Yet Another Year In Pop: 14

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The top ten contains almost exactly the same dudes as last week, but further down there are some new entries for you to peruse this Monday lunchtime:

[Poll #1378887]
Lower reaches watch: Girls Aloud and Britney hover outside the top 40 with their respective Difficult Third Singles; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sneak in at no.100 with 'Zero'. And the the most romantic song in the world* makes an entrance at no.94 - any ideas why?

*I can't remember why but this is apparently Trufax.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The most romantic song ever written was long ago proved by byebyepride to be "Perfect Gentleman" by Wyclef.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I was trying to find evidence of above-mentioned romantic consensus but to no avail. However, the act of leaving roses by the stairs clearly does show that she cares.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Just too depressing. Pop music - as in, stuff that charts - is so, so shit this year. I've only ticked about 4-5 songs in these polls this year that I genuinely love.

[koganbot]

Just Jack "Embers": Circular arrangement reminds us that those who can't remember the first verse are condemned to have it repeated. NO TICK.

Jack Penate "Tonight's Today": Baffled Brit makes his way through mysterious dance track, accompanied by elfin guitar embellishments. I kinda like this. BORDERLINE TICK.

Doves "Kingdom Of Rust": Weary vocalist adds sweet melancholy to jaunty country two-step - but subsequently achieves interminable bleakness. NO TICK.

Pink "Please Don't Leave Me": Singer rips up relationship, self, tries to mend both. Arrangement is deliberately disparate; chorus arrives as a balm. TICK.

Flo Rida f. Wynter "Sugar": There's a moment, as Wynter first enters, when she seems to be beckoning in a whole expanse of sound. But what we end up with is a mess. I don't get why they think this beat matches this riff. NO TICK.

Lady Sovereign "So Human": I like how she sounds aggressive and relaxed at the same time. The toy funk and the plinkity Cure sample get tiring, but this is a definite TICK.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

"all the small things" is the name of the new bbc drama about CHOIRS and uses an acoustical versh of the blink 182 song as the theme (as ranted about by piratemoggy, passim)

[koganbot]

When Moggy linked the vid, it wasn't available in my country - which seems my good fortune, if Moggy's writeup is correct.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Is Just Jack singing about the credit crunch? This is better than his older stuff: the snipped-up vocal, pizzicato strings, handclaps all effecively jittery. His voice is still too much of a dishrag for me to like it, but a BORDERLINE NONTICK is a lot more than I was expecting.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No improvement for Penate mind you.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Pink is nice and throaty. I like this more than anything she's done for a while. Borderline tick, but tick nonetheless.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

We should have a poll on which song Flo Rida should (and will) sample next. Regarding the latter, my money's on "Day Trip To Bangor" by Fiddler's Dram.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

How about Ocean Colour Scene? After this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICiXv9wC-xY) (which cis linked to earlier on - do not click if you value yr sanity etc) ANYTHING is possible.

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

Oh jesus my brain is melting.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Quite remarkable.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

My suggestion (http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=257): "Chipz’s “1001 Arabian Nights” as cross-cultural paean to having sex with Muslim women, co-starring Nicole Scherzinger with a tactlessly incongruous bindi."

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Just Jack writing about his career.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I assume. As I've not heard any of them.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Just Jack - This is the sort of music a 13 year old might like, well a 13 year old from 1988. I'm not sure if Jack has a demographic. This song is not very good. I recommend this song instead, if you want repetitive refrains:http://www.spin.com/audio/james-kochalka-superstar/britneys-silver-can

Jack Penate - horrible horrible horrible. I don't really like this one. Why do people have to sing like this?

Doves - It's been done before. Wild west on a council estate, oh the suburbs. Pleasant but that's not enough, is it?

PINK - Typical Pink ballad, but I quite like it, and I've gotta tick something.

Flo Rida - blimey Eiffel 65! This is kinda like Crazy Frog. It's not that bad!

Lady Sovereign - the B*Witched of Rap. Robots are way better than humans.

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Just Jack: I quite like the textures and the strings and the handclaps. The looping and overlapping vocals too! It would be any good at all, surprisingly, if Jack had any charisma, instead of reminding me of the worst moments of Blink-182s nasal period sung through a vocoder. Also, all of the looping and the build spend much of the song threatening to explode into a big transcendent moment, which never comes. Waste of a very nice arrangement. BORDERLINE NON-TICK.

Jack Penate: It's got this odd kind of Latin groove to it. Despite my (indefensible) enjoyment of Jamie T, who commits vocal ugliness about as egregiously, I somehow find Penate's vocals really grating in the context of the backing track. Hmm. Theory: This track would be BRILLIANT as a UK Funky track if beefed up by Crazy Cousinz and Penate were replaced by say, Kyla, or something. NO TICK

Doves: There was a time, somewhere around The O.C. soundtrack, when Caught By the River seemed to be very moving. Having never really bothered with anything else by Doves, it seems as though their songs are specifically constructed to do that slow-build vaguely melancholy thing all the time, which takes some of the charm out of any individual song's ability to affect, since this is their shtick. Country affectations are interesting, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. NO TICK.

P!nk: Ballad with bounce. P!nk reigns herself in from obnoxious and ends up somewhere around affecting. Looped vocals and syncopated/disjointed backing beat work quite well. About as self-loathing and depressing as any other song by P!nk but v. good nonetheless. TICK.

Flo Rida: Ugh. And to think that I was finally approaching the point where Blue might have been approachable from a nostalgia standpoint. The best thing I can say about this song is that if not for its existence, I might have never been reminded how obnoxious that hook is. Always and forever.

Lady Sovereign: Well, she's certainly not grime anymore, if she ever was, but I quite like it. The Cure sample adds bounce, and if Sov is transmuting into a UK version of Lil Mama, I think I'm fine with it, so long as she keeps cranking out stuff like this. TICK.