How do you combat a nude photo scandal that’s threatening to take over the public’s perception of your still-fledgling entertainment career? If you’re Vanessa Hudgens, you sing about wearing… shoes?
“Putcha sneakkuzz awwwwn,” High School Musical alum Vanessa Hudgens drawls at the outset of her 2008 single “Sneakernight,” the first single the starlet released after photos of her in the buff made their way to the Internet. And she brays the order once more, just in case you weren’t listening/were thinking the totally wrong thing, OK? The lite-funk that follows is a faded photocopy of Nikka Costa’s “Like A Feather”—after it’s been put through the Kidz Bop filter, then had all of its “sexy” musical bits Liquid Paper-ed out; Hudgens, meanwhile, is gamely leading the proceedings along, only it’s a little tough because her diction is somewhere between that of a drunk chick’s last-call karaoke performance of “Word Up!” and the Hamburglar. (I swear, every time she repeats the line “basically what we’re gonna gonna do is dance”—which happens often!—I think she’s going to break into a “robble robble.”) I’ll give her a bit of a pass, the lyrics she’s forced to work with, which all sound like they’re supposed to be about sex but have instead been beaten down into an extended metaphor about dancing “all night long,” would be tough for anyone to swallow, let alone a young woman hell-bent on proving that she’s totally 100% comfortable with being fully dressed. But this hot, stinky mess of a comeback song still needs to be aired-out.
I should also note that this song was co-written and produced by L.A.-based producer J.R. Rotem, whose list of production credits reads like a roster of songs that were cut from this list at the last minute. Ashley Tisdale’s piano-lesson fever dream “He Said, She Said”! Nicole Scherzinger’s inert “Baby Love”! Leona Lewis’ soporific “Better In Time”! That new Plies song about blow jobs! His two best tracks—Rihanna’s “S.O.S.” and Jason DeRulo’s “Whatcha Say”—were both saved by the dint of using UFW samples, thus proving the old maxim about broken clocks. Something tells me we might have to set up a mini-hall of fame for his efforts over the years…
Vanessa Hudgens - Sneakernight [MySpace]
Vanessa Hudgens [MySpace]
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I understand the comparisons to “Like a Feather”, but merely mentioning this song in the same breath as it still sets my teeth on edge.
I still use Sneakernight as a verb sometimes. As in, “That Head Shoulders Knees And Toes song totally sneakernights “Birthday Sex” in the Dumbest Lyrics of 2009 department.”
@bcapirigi: Well-played!
Completely unrelated to this song (if it can be called a “song”): Are we going to see Kevin Federline on the list somewhere? After all, when your album is by far the worst-reviewed in Metacritic’s entire database, there have to be some excruciatingly awful tracks in there.
Better In Time is clearly Rotem’s best song. Beautiful and understated and one of the unexpected delights of 2008 I thought. And very out of kilter which much of the rubbish on his credits list.
Yeah, “Better in Time” is good, and there are actually several Vanilla Hudge songs I quite like, though this is probably her most in-yr-face bad song. Not worst, because she has plenty of gross boring songs I dislike more than this one, but check “Don’t Talk” (her best by a mile), “First Bad Habit,” and “Say OK” (second of which, IIRC, was co-written by Dr. Luke).
Maura, I am dreading the entry when you finally smack down Ashlee Simpson, but I have long been training for this day and I trust you will be an admirable and focused opponent (bows).
@dusty vinyl: First of all, Better in Time is in NO WAY better than SOS and Watcha Say, both of which, as Maura points out, are redeemed by their well-mixed samples.
Also, gonna agree on the awfulness of this track: between the dumber than dumb/product-pushing lyrics, obnoxious horn that blares every so often, and off kilter (again, perfect description:) drunken late-night karaoke vocals. Still, I don’t mind Hudgen’s breezier “Say OK” that much and I kind of have a guilty pleasure for “Baby Come Back to Me” (although the unsung part of that song is still crap).
I never cared for “Better In Time,” and when it became a single I was confused; it’s just saccharine, all sugar and in the worst way- you literally cannot grab hold of it because there is nothing solid to it. My extrapolating that analogy gives me the writing credentials necessary to work on Vanessa’s next record, or at the very least Corbin Bleu’s.
Nicole Scherzinger’s mere name causes me to laugh aloud my haughty pop laugh. I surely hope several of her efforts, solo or otherwise, makes this list at some point.
I hope against hope that Asher Roth makes an appearance on this list.
Sneakertight < My Humps
(also, “Watcha Say” sucks way harder than the actually-kinda-pretty “Better in Time”)
Wow, I’m surprised you don’t like “Better in Time”. The song itself is admittedly kind of dull, but the arrangement is one of the nicest in recent ballad-pop, to my ears.
This song does have at least one redeeming quality, in that it at least tries to make sure girls are eating before they go out. That’s something, right?