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

[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.