December 2011
14 posts
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 10: "Switch It Up"
At the end of their journey, the wise men had the baby Jesus, savior of the world, an infant king. We have “Switch It Up.” Let’s get to it, shall we?
Robert’s thoughts:
Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but I think this is the fattest beat on the record so far. Off the heels of Christmas Eve’s miserable track, it’s nice to hear Ginuwine being cocky...
3 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 9: "Merry Christmas"
Robert’s thoughts:
WHOOOA and we’re listening to an album for kids, as opposed to what I assumed was Gin’s target audience (horny African-American divorcees? dot biz?).
So yeah, on the heels of some VERY adult Christmas music, you get children’s voices, but they kind of sound like maybe adult voice actors’ impressions of children. It’s all quite unsettling....
4 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 8: "Christmas Letter"
Yes, this is actually the seventh track on the album. Sincere apologies for messing up the order (to no one! this blog is basically Home Alone, pre-booby traps, post parents-gone ((aka terrible))).
HAVE A LISTEN.
So. Wow.
Robert’s thoughts:
Well. The name of the song is “Christmas Letter.” But while the filtered drum track gets things a’rollin, Ginuwine tells us that...
1 tag
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 7: "Joy to the World"
Robert’s thoughts:
You know what’s coming, because it’s a Christmas standard. “Joy to the World.”
But you also know, when the Lakers are announcing their starting lineup, that Kobe Bryant is gonna be in there. But they amp it up anyway. That’s how this song opens, kind of letting the tension build for what you know is going to be a pretty painful...
4 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 6: "I Love Christmas"
Robert’s thoughts:
This is my favorite song from the album thus far.
JP’s thoughts:
No matter how good the lyrics of this song could’ve been, I absolutely cannot get over the Casio keyboard drum machine beat of this jam. As I have previously mentioned, Ginuwine may be broke, but he could’ve at least had a little production value. From my limited knowledge of the music...
1 tag
“Robert, Thank you for braving the unmitigated lunacy of Ginuwine’s Christmas album and reporting your discoveries back to the rest of us. After reading your Ginuwine Advent series, my first reaction was to create a fake email account, masquerade as Ginuwine, and submit essays in defense of this album. And then I watched the music video for Pony. As I delved deeper into the arcane...
5 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 5: "12 Days"
Robert’s thoughts:
The beat is like a fatter “No Scrubs.” It’s not altogether the worst, though it’s slightly the worst.
Okay, I’ve been in the song a little bit, wondering if there’s another clever way to say that this sounds like three songs playing at once that I haven’t already used on EVERY SONG ON THIS ALBUM, and I just realized that...
5 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 4: "All I Want"
Robert’s thoughts:
A little piano. I’m feeling it. Very processed. This particular piano timbre reminds me of something. Can’t remember what. Maybe going to the mall when I was little and playing the keyboards at the piano store.
We’re 30 seconds in, and I’m enjoying this track. Here come the vocals.
Okay, Gin’s voice is a little annoying, but I’m...
4 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 3: "Without You"
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Listen to Without You
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Robert’s thoughts:
I hit play on this track and unmuted my computer and immediately assumed there was a YouTube video running simultaneously, because this song sounds like three kind of terrible songs happening at once. Ginuwine adds enough spoken “uh huh”s “Ginuwine”s “Christmas”s and “[whatever record company this...
5 tags
Ginuwine Advent Calendar Day 2: "Silent Night"
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Listen to Silent Night
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Robert’s thoughts:
I remember growing up, our preacher used to always tell this story about how on Christmas Even during WWII, American soldiers heard, through a break in the violence, German soldiers singing “Stille Nacht” along with them.
Then there’s Ginuwine’s “Silent Night,” which comes fresh off the heels of a song...
4 tags
Genuine Advent Calendar Day 1: "Mistletoe"
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Listen to Mistletoe
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Christmas come early, folks. Like a sweet little child, I rolled out of bed at 9:45 am PT (12:45 pm ET) and tiptoed my hand to the floor to pick up my laptop, open it, and check to see if I had any more Twitter followers (THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS NO) and found, with a skip in my heart, that someone had given me music on Spotify. The gift had no note, and came from a...