poptimists | A New Decade In Pop: Week #12

That top 10 isn't very exciting but it could be a lot worse. I would give it at least 6/10. 'Starry Eyed' in particular has grown on me a lot! I apologise to Ellie for implying that she might smell on the 'don't like any' option.

I saw her live supporting Passion Pit. She was very good indeed; I was annoyed to discover how weedy and overproduced the record was, because live, I thought she was fantastic. Ah well.

Top ten looks pretty good for once but sadly I have only heard two of the songs (Ellie Goulding and Rihanna, so RiRi gets the vote) so may be impaired on the assessment side of things.

Wait hold up is that fifteen-year-old Justin Bieber duetting with Ludacris?!

Yes, yes it is. It is an absolutely dire record:

Justin: I want to kiss girls but have no experience in this matter!
Ludacris: BUMS
Justin: Ludacris, can you impart some of your wealth of experience with ladies to aid my quest?
Ludacris: WOMEN'S BUMS
Justin: You know, serenading them outside their window, sending them roses, that sort of thing? Does it do any good?
Ludacris: I LOVE WOMEN'S BUUUUUUUUUUUMS

(^^^song would have been much better if it had gone like this)

Oh dere GOD. Awkward.

Not as awkward as his Q&A with Grimmie on BBC Switch last night, where he ended up coming on to his own UK PR lady.

He is 16 now, not 15. But still. *squirm*

Er hang on, the interview must have been with Reggie Yates on the Chart Show rather than w/ Grimshaw on Switch. Soz for any confusion there. The main point stands though.

You will savor this interchange featuring Disney heartthrob Sterling Knight; gets real interesting at about 1:20:

(And here's his single; he's not much as a singer, but this has a good chorus; song credits include Niclas Molinder and Joacim Persson who co-wrote Ashley Tisdale's excellent "Not Like That.")

As one of the few people here who thinks the boy is any good at all and have been blurbing his songs ever since they started nibbling the charts last summer here in the USA, I don't mind him at all: he's got an easy way with the melodies and never tries to come on too strong, but usually suffers from mediocre material. This is how I blurbed him here last week:

Justin Bieber "Baby": Sweet-voiced young'un who doesn't push too hard - though maybe he should have pushed a tad harder to get this bit of Tricky-Terius landscaping to rise above pleasant. But pleasant it is. BORDERLINE TICK.

His best song is "One Time," another Tricky-Dream production. It's gotten 55 million views on YouTube so far; I hear he's popular with the girls.

Kat, you seem ambivalent up top as to whether this is week 11 or week 12, but I definitely choose week 12.

Apologies - poor copying & pasting there.

The One Time video is extraordinary for its 34780904289 forms of product placement in the first three seconds. (XBox! iPhone! Usher -oh, wait) It's sort of pleasant enough but feels weak with his reedy little voice. He's no Lil Chris.

But then I am a massive grump.

Also in all fairness this is how I feel about all of The Dream's output that doesn't involve Electrik Red/Mariah Carey/Rihanna.

Edited 2010-03-22 16:24 (UTC)

I prefer "Baby" to "One Time". But it's no more than a 5/10.

I quite like "Baby", I find it incredibly earwormy! But I was disturbed to realize this Justin Bieber person is like 12 or something.

He just turned 16! He's Canadian! He first got noticed on YouTube!

Also I am frankly baffled as to why Alicia Keys hasn't released 'Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart' over here yet (wiki says a May release is planned? MAY?????), as it is EPIC and SAD and LOVELY and it sounds like a SPACESHIP driven by Stanley Kubrick is taking off in the background and it makes me like Alicia's raspy old voice that I previously mildly disliked and you should all listen to it if you haven't already:

OMG is he trying to do a 'Born Slippy'?

:-D

i read some ppl saying it's an actual sample, and other saying Skepta has no idea about the connection.

Blimey wasn't expecting that at all - it's like something off a Claude Von Stroke techno mix. Not bad! Definitely worth an 'any good at all' tick.

Agree w/ Kat re: the Inna being a pleasant surprise -- overall it would rate just a 'nice enough', but BLOODY HELL WHAT A BEAT. That beat would forgive a LOT of sins.

Telephone = officially the first Gaga single I've loved since Just Dance (and my love for Just Dance was always complicated by the fact that I came to love it in an environment that disguised the wishy-washiness of the production, making me think it was much more boshing and awesome until I youtubed it at home). So well done everyone involved there!

Well done to GaGa for the double, keeping the Glee robots from getting a second unwarranted number one album. Thoroughly deserved.

The Skepta record doesn't take itself too seriously and is therefore fun.

The Inna record takes itself awfully seriously and is therefore awful.

Inna "Hot": Romanian cutie pie's effective anono-ache contrasts with equally emotional coffee beats. TICK.

Skepta "Bad Boy": Guy won't give with the compliments, girl nags and mopes, guy even less likely to compliment, downward spiral, let's dance! BORDERLINE TICK.

Glee Cast "True Colors": For once a Glee track that isn't overarranged, resulting in a singer who sounds evocative and vulnerable and who retains her appeal even when the choir jumps in. This is my first Glee tick ever, albeit an unenthusiastic one. It helps that the original was kind of sloggy, so Glee isn't clobbering something fine here. BORDERLINE TICK.

I'm intrigued as to what you mean by 'coffee beats', Frank!

I suppose they were originally popcorn beats, but the sort of percolating popping electro sounds that appeared in some coffee commercial that I vaguely remember. (Here's Hot Butter's "Percolator," their follow up to "Popcorn," though it's not what got used in the commercial.)

Aha, I get you.

Blimey, Percolator sounds like its being wound up by hand.

I originally wrote "contrasts with percolating coffee beats" but decided that "equally emotional" was more crucial to what I was trying to say, and couldn't combine them since "equally emotional percolating coffee beats" contained one too many adjectives and one too many l's.

Maybe "equally emotional jumping beans" would have worked; or "equally emotional popcorn beats," but "popcorn" and "jumping" were too happy for the mood, whereas "percolating coffee" was right, if it had only fit.

The UK chart is surprisingly good this week, one of the few weeks recently when it can hold its own with the U.S. Here's Billboard's top ten:

1. Rude Boy - Rihanna
2. Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
3. Break Your Heart - Taio Cruz ft. Ludacris
4. Imma Be - The Black Eyed Peas
5. Nothin' On You - B.o.B ft. Bruno Mars
6. Hey, Soul Sister - Train
7. BedRock - Young Money ft. Lloyd
8. TiK ToK - Ke$ha
9. Telephone - Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé
10. In My Head - Jason Derulo

"Hey, Soul Sister" is easily the worst on either chart, and I'd say that of the best the Dizzee and the Tinie can compete with the Ke$ha and the Lady Antebellum (well, I'd definitely give the edge to the American two, but the Dizzee and the Tinie are at least in the same league; "Telephone" is on both lists so cancels itself out of the comparison; is a good song but I find the vocals too dogged, definitely prefer "Need You Now" and "TiK ToK" and "You Got The Dirtee Love," probably in that order). "BedRock" is really mediocre for a hip-hop hit. I do like "Nothin' On You"; rather sweet.

Also sad that 'Imma Be' isn't at least somewhere in the UK top 100 (three other Peas songs are), it's much better than Rock That Body but according to comparemyradio (http://comparemyradio.com/artists/Black_Eyed_Peas/tracks) it's only getting about half the airplay over here :(

Comparing the two charts I see that I ticked 6 out of 10 in America and 7 out of 10 in Britain (and probably should have ticked 8 or 9, but was feeling not in the mood for "Starry Eyed" that day, and Alicia fell just south of my borderline). My non-ticks were DeRulo on both charts; Cruz, Train, and Young Money in America; and Goulding and Keys in the U.K.

I was going to ask you about Lady Antebellum. Heard her for the first time on the radio on Saturday and thought she sounded OK - a slightly more orthodox-country version of Taylor.

Which Lady Antebellum track did you hear? They're up to their second album and have had a slew of hits here already. When I first heard them I thought "Air Supply" but with enough of a country tinge to be country, also something of a Fleetwood tinge, though not nearly as much of either as Little Big Town has (click the Little Big Town link and we'll see if you think of the same song I do). Best Lady Antebellum song by far* is "Need You Now"; Hillary Scott's got something of a Taylor quaver, but the melodies are more solidly adult California contemporary (not that this is a chasm of difference). Best track on the first Lady Antebellum album is "All We'd Ever Need" which is even more not traditional country than "Need You Now" but to my mind is solidly country anyway, there being about forty years of this sort of country MOR mixture that Xhuxk would know about far more than I would.

*Haven't heard much of their second album, so perhaps it's got further greatness beyond "Need You Now," but Xhuxk is meh towards it so far. Lady Antebellum's most recent single, "American Honey," has a strong enough Anglo-American "folk" feel to establish its country bona fides, and has a nice little tune, but doesn't break through for me. I write about it a bit on my lj.

That "Need You Now" link doesn't seem to work for me Frank, I assume because of a UK/US thing possibly?

Possibly is a UK/US thing; it's YouTube. See if this MySpace link works?

By the way, all the lyric sites say that the first line is "Picture perfect memories, scattered all around the floor," but what she's saying doesn't sound like "memories." It sounds like two syllables beginning with a b, "picture perfect bembies," which doesn't make any sense, and but it still is what I'm hearing, not "memories."

According to the Radio 2 website, it was "Need You Now" and "American Honey" I heard.

A New Decade In Pop: Week #12

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Correction

I am sure I am redder than your flowers right now

Justin Bieber

Re: Justin Bieber

Re: Justin Bieber

Re: Justin Bieber

Re: Just on Bebo

Re: Justin Bieber

Re: Justin Bieber

no subject

Skepta

Re: Skepta

Inna

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Who killed bembi?

no subject