SAMHI C.
Features Editor
skc5908@psu.edu

Let’s start with two lists… 

List 1 – Songs I do not like:

– Coming Home

– Cold-Blooded

– BIG

– Luckiest Man

– Margiela

– Room In A Room

List 2 – Songs I like and love:

– A-Town Girl

– Kissing Strangers

– Keep On Dancin’ 

– Risk It All

– Bop

– Stone Kold Freak

– Ruin 

– On The Side

– I Am The Party

– I Love U

– Please U

– One Of Them Ones

– Standing Next to You – USHER Remix

About the songs I do not like, I cannot say why beyond they just felt… meh. Well, except “BIG”. I had very specific reasons about why I did not like “BIG”. It was the only song I did not listen to completely. I pulled up the lyrics as I did while listening to all of the songs, and two seconds in, I knew this song was trash and messed up. Using the line “When I was a kid, I would go to McDonald’s | I would never order the small” in order to discuss the song’s speaker’s big d*ck is so not warranted. I cannot in my right mind take this song seriously. As for “Coming Home”, the lead song of the album, I expected something more sentimental and sweet. Not a song about missing a woman’s body. 

But my dislike toward those songs is balanced out by my love for some of the other songs in album. 

My top four favorites are “Kissing Strangers”, “On The Side”, “I Love U”, and “Standing Next to You – USHER Remix”. They are fun, they are meaningful, and they are dance-able. These four songs will definitely be played on repeat in my Spotify for the next few days. 

Also, a special shout out to “A-Town Girl”. I appreciate how USHER took the core idea from Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girls” and updated it to suit his purposes. I also thought using a muffle bit of “Uptown Girl” to lead into the song was clever so that listeners who may not be familiar with the original song can still get a sense of what “A-Town Girl” is trying to do. 

Overall, I think this album is worth the listen and worth the space on my Spotify “Liked” list. Even if some of the songs are boring or annoying or just plainly make you go ‘why does this exist?’, some of them are musical gold.