Billboard Hot 100 of the decade

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://www.billboard.com/#/charts-decade-end/hot-100-songs?year=2009&begin=1&order=position

via Maura.

Let's do a poll about it! (Well, the top 40). Tick as many as you like!

[Poll #1497610]

Comments

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Ha ha surely this list counts up to Crazy in Love! Actually I'm struck in my slightly cold-stricken state that Dilemma seems to tower over almost all of these.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Apropos of not much, I have been kind of obsessed with a few lines from the #28 recently. Obviously he has always been a stunning rhymer, but I am very keen on "Snap back to reality / Oh! There goes gravity / Oh! There goes Rabbit he / Choked he's so mad but he / Won't give up that easy / No he won't have it he / Knows his whole back's to these ropes" - astonishing internal rhymes without at all sacrificing meaning and emotional impact.

[koganbot]

The mention of Mom's spaghetti always gets me:

Attn: Greg and Frank

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I posted 'Burn' a few days ago, in this thread:
http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/743936.html

Re: Attn: Greg and Frank

[koganbot]

Yes, but it was at the bottom of the thread (and I had a piece due).

Re: Attn: Greg and Frank

[koganbot]

Er, wasn't as far down as some of what I embedded, actually, but nonetheless I did have a piece due.

Re: Attn: Greg and Frank

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

3 of the 5 songs I didn't recognize are Usher songs. Sorry, Usher. I did tick the one Usher song that I knew.

[koganbot]

FYI.



(This may well be the first time I've heard it. It was the Billboard #1 for 2001! I have heard of Lifehouse. They are Christian - yes, I know a lot of people are, but they direct themselves towards a market that makes a point of the fact that it's Christian.)

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I haven't thought about this song in about 6 or 7 years and it's still as awful now as it was then. I hope it stays on 0 ticks.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Lots of good stuff here but I still can't quite get over how triumphant and dominant the annexation by rap and rnb has been. The 90s seem a lot more balanced. It might be interesting to see whether other ideas can now carve a space in the mainstream alongside what is prevalent here - be they country-based teen pop, some kind of alt rock return, broader range of dance music/influences, more imports (unlikely). Will the 10s see a broader or narrower still range of pop in a chart like this?

As it is the non-rap/rnb-based stuff here all seems pretty bad, which is also interesting.

[koganbot]

Repeating here what I posted on Tom's tumblr:

When you jump to the albums list you find more variety - country and teenpop and mainstream rock - but you're still not finding performers who get much attention from critics (Eminem, Beatles, and OutKast the only critics acts in the Top 40). Carrie Underwood Some Hearts is deceptively low at 14 because its sales were racked up mid and late in the decade when album sales fell through the floor; I think if you pro-rate her numbers that album is near the top of the decade. The results that made my jaw drop were Usher (Confessions at number 2) and Norah Jones Come Away With Me at number 4), since I simply wasn't giving those two any thought all decade, except for the hit where Usher hooked up with Lil Jon. Also, Shaggy and Enya in the Top 20! I doubt that Enya fans and Norah Jones fans are having much impact on what dominates the singles charts.

As I've been arguing for a while, though maybe not in these terms, if anything, we're less fragmented culturally, more aware of each other. But that awareness has two consequences: (1) our experience seems more disparate, precisely because we're more aware of the other pieces, and (2) there's less a sense of a center. Also, cultural commentators were not particularly noticing how much teen life jumped to movies and video games starting in the late '70s. Nor was I (or, to the extent I was noticing, I wasn't caring). "Music" is less a distinct activity than it seemed to be forty years ago.

To put all this in perspective, I doubt that pre-Beatles there were many music stars that got much name recognition from the average person on the street, at least in America. Elvis and Sinatra did, but even they had movie tie-ins.

[koganbot]

Or to put the last thought differently, the music stars with wide-spread name recognition were singing in the rain movies: Garland, Astaire, Julie Andrews. Maybe there's an obvious exception I'm not remembering. Jolson, I guess; he was in movies but was famous already outside them. My impression is that people like Hank Williams and Chuck Berry and pre-1965 James Brown were massively famous among listeners to their genre, but not among the general public, though I don't have figures to back this up.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

special guest procrastination appearance on poptimists -

- this is a great list and assuredly a million times better than its uk equivalent; i am somewhat surprised that "umbrella" didn't make it
- "run it" is the least likely of my ticked songs that i'll ever listen to again, but i DID love it at the time
- and yeah confirming that this isn't a proper return to poptimists, what the actual fuck @ people who don't think "we belong together" is any good at all

bye again!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

oh yeah and as ever "baby boy" >>>>>>>>>>> "crazy in love"

baby boy you stay on my mind...

[koganbot]

With you on both "Run It" and "Baby Boy," except that I will listen to "Run It" again. Each was produced and co-written by Scott Storch, by the way.