Brandon's Buzz

We close out May with only a handful of major releases, but don’t be fooled by quantity this week: they’re diamonds, all.

Island Def Jam teams up with those mad geniuses over at Ultra Records this week for the sterling new compilation Just Dance, and the star power contained herein is mighty impressive: remixes from The Killers (with Armin Van Buuren’s strong reworking of their trippy gem “Human”), Lionel Richie (with his terrific new single “Just Go”), Rihanna (the painfully catchy “Disturbia”), and Duffy (the instant classic “Mercy”) pop up alongside the likes of Pitbull (who offers up his irresistibly stupid new smash “I Know You Want Me”) and my old fave Anastacia (back, thankfully, with a brilliant new single, “Absolutely Positively”), and while, sadly (and a bit misleadingly, given the album’s title), my new fave Lady GaGa is nowhere to be found on this disc, the intoxicating spirit and sense of fun that she has brought roaring back to the radio is alive and well all over it.

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Forgive me for a transitory shift toward the somber, but amid all the fun and frolic of this warm May day, I hope you’ll take a moment to remember not only the friends, the family, the loved, who have passed on from this plane, but also those brave warrior ones who lost their lives protecting your right to spend this Monday however you choose, whether you’re boating and boozing with the boys, tangled in the sheets with your lover, or simply trying to compose a short, serious blog post that is devoid of banal sap. (It’s harder than it sounds, believe me.)