The History Of Jop Part 25 aka Don't want to be your Daddy just want you in my Caddy

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

After an enforced absence, the History of Jop polls enter their final lap, reaching 2003. IT'LL ALL BE OVER BY CHRISTMAS! to coin a phrase. You get THIRTEEN ticks across thirty-nine singles: the Rapture were on last poll as well, the greedy beasts, so we leave them off this.


[Poll #888665]


Joptimists Go 2002

1. Work It (46 votes)
2. Can't Get You Out Of My Head (41)
3. Hot In Herre (38)
4. Fell In Love With An Girl (30)
5=. Like I Love You (29)
5=. Lose Yourself (29)
7. A Stroke Of Genie-Us (28)
8=. Oops Oh My (27)
8=. Hella Good (27)
10. Without Me (26)

Also be sure to go and nominate for the Poptimists end-of-year poll. Poll poll poll poll poll.

Comments

[cis.livejournal.com]

Was there a year in music more beautiful, more heart-fillingly wonderful, than 2003? In my preliminary ticky-box-fest there were only about five songs I didn't tick, and most of those I just hadn't heard. And there's all that young peoples' dancing music that J&P didn't cover!

Confession

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

In 2003 I started writing short reviews of every Radiohead song ever.

Look, I was on the dole, okay....

Re: Confession

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

BLOG IT

Re: Confession

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Alas it is lost forever on my dead hard drive. I didn't get that far - about halfway through The Bends, I think. Bizarrely at the same time I was listening to more pop music than I had since 1994.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

is funny because Ronan thinks 2003 was such an awful year for dance music in terms of big important 'anthems'...and bizarrely he is sort of correct altho there was so much great dance/pop this year plus numerous 02 hangover stuff.

[cis.livejournal.com]

It was the year I actually got into, well, Kompakt and Perlon, so I think of it as quite dancey, but I remember from ILM at the time that it was considered a falling-off year for alla that.

I imaging the good music quota for the year was filled up by R&B!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

you are entirely correct!

TRULY AMAZING STUFF FROM ALL DIRECTIONS!

[dansette.livejournal.com]

Yes I can't believe those were all the same year! 2003 RULED!

Poor old Grime

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Nobody yet saying Dizzee was most important :(

Good year this. I got married, started Popular (with the vague idea it might be finished by now - urk), my white heat of pop love not quite as intense as 02 but certainly not disillusioned as yet.

Stacy's Bum More Like

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Why did people voters like this so much?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

+ Coldplay's actually good song!

Re: Poor old Grime

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It is disillusioned now?! :(

You could make the Important case for a really large proportion of this list. 'Get Low' - harbinger of crunk. 'In Da Club' - harbinger of that really generic-Eastern ultra-polished Scott Storch strain of hip-pop'n'b which is probably the most ingrained, it's always around in a low-key kidz-on-bus way regardless of what Timbaland fannies around with. 'Crazy In Love' - harbinger of RETRO R'N'B, Rich Harrison and all that jazz (and conversely the chronic illness if not death of hyper-modern futuristic r&b). 'Beautiful' - reinvented Xtina as iconic popstar as opposed to trashy joke.

Is this the point at which the pop kids split from the r&b/hip-hop kids?

Re: Stacy's Bum More Like

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The video is actually DISGUSTING. And not funny. The song is worse. It's Passantino music basically.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

c0cks more like <<<<<< c0cks more like as sampled by Brandy and Timbaland

Re: Stacy's Bum More Like

[cis.livejournal.com]

cos it's really great! In any other year I probably would have ticked it, and one of the amazing things about it is how it really could have been released in any other year - in fact I thought it came out a good two or three years earlier. It's very much the definition of a certain type of college-indie-rock (that for me starts with weezer's 'buddy holly'): aggressively tuneful, punk-pop without the punk- part, masculine-immature... good stuff.

Re: Poor old Grime

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No, it's reillusioned now!

I think if such a split exists, probably crunk sparked it.

Re: Stacy's Bum More Like

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Because I am shallow so liked the video, and a sucker for an obvious tune. Actually this is the only year in my life when I have watched a lot of music TV (i.e. The Hits) and so some of my choices are heavily influenced by the videos (e.g. Junior Senior, which would just have annoyed me without the visuals!).

Re: Poor old Grime

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

But Dizzee turned out to be totally unimportant, didn't he?

My Pazz and Jop Ballot, 2003

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

1 Beyonce featuring Jay-Z Crazy in Love Columbia
2 T.A.T.U. Not Gonna Get Us Interscope
3 Girls Aloud No Good Advice Polydor import
4 Sean Paul Like Glue VP/Atlantic
5 Darkness I Believe in a Thing Called Love Atlantic
6 Vybz Kartel Sweet to the Belly Greensleeves
7 R. Kelly Ignition (Remix) Jive
8 Kardinal Offishal Belly Dancer MCA
9 Lene Nystrom It's Your Duty
10 Dr. Ring Ding Bombs Over Baghdad Seeed

Still like all of these, though some more than others. The ballot (Lene aside) doesn't take into account a huge load of great Europop I got into right at the end of the year, around the time I want on honeymoon to Poland. So bump Dr Ring Ding and Lene for "The Magic Key" by One-T ft Cool-T and "Libertine" by Kate Ryan if you like.

Re: Stacy's Bum More Like

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think this particular 'strain' of pop is one of the few sub-genres I really can't find anything to enjoy in. But maybe if I tried harder...

Re: Poor old Grime

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Fix Up Look Sharp is way better than I Luv U (which is still v good). I still heart Dizzee.

Re: Poor old Grime

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

surely its a 'we'll see', he only 'broke' three years ago didn't he?

Re: My Pazz and Jop Ballot, 2003

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My TATU vote, incidentally, was actually a vote for A Side and B Side, the fantastic studio version of their Eurovision flop "Ne Ver Ne Bojsia".

Reverb and starkness of line

[koganbot]

My Pazz & Jop singles ballot for 2003 (w/ an excerpt from my comments). In April or so Xgau had said that we were in the midst of hip-hop's worst commercial moment, a statement I found inexplicable. I think he was deeply offended by "Get Low," ended up voting for one of the other remixes of it (other than the one I voted for) because it had fewer of the original lyrics. If my memory's right, he mentioned that it was his daughter who had to convince of the song's greatness.

I'm not sure I would now call this my best list ever (and how come I didn't put "Baby Boy" on it?), but "Beware Of The Boys," "Get Low," and "In Da Club" could well end up being my top three songs of the decade. Amazing.

FYI, Beat-In-Azz - real name Michael Crooms - had previously been calling himself DJ Smurf, and is now calling himself Mr. Collipark. Recent productions include Young Jeezy's great "Trapstar."

1. Panjabi MC f. Jay-Z - "Beware of the Boys/Mundian To Bach Ke" (Sequence)
2. Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz f. Ying Yang Twins - "Get Low" (TVT)
3. Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz f. Ying Yang Twins and Pitbull - "Get Low (Merengue Mix)" (TVT)
4. 50 Cent - "In Da Club" (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope)
5. Justin Timberlake - "Cry Me a River" (Jive)
6. Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz f. Mystikal and Krayzie Bone - "I Don't Give a F" (TVT)
7. Black-Eyed Snakes - "Rise Up!" (Chairkickers' Music)
8. Electric Six - "Gay Bar" (XL)
9. David Banner - "Cadillac on 22's" (SRC/Universal)
10. Celine Dion - "Drove All Night" (Epic)

This is the best singles list I've sent since 1999, maybe the best ever - which, given the unfathomable amount of music and my feeling of always playing catchup, may not be a particularly significant statement. But 2003 wasn't my worst commercial hip-hop moment in years, in fact was among my best.

One quick example: Beat-In-Azz, producer on most Ying Yang tracks, has found a way to use LARGE sounds while still including lots of elements within the music. This is not easy, as big sounds usually drive everything else out. He's capable of running spooky whoo-whoos, Ennio Morricone whistles and horn blasts (which are spooky themselves), and Euro-operatic synth-orchestra accompaniments all at once, and this along with whatever the rhythms and rappers are doing. I'd have thought that the Morricone sounds, especially, would have demanded open space to be effective - room needed for reverb and starkness of line. Somehow, in this guy's music, these are not lost. (Best Beat-In-Azz I've heard so far: "Sound Off" on the Ying Yangs' Alley.) All this on records that don't aspire to do more than throw a good party, apparently.

And when I throw my mind into hip-hop, I am finding some lyrics to move my heart and engage my mind (see review of Me and My Brother) but I do think I'm having to meet the genre more than halfway in this regard, and I long for a Shady or Spoonie, someone who will make the move towards me as well. Maybe it's here where I understand your disappointment.

Re: Stacy's Bum More Like

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's the puerile nature of it which I can't stand, I guess it depends on how funny you find 10-year-old rough-and-tumble boy humour. I hated it when I was 10 and I hate it now and I comfort myself with the fact that practitioners of it surely never get laid.