Yet Another Year In America April 8, 2010
The top eight remains* unchanged, with "Hey Soul Sister" still too close to the top at number 3. Top eight seems unusually many for such stasis, but I actually haven't been tracking change versus unchange in the top ten except to notice the top three, usually. Ke$ha's "Your Love Is My Drug" re-enters the top 40, possibly as an official single, though this seems owing to popular demand (last I'd heard, "Take It Off" was being touted), "Your Love Is My Drug" already getting unsolicited airplay, perhaps. In this instance the populace is wrong, since "Your Love Is My Drug" is the least inventive or distinctive track on Animal. Flogs its clichés, eats, shoots, and leaves.**
Usher ft. will.i.am "OMG": Prettiness that feels deliberately rote, like let's take the polished and pretty for granted and get on with this. The energy of the track comes early with drums and vocals crackling in unison on the "oh-oh-ohs." Then the bass enters and the room gets crowded, and by the time the crowd leaves and lets the voice and drums go back to crackling, the crackling feels rote too. "Rote" might just mean - paradoxically, and in this sentence rather than the first - "effortlessness that sounds worn out" (had it not been for the wear and tear, "effortless" would be a compliment, though a misleading one, since a sense of effortlessness usually requires great effort on the part of those who achieve it). So, rote effortlessness that leads to diminishing impact. BORDERLINE TICK.
Diddy - Dirty Money ft. T.I. "Hello Good Morning": Comment from unknown blogger at hiphopmusicdotcom.com, "Diddy isn't a rapper, he's an entertainer above all. And you can sit there and say that the song is gay or weak. But 50 bucks says that when you're in the club feeling up on some girl, the base of this song is going to drop and that's when that girl is going break something proper on your ass and then you are going to have a whole new appreciate for this song." Actually, 50 bucks says that I won't be in a club feeling up some girl when the bass of this song drops. But the woman here saying "We on that" and the bass pushing her along are what propel this, while Diddy's "good morning" feels equivocal - is it a good morning? or are you dreaming? The track shifts mood several times in its four minutes, like the Denver weather. TICK.
*Uncertain whether this should be "remain" or "remains," but I went with the latter since I'm considering "top eight" as a collective singular*** like the top ten or the top forty, and I'm pointing out that this entity is unchanged in its constitution (i.e. song order), not that this song and that song and all songs within it remain unchanged in their individual constitutions. (This latter point is an oblique reference to events in Kyrgyzstan, pronounced /ˈkɜrɡɪstɑːn/; KUR-gi-stahn.)
**Do like the part in the middle eight where Ke$ha breaks into a compulsive-percussive breakbeat repetition of the phrase "your drug."
***Of course, with rock groups, for instance, I've been treating the collective as plural no matter what, simply as a convention since I habitually end up using the third-person plural pronoun as soon as a pronoun is necessary, so decided to go plural all the way. So, you know Public Enemy are punk rockers 'cause they bitch about rock crits and airwaves so much, etc.
Usher ft. will.i.am "OMG": Prettiness that feels deliberately rote, like let's take the polished and pretty for granted and get on with this. The energy of the track comes early with drums and vocals crackling in unison on the "oh-oh-ohs." Then the bass enters and the room gets crowded, and by the time the crowd leaves and lets the voice and drums go back to crackling, the crackling feels rote too. "Rote" might just mean - paradoxically, and in this sentence rather than the first - "effortlessness that sounds worn out" (had it not been for the wear and tear, "effortless" would be a compliment, though a misleading one, since a sense of effortlessness usually requires great effort on the part of those who achieve it). So, rote effortlessness that leads to diminishing impact. BORDERLINE TICK.
Diddy - Dirty Money ft. T.I. "Hello Good Morning": Comment from unknown blogger at hiphopmusicdotcom.com, "Diddy isn't a rapper, he's an entertainer above all. And you can sit there and say that the song is gay or weak. But 50 bucks says that when you're in the club feeling up on some girl, the base of this song is going to drop and that's when that girl is going break something proper on your ass and then you are going to have a whole new appreciate for this song." Actually, 50 bucks says that I won't be in a club feeling up some girl when the bass of this song drops. But the woman here saying "We on that" and the bass pushing her along are what propel this, while Diddy's "good morning" feels equivocal - is it a good morning? or are you dreaming? The track shifts mood several times in its four minutes, like the Denver weather. TICK.
*Uncertain whether this should be "remain" or "remains," but I went with the latter since I'm considering "top eight" as a collective singular*** like the top ten or the top forty, and I'm pointing out that this entity is unchanged in its constitution (i.e. song order), not that this song and that song and all songs within it remain unchanged in their individual constitutions. (This latter point is an oblique reference to events in Kyrgyzstan, pronounced /ˈkɜrɡɪstɑːn/; KUR-gi-stahn.)
**Do like the part in the middle eight where Ke$ha breaks into a compulsive-percussive breakbeat repetition of the phrase "your drug."
***Of course, with rock groups, for instance, I've been treating the collective as plural no matter what, simply as a convention since I habitually end up using the third-person plural pronoun as soon as a pronoun is necessary, so decided to go plural all the way. So, you know Public Enemy are punk rockers 'cause they bitch about rock crits and airwaves so much, etc.