A Year In Pop: 5

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

First of two polls today (the second being a January round-up). The more familiar pop names are starting to wake from their start-of-year slumbers, albeit nearly all with later singles from recent albums. Have a sift through this lot!

[Poll #922486]

Comments

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

"Say It Right" is my favorite song on the new Nelly Furtado album, and by a pretty fair amount (though I like the album). Two of my nonticks (Kasabian and Nas) were because I don't know the song, the other two "Listen" and Take That I genuinely dislike.

[koganbot]

The Nas track samples "In A Gadda Davida" (so it samples Iron Butterfly copying Cream), which is the second time in three years Nas has done this! The Kasabian is catchy poppy neo-garage rockish, not extraordinary but worth a tick. I can't figure out why Poptimists hate Kasabian. Is there something in their image and public presence that make them something Poptimists want to dislike? The Take That does what I was complaining about in my P&J comments about Daniel Powter's "Bad Day": It's dull and aggressively normal, and sung much more clumsily than "Bad Day." I have nothing in principle against clumsiness, but here it's just another way of embracing tedium and stodginess.

I've not heard the full Furtado alb, but I do like "Say It Right" more than the other three singles. My favorite Nelly F. from last year, however, may be her version of "Crazy"; fewer pained hesitations than on the Gnarls, which makes Nelly's less crazy-sounding, but better.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Say It Right gets a reluctant tick from me. I can see it getting really annoying if I heard it too often.