A kung fu fighter in a disco

I'm sure there will be much discussion of Avril - I will let someone else start it! Tick, though.

Hilary Duff - had no idea Hilary was doing electropop - not especially good electropop at that, this is a marginal tick really.

Ciara - the Lex's incessant enthusiasm spoilered this one a little, it's good, slick R&B which anybody who has ever enjoyed R&B should probably be ticking, but it's not especially memorable - maybe with more plays...

Tiny Dancers - very ill-advised and clodhopping ska tint to this. No tick.

Seamus Haji - another marginal tick: not even in the same galaxy of good as the original but I liked the brazen-ness of the video: "Old School" (frightful ugly sister style disco queens) vs "New School" (kewl ravers). The lack of reverence appeals even if I don't agree.

Pink - kind of a Go-Go's-y punky girlpop number, quite hooky but like Ciara not immediately memorable. Tick, though.

From:

Hurrah. Strong week. I've ticked all the ones I've heard. Will try and listen to Tiny Dancers and Seamus tonight.

Agree with Tom about Ciara, though - reluctant tick. That said, it took me a good while to warm to Cassie, so maybe this will grow on after ~~Lex sends me a copy of~~ I finally get to hear the album.

The P!nk=punk grew on me loads after repeat plays of the album.

From:

OK, after having heard the two I didn't previously know, maximum tickage this week. Fantastic!

Tom, you're a bit off beam re Tiny Dancers - it's European OOMPAH POP not ska that this is channelling. Which OK is still clod hopping, but that is its nature of oompah innit. Actually, the band's sound reminds me of 70s glam-pop a bit (not T.Rex et al, which = glam rock or glitter) but stuff like this (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/glamrockbear/page9.html). Add in all the tempo changes and their song fully deserves "any good at all" status. Don't much care for their look, though - the video brought to mind raggle taggle bands like The Levellers eek!

From:

Ciara might well be a grower because its impact for me is 80% in the narrative rather than the sound (though obviously I love that too! classical strings meet slabs of crunk bass meet screeeeewed and choooopped backing vox - a real cauldron of melodrama).

Surprised you don't like Hilarity more :( Her whole album is like this - I'm not sure she quite beats 'Come Clean' or 'Beat Of My Heart' but that's a ridiculous ask anyway - it's a very very good album.

From:

It reminded me a bit of the Ellis-Bextor from a few weeks back - second division electro, just not sparking for me.

From:

'With Love' is more dynamic and sharp than 'Catch You' though - it's jerkier, and Duff sells it in a way that SEB didn't, oddly by dint of sounding deliberately blanker where SEB was too much...herself.

I didn't think 'With Love' was one of the stronger singles on the album on the first run-through but I'm kind of obsessed with it at the moment.

From:

koganbot

Any thoughts about Good Charlotte? Two of them (Joel Madden and Benji Madden) helped write and produce "Beat Of My Heart." I doubt that "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl" would be your thing at all, but it's got a grinding, scraping, gargling sound all its own that's very powerful.

From:

REALLY? Oh no, oh no, oh no, this is even worse than finding out the Keane dumpling wrote my favourite new Stefani track. I hate Good Charlotte!

From:

lockedintheatti.livejournal.com

Oh I completely disagree about the Ciara one - finally after Lex raving about every Ciara single and me not feeling the love, comes this one which I adore, and I feel like it really does stand out from a lot of R&B at the moment. I think it's the classical strings featuring so prominently. It's completely gorgeous and I love it.

From:

WOOOO!!!! It feels like the year has finally kicked off, we've had stellar singles which were the third releases from the album &c but following last week's debacle it's so good to have not one, not two, but THREE completely amazing in every way lead singles hoving into view.

"Keep a straight face when you tell a lie, always keep an airtight alibi" vs "And yeah I think you know I'm damn precious; and hell yeah, I'm the motherfucking princess" vs "You can even give blood, just do it with love".

AMAZING.

Also - the raps Avril and Ciara break into right at the end of their songs are awesome, Avril seals her deal with a bratty up middle finger while Ciara finally seizes the upper hand.

I love the moment in the second verse of 'Girlfriend' when the gorgeous backing vocals come in, disguised by Avril's brattiness.

All three videos are ace too!

From:

koganbot

Was going to challenge this "lead singles" claim, since the Ciara album is on its third single and the Hilary and Avril albums are each on their second, but then I checked Wiki and discovered that "Get Up" and "Promise" and "Play With Fire" weren't singles in Britain. WHY WEREN'T THEY? Nor was "Keep Holding On," but I'm less aghast at its not crossing the Atlantic. Does seem to me that "Play With Fire," which went nowhere here, would have had more of a chance in Britain, with its Kylie sound.

From:

Hilarity, like Ashlee and Lindsay, never been marketed particularly heavily or even with any degree of commitment in the UK. A UK-friendly sound has only barely changed this (she came over and did a live PA at G-A-Y and I think maybe a TV show).

For whatever reason Sony really held back with the Ciara push here - the UK Sony rep didn't really seem to know why. The logic may have gone: ignore 'Get Up' as it's not really the Big Lead Single; Ciara's profile isn't high enough to launch her in December here, and in any case 'Promise' not a particularly UK-friendly single compared to 'Like A Boy'; January would have been logical but I understand that's when she was filming the 'Like A Boy' video.

I'd completely forgotten about 'Keep Holding On'. It was so bad!

From:

koganbot

"Like A Boy" seems to be sputtering in the U.S.: doing OK on Urban and Rhythmic stations, barely getting anywhere on Top 40, only up to 44 so far on the Hot 100. Don't know if it's available for download yet; if not, that could be holding it back a bit. "With Love" is actually higher on the Top 40 stations, though it's not tearing 'em up. "Girlfriend" is finally jumping in airplay - 1,000 more spins this week than last on Top 40. Still not sure how high it'll go on the radio; it got huge downloads right off the bat. Oh, and "U + Ur Hand" is in the top ten in Top 40 airplay, a fact I find real interesting.

From:

I swear I heard Gambaccini on BBC Radio 2* say a couple of days ago that "Girlfriend" was #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and #1 in Canada).

Both Duff and Lavigne were on Charlotte Church's chatshow recently. I didn't watch. But no doubt clips are on YouTube by now.

(*he does a US charts show every Saturday evening. Have now heard Carrie Underwood and the Dixie Chicks for the first time ever!)

From:

koganbot

Which Underwood? "Before He Cheats" is the one to listen for, though its chart run may be over (giving way to "Wasted"). "Girlfriend" leapt into the Hot 100 at #5 almost entirely on the basis of downloads, then fell to 9 in the second week as downloads dropped off from the initial rush but airplay picked up, is now climbing again - up to 8 with a bullet, so could be hanging around for a long time. The thing is, it doesn't really match anything else on the radio right now and the adult contemporary stations will probably stick with "Keep Holding On" and Disney won't touch it (they could easily take out the "motherfuckin' princess" but they'd still have to deal with playing a song that tots would then go and buy with "motherfuckin princess" intact). So airplay is unpredictable. Daughtry, Nelly F., Gwen, and Justin are dominating top 40 airplay at the moment. Fergie, strangely, isn't as high; I think downloads are what are keeping "Glamorous" atop the Hot 100.

From:

Can't remember which Carrie U. I've heard Gambo play two songs from the album actually - one I liked, one I didn't care for at all. That's really helpful, huh? Sorry. (Actually, the one I liked might have been "Before He Cheats")

When Gambo played "Girlfriend", he described it as the 'Clean version' and it went "I'm the mother[silence] princess" BUT the version Radio 1 are playing is a specially re-recorded radio version that substitues "I'm the one and only princess". Add in these 7 versions (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2007/03/09/lavigne-girlfriend-languages.html?ref=rss) and I make that 10 different "Girlfriend"s doing the rounds. ;-)

From:

koganbot

Quite promiscuous.

From:

V quickly:

Only heard Avril, and it is ACE.

From:

byebyepride.livejournal.com

I ticked Tiny Dancers because after forty seconds of the video on youtube it reminded me a little of Tom Petty.

From:

btw Tom you forgot the new entry by some people called Ghosts. Which I doubt is any good at all but still.

From:

WHAT?? I was SURE we'd had Ghosts before.

From:

We may well have done! The chart on Yahoo says it's rising from 59 this week though. Maybe it went in earlier, dropped, and came back? God the charts are complicated now.

From:

Yes, it was included in this poll (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/323623.html) (this is why tagging these polls is so essential!)

Said poll is not yet closed AFAIK so do go back and tick the song if it warrants a tick (I did this morning, and also the Alex Gaudino track from the other week).

Death to NOT HEARD ANY OF THEM

From:

Yeah death to them for real! Especially as one of these songs was posted RIGHT HERE ON POPTIMISTS weeks ago and another has been being talked about EVERYWHERE for over a month now!

From:

NONE of the polls are closed until the end of WEEK 52!

That said I'm not actually going to check any of the Jan-Feb ones again until midway through the year.

From:

Hahahah I have just gone back and ticked that Puff Daddy song. The video is highly comical! I love youtube.

From:

awesomewells.livejournal.com

The Ciara record is by some distance my favourite thing to have appeared in these polls in quite some time. Avril is good. Hilarity = a bit generic and boring really, maybe I'd have been more interested two or three years ago.

From:

martinskidmore.livejournal.com

I'm with Matt here - the Ciara is one of the best singles I've heard this year. I also ticked Avril.

From:

blue-russian.livejournal.com

Why am I not feeling this at all? I liked "Goodies" much more.

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

I really don't like Avril Lavigne and one listenable song doesn't make up for years of UTTER HORROR so she gets no tick.

Hilary Duff is quite attractive and the song is quite good, so tick.

Ciara is very attractive and the song is very good, so (much firmer) tick.

Pink is one of my favourite songs on 'I'm Not Dead,' apart from the title track, so tick there, too.

Not heard Tiny Dancers, that 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life' could have been good but somehow screws it up and becomes just really annoying.

From:

1. Gossip
2. LCD Soundsystem
3= Long Blondes
3= Justin Timberlake

From:

I expect (hope) Avril and Ciara will overtake all but The Gossip within 24 hours.

From:

koganbot

Yeah, top 4 seems mediocre, though I ticked three of them (all but long bores). But, to be provocative, seems to me that Gossip, LCD, and Long Blondes are fairly clodhoppy stuff that are socially comfortable for poptimist types (whereas Tiny Dancers do clodhoppy stuff that nonpoptimists are socially comfortable with; track wasn't unlikable but fell short of tickness). I can't make sense of any of those four beating "Too Little Too Late" and "Say It Right" except that the JoJo and the Nelly, being so much more alive and competent, also accentuate what irritates people about JoJo/Nelly. I suppose The Gossip are nice and alive too, which accentuates what irritates me about Beth Ditto's grating out-of-tune blowhard vocals. (But "Standing In The Way Of Control" was a solid tick anyway, because it's a solid song, and I'm not against grating out-of-tune blowhard vocals in principle - see Janis at Monterey, 'cept if you're gonna pull it off you've got to be Janis.)

This week "DJ" was a borderline tick, all that electro chop-chop getting in the way, but the chorus managing to get over the barriers anyway. Ciara track is quite good though there's better on the alb, Avril song has way too much overkill but is good nonetheless, the Pink's a bore (interestingly, the much better "U + Ur Hand," having stalled for months and months, is now rising on the U.S. charts), Hilary a good track even if it isn't within miles of "Come Clean" and "Fly" (and Ashley Tisdale's "Be Good To Me" is a better Kara DioGuardi dance effort).

From:

Right, have youtubed all the above now:

Avril (http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI): an obviously amazing pop smack round the face, 10/10. Video: Avril kicks sh1t out of a preppy version of herself with NO SHAME, 5/5. TICK.

Seamus (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rxzo2mjQhkc): mediocre bosh upgrade that doesn't add anything musically, 4/10. Video: 4/5 as features the FITE genre betwixt drag queens, a kung fu dude and Ver Cops. TICK.

Tiny Dancers (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rxzo2mjQhkc): appealingly simple guitar jangle that is just interesting enough to edge past my rather low tolerance for indie, 5/10. Video: pleasing big-faced man plays comedy ukelele and stands in cupboard full of board games, 3/5. TICK.

Duff (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rxzo2mjQhkc): Reasonable electro effort, I've learned not to expect much from Hilary so this is alright I guess, 5/10. Video: Unmemorable running about in hotel corridors, 1/5. Marginal TICK.

Ciara (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dgb9UXM_J9I): V slick but disappointing, this one just doesn't do it for me (that Natasha one was way better!) 3/10. HOWEVER Video: 4/5, omg that girl can't half dance! I am fascinated by her, I just wish the song was better. Marginal TICK.

Pink (http://youtube.com/watch?v=E3CoSZFQMXk): Whatevs. 1/10. Video: cheap tour footage 0/5. NO TICK.

From: