Another Year In Pop: 24

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

A very static top 20 this week - although last week's highest new entrant Morrissey has totally disappeared out of the top 100 already! Mint Royale are still at number one, milking it for all it's worth.

[Poll #1205575]

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Heh I knew exactly who had voted before me.

I didn't even see No Air in the countdown, the BBC ignored it in their article and said Feeder were this weeks highest NE.

It is incredible, one of my singles of the year definitely.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Technically No Air wasn't a new entry - it was at no 78 or something which 'counts'.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Bizarrely it's not even on the R1 playlist.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hopefully some of these will be shaking up the higher end of the chart imminently!

Jordin & Chris - definitely one of the singles of the year, completely ridiculous but so extreme about it - their OTT emoting is monumental and awe-inspiring - I mean the bit at the end where they're both going "OOHHHHH! OOOOOHHHHH!" over the chorus as if trying to outdo the other's pain and suffocation! Letting yourself get caught up in all that elemental life-or-death melodrama is an awesome pop feeling. Plus not one line in this song actually makes sense.

Madge - second of the three good songs on Hard Candy. Leaving aside how grim most of the album is, 'Give It 2 Me' is still fantastic - the problem with her voice now is that it's too tough, unmalleable, didactic, but it really suits 'Give It 2 Me' b/c it's all about how all those things are the source of her strength. More than strength - she pretty much explicitly stakes her claim to immortality, and she's right. I love the snobby sneer of "those are the people that did not amount to much at all", and the way the breakdown seems to be...some sort of hyphy nod??!! GET STUPID. GET STUPID. Madge for Hyphy Hitz Vol 2 please.

Flo Rida - haha talking of Madge, this is so blatantly the track Timba cribbed for '4 Minutes'. Decent enough banger, I like the ella-ella meme being used for "ella-ella-vator".

The others are basically beneath contempt. I especially don't want to hear any song called 'Chick Lit' by We Are Scientists.

Well Done Morrissey!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

this is, of course, what All Proper Morrissey Singles have done since time immemorium, one week at number 13 then never heard from agane...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Jordin & Chris - this is much better than I remember! I haven't actually listened to it since Lex first linked to it months ago. This is the sort of thing Taio Cruz is aiming for and missing! The BUMPF BUMPF drums give it some proper oomph don't they? Blimey, by the end Jordin looks like she's about to give herself a hernia.

Feeder - I don't think Grant has brushed his hair since 1997. Video is super-tedious 'spot the bit of London'. I could write a better bassline than this in my fvcking sleep.

Madge - covered this the other day: disappointing and leaden. Take Madge's vocal off and the verse could be the incidental music from a Changing Garden Bargain Swap montage. It's nearly saved by the trance synths in the chorus but I just don't have enough patience.

Skientists - Video contains a large number of cute dogs and Dr Jack off of Lost dressed as a cowboy. Song is reasonably jaunty stadium indie with a bit of electro-wibble. It's better than Feeder and Madge, but still no tick (I'm feeling ungenerous this week).

The Music - christ, this lot still going? They still sound the same, i.e. like some sort of big beat remix gone wrong.

Flo Rida - not bad, but I prefer 4 Minutes.

Solitary tick for Jordin & Chris, then.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Also, is that Bruce Hornsby (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV4PbzCPWHY) I can hear in the opening strains of Flo Rida? Good ol' Bruce.

[koganbot]

According to Wiki:

The piano intro features a melody based on the Halloween theme by John Carpenter and the second verse imitates the chorus of will.i.am's "The Donque Song". The song features Timbaland's signature percussion and vocals, as well as former Beatclub recording artist Kiley Dean on the background vocals.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh wow I recognise Kiley there now! Excellent.

[koganbot]

Jordin Sparks f. Chris Brown "No Air": Starts relatively blank - "Tell me, how am I supposed to breathe with no air?" - then Jordin and Chris exchange compliments, the arrangement inhales and exhales, lungs fill and let go. BIG AERATED TICK.

(OK, question here - and I haven't read your comments yet - is how does "No Air" work so well? Rissi Palmer's country cover of the song is merely OK, proving that the song is pretty good but hardly sure-fire great. So what's going on in the Jordin-Chris arrangement that's so compelling? Something about the contrast between emptiness and crowding, inhaling and exhaling. (Except it's standard in pop music for verses to be spare in relation to choruses, so how especially does the alternating spareness and cluttering work in this track?)

Feeder "We Are The People": Guitars lay down a big fog of fuzz, with a melody embedded deeply within it. Then a boy in tight crotch-crushing pants sings a pretty song in a semi-emo whine. Must be hard for him to breathe. NO TICK.

Madonna "Give It 2 Me": Unpretentious little half-reggae rhythm that Pharrell jerry rigs w/ rubber bands and chewing gum. Madonna's singing is a bit snoozy, just sort of nicely there, which is fine for the song. TICK IT 2 RIDE.

We Are Scientists "Chick Lit": As a couple of different rhythms do battle, a melody flees from the beat. The sound is too disparate for me to connect to emotionally. TICK NOT.

The Music "Strength In Numbers": Basic pounding beat enlivened by violent jitters. Vocalist spits cough drops. There'd be a nice song here if the instruments weren't trying to trample our feet and dynamite the city. Not awful, but NO TICK.

Flo Rida "Elevator": Timbo's going for a dark Southern sound. Melody and sensuality fight their way up through a swamp, don't quite make it. Interesting but NOT A TICK.

I know you're only sorry you got caught

[koganbot]

Speaking of country covers of r&b, I don't think I've mentioned in poptimists the Taylor Swift version of "Take A Bow," caught here in a fan phone vid. I completely love this. Painfully out of tune in spots, but I'm feeling this version a lot more than Rihanna's. The thinness of Taylor's voice adds an extra hurt to the sarcasm and sorrow.

Hear the girls in the audience shrieking.

(Don't know what went wrong for me with the Rihanna version. It's not as if Rihanna's an inexpressive singer, but the fullness of the arrangement neutralizes her expressivity. I had to hear Taylor's version to find out what the song was about.)

Re: I know you're only sorry you got caught

[koganbot]

What I wrote about "Take A Bow" on rolling country:

What interests me about Taylor's "Take A Bow" is that I was riveted by the lyrics of a song I'd up to then totally ignored. I tend to pay only cursory attention to r&b lyrics, though Rihanna is usually an exception. (The lyrics to "Disturbia" are quite disturbia, though enjoyably rather than disturbingly so.) Anyway, in Rihanna's "Take A Bow" the whole arrangement neutralized its effect, too full or something, so the song passed me by. But with Taylor singing it, it's suddenly in the world of adolescent infidelity and sarcasm and pain. So it's "You Can't Do That" and "Should've Said No," etc. And now I may find a way to go back and appreciate the original, now that the song's got my attention.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's so much the arrangement as the vocal performances - 'No Air' is the kind of song which can only really be sung in a certain way if it's going to maximise its effect. Understatement and maturity and distance really don't work - it's too fundamentally silly for that, but Jordin and Chris's youth means they can get away with the nihilistic life-or-death melodrama, because they sing it as though it's the very first time they've actually felt these emotions.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I've not heard the Palmer version, but does it preserve the very strange rhythm in the vocal line (in the verse)? I can imagine other singers attempting it and coming a right cropper, but CB pulls it off effortlessly.

[koganbot]

Yes, Rissi preserves the vocal rhythm, which is basically to emphasize the offbeats, "if I should DIE beFORE i WAKE it's 'CAUSE you TOOK my BREATH aWAY." But the accompanying strums are mostly undifferentiated sixteen notes against backbeats from the drums, as opposed to the counterbeats that are thrown underneath Jordin and Chris. So Rissi's version has vastly less tension. Is definitely worth hearing, however. Rissi is a good singer, and she's the first black female to have had an impact on the country charts in twenty years - not that it's much of an impact yet, but she's not just someone who sings country and happens to be black, she's emphasizing the r&b and going for a country dance market. "Country girl," her best song, is a country-blues groove with gospel touches. The lyrics claim that the country beat speaks to the world, the vid cannily mixing country and city, and white, Asian, and black. The guitarist who's laying down the wicked blues slides at the start is portrayed by a bearded old white guy.