Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Single Premiere - Ke$ha's duet with Alice Cooper is here and it's ....not terrible

"Look at this old guy I just met...he says his name is Ke$ha.  That's a stupid name."
Ok so here's the thing.  When we heard that Ke$ha was going to be rolling around in a musical mudpit with uber-rocker Alice Cooper we were all *eyeroll*/"oh dear"/"what the hell has this world come to, can't we just have another Kylie album already?". And understandably so.  It sounds terrible, no?

But a snippet (does half the song still count as a snippet?!) of the track has appeared and it is SHOCKINGLY NOT HORRIFIC.  It's nothing spectacular, but it's not a world away from what "a hit" sounds like these days (which is either a good or bad thing depending on whether you're under the age of 15 or not).  As well as the two artists mesh together, it's absolutely clear that this collaboration was the result of some clever marketing, though, and not any organic development of musical rapport - but that's pretty par for the course these days.  You know, because Rihanna, Britney and Nikki are SUCH GOOD FRIENDS.

Getting Ke$ha on his new track may seem like quite a coup for Mr. Cooper:  Ke$ha is coming off her top 10 U.S. hit 'Blow,' while Alice is coming off...well, beta-blockers, probably.  But while on the surface it might seem like Ke$ha's slumming it with a has-been, one can never underestimate the importance of converting 50-year-old tattoo artists into fans.

In any case, whatever marketing deals are behind this duet, we're certainly not hating it. It has a beat and you can dance to it and we're in a recession for chrissake, we can't be picky.