If on the 26th April you are just about to go to bed and look out the window and wonder what that queue down your street is, the answer is that it’s probably the line of people waiting for the new Janelle Monáe album Dirty Computer to be released on 27th April. I’ll be at the front. Obviously. Why? Because she’s already released one of the best pop songs of 2018 with Make Me Feel and now she has replicated that achievement with another pop song that demonstrates the art of amazingness. It’s called Pynk. Grimes added some harmonies on it. You might recall that Janelle worked with Grimes on her track Venus Fly. It’s got great lyrics like: ”Cos boy it’s cool, if you got blue, we got the pynk.” Or how about “Pynk like the inside of your, baby, pynk behind all of the doors, crazy, pynk like the tongue that goes down, maybe, pynk like the paradise found”. Yes, it's a song that is undoubtedly talking about cunnilingus. It’s got a stripped back deeply throbbing minimalist 80’s sounding synth groove. It’s got a guitar riff and some ‘Yeahs’ that sounds like the sort of thing that Taylor Swift might have done after 1989 if she hadn’t screwed it up with the piss poor Reputation. It’s got a video that features pink trousers that look like a vagina. I defy any fan of pop music to dislike this jam. It will make you feel alive. Frankly even if all the other songs on the album are a load of old toss it won’t matter, because there’s more amazingness in Pynk and Make Me Feel than most full length long-players combined. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to join the queue. Janelle Monae - Pynk (Video)
Looking back at my last few hours Twitter feed (which mainly consists of the music types that I follow), there has been one singular opinion that has stood out with universal agreement, and that is that the new Janelle Monáe single is really rather bloody brilliant. This worried me a lot. Because every now and then, when the internet gets excited about a song en masse, I often find that I’m a bit underwhelmed by it. Sometimes my opinion changes; for example I initially thought Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, which had that same extreme online reaction, was just OK. But now I’m firmly of the mindset that it is one of the best pop songs of the last 10 years and hope and expect it will be on all those end of decade lists (not too long before we get those folks…). Yet other times I find myself failing to understand why everyone that I follow seems to love something so much and I never ever get beyond that point. But it’s OK here. More than OK. Because Make Me Feel, from Janelle's new album Dirty Computer, her first in five years, is ridiculously good. Yes, there’s a big dollop of Prince’s Kiss in the track, but heck if you’re going to reference something, choose something great. And Kiss is great. Sure Prince had even greater, but Kiss is up there in the leading pack. This is pop music’s equivalent of a couple of strong cocktails downed quickly then getting straight onto the dance floor without a care in the world. Janelle Monáe is here to make you feel damn good. You’re not going to be able to help yourself. Well done Janelle. Well done Twitter. Well done music.
