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Taio Cruz ft. Luciana - 'Come On Girl'

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Fraser McAlpine | 10:46 UK time, Friday, 29 February 2008

Taio CruzSometimes, you hear songs in excruciatingly innappropriate circumstances to say things like "WOW, THIS IS AMAZING!". A funeral, say, or the dentist's or, while you're in the middle of snogging a fit hotty. There's no real helping you when this happens, you just have to hope you manage to not open your big mouth (or indeed close your big mouth, move it away from your kissyfriend's, and then open it again) until the situation has passed, accepting this sort of thing as part of life and que sera sera etc.

I was actually in an 'adult' shop when I first heard this song. Before this gets too sordid, I might add that I was actually just ...no actually, nevermind but anyway, they had the radio on in there and upon hearing this quite marvellous ditty, I felt instantly compelled to dash back home and listen to it a lot. It really is THAT distracting.

You see, this is one of those electro-funk numbers that, if Justice did it, would have every indie kid from here to Norway throwing crazy shapes like a faulty shape-making device in a shape factory. As it is, of course, it's made by Taio Cruz and is consequently takes itself a lot less seriously than Justice, and is more interested in making you really, really want to do quite rude things than making your hairdo look amazing.

Some musical things are very, very effective in making you feel sexy; one of them is having a strong, strutty beat like the one in this song, something that makes you feel like posing in the mirror and deliberately ignoring any of your squashy/bony bits to declare that dayamn, you look awesome.

Another is that subtle, dipping bass that gives you something to not only sashay authoritatively to but gyrate around a bit, not so extravagently that you feel like a prat, but fast enough that you don't have time to think about possibly looking like a prat. Then of course there's the Timbalandy synths that slide all over the affair with the effect of strobe lights catching someone really, really hot in some darkened, sticky establishment (no, no, not the shop I mentioned earlier, I mean a club or something) and that's before you even get to the vocal.

I was actually leaving this bit till last deliberately. The only thing that hit me on the first ten or so listens was the general mindblowingness of the whole thing, but then I began to realise it has some quite wonderful lyrics, in a sort of cheesy-funny-kind-of-cute way, like "We can do whatever, keep it public or if you wanna keep it private and undercover that's cool, I just wanna stay under the covers with you" which Taio somehow manages to make sound sweetly inept rather than sleazy (there's a certain ...nerdy aspect to him, in my opinion) and other parts are just flat-out sweet, especially the chorus' plea to tell him what to say to get, err, into your pants...

Then, of course, general Winner At Everything Luciana appears in the middle eight and clarifies that Taio is, indeed, very sweet and that she is basically rather filthy but that doesn't mean they can't do a song together. Much as I love her, there's a lot to be said for cutting her appearance down to it's 20 seconds or so, since the sharp introduction of her voice does wonders to mess up the song a little in a hair-disarrangement manner without derailing it too badly and keeping it all on the sweet side.

That sweetness is really what makes this song good, otherwise it could easily have become some generic sex'n'b song but there definitely is something a little bit romantic about the whole thing, and that injects just enough fantasy into proceedings to stop any over-explicit lines causing a giggle which puts you off the whole thing.

Basically, if this song is not amazingly huge very soon then there is something wrong with everyone.

Five starsDownload: Out now
CD Released: March 3rd

(Hazel Robinson)

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