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Hot 100 Roundup—2/13/11

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Dr. Dre featuring Eminem & Skylar Grey—”I Need a Doctor”
#5
This seemingly heartfelt but confusing tribute to Dr. Dre might be touching if it were an Eminem record, or even a Skylar Grey record. But it’s not, so we’re faced with what is basically a paean to Dr. Dre from Dr. Dre himself, produced and co-written by Dre and released under his name. For all we know, the whole thing was his idea from the beginning. Eminem’s rap is so plainspoken that you can’t help but think that he means every word, though that doesn’t make it sound very exciting. Dre, meanwhile, provides some old-hat beats (no, not old-school), and a rap which, after thanking Eminem for his praise, heaps scorn on everyone—that is, the “faggots”—who ever doubted him. Fuck you, too, Doc.

Chris Brown featuring Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes—”Look At Me Now”
#11
Though he may be rehabilitated, Brown’s ego still far exceeds his grasp. As much as I disliked his teenage falsetto, his mature voice is worse, lacking any character or personality whatsoever, especially when he uses it to make stupid dick jokes. Lil Wayne’s contribution is nothing to get excited about. Which leaves Busta Rhyme’s demonstration of breath control as the only interesting thing about this record. Nice to hear he’s still got it.

Glee Cast
“Need You Now”, #72
“Thriller/Heads Will Roll”, #75
“Bills, Bills, Bills”, #79

3 Doors Down—”When You’re Young”
#81
They start off sounding like Darius Rucker, than turn into Daughtry with Nickelback touches. Do these guys know how to cover all the bases or what?

The Lonely Island featuring Nicki Minaj—”The Creep”
#82
It takes real effort to turn Nicki Minaj into just another unfunny singer/rapper on an over-arranged comedy record, and you can feel the strain. You’re comedians guys; it’s not your job to make real music. Mediocrity isn’t funny.

Jessie J featuring B.O.B.—”Price Tag”
#88
A mixture of Natasha Bedingfeld, VV Brown, and Lily Allen, with all the appropriate vocal inflections and musical hooks, only with less to say (even than Bedingfeld, who trades in nothing but self-help these days). Dr. Luke provides the hooks, all of which sound vaguely familiar, either from his own productions or other sources. All the same, I welcome this record. Not because it’s good itself (though it isn’t bad), but because it may open the door for others who are better. It may also shut them down, but that’s the chance we’ll have to take.

Panic! At the Disco—”The Ballad of Mona Lisa”
#89
So beautifully produced and arranged—and catchy, too—that you might end up feeling that you know what it’s about. Let me know if you do, will you? If you can convince me that it isn’t just a misogynistic rant, all the better. What do you think that exclamation point stands for, anyway?

Mumford & Sons—”The Cave”
#99
Just like Panic! At the Disco, these guys are masters at creating records that you swear you understand until you actually try to put that understanding into words. I have nothing against vague emotions, but if you’re going to cram this many words into your songs they should connect in some way to some idea somewhere, and not just be a bundle of pseudo-folk-wisdom tropes.

Bubbling Under:

Mary Mary—”Walking”
#107
Elementary gospel music—almost literally; the second verse sounds like the soundtrack to a short film on Sesame Street. I like the application of religion to the everyday, and the fact that they don’t mention Jesus until the very end, but the music itself is too everyday, and this could use a little Christlike passion. Not bad, but not exciting.

El DeBarge featuring Faith Evans—”Lay With You”
#112
If you’re going to engage in ’80s nostalgia, this is the way to do it, with somebody who’s actually from the ’80s and who, even after years on the sidelines, doesn’t seem to have lost the touch. It isn’t progress, but it sure sounds good.

Tinie Tempah featuring Eric Turner—”Written In the Stars”
#117
Like his fellow newcomers to the states Jay Sean and Taio Cruz, Tempah is already a huge star in the UK, but in his case it’s difficult to understand why. His not a terrible rapper, and I like his dancehall touches, but otherwise there’s nothing to distinguish him besides his accent, which makes him unusual here but ten-pence-a-dozen in the UK. The song is ordinary, as well. And God help me, I never want to hear Eric Turner breathe again; he sounds like he’s having an asthma attack.

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Hot 100 Roundup—1/2/11

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

The Lonely Island featuring Akon—”I Just Had Sex”
#30
Akon is funny, and his willingness to parody his persona makes me respect him a little more, but he’s not as funny as T-Pain was on “I’m On a Boat”, and the jokes, even when they’re good, are obvious. The formula is getting old, too. There are times when this sounds exactly like Flight of the Conchords, only not as good.

Brad Paisley—”This Is Country Music”
#65
Paisley has enjoyed an aesthetic and commercial peak over the last two years, the sort of thing only the best can pull off, and you can’t blame him for engaging in some sentimental celebration. The sentiment wins out over the celebration, though, and once the cliches start piling up even Paisley’s guitar can’t dig him out from under. It all feels tossed together, and not in a good way.

3Oh!3—”Hit It Again”
#66
Catchy enough, and less offensive than usual, which isn’t really a compliment. Record by record they become more ordinary, and this features a chorus that’s as close to old-fashioned rock and roll as they’ve ever come. The one thing the world doesn’t need.

Troop 41—”Do the John Wall”
#81
More teenage hip-hoppers with another new dance, this one based on basketball (the jump-shot move is silly even by fly-by-night dance trend standards). They’re from North Carolina, so the sound is more Dirty South/Soulja Boy than jerkin’ or dougie—more baroque and with more fuzzy synths. The spirit and the energy are the same, though, and I can’t think of anything that would be better for pop’s future than cross-country dance-move battles. There must be room on cable for that somewhere.

B.O.B.—”I Am the Champion”
#85
I still have my doubts about B.O.B.’s strengths as a rapper—especially when he follows up a claim to never being imitative with spoken asides that sound exactly like Will Smith—but he knows how to pick hooks and beats, and this is his best record since “Nothin’ On You”. His nonchalant self-absorption is almost charming, and he knows how to brag without being overbearing. If anything, he’s less of a goof here than on previous records, but he still sounds like he’s after nothing but a good time.

Train—”Shake Up Christmas (Coke Xmas Anthem)”
#99
Since almost every band in the world hoped to wake up Christmas morning with a licensing or endorsement deal in their stocking, I can hardly blame these bozos for locking up this year’s official Coca-Cola Christmas song. Not that they need the money or the attention, but if they want to be The New Seekers of the two-teens that’s their privilege. Just as it’s my privilege to never listen to it again unless I’m stuck in a mall.

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New this week—5/9/10

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Glee Cast
“One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not a Home” (featuring Kristin Chenoweth), #53
“Beautiful”, #61
“Fire”, #64
“A House Is Not a Home”, #70
“Home” (featuring Kristin Chenoweth), #90
Though the rest of this week’s crop is made up of the usual sub-par versions of overly-familiar pop songs, I need to be fair and admit that Kristin Chenoweth’s take on “One Less Bell To Answer” (at least the first three minutes of it) is easily the best thing Glee has produced yet. But I also need to point out that in keeping with the show’s growth as a marketing tool, the song is a cross-promotion for the Broadway revival of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David/Neil Simon musical Promises Promises, in which Chenoweth stars. “One Less Bell” wasn’t part of the original show, but has been added to the new production. In other words, it isn’t technically a Glee song at all (by the sound of it, the arrangement was taken straight from the musical), thereby keeping the show’s unbroken record of awfulness intact.

The Black Eyed Peas—”Rock That Body”
#62
It’s too late to convince the haters, of course, but this is my favorite track from The E.N.D. It rocks, it discos, it punks, it calypsos, and it turns Fergie into the pure special effect she was born to be.

Shakira—”Gypsy”
#65
Not as profoundly silly as “She Wolf”, but it has its moments. “I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of gypsies, but that only makes the line jump out even more. Sexy and silly at the same time—a pretty neat trick.

B.o.B. featuring Rivers Cuomo—”Magic”
#83
As bizarre as this pairing may seem, I have to admit that there’s something both wonderful and ridiculous about Cuomo bragging about his flow, especially on a chorus that’s livelier than anything Weezer themselves have done in years. As for B.o.B., once again he gets lost somewhere in the background. Maybe that’s where he belongs. I respect him more for his realizing it.

Mike Posner featuring Big Sean—”Cooler Than Me”
#85
I liked the chorus the first time I heard it, but by the time Posner had rambled through it in his self-satisfied sing-song for the fourth time, with nothing but a mediocre rap to break the pattern, I was already bored with it. Now I don’t care if I ever hear it again.

Jerrod Neimann—”Lover, Lover”
#89
Country has been weird lately, and I mean that in the best possible way. Though loud, good ol’ boy country hair metal hasn’t gone away, there are a whole bunch of sort-of newcomers on the scene who seem to take a more traditional, slightly laid-back approach (they all tend to cite George Strait as their biggest influence). Neimann has been hanging around in Nashville for almost fifteen years, put out a couple of albums on independent labels, wrote a few songs that found a place on big name LPs (Garth Brooks, Chris LeDoux), and now here he is with his first major label single. Lyrically it’s nothing special, but the music, which mixes both soul and country-gospel influences, is wonderful. It isn’t perfect—it gets too soft at the end and starts to drift into early Doobie Brothers territory—but it’s another pleasant surprise in a genre that two years ago was as predictable as they come.

Big Time Rush—”Halfway There”
#93
Another attempt by Nickelodeon to seize some of the tween-pop landscape that Disney has already conquered. They don’t seem to be making the same investment in songwriting, though; even the worst songs on the High School Musical soundtracks were better than this. Maybe someone should tip these kids off to Zeno’s Paradox so they can get out while they have the chance.

David Guetta & Chris Willis featuring Fergie and LMFAO—”Gettin’ Over You”
#95
Up until now, I’ve never been sure what, aside from the occasional rap, Apl.De.Ap and Taboo actually contributed to The Black Eyed Peas. Now, after hearing this garish mess and Usher’s will.i.am-produced “OMG”, I finally have an answer: they tell will.i.am and Fergie when to stop. If only somebody else would.

Alpha Rev—”New Morning”
#100
A couple of weeks ago I suggested that there wasn’t a single song on the Hot 100 that was worse than anything by the Glee Cast. That is no longer true.

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New this week—5/2/10

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Glee Cast
“Like A Prayer”, #27
“Borderline/Open Your Heart”, #72
“Like A Virgin”. #87
“4 Minutes”, #89

Madonna has taken a lot of criticism for her voice over the years—lack of strength, lack of range, lack of flexibility, yada yada yada—but that doesn’t mean just anybody can sing her songs. Exactly the opposite, in fact; her songs are so carefully designed to take advantage of the strengths of her voice and hide its weaknesses that they’re nearly impossible for anyone else to bring off—especially non-singers like the Glee Cast. When I say non-singers I don’t mean that they don’t have decent voices, or aren’t capable of hitting the notes, I mean quite literally that they don’t sing—they act. There’s a huge difference between singing a song and acting a song. Acted songs tend to have less depth, fewer emotional shades, less, to put it simply, musicality. In theater, in movies, on television, acting a song is fine, because there are so many other things going on, but for listening in isolation, in the home, or even through earbuds on the bus, they’re mostly flat, one-dimensional, banal, and obvious in all the worst ways. The main reason Glee’s music is so bad, and why I find it so infuriating, is that for the most part they’re taking songs designed for singing and acting them and then releasing them as records as if they were actually in the business of making music rather than TV. I’m probably taking it much too seriously, but these records are consistently terrible, and I find it maddening. Hearing these folks sing is almost as painful as watching Madonna act.

B.o.B. featuring T.I. & Playboy Tre—”Bet I”
#72
B.o.B. has talent, but if he keeps releasing records where he’s outshown by his guests no one’s ever going to notice. T.I. may be B.o.B.’s mentor, but he sounds like he doesn’t even know, or care, whose record this is. He’s so happy to be out of jail and working again you could ask him to contribute a verse to a remix of the Glee Cast’s “Bust A Move” and he’d probably say yes.

Shontelle—”Impossible”
#88
I like the way the melody takes little twists and turns, adding a level of emotional vulnerability, but in the end those twists don’t take you anywhere and it turns into just another hip-hop ballad. Nice try, though.

Reba—”I Keep On Loving You”
#90
Classy as country gets, and the first verse is brilliant (even in country you don’t get too many references to Job these days). The second verse isn’t brilliant at all, though, and after that the chorus gets repeated a few too many times. Reba’s voice, thicker with age, and with more emotional depth as a result, almost carries it through, but by the end you’ve had more than enough.

Tim McGraw—”Still”
#91
McGraw’s latest sop to family, country, and god. I appreciate his experimentation in terms of instrumentation and arrangement, but the song itself is dull as dirt. And what’s with the last verse, where McGraw thanks God that his church is still there for him to go to? Did the Taliban threaten to blow it up? Did liberals threaten to close it down? Or did Tim’s own sinful ways keep him from its doors? Leaving a question like that hanging just isn’t fair.

Ciara featuring Ludacris—”Ride”
#93
The unfortunate truth about Ciara’s records, at least since she decided to become a “class” act, is that, well-crafted and carefully thought out as they may be, they’re also boring. This is the worst offender so far. As for Ludacris, though he’s still capable of being funny (check out the remix of The-Dream’s “Love King”), here he’s just crude.

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New this week—4/25/10

Monday, April 26th, 2010

B.o.B. featuring Hayley Williams—”Airplanes”
#12
The airplanes as shooting stars image is old, but it’s a good one, conjuring up a specifically urban sensibility, and as a somewhat self-pitying description of the travails of the rap life, B.o.B’s verses aren’t bad (I especially like the image of him holding his cell phone in his lap, hoping it doesn’t ring). But make no mistake: Hayley Williams owns this record, elevating both the imagery and the rap far above any level they could reach on their own. To have a voice with the strength to stand up to punk/metal and still have that vulnerable ache in it is a gift, and Williams knows exactly what to do with it. The official artist credit, by the way, reads “B.o.B. featuring Hayley Williams of Paramore“, in case anybody should get the ridiculous idea that this is her first move toward a solo career. Uh-huh.

Christina Aguilera—”Not Myself Tonight”
#23
Reportedly a lot of people think Aguilera is pulling a GaGa on this generally excellent but frustrating record, but that’s nonsense—she started down this road long before GaGa appeared on the scene. The more obvious influence is Britney Spears’s Blackout, which “Not Myself Tonight” copies in overall sound and feel, even if its rhythm track is more straightforward. That doesn’t mean GaGa isn’t an influence, though, or, for that matter, Beyonce. Which leaves Aguilera with the same problem she’s always had, that of a talented and intelligent performer who tries too hard and has yet to establish any definite personality on her records. The title begs the question: when was she ever herself?

Glee Cast
“Gives You Hell”, #32
“Hello”, #35
“Hello Goodbye”, #49
“Hello, I Love You”, #66
At their best the Glee Cast records are a mix of overmiked Broadway and sober karaoke, fun sometimes but negligible, and that’s all they’ll ever be. At their worst, which is most of the time—this week they turn The Beatles’s lamest single into something indescribably awful—they’re the absolute worst; I can’t think of a single record to appear on the Hot 100 last year that wasn’t better than all 26 of the Glee tracks that made the chart. But that’s not why I hate these records. I hate these records because they clog up the Hot 100 with tracks everybody knows are nothing but souvenirs, and keep more worthwhile records from making an impact. As Glee proves, this is the latest era of instant hits, and a week or two difference may well destroy the chances of a much better record getting on the charts. On TV it’s fine, and if they want to release a soundtrack album at the end of each season, like Hannah Montana, that would be OK, too. But putting this crap out every week and preventing worthier artists from gaining exposure isn’t just crass commercial exploitation, it’s a kind of decadence.

Jason Aldean—”Crazy Town”
#92
Though it’s nice to hear a fun country rocker that isn’t just about how great it is to be A: country, and B: a rocker, this is too loud and shrill to be C: fun. I don’t buy the idea that Nashville is Hollywood with twang, either. Vegas is more likely, if only because it’s where a lot of these good ol’ boys are probably going to end up. The big names, anyway—the rest will grind out their days on the smaller casino circuit. I mean, you don’t expect to find anything like this in Branson, do you?

Brad Paisley—”Water”
#100
This isn’t Paisley at his best, but it isn’t his worst, either, which means that it’s better than most of the country singles out right now, even if it isn’t anything new. As usual, there are both brilliant touches—the opening line about his father inflating the wading pool is perfect—and tasteless ones (a wet t-shirt contest? C’mon, Brad). Plus tons of guitar, of course, which I could listen to for hours, even if he is just showing off.

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New this week—4/18/10

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Jack Johnson—”You and Your Heart”
#20
Jack Johnson hates haters. Ooh, he hates those haters. He hates haters because they do hateful things like have standards and because their hearts are somehow disconnected from their bodies. (Jack Johnson’s heart is connected directly to his body, and he’s got the song catalog to prove it.) He hates haters so much he lets his guitar distort—just a little, not too much—and convinces his band to play like they hate haters, too. He almost sounds angry. If those haters keep hating he might just go insane. Let’s try it and see.

Jamie Foxx Featuring Justin Timberlake & T.I.—”Winner”
#28
Like all of Foxx’s hits, this one gets the credits wrong—it should be “T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake and some other guy”. I’d give Foxx credit this time out for rapping in his own voice, except he doesn’t have one (he doesn’t dare imitate anybody who can actually sing or rap without technological aid). He is skillful at getting good material out of his “guests”, though. Timberlake actually sounds interested, and T.I. walks off with the record, which he treats as if it were his latest comeback single. Considering how his first comeback single is doing, it may well be.

B.o.B.—”Don’t Let Me Fall”
#67
Aside from the fact that B.o.B. can’t sing, isn’t it a little early in his career to be trotting out the rap equivalent of a demographic-widening power ballad? That’s the third single, dude. Second single’s supposed to be the damn!-look-at-how-famous-I-am record. You’re getting everything out of order.

Nickelback—”This Afternoon”
#84
Tempo-wise, these guys have only one gear, second, but they seem to think that being loud and gruff makes up for this. It doesn’t. This is all about chilling on a sunny afternoon, but it doesn’t chill, and it isn’t sunny, and it forces me to the conclusion that their deliberate lack of subtlety isn’t a stylistic choice or commercial calculation–they honestly lack the ability to play any other way. I’d almost feel sorry for them if I thought they were smart enough to recognize it.

Miranda Cosgrove—”Kissin U”
#87
For it’s latest foray into the Disney-owned tween pop universe, Nickelodeon brings out the big guns, hiring Dr. Luke to produce what sounds like a Kelly Clarkson reject sung by a teenage girl who’s been listening to too much Ke$ha. Not that Dr. Luke isn’t constantly trying something new; here he experiments with the idea of a chorus that is actually more sluggish than the verses. Needless to say, this isn’t a good idea, but no one involved with this record seems to have noticed that, or to care.

Alicia Keys—”Unthinkable (I’m Ready)”
#88
Wait a minute—how old is Alicia Keys? She must be old enough to not consider sleeping with somebody as “the unthinkable”. Is this written from a teenager’s perspective? The music, all slow-grind and heavy percussion, certainly doesn’t sound like it. If it’s about cheating there’s no sign of that either. Does she have any idea what she’s doing at all?

Breaking Benjamin—”Give Me a Sign (Forever And Ever)”
#97
I’d have a lot more respect for Christian metal if what I heard of it wasn’t so one dimensional. It’s all about suffering and pain, the sonic equivalent of The Passion of the Christ, with flagellation and crucifixion replaced by headbanging and bleeding ears. I suppose it’s meant to be cathartic, but how can it be when they do the same thing over and over again? Apparently, as that model Christian, Jacqueline Susann, put it, once is never enough.

Kelly Clarkson—”All I Ever Wanted”
#99
God, I wish Kelly Clarkson picked better material. She sings this perfectly, but it isn’t much of a song, and though I don’t expect masterpieces four singles into a Clive Davis-managed pop album this should be better than it is. As a more subdued version of the stuff she did on My December I suppose it could be considered a step in the right direction, but the real problem with that album wasn’t musical overkill (though that was a problem) so much as the weakness of the material. Maybe this will grow on me the way “Already Gone” did. But “Already Gone” stayed in one place and drove its point home. The greatest singer in the world couldn’t save a song as confused as this one.

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New this week—2/7/10

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

For the second week in a row, the debuts are dominated by charity singles for Haiti. This week, though, except for Eddie Vedder’s wonderful cover of Bruce Springsteen, I’ve decided to let them pass without comment. I don’t have the heart to badmouth any more records pointed at such a worthy cause (as opposed to last week, when I was feeling cynical). Just for the record, though:

Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock, Keith Urban—”Lean On Me”, #47
Taylor Swift—”Breathless”, #72
Jennifer Hudson featuring The Roots—”Let It Be”, #98

The rest of the week’s crop, though, is surprisingly strong. Only one dud, and at least two tracks that will probably stand among the best of the year, at least in my estimation.

B.O.B. featuring Bruno Mars—”Nothin’ On You”
#89
Maybe I’m just a sucker, but I love this record. There’s nothing new here, and given time I could probably trace the original source of every hook (I wouldn’t need to look far, either), but it’s so beautifully put together I don’t see the point. As an encapsulation of a certain strain of southern hip-hop it’s just about perfect. It’s probably too soft for some people (there’s not single grating or negative moment in it), and it lacks a certain brashness, but that just means it’s as purely pop as you can get. I, for one, can never get enough of that sort of thing.

Eddie Vedder—”My City Of Ruins”
#92
I have my doubts about the gospel choir, but that’s the only weakness I can find in this performance, which not only cuts the Bruce Springsteen original, but just about everything that Eddie Vedder has ever done as well. Because Vedder is something of a softy, his voice lacks the stridency and the stiffness that often mars Springsteen’s own performances, and all the beauty and regret in the song comes though in a way Springsteen didn’t quite manage. Being reminded of what Vedder can do with a great song is enough to make me wonder if the only thing that’s really wrong with Pearl Jam is that they write their own material.

Jaheim—”Ain’t Leaving Without You”
#96
Since few people make records like this piece of early ’80s-style funk anymore, it sounds fresh and appealing. If this actually were the early ’80s, though, it would be just another one, and only slightly above average, at that.

Jason Michael Carroll—”Hurry Home”
#99
What’s worse than a manipulative country weeper? How about a manipulative country weeper that doesn’t succeed at manipulating anybody?

Roscoe Dash featuring Soulja Boy Tell’em—”All the Way Turnt Up”
#100
Whatever else you might think, there’s no denying that this song lives up to it’s title, with it’s crossing lines of melody and rhythm jacked up so high that after about two minutes it become wearing. As a flashing of musical and production skills it’s both impressive and intentionally obnoxious, and up to the point where my ears start to bleed I like it a lot. I do, however, find it impossible to tell Roscoe and Soulja Boy apart—though that might be intentional, I suppose.

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