No Hurries

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More About

• Nickelback
• Fergie (Singer)
• Omarion (Singer)
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Dirty South

Ice Box
All the better for its literalness. The scenario: Dude can't be good to his current flame because he's wrecked over the last one, and now he's so cold, so cold. Timbaland (him again) dutifully dials up every chilly sound he can: plinky icicle pianos, arctic trancey synths, and his own flanged-out backing vocals. This snowstorm rides on his fussy, chest-level thumps, punctuated here and there by whispered exhalations you can almost see hanging in the air. Omarion's inner conflict might be convincing on the surface, but isn't it a bit disingenuous to luxuriate in frigid torment when the girl's heart is on the line too?

Nickelback

If Everyone Cared
Oh, Nickelback. So big, so hated. With good reason—they're no good. Comparing the number of scathing reviews they've received with their monolithic sales has become its own meta-story on the impotence of the music press (sniff). Here, Chad Kroeger and Co. imagine a do-gooder liberalism both blindly apolitical and naively insistent on total change: "If everyone shared/And swallowed their pride/Would we see the day/When nobody died?" No, we wouldn't. Beware emotionalist non-politics that take aim at human nature: That way lies the killing fields. Their donation of 100 percent of this single's digital proceeds to Amnesty International and a Canadian children's charity is impossible to hate. The song is not.