Nelly ft. Fergie - 'Party People'
The problem with reviewing a song called 'Party People' from the comfort of your computer chair is that this is not the environment for which it was created. There are a lot of songs that sound like total rubbish if you sit considering them in your room, where they'd sound brilliant if you were hearing them blared through a club's speakers. Club songs aren't meant to be especially clever, although they sometimes can be and they're not really meant to be dissected and analysed, just felt.
This could be said about a lot of music of course but when the operative line in a song is "WHERE MY PARTY PEOPLE AT?!" you can probably make a general assumption that you're not meant to be giving this a lot of careful thought and trying to work out the emotional implications of the stuff Nelly is shouting in your ears.
Lacking an enthusiasm for getting myself down to my nearest rave, I did the next best thing and, for purposes of reviewing it, stuck the song into
Sort of a glorified visualisation, this game makes a race track of sorts out of a song, which you consequently 'ride' in a small spaceship. Yes, this does sound a bit mad but it's very fun and has a lot of flashing colours and just like being in a club, can make songs you thought were total rubbish suddenly seem very good because they have lots of jumpy bits. For instance, I have only a very mild interest in 'Chelsea Dagger' by the Fratellis outside of Audiosurf but once in it, it becomes an infinitely better song than 'This Is Everything' by Tegan and Sara, a song I normally prefer to a massive degree.
I can report that 'Party People' makes an excellent Audiosurf experience, triggering all kinds of exciting twists and fast downhill surges and providing me with a jolly big score, making me the champion of the song on the Pro level.*
Suddenly, all those agressive, snorting electro-bass noises stop reminding me of offensive brass instruments and turn into an awesome beat. The momentum of the song comes into its own and suddenly the lack of any meaningful lyrics whatsoever becomes insignificant in comparison to the noise. The fact Nelly and Fergie are essentially just shouting totally random commands over a fairly minimalist instrumental doesn't matter anymore because the whole sonic experience turns into one of those "I. AM. AWESOME." attitude-packed songs that makes you feel like quite the badass.
Objectively, there's really nothing particularly good about this song. It's extremely self-referential and the rest of it's basically risible but the fun happens once you stop being objective about it and just get into how absurdly stupid it is, Pollow Da Don's ridiculously ballsy bassline suddenly gets hold of your ego, sticks a pump in it and inflates it until you think you're very, very cool, even if you happen to be a bedroom hermit competing for a high score on a computer game.
This is precisely the sort of thing that club music is designed to do (well, minus the bedroom aspect, probably) and there's not really a ballsier sort of comeback than just coming along and shouting "GET OUT OF YOUR BEDROOM AND PARTY, FOOL!"
Download: Out now
CD Released: May 19th
(Hazel Robinson)
*Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough, etc. [nb: I am actually rubbish at Audiosurf]
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