The 2009 Earworm Award goes to this totally artless teenage R&B fuck jam by a singer whose name is pronounced plain old "Jeremy." It has not escaped my head for weeks thanks to the stammering chorus: "Girl you know I!!! I!!! I!!! Girl you know I!!! I!!! I!!!" It's like a jackhammer jumping out of (what else?) a birthday cake. Once heard, never forgotten—very nearly the opposite of the rest of the song, which is syrupy, though not unappealingly so. Typical bon mot: "You say you want passion/I think you found it." You think so, huh? But try as many of my friends might have, Soulja Boy's "Yahhh!" didn't catch on as a catchall interjection. So maybe this will. Those I!!!s—oh, those I!!!s.

Speaking of maddening, Maxwell has released this, the first single from a new album due in July that has been gestating eight years. So what do we get? A song about how much better you, attractive woman, would be without Maxwell in your life. Except, of course, that he's been away so long that it's impossible to resist hearing it as a naked letter of appeal to his fans. "You won't remember me," he tells us, half a verse before he repeats "I had to leave" four times in a row, the first of this record's many climaxes; each iteration is more desperate and claustrophobic than the last—and also more vulnerable and soothing and haunting.

That's the paradox at the heart of "Pretty Wings": The harder Maxwell tries to be nice about being scared shitless to commit, the more desirable he becomes. The more see-through that fear is, the sweeter he sings it. The more trite the imagery (the title refers to what you, dear lady, should go flap elsewhere because, after all, Maxwell doesn't deserve you), the more subtly he layers everything around it, from the gamelan and fuzzy loop of guitar harmonics to the stuttering beat and the horns that nudge midway through the song then rise into the mix nonchalantly. And the deeper you listen, the deeper you fall. On the second verse, Maxwell gives in and just starts sobbing, which would be shameless if everything else weren't so damn enticing. And when he bursts into overdubbed single syllables after the breakdown, or sings "prit-tay wangs" on the lead vocal and "pret-ty wiiings" in the background, you'd have to be made of iron to resist.