Month: August 2013

Luke Bryan: ‘Crash My Party’

Pop Martzoo , , ,

Luke Bryan: Crash My Party

After winning the coveted CMA Entertainer of the Year award, with the help of his hugely successful Tailgates & Tanlines, Luke Bryan now finds himself in the unenviable, but inevitable position of having to follow up its chart longevity.

Armed with its hit title track, Bryan’s latest offering, Crash My Party, is fraught with catchy hooks and strong melodies, but it’s often sidetracked by reductive and forgettable lyrics (“Out where the corn rows grow/Row, row my boat/Floatin’ down the Flint River/Catch us up a little catfish dinner”). Ironically, the set’s most disposable track (“I See You”) was co-written by Bryan himself, yet he later manages to redeem his musical faux pas with the reflective life ballad “Dirt Road Diary.”

While you’d have to hunt high and low for any real substance here (“Blood Brothers”), that shouldn’t matter since Bryan’s fourth proper album is exactly the sort of good time romp for which the Georgia native has become famous; country booty shakers (“That’s My Kind of Night” and “Out Like That”) balanced with emotive balladeering (“Goodbye Girl” and “Play It Again”). However, listeners should be forewarned, this album is predictably programmed for obstreperous fist-pumping, beer chugging followers of feel good country pop who don’t want to waste a lot of time contemplating the deeper meaning of life. Ultimately, Crash My Party is melodiously rewarding despite its sporadic lyrical missteps.

© 2013 ForASong Media, LLC

The Return of Lady Gaga

Pop Martzoo , , , , , ,

Gaga applause

After beginning 2013 underneath a dark cloud ultimately resulting in the cancellation of several tour dates followed by surgery and intensive physical therapy, Lady Gaga has finally arisen looking like she’s vowed to make up for lost time. New details are beginning to emerge on a weekly basis about her forthcoming album ARTPOP, interactive app, new single and music video.

Lady Gaga is set to release new music for the first time in over two years on August 19th. “Applause” will be Mother Monster’s first single from her highly anticipated upcoming multimedia epic, scheduled to drop in November. She recently unveiled the cover art of her soon to be released new single (above) showing the performance artist with mime-like multicolored makeup smeared across whiteface. The lead single is reportedly an upbeat track “full of happiness” and judging from the lyrics teased so far (“I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong/To crash the critic saying is it right or is it wrong/Give me that thing that I love/Put your hands up make ’em touch”), that description sounds accurate.

During a recent interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Gaga confessed “I had broken my hip. Nobody knew, but when we got all the MRIs finished before I went to surgery there were giant craters, a hole in my hip the size of a quarter, and the cartilage was just hanging out the other side. I had a tear on the inside of my joint and a huge breakage. The surgeon told me that if I had done another show I might have needed a full hip replacement. I would have been out at least a year, maybe longer.”

“Applause” will be released simultaneously with an accompanying music video (directed by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin), followed by its debut live performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards on August 25th.

ARTPOP promises to be an immersive multimedia release, which Gaga describes as “a musical and visual engineering system that combines music, art, fashion and technology.” Co-produced by Gaga with Zedd, DJ White Shadow, Dallas Austin, RedOne, and Fernando Garibay, ARTPOP is scheduled to be released worldwide on November 11th.