https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/christina-aguilera-accelerate-ft-ty-dolla-d
ollarign-and-2-chainz/
Christina Aguilera
“Accelerate” [ft. Ty Dolla $ign & 2 Chainz]
BY:SHELDON PEARCE
9 HRS AGO
POP/R&B
Christina Aguilera is reconstructing her sound for her first album in nearly si
x years,Liberation. Her comeback single, “Accelerate,” a collaboration with
Ty Dolla $ign and 2 Chainz, is certainly a liberation from something, thoug
h it’s unclear what—if not conventional songcraft, then perhaps the formulaic
chaff of her last few albums. It’s also produced by Kanye West, in a time when
Kanye is making the worst decisions of his career. Aguilera probably has mixed
feelings about that, but pop artifice is reliant on getting people to pay attent
ion. And if “Accelerate” is one thing, it’s certainly attention-grabbing. The
re’s a fun song (or two) trapped in here somewhere, between several mutations,
but without any sort of constancy or meaningful direction, it isn’t much of a s
ong at all; it’s a series of disjointed episodes with superfluous parts.
Unlike the majority of songs on 2012’s Lotus, which were unadventurous and unc
omplicated power pop, “Accelerate” is unduly busy, sometimes even spasmodic in
its progressions. The opening production invokes the scene in Kanye’s Runaway
where he messes around with his MPC drum pad, as a winged Selita Ebanks convul
ses to the rhythm. It arbitrarily erupts into synths before breaking down into a
percussive chug; the programmed glitchy vocal samples and add-ons are meant to
be ornamental but they comes off as excessive. The performers all move curiously
, if not dutifully, upon the stage Kanye has set forth, yet they seem to be look
ing around at each other for cues. It’s confounding that a song with this much
talent doesn’t seem to know what to do with any of it.
“Accelerate,” like so many of Xtina’s songs, seems to misunderstand what is g
reat about her: those pipes, capable of Weapons-grade vocal runs set to vapori
ze. She should be wrapping her golden throat around something like Demi Lovato’
s operatic “Sorry Not Sorry.” In “Accelerate,” she offers blasé, understate
d croons at odds with her chatty lyrics about partying and being ‘bout that lif
e. “Fuck all these drugs, fuck all these clubs/What’s wrong with me?” Ty blur
ts out randomly, going off message like a robot host Suddenly becoming self-aw
are mid narrative. Even the 2 Chainz verse is innocuous, a set of bottom-tier st
unt raps about having a sex drive like Nascar and whatnot. He raps the words “D
on’t forget the hashtag” and “You ain’t got internet?” as if to stoke onlin
e discourse. It’s sort of fitting that “Accelerate” is the sonic equivalent o
f expanding tweets to 280 characters; unnecessarily mixing and inflating ideas w
hen far less would do.
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※ 編輯: nttu94310 (223.137.81.29), 05/04/2018 13:07:13