Catty Micro-Reviews, New Edition

I can't claim to have invented the mini-review, in fact as classical record reviews seem to be shrinking more and more, pretty soon everyone will be doing them. With horror, I realized the other day that I haven't done a set of catty micro-reviews for years and years. So here goes. My methodology is simple. I just go to YouTube, type in a single letter of the alphabet and listen to the first pop song that comes up. Then I try to deliver a one or two sentence review. Let's start with "A."

First up, believe it or not is "Adventure of a Lifetime" from Coldplay with an astonishing 721,780,550 views:

The opening of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey redone in CGI with a tedious pop-rock back-beat. Kubrick's original soundtrack featured music by Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss and Györgi Ligeti.

Agh, this isn't my day! The first thing that comes up with "B" is "Bodak Yellow" by Cardi B and Blogger doesn't want to embed the original video. Just follow the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGccV-NOm8

It is a rare accomplishment for a music video to be aesthetically unpleasant in all these dimensions: music, lyrics, fashion, and culturally, but this one manages. How over 490 million people managed to watch this without resulting nausea is a mystery to me.

Typing in "C" brings up a tune by Mexican rapper C-Kan, "Un Par de Balas" which means "A Couple of Bullets."

As rap goes, this is fairly tolerable. I wonder, is it sort of illegal for anyone in this sub-culture to actually not, you know, have any tattoos?

"D" brings up a tune by Ludacris, well known for his recurring role in several Fast and Furious films. Everything in the video is turned into a weird cartoon with more CGI. You know, I think this is how the elite of music these days distinguish themselves from the low-rent artists: CGI budget. A couple of guys in a garage just can't compete, which is the whole idea. Mind you, they certainly could musically, as this music is about as tediously formulaic as possible. Again, follow the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4dPrjh9wCc

"E" brings up a song by Matt Mason, a country singer with a mere 4 million views.

This video is so low-budget that they use default captions from iMovie! Apart from that it is pretty much a standard country song: unfaithful wife, car (or rather truck) chase, use of shotgun, steel guitar solo. Kind of like Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan around the time of Nashville Skyline, with about 70% of the inspiration removed.

After all that, we really need a palate cleanser, don't we? Here is "Lay, Lady Lay" from the aforementioned Nashville Skyline: