You may remember Anjulie from her exotic, sexy "Boom," the lead single off her self-titled debut album that topped the US Dance Club Play chart and was featured on a number of television shows (see my review from early 2010). "Brand New Bitch" is a departure from the exotic, Bond Girl-esque style of "Boom," centering on the solid four-to-the-floor beat that's very Dance 2011, but the new single stands out from the pack for a few reasons. First there's Anjulie's distinctive voice, an odd combination of powerful and nasal that is simply a pleasant one to hear, even though it would be hard to explain or understand exactly why. On "Brand New Bitch" the singer gets to show off the power more than in her earlier tracks, especially on the pounding, joyous chorus, but there's also a lot of benign sass and personality to her delivery. I was honestly surprised to see the artist release a single with an expletive in its title, "Boom" and its contemporaries having been rather chaste, and I worried about this being a failed attempt at a good-girl-gone-bad makeover I didn't think Anjulie could pull off, and frankly wouldn't have liked it much if she had. But one listen to the celebratory tune, from the same topical school as "Since U Been Gone" and "Stronger" but with more attitude, and it's clear Anjulie has found a way of pulling off calling herself a "Brand New Bitch" without compromising the likeability that makes her so charming.
The song structure is fundamentally simple but with a few tweaks that add the delicious moments that help make "Brand New Bitch" an indelible dance-pop treat. The lyrics stretch across the measures in such a way that emphasizes some syllables that would normally not be so in regular speech, and vice versa - a trick Alanis Morissette used to use to fit her tormented poetry into conventional song structures regardless of meter. This draws attention toward the words being sung, or in this case simply to the singer herself, which in a genre that de-emphasizes the central importance of the vocal that exists in most others is a noble design on Anjulie's part: she is not merely providing a producer with one of many elements of a piece of his design, this is her song, and she's the star.Anjulie has control of the song from the very beginning, her stinging "Don't need your sad face/Sorry baby/But I've made up my mind" striking before the end of the second bar rather than waiting the usual four to eight or more that make up a typical intro. She is even more biting in the second half of each verse, where instead of defensively lashing out at an erstwhile lover's sexual inabilities she acknowledges the steamy past, but only as she pointedly takes credit for teaching him how to do it in the first place. Anjulie talks about sex frankly without being a turnoff, and throughout the song she maintains control and confidence that never waivers or admits residual guilt or uncertainty the way women tend to do in this type of song; the closest she comes is her admission that "Ooh, I was so fucking blind."
Predictably, the single is also available in a clean edit (with the title...you guessed it: "Brand New Chick." So what if it actually better suits the rhyme? Ugh.), but if you ask me, this is the kind of empowerment anthem I can stand behind. Unlike feel-good, low-rent songs about being a firework or getting sloshed because you're just born that way baby, "Brand New Bitch" faces the inevitability that even being who U R isn't going to keep various assholes from fucking you over every so often. When that happens you have a choice: you can mope around until Katy Perry's boobs ignite and make it all better, or you can "get your red lipstick'" and do like Anjulie. In her welcome return, as she sums up on the single cover art with her "face to the sky/ Sunglasses on/ Turning up the beat so sick," Anjulie's a brand new bitch indeed. It's good to have her back.
"Brand New Bitch"
Anjulie
Universal, 2011
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