Review: Paris Hilton’s single ‘Good Time’ is grim

“Are you having a good time? / ‘Cause I’m having a good time,” Paris Hilton declares in her new single, and it’s important that she says so, since Good Time otherwise feels about as joyless as you could imagine.

A rave-by-numbers EDM track produced by Afrojack (who’s capable of far more), Good Time finds the hotel heiress telling listeners that she “came here just to party.”

Yet with its succession of sonic and lyrical cliches – “haters,” “sexy girls,” laser-light synth squiggles – the song never summons anything approaching a recreational vibe; it’s purely an exercise in brand maintenance, a working holiday that even Lil Wayne can’t lighten with an amazingly perfunctory guest verse in which he admits, “I can’t tell you what’s what.”

According to a rather optimistic press release, the song also “whets Hilton’s fans’ appetite by giving them a glimpse of what’s to come on her new electronic dance album,” which is due out next year and is to contain collaborations with Snoop Dogg and Flo Rida, among others.

That record – set for release on Lil Wayne’s label, Cash Money – won’t serve as Hilton’s full-length debut as a recording artist, of course.

Pop fans with long memories will remember Paris from 2006, on which Hilton sang (sort of well!) about the celebrity experience over glossy robo-disco grooves produced by folks who went on to make smash hits with Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.

But the upcoming disc is her first since becoming, as the statement puts it, “a key player in electronic dance music.”