Track Review ⊙ Daily Ops Home
Sean Kingston :: "Beautiful Girls"From Sean Kingston (Epic; 2007)
This is a deeply insecure reggae-wop ballad, Kingston stating that he’ll become suicidal if his relationship with one of the titular beautiful girls bites the dust, that’s how freaking gorgeous she is. So Kingston’s reticent to even try: “That’s why it’ll never work,” he says in dumb, happy, uber-melodic cadence. At least he’s aware that he’s playing out of his league -- dude looks like Kenan Thompson. Producer J.R. Rotem continues biting the big shit; for Rihanna it was “Tainted Love,” here it’s “Stand By Me.” But let’s got back to “reggae-wop”: yeah, it’s kind of fascinating to listen to. I mean, we’ve heard Akon (boy, have we) and Gwen Stefani’s “Sweet Escape” with Akon, so it’s not like Sean Kingston’s breaking any ground in a post-Akon world or that Akon was breaking ground in the first place, but there’s something definite about the marriage of this track’s two constituents. There is reggae of the pop variety, and there is doo-wop of the new pop variety, and “Beautiful Girls” lets nothing come between them. So the song consists of two legs both walking straight towards sugary, sun-drenched, simultaneously nostalgic and trendy pophood….while the sentiment of the lyrics is more emo than Jared Leto in a scarf. This thing blew up my local radio stations within ten minutes of its first rotation.
Chet Betz :: 18 July 2007 |
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