Review Summary: Red Fuhrer.
Where I’m from, we have a history of eager consumption of miserable schlock from the West alongside the good stuff. Back in the Soviet times, Army of Lovers or Modern Talking records were sold here by busloads (none of them ever got any royalties or otherwise profited from that though, they were exclusively pirated copies). That’s how it was back then, that’s how it is now, that’s how it always will be. Amen.
Naturally, LMFAO dominated the main Ukrainian musical TV channel M1 around 2011 with “I’m Sexy and I Know It”, feeling right at home together with the dross that was produced by our native pop artists at the time. It was ridiculed of course, but omnipresent nevertheless, from the TV to Internet memes. My own cousins, who were in their early teens at the time, took a great pleasure in torturing my metalhead soul by turning the volume up every time the song was broadcasted and suggesting that I should stroll the streets in the same box-head outfit that was shown in the music video. Luckily, LMFAO came and went, soon to be replaced by PSY, and I have never heard any other song by them, not even their one or two other hit singles.
Little did I know that upon dissolution of the infamous duo its older half decided to branch out as a solo artist and release an album that I was destined to review long after it was gone for good from the public memory. Redfoo is the name, and you can tell just by looking at the album’s title and cover that nothing has really changed since LMFAO times. You’d hardly be surprised to learn that the album opens with a song about partying. The real surprise lies in the fact that the song is actually tolerable. “Keep Shining” features a catchy if not very original synth melody and endearing lyrics about, well, partying. I mean, if you can enjoy an “Electric Callboy” song, you might be able to like this one as well to some extent. The one issue is that a song like that is not supposed to last for more than five minutes and it quickly becomes grating and tiresome. That impression is reinforced tenfold when samey outdated electropop songs follow one by one in all their autotuned glory, featuring way more irritating melodies and tired and trite lyrics about having fun again and again. However, partying is not the only recurring theme here. There’s one more important subject that Redfoo deemed necessary to cover extensively in this oeuvre. As a truly masterful storyteller, he constructs the narrative around that subject gradually, aptly preparing the listener for the full disclosure.
During the first four tracks of the album “booties” are only mentioned once in every song, and during the first two songs they are rhymed exclusively with “cuties.” Over time, Redfoo puts his beloved word in different contexts, including comparing a girl’s “booty” to a full moon at some point. The first peak is reached in the fifth song “Booty Master,” which, as you can guess, is totally focused on the subject of female buttocks.
It is at this point that Redfoo surprises me for the second time, proving that he is aware of the necessity to switch the gears every once in a while when you’re putting thirteen songs on a record. “Lights Out” has a markedly old-school feel, its melodies go back all the way to the seventies and remind me of glam/disco songs from that era. Refoo’s singing also feels significantly more organic on this song. Surprisingly, it is the first and, for quite a while, the only song that does not mention booties. Its flow is broken by ill-fitting sections of chaotic-blip-blops and screechy samples, but it’s still better than most of the preceding material. May wonders never cease, as Redfoo immediately proves to be capable of putting out two decent songs in a row. There’s nothing old-school about “So Lit,” it’s a typical club song from ten years ago, but it is quite enjoyable if you can look past annoying falsetto in the chorus and ridiculous amount of autotune. If that’s too much for you, don’t worry, the following track and the album’s lead single “New Thang” ups the game on that and is buried under a mountainous pile of processed vocals. Oh, and if you missed booties, they are back from their one-song break, culminating in “Juicy Wiggle,” another full bootie-centered song. However, after that, booties only make a token appearance on one more song.
I can not possibly achieve nor even imagine the level of concentration and willpower that it took for Redfoo to refrain from mentioning booties for the last
three, I repeat three songs on the album, but he did pull off that magnificent feat of temperance and restraint. As for the songs themselves, I do think that of the one that infamously features
Stevie Wonder of all people is genuinely enjoyable. Don’t ask me. I don’t know how that happened, what did we do to deserve this, or even what Stevie actually does on the track. I thought that Xzibit feature on a Within Temptation song was from a parallel universe, but now I learn that just a couple of years later
this happened. The song itself, however, has an actual groove, features a nice bouncy melody, and cute vocals provided by a lady who, apparently, does not have Stevie Wonder’s star power, and is not even mentioned in the album’s liner notes. “Where the Sun Goes” serves as a welcome respite after the preceding booty feast and the two following songs, those being yet another exercise in autotuning and a cheap piano ballad respectively.
So, where does this leave us? Well, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, “Party Rock Anthem” is an overlong album full of autotuned and overproduced songs about partying, partying, partying, and, most importantly, ASS. I guess you can enjoy a song or two from here if you absolutely have to. Leave it or leave it.
