The second in a new feature on The Vine, where we listen to the latest Australian #1 single and analyse it to death, so you don't have to.

Usher
'OMG'
(Sony)

'OMG' is Usher’s first Australian #1 since the crunk jam 'Yeah!' from 2004, and his 12th single to enter the Australian charts. Produced by Usher and will.i.am (of the Black Eyed Peas), it also features will.i.am, who begins the song. Considering that Usher's first charting Australian single, 'You Make Me Wanna', was in 1997, now 13 years ago, the Texan-born R&B stars career has lasted aeons in the fickle novelty-driven worlds of chart pop.


Usher (with will.i.am) - 'OMG'

“OMG” is synthetic; full of the autotuned vocals and synth bleeps that we’ve come to expect from chart pop. It also features all the subtlety, taste, and innovation that we've come to expect from your average Black Eyed Peas tune. Aka zip. Many of you will be painfully aware that will.i.am is expert at not letting musical taste get in the way of repeating a musical element so many times over the course of one song, that it lodges in one's head like a nail. And so, like 'I Gotta Feeling' or 'Boom Boom Pow', the hooks in 'OMG' (the "oh oh oh oh oh oh" in the chorus, in particular, which are broadly reminiscent of the "eh eh eh eh eh's" in Lady Gaga’s 'Telephone') are set to stun.

Much like the Black Eyed Peas’ previous single, 'Meet Me Halfway' (and much of will.i.am’s production work in general), 'OMG' is a gawky mishmash of 4 or 5 different elements, that blend together about as well as custard and fish fingers. There doesn’t seem to be much musical logic in the song in terms of dynamic, or tension and release (which great pop songs like 'Single Ladies' and 'She Loves You' do expertly). In places, it features desultory robotic drum patterns that aim for the clever syncopations of Timbaland or Missy Elliott, but mostly end up sounding tinny and dated.

Perhaps the worst offender to musical taste in the song is the glaringly incongruous football chant which provides a counterpoint to the chorus melody. Considering the style of the song (club R&B), the lyrics (smooth loverboy platitudes), and the general feel of the tune (sparse synthetic jitteriness), this seems wildly inappropriate. Everything else in the song is so quantized, autotuned and robotic that some actual human group chanting scans as bizarre - the audio eqivalent of the uncanny valley). To hell with taste!

Ten years ago, the idea of using internet jargon and slang in a song was comical or gimmicky (see Britney Spears’ 'E-mail My Heart'). But these days a #1 single using internet acronyms gets a shrug; as Facebook, txtspeak, and Twitter become part of our everyday lives, such language becomes ripe pickings for pop songwriters looking to allude to - and connect with - a "hip" fanbase. Video superstars OK Go this year released a Prince-ish song called 'WTF?', Katy Perry’s breakout hit in the US was called 'UR So Gay', and a David Guetta track currently sitting at #25 in the Australian charts features an ‘electro-hop’ group called LMFAO. And this is now taken for what it is – slang used, more often than not, by teenagers; calling your group LMFAO now is not so different from calling your group Motorhead (British slang for someone who takes a lot of speed).

Strangely, though, the title ‘OMG’ does not stand for “oh my God”. Instead it stands for “oh my gosh”. This choice of words puzzles me. Were Usher and will.i.am trying to avoid offending Christian mores by avoiding the word “God” in the lyrics? If so, why have they left in lyrics like “honey got a booty like pow pow pow / honey got some boobies like wow, oh wow”?  In the context of the uninhibited dancefloor lust depicted in the lyrics, “oh my gosh” sounds, at best, like sarcastic understatement. And at worst, incongruous and wimpy. Someone so in thrall to the physical charms of a woman, as Usher appears to be, would doubtfully remember to avoid using the name in vain, after all.

Like so many Number One's, this 'song' is an oxymoron; not really music for listening, and certainly not music for thinking about. So what is it for, and why do people buy it? 'OMG' is club fodder, meant to be danced to. (Or, in a pinch, to answer your phone to). In your typical meat market nightclub, the song probably works just fine. Fueled by alcohol, dim lighting, loud music, and raging hormones, the lyrics make (some) sense. After all, nightclubs (allegedly) often feature female booties and boobies prominently on display.

The sentiment of the song – that Usher has his lust-filled eyes focused on one particular lady – has a certain appeal if you’re inclined to take it at its word. It’s doubtless more flattering to be "the one", rather than say, the 25th in a long line. So I can imagine a little of this kind of club-hopping wish fulfillment – wanting to be the object of Usher's gaze, wanting to be that woman for someone in the club you’re at, wanting to be that guy gazing upon such a girl – goes a long way to planting the desire to resurrect that feeling in one's headphones. Or car stereo. And so inadvertently, get it to #1.

Tim Byron