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The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Hot 100 Roundup—4/20/13

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

A surprisingly good week, even if the best of the tracks are imitations of their betters. It’s interesting that many of those being imitated are relatively new artists: The Black Keys, Miguel, and (next week, via Hunter Hayes and We the Kings) Mumford and Sons and fun. A year or so ago, no one would have thought of any of those people as influential in any meaningful way, but now they’re working a sea change on pop radio, one that may be even more profound than EDM. I’m not saying it’s an improvement, but then pop rarely improves, it just sounds different.

Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly—“Cruise (Remix)”
#8

Technically a chart re-entry, but since it’s more a remake than a remix, I thought I’d review it anyway. It’s terrible. Nelly would record with Alvin and the Chipmunks if he thought it would get him back on the charts, and this adds nothing while losing all the rough and ready charm of the original. The chorus still works, but that’s about it. Low moment: the southern white boys greet their guest with “What up, Nelly?” At least they didn’t say “Whoa”.

Chris Brown—“Fine China”
#52

Even when his records are good (and this is one of his best), Brown’s past continues to haunt him, and it doesn’t help that he keeps reminding people of it. I don’t think he does this intentionally, but he seems oblivious to what the words of his songs mean. The title “Fine China” immediately calls up images of Brown as the bull in the shop, and when he assures his lover that he’s not dangerous all you can do is cringe. Musically, though, this is just about perfect, with it’s mix of a Stevie Wonder-ish distorted bass line, Michael Jackson-style hiccups, and a striking, if overzealous, string arrangement. The arrangement is too busy, but that bassline makes up for a lot. Brown has obviously been paying attention to Miguel, and decorates his slightly subdued vocals with slurs and falsettos, though not always in the right places. His falsetto isn’t as pure as Miguel’s, either, and his lyrical ideas (or the ones he buys, anyway), are as empty as always, even when they’re not cringe-worthy.

Jonas Brothers—“Pom Poms”
#60

This is fluff, but I like it, which is more than I can say of any previous Jonas record. Their inability to maintain a career at Disney, though probably not their fault (Disney is much better at grooming female pop stars), is a kind of merit badge: they went through the pop sausage machine and came out whole, and maybe better than when they started. In a show of business savvy, they even bought back their masters (can we look forward to de-Disneyfied remixes? hope not). It’s odd to find them falling under the influence of The Black Keys, but that influence not only inspired them to write (or steal) a wicked bassline, but to clean up and focus their sound. And unlike the Black Keys, the Jonases have a sense of humor. “Pom Poms” is sheer nonsense, but nonsense has always made good pop, and this is a giant step in the right direction.

Nicki Minaj featuring Lil Wayne—“High School”
#83

This is not only Minaj’s best single since “Stupid Hoe”—and a lot more thought-provoking—but she even got a rap out of Lil Wayne that follows a single train of thought for more than two bars (is she the only rapper in the world he feels challenged by, or is she the only person who can whip him into shape?). “High School” may be about nothing more than sex and dope, but it’s also about Minaj being in total control of the sex and dope (or, more specifically, taking over her lover’s drug business when he gets arrested), which means a lot. It also tells a story, which I haven’t heard any rap song on the pop charts do in a long time. The music is good, too, beautiful but vaguely sinister. This may be a step that will eventually take Minaj off the pop charts, but it’s still the right direction.

Little Mix—“Wings”
#98

This thoroughly enjoyable piece of imitative craftsmanship provides the answer to one of the great mathematical questions of the age: how many people of average talent does it take to almost equal one Beyonce? Answer: four singers, one three-man production team, and fourteen songwriters. And she makes it seem so easy.

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How Does One Diffie, Exactly? Hot 100 Roundup—3/30/13

Friday, March 29th, 2013

French Montana featuring Nicki Minaj—“Freaks”
#77

As a rapper, French Montana is negligible, but he sure knows how to pick hooks and choose guests. Nicki Minaj is perfect here, even if you can’t understand half of what she says. Since she not only plays the freak, but goes freak hunting at the same time, she can serve as both a sexual object and a role model (though I have no idea who could possibly follow the pattern she’s set), and blows Montana’s more generic rap sexism away with a giggle and a shout. There’s a reason this is officially Montana’s record, though. His chorus holds the track, which would otherwise be pulled apart by its eccentricities, together.

The Band Perry—“DONE.”
#87

It would seem that the lighter, dreamier, romantic version of The Band Perry, (that is, the one that made their first album) is already history. “Better Dig Two” traded in obsession and psychosis, and now comes “DONE.” (yes, all caps and a period; never say these folks aren’t up-to-date), a break-up song with teeth. The bite isn’t just in the lyrics, either; the music is tougher than anything they’ve done before, but never falls into the pseudo-metal that mars a lot of country music. For that you can thank Kimberly Perry’s power-pop-loving brothers, Reid and Neil, who did the bulk of the writing. In other words, not a one woman show by a long shot. They may be around a lot longer than people thought.

DJ Drama featuring Wale, Tyga & Roscoe Dash—“So Many Girls”
#90

If I had to choose between screaming DJs, I’d choose Drama. He screams less than Khaled, for one thing, and his beats show a lot more variety and subtlety. Khaled scores bigger and better rappers, though, and every once in a while his guests make all the shouting and bombast worthwhile. On “So Many Girls” the raps drag an impressive track down with generic, mindless boasting. Maybe Drama should try releasing unfinished instrumentals. It worked for Baauer.

Jason Aldean—“1994”
#93

This is so goofy that it goes a long way towards making me think Aldean is an actual human being, as opposed to a country cliche machine. How can you help enjoying a song that, instead of paying obeisance to Hank or Johnny or Waylon, serves up some respect to Joe Diffie? This doesn’t make Aldean a genius, of course: he should never be allowed to rap again, or even say hip-hop. I do like the line “teach us how to Diffie”, though, even if it is a little late in the day for dougie jokes.

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Best of the Hot 100, 2012

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

There seems to be general agreement that 2012 was not a good year for pop music—musically, commercially, or for those who cover it. I have my doubts about this (I have my doubts about the whole concept of good and bad years in general, but that’s another discussion), but there’s no doubting the negatives.

The commercial aspect is obvious: CD sales continue to drop, and digital sales aren’t rising fast enough to compensate. Individual track sales are booming, but LP sales are still far behind.

For critics, while the opportunities to publish, or at least self-publish, continue to expand (which may be part of the problem), the possibility of getting paid has dropped. The two most obvious signs of this decline—the firing of Maura Johnston at the Village Voice in favor of the snarky, listicle-based, and largely out of touch music coverage featured in the other Voice Media papers (disclaimer: by extension, I was one of the victims in Maura’s firing); and the failure of Uncool to find crowd-sourced financial backing (largely their own fault, but still)—suggest that support for decent music writing exists, for the most part, only among decent music writers, and stretches not much further than their families and friends.

As for the music, this has been a transitional year, though I wouldn’t call it a complete disaster. The collapse of hip-hop as the reigning genre, a process that started back in 2008, became a general part of the discussion this year, as the music all but disappeared from the top ten. Older stars like Usher (and Beyonce in 2011) found it almost impossible to scale the pop charts, even after they modernized their sound. Of the younger artists, only Nicki Minaj and Rihanna have managed to stay near the top of the charts, but both had established themselves in the years before, and there were no big breakout artists.

In rap, though a number of new artists in the older mold (Wiz Khalifa, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, and others) scored decent hits, none of them have made much of a mark on the pop charts. Far more successful, and claiming the most critical interest over the last year, have been artists like Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, and Future, who follow in the wake of the album that broke the old form’s dominance: Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreaks. 808s is not only one of the markers for the commercial collapse of hip-hop, but has become far more influential musically than anyone expected. West, not surprisingly, is also the only established rapper who continues to have major pop hits.

So far, though, even as hip-hop has faded, nothing has stepped up to take its place, at least not in in comparison to the total domination hip-hop enjoyed for over a decade. Instead, we have three different streams rising up and sharing the spotlight.

The one that has gotten the most attention, and certainly the most press, is the dance and party music that has been stuck with the name EDM. EDM made its first major appearance on the pop charts via The Black Eyed Peas in the late oughts, just as hip-hop was starting its swan dive. The electro-based minimalism of BEP has been largely replaced by various types of eurodisco (Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia), and dupstep (Skrillex, Diplo, Zedd, and many others).

Over the last year it was dubstep that got the most attention. Skrillex’s singles, though never large pop hits, stayed on the lower reaches of the Hot 100 through most of the year, and he sold out everywhere he played (which was pretty much anywhere, and almost every night). Then came Usher’s Diplo-produced “Climax”, one of the best singles of the year and a number one r&b record, but not a big pop hit, most likely because it was too subtle to come across on top forty radio.

After that, it was as if the floodgates had opened, and every wave contained another “drop”. By the end of the year, dubstep had found a place in almost every genre. Not just in r&b and hip-hop, but in sensitive singer-songwriter balladry (Alex Clare’s “Too Close”, produced by Diplo), teen-pop (Carly Rae Jepsen and Justin Bieber), and even, if you stretch the definition a bit, country, in the form of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” The most garish and obvious cash-in came on Pitbull’s “Back In Time” (produced by RedOne). Laying the wobble on Mickey and Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange” created one of the most joyfully ridiculous pop moments this year, and it continues to mystify me that the record wasn’t a bigger hit.

Just behind EDM was teen-pop, mostly in the form of the effervescent Jepsen and the somewhat beleaguered and bipolar (in a relationship sense) Swift. The Disney factory, which for all intents and purposes created teen-pop as a genre, was for the most part silent this year, with only the rehabbed Demi Lovato’s “Give Your Heart a Break” scoring big, although Bridgit Mendler continues to hover on the lower reaches of the Hot 100 with the readymade “Ready Or Not”.

The Disney gap was largely filled by Brits. Boy band One Direction turned the Disney blueprint into gold, pumping out one bright, snappy pop/rock track after another, while Cher Lloyd toughened the stance without losing the cheeky corniness of the genre (if anything she amplified it). “Want U Back” is too mature to fit the Disney mold well, but follow-up single “Oath” could have come off the soundtrack to any Disney Channel musical of the last five years (“Oath” wasn’t a big hit, but it was scooped up by a lot of teens with their iTunes gift cards after Christmas—enough to give the record it’s highest chart placement after it had fallen off the Hot 100 two weeks before; the next week it was gone again).

The third stream produced big hits but hasn’t, as far as I can see, gotten much publicity, or what it has gotten has been for a different reason. I call it the “new seriousness”, though that can hardly be considered a genre name. Most of these records came from what usually get called “indie bands”, though that label becomes more meaningless all the time (and it never meant much). The biggest hits, by Gotye and fun., (Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” started the ball rolling in late 2011), feature intense self-reflection and -doubt, with a heightened, though intellectualized, sense of musical melodrama.

These records aren’t to everyone’s taste, obviously, but the fact that lesser artists (Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men, Ed Sheeran, even American Idol winner Phillip Phillips), have been able to make hits along the same basic lines suggests that there’s a growing sense of—dare I say it?—personal responsibility building in the pop audience. The real proof may come later this year, when the new Arcade Fire is released. If they get a hit single, I’d say the “new seriousness” is officially a trend. If not, it’s a blip. (Meanwhile, the record I thought would be the next big “serious” hit—Passion Pit’s “Take A Walk”—continues to hover in the lower reaches of the chart. It’s dropped off a couple of times over the last three months, but it always comes back).

But was 2012 a mediocre year? I don’t think any year that contained “Call Me Maybe”, “Climax”, and “Adorn” could be called bad, and these judgments are best made in retrospect anyway, so I’m only prepared to go as far as calling it average and transitional. The pop audience is still making up its mind as to what will follow hip-hop as the dominant paradigm, but I would assume it will be a mixture of all three streams, an idea already explored by artists like Robyn and on Jepsen’s critically praised but commercially disappointing album Kiss (again, Arcade Fire’s new album may work as a test case, though I doubt there’ll be much teen-pop influence).

At any rate, my picks for the best songs to make the Hot 100 in 2012 are below. Basically, anything that would deserve a B+ or better—if I bothered to grade records, that is—is included. The only track missing from the playlist is Swift’s “Begin Again”, which isn’t yet available on Spotify. These are not in order of quality, though a lot of my favorites ended up at the beginning and the end, with the slightly lower quality stuff tossed about in the middle. The mix is a mess, but then the year was a mess, and at least this gives a sense of how scattered it was stylistically.

My choices make up slightly less than ten percent of the records that made the chart this year, and as could be expected, some of the inclusions and omissions are questionable, not just by you, but by me as well. Still here it is. (Ten percent, by the way, is what I would consider average. If it were fifteen it would be a good year, twenty a great one. Anything much below ten, though? I don’t even want to think about it).

Enjoy.

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Chart Notes—12/8/12

Friday, November 30th, 2012

There’s not much new to say about features; they increase star power, they give the primary artist a rest (and sometimes a challenge), they give new artists a chance to make a name for themselves, etc. But it’s worth mentioning that there are five debuts on the charts this week that most likely wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the features. Three from Rihanna, two from Nicki Minaj, one from Pitbull. All are from new albums, and all are being picked up from curiosity (especially Rihanna’s “Nobody’s Business”, with Chris Brown) as much as anything else.

This is especially true when you consider that the power of a new album to load the charts with individual tracks in it’s first week of release seems to be fading. At one point or another, every song from Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now”, including nine debuts on the week of release, made the Hot 100. But Red only managed to put five tracks there, despite the album selling over a million copies its opening week. The same is true of Mumford & Sons. One Direction, the only other performers to sell over half a million their debut week, and who are singles band if anybody is, only got two new tracks into the Hot 100 (thought there were a bunch more on the Bubbling Under chart). Neither Rihanna nor Minaj managed to get a Hot 100 record from their new albums (not counting official singles like the number one “Diamonds”, of course. Pitbull meanwhile, whose star appears to be fading (though “Don’t Stop the Party” is turning into a hit), barely squeaks into the bubbling under chart, thanks largely to Christina Aguilera and the a-ha sample the track is built around.

I’ll talk more about The Voice when I do the Hot 100 Roundup, but for now I just want to mention that Cher Lloyd, Rihanna, will.i.am and Britney Spears, and Ke$ha have all been prevented from entering the Hot 100 this week by the competition show’s souvenir singles. But then, how much fire power can these guys still have if they would have debuted so low anyway?

Finally, we have the year’s first new Christmas record, a remake of “Holly Jolly Christmas” courtesy of Lady Antebellum. It’s pretty bad, though the horn section is good. The worst part is Hillary Scott’s misguided attempt to sound sultry. When was Burl Ives ever sultry?

Here are the debuts from the charts I’m following at the moment. This list may expand as time goes on.

Bubbling Under
Loveeeeeee Song – Rihanna (featuring Future) #2
Scream & Shout – will.i.am (featuring Britney Spears) #3
C’mon – Kesha #4
Lean On Me – Nicholas David #7
Gone Gone Gone – Phillip Phillips #12
Who Booty – John Heart (featuring iamSU) #14
Trust and Believe – Keyshia Cole #17
Love Sosa – Chief Keef #21
Feel This Moment – Pitbull (featuring Christina Aguilera) #24

Hot R&B Songs
Loveeeeeee Song – Rihanna (featuring Future) #31
Love Sosa – Chief Keef #38
Nobody’s Business – Rihanna (featuring Chris Brown) #39
I’m Legit – Nicki Minaj (featuring Ciara) #40
Numb – Rihanna (featuring Eminem) #42
High School – Nicki Minaj (featuring Lil Wayne) #44
Neva End – Future #49

Hot Country Songs
Over You – Cassadee Pope #3
Give It All We Got Tonight – George Strait #25
A Holly Jolly Christmas – Lady Antebellum #48

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Half ‘n’ Half
Hot 100 Roundup—8/11/12

Friday, August 10th, 2012

Pusha T & Kanye West—“New God Flow”
#89
West, like he always does, runs away with this record at the end, when his chant promoting G.O.O.D. Music takes over (doing a call and response with himself is not only funny but powerful in a way I can’t quite explain). But Pusha T comes close to being his equal, and gets off a great opening line: “I believe there’s a God above me, I’m just the god of everything else”. He also sums up their pairing better than I ever could: “A hot temper matched with a cold killer”. Near perfect, and my favorite G.O.O.D. single so far.

2 Chainz featuring Kanye West—“Birthday Song”
#91
Those who argue that West is lowering himself by appearing on this record ignore his desire to prove himself the master of every kind of music, including slow grind car bangers. They also ignore the fact that his presence forces 2 Chainz to up his game. 2 Chainz isn’t a genius, but he does better here than he usually does, and if I were the sort of person who spent their time driving slow through the hood I’d be playing this a lot.

Nicki Minaj—“Pound The Alarm”
#92
A sound-alike follow-up to “Starships”—same production team, same basic structure and formula—less daring, but more enjoyable. Of course, that might just be my ears adjusting to the style, if it can be called that. Still hard to tell whether there’s any real point to this sort of hodgepodge other than making hit records. Minaj is too smart (I think) and too sly not to have something up her sleeve, but other than cutting sampling artists like Girl Talk off at the pass (or making their job easier), I can’t quite hear what it is. Unless the cut and paste is the point, in which case we’ve heard it before.

Miranda Lambert—“Fastest Girl In Town”
#93
Back in the days of “Kerosene” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”, songs like this seemed fresh and daring, but now they’re as expected (and not just from Lambert) as patriotic songs are from Toby Keith or truck songs are from everybody. It’s not bad, and almost anything from Lambert is better than 95% of the rest of the country chart, but this is the sort of record she could make in her sleep, and there are moments where it sounds as if she did just that.

Rascal Flatts—“Come Wake Me Up”
#98
I still swear that Rascal Flatts have gotten better since their old label closed up and they moved to Big Machine, but that belief is founded on “Changed”, which is easily the best record they’ve ever made, and not on this, which is more of the same old oversized power-balladry. There are a couple of smaller-scale moments where they sound almost human, but the chorus, and the orchestra that accompanies it, are designed to knock you over with the intensity of the singer’s pain, and unless he’s accidentally cut his hand off or got his penis caught in his fly it just isn’t worth all that noise.

Chris Young—“Neon”
#100
A wasted opportunity. The change-up in the first verse from celebrating the beautiful colors of the flyover states to celebrating the glow of beer signs is a great idea, but Young is too timid and tasteful a singer to capitalize on it. Once he gets that gentle, swelling groove going he doesn’t want to lose it, so even when he sings about getting a buzz on he sounds like he’s drinking ice tea at a church picnic. Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, hell, even Scotty McCreery would know what to do with an idea like this, but Young is too busy being smooth and elegant and emphasizing his craggy lower vocal range to get the point.

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From the Ridiculous To the Sublime
Hot 100 Roundup—7/7/12

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Maroon 5—“One More Night”
#42
Less irritating than “Payphone”, but also less catchy, with both the band and producer Max Martin running on automatic. Since “Payphone” still hasn’t peaked (God help us), I’m not even sure why they released this. To prove to themselves they can still make hits without guest spots?

Justin Bieber
“Beauty and a Beat” (featuring Nicki Minaj), #72
“Right Here” (featuring Drake), #95
How confident is Justin Bieber in his talent? Confident enough that the two LP tracks with the highest profile guests are pure filler. Minaj gets jokey and suggestive but does nothing special, while Drake tries out a new flow and nails it but doesn’t say much. “Beauty and the Beat” has a great break, but for the most part the music is passable and nothing more. These charted only because of Minaj’s and Drake’s fans, and I’ll bet neither one will be released as an actual single.

Meek Mill featuring Drake—“Amen”
#86
Mill has nothing to say beyond the usual rap bragging, but he’s funnier and more clever about it than most: the line about drinking so much that when he takes a drug test he pees rosé is perfect, as are the lines about building himself a crib with a moat. As for Drake, he’s been using his post-Take Care guest spots to work out new vocal and rhythmic approaches, and so far he hasn’t taken a wrong step. He’s almost unrecognizable here, but he’s also very good, and his rap raises what would have been just an above-average track to a higher level. Not that much higher, mind you, but still an improvement.

Kelly Clarkson—“Dark Side”
#93
Clarkson is in a groove where every record she releases has some magical quality that makes it compelling, if not overwhelming. There’s a sense of both comfortableness and humility in the music she’s making now. After a couple of shaky years she trusts herself, her talent, and her audience more than ever, and it shows. More than any other singer I can think of, she wants to draw her listeners into her world, welcome them and reassure them, even when what she’s singing about is pain and the loss of emotional control. This isn’t a brilliant record, but it’s very, very good, almost as good as “Stronger”. For the moment, at least, Clarkson may be the world’s friendliest, most sublime, and perfect pop star.

Easton Corbin—“Lovin’ You Is Fun”
#100
Corbin, along with Chris Young, Luke Bryan, maybe Blake Shelton, and others, is what I call a country nerd. Goofy, smiling, dedicated, their music is always pleasant and well-crafted, but never strikes a nerve. To me, they’re a country version of the second-level power pop bands of the late ’70s, only instead of The Beatles and The Byrds they grew up on Garth Brooks and George Strait. They have talent, and they mean well, but most of them don’t have the stuff. Corbin is slightly better than the pack, but that isn’t saying much.

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Pouting Will Get You Nowhere
Hot 100 Roundup—6/30/12

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

Justin Bieber featuring Big Sean—“As Long As You Love Me”
#21
Bieber isn’t stupid, and he tries harder than he probably even needs to, but he’s still young, and he still feels the need, in order to connect with his fans, to couch even his most serious messages in the form of love songs. Hence this astute but confusing foray into dubstep. Bieber demonstrates true concern for the poor and disadvantaged while at the same time belittling their problems by saying that he could endure it all as long as he has “you” by his side. His vocals have never been better—just listen to his phrasing and dynamics on the line that ends “we could be broke”—and the arrangement has real darkness and urgency to it, but in the end it’s just another love song; he still hasn’t learned to merge rote romance with his more “serious” ideas. He’s right, though, I think, not to throw the romance out—if he could merge the two ideas he’d be on to something deeper than he may yet realize. The fact that he’s trying, though, is already a point in his favor.

Cher Lloyd—“Want U Back”
#75
This is a step up from other British trash pop singers like Jessie J and Rita Ora, but not by much. Details that seem distinctive at first—the frustrated grunting in the background, the pouting phrasing, Lloyd’s feeble attempts to mimic Nicki Minaj’s vocal pyrotechnics—quickly become irritating, and presenting herself as a woman who only want’s her ex back because somebody else grabbed him doesn’t exactly strike a blow for feminism, even she’s only playing a part. Judging, though, by her previous single, “Swagger Jagger” (no, I didn’t make that up), Lloyd is a one-shot and then some. Thank God.

Blake Shelton—“Over”
#89
Shelton has one great commercial advantage: it isn’t necessary to actually listen to his songs in order to appreciate them. You still have to hear them, of course, on the radio, in a bar, or a department store. But all the emotional effect they’re going to have on you can be had at a distance. The words and the details of the arrangements don’t matter. The texture of the music, the dynamics, the tempo, the familiar, reassuring chord changes, that’s all you need to hear to get everything there is out of his records. Listening closely, or even thinking about it, only diminishes the effect. It’s music to do other things to: washing the dishes, fixing the car, shopping. Once you hear the opening acoustic guitar, you anticipate the crash of drums and electric guitar in the chorus, and instead of delivering an emotional jolt, it’s comfortable and calming, just the thing to help you decide if you want to stock up on laundry detergent while it’s on sale. I doubt if this was Shelton’s intent—he may well see his overwrought melodramatic clichés as true emotion and pathos—but it’s still an achievement of a kind. And it’s certainly made him successful.

matchbox twenty—“She’s So Mean”
#91
matchbox twenty write and perform with such smugness you’d think they’d invented dumb. The song is stupid enough, but Rob Thomas’s phrasing, which I’m sure he put a lot of thought and effort into, results in some of the worst singing I’ve ever heard. Thomas is the kind of guy who thinks it’s funny when he pouts and whines like a five-year-old. There’s a reason that woman treats him like shit: he deserves it.

Lee Brice—“Hard To Love”
#96
Hard? Try impossible.

Driicky Graham—“Snap Backs and Tattoos”
#97
The beat gets inventive after a while, and Graham isn’t a bad rapper, but most of this is standard issue stuff, if more fashion conscious than the norm (he also has a rap about high-top sneakers). Hard to get past that name, though. Is that supposed to be a pun on Tricky? Dicky? A mix of the two? Who knows. I doubt we’ll ever hear enough from him to make it worth finding out.

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Usher and the Myth of a Genre-less Future

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Katherine St. Asaph’s piece on Usher, Nicki Minaj, and the demographic triangulation technique of modern pop is essential reading, even if you disagree, as I do, with her critical assessment of Looking 4 Myself and hold a less gloomy view of the current landscape. There’s no arguing that Usher’s album is largely pastiche, drawing on numerous well- or lesser-known sources, but I don’t think it’s the jumble St. Asaph suggests. What holds all the disparate musical backgrounds together is the very thing that St. Asaph says the music hides, Usher’s personality, in particular his overheated romantic/sexual obsessiveness, and, more importantly, his vocals. No matter how much he alters his voice to fit the different musical backgrounds, it’s always recognizably him. The album, in fact, may ultimately be more important for Usher’s vocals than for its electronic backgrounds. The same can be said of Minaj, though she has a harder time making something cohesive out of her varying voices and points of view (the resulting clash, however, is also a large part of her appeal).

At this point I should admit that I also have a hard time with albums where all the tracks seem to draw from the same stylistic source. This has to do, I imagine, with growing up in the 60s and 70s, a time when the variety of styles between tracks was often seen as a large part of an album’s appeal and quality. Stylistic diversity, after all, is a hallmark of The Beatles’s later LPs; ranging over various genres on a single album was seen as a sign of artistic strength, not as a weakness or a genuflection to demographics. As much as I enjoy Born This Way, for instance, which St. Asaph cites as an album that resists the current pop trend, I find it wearing in the stylistic similarity of its songs (though that’s also a result of the loudness and garishness of the mix).

The article also reminded me of some notes I’d made a while back regarding genre and the talk of the creation of a “genre-less future” that was current a couple of years ago. The idea, as I understand it, was that the digital marketplace would create a vast musical melting pot in which genre would disappear, turning all popular music into a kind of giant Bollywood soundtrack (as if it isn’t already). Ridiculous on its surface, the idea was also wrong at its heart, based on an idea of genre mixing that replaced the reality of the situation with a utopian vision of a universal pop style that would be inclusive and accepting of all the world’s music and result in the end of racism, nationalism, and generational conflict, not to mention ushering in an era of world peace (I’m hyperbolizing, but not by much).

I once felt something close to this idea myself (absent the utopian yearnings), but came to realize that the opposite of a pop landscape heavily divided by genre, isn’t one ruled by a universal synthesis, but one focused on individuals in all their multifaceted complexity. In other words, not so much a mixing of genres, but an acceptance on the part of artists, and the audience, of different genres and styles as tools of personal expression, reflecting varying aspects of the world and the culture and the individual lives within it.

The way I’m putting it makes it sounds as utopian as the idea of a universal style, but all I’m trying to suggest is that when you focus on the individual artist as opposed to the genre an artist is associated with, you allow an expansion of style and expression that moves the artist, the audience, and hence the culture, beyond the limitations of genre.

I’m not suggesting that this would become some permanent, ideal state, but I do believe it’s an essential element in the cycles of culture. In time, the personal styles that would develop in this phase would harden into genres of their own, starting the whole cycle over again. For now though, I think this relatively genre-less state is what we’re moving toward, and where we’ll be for the next decade or so. Usher and Minaj may be moving in this direction through commercial calculation, but that calculation is based on following the culture wherever it leads. I’m not sure anyone can be faulted for that.

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Half Full
Hot 100 Roundup—6/23/12

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris—“All Around the World”
#22
You knew the Eurodisco was coming, right? But this is better than expected, with a great beat and all sorts of nice touches (love those live-sounding drum fills). Bieber’s singing continues to be a pleasant surprise, despite his occasional lapses into Chris Brown-style slurring. The inclusion of Ludacris, however, is a major stumble. When was the last time Ludacris contributed anything worthwhile to a track? I honestly can’t remember, and this is even worse than usual.

Lil Wayne featuring Big Sean—“My Homies Still”
#38
The beat isn’t as stunning as, say, “A Milli” or “Lollipop”, but at least it’s in the same ballpark, and suggests that Wayne is coming out of his post-prison funk. His raps aren’t brilliant, but he sounds like he has his energy back, even if he admits that he’s stepping aside from the game (at least the illegal parts of it). What I want to know is if he really spends his spare time skateboarding and listening to Rebirth?

Little Big Town—“Pontoon”
#51
It’s hard not to think of this as the country version of “Call Me Maybe”, a song so happy and infectious that attempting to resist it would cause a minor seizure. Though it never mentions the subject, it’s also about as sexy as country ever gets, with its deep, gently swelling groove and slide guitar creating a simmering heat. Like too many country records, there’s a certain smugness in its craftsmanship, and the sound could be looser to go with the light lyrical content, but otherwise it’s perfect.

Waka Flocka Flame featuring Nicki Minaj, Tyga & Flo Rida—“Get Low”
#72
This is built around one of the best hooks Flo Rida has come up with (which, whether you hate him or not, is saying something), but I have to admit that much of its appeal for me is based on what isn’t on it. No Flo Rida raps about rough sex and blow jobs, for one thing; Waka Flock Flame not yelling another. Nicki Minaj contributes nothing special, and the same goes for Tyga. But they probably felt that they didn’t need to; the hook carries the record along so well you barely notice the paltriness of everything else.

The Lumineers—“Ho Hey”
#90
Try to imagine a combination of .fun and Mumford and Sons. No, no, stop. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.

Imagine Dragons—“It’s Time”
#93
It would be unfair to label Imagine Dragons as merely fun. imitators. Most likely they were making this sort of record anyway, and are being seized on and promoted by the record company in an attempt to cash in. You can’t blame the band for that. But that doesn’t mean this is any good, or that if “We Are Young” didn’t exist anybody would pay attention to them. This sounds like fun. might if they were fans of Kings of Leon. The total lack of emotional confusion and/or subtlety in the lyric doesn’t help any, either.

The Black Keys—“Gold On the Ceiling”
#97
Boogie.

Thompson Square—“Glass”
#100
The worst kind of country acoustic balladry, based on an extended metaphor that might have worked if they hadn’t tried to get too much out of it or if they hadn’t tried to change it up in the last verse: they’re not just glass, but oil and water and gasoline too. That inconsistency might not have mattered, though, if the arrangement and singing weren’t filled through and through with sap. Oddly enough, that makes it even easier to see through them.

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A Perfect Storm

Monday, June 11th, 2012

I like this Zach Kelly piece in the Village Voice about the spread of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” as an internet meme, but I also disagree with him almost completely about what the end result will be. He uses phrases like “mummified” and “frozen in amber” to describe the ultimate effect of the constant flow of tributes, covers, and parodies of the song (a flood that shows no sign of abating). His idea is that the song itself will be buried in the detritus that has built up around it, and will eventually be pulled under and disappear.

As I see it, the effect will be exactly the opposite. The tired old idea of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery is to the point here, and much the same can be said of parody. It’s important to remember that parody is directed more toward objects of affection than hatred, which is the case in satire. The object of parody is never forgotten or lost because it’s the things that are most loved about it that are the actual subject of the parody. All these tributes and covers and mashups aren’t diminishing “Call Me Maybe”; they are constantly reminding us of just how great it is, how influential it is, and how inspiring it is.

Part of Kelly’s mistake, I think, is that he’s viewing “Call Me Maybe” in isolation. It’s another “song of the summer” (an idea that irritates me more the more I think about it, though the commercial reality is undeniable), just like Nicki Minaj’s “Superbass” last year. Comparing the two songs is instructive, but Kelly misses the real difference. “Superbass” is, essentially, a hybrid of the music of two different pop generations: the hip-hop past, and the dance music/teen-pop influenced future. With one foot in each camp, it came across as something of a mess, despite its greatness. That messiness, of course, was part of its greatness, but it was also what prevented it from becoming the overwhelming force that “Call Me Maybe” has become.

But “Call Me Maybe” isn’t just a great pop song: it’s a pop explosion, the breakout moment of a movement and a generation that have been growing up and growing larger over the last five years, a generation that has only been waiting for the call that will bring them to the fore.

Over the weekend, after watching the new Blu-Ray of Yellow Submarine, Jaq and I were inspired to watch A Hard Day’s Night and Help! again, as well. Near the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night, it occurred to me that the Beatles were the perfect storm of pop (not an original idea, I know). That is, they contained all the elements, and found themselves in an atmosphere, to make them more than just pop stars, but a true cultural phenomenon. This was more than being in the right place at the right time; they also possessed all the right attributes: their music was not only catchy and exuberant, packed with earworms that have lost none of their effectiveness fifty years on, it was also very good, and often great, full of surprises as well as references to a pop history that stretched back at least three generations. On top of that, they were personally charming, intelligent, witty, and good-looking.

“Call Me Maybe”, in its own, smaller way, is another perfect storm: an excellent, catchy song, packed with the exuberance of youth, sung by a woman who, though I can’t vouch for her wit or intelligence, having never seen or read an interview, is both cute and charming as a performer. It’s also the right song for the time (if anything, not a moment too soon). It’s not just the song of the summer, it’s possibly the most important record of the year, or the last five, one that people in the future will look back on as a sign of things to come. Mummification isn’t the problem: if there is a problem, it’s going to be in controlling the forces that “Call Me Maybe” is helping to unleash. Not that they can be, at least for now.

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