Another Year In Pop: 33

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Katy Perry remains astride the top of the charts, and Solange gets her first taste of the top 40.

[Poll #1243811]

Inexplicable re-entry watch: Miley Cyrus jumps from 141 to 76 with 'See You Again'. Also, the Fightstar album has entered the charts at number 86, well done there Charlie :)

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am busy watching the women's discus right now, so will have a listen to the others later on, but I can safely say:

Solange: TICK VG
Keane: TICK VG SMILEY FACE

Blimey one of the lady pole vaulters has lost her pole. I really wish she was from Poland, but no.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

DISCUS as in DISCO!

Oh god I really wanted to watch the pole vault - I love Yelena Isinbayeva so much, she's amazing.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Madcon - not awful but very pointless. The existence of this so soon after last year's Pilooski re-edit is slightly baffling.

Bloc Party - Okereke's voice really is one of the most purely awful sounds ever, isn't it? You can tell that they're actually trying to do interesting things with the rhythm and the arrangement but it's all executed so ineptly and you don't get ticks for effort.

Little Jackie - hatefulness of 'Black Barbie' isn't quite sufficient to make this pall, though it's not quite the rule-the-world summer jam it sets out to be, or indeed as good as Imani's Chupacabra-era stuff

Solange - this tick is for the original NOT the leaden, clunky Freemasons mix. I love the nimbleness of the original, I imagine Solange prancing around in a Great Gatsby-era flapper dress, though it's not really representative of (or the best thing on) her very good album

Keane - I understand people elsewhere on the internet are pretending this is a great pop song? they are very wrong.

Taio - 4th single off the album and sounds like it. I like Taio's aesthetic but he doesn't always have the songs to back it up.

I think the Miley is actually its first proper UK release. Radio 1 are playing something which claims to be the 'Rock Mafia remix' of 'See You Again', which - you know, I don't even want to know.

[koganbot]

Agree about the Freemasons. Last year they were gold, this year they're clods. Wonder what happened.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I still think their only really great productions have been the 'Ring The Alarm' and 'Work' remixes (and in both cases I still prefer the original). I'm very glad that the rumour that they were going to produce the next Beyoncé album seems to have died.

[koganbot]

Rock Mafia remix isn't terrible, just makes the beats harder and adds a deeper space and an intermittent freestyle riff, all of which adds extra sound that ultimately muffles the tension and charm of the original. Unnecessary.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

ticked everyone this week - but BP, Jackie and Taio can count themselves very very fortunate indeed

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Went back and unticked Taio -- there are a ton of better tracks than this on his album. Why hasn't Driving Me Crazy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnKyCW523PI) been released as a single?

[koganbot]

This week is a welcome respite, though hardly amazing. One clear winner, one clunker, the rest borderline.

Madcon "Beggin": Great song that he adds absolutely nothing of value to, but would be worth a tick anyway if his voice weren't heavy and inflexible and he'd come even a quarter-way towards the goose-bumping deliriousness of the Four Seasons' harmonies. NOT TICKIN'.

Bloc Party "Mercury": Fractured dance rhythm, gets your immediate attention, though Okereke's voice isn't nearly compelling enough to carry the track's spareness. But the thing gains force when the big bass enters and slathers a dark mood underneath. Doesn't totally work, but it kicks. KICK EARNS TICK.

Little Jackie "The World Should Revolve Around Me": Good groove, a pleasant contrast to the pummeling Bloc Party gave us, but I'm nowhere with the verse and in tepidity with the chorus, despite the lilt. Summer breeze, but needs summer heat. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Solange "I Decided": More summer sweetness, thrown into a Motown past but jazzed into the present à la Destiny's Child. Solange's voice isn't a burner, the melody isn't riveting, but this has so much bubbling stuff in it that it's an easy TICK.

Keane "Spiralling": Big horns and whoos, beats just as big but clompy and swingless, singing an attempt at expansiveness from a man who can't expand. The spoken interlude just batters us with stupidity. TICKLESSING.

Taio Cruz "She's Like A Star": Male-passion r&b sweetness but it's got nothing distinctive. Dull, though not unpleasant. HE'S NOT A TICK.

[ijgrieve.livejournal.com]

I ticked Little Jackie only. Keane is good for Keane, but that's hardly a great recommendation. No interest in any of the others I'm afraid.

OMG U GUIZ

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I really love that Taio Cruz song. What's with the hate?

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

See You Again is finally being released in the UK, or promoted anyway. I've seen the video on TV a few times.

[koganbot]

Had no idea there even was a video. (In the U.S. the song managed to break onto pop radio - first Disney song to do that in a big way since... since anytime I can think of [I think Hilary's "Come Clean" got some radio airplay] - without a vid or as far as I can tell any actual promotion [Radio Disney didn't even start playing if 'til about five months after the song had hit started clawing its way onto radio, and I'm still not sure if it was promoted as a single at all originally or if the airplay came on the radio stations' own initiative]. Anyway, I've checked YouTube, and the vid barely qualifies as a vid, is just some concert footage with the mediocre Rock Mafia mix of the song piped in on top. Why is the record company being so fucking cheap promoting this in Britain? The single gets its official release in the U.K. in five days (over a year after the alb it was on appeared in the U.S.).

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's the second one. Hideous, isn't it? As for why they're being cheap, they always are with Disney acts. They don't see them as recording artists, just as TV shows with soundtracks. None of the HSM songs have been hits, even though they're very well known. Miley Cyrus isn't a household name in the slightest, although most people under 20 would at least have heard of Hannah Montana, and there is lots of Hannah merchandise in the Disney Store. HSM, however, has more merchandise in there than any other show or film.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Just read this back and it sounds like I'm complaining about the lack of promotion, but to be honest, I don't care - I find Miley incredibly annoying and only like See You Again and If We Were A Movie. I like the HSM music but only really because of the films, which have a much nicer vibe than what I've seen of Hannah Montana. If those songs were released without the film, they would be really weak and dated compared to pop music now. Since I don't watch Hannah Montana I can judge the songs on their individual merit and they are poor, with odd exceptions like the amazing See You Again. That's the only song of hers or of Hilary Duff's which has been up to the standard of European pop music. It's sad that American kids have to listen to such rubbish (or even worse, Jonas Bros!!) when there is so much better available, but not getting through to them.

[koganbot]

Disney threw the pocketbook at this video for "Start All Over," which they were busy playing on Radio Disney while "See You Again" was shooting up the top 40. My guess is that they never expected "See You Again" to break big in pop and they didn't know how to shift gears. (Another guess, which may not be true at all, is that Disney never even promoted it as single, that downloaders and then radio stations were the ones who turned "See You Again" into a single.) And now that its run is done in the U.S., no one's going to spend big to create a whole new video for a relatively small market.

Miley Cyrus is a household name in the U.S., at this point.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can tell she's hugely famous. Her and the Jonas Bros are like the Britney and *N Sync of my early teens. Comparing the songs, it's not in their favour! Burning Up vs. Pop... it's ridiculous!

[koganbot]

Oh, here's a better vid which is also a better - live (or "live") - version of the song than the one on the Polydor site, though I fear that the latter'll be the vid that's shown in Britain.

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Solange - WTF? This was evidently the one thing I really missed out on pop-wise while I was out in the wilderness. This is not at all what I expected when I heard that Solange was making a(nother?) album. TICK. Also, the Freemason's Mix is not as clunky as y'all are making it out to be.

Mercury - Not one of the 2 or 3 tracks on Intimacy that are actually, you know, any good at all. However, in this case, that's all Kele's fault. Having lost his ability to do good lyrics, phrasing, melody, etc., he's now vocally shitting over one of the more compelling arrangements Bloc Party have done of late. Skittering drums + distorted horns make this a TICK, since I'm learning to overlook Kele.