The technology's genuinely cool, to be honest, especially on an iPad-sized screen. The main function of the thing is a spherical view of the clubby party cube where the video for "The Time" takes place- you're right in the center, and you can turn your iPad/iPhone/whatever in any direction and seamlessly view all angles. So part of the purpose of this 360 app is to put you in that dreamed-about environment. This one's just a pictogram, which means you'd guess it mostly appeals to people for whom The Club is sort of a glamorous, dreamed-about place, not somewhere they spend every other weekend.
But the direct, in-the-moment party track- the club track about clubs, the party track about partying- is sort of everywhere. Some hits infuse it with personality and depth others are just functional and utilitarian.
That's a fine enough subject for pop, and not remotely uncommon lately. Whereas the lyrics to this song stick with "come on let's go" / "we're gonna rock" exhortations- it's like a simple pictographic representation of the pure idea of being someplace where there's alcohol and people feel freaky and it's time to party, etc. I mean, consider the dizzying array of topics tackled by songs people dance to all the time: flirting, falling in love, telling off exes, liking big asses, self-determination, community, luxury goods, religion, masturbation, revolution, labor, poverty, finding profound near-spiritual solace in the act of dancing. But it's also one of many songs in this realm that haven't found a lot to be about, beyond the fact that they're the type of thing you might dance and drink to in a theoretical club. The past year has been a big one for thumpy, clubby, Euro-style pop singles, and "The Time" mostly fits that rubric it just happens to throw in a big chunk of a song from Dirty Dancing, for cross-generational appeal. Still: Can we talk for a second about BEP360, an interactive app the band just released? (Don't worry: It's sort of a metaphor.) The app's based around the video for the BEP single "The Time (Dirty Bit)". It's just that, a lot of the time, this crew seems to overshoot the mark and boil the "essence" part out, too. I imagine they're trying to accomplish something generous and uncynical- boiling modern pop down to some pure universal utilitarian essence that's accessible to all. I always feel like the group is to pop music, roughly, what a Fisher-Price figurine is to a real human being, or a bathroom-door pictogram is to the men and women inside: Everything's reduced to blank, rudimentary outlines, almost a placeholder for the original item. It's way too easy to take cheap shots at the Black Eyed Peas, so let me put this in a neutral way.
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