It’s very fitting that I’m late with this week’s Song of the Week as I’m even later with my choice for it. A joint venture of Diplo and Switch, Major Lazer’s Hold The Line has been doing the rounds for a while now but it’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to construe the brilliance of it. Hold The Line is probably the least immediate single I’ve reviewed on this blog. There are so many reasons it shouldn’t work, but boy does it. It kicks of with Rawhide meets Kill Bill bluesy guitar and from there gets thrown into a blender of rippling drum beats and guitar riffs, Jamaican accents, random phone ringtones, giggling and killer lyrics, “I’ll make your jeans vibrate like a Nokia.” Better still, just as she did in Jay-Z’s Brooklyn We Go Hard, Santigold totally steals the show with her amazing guest rap. Then there’s the clip – What a stroke of genius. An appropriation of random cartoon clips and an 80s Mattel styled ad. One of the most original singles in ages.
Check it out!
