"I Am My Own Mommy, The Fuck!" (Top Singles, One-Third Through 2018)
Closed my 2017 Top 100 on March 3, giving myself a sigh of relief that "Gummo" and "The Race" were near misses and I wouldn't have to write about them. But here those guys are anyway, 6ix9ine and Tay-K, sure things on this list for "Billy" and "After You." And I still haven't done my writeup for 2017. Probably don't have much more to say about
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"Ninety One may be the best boyband since the Backstreet Boys" implies that the Backstreet Boys are better than Big Bang, which they're probably not, even if their top songs are a greater top. Certainly they're not as interesting as Big Bang. I was just kinda thoughtlessly falling into the idea of the Backstreet Boys as a gold standard, riffing off of Christophe having once said that Big Bang's "Blue" was the greatest boyband song since the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" (inspiring my Boyband 15 post) and my misremembering Christgau having called the Backstreet Boys the best boyband since the Beatles.
(What Xgau actually wrote was a lot more complicated: he says Backstreet Boys are not just another in a string of girl-directed concoctions - runs through a short historical list of mediocrities with maybe Wham! not being half bad, before arriving at the Beatles whom the Backstreet Boys are not remotely as good as, also not as good as the ( ... )
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"Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" was transcendent, and "I Want It That Way" and "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" were faultlessly tuneful while still having punch, but I find fault with those two anyway for the singing having not nearly enough punch or push or character - character not always being musically wonderful, but the girl confessional wave that wiped out Backstreet - Pink, Michelle, Avril, Ashlee, Lindsay, Aly & AJ, Taylor, Miley, Demi, Selena - was a lot better for it, more powerful and individual and engaging. Blanks can be effective depending on what musical elements seep through the blank. But blanks usually don't out-do the passionate, specific, and idiosyncratic ( ... )
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*Bee Gees hit me strong when I was thirteen, but I didn't end up caring that much. They did turn out a catalog that included some first-rate stuff. In fact they're a Subject For Further Research too, since I basically only know their excellent U.S. debut LP and the disappointing couple of singles that came with their next album, and then the second flowering a decade later right before and after Saturday Night Fever. And "Woman In Love," a Streisand ballad that Barry Gibb created a great shivery Bee Gees-style chorus for.
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Some of the remixes veer towards mesmerizing rather than monotonous, are more basically listenable - it is a powerful track - but none have FGB Duck's shouting excitement, either. On single listens my favorite two so far are Kidd Kenn's and Bangg 3's; I also like Queen Key's and A.K's and Sexy Red's and Fooch's. Do you have any favorites?
In all this I'm eliding* how oppressive the original "Slide" is, not in the sense of "dull" but in the sense of ugly and threatening and I have the sense of being battered listening to it. This though is not necessarily a musical flaw - unless it is, of course, for ( ... )
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I had the same reaction to FGB Duck that you did -- total bore, then something, then nothing again. It's not dissimilar to Wang Rong's "Chick Chick," just a blast of feeling surrounded by something a little blanker, except with Wang Rong the contrast is a little sharper and the surroundings aren't quite so drab.
I mostly hear the Bangg 3 and the Queen Key versions. Key is closest to getting some of the energy of the (parts of the) original, Bangg 3 does something totally different, almost turns it into something pretty.
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