As of today, and I hope forever, the Hot 100 Roundup will be running in the Village Voice. I’ll note here when each one goes up, and I’m planning to create an archive for each year. Thanks to Voice music editor Maura Johnston for taking me on board.
I have plans for some other regular pieces here on the blog to keep things going, so stay in touch.
Just a quick note to let people know that I’ve finally done something I’ve meant to do for a long time: created a page for the entire current Hot 100, all reviews included. Some of the records have been on the chart for so long that I no longer agree with my original assessment—I like Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” a lot more now, for instance—but I’m not going to engage in any historical revisionism; at least not yet. This will be updated as the new reviews are posted, so don’t expect it to be up-to-the-minute, but it’s all there.
The possibility of an archive ordered by artist is also out there, but since it’s a much bigger job I’m not sure when I’ll get to that.
i.e., Tom Zé recording is more important than just about anyone else recording:
Even before they became the bane of the internet, I was never big on lists. Sometimes I enjoy them, and if they’re well done they can serve as a spark to thinking about things in a different way, but too often, instead of contextualizing or re-contextualizing, they de-contextualize , hiding the essence of a piece of art by pasting it over with shallow similarities or comparisons to others. This is especially true of “best of” lists, whether they focus on a particular period of time, a particular genre, or at their worst, specific stylistic flourishes or the use of instruments (“best guitar riff played on a Telecaster run through a fuzz box and a digital delay system without the use of a wah-wah pedal”, etc.). Though I’m well aware that some performers and songs and bodies of work are better than others, I don’t like ranking them against each other—I’m far more interested in what a performer achieves or doesn’t achieve within the context of the record itself and the overall environment in which it was created. Often that means comparing one piece with another, but it doesn’t mean ranking them against each other as if their place on a list conveyed something meaningful. It doesn’t. It may be a convenient shorthand, but I would rather see it as a guide to listening (or viewing or reading) than as a judgment of relative value. I always remember what Pauline Kael said in the early 60s, in reference to Jean Renoir being listed as the world’s greatest living movie director: that being ranked on a numbered list, no matter how high, was an insult to a true artist. Art isn’t a competition, folks, it really isn’t.
All of which verbiage is only to explain why I’ve never done much with lists on this site, even though I work off of one. I excuse this by saying that a weekly ranking of sales and popularity, though it may ultimately affect the amount of money an artist makes and their influence, if any, on others and the culture at large, doesn’t actually reflect on the artistic value of their music. In any case, though I’ve put a few lists together in the past, sometimes out of a sense of duty, sometimes as a result of a reader’s request, even when I’ve been tempted to make one I’ve usually managed to argue my way out of it. My favorite was one I made a few years ago, before I started reviewing the entire Hot 100, of songs that made the main chart but never worked their way into the top ten. That seemed like a worthwhile service because a lot of those songs, especially the ones that only managed a week or two on the charts, may not have been heard by a lot of people. I would probably still do it if I hadn’t started reviewing the entire chart; but as long as I am a list like that seems a redundant exercise.
What I loved most about that list, though, was listening to the mix I made of the songs, which I re-programmed and fiddled with for a couple of weeks until I had something that I could listen to over and over again without ever getting bored. This not only contextualized the songs, but provided a more viable and meaningful way of comparing them and, yes, even ranking them. This is what most critics do, I’m sure, when they make their own lists, and is merely a compressed version of the way long-term critical judgments (i.e., “the canon”), are ultimately made. But the lists themselves, unless they’re heavily annotated, rarely convey that.
Which is the long way of leading up to the fact that now, even with my dislike of lists in general, Spotify changes everything. Now lists, even the most arbitrary, are available for listening without you having to spend large amounts of money, scramble around on the net or in record stores, hassle your friends, or depend on serendipitous crate-digging. Even if the list itself is a de-contextualizing disaster, the ability to listen to the selections, immediately, gives it at least some value. If you feel like listening to the Hot 100 in its entirety, for instance, Billboard has conveniently created a playlist that allows you to do just that (at least, that is, those songs that are available on Spotify, which will get you 90% of the chart most weeks—which is more than enough, believe me; you don’t really want to hear all of it). Many critics, as well, are creating rolling best-of playlists throughout the year. The possibilities are endless. I await the übernerd who puts up a playlist of every Pazz and Jop Poll, or every album reviewed in Christgau’s Consumer Guide—it’s only a matter of time.
In this spirit, I have created a rolling playlist of my own: The Best of the Hot 100, 2012. For the moment, I’m only including songs that made the chart through March, but in another week or two I’ll start adding songs as they come out and include a link on the sidebar. This is not a ranked list; I’m doing my best to make this a real mix, with some sort of flow that I hope puts these songs into their proper context, or highlights exactly what I think makes them so enjoyable. I want the list to be entertaining as well as informative. It’s also, of course, highly personal—I’m indulging more of the fan side of my brain than the critical side (no, I don’t think “Sorry For Party Rocking” is a work of genius, but damn I love that sound). I have a feeling I’ll get closer to explaining the ultimate value of these records in that manner, anyway—this is pop we’re talking about, after all. I’m not even going to list the songs here; just give it a listen and see what you think.
A few programming notes:
The only criteria for inclusion is that the record has to have debuted on the Hot 100 this year. So songs that were actually released in 2011 (or older) can make the list, while songs that broke into the big time this year but had already appeared on the chart won’t. Totally arbitrary, but there have to be rules.
There is one song missing. Rascal Flatts “Changed” isn’t available on Spotify yet. I assume it will be, since the first single from the album is, but they’re most likely holding off in order to increase actual sales. In the meantime you can find it on YouTube. Just imagine it coming between “Call Me Maybe” and “Springsteen”. I’ll add it as soon as I can. I know you can’t wait for that one.
I am aware of the absence of rap. There’s a lot of great stuff out there this year, but very little of it gets onto the Hot 100. The best candidates—”Stupid Hoe”, “I Do”, “No Church In the Wild” (relatively old, but it hit the chart in February), “Muthafucka Up”, and V.I.C.’s “Wobble”—were hard to fit into the mix and are all flawed in some essential way (at least to my ears). I may make a separate rap mix, or I may find a way to work them in later.
I will most likely freeze the list for a couple of weeks at the end of each quarter, and possibly write up a brief summary. Otherwise, it will be under constant change: songs added, songs dropped, programming shifting around. Stay tuned.
Update: I knew the nerds were out there, but damn, here you go. Every record available on Spotify that has hit the Billboard chart from 1946 through 2011. 5370 songs. A lot missing from the early years, of course, but this should fill up your weekend.
This morning I listened to the latest tracks from Glee to enter the Hot 100. There are five of them, they’re the five top debuts this week, and they’re terrible. I’ve been dreading this moment all summer. I had a feeling the music, and the show itself, would get worse rather than better. I still haven’t seen the show, but it appears I was right on both counts.
For the last few months I’ve been arguing with myself: there’s no reason to expect anything worthwhile to come out of this show, but at the same time, having decided to write this column every week, I felt a duty to review the records, even if, week by week, it felt more and more as if I were trying to put into words what it’s like to listen to the sounds emanating from an abyss. At the same time, I also feel a certain duty to pop music itself, its survival and further growth, which Glee seems intent on preventing, if not killing outright.
After listening to this week’s entries, however, by the end of which I felt like crawling into a fetal position under my desk and crying, I came up with what strikes me as a promising compromise between reality and what I wish was the truth. Starting with the next Hot 100 Roundup, I will no longer review the Glee Cast singles. Since facts are, unfortunately, facts, I will still list the titles and their chart placement, but I won’t make any comment otherwise. I will probably give each one a cursory listen, and I may occasionally make some general comment about the show and its pernicious influence on the culture (I’m working on one right now), but in the main I intend to ignore them. I intend to ignore them with extreme prejudice.
This doesn’t mean that I will leave a gaping hole in the middle of my column. Since one of the things I dislike about the Glee singles is their displacement on the chart of other new, undoubtedly superior records, preventing them from getting the exposure they deserve, I will do what little I can to rescue those records from obscurity (many of them, no doubt, won’t need my help, but it’s the thought that counts). So, for every week that Glee puts songs on the chart, I will dip into Billboard’s Bubbling Under chart (which lists the 25 songs below the Hot 100) and review an equal number of records that haven’t yet made the big chart. If by some odd chance there aren’t enough to fill all the spaces Glee occupies, I’ll just pick some recent record out of the blue that I think is worthy of notice (some weeks I may do this anyway, just because I feel like it, or if I stumble on something particularly worthwhile).
This strikes me as the least I can do in a Gleeified world, short of ranting and crying on YouTube or committing violent acts.
Administrative note: For the sake of clarity, I decided to change the name of this column so people dropping in from Venus will know what they’re getting from the start. Part of the reason is purely mercenary; I figure it will make more sense in search engines (to paraphrase Liz Phair: I want to be read, dammit!). Also, Maura Johnston referred to this as a roundup in a tweet last week, and I liked the sound of it. Thanks, Maura. This will continue to be tagged as “New this week”, for those people who search around here by the tags. I’m also considering an archive page like the one I did for my top ten reviews. That’s for the future, though. As far as this week is concerned…
Lil Wayne featuring Drake—”Right Above It”
#6
I’m sure they thought they had a good idea when they started this track. Whatever it was, they lost it. Or maybe they were wrong to begin with.
Nelly—”Just a Dream”
#12
After nearly disappearing for half a decade, Nelly comes back with a record that pretty much takes up where he left off (this is the guy who recorded with Tim McGraw, remember?). His mix of R&B and rock seems a lot better thought out than Lil Wayne’s, and comes closer to a true synthesis than just about anybody, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t heard it before, or that Nelly has anything interesting to say. Not bad, but nothing special.
Katy Perry—”E.T.”
#42
When you consider that Perry’s fiancee is Russell Brand, who looks as much like an alien as anybody I can think of, this comes across as a good, affectionate joke. If you don’t know that, though, it’s just a mess. What’s interesting is that it holds up much better on the album, where Perry’s vocal affectations actually seem subdued in contrast to what surrounds it, than it does as a single. It also fits in perfectly with the other LP cuts that are about coming to terms with the split between her upbringing and the world she finds herself in now. She only plays dumb, you know.
Rascal Flatts—”Why Wait”
#48
I could make a comment about the continual mellowing and softening of country over the last couple of years, but these guys have been doing it for a decade now. While others of their generation followed The Eagles and Lynard Skynard, Rascal Flatts has stayed strictly pop, so when they want to up the tempo and look for a model in the ’70s they imitate Loggins and Messina. Loggins and fucking Messina.
Maroon 5—”Give A Little More”
#86
I appreciate their tempo and their brevity—this clocks in at exactly three minutes—but they sound mechanical, and they don’t seem able to write a song that has any ebb and flow to it. Their endless funk riffing, however well they do it, is crowded and claustrophobic. They also don’t seem to have a single interesting lyrical idea. I give them points for trying, but this just doesn’t cut it.
Soundgarden—”Black Rain”
#96
If you’re coming back after 12 years of dicking around and cashing in on your past, do you really want to do it with a song that sounds like all your previous records squeezed into one huge cliche? Not that they ever had more than one great album in them, anyway.
Jaq and I are are visiting her family in Indy for the weekend, so Hot 100 and Top Ten updates won’t be posted until Monday. Since Michael Jackson’s records don’t qualify for inclusion in either, the charts this week won’t be an accurate reflection of sales and airplay, anyway. Maybe Billboard should have let the whole chart take the week off. See you on Monday.
My intention from now on is to provide short reviews of every record to hit the Hot 100. Most of these will only be a sentence or two. Some, as you can see, will be longer. It all depends on whether I can think of much to say about records I’ve only heard two or three times. Luckily, this week is a pretty good crop. I only count three clunkers among a whole batch of good to near great records, including a couple of potential top tens. Makes it easy to start this whole process off. Here’s hoping next week doesn’t kill it.
Katy Perry–”Waking Up In Vegas”
#65
Nowhere near as titillating as “I Kissed a Girl”, or as catchy as “Hot ‘n’ Cold”, but nowhere near as awful as “Thinking of You”, either. This is a little clunky, and reaches for effects Perry doesn’t know how to pull off yet, but it isn’t horrible, and it offers the same idiosyncratic lyrical quirks that made even “Thinking of You” an interesting listen. I know a lot of people were hoping that Perry would be a one shot, and I thought the same myself at first, but now I think she’s in it for the long haul. I wouldn’t base that judgment on this record alone, but remember she also co-wrote Kelly Clarkson’s “I Do Not Hook Up”, the best song to hit the Hot 100 so far this year.
Fall Out Boy–”America’s Suitehearts”
#78
Yes, Patrick Stump can sing, and, yes, occasionally Pete Wentz gets off a good lyric, but that’s it. The rest is self-important bombast and overkill. Come to think of it, so are Stump’s singing and Wentz’s lyrics most of the time.
Gorilla Zoe–”Echo”
#82
Strange to say, what this most reminds me of, aside from Timbaland’s “Apologize” of course, is the British high-gloss pop-band Prefab Sprout. Those airy synths, the half-spoken, half-sung lyrics, the slight burr in the voice. Paddy McAloon would have made that chorus soar, though, instead of the little sing-songy thing we get here. Still, a good record, and one that demonstrates that Zoe has far more range than I would have guessed from his previous singles.
Maxwell–”Pretty Wings”
#89
More Al Green than even the latest Al Green, this is so subtly crafted and so unassuming even in its massive artistic intentions that what you think of it may depend on how much you’ve missed Maxwell rather than the song itself. It may also depend on how much you’ve missed classic soul horn charts. I say welcome back to both.
Billy Currington–”People Are Crazy”
#90
I like the title hook, but this take on the legend of Howard Hughes and Melvin Dummar is too lacking in relevant detail to get over (though leaving a six-pack on the grave is a nice touch). I suggest renting a copy of Melvin and Howard instead.
Hurricane Chris–”Halle Berry (She’s Fine)”
#91
The only real joke here is how often Chris repeats Berry’s name. The rest is crude celeb fantasies that reduce Berry to just another stripper, which makes me think the only thing they’ve seen Berry in is The Last Boy Scout. But it’s still pretty funny.
Chrisette Michele–”Epiphany”
#92
This is subtle enough to slide right past you at first, but give it a few tries and it grows on you quick. Ne-Yo provides the hook (a great one) and, I’m willing to bet, a lot of advice on how it should be sung. Michele sounds cool and in control, and never oversings or pushes the emotions. Nowhere near as adventurous as Ne-Yo’s own records, but then, the songs Smokey Robinson wrote for others were never as adventurous as the one’s he recorded himself. Ne-Yo isn’t in Smokey territory yet, but he’s getting closer all the time. I have a feeling he’s just hitting his groove.
Toby Keith–”Lost You Anyway”
#97
It wouldn’t make any difference how good I was to her, Toby laments, she’d have left me anyway. That’s ’cause she knows you’re lying, Toby, it’s ’cause she knows you’re lying.
Charlie Wilson–”There Goes My Baby”
#98
I had no idea the prettiest girls hung out at Macy’s, but Charlie Wilson says so, and he was in The Gap Band, and they knew where all the pretty girls were, so it must be true. Oh, and ladies, if you need your hair done, he has a cousin. I’m not sure if this is intended as parody, but Wilson sure sounds like he’s having fun.
I’m in the midst of redesigning the site. The old site can be found here. I hope to archive it all properly sometime in the future.
