![]() It successfully nails the coke-dusted pleasure centers of ‘80s funk, James Brown and Earth, Wind & Fire while still stretching supinely across genres like psychedelia and jazz fusion, enlisting everyone from Mystikal (whose rap on “Feel Right” is a hilarious high point – “slapping kittens,” indeed) to uber-producer Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, fun., Taylor Swift) to smooth out the rougher edges of his vision. ![]() Where 2007’s Version reimagined current hits in strange and kaleidoscopic ways and 2010’s Record Collection was an ill-timed shot across the bow for weird pop music (released today, there’s no question “Bang Bang Bang” would be a huge hit), Uptown Special is Ronson’s most straightforward record. Yet “Uptown Funk” never feels dated it’s vibrant and alive, a celebration of present moods through the prism of the past, another encore of a sound Ronson has meticulously curated over his career. By collaborating with one of pop music’s great faceless chameleons, Ronson makes “Uptown Funk,” the record’s thesis statement, a deft summation of his own aesthetic, transporting his deliciously subversive sound to a wider audience through the pleasantly vanilla guise of Mars’ energetic persona.Ī song with a title like “Uptown Funk” should be corny, terrible, likely flat, and, yes, a lot of the landmarks of the contrivances you would expect – machine-gun horns, overactive syncopation, inane lyrics – define the song. ![]() Indeed, it’s a fitting track for a producer with as shifting a sound as Ronson, one who doesn’t have so much of a signature sound as he does an expert handle on a wide tapestry of past styles and how they weave seamlessly into trends of the present. That it took a guest spot from Bruno Mars to seize the #1 spot shouldn’t dilute the accomplishment. ![]() The British producer and singer-songwriter has been torching European charts for years, ever since his work on Amy Winehouse’s seminal Back to Black album defined his modern-retro pastiche and took Ronson’s work out of the warehouse clubs where he had made his name and into Grammy territory. The shock is that it took this long for it to happen. It’s not particularly remarkable that Mark Ronson was the one who finally snatched the Billboard Hot 100 crown from Taylor Swift’s clenched fists. ![]()
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