A New Decade In Pop: Weeks #31 & #32

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Catching up on last week's missed poll = double bonus ticky today! Apologies if I've missed anything. Ne-Yo is at #1.

[Poll #1603549]

Comments

Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

This year:





Last year:

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

Best Korean songs I first heard in July, that is.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[askbask.livejournal.com]

How many other songs use the speed up and down effect SO much? I really like that song and Sandara seems naturally feisty, both here and with the group. I don't think it's an act, she is a troublemaker.

Her fellow bandmember Park Bom's 2009 solo offering is simpler and prettier with fewer edges. It's catnip music, but I like it (though not as much as Dara's)

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

E.via seems like even more of a troublemaker (and more self-consciously a troublemaker). When she speeds up "Shake!" it seems like a deliberate parody, though I know so little about Korean genres that I'm not at all sure I'm reading this right.

Dara's family moved to the Philippines when she was eight, and that's where most of her showbiz career took place; she had an album out in the Philippines in 2004 (also, the site I link claims that she claims that her dad is a wife-beater and bigamist who abandoned her family for another).

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

OK, I don't know the song lyrics, but what's that video about, with the wheel chair, the hospital room, and the cupcakes?

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[askbask.livejournal.com]

My take: The happy couple are married, but the man suffers from some sort of disease. He ponders suicide, decides against it with the support of love and cupcakes, but ends up dying anyway, so our girl wanders alone. Some holes are left to explain.

E.via is more of a troublemaker, but she sort of comes from another place outside the pop idol sphere where 2NE1, though touted as bringing girl power to pop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrdGpealMpw), still exist.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

I'm curious about the little bit of religious imagery in the video. The church seems to be Christian, though except for one set of crosses Jesus doesn't appear in the vid. Christmas does, but for practical purposes that's a secular holiday. I know nothing about religion in Korea.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

I think the "Shake!" vid is from this year, even if the song isn't (not sure it isn't, actually), so that makes the song eligible for my year-end lists, I've decided.

Re: Best new songs (Korean edition)

[koganbot]

"Shake!" does seem to be from this year, though Wikip is not definitive on this issue.

[koganbot]

Livejournal's percentage calculator is acting strange at the moment (4/7 equaling only 23.5%).

[koganbot]

Ne-Yo "Beautiful Monster": Of course, for Ne-Yo "beautiful" and "monster" are redundancies. BEAUTIFUL TICKSTER.

The Wanted "All Time Low": Massed strings try to get funky; singer attempts int'l half-gruff half-tremulous larynx control, achieves tedium. NO TICK.

Travie McCoy ft. Bruno Mars "Billionaire": Sitting next to the Wanted, Bruno manages to sound almost sentient. Travie has barren dreams, but the dig at Katy ("You can call me Travie Claus, minus the ho-ho") provides a moment o' mirth. NO TICK.

Swedish House Mafia ft. Pharrell "One": Vocalist has the vague humming mumbles, his rhythm sliding by the instruments, which sound vaguely interstellar and would be better with a keyb in his place. BORDERLINE TICK.

The Hoosiers "Choices": Sparkes' vocals are too thin for the pretty good tune he's trying to shimmy up. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Magnetic Man "I Need Air": Beats step cannily; singer claims a desire to breathe, though I'm skeptical. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

DJ Fresh "Gold Dust": Singer has a hard obsessiveness that drives the verses along; unfortunately, the intensity drains away in the chorus. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Best new

[credoimprobus]

Can't vouch this was actually July rather than just-as-possible end of June, but it's the only thing so far that's challenging Jenni Vartiainen's otherwise rock solid tune of the year spot, so I'm embedding it regardless:



SO BEAUTIFUL OMG. And somehow way, way too short despite a 5-minute runtime, heh.


(Non-best new related: omfg Magnetic Man have charted?? I always fail to pay attention to what's going on in dubstep at all the wrong moments, ahahaha.)

[koganbot]

Other tracks:

New to me and relatively new to the world:
Sunny Sweeney "From A Table Away"
Belinda ft. Pitbull "Egoísta"
Professor Green ft. Lily Allen "Just Be Good To Green"
Zinja Hlungwani "N'wagezani My Love"
J. Cole "Who Dat"
Stealing Angels "He Better Be Dead"
Rick Ross ft. Styles P "Blowin Money Fast (B.M.F.)"
Tiyiselani Vomaseve "Vanghoma"
Chase & Status ft. Mali "Let You Go"

New to me but old to the world:
Chaka Demus and Pliers "Boom"
Banda Blanca "Sopa De Caracol"
Actitud María Marta "Así Esta La Cosa"
Shapes & Sizes "The Long Indifference"

[askbask.livejournal.com]

A, a good old drum n bass pop single in the charts. On first listen I'm not sure if "Gold Dust" is catchy enough to make my easy listening list where so many bassline singles have entered.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The video is TERRIFIC:

you must understand my definition of 'new' is a poor one

[many-from-one.livejournal.com]

Unforch. most of July's music listening was been devoted to trawling the Mercury Prize shortlist for me; moreover the July ones were the ones I suspected (and was generally proved correct) were pump, so I could build up to a big finish. Thankfully! Thankfully all is not lost because just before July faded into non-existence I did some charity shopping in Liverpool and came away with Sash!'s rather good "Colour the World" and an Italiadance LP, and thus my track of July is unanimously "Numero Uno" (1989) by Starlight.

[many-from-one.livejournal.com]

But onto more recent pleasures! Or not pleasures, as we will have cause to find out.

"Beautiful Monster" - blah blah pulse blah massive great chorus, really I have to give it a tick because of the video, which could only have been bettered if one of the bar patrons at the start had pointed at the TV and gone "It's the Mayor!". Tick.

"All Time Low" - feels like a rather desperate attempt to be all things to all people (stringsy bit, drumsy bit, Coldplaysy bit). No tick.

"Billionaire" - Begins with an awful first line (it works as a last line because you've had time to invest in the divide b/w what he wants and what he has so it takes on an air of plaintive longing - as a first impression it makes him seem like a jerk) and the way the drums come in didn't dispose me well either, but Travie & Bruno's cheerful infectiousness (there are many many ways you could write a bad song about wanting to be a billionaire, but they give it the right mix of likeable abandon and poverty-is-bad) won me over. Tick-o.

"One (Your Name)" - deserves one for the band name alone, thankfully gets it instead for its simple grooviness and the fact it has the decency to stick to one vocal line for most of its length. Would have been better if it exploded more at the start rather than building up. Still, tick, probably.

"Choices" - another filmic video, although in recognition of the fact that the Hoosiers don't look as good in suits as Ne-Yo they go for a Zoolandery camp affair (thankfully). Clearly a song somewhere on the border, just pushed over into tickiness by the way the rippling backing that comes in under the last verse just (just!) seems to be angling for the Orient.

"I Need Air" - the ticks have to stop somewhere, alas, and today they stop here. The vocals are a tad predictable and it's a bit too long. Very unfair of me cos the production is top notch but no tick.

"Gold Dust" - It's good, I guess, but I'm without much enthusiasm. I reckon I should probably like this sort of thing so the fact I don't really like this thing in particular all that much is a bit of a disappointment. Alas poor notick.