Game Review: Winter Olympic Games

Winter Olympic Games: Lillehammer '94

• Publisher: US Gold 
• Developer: Tiertex 
• Release: Super NES/Sega Genesis/Sega Game Gear, 1994 
• Genre: Sports 
• Players: 1-4 Alternating 
• Save: N/A 
• Rarity/Cost: 
• Super NES/Genesis: Common, US$5-10 
• Game Gear: Moderate, US $5-10 

The XVII Winter Olympic Games, held at Lillehammer, Norway in 1994, were a time of change for the festival's history. It was the first time that the Winter Olympics were staggered by 2 years to take place in between the Summer games, and the first time that the former Soviet republics competed as independent nations [1]. To date, Lillehammer was the northernmost site ever to hold a Winter Olympics, and these were the last Winter Olympics to date that were held in a "small town" of less than 50,000 people. Oh yeah, and Lillehammer will also host the 2016 Youth Winter Olympics, so look out for that. So what's the point of all that trivia? Because it also gave us the officially-licenced, multi-platform, aptly-titled video game Winter Olympic Games. Now, I've covered the Game Gear version of this multi-platform release before, in a Sticking Points special, and I've managed to take some of the other versions for a spin since. For the sake of officiality, this review will cover the versions for the Game Gear, Genesis, and Super NES. This review does not cover the version for the Sega Master System, but that wasn't sold outside of Europe, nor the Game Boy, whose events are substantially different to require a separate review.

Some of you readers, especially American readers, may remember the '94 Winter Olympics for the rivalry between American figure-skaters Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, where the former had the latter knee-capped only for the gold medal to go to Ukraine's Oksana Baiul. The video game doesn't give you a chance to re-create this little event, however; it boasts 10 events across 6 sports, none of them figure-skating. There are 4 skiing events (Downhill, Super-G, Giant Slalom, and Slalom), 2 sledding events (Luge and Bobsleigh), plus Freestyle Skiing, Ski Jump, Biathalon, and Short Track Speed Skating. They are presented in three different modes: Full Olympics, where all 10 events are played in a set order; Mini Olympics, where you select which event(s) you wish to play; and Training, where you can practice an event as often as you need.

The way the skiing events are designed, it's too hard to react to the gates in time,
and the penalty is too steep if you miss one. (Genesis version shown.) [2]

It's unfortunate that there are so many skiing events, because they're a major headache. The trouble is the isometric perspective in which these events are displayed, which give you precious little time to react to upcoming gates. Holding a button to tuck for speed only gives you less reaction time, but unfortunately you have to do this to finish fast enough for a medal. The only guideline you have to go by are the contours of the snow, but these lines show up faintly against the snow itself, and don't indicate if a gate is centred or aligned to one side. If you miss even one gate, you'll be disqualified from the event, and yet you still get to keep going. Pray tell, game, if you're going to invalidate my results in medias res, what incentive do I have to waste time finishing the course? I might as well just crash into one of the many tree banks and end my run then and there. Oddly, I had an easier time of it on the Game Gear than on either of the console ports. Maybe it's just me, but your skiier and the flags are smaller in proportion to the screen size on the Game Gear unit, so you have more room to look ahead, but still, that's not much room for error.

The Moguls event is equally punishing in that it requires the most precise timing to land your jumps safely, but at least the round ends immediately if you do crash. It wouldn't be so bad, except there's very little indication of what will constitute a successful jump until it's too late. That's the same problem I had with the Ski Jump; of the many actions you must take in order to perform a high-scoring jump, there's little to no indication of what commands you have to input and when you have to do them. But not all the events are downers. My personal favourite might be the Biathalon, possibly because you're actually given a timing meter for you to gauge your strokes against. Plus you get to shoot targets! Okay, so they throw off your aim by simulating muscle fatigue, but at least the penalty for missing a target is relatively light -- just an extra 10 seconds added to your time. Now why couldn't they have just done something like that for the skiing!? The Luge and Bobsleigh events are also considerably more playable, since there's no opportunity to crash, but the track is so narrow and the turning controls so slippery that scraping along the walls and haemmoraghing speed is an inevitability at some point. And finally, there's Short-Track Speed Skating, which boils down to a functional but tiring button-mashing contest.

As with that other Olympic-like game I reviewed a long time ago, Winter Olympic Games is unforgiving in its difficulty. But it's not hard in all the same ways; there are no qualifying barriers you have to pass before you can continue. On the contrary: even if you do get disqualified from an event, the game just moves you on to the next event. Well, what if I want to try it again? Granted, that's how it works in the real-life Olympics; if you don't win, you just move on with the program and your life. But maybe I'm feeling a little ashamed of my performance and would like to save face. Why won't you give me that little quantum of solace, game?

For some reason, the Game Gear version (shown) is easier. [2]

I'll admit, once you get the hang of playing the events, there is more than just a quantum of fun to be had. Up to four players can take turns competing in the Full or Mini Olympics modes -- yes, even on the Game Gear; no additional controllers or consoles needed. But if you insist, the console versions also let you play some of the events head-to-head, but unfortunately it's limited to the dull stuff like Moguls and Speed Skating. You get to name your athletes as well as choose their nations, each with their own uniform colour scheme -- again, only in Full and Mini Olympics. The soundtrack is pretty rockin' too -- although the Game Gear's music is more tuneful than on the other games. And it supports eight languages for the in-game text -- I reckon that was unheard of for the time. But I'm pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point in my efforts to justify this game's existence. If you desperately want to play Winter Olympic Games, be sure to A) stick to the Game Gear version, and B) ask yourself if you're a big enough Olympics nut for this game to be of any value to you.

Control: 2 medals out of 5
Design: 3 medals out of 5
Graphics: 3 medals out of 5
Audio: 3 medals out of 5 (SNES/Gen) / 5 medals out of 5 (GG)
The Call: 55% (D+) (SNES/Gen) / 60% (C-) (GG)

---

[1] The Soviet Union dissolved before the Winter (Albertville) and Summer Olympics (Barcelona) of 1992, but as the Soviet republics had already been training together, they competed as the Unified Team.

[2] "Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 (1994) screenshots". MobyGames. http://www.mobygames.com/game/winter-olympics-lillehammer-94/screenshots.

Editorial: 2013 Best Hit Songs Runners-Up

To all the critics who deemed 2013 the worst year for pop music in recent memory, well... I can't quite agree.  (I'd suggest 2007 myself, but that's another story.)  I'll be honest, in addition to the stuff that actively sucked, there was a lot of boring, safe schlock padding out the top 40 throughout the year.  Even some of the stuff I put on my best-of list couldn't hold my interest after just a few listens.  Sometimes being a critic is about letting your personal tastes take the bullet in favour of what really matters.  But seriously, folks, the fact that I could pick out so many other songs I liked in addition to my top ten should give the hint that maybe, just maybe, there was enough good to balance out the bad.

"Alive" by Krewella
from Get Wet
Peak position: #32
Year-end position: N/A

Among the EDM songs to hit it big this year, this was my second-favourite behind "Don't You Worry Child".  The beat is pulse-pounding, the instrumental parts have just enough melody for them to have their own personality as opposed to the usual background noise we're often subject to, and the lyrics are affirmative but just vague enough that they work as a party song but aren't strictly limited to the dance floor.  And as somebody who's suffered from the neo-disco storm of '10, that's all I ask.  Yes, it could've made my best-of list if it had been a bigger hit.  Sorry, Paramore, but consider yourselves lucky.

"Applause" by Lady Gaga
from Artpop
Peak position: #4
Year-end position: #37

Lack of personality was a common crime among the hits of 2013, but Lady Gaga was acquitted on that charge as far as I'm concerned.  "Applause" is one of the few "image songs" to come out from America, and the character Lady Gaga plays in the song is Lady Gaga herself.  She leverages all the fame she's garnered over her career thus far and invites us to learn her take on it all.  At least she would, except the second verse was just garbage.  "One second I'm a Kunst / And suddenly the Kunst is me", eh?  You do know you're just saying the same thing with the words switched around, right?  But apart from that, it incorporates tasteful, if watered-down, elements of dubstep without bringing its momentum to a screeching halt, as is often the case with dubstep, intentional or not.

"Hold On, We're Going Home" by Drake feat. Majid Jordan
from Nothing Was the Same
Peak position: #4
Year-end position: #34

One of the songs from my Best Hit Songs of 2010 list was "Find Your Love" by Drake, an emotional retro-R&B jam.  I'm not going to say too much about its spiritual follow-up, "Hold On, We're Going Home", because I'd just point to that mini-review and say, "pretty much that". Unfortunately, the emotional stakes aren't as high this time around.  Whilst both this and "Find Your Love" were about picking up a girl, the other song was more desperate in its approach, whereas "Hold On, We're Going Home" is instead more upfront with its promise of sexy time.  But hey, at least this would work better than some other songs Drake's been on...

"Mirrors" by Justin Timberlake
from The 20/20 Experience
Peak position: #2
Year-end position: #6

Among the Justins of pop music, for once the Timberlake:Bieber ratio was skewed towards the former.  It's not like Bieber didn't put out music last year, but it was relatively easy to avoid -- not like Timberlake's world-conquering The 20/20 Experience albums.  But I didn't know what to make of "Mirrors".  I think it's supposed to be a song about rekindling a dying relationship, about discovering the magic that had once been lost with his significant other.  But then he says she's like his reflection in the mirror, and I'm like, "What's that supposed to mean?  Is he realizing that which he thought was lost, or is he just stroking his ego?"  With "Mirrors" having come out after the uber-slick "Suit & Tie" (discussed below), it could go either way, really.  Also, this song lost some points for its haphazard beatboxing in the background, which sadly leaves it sounding more like "Cry Me A River" than "What Goes Around (Comes Around)".

"My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)" by Fall Out Boy
from Save Rock and Roll
Peak position: #13
Year-end position: #40

When last year I described Linkin Park, Maroon 5, and even Nickelback as the only rock bands to have halfway decent success in the 2000s, I regret that I seem to have undercut Fall Out Boy by leaving them out of that statement.  Sure, they got lumped into the emo-rock scene which was apparently the only way we could get actual rock hits in the dark times that were the middle of the decade.  But now they're back with one of the most catchy and powerful songs of their career.  The beat has real headbanging potential and the lyrics involve fire motifs, so what's not to like?  Maybe that the lyrics are also mega-stupid.  See, whoever's writing the songs in Fall Out Boy, no one told them that the title phrase doesn't make any sense.  Also, the music video stars 2 Chainz.  But whatever, I'm still having fun.

"Safe and Sound" by Capital Cities
from In a Tidal Wave of Mystery
Peak position: #8
Year-end position: #29

The popularity-deciding public seems content with letting numerous indie-esque singles slowly filter up to the top ten, and "Safe and Sound" felt like a deserving success story when it did.  Even when compared to its genre peers, it's an incredibly bouncy tune, with judicious uses of retro synth washes and non-traditional instruments.  When's the last time you heard trumpets in a pop song?  Unfortunately, the same melodies are recycled throughout the verses, which was something I really paid attention to this past year.  Eventually, it was enough for me to change the station whenever this came on, and enough to keep it off my own top-ten list, but our times were good while they lasted.

"Still Into You" by Paramore
from Paramore
Peak position: #24
Year-end position: #100

In a year where so many female vocalists got through 2013 by the musical equivalent of sleep-walking, the same cannot be said of Hayley Williams.  True, I took it off my list because she sang off-key for much of the song.  But still, her staccato delivery on the verses of "Still Into You" provide a sort of '80s-rock swagger, and some much-needed edge to lyrics that could honestly have come off as lovey-dovey otherwise.  But lacking that, I'd still be loath to describe this song as "lovey-dovey".  I mean, this is a girl who knows times can be tough, and still manages to see the good in her significant other.  She and her song just ooze good times and pass those good times along to us.

"Suit & Tie" by Justin Timberlake & Jay Z
from The 20/20 Experience
Peak position: #3
Year-end position: #20

In the midst of the casual Internet's fascination with the word "swag" back in 2012, I saw an image macro with the caption "Swag is for boys, class is for men".  Somehow, Justin Timberlake exhibits both swag and class in his comeback single "Suit & Tie".  The vintage R&B music (it reminds me the most of the theme song to Diamonds Are Forever) provides the class, and the swag comes courtesy of Timberlake's reasonably self-confident lyrics and attitude.  Oh, except for the line "So thick / That I know why they call it a fatty".  Dude, I know you're talking about a girl's hindquarters being in pleasant proportion to the rest of her body, but you have to realise what you sound like.  Jay Z throws in a guest verse, and while it switches to a slower, chopped-and-screwed beat that dates his part of the song somewhat whilst killing the momentum, lyrically it doesn't exactly clash with anything before it.  Leave it to JT to pick a topic to which you could tack on any luxury-rap guest verse and no one would even notice.

Personally, if any of the songs from JT's The 20/20 Experience albums (yes, plural) would've made my list, I'd have placed "Take Back The Night" in my top 5 at least.  For having come out in the midst of the year's disco revival, this one arguably did it the best, with the funky grooves of its soundscape transcending the experience beyond the normal "carpe diem" anthem.  But sadly, it didn't meet my requirements, and I didn't think it noteworthy enough to warrant a Wildcard slot, but do check it out anyways.

"Timber" by Pitbull & Ke$ha
from Meltdown [EP]
Peak position: #2
Year-end position: N/A

I can't believe it!  This is the least awful Pitbull song yet!  How could this be!?  Maybe it's because they followed the same formula of "Feel This Moment", except the elements are more congruous this time around.  Whereas Christina Aguilera seemed more detached from the mood Pitbull was trying to promote in that other song, Ke$ha sounds like she's having much more fun in this one.  But any old Pitbull song could do that and I'd still think less of it because it's Pitbull; however, his own verses aren't as in-your-face this time around.  Instead of treating his good fortune as an exclusive privelege, he appears content with having a reasonably good time and letting everyone join in.  Sure, there are some questionable lines -- the Miley Cyrus reference is bound to become dated fast, and "slicker than an oil spill" is a Funny Aneurysm Moment waiting to happen -- but there's nothing that warrants a revision to my Top 10 Worst Pitbull Lyrics or anything.

"Troublemaker" by Olly Murs & Flo Rida
from Right Place Right Time
Peak position: #25
Year-end position: #82

Speaking of awful rappers having less-than-awful moments in 2013, Flo Rida's verse on "Troublemaker".  I don't know about you, but I'm used to him bringing out the same bottles-and-models lyrics for each one of his outings.  So you can imagine my surprise when his guest verse here actually carried the topic of the song!  Olly Murs is at least partially tortured over his less-healthy-than-desirable relationship, and by gum, so is Flo Rida!  Also, the instrumentation is what Maroon 5's last album should've sounded like.  I mean, cowbells and violin blasts!  Doesn't that spell funk to you?  I'd like to think this started the whole otherwise-inexplicable '70s-retro thing that we got this year.

"Wake Me Up" by Avicii & Aloe Blacc
from True
Peak position: #4
Year-end position: #19

So folky indie-pop and electronic dance music were two genres that gave us a good number of hits in 2013.  Who'd've thought that combining the two would yield such a good result?  I don't care what some of the critics say, I think the transaction between the acoustic and electronic parts are handled rather smoothly... for the most part.  The occasional cliched lyric holds it back, as does what they did with the chorus.  In the original version, Aloe Blacc sang a bunch of long "oh"s over the interlude, but the remix dropped them out in favour of a completely instrumental break.  Yeah, if I have any problems with vocal dance music, it's when they try to restrict any efforts for the singer to show off his or her personality.  I'm looking at you, David Guetta.  But it'll take a lot more than that for me to kiss off the genre, and for that matter, 2013's music in macrocosm.

Editorial: 2013 Worst Hit Songs Runners-Up

It's that time again.  With a worst-of list comes the stuff I had to leave off it.  Some of it just wasn't bad enough, some of it failed my last-minute requirements for being on the Billboard Year-end Hot 100, but as always, my mind's been on overdrive whilst listening to the radio this year, so why let all that thinking go to waste?

"23" by Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, & Juicy J
non-album single
Peak position: #11
Year-end position: N/A

If I hadn't made the last-minute decision to restrict myself to Billboard's Year-end Hot 100, "23" would've made my worst-of list for sure.  First of all, there's producer Mike Will Made-It, who technically gets top billing on this song (I took his name off the artist tag out of protest).  He's produced hits like Miley Cyrus's "We Can't Stop" and Lil' Wayne's "Love Me" (no), and while his drunken beats weren't the key factors that made me put both of those on my hate-list, they certainly didn't help matters.  The stuttering rap delivery of Miley and Juicy J (at least Wiz Khalifa gets a pass), not to mention the egregious product placement (assuming you know that "J's on my feet" refer to Air Jordan shoes) only make things worse in that regard.

"Berzerk" by Eminem
from The Marshall Mathers LP 2
Peak position: #3
Year-end position: #67

What a disappointment.  I wrote up this long, beautiful paragraph on why Emimem's "Berzerk" [sic] belongs on my worst-of-2013 list, when it manages to grow on me.  Maybe it's because of his other new singles (namely "Survivor", "Rap God", and even "The Monster") which I really liked, but eventually I learned to appreciate the old-meets-new-school hip-hop approach to "Berserk" as well.  But never let it be said that I'd willingly withhold finished content from my consumers, unlike a certain games maker I could Capcom mention, so here is why I used to hate "Berserk":

"My opinion of Eminem is... complicated.  I like him when he's serious (e.g. "Lose Yourself" and most of the Recovery album).  And I like him when he's less rapping and more doing a stand-up comedy routine with a beat (i.e. "My Name Is" and "Without Me").  But he also tends to fall back on obnixiousness, and I'm sad to say "Berzerk" falls into that camp.  For example, he throws in a grating, rather un-ironic "bow chicka wow wow" somewhere in the second verse, and has the balls to rhyme it in the next few lines.  Also he sings his own chorus, which in theory is admirable, except for the fact that HE CAN'T SING WORTH BEANS.  As anybody who's suffered through the Encore album can attest to.  Meanwhile, the Billy Squire sample and old-school beat are equally promising, but even when he's not inflicting his demonic attempts at singing upon us, his rapping style is just too dark for me to enjoy it.  And another thing, he dared make a Kevin Federline reference in the chorus?  In 2013!?  Are you trying to make up for lost time or something?"

"Come & Get It" by Selena Gomez
from Stars Dance
Peak position: #6
Year-end position: #33

The teen pop machine chugged on in 2013 with "Come & Get It", or as I like to call it, "What not to do with an interesting beat".  The beat, by production team StarGate, starts out slow and subdued, with an Indian bhangra-esque influence, when suddenly the first chorus kicks in and everything unique about the song thus far is drowned in a torrent of indistinct synth.  And that's before you get to Selena's performance on the song; she sounds like a tired Rihanna rip-off, with all those stuttering edits and that bad Caribbean inflection.  I thought the world didn't need any more Rihanna, but come on guys, presenting the same thing under a different guise doesn't count!

"Cruise" / "Cruise (Remix)" by Florida Georgia Line & Nelly
from Here's to the Good Times
Peak position: #16 / #4
Year-end position: N/A / #9

Good news and bad news: it's getting harder to say you don't like country music these days, but that's only because it's adopting elements of all other genres in the blandest way possible.  The original version of "Cruise" barely had any country soul in its instrumentation, so why not add a drum machine and a forgettable guest verse by Nelly for the remix?  I'll give it this: that revised approach made for a more palatable hit... unless your tastes require good music.  And even then, the lyrics still bring up topics that I just can't relate to, like their obsession with trucks and relating girls to them.  In a year where rappers made references to brutal, racially-charged murders in relation to rough sex, I can't call this stuff un-palatable, but either way, I guess it isn't getting harder to say you don't like country music these days.

'[verb]in' Problems" by A$AP Rocky, 2 Chainz, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar
From Long. Live. ASAP
Peak position: #8
Year-end position: #41

The title of the song comes from the line 2 Chainz repeats in the chorus: "I love bad [noun]s, that's my [adjective] problem / And yeah, I like to [verb], I got a [verb]ing problem".  In case you're wondering what I censored, just picture the joke from Airplane! about the "drinking" problem, and filter it through the lens of luxury rap.  Did you like it?  Well, you needn't worry about that, because he beats that horse right into the ground!  In fact, I like the way Drake takes over the last two lines of the chorus, as if to save us the precious brain cells we could be using for more important things.  Yeah, the song could've made it on my list based on that line alone, but the rest of the song is actually kind of okay, inasmuch as mainstream hip-hop can be considered "okay".

"Gentleman"
by PSY
non-album single
Peak position: #5
Year-end position: N/A

Do me a favour and click back to my video review of "Gangnam Style".  You can find it here.  I'll wait.  So assuming you have it fresh in your mind, I'd like to you to flash back to my comments at the end.  You know how I despaired over the fact that PSY's follow-up to "Gangnam Style" was just a remake of the original song?  Well, I could very well recycle the same complaints for his real follow-up, "Gentleman".  And in case you're thinking, "Kevin, you liked 'Gangnam Style', so why should this be any different?"  Well that's just it: it isn't any different -- except the stuff they did change wasn't exactly for the better.  There's no soaring sing-along, PSY didn't bring as much energy to his rapping, the beat is dingier and less remarkable, and even the prerequisite dance in the music video doesn't have enough to it.  "Gentleman" would have potentially been the third viral-video hit on my worst-of list, after "The Fox" and "Harlem Shake" (at least before I took it off), and despite how much I like a good theme, "Gentleman" just wasn't the kind of bad I look for in making these lists.

"Harlem Shake" by Baauer
Non-album single
Peak position: #1
Year-end position: #4

The powers that be at Billboard must have been as frustrated as I was when "Gangnam Style" failed to wrest control of the top spot last year, so they've since changed their rules to include YouTube plays in the criteria for their charts.  Unfortunately, this resulted in "Harlem Shake", the song used for a briefly popular video meme, sitting at number one for five weeks despite lacking any personality whatsoever.  Now, I have the patience for extended dance mixes, but that's usually for vocal trance songs, stuff with distinct verses and chorus to mix it up.  "Harlem Shake", on the other hand, recycles the same musical idea for all it's worth and then some.  There's a reason all those videos only used the first thirty seconds of the song, and it's also the same reason I've never heard it on the radio -- and mind you, I have heard "Gangnam Style" on there.  Actually, there was this one time where a station played a sort of remix of this song, where they worked in a bunch of other songs about shaking.  Which illustrates "Harlem Shake"'s quandary perfectly: its best purpose is as a medium to convey other, more interesting media, sort of like the musical equivalent of, say, Melba toast.  Still, my disdain for "Harlem Shake" has less to do with the song itself than with how it got popular, so when the the time came for "U.O.E.N.O." to budge its way on the list, this was the one I felt the least guilty about forgiving.

"Royals" by Lorde
from Pure Heroine
Peak position: #1
Year-end position: #15

I wanted to like "Royals", I really did.  As a self-professed hipster, I'm inclined to welcome any attempt to tear down the excessively materialistic status-quo preached in popular music.  And I was pleasantly surprised when it started getting airplay on top-40 radio.  But then I listened to it again.  And again.  And again.  Sure, many, MANY songs this year wore out their welcome for me this year, but it felt like "Royals" achieved this task faster than any of its peers.  Personally, I blame its horribly lopsided verse:chorus ratio.  It's as if Lorde saved all her words for the parts that would get repeated the most.  And judging by her follow-up single "Team", this is a very real possibility.

"Summertime Sadness (Cedric Gervais Remix)" by Lana Del Rey
non-album single
Peak position: #6
Year-end position: #45

I can't say I've ever bought into the whole Lana Del Rey thing; it's hard to describe, but it's like she's a quirky kind of boring.  And what better way to take the "quirky" part out of the equation than to shoehorn one of her songs into the growing EDM fad?  The original version of "Summertime Sadness" had little staying power on its own, but Cedric Gervais's remix does it no favours.  The electro parts they added in lack any intricacy whatsoever, which only serves to highlight how dull Lana's voice is.  Sadly, "Summertime Sadness" was just one example of how  2013 was a very, very dull year for pop music.

Dance Dance Retrospective: DDR X2

The advent of a new decade (get it, "New Decade" is a song from this game... read on) brought with it a chance for the Dance Dance Revolution franchise to redeem itself. On the one hand, there was the arcade release of DDR X, an otherwise okay entry which got shafted by poor machine construction outside of Japan. And on the other hand, there was the one-two punch of the home games X2 and Hottest Party 3, which couldn't decide whether they wanted to appeal to casual or hardcore DDR players. Well, with such stakes as I've described just now, I'm proud to announce that the arcade sequel DanceDanceRevolution X2 (not to be confused with the 2009 PS2 entry of the same name) was good.

...

I assume. Regrettably, I've never played on an X2 machine, ever since its rollout in 2010 (Asia: 7 July, NA: 31 December). Sure, I've played its new songs on other DDR games, but the nearest X2 machine to where I am is up around New York, and we all know what I think about the Big Apple. Even worse, I took a vacation to Japan just weeks before its launch over there, leaving me stuck to play on those crummy old deluxe X cabinets. And even worse worse, I'm planning to visit again early next year, but by now all the arcades in Tokyo have replaced their X2 machines with newer entries in the series (if the arcade listings on zenius-i-vanisher.com are to be believed). Edit 16 September 2014: Never mind, I've finally managed to play on a real X2 machine. And it was good. But enough about my personal anecdotes, let's talk about the game.

The new music menu screen with the Cover Flow layout.

DDR X2 -- that is, the real DDR X2 -- has a green-dominated colour scheme and (re-)introduces the Cover Flow format on its music select screen. As far as actual gameplay is concerned, X2 introduces new gameplay options which I'd say are useful for pro players. First are the Hidden+ and Sudden+ modifiers, which like the original Hidden and Sudden mods hide the arrows at the bottom or top of the screen. The difference with the "plus" versions is that you can adjust how far you want to hide the arrows by pressing the Up or Down buttons on the console during gameplay. (Arrow-speed mods can also be adjusted on the fly in this fashion.) And second is the Risky option, where missing one step or Freeze Arrow will kick you out of the song instantly, except you can still play any stages you have left. On the flip side, beginner players can eschew the traditional, full-featured Pro Mode in favour of Happy Mode, which features a limited songlist focusing on easier charts, so if that makes you comfortable, then go nuts.

Hidden+ and Sudden+ look something like this.

(From Beatmania IIDX 12: Happy Sky.)

Once again, X2's hidden content requires an e-Amusement profile to unlock. And once again, Konami released unlock codes for regions that were never graced with the presence of e-Amuse (read: America and Europe). Furthermore, X2 is the first arcade DDR game to support PASELI, a debit card which can pay for games coinlessly. In fact, there's also a Marathon Mode in which PASELI users can pay to play up to seven songs in a row. As with e-Amuse, it's only available in Japan, and you can't even set up a PASELI account over the Internet if you don't live in Japan, so don't get your hopes up. Fortuantely, the international versions of X2 bring back the ability to save high scores for each song and chart on the machine itself, a feature which was created for SuperNOVA but dropped from the sequel in favour of doing so with e-Amuse.


DDR X2 features a total of 444 songs, including the following:

• A handful of classic Dancemania licences (including "If You Were Here" from 2ndMIX, and "Captain Jack" and "Dam Dariram" from 3rdMIX) have been revived, in the fashion of the X-Edits from the last game, including Challenge charts with Shock Arrows. This time, however, they actually stuck to the original cut of the song and just stretched that out a bit at both ends.
• "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice. Yup, the same cruddy version I tore down in my last entry.
• Since Konami also sold X2 in the rest of Asia, they threw in unlockable Mandarin Chinese-language versions of a few songs, including "iFuturelist" and "Nijiiro" from SuperNOVA.
• "Gold Rush" by DJ Yoshitaka-G feat. Michael a la Mode, a crossover from Beatmania IIDX 14: Gold. A lovably infamous song recogniseable by fans for its energy, stupid lyrics (like the recurring reprise of "Make it make money"), and the sequential name-dropping of the Beatmania games mid-song. In X2, it is joined by two alternate versions, the "DDR AC" and "DDR CS" versions, which replace those references with the arcade and console DDR games, but otherwise use the same charts.
• "smooooch" by Kors K, a crossover from Beatmania IIDX 16: Empress. A bouncy happy-hardcore track whose background video, with three cartoon princesses bouncing about, has inspired parodies and tributes from both sides of the Pacific.
• "Mei" by Amuro. Not a boss song, but it should be. In its IIDX appearance, the hardest chart on this two-minute track had two thousand notes, and whilst its DDR counterpart is nowhere near as complicated, with a level-18 Challenge chart, it's still among the hardest songs in X2.
• "ΔMAX" (read: "Delta Max") by DM Ashura, a revival from DDR Universe 3. Not a boss song in this game, but its tempo starts out at 100 and, throughout the song, gradually increases to a blistering 573.
• Fun Fact: The number 573 appears elsewhere in DDR, namely the default high score in certain versions, and other Konami games as well. That's because the name Konami can be "translated" to "573" through a system of Japanese wordplay known as "goroawase".
• The boss songs are revivals from the 2009 series:
• The Extra Stage is "Kimono Princess" by jun.
• The Encore Extra Stage is "Roppongi Evolved" by TAG Underground. The first time an Evolved song was used in an arcade release, this one boasts an exclusive fourth version not found in the 2009 home games.
• In addition, X2 introduces a new system for boss songs called "Replicant-D Action", lifted from the newer Beatmania IIDX games. For all intents and purposes, this doesn't work without an e-Amusement profile. The songs in RDA and their requirements are:
• "Pierce the Sky" by JAKAZiD feat. JN. Unlocked by clearing any 20 songs from the X2 folder.
• "Sakura Sunrise" by Ryu☆ (Ryutaro Nakahara). Unlocked by clearing any 2 songs from each of the 12 folders.
• "Shiny World" by Capacity Gate. Unlocked by clearing 6 courses and one Drill Course.
• "Posession" by TAG Underground. Unlocked by clearing any 100 Challenge charts, and getting an AA grade or better on "Pierce the Sky" and "Sakura Sunrise". The difficulty level on which those AAs were achieved determines which difficulty "Possession" can be played on.
• "New Decade" by Sota F. Unlocked by getting a full combo on any 15 charts, and getting AA or better on and "Sakura Sunrise" and "Shiny World".
• "Anti-Matter" by Orbit1 & Milo. Unlocked by playing Trial Mode (where two players can play one song for the price of a single-player game) three times, and getting AA or better on "Pierce the Sky" and "Shiny World".
• Getting AA or better on each of the above songs earns a medal. When all six medals are earned, the song "Valkyrie Dimension" by Spriggan (Yoshitaka Nishimura) is automatically selected as an Encore Extra Stage. When this song is finished, pass or fail, all six medals are erased from the player's profile and can be earned again. Rinse and repeat.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well... remember how I said that X2 machines were few and far between in my sphere of experience? What hurts matters more is that there was never a home port of X2. Sure, the individual songs showed up in other games, but this was Konami's big chance to bring Dance Dance Revolution into the seventh generation, and they blew it. Again. But think about it from their point of view: by 2010 the last console generation was for all intents and purposes dead, and the Guitar Hero/Rock Band craze was about to fade as well, so perhaps consumers wouldn't have the stomach to purchase another plastic peripheral for another system. Konami did bite the bullet after all and make a DDR game for the latest and greatest systems, but... ah... that's a story for next time on Dance Dance Retrospective!

Top 10: Best Hit Songs of 2013

Previously on the SDP, I counted down the worst hit songs of 2013.  So of course, it's time to do the same with the best.  Now with more same-slot ties!

10) "Power Trip"
by J. Cole & Miguel
from Born Sinner
Peak position: #19
Year-end position: #48

Edit 24 Jan 2014: This song replaces "My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light 'em Up)", which previously sat at #10.

I admit I never thought much of North Carolina rapper J. Cole when he broke out in 2011; his first hit, the Paula Abdul-sampling "Work Out" did nothing for me apart from that Paula Abdul sample.  Guess I should've checked out the rest of his album.  Well, apparently he and I got off on the wrong foot, because when he re-introduced himself with "Power Trip", I was pleasantly surprised.  The beat is dark, but not in a lethargic Mike Will Made-It kind of way, but an intense Wu-Tang Clan kind of way.  Meanwhile, the lyrics are all over the place, going from rags-to-riches tales (and far better than Drake's attempts -- plural) one moment to picking up chicks the next, but as a rapper, J is skillful at handling the speed and throws in the occasional clever moment.  More importantly, he keeps his braggadocio just restrained enough to not be either soulless or obnoxious, which is all I ask from a rapper these days.

9) "Counting Stars"
by OneRepublic
from Native
Peak position: #3
Year-end position: #63

Speaking of artists delivering pleasant surprises, OneRepublic.  With few exceptions, none of their songs have stood out to me, and that goes double for the songs frontman Ryan Tedder wrote for other singers.  In fact, if their last song "Feel Again" had been an actual hit, I would've put it on the worst-of list, simply because his singing is horrendously off-key.  Fortunately, that is not the case with "Counting Stars".  This song is adventurous: both in the musical sense with its folk-slash-native-American beat, and in its lyrics, which talk about shrugging off the material establishment and forging off on your own adventure, whatever that may entail.  And when nearly everything surrounding "Counting Stars" is so boring (to repeat my recurring theme for this year in music), I'll gravitate to anything with some personality like a fly to a bug zapper.  Except without the horrible shocky death.

8) "Bad"
by Wale feat. Tiara Thomas
from The Gifted
Peak position: #21
Year-end position: #59

Okay, now I put Lil' Wayne's "Love Me" (no) through the ringer for its promotion of unhealthy gender roles, but at least we may take heart in the fact that not everybody plays the same game.  The chorus, delivered either by Tiara Thomas or Rihanna depending on which version you're listening to, contains lyrics such as:

Is it bad that I've never been loved?
No, I never did
But I sure know how to [verb]

These are some of the song's first lines, and already I've been given a lot to mentally chew on.  I mean, she's making the distinction between physical lust and emotional love, two things which have often mistakenly been confused for one and the same.  And this isn't just some doe-eyed groupie playing up the shallow stereotypes of women in the rap community -- the verses also deal with similar themes.  If you're thinking about the ramifications of all the shallow sex you're having, it's not the same (not necessarily worse) as creating a meaningful relationship, but anything that gets you (either the first-person or the listener) thinking deserves its place in the world.  Also, you may be wondering about that repeating springy noise in the back of the track.  The Rap Critic has a... disappointing explanation for that in his review.  Hint: it involves an inappropriately-chosen remake of a really bad song.  ...Still good though.

7) "Just Give Me a Reason"
by P!nk & Nate Ruess
from The Truth About Love
Peak position: #1
Year-end position: #7

Recording artists making guest appearances on other people's songs were a dime a dozen in 2013, and have been for some time, actually.  It's getting so that the guest rap verse has become the new guitar solo.  But it's rare that you see an actual duet these days, where the singers appear to interact with one another through the lyrics.  In a relationship that's hit the skids, their song is an... overly dramatic attempt to rekindle what they once had, but hey, it's the drama that makes it work.

6) "Get Lucky"
by Daft Punk feat. Pharell Williams
from Random Access Memories
Peak position: #2
Year-end position: #14

I've already talked about this song, and even compared it to the song which blocked it from number one.  Do I think that was an unfair episode?  Yes, but neither is "Get Lucky" my favourite song of the year.  I mean, repetition in both lyrics and music has always been a weak point of Daft Punk, and this is no exception.  But I suppose bringing on a guest vocalist softens the blow, because in the midst of such repetition (such to the point that I can't even think of a new word for "repetition"), I'm down for any new ideas.  BUT but, that's not to say "Get Lucky" is bad, by any means.  It wasn't the first of 2013's retro-R&B jams, but by correctly mimicking the late-70s mindset of cautiously experimenting with the possibilities of synthesizers whilst still maintaining a background of traditional instrumentation, it's the most true to its roots, and arguably the best.  Unless my #5 choice have something to say about it...

5) "Locked Out of Heaven" / "When I Was Your Man" / "Treasure"
by Bruno Mars
from Unorthodox Jukebox
Peak position: #1 / #1 / #7
Year-end position: #11 / #8 / #30

Make that choices, plural.  I make it a policy of mine that no matter how bad somebody fouls up, I am always ready to forgive them if they sincerely make up for their mistakes.  Even you, Capcom, but first I’ve gotta see results.  For example, no matter how much of a clusterfail “The Lazy Song” was, Bruno Mars managed to put out some half-decent music afterwards, such as this.  The first thing that hits me about "Locked Out of Heaven" is the restrained, classic rock-style production, which automatically gives it a leg up over the competition.  And the lyrics take a more spiritual approach to a subject matter which has lost much of its spirituality over the years.  By claiming that he used to feel "locked out of Heaven" until he has sex with his girlfriend, he realises how much he's been missing by not having sex over the past few... however long it was.

And then along comes "When I Was Your Man".  Whilst piano-ballads were a dime a dozen in 2013, and it didn't take a lot of listens for me to change the radio station whenever this came on, I can at least appreciate the sentiments described therein.  In the song, Bruno apparently suffered a breakup due to his own ignorance, and now all he wants is for her to be happy and for her new boyfriend to not make the same mistakes.  Humility?  In a pop song?  What has this world come to!?  ...Whatever it has, don't stop, please.  Add to that "Treasure", which is basically a self-esteem anthem like his own "Just The Way You Are" but as a post-disco jam virtually precisely in the style of acts like Evelyn "Champagne" King, and Bruno Mars is officially on my "nice" list again.

4) "Don't You Worry Child"
by Swedish House Mafia feat. John Martin
from Until Now
Peak position: #6
Year-end position: #26

Full disclosure: I’m a fan of dance music. No, not that nigh-identical in-da-club pop-rap that passes for dance music these days; I’m talking real EDM, genres like techno, trance, house, drum-and-bass, even a little dubstep, from artists like Ian van Dahl, Armin van Buuren, Armand van Helden... a lot of "van"s.  This sort of music doesn’t get popular, though, except for maybe a few hits in the early 2000s, but lucky for me, another handful of these songs broke the top 20 throughout 2013.  And whilst one could point to David Guetta for making this sort of music popular again, I refuse to dignify that suggestion and instead point to this track by a band who had the amazing foresight to break up after notching their first hit.  ...Huh.  But back to "Don't You Worry Child": isn't it nice to have a dance song that isn't set in da club, but instead talks about a meaningful episode of doubt and consolation?  And one that doesn't rely on a "dirty bit"?  Remember when I coined that phrase?

3) "Swimming Pools (Drank)"
by Kendrick Lamar
from Good Kid, m.A.A.d City
Peak position: #17
Year-end position: #79

We get a lot of positive representations of alcohol in popupar music these days, particularly in hip-hop.  So leave it to a rap song to take boozing down a peg.  In his relatively short verses, Kendrick Lamar paints himself as an unconfident person who drinks to fit in with the cool crowd, and whilst he tries to maintain moderation, he takes peer pressure which threatens to push him past his limits.  And he does this by playing multiple roles, not only him, but the jerk who's trying to get him drunk through the chorus, as well as his own conscience in the second verse  ...I get the sneaking suspicion that alcohol can be a bad thing.  If you don't believe me, check out the Rap Critic's review.

2) "Catch My Breath"
by Kelly Clarkson
from Greatest Hits - Chapter One
Peak position: #19
Year-end position: #68

Edit 14 Jan 2014: This song replaces "Hold On, We're Going Home", which previously sat at #9.

One of my many problems with Kelly Clarkson is that she keeps recycling the same independent-woman anthems for each one of her singles.  But when you do the same sort of thing often enough, people can form opinions on what are the best and worst examples of that thing.  And "Catch My Breath", a new song from a compilation album of all places, rises above its many peers.  I guess what sets this apart is its performance.  The way she forcefully sings her lines, especially later in the song, give her words some much-needed defiance.  And the chord structure, which to be fair may have been adapted from Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream", adds some not-quite-major-key, not-quite-minor-key mystique to the composition.  Could you imagine how good something like "Mr. Know-It-All" could've been if she employed some of those tricks...?

1) "Thrift Shop" / "Can't Hold Us" / "Same Love"
by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, et al.
from The Heist
Peak position: #1 / #1 / #11
Year-end position: #1 / #5 / #43

Believe it or not, Macklemore is not the only independent rapper from Seattle to have a number-one album, and man was that an overly narrow classification.  But anyway, he and Ryan Lewis did the same with The Heist and it was awesome.  The song that broke them into the mainstream was, of course, "Thrift Shop", and since I've already reviewed it, I'm just gonna link you to that review and throw on some additional comments.  Now, in that review, I expressed concern that the music might grow annoying and that few of the lyrics would stick in my head, but over the course of the year I've heard it just enough for it to grow on me.  "Thrift Shop" hits me much in the same way as Jay-Z & Kanye West's "[nouns] in Paris" did last year, albeit on the opposite end of the economic spectrum.  And if I'm going to side with the 99 percent, I should at least support them.

So let's move on to their next song, "Can't Hold Us".  At first, I was wary of this song, since whereas "Thrift Shop" took potshots at our materialistic culture, "Can't Hold Us" is merely a song about celebration.  But it's a well-deserved celebration; Macklemore makes comments about how hard he's worked for his success (oddly prophetically, assuming he recorded this at the same time as "Thrift Shop", and therefore, before he could've dreamed it would be a hit), and how he's dissing the record labels in favour of giving his products directly to the people.  Yup, musical communism.  ...Some things work out better than they sound.  And whilst he still plays fast and loose with the concept of rhyming, this song makes him rap faster, and man is he on point.  He could've stopped the track after any line in the song and it would be the most awesome moment ever recorded.

Finally, there's "Same Love", their treatise in defence of same-sex love and marriage.  Musically, there's not much more than a piano and drums, but in this case that's a good thing, because that way the production doesn't overshadow the message.  Like Wale's song did at points, "Same Love" treats emotional love as a separate entity as physical sex, which is doubly notable because that hardly ever seems to be done in the context of homosexuals.  But it's not preachy about it, either, it's actually quite confessional at parts, such as the opening where he talks about questioning his sexuality as a child.  (Spoiler alert: he's straight.)  How good is "Same Love"?  If I had to pick any song out of these three to officially represent #1, it would be this, but really, if you have any respect for real music and want to change the course of our culture in a positive direction, buy their album, The Heist.  In fact, and I know it was created in late 2012, but I dare say it was the best thing ever to happen in 2013.

Top 10: Worst Hit Songs of 2013

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to my part one of my third annual year-end musical countdown: the Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2013!  As always, I'm basing both this and my best-of list off of Billboard's top 100 registered hits throughout the year (well, at least through November or somesuch).  For my stopgap 2010 lists, I experimented with a new rule where I accepted songs that charted within the top 20 during the year but didn't make the year-end list.  But this time around, once I noticed that nearly all the songs I wanted to include made the list anyway, I decided to scrap that extra rule.  Besides, it simplifies the matter of songs that chart too late in the year to make that list.  However, I am adding a new rule: if there are multiple songs by the same artist, I reserve the right to put them in the same spot.  Otherwise... well, let's just say that my best-of list would be way lopsided.  So with that declared, we shall start the countdown!

10) "The Fox"
by Ylvis
Non-album single
Year-end position: #73

I'm tempted to say "The Fox" is a transparent attempt to copy the success of last year's "Gangnam Style", but it turns out that Ylvis have been making comedy songs for a couple of years now.  And look, I'm trying to give them credit for this being a comedy song; I want to grade them on a curve, but they haven't given me a heck of a lot to work with.  The main point of "The Fox" is that it treats the question of what sound a fox makes as the deepest, most sacred question in the universe... in the second verse.  Should've mentioned that the first verse just lists off the sounds certain animals make, which sadly leaves a first impression that this is a song for children.  As if that weren't enough, then the chorus comes along and they answer said question with random, ungodly annoying noises which sound like failed attempts to vocalise the "dirty bit" from LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" (or for that matter, "Gangnam Style" itself), an unfortunate dissonance arises.  Basically, its problem is its lack of dignity, in that I don't know how not seriously I'm supposed to take it.

9) "Started From The Bottom"
by Drake
from Nothing Was The Same
Year-end position: #32

One of the songs from my Worst Hit Songs of 2012 list was "The Motto (YOLO)" by Drake and company, a boastful luxury-rap song that couldn't get the boasting part right.  "Started From The Bottom" is pretty much the same, with two notable changes.  One, he thankfully ditched Lil' Wayne and Tyga this time 'round.  And two, instead of using the adage "You Only Live Once" as a framing device, he compares his fabulous life now with the less fabulous life he lived before.  Of course, the whole concept backfires laughably for those who remember his stint as a TV star on the Canadian teen sitcom Degrassi: The Next Generation, which gets nary a mention on this song.  Even without that paratext, the middle-class life he does describe in the song doesn't sound all that soul-crushing compared to other rags-to-riches rap tunes.  I mean, the worst things he brings up in the song are arguing with his mother and encountering traffic on the way home from his night job.  You know, some rappers grew up in honest-to-blog poverty, so you're not exactly impressing us.  And above all, Drake just sounds bored throughout the whole thing.  Case in point, he literally says, "We don't like to do so much explaining".  I think we've found our problem, doc.  The Rap Critic summed up this song perfectly, I think, in a brief skit where he monotonely droned the line "My friends and I were broke, but now we're not" over and over.  So I guess it's true what they say: money doesn't buy happiness.  Or if it does, Drake's got a bloody terrible way of showing it.

8) "Roar"
by Katy Perry
from Prism
Year-end position: #10

Back in October, I wrote a separate review for "Roar" because I wasn't sure if it would make it on this list.  Well here we are now, and I think I can sleep soundly having left it on after all.  Throughout the year's pop scene, there were a lot of songs which I avoided like the plague for no crime other than being too boring to have any real staying power.  "Roar" is all that, but it also fails at the goal it set out for itself.  It's supposed to be this personal power anthem, but ultimately, "Roar" is just too cute for its own message.

7) "We Can't Stop"
by Miley Cyrus
from Bangerz
Year-end position: #23

So, this is Miley Cyrus's attempt at an edgier image.  (Anyone remember the last time she tried that?)  Yeah, I'm through with celebrities trying to shock me; I guess the endless onslaught of Lindsay Lohan exploits have desensitised me to it all.  So if the former Hannah Montana wants to sing a song with references to cocaine, ecstasy, and strip clubs, I'm not going to judge her for it.  I am going to judge her song, however, and it bucking sucks.  Producer Mike Will Made-It's insistence on pairing these club songs with lifeless, limpid beats does nothing for its atmosphere (nor does stapling his name to the beginning of the track), and Miley's voice has not grown any less shrill, especially on the high notes in the middle 8.  This isn't a song... it's a cry for help.  Emphasis on "cry".

6) "I'm Different"
by 2 Chainz
from Based on a T.R.U. Story
Year-end position: #99

2 Chainz, the rapper formerly known as Tity Boi, made his mainstream debut last year with songs like the laughably inept "Birthday Song".  Luckily that didn't make the list, but in its place is yet another slice of generic luxury-rap known as "I'm Different", I can't call that much of an improvement.  I mean, if your song's subject matter involves materialism and sex -- you know, like 90 percent of all commercial hip-hop -- how different can you really be?  On second thought, 2 Chainz is different -- in the sense that he's incredibly bad as a rapper.  How bad is he?  Here's his attempt at that so-called "hashtag rap":

I am so high, attic
I am so high like a, addict

Uh... you do know you're not actually supposed to explain the joke, do you?  I thought not.

5) "I Love It"
by Icona Pop feat. Charli XCX
from This Is... Icona Pop
Year-end position: #28

All the reviews of this song I've bothered to read seem to have praised it for some reason.  But ever the contrarian, I don't agree with them, because I don't agree with this song.  For one, the music.  You know that "four chords of pop" structure that seems to be the default for music these days?  "I Love It" somehow manages to get by with only two chords.  And the verses?  There is one, which repeats three times, and one chorus, which repeats twice.  It's a shame, too, because in the lyrics the main character goes buckwild without reason, throwing a bag of her ex's posessions down the stairs, only to crash her own car into a bridge.  Wait, was that the railings on top of the bridge, or the supports below it?  And more importantly, what the buck is up with her!?  Because of how much the lyrical content is recycled, we're given the bare minimum of context.  Sure, the chorus says that they have their differences, but how would that necessitate her destructive behaviour?  Geez, and I thought "Sexy [Chick]" set the bar for recycled lyrics, but the ante has been upped, motherfalcons.  ...Or downed.  Upped.  Err...  What I'm trying to say is: no, I do care.  And I hate it.

4) "Scream and Shout" / "#thatPower"
by will.i.am feat. Britney Spears / Justin Bieber
from #willpower
Year-end position: #23 / #95

In the midst of the Black Eyed Peas' latest hiatus, "frontman" will.i.am made his solo breakthrough in 2013.  Unortunately, he did it with the musical equivalent of empty calories.  I'd be lying if I said his "Scream and Shout" and "#thatPower" weren't catchy musically, but if you're going to have lyrics in your songs, at least make them competent and something different from the bragging and party-egging-on we've heard a million times before.  And if you're going to do the vocals yourself, for the Trinity's sake, put some enthusiasm into it!  You wouldn't want to upset the Holy Trinity, would you?  (But enough about Run-DMC.)  Sorry, I'd say more, but that's what my review of "Scream and Shout" is for.  Also, can we address this egregious use of hashtags, you know, the pound signs (#) people on Twitter put at the beginning of keywords?  I've seen hashtags in what felt like every other commercial this year, and I have to say, I'm fed up with companies trying to control how we use social media.  If I didn't know better, I'd call this thought control.  In fact, I'd omit the hashtags myself out of protest, but the joke's on you, will.i.am: I'm writing this for a blog in which hashtags haven't been implemented yet!  So no matter how I format it, it won't count for your attempt to trend those precious topics of yours!  Nya-ha-ha!! >:-)

3) "Pour It Up"
by Rihanna
from Unapologetic
Year-end position: #70
Link to video [NSFW]

Oh goody, another club song about spending gratuitous amounts of money at a strip club.  We don't have nearly enough of those, I said in sarcasm mode.  But wait, I said, this one's sung by a woman!  What a shocker!  So you think I'd applaud Rihanna for breaking new ground in the game of gender roles, but with a beat so dingy and lyrics so... samey, any compliments I could muster would be negated before Rihanna gets her next album out.  Seriously, she's like the musical equivalent of Call of Duty.  Sure, she used to be good in, like, 2007, but now she's just floating in mediocrity in between bouts of trying to hard to shock us (albeit through sexuality instead of violence), thanks in large part to her ceaseless annual production sched... what's that?  Rihanna hasn't released a studio LP this whole year?  ...Well, that's good news.  Let's see how long she can hold out, because I certainly don't need another "Pour It Up" in 2014.

2) "U.O.E.N.O."
by Rocko, Future, and Rick Ross
from Gift of Gab 2
Year-end position: # 87

Edit 9 Jan 2014: Ever the revisionist, I knocked "Harlem Shake" (which previously sat at #4) off the list in favour of... this.  What the heck does "U.O.E.N.O." stand for, anyway?  I for one had a bad habit of reading it as "Ueno", a region of Tokyo, but something tells me the writers of this song weren't exactly Japanophiles.  Actually, this five-letter collision is a corruption of the phrase "You don't even know", which in itself should warn you of the level of intelligence we're dealing with.  Now, I've managed to get through 2013 without this song ever showing itself on my radar, but if you've heard it before, odds are it's because of a certain line in Rick Ross's verse:

Put molly all in her champagne
She ain't even know it
I took her home and I enjoyed that
She ain't even know it

To put it bluntly, date rape.  Apparently this passage was so despicable that it got Reebok to drop their sponsorship deal with Rick Ross.  (Oh, I forgot to mention, there's Reebok product placement in this song as well).  I'd be more incensed by these lines myself if it weren't the only interesting thing in the song!  Virtually the whole thing, verses and chorus, follow the pattern "I say something / You don't even know it / I say another thing / You don't even know it".  Man, we've reached a new low in lazy lyric-writing, haven't we?  "U.O.E.N.O.": condemn it for the rape lines, forget it for everything else.

Wildcard) "Accidental Racist"
by Brad Paisley feat. LL Cool J
from Wheelhouse
Peak position: #77
Year-end position: N/A

My vote... for the worst song of the year... is not "Accidental Racist".  Partly because it was not a hit, at least as far as the Hot 100 is concerned.  And partly because it's not bad enough.  Sure, at six minutes long it's glacially paced even by the standards of country music.  The words are paced so slowly that, were it not for the cultural context, you'd forget each verse as soon as the next one starts.  And its attempts to bridge the gaps between country and hip-hop are half-hearted, with LL Cool J's verse more like beat poetry than actual rapping.

But if you're listening to "Accidental Racist" for anything, it's to meditate on its story.  So Brad walks into a Starbucks wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt with a Confederate battle flag on it, and that causes him to apologise to African-ethnic barista, played by LL Cool J.  Yes, Brad's apologising for a crime, heinous as it was, was not committed personally by him or even anybody from his generation.  So one would think J is in the right in this "argument", but he's still making assumptions that Brad still holds negative, threatening associations for black people, which isn't even the case.  Furthermore, is it possible for J to write off the issue of slavery just by Brad dropping any threatening connotations he may or may not have about black people?  Perhaps it can after all: if you think about the "conflict" in terms of that fable about the starfish on the beach, at the very least Brad and J could manage to forget the issue on a personal level, and start their friendship anew, so no harm, no foul.  I guess the reason this song got as much controversy as it did is because the topic of slavery is so sensitive that no one seems to know how to address it, and I have to admit, "Accidental Racist" is rather clumsy in its naivete.  But in the end, any song that can be interpreted in so many ways certainly deserves a place in the artistic sphere, no?

A brief warning before we go on: the number-one entry on this list can get a little racy, rapey, misogynistic, and uncomfortably skin-crawling.  ...It's not "Blurred Lines", either.  In fact, I've established that I don't believe the song was that bad.  Or that controversial, even.  No, for the real worst hit song of the year, it all comes back to Lil' Wayne.  AKA Weezy.  AKA Tunechi.  AKA Dwayne Carter.  AKA Weezy F. Baby.  AKA one awful, awful human being.  (Unless his album title I Am Not a Human Being is to be believed.)  Ladies and gentlemen, don't say I didn't warn you... without further ado, here is...

1) "Love Me"
by Lil' Wayne feat. Future & Drake
from I Am Not a Human Being II
Year-end position: #39

Lil' Wayne supposedly got his title as the self-professed "best rapper alive" because he freestyles all his lyrics instead of writing them down.  I don't know if that was the case for "Love Me" (no), but if it is, he has lots, LOTS of explaining to do.  I wish I could say I've been desensitised to the casual objectification of women in music, but every so often something comes along which makes me wake up and smell the proverbial coffee.  Counting repetitions of the chorus, he, Future, and Drake use the B-word 25 times, and the word "ho" thrice on top of that.  Throw in drug references and suggestions of what haters could go do to themselves, because why not, and you've got a disgusting cesspool of lyrics right there.  Perhaps the crowning achievement in this field is the following couplet:

She said, "I never wanna make you mad,
I just wanna make you proud"
I said, "Baby, just make me [verb]
Then don't make a sound"

Yes, I know I censored a key word, because that's how I roll, but you wanna know how I interpreted that passage?  I imagine that as him saying, "What, you think I give a wooden nickel about your hopes and dreams?  Now get back in the bedroom and make me an orgasm!"  ...Okay, so my version doesn't rhyme, but the point is, this Weezy guy's a douche.  I mean, he even says he "can't treat these hoes like ladies"!  And *what*, pray tell, is wrong with *that*!?

But believe it or not, "Love Me" (no) didn't clinch the "top" spot for Weezy alone, so let's list off some non-Weezy related flaws.  What was the point of having Future and Drake split the chorus if they both sound alike?  What was the point of them both delivering it in this auto-tuned monotone, especially if Wayne himself has dabbled in such?  What was the point of producer Mike Will Made-It pairing up these disgusting lyrics with a slow crawl of a beat or that disturbing, singsongy, jack-in-the-box twinkle on top of the track?  Or for that matter, putting another one of those fscking audio watermarks at the beginning?  (Oh right, just for the producer to promote himself.  Should've known.)  And what, pray tell, was the reason showing such questionable sights in the music video, including women writing in cages and bathing in a bathtub of blood!?  Had you no shame!?

*sigh*

It didn't have to be like this.  Late last year, Lupe Fiasco put out a song called "[noun] Bad", in which he deconstructed the B-word by juxtaposing the different connotations which the rap scene has bestowed upon that word against each other.  But its message apparently didn't catch on, because it didn't even make the Hot 100, and on the contrary, voices like those of Spin Magazine criticised it for preaching on an issue that they said wasn't exactly relevant in our culture!  And yet songs like "Love Me" (no) do just that and get promoted enough for a top-ten spot!?  Seriously, mister Brandon Soderberg, go fuck yourself.  And that goes for everyone who supports this shit unironically.  I quit.  Hope you're proud of yourself, 2013.

...

But soft?  What yonder noise transpires in the distance?  Could it be the knight in shining armour who will rescue us from the scourge of commercial hip-hop?  Yes!  Our hero is nigh, and his name is on second thought, this article's gone on too long.  Wait for part 2.