A Year In Pop: 47

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well, that was easy - only four new entries, unless I've read the BBC charts wrong. I'm also guessing that this might be the last week in which our overall winners might be troubled, but let's see.

[Poll #1095062]

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Shd point out that the Gallows track features Lethal Bizzle, though it isn't credited as such on the Radio 1 site.

Anyway, four tracks, four ticks - with a certain amount of generosity towards Gallows I admit. If anyone could present a good argument for "Staring At The Rude Bois" NOT just being a punk rock equivalent of "The Tide Is High (Got The Feeling)" then I'd like to hear it - but I'd have ticked that too.

Soulja Boy's track is brilliant.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware that The Tide Is High (the Blondie one) was a cover! The wikipedia entry does contain the line "In 1985, parts of this song was taken and used as a sample for Bryan Adams', Reggae Christmas." Which I previously did not know!

[koganbot]

Well, "The Tide Is High" is probably my least favorite Blondie single, whereas "Staring at the Rude Bois" is the only Gallows I've heard, but actually I like it, by-the-numbers punkish-ska gangshouts which of course makes this the opposite of my own concept of "punk" which isn't a sing-along but a melee, but that doesn't make this bad; the singer's not transcendent and there's not the sense of rising up through the sewers and snakes that you get in classic gangshouts like Black Flag's "Rise Above," but this does create an energy rush just like the formula says it should. No problem ticking it, even though I suppose what I just said fails as a good argument for whatever it was you wanted me to argue for. Lethal Bizzle is the most rote an uninspired part of this, surprisingly.

I wanted more from the Dizzee track, by the way; nice bubbles, both vocally and in the background, and his voice has got flow or bounce or kerboing or whatever you want to call it, but there's a sameness all the same. Sure tick, though (as were Girls Aloud and Soulja).