poptimists | The History Of Jop Part 26 aka You leave me broken shattered I lie

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freakytigger.livejournal.com posting in

2004 is now THREE YEARS AGO (sort of) - our possibly penultimate pazz and jop ponderations will let you relive that golden or otherwise era. You get THIRTEEN from thirty-eight picks: Alicia Keys "You Don't Know My Name" and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Maps" turned up last time so are omitted this.

[Poll #902705]

Poptimism Of Times Past - 2003 Edition

1. Crazy In Love (43 votes)
2. Milkshake (37)
3. Cry Me A River (35)
4=. Ignition (Remix) (31)
4=. Hey Ya! (31)
6. Move Your Feet (30)
7=. Hurt (27)
7=. I Luv U (27)
9=. In Da Club (24)
9=. Danger High Voltage (24)
9=. Rock Your Body (24)
9=. Pass That Dutch (24)

This scientifically confirms my empirical findings at the work Xmas party viz that "Crazy In Love" is much loved again but that people are bored of "Hey Ya". This one will run and run.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

This is all v interesting, thanks - I guess the only way the UK pop acts could ever hit in America is if there was a pre-existing reason for America to care about them as pop stars (eg Disney movie). Which there isn't; they are not Posh Spice, but Posh Spice is not them.

(How did Kylie's 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' become the hit it did? I gather it was a pretty big hit, from someone with no prior track record in the US at all - how did it do it? Because both soundwise and profilewise that's the territory we're dealing with.)

(Do you think the success of Confessions On A Dance Floor is a total one off, simply because it's Madonna, or will its sound trickle into...other pop? Although if it has with Hilary already, and failed, that probably answers that.)

From:

justfanoe.livejournal.com

Like Frank said, there's some space for this, just about 1 or 2 songs a year. The Sugababes actually saw one of their albums released in the US, and one of the tracks was a hit on the dance charts, but otherwise it made no impact. Confessions was a hit, but not a massive hit. "Hung Up" a big hit but all the other singles flopped. Why Kylie? Who knows. Why Cascada this year? Americans seem to just pick one seemingly at random and run with it. FWIW, "Locomotion" was a huge hit in America too though I doubt that had anything to do with Kylie's later success.

Speaking of Posh Spice, Spice Girls huge here of course too, though with some delay from the rest of the world.

There HAVE been some big crossovers from Britain in America lately. Notably, "You're Beatiful" hit number one and Natasha Bedingfield has had a couple of big hits, biggest being "Unwritten". Of course, these are not of the dance pop genre we have been discussing.

From:

koganbot

Madonna gets attention because she's Madonna: her first album got to number 8, every album since that wasn't a soundtrack went top 5, usually 1 or 2. But she doesn't get nearly the airplay she used to.

Kylie'd hit in the U.S. 13 years before "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" w/ "I Should Be So Lucky" and "Locomotion," but nothing in the interim. And the fact that she hasn't been able to break through with a followup may prove my point. ("Love At First Sight" did OK, other stuff does well on the club and dance airplay charts, which as I said barely register nationally.)

I wouldn't say that Girls Aloud have absolutely no chance, but their sound isn't getting played on hip-hop/r&b stations (six years ago those stations were a bit more open; Bloodhound Gang and "Blue Da Bee" got r&b play as novelties, for what that's worth), and it's hard for a dance act to cross Top 40 without any particular constituency. Shakira can do it because she owns the Latin charts and gets automatic play on the video stations.