President Barack Obama - This is great. Obviously doesn't fit for any sort of comparison to other songs. Does fit African American civil rights stuff, public singing and Amazing Grace in particular hold a lot of significance in that cultural arena and would make excellent writeup fodder. Doing just this might feel like too much of a departure from the weekly contemporary music angle? If so, maybe include this with another song as a double feature?
T.I. - I actually really like the backing on this, but the lyrics are... well, they're unintelligible to me except for frequent appearances of "nigga" "fuck pussy" "naked bitch" etc. Doesn't seem like a very classy or family friendly song in general.
A.O.A. - This is not a very classy song either, the dancing seems a lot more sexualized than the other "K-pop American high school" songs that have been in the last few weeks rankings. And they were already pretty sexualized. It is, however, more pleasing to my ears than those previous genre entries. I could remember the whole song and bounce around to it after just a single listen. Thankfully, the song does not fit a proposed civil rights narrative at all, saving us from an in depth analysis of the relative artistic merit of mock spanking in soccer shorts.
Lianne La Havas - Really nice vocals. Lyrics could be interpreted very pessimistically on paper, but the tone of the singing and the infectious smiling in the video make it a positive narrative instead. To me personally, it was "just kinda there," but it could make a good companion piece with the Obama vid?
K Trance & Everyone - Lotta good passionate musicians groovin out! A very clean feel good track. Everyone there clearly loves what they're doing.
R3hab & Sander van Doorn - Oh hey, Alexbait. Yeah, I love this track. The build and break and resolution forms are all properly trimmed to fit in a 3 minute length. The piercing tone of the melody line mixes with the bass and gives an impression of strong piercing "lines" - matching all the linear jets and lines in the video. The siren wails are tuned to sound like bird cries, fitting the phoenix theme. Couple of unnecessary flashes of bikini girls are the only real negatives here. Really well made. Sadly there isn't a lot of African-American presence here either... I don't know if I can ignore such a strongly built track that hits my buttons though.
Hard week to judge, very strong, as noted. R3hab sits at the top for me for sure, T.I. at the bottom, and Obama in the "put this in as a double feature with the planned writeup no matter what" category. The other three are all good as well, don't know that I could put an ordering to them.
