by Mark Cruikshank
This week has seen Maroon 5 return to the music scene with their unique brand of catchy pop song, The Weeknd gives us a new taste of his upcoming album, and RuPaul uses the success of his popular reality TV show to push his latest addictive single.
‘Don’t Wanna Know’ – Maroon 5 ft. Kendrick Lamar
Beginning the run up to their upcoming 6th album, Maroon 5 have done what they do best and released a cheery pop tune that will be stuck in your head for about a week and a half. ‘Don’t Wanna Know’ is not a traditional break-up song that is full of anger and bitterness, but about moving on from a relationship and not knowing who an ex-lover is seeing, or what they are up to.
The song acts as an introduction to whatever the pop rock group has coming next as it is similar enough to the band’s past records that fans will be able to enjoy it, but the subtle island style percussion is something not often found in a Maroon 5 hit.
A definite downfall of the tune is the four syllable repetition during the chorus which makes the song feel very long and almost irritating if played too often. However, Kendrick Lamar’s verse does help break the song up a little which means that it will work well on a playlist for the gym, just maybe don’t play it on a loop.
It earns a decent 3/5 – it might have scored 3.5 if it was released just before or during summer as this is clearly a summer hit, not one for mid-October.
‘False Alarm’ – The Weeknd
First released as a promotional single, ‘False Alarm’ serves as the official second single from singer, song-writer The Weeknd’s third album ‘Starboy’.
Instantly upbeat, this song grabs you and doesn’t let you go until you find where it leads. The Weeknd’s smooth vocals in the first verse takes you to the next step, the pre-chorus, before quickly building into the explosive chorus.
Although the chorus is basically the title repeated over and over again, due to the fast pace of the song, it doesn’t reach the point of sounding repetitive but instead keeps your attention and makes it almost impossible for your body to not move along with the music.
This gets a solid 4/5. Hopefully, this is not the best song on ‘Starboy’ and The Weeknd has even greater gems included on the album.
‘Read U Wrote U’ – RuPaul (Ellis Miah Mix) ft. The Cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 2
As featured on the season finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars (Season 2), ‘Read U Wrote U’ is a single that sees the top four in the competition alongside RuPaul as they shade each other and show the world why they think they are the best drag queen.
The slow dance track is not structured like a conventional song. It is made up of RuPaul’s computerised and staggered vocals in the chorus placed between the four queens self-written verses.
The first verse, from Alaska 5000, stays on point with her brand; funny, clever and confident. It also contains one of the most inventive lyrics in the song: “Mess with me and you’ll end up in a casket, I’m Dorothy, you’re Toto, get in the basket”. This verse moves seamlessly back onto the chorus before continuing onto the second verse by Detox.
Detox and Katya’s verses are equally as good as the first and fit perfectly into to song, due to Detox’s exceptional rap skills and Katya’s Russian character shtick. However, the fourth verse, rapped and sung by Roxxxy Andrews, almost completely ruins the song. The rap portion sounds like a cringe-worthy internet video of a teacher trying to connect with children by trying to bring rap into the classroom and the singing segment is neither in tune nor lyrically inspirational.
This deserves a respectable 3.5/5 – if it wasn’t for Roxxxy’s verse, it would have received a much higher score.
If you want to listen to the editor’s other top picks of the week, you can check them out below in our new extended Spotify playlist:
