POPTIMISTS REVIEW OF 08: Most Horrible Pop Thing

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

As before* this is being done canon-style - you get THREE picks plus! whether you pick the X-Factor or not in the main poll you can take part in the special sub-poll.

[Poll #1312786]

*all polls will be open until the end of the year when official results will be posted.

And remember - send yr list of 10 top tracks to leagueofpop@gmail.com before the end of the year too.

Comments

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

I like the Ting Tings and Katy Perry albums (in that order.) Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" will probably make my top ten singles list of the year. It's great.

Had I made nominations, I probably would have nominated:

-- John Rich’s Republican bootlicking
>
> -- Convoluted critics bending over backwards to blame their
> entirely predictable dislike of Katy Perry on her supposed
> homophobia.
>
> -- The warped idea that anybody should care about a
> Metallica album in 2008
>
> -- The warped idea that anybody should care about a Guns N
> Roses album in 2008
>
> -- Digital promos replacing ones I can hold in my hand.


(That said, neither the Metallica nor Guns N Roses albums are COMPLETELY horrible. In fact, I kind of *wish* they were even worse; they'd be more fun to talk about that way.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I love digital promos. They have basically saved me from being buried alive by jiffy bags and CDs this year.

Katy Perry has a very strange attitude to/relationship with/obsession with homosexuality, but it's not really offensive, and there are many many more things to dislike her for.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

No, no, I'm pretty sure it's offensive.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Hi Chuck. Nice to see you here. I'm sure "All Summer Long" works just fine in the US. Brits of a certain age pretending it has some resonance for them is what earns it its place in the nominees. But it's not in the top 3 most horrible things on the list, I'll grant you.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

It works fine in the U.S., yeah. But it works GREAT in suburban Detroit, where I was over Thanksgiving weekend. Believe me, in suburban Detroit these days, memories of long-lost summers on the lake in Northern Michigan is about all that's left to live for.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i would've thought the Alabama connotations would spoilt it for them if nothing else

[koganbot]

Well, Brits getting resonance from stuff out of the U.S. south is a good part of the great music of the last 55 years or so, and the Lynyrd Skynyrd track that Kid was referencing wouldn't have existed if the Rolling Stones for whom the U.S. south had great resonance hadn't themselves resonated in northern Florida. That said, and though "All Summer Long" doesn't belong on this list (and its supposed horribleness isn't getting ratified by the voters), I'm meh on it: just doesn't have the bite or dance that I wanted from it. I do love "I Wanna Fuck You Like I'm Never Gonna See You Again," however.

[koganbot]

If the Chinese Democracy had pulled off even a quarter of the squall and screech and dance and poignancy of Appetite For Destruction I'd have cared about it, and it does pull off the dance (whoevers were on bass did rather good Duff McKagan imitations) - think you're the only person who's ever given GN'R adequate appreciation for their danceability. I don't assume that poignant squall and screech and dance is obsolete, even if I haven't found my way to people doing it well this decade.

[koganbot]

I don't assume that poignant squall and screech and dance is obsolete

In aggregate, that is, which is why I said "is" rather than "are."

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Not suggesting it'd be impossible for GnR to pull a great album out of their butts in '08; just saying it'd be no more likely for them to make one than for any number of other random bunches of rock guys. Hell, they had a hard enough time making another great album *four* years after *Appetite* (and Axl's high register was already shot by then); 21 years would be a stretch. Also not sure I'm hearing the "dance" on the new one that Frank's talking about; there are moments, I guess. but mostly I hear them trying to get dancey in, like, a Nine Inch Nails way here and there, which comes off as rigid as you'd expect. (Maybe what they really miss, still, is Adler's drumming. But they were already missing that on the *Use Your Illusion*s). And yes, I did (and do) think that *Appetite* is one of the great dance music albums of all time. But I could easily come up with a list of several '08 hard rock (not to mention country, probably) albums I'd be more likely to dance to than to *Chinese Democracy*. So again, the assumption that people were supposed to care about this album just because the singer useta be awesome in another lifetime made no sense to me.

[koganbot]

Makes sense for the same reason I cared in anticipation of the Mary Weiss album last year: the long long layoff and the fact that I didn't know what to expect. (Whereas my indifference in advance of the Dolls and Stooges reunions was owing to Johansen and Iggy not being out of earshot in the intervening years and so having had a long time to undo my caring.) Not that I was surprised by the mediocrity of the Mary Weiss album or the Guns N' Roses album, but I did care, had hopes for a shiver of excitement.

(Actually, don't remember if I heard the full Mary Weiss album or just selections from it various places.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Oddly, several of the more bearable parts of the new GnR (parts of tracks 4, 10, 12, 14 - usually when Axl at least sings in his midrange) somehow make me think "Queensryche," who were hardly the most swinging dance band in hard rock history themselves. The one track that did hit me as rather funky -- also probably my favorite track, at least in part because Axl's singing reaches for the rafters, though I like the middle eastern-ish guitar parts, too -- is "If The World" (though its lyrics don't grab me any more than any of the other lyrics on the album have, which is to say pretty much not at all.) I guess I detect some quasi-funkiness in other places, but it tends to be so buried in ugliness that I don't care.