Top 40 Thread!!!!!

[Alex C]

I remember looking around at music sites and some reviewer called his latest a highly polished and hate filled turd. I don't really have anything against Eminem, but it is as apt a description of what he creates as anything. Nobody ever accused him of trying to be pleasant.

[tricia kidd]

Eminem's two new albums are quite good.  Refill is a lot better than Relapse, but they both count as great albums of 2009.

which is nice because the last good album he did was like 6 years ago.

[Alex C]

Yeah, I didn't make myself clear at all there; I consider such a description more intriguing than off-putting, even if the reviewer didn't mean it that way.

[tricia kidd]

you have to give props to a mainstream rapper making an entire album about being addicted to valium and having the best song on it be a very descriptive and dark number about how his stepfather molested him.

even if you don't like him it's pretty brave when he does entire albums that nobody would ever put on at a party, considering he's supposed to be a "pop" artist.

[Professor Snuggles]

I mean he'll never top Marshall Mathers LP. That record was fucking amazing.

[Johnny C]

I mean he'll never top Marshall Mathers LP.

We only agree as far as this.

[Alex C]

I liked that LP.

[aflowerchild]

The new Jay- Z album Blueprint 3
pretty rad.

[20 jazz funk greats]

i really like this keri hilson song for some reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26W0pysJPjI

[tricia kidd]

The new Jay- Z album Blueprint 3
pretty rad.

really?  i love most of his stuff but thought blueprint 3 was pretty damn weak.  maybe i'll give it another chance but it just felt phoned-in.

[KharBevNor]

One thing I keep noticing about modern pop music (this goes for a lot of rock as well) is the tediously narrow range of lyrical content and themes. Maybe one reason I like old pop music is that they sung about a more fulsome range of things, like nuclear war, cigarettes and being fashionista highwaymen. Everything these days seems to be one of the following:

1) I LOVE U
2) OMG BEING A CELBRITY IS TOUGH D:
3) LOOK AT MY WEALTH AND/OR SEXUAL CHARACTERISTICS. DO THEY NOT THRILL?
4) DANCE, CUNTS.

Is this an unfair judgement?

[20 jazz funk greats]

U BROKE MY HEART </3 is missing from your otherwise accurate list.

yes, pop music is shallow and i am not going to pretend it's not by over-analyzing lady gaga's videos like that dude who wrote that pretentious article about her "topical signature" or saying that millionaires are somehow subversive (really not seeing it!)

[KharBevNor]

Yeah but what I mean is if you look back in time pop artists were tackling a wider range of subjects, and tackling the above subjects in a wider variety of ways.

I'm not saying that pop music has to be referencing proust or something. It's just the above stuff is pretty boring and hard to relate to. Especially if you don't value wealth or find the singers sexy and hate celebrity culture with a passion.

[StaedlerMars]

LOOK AT MY WEALTH AND/OR SEXUAL CHARACTERISTICS. DO THEY NOT THRILL?

sig quote?

[KharBevNor]

Nope. Here's proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ

Why is everyone so languid and emotionally dead? I thought heroin was a 90's thing. Watching these people sing is like when you're watching a porn flick and it becomes increasingly obvious the lady in it is being forced to do this stuff, then you turn it off and your dick wilts and you feel really bad.

[Johnny C]

Yeah but what I mean is if you look back in time pop artists were tackling a wider range of subjects, and tackling the above subjects in a wider variety of ways.

such as

[Johnny C]

holy fuck that's the second time i've seen that dj earworm vid today and it continues to give me a headache

[Johnny C]

Why is everyone so languid and emotionally dead?

maybe it's because it's a selection of certain clips OR maybe because mimicking that your throat is ripping itself out of your neck like you're kenny loggins in the mid-eighties is out of vogue because the only people who bother with it nowadays are Three Days Grace OR maybe it's because who gives a shit people have been low-key lip syncing since the dawn of the music video

[KharBevNor]

I mean the sound as much as the visuals. That video is like snorting a kilo of valium. The soulless eyes are just what sets it off.

Johnny, question. Do you like, for example, Nickelback?

[KharBevNor]

such as

Butt sex, charlotte bronte, comparisons between giving head and nuclear war, the joys of the countryside. The Beatles wrote a pretty damn catchy pop song once about writing pulp novels!

[Johnny C]

Johnny, question. Do you like, for example, Nickelback?

No. Why do you keep conflating "know" with "like"?

[Johnny C]

Butt sex, charlotte bronte, comparisons between giving head and nuclear war, the joys of the countryside.

Two of those are about sex, the other one has its modern update in contemporary chart country, and if I never heard a song which was just about a book someone else wrote for the rest of my life I think I'd somehow live.

[Johnny C]

This is probably personal bias but I'm fucking sick of bands/songwriters/etc. that just lean super-heavily on referencing books and authors and Important Stuff in an effort to stand out, it's so distasteful. Like there's a band around here that has a song that's just a list of things in Vonnegut novels. I'd rather listen to "Birthday Sex" any day of the week, you know?

[Alex C]

I honestly don't even pay attention to the lyrics unless they're being sang so clearly that I cannot help but notice what they are saying. Considering that lyrics are so often misheard and in misinterpreted by audiences, I rather suspect I'm not alone in this.

[the_pied_piper]

Nope. Here's proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ

The Fray are still a band?

[KharBevNor]

Two of those are about sex, the other one has its modern update in contemporary chart country, and if I never heard a song which was just about a book someone else wrote for the rest of my life I think I'd somehow live.

You don't like Wuthering Heights?

Also, the sex thing is part of my problem. Modern pop music has the sexuality of a fifteen year old boy who was late to the masturbation game. There's nothing mature or adult about it at all.

[KharBevNor]

Also I know I do it sometimes but it's not necessary to make every post three posts except where it is part of comic timing.

[StaedlerMars]

This is basically what pop music is sometimes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B86CGQfo8A

[tricia kidd]

this is basically what pop music should be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qahee9DxFQM

[Alex C]

A thousand times yes.


I kinda hate myself for loving New Order though. It's been hard for me to accept that I can actually like cheesey '80s synths and keyboards. I don't say that out of any weird misguided attempt at hipster irony or anything, I just usually find those elements kind of annoying. I can't even listen to "Love will tear us apart" without getting annoyed, and apparently people love that fucking thing. But here I am, loving New Order. It's the god damndest thing.

[Johnny C]

You don't like Wuthering Heights?

I don't like people trying to rewrite it.

I'm also having a hard time thinking of this golden age of sexually mature pop you're thinking of. Was it the decade where "Like a Virgin" was one of the most-played songs?

[ruyi]

I Wanna Be Loved - Dinah Shore (1950)
It Takes Two To Tango - Pearl Bailey (1951)
Hey Good Lookin' - Frankie Lane & Jo Stafford (1951)
The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane - The Ames Brothers (1954)
Experience Unnecessary - Sarah Vaughan (1955)
Let's Do It - Ella Fitzgerald (1956)

So, probably the 50s.

[Inlander]

Except that great swathes of the popular songs of the 50s were actually written in the 20s and 30s, i.e. "the Great American Songbook".

[ruyi]

This is true. But I think a few of those, like "Hey Good Lookin," might have been written in the 50s.

[JD]

Then they used their time machine to record it in the 20s, right?

[KharBevNor]

I'm also having a hard time thinking of this golden age of sexually mature pop you're thinking of. Was it the decade where "Like a Virgin" was one of the most-played songs?

It is definitely not the era of 'my humps'.

[Professor Snuggles]

Guys! The Young Money album is like really really... okay.

[est]

Nope. Here's proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ

Wow, that is like a 4:45 promo for something, or like, a song you'll hear as the backing track for a cinema ad about how great movies are, made up of a montage of famous (shit) movies.  That is the type of soulless mixing it reminds me of.  All it is missing is text over the top advertising whatever it is, or a voiceover or something.

[Johnny C]

give me a day to refine this post but please, PLEASE look at your local top 40 station website to see if they've got a best-of-the-decade roundup cause those are worth several laughs

[Nodaisho]

So, does someone have a definition of top 40? Is it an album that ranks in the top 40 of sales that week?

[nufan]

So, does someone have a definition of top 40? Is it an album that ranks in the top 40 of sales that week?

You'd think, but people seem to be taking it to mean just purely manufactured auto-tuned stuff. Forgetting that shit like this and this and this all got to number 1 (in the UK at least).

[KharBevNor]

Protip: choose better songs to make your case next time.

[Professor Snuggles]

Robyn and Gnarls are both awesome, shut up khar.

Autotune is also awesome.

Top 40 generally means bands that only can afford to do a maximum of 40 dates on a tour, in other words they "top out at 40" hence the name.

[Scarychips]

Auto-tune is awesome when it's well used/not overused. Like on that Kanye West album.

[KharBevNor]

Gnarls Barkley are ok, Outkast are just the wrong side of Meh, Robyn is pretty crap.

[JD]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLr9wUkogdg

[nufan]

Regardless of whether you like them or not, it's kinda hard to argue that people "suck the cock of the big four record labels and buy into the fake hype and marketing of their latest batch of renta-stars" when buying those songs. All of them, but in particular Gnarls Barkley and Robyn came out of nowhere and received little or no promotion upon release.

[KharBevNor]

Robyn is on Island and Cherrytree/Interscope, both owned by Universal Media Group. She used to be on two Sony BMG owned labels.
Gnarls Barkley are on Warner Music Group.
Outkast are on Sony BMG labels.

Promotion doesn't just mean adverts. How do you think the music journalists, DJs and video music channels that built up the hype for these artists heard about them and got advance copies and press packs?

[Johnny C]

Khar I figured you'd be all over songs like "B.O.B."

Also: American Top 40 song of the decade is "Yeah" by Usher ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris. Think about that for as long as you want.

[Nodaisho]

Down III and Alice Cooper's latest album both got into the 20s, so are they top 40? It isn't Alice Cooper's best, but he rocks a top hat better than T-Pain and it isn't bad like Dragontown. Down III is probably their best album, so does that mean I like top 40 music?