Yet Another Year In Pop: 20

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The Peas finally nab their 2nd number one, Eminem and Shontelle scrape into the top 40. Plus, what do you get when a duck attempts re-entry? Geddit? RE-ENTRY.

[Poll #1402250]

Lower reaches watch: this week's bizarre re-entry is Dizzee Rascal's Fix Up Look Sharp at #78. Any ideas?

Comments

[koganbot]

Kris Allen did a nice version of "Ain't No Sunshine" on American Idol, but that was seven weeks ago, and I can't assume there's any connection.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Some chap sung it on Britain's Got Talent last week (sez EveryHit)

The Bill Withers version of "Ain't No Sunshine" is nice (and I ticked it notwithstanding my "no reissues" rule as it's never charted in the Uk before) but I think the Michael Jackson version is a masterpiece - his best single in fact.

[koganbot]

I'd never even heard of Michael Jackson's version. You're right: it's beautiful. I'll have to take some time to think if I consider it better than "Billie Jean" et al., but I'm considering it.

[koganbot]

The melody sounds faintly Brazilian.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

From the few Youtube clips I've seen of it, Britain's Got Talent may be the very worst of the Cowell-branded reality TV shows, and I swear I didn't realise just how much I hated him until then. What a cunt he is!

I've never heard the MJ version - my favourite Bill W track is easily 'Who Is He (And What Is he To You)?' though. (Britain's Got Talent contestants STAY THE FUCK AWAY.)

[koganbot]

Wow, great song ("Who Is He"), which I don't recall ever hearing. I love the four-chord turnaround at the end of each measure. Hypnotizing.

1973 was a crucial year for my music listening, the end of the old "rock" and the mind-flipping discovery of the Dolls and the Stooges, but meanwhile I completely overlooked the music-melding and transforming evolution going on in soul and funk, and the start of disco. This track was a year after "Papa Was A Rolling Stone"; you can hear the genre seizing white "head music" and make it its own (which had been going on since the late '60s; Sly and Funkadelic would have said, correctly, that a genre divide - the one between Hendrix, Cream, etc. and James Brown - was simply being erased. But new divides were also being erected).