Of the DJMag’s top 10 DJs of 2010, David Guetta is probably the only name who almost everybody today is going to have heard of. Shaking the music industry up in 2009 with ‘One Love’, Guetta’s reputation for churning out dancefloor-dominating hits is almost unparalleled. Hits from One Love have received unbelievable amounts of radio play ever since, and brought house music to the mainstream in a way that very few others have ever accomplished. In the past year, three albums in particular have, in my opinion, delivered truly significant tunes to the electronic scene, namely (in chronological order) Armin van Buuren’s ‘Mirage’, deadmau5’s ‘4x4=12’ and Above & Beyond’s ‘Group Therapy’. Now, almost exactly two years on from One Love, the question which remains is whether Nothing But The Beat will hit the spot when it comes to current tastes in electronic music, amongst the mainstream and house fans, and join the ranks of the aforementioned trio at the cutting edge of electronic.
Having listened through Guetta’s latest offering, I find myself little closer to answering this question. Throughout Nothing But The Beat, there are certainly plenty of glittering synths, pounding ‘four on the floor’ beats and a superstar vocal line-up to back it all up. But this perhaps is where the album falls down - whereas One Love delivered a breath of fresh air, Nothing But The Beat feels tired, laying down formulaic pop vocals over big backings over and over again. There are of course, exceptions. ‘Little Bad Girl’ is undeniably catchy, with an urgent verse by Ludacris kicking the pace up, while Guetta’s take on ‘Sweat’ with Snoop Dogg is a sure-fire dancefloor hit - although those who aren’t fans of Autotune should probably steer well clear. Elsewhere on the album, Jennifer Hudson collaborates on ‘Night Of Your Life’, to deliver a refreshing vocal performance which could comfortably soar straight to the top of the charts.
Elsewhere on the album, it feels that there is little which we haven’t heard before. Every artist working with Guetta seems to have hedged their bets with very middle of the road performances, nothing too extreme, and certainly not pushing the limits of their talent. Flo-Rida’s vocals on ‘Where Them Girls At’ could be taken straight from his chart smash hit ‘Right Round’, and simply laid over a backing which sounds suspiciously similar to Roll Deep’s ‘Good Times’. Although I earlier praised Ludacris’s performance on ‘Little Bad Girl’, Taio Cruz lets the side down with almost sickeningly bland vocals. I fully appreciate the pop-bias of the album, but I’m sure a lot of us hoped he could manage something more interesting than “Look at her go on the dancefloor, She’s amazing on the dancefloor, When she moves, girl I want more.” Moving on, ‘Without U’ featuring Usher feels decidedly out of place, and Akon’s ‘Crank It Up’ doesn’t offer anything which we didn’t hear on ‘Sexy Bitch’ or ‘Party Animal’. Following this up, Timbaland, over a backing with an unusually funky electro house twist, performs another porno-rhyme on ‘I Just Wanna F-’, which once again feels all too familiar, albeit with especially mediocre lyrics, which for some reason use the letters of the alphabet as a major theme. The first disc closes with ‘Titanium’, which bizarrely borrows a riff from Sting’s ‘Every Breath You Take’, about as far from the clubs of Ibiza as you can get - if you can overlook this rather horrid juxtaposition, the track itself is one of the better ones, but, having heard the track by Sting, you might find it difficult to feel particularly comfortable with it.
The second disc of the album features purely instrumentals, which hark back to Guetta’s earlier work. While ‘Alphabeat’ lapses into an incongruous electric guitar synth, much of the rest of the disc is really quite pleasant, high points being ‘Metro Music’ and ‘Glasgow’ which verge on electro house, while ‘Dreams’ and ‘Paris’ veer almost towards the progressive side of things. But again, none of this feels terribly new - everything is a very safe bet, and while DJs might wish to lay some of these instrumentals into their sets, in the most part they would do better to look to Guetta’s ‘F*** Me I’m Famous’ compilations, which generally offer a much broader range of music, and the most recent of which is exceptional. Nonetheless, this raises the question of whether Guetta should have stuck to his promise in the album title of bringing us nothing but the beat - certainly his instrumentals appear to have more to offer.
Nothing But The Beat is not a bad album in itself. The mastering has been done well, the singles have been chosen well and Guetta has not dropped any particularly terrible tracks - but herein lies the issue, as he has not dropped any particularly remarkable tracks. Perhaps it’s just the wrong thing at the wrong time, but I feel that Nothing But The Beat will sell primarily on the back of Guetta’s One Love success, rather than carving out new territory in the way its predecessor did. Ultimately, of course, I’m just another guy on the internet with opinions, and not necessarily the right ones - I’m sure some of you will not be able to stand this album, while others will praise it as the hottest release in years. But for me, I feel that in the future, perhaps Guetta would do better to stick to his older ‘core’ house style, or perhaps pursue his dabbling in electro house, which seems to be gaining momentum in clubs and at gigs. Certainly for his next album, I hope that we won’t be offered more of the same formulaic pop thinly disguised as house - if it feels tired now, I can guarantee that in another couple of years, it almost certainly won’t feel any fresher, and the upcoming names of today will be finally threatening Guetta’s domination of the world dance scene...
