by Susan Boyle
(Sony)
This Rolling Stones remake by the middle-aged runner-up of the UK TV show Britain's Got Talent has become something of an accidental generational marker. If you grew up on the myth of rock as rebel music, chances are this is a spitting-on-the-ground offense—how dare this grande dame turn Mick and Keith's most tender moment into light operetta? If rock to you is simply part of the entertainment industrial complex, it's par for the course—light operetta is what TV talent shows do to everybody's canon. Why should the Stones be any different? Me, I was never a fan of the song to begin with: Every rendition I'm familiar with, including the first (by the Flying Burrito Brothers, off 1970's Burrito Deluxe, which beat the Stones' version by a year), has basically put me to sleep. And no, that's not knee-jerk anticanonism at work: Sticky Fingers has always sounded to me like the weakest of the Stones' "classic" 1968–72 quartet; the others (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Exile on Main St.) are all blindingly obvious, 10-out-of-10, A+++, five-star classics. But I like light operetta less, and by the time Boyle glisses the final lines of this song, she makes it sound not simply uninteresting but maudlin.
by Hockey
(Capitol)
The '90s revival is on. The proof is this smarmy flashback to that golden moment when modern-rock radio was jam-packed with the what-me-worry likes of Sublime, Cracker, Cake, Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, Barenaked Ladies... you get the anodyne, mildly quirky, liberal-arts-educated point. Thing is, what the vocalist Hockey's center reminds me of most strongly (besides Mark Knopfler, an observation I thank Will Swygart for) is the curly-haired dink from the Free Credit Report TV ads. Too bad this song's bid for earworm immortality ("Tomorrow's just a song away"—yes, and monkeys might fly out of my butt) isn't quite as catchy as "F-R-E-E, that spells 'free'/Credit report dot-com, baby." Not yet, anyway—surely Pizza Hut and/or Taco Bell will come a-callin', and boy will we all be sorry when that happens. Keep Portland weird, dudez.
by P-Money feat. Vince Harder
(3Beat Blue)
Pop-house from New Zealand that's been making headway in England. It sounds like something Justin Timberlake left off FutureSex/LoveSounds because it didn't feature enough synths. Instead, there's a strangled little looping guitar riff that makes the record all by itself.
