Eminem and Rihanna have been here before. YouTube “The Monster”—America’s newest No. 1 single, according Billboard’s flagship Hot 100 chart—is the umpteenth example of one of the most durable pop tropes of the last two decades: the rough-and-smooth pairing of a gruff rapper and a hook-belting singer. It’s flawlessly constructed—machine-tooled, really—for radio dominance, a stew [...] Read more

On Monday here at Brow Beat, Forrest Wickman wrote about President Obama “singing” (in supercut form) Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and declared that the single “seems more and more destined to be the song of the summer.” The only question, he wondered, was whether it could “topple its nearest competitor, Robin Thicke’s Marvin Gaye–inspired ‘Blurred Lines’ ” [...] Read more