To be honest, I had no idea what he looked like until I started writing this blog.
This picture shows DeRulo is taller than a Fender...not necessarily that he knows what it is.Jason DeRulo first entered the public eye in 2009 with his hit single, "Whatcha Say," which he then followed in the next year with "In My Head" and "Riding Solo," all off of his first eponymous album (he named it after himself to make sure he wouldn't forget his name). DeRulo is one of many in a recent string of artists who likes to use Auto-tune/vocoders to sing 2000 harmonies at once and slide like they covered the treble clef with baby oil.
I thought I'd take a second and analyze the popular music my boy Jay-Jay has produced. First off, let's examine his breakout hit, "Whatcha Say." If you have ever listened to decent music, or you're a teenage girl who happens to love The O.C. (like if you're my roommate and happen to own an entire season on DVD, you know who you are), then you have probably heard the song that he samples.
This Summer, Shia LaBeouf will act better than you've ever seen him act before...maybe.
Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" is a classic song that teaches kids how to actually use a vocoder and the proper art of multiple voice harmony. "Whatcha Say" steals one of the best parts of the song and turns it into a call and answer session. "Hide and Seek" is about...well honestly, I don't know. I've been over the lyrics a dozen times and the music video is no help at all. What matters is that it kicks ass. "Whatcha Say," on the other hand, is clearly about J-Dog pleading his ex-girlfriend to get back with him after he blatantly cheated on her, and his only reason is that he's going to be so famous that he can buy her anything. How romantic. It's also one of a few songs that has been replaced as the number one Hot 100 billboard song in America by the song it displaced ("Fireflies" by Owl City. Ouch JayBone. Ouch).
The second song that we're going to cover is his current popular track, "In My Head." Some of you may have been confused the first time you heard it. "Isn't that Lady Gaga?" you might have asked, as you hopefully prepared to jam out to the epic collaboration between Stephanie Germanotta (How many of you had to look up the name to know who I was talking about?), Akon (Aliune Thiam? OK seriously does anyone use their own names anymore?), and Colby O'Donis Colon (I hate you all). But instead of getting "Just Dance," you start hearing the power of Auto-tune as our good old boy J-Money starts singin' his new fiery tribute to women. What's this particular piece of music theft about, you ask? Rape. In a Club. That he is imagining.
Ooh baby, I'm gonna pretend I'm commitin' a felony on youuuu baby!
In Jason's final song, "Ridin' Solo," which at first sounds like his most original piece of work to date. In fact, the only reason it is remotely close to original is because he failed to steal "Bittersweet Symphony" from The Verve. This symphony, however, is about our good old boy JD not being weighed down by his apparently overbearing girlfriend (or girlfiend, as he would have us believe) and now he can go back to wearing his sunglasses at night. Cause he's so tight. Altogether, Jason DeRulo doesn't seem to have much talent as a musician.
Doing a little research on DeRulo yielded some interesting information, however. According to the ruler of the internet, Wikipedia, Jason Joel Desrouleaux (SERIOUSLY??) has "been performing since the age of five. He wrote his first song, "Crush on You", at age eight and was heard singing part of the song on a Galaxy FM interview. Derülo spent his youth studying opera, theater, and ballet. He attended Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York."
This schmuck has been a musician since he was a little kid, and he pushes out crap songs like this? Mozart is shitting his pants in heaven right now. How is this even close to being allowable by the Universe? I guess he ended up trying to keep up with the times...after all, every artist is doing it nowadays. For example:
Katy Perry
California Gurls = September by Earth, Wind, and Fire. Except about frosting beaches and Candy Cane pimps or whatever. By the way, the only time that the music video shows that it's aware of the lyrics is when a anthropomorphic popsicle dies a melty death.
Sweet, delicious murder.
I thought I'd take a second and analyze the popular music my boy Jay-Jay has produced. First off, let's examine his breakout hit, "Whatcha Say." If you have ever listened to decent music, or you're a teenage girl who happens to love The O.C. (like if you're my roommate and happen to own an entire season on DVD, you know who you are), then you have probably heard the song that he samples.
This Summer, Shia LaBeouf will act better than you've ever seen him act before...maybe.Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" is a classic song that teaches kids how to actually use a vocoder and the proper art of multiple voice harmony. "Whatcha Say" steals one of the best parts of the song and turns it into a call and answer session. "Hide and Seek" is about...well honestly, I don't know. I've been over the lyrics a dozen times and the music video is no help at all. What matters is that it kicks ass. "Whatcha Say," on the other hand, is clearly about J-Dog pleading his ex-girlfriend to get back with him after he blatantly cheated on her, and his only reason is that he's going to be so famous that he can buy her anything. How romantic. It's also one of a few songs that has been replaced as the number one Hot 100 billboard song in America by the song it displaced ("Fireflies" by Owl City. Ouch JayBone. Ouch).
The second song that we're going to cover is his current popular track, "In My Head." Some of you may have been confused the first time you heard it. "Isn't that Lady Gaga?" you might have asked, as you hopefully prepared to jam out to the epic collaboration between Stephanie Germanotta (How many of you had to look up the name to know who I was talking about?), Akon (Aliune Thiam? OK seriously does anyone use their own names anymore?), and Colby O'Donis Colon (I hate you all). But instead of getting "Just Dance," you start hearing the power of Auto-tune as our good old boy J-Money starts singin' his new fiery tribute to women. What's this particular piece of music theft about, you ask? Rape. In a Club. That he is imagining.
Ooh baby, I'm gonna pretend I'm commitin' a felony on youuuu baby!For those of you wondering what I'm talking about, here are a few selected lyrics from the song:
"Everybodys looking for love. Oh. Oh.
Aint that the reason youre at this club. Oh. Oh.
You aint gonna find a dance with him. No. Oh.
Got a better solution for you girl. Oh. Oh."
So in these first verses, Jason establishes that people come to clubs for "love," which for the younger audience, is a euphemism for SEX. He offers a "better solution" to this mysterious him this girl is dancing with, and I can only assume its Jason himself. He drops the sweet line "Youll see a side of love you've never known," which probably is his throwback line when he's hitting up clubs tryna run bitches down.
It then follows up with :
"In my head, I see you all over me.
In my head, you fulfill my fantasy."
At first, this seems like it's a relatively normal song about club hookups, but a few things you might have noticed that there's a lot of personal pronouns being used in the chorus. It's not about what this girl wants, it's ALL Jason here. That said, it still seems like its a legitimate song (with just Jason being a typical asshole looking for his own satisfaction) until he takes it to the next level with this gem:
"Youll be screaming no.
In my head, its going down."
Again, in theory this could just be Jason saying that he'll be so good that she'll be screaming out, but then in the second verse:
"Some dudes know all the right things to say.
When it comes down to it, its just a game.
Instead of talking let me demonstrate. Yeah.
Get down to business lets skip foreplay."
Apart from the first acknowledgment that he's just playing this chick as part of the game (which lead to my conclusion of the use of love in the opening line of the song), he intends to just go straight to railing this girl with warming up. This fact, combined with he wants her to be screaming "no" do not lead to the conclusion that that scream is about her being wowed by his sexual prowess.
Oh baby, I just loved the way you treated me like a hole in a seedy club bathroom wall.
"Everybodys looking for love. Oh. Oh.
Aint that the reason youre at this club. Oh. Oh.
You aint gonna find a dance with him. No. Oh.
Got a better solution for you girl. Oh. Oh."
So in these first verses, Jason establishes that people come to clubs for "love," which for the younger audience, is a euphemism for SEX. He offers a "better solution" to this mysterious him this girl is dancing with, and I can only assume its Jason himself. He drops the sweet line "Youll see a side of love you've never known," which probably is his throwback line when he's hitting up clubs tryna run bitches down.
It then follows up with :
"In my head, I see you all over me.
In my head, you fulfill my fantasy."
At first, this seems like it's a relatively normal song about club hookups, but a few things you might have noticed that there's a lot of personal pronouns being used in the chorus. It's not about what this girl wants, it's ALL Jason here. That said, it still seems like its a legitimate song (with just Jason being a typical asshole looking for his own satisfaction) until he takes it to the next level with this gem:
"Youll be screaming no.
In my head, its going down."
Again, in theory this could just be Jason saying that he'll be so good that she'll be screaming out, but then in the second verse:
"Some dudes know all the right things to say.
When it comes down to it, its just a game.
Instead of talking let me demonstrate. Yeah.
Get down to business lets skip foreplay."
Apart from the first acknowledgment that he's just playing this chick as part of the game (which lead to my conclusion of the use of love in the opening line of the song), he intends to just go straight to railing this girl with warming up. This fact, combined with he wants her to be screaming "no" do not lead to the conclusion that that scream is about her being wowed by his sexual prowess.
Oh baby, I just loved the way you treated me like a hole in a seedy club bathroom wall.In Jason's final song, "Ridin' Solo," which at first sounds like his most original piece of work to date. In fact, the only reason it is remotely close to original is because he failed to steal "Bittersweet Symphony" from The Verve. This symphony, however, is about our good old boy JD not being weighed down by his apparently overbearing girlfriend (or girlfiend, as he would have us believe) and now he can go back to wearing his sunglasses at night. Cause he's so tight. Altogether, Jason DeRulo doesn't seem to have much talent as a musician.
Doing a little research on DeRulo yielded some interesting information, however. According to the ruler of the internet, Wikipedia, Jason Joel Desrouleaux (SERIOUSLY??) has "been performing since the age of five. He wrote his first song, "Crush on You", at age eight and was heard singing part of the song on a Galaxy FM interview. Derülo spent his youth studying opera, theater, and ballet. He attended Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York."
This schmuck has been a musician since he was a little kid, and he pushes out crap songs like this? Mozart is shitting his pants in heaven right now. How is this even close to being allowable by the Universe? I guess he ended up trying to keep up with the times...after all, every artist is doing it nowadays. For example:
Katy Perry
California Gurls = September by Earth, Wind, and Fire. Except about frosting beaches and Candy Cane pimps or whatever. By the way, the only time that the music video shows that it's aware of the lyrics is when a anthropomorphic popsicle dies a melty death.
Sweet, delicious murder.Sometimes artists copy each other because they decided to have someone else write their music For example, some of you might have heard of Ryan Tedder, the lead singer of OneRepublic. Since the start of his career, he's also been helping other artists write their music. Every now and again though, he gets a little lazy. He helped both Beyonce and Kelly Clarkson write some smash hits ("Halo" and "Already Gone"). After they came out, our girl Sasha Fierce and recently converted Beluga whale Kelly began to notice they sounded a HELL of a lot alike. Like "didn't I just release this song" alike. And as always when people cheat, they get caught and punished with two Grammy nominations.
My personal favorites are when artists end up copying themselves. In the olden days, when people still could tolerate Nickelback without crying, they were actually relatively popular. I mean they didn't have the ability to press horseshit into a CD with record-breaking sales, but they could hold their own. That having been said, they pulled a little trick called "we're going to write one of our hit songs backwards and not have people notice." And by write, I mean literally, they took their number one hit song "How You Remind Me" and turned the melody around to get "Someday", which was number 7 on the U.S. Top 100, and number 1 in Canada. Look at you showing favoritism, America's hat!
Of course, America's bands weren't to be outdone on the musical douchebaggery scale, so Massachusetts Punk-Emo-Bitches-Whateverthehell band Boys Like Girls decided that instead of altering one of their hit songs, they would simply write it all over again. "The Great Escape" was a decent song (only hit 23rd on the billboard) but two singles later, "LoveDrunk," off of the similarly titled album, apparently fooled everybody because it was actually placed higher in the charts (22nd!). People eventually realized that they'd heard the song before, but somehow couldn't figure out what it had copied. Then, it hit them! The Killers!
You are under my spell...listen to my music!
My personal favorites are when artists end up copying themselves. In the olden days, when people still could tolerate Nickelback without crying, they were actually relatively popular. I mean they didn't have the ability to press horseshit into a CD with record-breaking sales, but they could hold their own. That having been said, they pulled a little trick called "we're going to write one of our hit songs backwards and not have people notice." And by write, I mean literally, they took their number one hit song "How You Remind Me" and turned the melody around to get "Someday", which was number 7 on the U.S. Top 100, and number 1 in Canada. Look at you showing favoritism, America's hat!
Of course, America's bands weren't to be outdone on the musical douchebaggery scale, so Massachusetts Punk-Emo-Bitches-Whateverthehell band Boys Like Girls decided that instead of altering one of their hit songs, they would simply write it all over again. "The Great Escape" was a decent song (only hit 23rd on the billboard) but two singles later, "LoveDrunk," off of the similarly titled album, apparently fooled everybody because it was actually placed higher in the charts (22nd!). People eventually realized that they'd heard the song before, but somehow couldn't figure out what it had copied. Then, it hit them! The Killers!
You are under my spell...listen to my music!Apparently these clowns are masters of hypnosis, because they managed to make everyone think they actually did something less self centered and stole another bands music.
Anyhow, it's kind of a roundabout way of saying this, but the point of all this is that musicians get lazy, thieving, and uncreative once they join the industry. Support creativity, advance the arts, and only use Jason DeRulo for grinding beats when your hammered and nothing else.
Anyhow, it's kind of a roundabout way of saying this, but the point of all this is that musicians get lazy, thieving, and uncreative once they join the industry. Support creativity, advance the arts, and only use Jason DeRulo for grinding beats when your hammered and nothing else.
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