Yet Another Year In Pop: 27

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Cascada fend off MJ to the top spot this week, but our Jacko has the rest of the top 40 pretty much covered.

[Poll #1425742]

No lower reaches watch today as OCC is still stuck on last week and Yahoo is kinda unreliable for anything past the top ten. Basically there's a lot of Michael Jackson down there too.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I have been humming the chorus to Cascada for the last 48 hours. That is all.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

It is really ace! I wasn't sure when I first heard it but it has totes grown on me. Keep listening to it on repeat.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what happened them/her/whatever?

[meserach.livejournal.com]

It is so great! And in a funny way it kind of strikes a blow for poor Britney who ever managed to get a number 1 from anything off Blackout despite it being AMAZING, because this Cascada number so slavishly apes the Blackout style.

The rap bit is a little rubbish, but then slight rubbishness is often part of Eurodance's charm.

This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

...why is "Man In The Mirror" the (apparently) preferred MJ pick?

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[meserach.livejournal.com]

My theory runs:

1. The British record buying public have always had a weakness for political "message" songs about world piece, universal love, and how If We All Tried A Little Harder We Could Make Everything Wonderful (cf. BEPs Where Is The Love?, Jackson's own Earth Song)

2. In general, balladry has broader appeal than dancery. Sadly.

3. I we're picking the record to be Jackson's monument/tombstone, it makes sense to pick one that seems somehow autobiographical, descriptive of the man. The main refrain of Man In The Mirror, with its self-obsession and its overtones of identity crisis, do this pretty well. (I guess "Black or White" woulda been too close to the bone?)

4. Singles buyers tend to skew younger, and Man In The Mirror's a more recent hit than his more critical acclaimed Thriller/Off The Wall era stuff.

5. After a certain point it was probably fuelled by inertia - it ended up being the highest placed in the initial flurry of sales, and then Jackson boosters flocked to it in an attempt to secure him #1.

All speculation, no science to any of it. But there you are.

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

These are all good reasons but I'm afraid it's actually because it wasn't on any of the big albums or compilations.

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[meserach.livejournal.com]

It's still a decent point though, given how Bad is kind of rub.

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I thought this too, I hadn't actually heard 'Man In The Mirror' before seeing it was apparently the people's choice! I'd guess that it's right on the cusp between "famous MJ hits that people remember" and "MJ songs not quite canon enough that people already own them".

I've just read back and that actually makes no sense but I have no idea how to phrase it to express what I mean. UGHHHHH today is not a good day for language and me.

'Beat It' is prob my favourite MJ song in the top 40.

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Man In The Mirror was apparently the most requested song on this MJ Tribute show I'm listening to so it's obviously a deliberate thing rather than something people are buying because they don't have it. The music channels have been hammering it but I don't know whether they were before it got the fan response.

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Maybe dudes just really like mirror-based metaphors?

Re: This question has probably already been posed and answered while I was away, but...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

OK ignore this comment, I was looking at the wrong page of the werk database.

FYI

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Sticks and Stones is really good:

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Pitbull? Half a decade of releasing amazing and classic bangers and this is his UK top 40 debut? WTF, I don't get the music industry. Not a patch on 'Culo' or 'Toma' or 'The Anthem' or 'Dammit Man' or 'Bojangles' or his classic guest spots but definitely OK, and has been growing on me lately. Def looking forward to the album when it drops.

Black Eyed Peas - I think I like this one and the vague way I liked the whole album but I can't really remember how it goes. Oh well, tick for boom-boom-powing Perez Hilton. wiil.i.am drop the beatdown!

Cascada - not awful but can't imagine myself thinking about it again

Jamie T - don't care

Um, we haven't really had a summer anthem yet, have we? I mean, I have several, but not a chart-topping ubiquitous one. And it's JULY already.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

*IN the vague way
*will.i.am

I used to be able to type.

Absence of blurbs explained

[koganbot]

Up until a week and a half ago my way of doing this was to scribble notes furiously while the track played: from these would emerge insights, puns, metaphors, alliteration, assonance, images, themes, points of view, meter, lack of meter, etc. Now my basic choices are (a) handwrite with my left hand which takes forever and my s's are backwards and it looks like it was written by an unlettered six-year-old as well as lacking assonance, alliteration, etc., (b) type painfully slow notes with my left hand, or (c) to hell with it. Anyhow, I have chosen (c), hence no asparagus, assonance, Asperger's, Brussels sprouts, tulip bulbs, blurbs. But anyhow, the chorus rescues Cascada and the track needs someone like Katy Perry to give it more punch, BORDERLINE TICK. Jamie T., the low-sparked gargle of the average boy, NO TICK. Pitbull, he's been on all sorts of amazing stuff, usually as a guest, for instance the remix of Get To Poppin," which I first heard on the reggaeton station back when Denver had a reggaeton station, the merengue mix of "Get Low," which is insane, and "Get Up Stand Up,

Absence of blurbs further explained

[koganbot]

Er, it posted me in midsentence... I was saying, GET YOUR ASS DOWN LIKE A NASDAQ, er, all those Pitbulls are TENS except maybe "Get Up Stand Up" which is nine, so I don't understand why the relatively nondescript "I Know You Want Me" gets to be his breakout hit, hence I'm punishing it with a BORDERLINE NONTICK. Black Eyed Peas, back when I could write with my right I said that the BEPs and Fergie scored one improbable riveting hit after another from a whole variety of disparate left fields, so why now do they come up with this pedestrian slow dribbler to short that allows them barely to beat out the throw to first [baseball ref that, in retaliation for you alls not bothering to listen to the country tracks Chuck and I nominate for the Best Of The '00s competition, I'm not going to bother explaining to you Brits]? BORDERLINE TICK.

Re: Absence of blurbs further explained

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The best bit in the BEPs is where Will goes "Mazletov!" but WHY this is the best bit I don't know. It is a maztery.

Re: Absence of blurbs further explained

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

My best bit is in the chorus-and-response, where Fergie and The Other Dude goes "L'Chaim!"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I really really liked I Gotta Feeling until I played it at Poptimism and realised how unconscionably slow it was.

Similarly I only quite liked Evacuate the Dancefloor until I played it at ditto and realised how banging it was. Also +1 eurorap.

Both ticks mind you.