Review Summary: They just wanna see you shake that and "get crunked" and fucked up enough to actually buy their album.
After the inundation of its presence in the clubs and on the radio, I can finally say: I
get "Party Rock Anthem". Like, I understand why it's a worldwide hit (and why the Melbourne shuffle will now forever be known as the "party rock dance/shuffle"). There's something extremely universal and inclusive about that chorus of "party rock is in the house tonight / everybody just have a good time." Instead of bragging about how they get into the club for free and how the bouncers recognize them (although the duo
does "rap" about that stuff on other tracks), LMFAO just invite everyone to get totally fucked up. Which is fine, and almost fun to boot; that synth hook has a way of sounding pretty damn good after a few shots. So there you have it - a begrudging admission that "Party Rock Anthem" does indeed deserve to be popular. It ticks. It hits the right spots. It tries too hard, especially during that painfully predictable buildup, but it's not the horrid abomination I thought it was. As for
Sorry For Party Rocking, LMFAO's second proper album and the one from which "Party Rock Anthem" is taken from, however…well, it's a tough call. On the one hand, the disc doesn't sound nearly as awful as one might expect, considering other albums of its ilk (
The E.N.D., whatever Far East Movement's full-length was called). On the other hand, that's hardly a compliment.
In fact, it's probably a more damning criticism - most of the time,
Sorry For Party Rocking is distressingly boring. Not that "Party Rock Anthem" or the duo's other half-decent single, 2009's "Shots", aren't numbingly repetitive - but at least they're propulsive and demand people to
move. Songs like "Champagne Showers" and the album's title track are dull pastiches of better tracks, while "All Night Long" is a cliché-ridden misfire. But, I mean, it isn't even a
dramatic misfire - I was hoping for, at the very least, exhilarating badness, but this shit is just limp. For the most part, when LMFAO try to actually express emotions, they fail miserably. Hey guys, here's a tip - "She's outta space like Anakin / body like a mannequin" is
not, contrary to whatever fucked-up logic you're operating under, a remotely attractive, let alone thoughtful, image! Then again, it's far too generous to assume that
Sorry For Party Rocking intends to be taken seriously; look no further than that cover art. Tunes like bonus track "Put That A$$ To Work" and "Sexy and I Know It" are mindless, to be sure, but they work because of their close alignment to their creators' basic disposition as, ahem, artists - that is, the basic fact that Stefan Kendal Gordy and Skyler Husten Gordy's trashy "electro-hop" is meant to be gleefully shallow. Y'know, like every other awful electronic collective starting up in some teenage douchebag's basement in suburban Los Angeles - except that the Gordys are actually the son and grandson of Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records.
Which shouldn't matter, really, except that these guys' privilege does seep into their hedonism. "Flying the world, filling up my passport / I'm in the zone, martini's strong, my tall is short, but my money long" goes the poorly auto-tuned "One Day"; listening to the song is a bland and occasionally painful experience, but reading the lyrics is practically torturous. This stuff is queasily indulgent and it never steps into camp territory, giving the entire product of
Sorry For Party Rocking a disturbingly polished sheen. "I'm gonna celebrate, 'cause I'mma get you one day," somebody sings (it's impossible to distinguish between the two through all that processing), but let's face it - if the girl being addressed ever existed in the first place, the Gordys probably never cared about her. To them, women are commodities, and although misogyny is hardly anything new in hip-hop, it's atrocious to see it so rampant in party music, intended to be enjoyed by everybody at different levels of intoxication. The one egregiously bad moment of "Party Rock Anthem" is the line "step up fast and be the first girl to make me throw this cash", because it isn't even meant to be funny - it's just plain moronic. Ultimately,
Sorry For Party Rocking is the worst kind of bad album, offering no captivating moments of sonic excrement and presenting plenty of awful crap upon further listening. I suppose that's something of a compliment, though. At least there is something beneath the surface of these songs. Too bad it's unexciting trash.
