'Domino' feels like a lazy and cynical record; thrown onto the deluxe 'platinum edition' of Who You Are as a bonus track, and released as Jessie J's second single in the US (a follow-up to 'Price Tag'), everything about it smacks of trend-chasing. Of course, a pop song can be lazy and cynical and still fantastic, but 'Domino' falls desperately flat for me. It doesn't help that it sounds an awful lot like a Katy Perry song (which, given the involvement of Teenage Dream mainstays Max Martin and Dr Luke, is unsurprising). As with Perry's recent party-pop songs of abandon - 'California Gurls', 'Teenage Dream', 'Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)' - there's something oddly joyless and unconvincing about 'Domino'.
Apparently 'Domino' was partly inspired by Whitney Houston's immortal 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'. That's a song that I absolutely adore, and there's something oddly depressing about hearing a professional songwriter like Jessie J describe it as "a happy song", as being "something uptempo [and] fun [that] everyone can sing along to", and claiming something like 'Domino' as being in the same spirit. It's not that 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' isn't happy, uptempo and fun. But there's a lot more to the song than that.
After the ecstatic release of the introduction, 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' is pared down to a soft, melancholy twinkle. "Clock strikes upon the hour, and the sun begins to fade" - a lyric which could indicate anticipation and excitement is instead an indication of encroaching depression. At the outset of the song, Houston is trying to "figure out how to chase my blues away". "I've done all right up to now, it's the light of the day that shows me how," she explains, "but when the night falls... my loneliness calls." Obviously, she's going out. But the solution to her unhappiness isn't just partying, dancing and hedonism, it's real love - "a love that burns hot enough to last". And that pay-off at the end of the chorus - she wants to dance with somebody, but not just anybody: "with somebody who loves me" - is as beautiful and perfect a pop moment as any I have ever heard. (How many contemporary songs about dancing in clubs dare to admit, as starkly as Houston does in her second verse, "I've been in love and lost my senses spinning through the town/sooner or later the feeling ends, and I wind up feeling down"?)
On paper, then, 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' is certainly not about feeling happy, or not in any direct way. At no point in the lyric does Houston say that she is feeling anything positive; she gives us no reason to think that she is dancing with somebody who loves her. Is it a sad song, then? Certainly. But that doesn't mean that it isn't also a happy song, because it absolutely is. Carving "sad" and "happy" songs apart into two mutually exclusive categories is a total misunderstanding of how pop music works. (And it's exactly the sort of misunderstanding that might lead to someone thinking that a song like 'Domino' could possibly be as powerful or meaningful as 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'.) The production - twinkly and wistful on those verses, giving way to joyous explosions of synths on the chorus - makes the song about release, while Houston's assured and disinhibited vocal performance sounds irrepressibly hopeful; she sounds like she still believes in love, like the deliverance and happiness she seeks really are out there to be found. The song is, or can be, just about having fun, being happy, and dancing. But it positions that fun explicitly as an escape from darkness and misery; it draws attention, therefore, to the fragility and perhaps fleeting nature of that deliverance; and it yearns, hopes, and pleads that those moments of escape and joy be turned into something solid and lasting.
As for 'Domino': musically, it evolves from a guitar-led plod on the verses into a racing synth-rush-by-numbers on the chorus, before falling away again and repeating. While Houston's emotional language involved "the blues", "feeling down" and her "lonely heart", Jessie J opens proceedings here by declaring "I'm feelin' sexy and free/like glitter's raining on me", the lyric feeling as lazy as the performance and music are lifeless. "You spin me out of control," she sings, sounding utterly in control. "Dirty dancin' in the moonlight" is Toploader filtered through Kesha; there's an embarrassing couple of lyrics that sound a bit too much like songwriters glancing around at the objects around them in the studio for inspiration - "boomin' like a bass drum" is passable, but what on earth does "you strum me like a guitar" mean? And, of course, there's that title image, "take me down like I'm a domino", which is just an appalling simile on so many levels.
The lesson to learn from 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' might just be that the most convincingly happy songs are the ones which let sadness in as well. The biggest problem with 'Domino', really, is that it doesn't do this; the happiness in this song doesn't feel like it has been hard-won, or like it is to be contrasted with anything else, any unhappiness that is being blocked out, or left behind. As such, it feels less like euphoria, and more like unreflective cheeriness. That's all well and good, but it's not emotionally compelling or interesting in the slightest; it's a happiness that doesn't mean anything. And I could forgive all the clunky similes and lazily formulaic music in the world if this song connected emotionally, if it made me feel anything, if it made me care. But it doesn't.
