Yet Another Year In Pop: 8

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Lily holds on to the top spot once more, while best pals Miley and Taylor get some chart action to share between them.

[Poll #1354094]

Lower reaches watch: some Brits-related re-entry shenanigans going on, with high climbs from Kanye, Take That, Duffy and the Ting Tings. Lovely.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Don't have much to say this week, not just cuz I'm on deadline...can't get with the Miley, it falls awkwardly between GRRR and overly perky, as with '7 Things' she can't quite pull off whatever needs to be pulled off.

Really like Taylor S - I have both of her albums lined up in itunes and once all these damn articles are finished I am going to embark on a big Taylor discovery session this week. So much better without the video, the song's all about the details and the minutiae, and the video just goes in the opposite direction and detracts from the song.

The Rudenko is like a Eurobosh take on the PCDs' 'When I Grow Up'. Destined to be unticked when I go back through this in five months' time and have no recollection of it.

Others are just boring. It seems like there's a new James Blunt every week - why is this!

Also having heard the new singles from Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk, I am never ever going to root for a grime MC to cross over ever again. Utter, utter shite. Sadly I think they'll both be big hits :(

[koganbot]

I agree about the Taylor vid. The dressy dresses in the "Our Song" vid had been so incongruous as to be fascinatingly weird and who cares if they have nothing to do with the song (and they really defy the country standard of dressing like your audience), but "Love Story" is just Prince Charming and Princess Taylor stereotypes that do nothing for the song's actual fear and hope ("we'll make it out of this mess"). The vid for "Teardrops On My Guitar" is brilliantly spot-on normal in the high-school scenes and so bizarrely strange in her doll-costume and fake glitter tears in the "home in bed and dreaming scene" as to be brilliant too. My favorite vid is the pre-megasales "Tim McGraw," which is also my favorite song of hers, the guy playing the boyfriend having such a handsomely unrevealing face that he's perfect as the boy ambivalently addressed in the song. Great use of standard pastorale scenes that the song lyrics give an edge of uneasiness to. Compare to the great Deanna Carter's "Strawberry Wine" ("I was thirsty for knowledge, and he had a car"), the prototype for both the song and the vid, but the video for "Tim McGraw" has a much clearer sense of its story. "Picture To Burn," which I totally missed at the time, seems like a quickie concept "let's do a takeoff on a whole bunch of new wave and rock show videos" and is disappointing in the way it hints at some "Kerosene" or "Before He Cheats" action but then keeps taking you back to the rock show. "White Horse," which just came out last week, works really well as the anti-"Love Story" vid; e.g. the way she finds out that her boyfriend is going with someone else is by seeing him carrying groceries to the other girl's door. I like the way that she plays neither poor nor fancy in the restaurant and house settings. (Too bad I don't like the melody more.)