Ariel Pink Reviews The Top Five Pop Songs

ECCENTRIC BORE STIRS CONTROVERSY THROUGH INANE CONCEPTS

Ariel Pink should drop his mic right now, it’s not because his album got a 8.8 on Pitchfork (told you!) and overall positive reviews all over the blogosphere, that ‘Pom Pom’ is a chef d’oeuvre! The guy surrounds the release of his albums with so much controversy that it is difficult to concentrate on the real music, and I am not only talking about the Madonna story, which, he explained to the Guardian, was ‘an amazing promotional campaign’. This was peanuts compare to what he said in the same interview… Didn’t he call Grimes ‘stupid and retarded’? Nice!

A few years ago, he became totally provocative declaring ‘I love paedophiles too, and I love necrophiliacs [sic], and all these other people’, after saying ‘I’m all for being a deviant’. Yuck! See, to me, this was totally unnecessary, I had figured all this a long time ago. Pink is a scabrous wacky individual, a parody-man and king of the lo-fi pop who is called a genius by some media, but the big-mouth musician should consider changing career and becoming a music critic! Vogue actually asked him to ‘review’ the top five pop songs of the moment, and he had great lines:

Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’? ‘Everybody loves this song. She’s trying to come out and get this party started, it’s got a P!nk-ish feel to it. It has that sugary pop trace that’s become a hallmark—it’s a little bit like Shania Twain doing ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much.’’

Meghan Trainor’s ‘All About That Bass’? ‘I have no idea if she is a hard rapper or a little bit like an Amy Winehouse, but with less personality and less originality.’… ‘But I don’t like the song, it sounds to me like Amy Winehouse, but the Toys “R” Us version.’

Maroon 5’s ‘Animals’?’ It’s got an urban edge to it, it’s also cookie-cutter, and then it sounds like Pitbull could jump in at any second. If you can throw Pitbull into any song then these songs are working.’

Tove Lo’s’Moments’?’ The Swedish take hyper-pop melodicism and always excel at it. They ABBA-fy everything, so they always kick our asses in whatever dance and urban craze, and add these sophisticated harmonies and grandiosities.’

Jessie J, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj’s ‘Bang Bang’? ‘I’m in love with Ariana Grande—she’s got a very curious personality, I hear she loves Freddy Krueger and I love Freddy Krueger, which makes me feel like we’d be perfect for each other.’

Strong opinions? Certainly, but he is funny. The sleazy misogynist character wants to marry Swift and is in love with Grande, but does he really think anything of all this or is it just a series of bon mots? Does he really like Taylor Swift, or should I read again this Guardian interview? ‘Everybody’s full of shit. The more sense they make, the more full of shit they are,’ he declared. ‘We’re all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It’s dogs barking. It doesn’t mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.’ Pink can be deep at times, and this is certainly when he makes the most sense.