I had you SUICIDAL! SUICIDAL!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

So if you don't know yet that 'Beautiful Girls' by Sean Kingston is on the cusp of being inescapable, this is where you start to prepare yourself. I love it; totally ridiculous, slightly inappropriate, and massively charming emo-dancehall. How much you like it may depend on whether you find the thought of primary school kids singing "SUICIDAL! SUICIDAL!" cute or wrong.

And JoJo's covered it from the girl's point of view! I love JoJo but I think this is the first time she's shown, you know, humour in her art.

Not suicidal is Róisín Murphy - this is a bit old now (I assume it flopped then, le sigh) but I love the video.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I like Jojo's cover a little better because of the role reversal...the suicidal part is a little lighter/makes more sense that way. With Sean, I want him to go completely over the top with it, to make LESS sense than he does, like Rihanna in "Unfaithful" -- he could detail the ways in which one might off himself after being scorned by a beautiful girl, even though this would bring him somewhat close to "One More Minute" by Weird Al. Wait, maybe because of that. Wish Jojo's production was as breezy as his, though, it's a bit nondescript. But the lyrics hit harder from the girl's point of view (seriously, he's suicidal and the best he can do is just say that he is? Gimme some hilariously overwrought metaphors or something...).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"Unfaithful" really is my gauge for judging over-the-top kiddie-singalong questionableness in pop music content (basically I imagine how hilarious it would be for Girl Authority to cover a given hit), but c'mon, even "Because of You" trumps the word SUICIDAL (w/o much disturbing context for it)...esp. because you can memorize all the lyrics and sing it at karaoke without even realizing what it is yer singing about!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I dunno, it's not as wtf or brilliant as 'Unfaithful' but that's part of its appeal - the word SUICIDAL appears out of nowhere, it's never backed up and he doesn't even sound suicidal, he sounds breezily unconcerned, so it has a different kind of wtf factor. Like, are you SURE that's the word you mean. Like 'Promiscuous' actually! I don't think Nelly or Tim really know what that word means...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I have to say I'm not massively impressed by the Sean/Jojo. It's alright but the sample is too heavy. I bet I'll be bouncing around to it on All Dancefloors in three weeks' time, mind.

That Roisin vid is awesome though. She's sat on the bog! Brushing her teeth! This is the sort of multitasking that all popstars should master to earn MY RESPECT.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I didn't know there was a sample in the Sean Kingston!

[cis.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard a song called 'stand by me'?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Or seen a film called 'Stand By Me', that had a old soul tune called 'Stand By Me' as the theme track? Oh, never mind - here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_E._King).

[cis.livejournal.com]

my problem with the Sean Kingston, which otherwise I love for al its fifties stylings, is when he sings 'it was back in '99, watching movies all the time, when i went away for doing my first crime'. SK looks about sixteen? So he's still bangin' on about some girl who left him when he went into juvie at the age of eight? I love nonsense for the sake of a rhyme as much as the next girl, but there are some things up with which I will not put.

I find the Jojo version really bland? idk. pretty funny when she sings 'when i dutty wine' with such clear enunciation.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I love that bit precisely because it implies either a) astonishing gulliness at the age of 9 (SK was born in 1990) or b) pure nonsense. Would have been better if he'd sung '89 though.

'Stand By Me'? Rings a vague bell, I don't think I've heard it though...

[cis.livejournal.com]

'Stand by me' always seemed to be one of those songs that everyone knew without really having heard the original: we used to sing it in the playground in primary school, that sort of thing.

Sometimes I can't help but think you might be well served by listening to Capital Gold once in a while. ^^

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of Ben E King either :(

I don't really know how to tune my radio? and can never get internet radio to work. Not that I ever try b/c I can never stand any radio normally - too many presenters' voices, not enough music...

[cis.livejournal.com]

I really don't think knowing who Ben E King is has any importance compared to knowing the song!

I decided to listen to Capital Gold yesterday afternoon and it turned out I couldn't really bear it for more than about half an hour (they played queen or sth and i had to turn it off) so, you know, maybe I can't talk about who should listen to the radio more. But it is definitely lower on presenters-being-unpleasant and higher on presenters-being-affable-nobodies, the lesser of the two available evils.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Oh man, all kind of layers in this (factoring in both the SK video and the song). Not something that I can articulate in a throwaway comment anyway.

Like cis, I thought the JoJo version subtracted rather than added. But I wasn't paying much attention to the lyrics. Normally, I'll instinctively side with the female where these song / answer song deals are concerned. So maybe when I've worked out the words, I'll reconsider.

SK though: talk about messing with totems. He trashes at least three in that vid.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

most u&k JoJo lyric: WHEN I DUTTY WINE

JoJo! Dutty wine!

[mackromackro.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's for the best, but I'm surprised no one touched the "Suicidal, Suidicial" bit. I like this song, even though it will be a kinda-dancehall-ish "Stand By Me" for me, as far as how I remember it. I think there may even be rocksteady, dub, or reggae covers of "Stand By Me" to make the lines more blurry.

Anyway, I can tell you that this single would be banned in the U.S. for that word repeated twice. We're still a horribly nanny culture here. Then again, we're the type of country that could produce that one fellow who breaks up with a girl, decides to off himself in his car off a cliff with THIS song blaring in the car stereo before he pummels, therefore making Sean Kingston a gazillionare artist in the U.S.

DEATH SELLS IN THE STATES! REALLY WELL! ALL THE TIME! I'm surprised the song hasn't even brushed against this side of the Atlantic yet.

[cis.livejournal.com]

It hasn't been released in the UK, though I did get on a bus yesterday where the one of the kids on the back seat started singing it (TRUFAX) so it must have some radio presence. And that video suggests the primary market is the States, not here, and not Jamaica neither.

Actually i just checked wikipedia, and it's #2 on the billboard hot 100 airplay chart? apparently on certain radio stations 'suicidal, suicidal' has been replaced with 'in denial, in denial'. awesome.

[mackromackro.livejournal.com]

WO!

I have no clue if ILM is talking about this song or not (I don't read the board anymore), so for all I know it's the number one hit here. Too bad there isn't a strong enough American chapter of Freaky Trigger with its parallel in community size and focus. :/

[cis.livejournal.com]

I was thinking, earlier, about the meaning of the 'stand by me' sample in the SK version: aren't the song and the sample commenting on one another? If the sample's a synecdoche for the whole original song - 'i won't be afraid... so long as you stand by me' versus 'they have you suicidal when they say it's over', feeling safe when she's with you versus feeling destroyed when she leaves you. Whereas the video's clearly treating the sample as a synecdoche for the whole doo-wop/fifties-pop genre, though, the enduring traces of that soda-fountain kind of life -- it's almost too easy (though what's kind of uneasy is that the fifties stylings make you extra-aware of the racial makeup: has anything changed, and so on).

[koganbot]

I'm running out of space on my hard drive, so I ended up deleting this when it came through on Jukebox. It's nice enough, actually, and I'm not going to mind hearing it a thousand times, but it falls into a tepid nowhere for me. An actual Jamaican ska group from the early '60s (such as the Wailers: that's my favorite time for them, actually, when they were essentially trying to be an r&b vocal group like the Impressions but with forays into rock 'n' roll and garage rock) would have done this even lighter - the singing would have been a barely visible mist - yet it would have had 100 times the intensity and sweetness.

When I'd just turned nine (and was planning my first crime, perhaps) my favorite song on the radio began "Why does the sun go on shining?/Why does the sea rush to shore?/Don't they know it's the end of the world/'Cause you don't love me anymore." My mother managed not to get upset by this, though of course my subsequent dissolute and unregenerate life was caused by my being allowed to hear the song.

Anyway, I read the ilX thread on this thread. Joy and intelligence seem to have abandoned ilX.

[koganbot]

The ilX thread on this song ("Beautiful Girls"), that is. There's been no ilX thread on this thread, as far as I know.

[koganbot]

The Roisin Murphy vid is brilliant, warms the whole song up for me, though I'm not sure if I can explain why. Reminds me of that Bob Dylan line: "But these visions of Johanna make it all seem so cruel." Sweets from the shop, drunken lout on the bus home, a mob giving chase to someone (unexplained), all end up refracting into her mood of discontent.