Nelly Furtado, "Maneater" (LINK FIXED)
Christina Milian, "Say I" (feat. Young Jeezy)

"So Nelly Furtado's apparently been working with Timbaland" was the way I settled on starting my entry on "Maneater", my as-yet-unchallenged favorite song of 2006 so far. Who'd'a thunk it? I mean, seriously, when "Maneater" surfaced around the same time as "Promiscuous Girl", I barely would have even pegged "Maneater" as a single, or at least not a single in the same universe of obviousness as "Promiscuous Girl"; these days it might as well be the only song on my iPod. And, again, this is Nelly Furtado we're talking about here; I would have expected to hear the best song of the year come out of Pink's honeyed throat way before I ever would have guessed Little Miss My First Album Was Thoroughly One-Upped By Leslie Fucking Feist's would even have a shot at it. And yet here we are.

I'm sure that you're all shocked into oblivion by the fact that I give Timbaland most of the credit for this one. I don't even want to diminish Ms. Furtado's substantial contributions to the track - I certainly never saw her remaking herself as a Sexxx Kitten, or at least not with this level of commitment - but fucking hell, if there's ever been a less-probable array of elements put together to form something this compelling, I want to hear it; "Maneater" is nothing less than a Billy Beane-esque lesson about the rewards to be reaped from effective resource management. I mean, faced with the challenge of making something compelling out of a Nelly Furtado attempt at a transparently cast-off Missy Elliott song, I can't imagine that my first reaction would have been to go "Hey, let's make it a billion times more abrasive", because lord knows that's not a combination that really needs any help on that front; needless to say, this is why Timbaland is Timbaland and I'm just some dork paying eight bucks a month to add my musical messiah complex to the public record. And fuck are we ever the richer for the difference, because any attempt to soften the blow of Nelly Fucking Furtado entreating an audience to "move your body around like a nympho" would have only diminished the way That Unearthly Chorus sails in, genuinely the best single moment of pop music I've encountered since Come And Get It ended damn near every discussion on the subject in my head half a year ago.

By this point, I would imagine that some of you are beginning to suspect me of attempting to sell you a gussied-up 2k6 "Hollaback Girl" . Well, I'm not. I mean, yes, obviously there are some striking similarities between the songs, especially in the way they pay off all their self-conscious minimalism with majestic synth swoops, but if I'm trying to sell you on anything 2k6'd up, it's got to be "1 Thing". Obviously, the sauce of bragging about remembering a song barely a year old knows no limits to its weakness, but when you don't watch commercials, don't listen to the radio, and don't have friends who flip the motherfuck out over froofy mass-market girl-pop, songs like "1 Thing" tend to stick out in your head - you could have convinced me Jason Forrest was on the knobs for that one without a whole lot of effort. "1 Thing", in fact, would prove so distinctive as to spawn a horde of imitators attempting to seemingly put a song together entirely from old soul cuts' right angles; by this point, the formula's been refined to the point where two pop artists as transparently fraudulent as Christina Milian and Young Jeezy can shake off something as genuinely captivating as "Say I" - if it weren't for "Maneater" ruling over my skull at the moment, there's a decent chance I'd be using my inside voice for "Say I" instead. It's that good.

Unfortunately for "Say I", however, it's also just that good at reminding me why I loved "1 Thing", which in turn reminds me of why I love "Maneater" - simply put, it takes something that I didn't know could hold my attention (tooth-rotting exuberance in Amerie's case, unrepentant abrasiveness in Nelly's) and uses it to wring my mind dry. As good as "Say I" may be, it's a pretty huge chip against it that it doesn't bring anything new to the table apart from the fact that it's a really fun pop song that's new to me - there's never a point when I feel like I'm in conflict with the song, even when Jeezy shows up to put me to sleep with his breathtakingly uninteresting competence (seriously, dude's like the Steve Vai of hip-hop). "Maneater", on the other hand, you can't keep from rubbing up against; it's one of those songs that sounds nearly broken until you can actually unlock how to have fun with it. Until you get to that point, however, it's one of those songs you can't ignore it or avoid it without totally committing to doing so - in other words, it's one of those great, great pop songs.

(Loose is set for release on May 24th; in the meantime, buy Whoa Nelly from Amazon, or visit NellyFurtado.com for more information)
(Click here to buy a promo CD for "Say I" used from Gemm)