The Cosmic Ballet Goes On

Melissa threw down a challenge a few days ago for me to explain why I felt that Kesha's (no way can I bring myself to type the dollar sign) Tik Tok is a better song than Lady Gaga's Bad Romance.  The cut of her jib was that they're both pretty much just regular ol' pop songs (a plus, in her estimation) and that there's no reason to believe one is better, or even significantly different, than the other. This is in the context of our now thousands of words long RAGING blood-feud about the pros and cons of pop culture.

Well, I think someone has far underestimated my ability to endlessly argue my point.

Melissa says she personally thinks Bad Romance is "interesting, dark, and far more melodic", which just blows my mind. Bad Romance could not be any less interesting as a song.  The only thing in it that is remotely unpredictable (by which I mean, thoroughly predictable) is when Lady Gaga decides to sing her "la la la" phrases like some sort of sex-doll pokemon, tossing out nonsense syllables intermixed with repetitions of her own name.  Whatever, Lady Gaga, I guess you can have a gold star.

As for dark, where do you get that?  I guess it does have words like 'bad' and 'ugly' in it.  But on the whole, I can't see any reason why this would be higher than, say, Bad Company's Feel Like Making Love on the Dark Scale.  It's about as frilly as you can get.  The video is certainly dark (and way cooler than the song itself) but it's a mistake to let that convince you that there's anything to the lyrics that is meant to reflect serious emotions at all, much less disturbing ones.

All in all, the song is blatant euro-trash, a sound that has been the staple of dance clubs for decades.  If there's one thing that music like this, and the work of almost every other major pop act, hammers home, it's that the 80s are never ever going to go away.

Kesha, however, makes the unexpected and hilarious choice to reach back to that time and steal her sound from video game music. That's right, video game music.  I find much of the charm of Tik Tok to come from the image this song gives me of Final Fantasy I character sprites waking up hung over and half-naked in the bathtub.  "Dude, White Mage puked all over his robes last night!"

And what's this?  Within the first minute, Tik Tok makes the bold choice to use syncopation.  Well, crap my pants!  There's something I thought would never return to pop music.  The arrangement is also refreshingly sparse, choosing to keep the cutesy Nintendo melody as the main focus and accenting it with heavy hits that still satisfy the need for everything to be danceable. Also, Kesha gets points for using my favorite contraction of all time, "I'ma", a three-letter abomination that does the job of four words.

By contrast,  Bad Romance sighs through an obligatory intro that is quickly tossed aside in favor of a bludgeoning four-on-the-floor beat and omnipresent synth orchestra whose sole purpose is to keep you from actually hearing what's going on.  The thumping bass and wall of sound are little more than pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain trickery/laziness.

But let's not kid ourselves, Kesha does eventually fall into cliche.  If Tik Tok had ended at the two minute mark, I might be inclined to call it a good song in general, not just a well-made pop tune.  Instead, Kesha chooses to do the most awful thing she could and throw in a goddamn break down.  Directly after this, the kick drum starts coming down on every beat, and all of a sudden we find ourselves pretty much listening to Bad Romance.  What a waste.

By the way, have you seen Kesha's website?  Holy shit.  It has narwhales with rainbow horns!