I’m not sure if “Downtown” is actually a good song. It’s wildly inconsistent. The be completely honest I think the only bits I really want are the Eric Nally parts. The Macklemore parts just aren’t for me. How much of a song do you have to like to like a song?

Dealing with negatives, there are two, maybe three. Number one: as mentioned above, I just don’t really get Macklemore. Number two: the video has too many vests. The third negative is a bit of a combination of the first two. Macklemore really tried to make the thrift store thing his thing and just milked it to death.

I think the positives out weigh the negatives. Eric Nally has a great voice and it is a top notch feature from him. He really steals the show. He has one of those big voices like Freddie Mercury or Justin Hawkins. The song got some hate on blogs for ripping off “Uptown Funk” but that ripped off so many songs in the first place that that becomes redundant. I think the reason I like it so much is that one of my favourite things to do when a song gets stuck in my head is to mix and match the lyrics and vocal melody. It’s a standard enough meme idea that was particularly big around the time when “Allstar” by Smashmouth was getting the serious meme treatment online. So we eventually arrive at all the lyrics of “Downtown” becoming “Beef boy”. It was a running joke last summer when we played a lot of Warzone online so I’ll always have very fond memories of the song. And that’s enough for me to actually like it.

You can listen to “Downtown” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis here.