“Timber”

Album Review

If you’re looking for a short review of Pitbull’s team-up with Ke$sha, here it is: get down, get drunk, get sex.

Need a bit more than that six-word slam?

Okay. Let’s start with Ke$sha’s contribution in the chorus, which also launches the song (with a catchy, oddly countrified harmonica melody accompanying her). “I’m going down,” she admits. “I’m yelling timber/You better move, you better dance.” Next up: a pair of lines that hint both at drinking and what likely comes after it: “Let’s make a night you won’t remember/I’ll be the one you won’t forget.”

If Ke$ha’s playing carnally coy here, Pitbull clears up what little mystery’s left by spelling out exactly what such a night of debauchery might look like. “I have ’em like Miley Cyrus,” he raps in the first verse, “Clothes off/Twerking in their bras and thongs/Timber.” And for the fortunate few left on Planet Earth who haven’t witnessed Miss Cyrus’ twerking routine, he then vividly detail exactly what’s going on: “Face down, booty up/Timber/That’s the way we like to, what?/Timber.” Pitbull then tips his hat to Robin Thicke’s sexually sleazy ” Blurred Lines,” adding, “I’m slicker than an oil spill/She say she won’t, but I bet she will/Timber.”

Allow me to break that down into everyday language: “Timber” is about a man meeting a woman at a club, plying her with alcohol and his admittedly oily charm in the hopes that she’ll sleep with him—even if her first answer is no. You see, he’s apparently had enough experience getting his way that he thinks no is a response he can just blithely ignore. Oh well, Ke$ha figures, both participants will likely be so inebriated they’ll have no memory of their booze-infused, flesh-filled soiree when they wake up with each other the next day anyway.

The song’s pre-chorus fills in some of the drinking-dancing details: “Swing your partner round and round/End of the night, it’s going down/One more shot, another round/End of the night it’s going down.” And then the second verse finds Pitbull comparing his vodka-swilling, predatory lifestyle to that of a superhero. “Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane/Nah, it’s just me, ain’t a d‑‑n thing changed.” For him, life is a nonstop luxury party that he divides between private planes, swank hotels and the dance clubs where there are never any shortage of willing women, one presumes, to whom he might yell, “Timber!” “Live in motels, swing on planes,” Pitbull brags, “Blessed to say, money ain’t a thing/Club jumping like LeBron now, Voli/Order me another round, homie/We about to clown/Why? ‘Cause it’s about to go down.”

The accompanying video mostly focuses on the dancing part of the song’s subject matter—though that, not surprisingly, is drenched in sensuality. Ke$ha writhes and contorts in bizarre, barely there outfits. Meanwhile, a retinue of dancing waitresses at a Hooters/Coyote Ugly kind of bar sashay about in unbuttoned short shorts and midriff-baring tank tops. They deliver drink after drink to the establishment’s mostly male patronage (who are in full leer mode). Pitbull himself ends up on his own private island with his own private hottie who undulates for his own private viewing pleasure. And the camera’s, of course.