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Benne
Sep 2, 2011

STOP DOING HEROIN
This is the thread to discuss the latest/greatest in pop music.

:siren: THIS IS A NO THREADSHITTING ZONE :siren:

I know the very subject of pop music brings out the worst trigger-happy bufoons on the Internet, but this thread is to have an actual discussion about pop, not to be the 84,328,943rd online nerd to proudly proclaim you don't listen to such banal nonsense.
I will refer to NMD's rule here:

quote:

4) NO TROLLING. this is obviously a general rule for SA but I want to stress it. People have different tastes in music. Don't waste people’s time crapping on a thread just because you hate a certain band or genre. This will get you banned. If you disagree with someone post about it but make sure you include reasons why you disagree.

If you're not interested in discussing pop music, there's about a billion other places on the Internet to say you don't care.

So why pop music?

For starters, we're not in high school anymore, it's okay to like this poo poo.

But for a real answer, pop music, and the Billboard charts in particular, are a really interesting snapshot of where the cultural zeitgeist is trending. Given the nonstop turnover in today's Twitter age, the trends can literally change by the day. 8 years ago crunk was all the rage. 2 years ago the Euro-dance wave finally made its way overseas, and we got a bunch of vauge "party" songs with house beats. And then there is the occasional breaking of the mold, such as in 2012 when offbeat indie bands like fun. and Gotye dominated the charts.

Basically, the pop scene never gets boring. As I type this OP, dubstep is where it's at (including one of the newer Justin Biebeer singles), but this industry is changing almost too fast. Your latest bandwagon-jumping hit may be passe before it even hits the charts--I guarantee we'll be seeing 2,500 Gangnam Style copycats over the next few months.

But like I established at the start of the OP, this thread isn't about making GBS threads on pop music. It's about celebrating it. Let's all get together and remember the first time we threw our arms up to "Call Me Maybe" without feeling any shame. Talk about the latest singles. Share your favorite hits from years ago. Have some loving fun--that's what pop music should be about in the first place.

Benne fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Jan 28, 2013

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ninjahedgehog
Feb 17, 2011

It's time to kick the tires and light the fires, Big Bird.


So who else is really annoyed that Maroon 5's One More Night kept Gangnam Style from hitting #1? Seriously, like it or not, that would have been historic. Foreign language songs have hit the top (99 Luftballoons, Macarena, can anyone think of more?) but this would have been the first completely viral #1 hit, right? Not to mention it would have made 2012 the weirdest year ever, between it and all the idie stuff back in the spring.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
"Gangnam Style" outsold and out-streamed "One More Night" in nearly every week the latter was number one, so if Billboard was operating under the same formula as it did a decade ago, "Gangnam Style" would have been guaranteed the top spot. At the moment, however, their method of calculating chart points is biased toward radio airplay and "One More Night" was an absolute monster on American radio in the latter half of 2012.

The balance of the three main components used to determine chart positions on the Hot 100 - namely airplay, sales and streaming - is a point of contention among chart watchers and it's situations such as this one (and, as a further example, the refusal of Taylor Swift's record company to release any of her new music to streaming services such as Spotify) that puts it in the spotlight. Contrast this to the situation in Britian, where the Official Charts are purely sales-based.

Nevertheless, I believe it had the result of making "One More Night" one of the most anonymous long-running number one singles of the past decade. To elaborate, in their weekly chart updates (at one point, they were daily updates, which is almost unheard of for Billboard), Billboard made Psy the star of the show. The fact that Maroon 5 had achieved one of the biggest hits of the year was an afterthought; they were there for "Gangnam Style" to struggle against, not because "One More Night" was particularly meritorious on its own.

Would "General Chart Discussion" be within the purview of this thread?

Cool Blue Reason
Jan 7, 2010

by Lowtax
I think that the new Justin Bieber album is actually pretty ok, but the new Ke$ha is pretty bad. That's all I know about pop music released in the last year.

#Twitter #Pop #Justin Bieber

ninjahedgehog posted:

So who else is really annoyed that Maroon 5's One More Night kept Gangnam Style from hitting #1? Seriously, like it or not, that would have been historic. Foreign language songs have hit the top (99 Luftballoons, Macarena, can anyone think of more?) but this would have been the first completely viral #1 hit, right? Not to mention it would have made 2012 the weirdest year ever, between it and all the idie stuff back in the spring.

I think that people who like Gangnam Style are racist.

#WhitePrivilege #FunnyFatAsianMan

Acute Grill
Dec 9, 2011

Chomp
How are we defining pop music here, exactly? Just a general discussion of whatever's charting right now?

I gotta say that I'm pretty happy about bands that would usually be unable to break out of the indie and alt charts showing up on ranking pretty well on Billboard's Hot 100. Stuff like Imagine Dragons, fun., and Gotye. As someone who doesn't particularly care for dance music and has a pretty limited palette for hip hop and R&B, the last few years of radio airplay have been kinda painful.

I'm particularly happy about Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks" climbing up to 25, as the band's been a recent obsession of mine.

Scorched Spitz
Dec 12, 2011
Sitting at the top of the Hot 100 is "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. I'm still meh to it. It's more interesting than some of the other singles from The Heist, but sitting in the waiting room is more interesting than the beats to "Same Love" and "Wing$".

Benny the Snake
Apr 10, 2012

GUM CHEWING INTENSIFIES
I've been hearing "Locked out of Heaven" by Bruno Mars a lot. Especially at my bar where it's on quite a bit. I like it if only because my friend Chris will dance to it when she's tending bar :3:

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



I like the idea of "Thrift Shop" more than the actual song. It's good that a more counter-cultural, low production song can make it to the top of the charts, especially after, what, a year after its original release? The lyrics are fine, but the beat's just anemic.

Scorched Spitz
Dec 12, 2011
I have the opposite problem. I don't mind the beat and the hook's pretty good, but I just don't like Mackelmore as a rapper. He isn't engaging in the slightest.

ninjahedgehog
Feb 17, 2011

It's time to kick the tires and light the fires, Big Bird.


Kalos posted:

How are we defining pop music here, exactly? Just a general discussion of whatever's charting right now?

I gotta say that I'm pretty happy about bands that would usually be unable to break out of the indie and alt charts showing up on ranking pretty well on Billboard's Hot 100. Stuff like Imagine Dragons, fun., and Gotye. As someone who doesn't particularly care for dance music and has a pretty limited palette for hip hop and R&B, the last few years of radio airplay have been kinda painful.

I'm particularly happy about Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks" climbing up to 25, as the band's been a recent obsession of mine.

I'd be okay with using this thread for general chart-watching. There's usually a song or two I'm rooting for to climb the charts, and Little Talks is it right now. Go, weird Icelandic band who never would have had chance any other year besides this one, go!

ZakAce
May 15, 2007

GF

ninjahedgehog posted:

I'd be okay with using this thread for general chart-watching. There's usually a song or two I'm rooting for to climb the charts, and Little Talks is it right now. Go, weird Icelandic band who never would have had chance any other year besides this one, go!

When was the last time any Icelandic group or act got near the top of the charts? Björk?

BTW, I saw those guys at Laneway (a music festival) in Auckland yesterday. They're pretty good live.

High Warlord Zog
Dec 12, 2012

Metal Loaf posted:

...if Billboard was operating under the same formula as it did a decade ago, "Gangnam Style" would have been guaranteed the top spot. At the moment, however, their method of calculating chart points is biased toward radio airplay and "One More Night" was an absolute monster on American radio in the latter half of 2012.

The whole airplay effects chart position thing bugs me. It seems that it allows record companies to rig the list in favour of the brand new singles (even though the album has been out six months or more) they allow "hottest hits" radio stations to include in their playlists.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
The policy was instituted as a response to criticisms directed at Billboard in the 1990s, when singles were ineligible for the chart if they didn't have a physical release. Songs like "Champagne Supernova" and "D'You Know What I Mean?", "Fly", "Torn", "Don't Speak" and "Iris" were all huge radio hits but they didn't make a significant impact on the Hot 100 because they had either no or only a limited release as a physical single.

The Hot 100 purports to measure the popularity of a song, and there's more to popularity than the number of units sold. That being said, I think they overcorrected, and I think that while the airplay component should certainly be retained, sales should bear more weight in the overall rankings. That's just me, though.

Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jan 28, 2013

Alvarez IV
Aug 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 8 years!
Regarding the mold being broken by indie rock; I'd peg that as having happened a couple years ago, and claim that we're now in the very beginning of the ultra-saturation stage where everyone's realizing how lucrative a stripped-down earnest acoustic guitar song sung by a bearded Portlander is and is going to start churning them out with reckless abandon without realizing why they became popular in the first place. Indie-folk is the most recent iteration in the long trend of radio-friendly rock music (still counts as pop) because emo didn't get as huge as it was supposed to six years ago.

What I'm really waiting for is for EDM influenced pop to start getting a bit more distorted. The current dance-pop is very upbeat and uplifting and major key and I think we might collectively get bored of that and start mixing in more gritty types of EDM. I doubt we'll ever hear Skrillex or Deadmau5 types on the radio but there's got to be a halfway point between the very accessible Guetta stuff and the less house-y stuff. Deadmau5 is already sort of getting there by getting featured vocalists that aren't the traditional diva sopranos, but he doesn't seem to want to be at that level of mainstreamness that Guetta is.

If that happens, then by the time the indie-folk craze goes the way of glam-metal, pop-rock will need a new form to take and will grudgingly assimilate more electronic elements. On the bright side, we'll probably get a more accessible Nine Inch Nails out of this (I like NIN but I'd like to hear what their sound would sound like with some pop sensibilities behind it). On the downside, electronic-rock will be only slightly less lambasted than nu-metal was because rock fans hate hate HATE miscegenation (I'm painting with a wide brush but you know the types I'm talking about).

I think I'm gonna like this thread, no one takes you seriously when you want to talk seriously about pop music because I'm a twelve year-old boy and I'm disgusted at what my generation's come to, Like my comment on YouTube.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
One of the most interesting events in pop music in 2012 was the apparent commercial decline of R&B. Consider the example of Usher; he was one of the biggest stars of the last decade, and until Adele's sophomore record came out in 2011, Confessions was the most recently released album to achieve a Diamond certification for sales of ten million units. Last year, Usher released Looking 4 Myself and it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, but its first week sales were significantly lower than what a artist of his stature should be capable of achieving, even in this sales climate.

It was the same story with Alicia Keys, whose own 2012 effort, Girl On Fire moved 159, 000 copies in its first week. It also debuted at number one, but this represents the lowest first week sales figure of her career so far; her previous record started at number two on the album chart with opening sales of 417, 000. What about a more extreme example? I trust everyone is familiar with Chris Brown, the man with teflon skin whose 2011 album F.A.M.E. was number one for a week in 2011. His follow-up to that album, Fortune, was released last year and in its first week it sold approximately half of what its predecessor figures.

By all accounts, it's the product of a backlash in the R&B fandom; there is a perception, fair or not, that all three artists have ignored their urban fans in favour of chasing Top 40 crossover hits. This would have been fine a few years ago when Top 40 and urban radio were essentially synonymous; Usher could release a club anthem like "Yeah!" without alienating his R&B fanbase, because it was guaranteed that a quality slow jam like "Burn" would be a surefire hit on both the urban and CHR formats. That's no longer the case; in order to get into the Top 40, urban artists have to modify their sound to pander to electro-/dance-pop trends, and from what I can tell, some R&B fans aren't exactly thrilled about it. I think that's why audiences are excited by the success of artists like the Weeknd, Frank Ocean and Miguel.

Still, I must be honest and admit that I'm not really a huge R&B fan; I'm mainly interested in trends within the pop music landscape.

ninjahedgehog
Feb 17, 2011

It's time to kick the tires and light the fires, Big Bird.


ZakAce posted:

When was the last time any Icelandic group or act got near the top of the charts? Björk?

BTW, I saw those guys at Laneway (a music festival) in Auckland yesterday. They're pretty good live.

Were Peter Bjorn and John Icelandic? I remember Young Folks having a stranglehold on the radio back in summer 2007.

Cemetry Gator
Apr 3, 2007

Do you find something comical about my appearance when I'm driving my automobile?

ninjahedgehog posted:

So who else is really annoyed that Maroon 5's One More Night kept Gangnam Style from hitting #1? Seriously, like it or not, that would have been historic. Foreign language songs have hit the top (99 Luftballoons, Macarena, can anyone think of more?)

Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto. If you want to be a nerd, refer to it by it's title "Ue o Muite Aruko," since Sukiyaki makes no sense as a title. It was just chosen because it's a Japanese word that us Americans would be familiar with, and rolls off the tongue much easier than "Ue o Muite Aroku." It's also the only Japanese song to hit #1 on the charts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmj6Vml5YgA

rjryan3
Oct 10, 2012

Cool Blue Reason posted:

I think that the new Justin Bieber album is actually pretty ok, but the new Ke$ha is pretty bad. That's all I know about pop music released in the last year.

#Twitter #Pop #Justin Bieber


I think that people who like Gangnam Style are racist.

#WhitePrivilege #FunnyFatAsianMan

You are aware that this is not trolling thread right?

ZakAce
May 15, 2007

GF

ninjahedgehog posted:

Were Peter Bjorn and John Icelandic? I remember Young Folks having a stranglehold on the radio back in summer 2007.

Er, no. They're Swedish.

Benne
Sep 2, 2011

STOP DOING HEROIN

pospysyl posted:

I like the idea of "Thrift Shop" more than the actual song. It's good that a more counter-cultural, low production song can make it to the top of the charts, especially after, what, a year after its original release? The lyrics are fine, but the beat's just anemic.

Macklemore is a weird case to me. He spent years building a devoted fanbase in the Seattle underground scene. I will admit that his actual rapping doesn't do much for me, but he and Ryan Lewis write some pretty drat good beats and he tackles some compelling social issues, as well as his own personal battle with drug addiction. He's a talented guy and I've been waiting for his breakthrough for a while now.

Now he finally has a huge crossover hit...and it's about second-hand clothing. Billboard confuses me sometimes.

Benne
Sep 2, 2011

STOP DOING HEROIN

Alvarez IV posted:

Regarding the mold being broken by indie rock; I'd peg that as having happened a couple years ago, and claim that we're now in the very beginning of the ultra-saturation stage where everyone's realizing how lucrative a stripped-down earnest acoustic guitar song sung by a bearded Portlander is and is going to start churning them out with reckless abandon without realizing why they became popular in the first place. Indie-folk is the most recent iteration in the long trend of radio-friendly rock music (still counts as pop) because emo didn't get as huge as it was supposed to six years ago.

What I'm really waiting for is for EDM influenced pop to start getting a bit more distorted. The current dance-pop is very upbeat and uplifting and major key and I think we might collectively get bored of that and start mixing in more gritty types of EDM. I doubt we'll ever hear Skrillex or Deadmau5 types on the radio but there's got to be a halfway point between the very accessible Guetta stuff and the less house-y stuff. Deadmau5 is already sort of getting there by getting featured vocalists that aren't the traditional diva sopranos, but he doesn't seem to want to be at that level of mainstreamness that Guetta is.

If that happens, then by the time the indie-folk craze goes the way of glam-metal, pop-rock will need a new form to take and will grudgingly assimilate more electronic elements. On the bright side, we'll probably get a more accessible Nine Inch Nails out of this (I like NIN but I'd like to hear what their sound would sound like with some pop sensibilities behind it). On the downside, electronic-rock will be only slightly less lambasted than nu-metal was because rock fans hate hate HATE miscegenation (I'm painting with a wide brush but you know the types I'm talking about).

I think I'm gonna like this thread, no one takes you seriously when you want to talk seriously about pop music because I'm a twelve year-old boy and I'm disgusted at what my generation's come to, Like my comment on YouTube.

I remember back in 2005 or so when the charts got blown up by the likes of The Killers, Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand and people were saying the same things back then, that indie-rock was the new normal and we were finally getting our first real revolution since "Nevermind".

That never happened, obviously. So I'm naturally a bit skeptical about 2012's breakout bands sticking. Now Gotye and fun. have real talent, and I don't doubt that they'll continue putting out quality music, but is lightning going to strike again for those guys?

I'm already bracing for the Gotye knockoffs coming this year.

ninjahedgehog
Feb 17, 2011

It's time to kick the tires and light the fires, Big Bird.


ZakAce posted:

Er, no. They're Swedish.

Rats. That was my second guess.

Benne posted:

I remember back in 2005 or so when the charts got blown up by the likes of The Killers, Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand and people were saying the same things back then, that indie-rock was the new normal and we were finally getting our first real revolution since "Nevermind".

That never happened, obviously. So I'm naturally a bit skeptical about 2012's breakout bands sticking. Now Gotye and fun. have real talent, and I don't doubt that they'll continue putting out quality music, but is lightning going to strike again for those guys?

I'm already bracing for the Gotye knockoffs coming this year.

Man, I hope they're right this time. Fun at least has two charting singles, but Gotye's sitting at just the one. If I were his producer I'd be frantically trying to release another one soon before he starts running the risk of being a one-hit-wonder.

Christmas Jones
Apr 12, 2007

nuklear fizzicist
I listened to "Body Talk" by Robyn again today. I think I love it more every time I listen to it. I really need to check out the original 3 part version.

Aside from the impressive amount of variety her style encompasses, she's one of the few pop stars whose lyrics aren't just passable, but great. "Dancing On My Own" captures romantic hopelessness more accurately than any breakup song I've ever heard, "Hang With Me" and "Call Your Girlfriend" look at love from completely fresh angles, "You Should Know Better" is a boast that is equal parts hilarious and exhilarating. Also, her vocals also tend to capture whatever emotion she's going for better than most performers.

I would love to know how Sweden does it when it comes to churning out great pop music.

HorseRenoir
Dec 25, 2011



Pillbug

ninjahedgehog posted:

Rats. That was my second guess.


Man, I hope they're right this time. Fun at least has two charting singles, but Gotye's sitting at just the one. If I were his producer I'd be frantically trying to release another one soon before he starts running the risk of being a one-hit-wonder.

I don't really think Gotye will have another hit, mostly because I don't think he was ever aiming for one in the first place. If anything, he sounded really pissed dealing with Top 40 radio stations and the lovely "remixes" they made so his song would sound like everything else on the radio.

Benne
Sep 2, 2011

STOP DOING HEROIN
Speaking of Sweden, Loreen had another big hit with "Euphoria"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcnWysA9gxo

It was the winning entry in last year's Eurovision Song Contest, and is just a great song overall. I listened to this countless times.

Sweden really does just get pop music right.

High Warlord Zog
Dec 12, 2012

HorseRenoir posted:

I don't really think Gotye will have another hit, mostly because I don't think he was ever aiming for one in the first place. If anything, he sounded really pissed dealing with Top 40 radio stations and the lovely "remixes" they made so his song would sound like everything else on the radio.

Gotye accepted an industry award with a speech that included this gem: "Sorry for those people who listen to commercial radio and had to listen to it 50 times a day at their workplace"

Jay O
Oct 9, 2012

being a zombie's not so bad
once you get used to it

HorseRenoir posted:

I don't really think Gotye will have another hit, mostly because I don't think he was ever aiming for one in the first place. If anything, he sounded really pissed dealing with Top 40 radio stations and the lovely "remixes" they made so his song would sound like everything else on the radio.

Yeah, every time he's been asked about it, he's sort of scratched his head and said "I'm grateful for the success, but I'm just going to do what I'm driven to do as an artist, so if it happens again, nice, if not, then not." Eyes Wide Open and I Feel Better were released as singles and EWO bubbled in the Top 100 for a while but not much else, IFB didn't go anywhere which is a shame because I adore it so. Don't know if any others were released in the US as singles, it gets weird when you have artists from other countries, I get the stats confused.

Gotye's a cool motherfucker though. I mean, he remixed Youtube covers of Somebody that I Used to Know into a medley that sweeps through like every style of instrumentation possible. Of his own volition. Just to turn his gratitude for its success into art. Bless you, Wally.

Jay O fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jan 29, 2013

Yoshifan823
Feb 19, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Is this where I can come to talk about how much I love Taylor Swift and Ke$ha? Because I loving love Taylor Swift and Ke$ha.

Admittedly, T-Swizzle's latest is kind of a mixed bag. It's still stuffed with about 50% those acoustic ballads that have filled out pretty much all of her albums before this one, but something happened and they stopped being anything other than total filler. Treacherous, All Too Well, I Almost Do, Sad Beautiful Tragic and (to a lesser extent) the two duets on the album all sound so samey that it's just boring. Bad T-Swift. But then you get to the other 50% of the songs, you have a wide variety of actually kinda cool poo poo. Everyone on earth has probably heard We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together at this point, but that's because it's catchy, just a little sassy, and fun to listen to. I Knew You Were Trouble comes on and it sounds like some Kelly Clarkson poo poo, but the bass drops and it's suddenly a completely different song. Awesome. State of Grace is a great booming (for her) album opener, and Holy Ground is another song that I always have to listen to whenever I get in a Taylor Swift-y mood. At this point I'm hoping she continues to trend toward more poppy music, because she's proven pretty well that she can handle it.

Ke$ha on the other hand is some sort of mad evil genius who makes awesome music with a pretty much perfect success rate at this point. I loved Die Young when I first heard it, because it was exactly the song I was expecting from her (even though I was hoping for a little more branching out), and the first time I listened to the record the whole way through, it was a really logical progression from where Cannibal ended up. She tossed in some guitars, got a few more rock oriented collaborators (Wayne Coyne and like, half of the Strokes, and of course Iggy Pop), and made an album full of both the dance pop people came to expect and some fantastic tributes to a few different styles of rock (I Only Wanna Dance With You is obviously The Strokes, take the Iggy Pop parts out of Dirty Love and it sounds like a cast-off Riot Grrl track, and Gold Trans-Am is a better hair metal song than most hair metal was). There are definitely moments where it's far too Dr. Luke (C'Mon and the title track), but again, when she expands her horizons, there are some real loving gems.

^burtle
Jul 17, 2001

God of Boomin'



Saw Ellie Goulding tonight and for how much I like her music, it was a pretty bad show. She hardly had any energy, barely worked the crowd and her mic was so out of whack that no one could understand what she was saying. It didn't help that she's singing over pre-recorded backing vocals as well. Her band is talented as hell though, each one of those guys it seemed like had a guitar, a keyboard and drums.

JimmyTR
Jan 24, 2013

Loving something doesn't prevent it from being ridiculous.
I realize that this thread already has an established MO, but, I can't let a thread called "The Pop Music Megathread" pass without mentioning an era of music where pop music seemed to be able to do no wrong: I am, of course, speaking about the 80's.

Songs like "Head over Heels", "Don't Push Me...", even TV themes like "Hill Street Blues" and the theme from "Great American Hero" (both of which I have on opposite sides of the same 45RPM record) lit up the charts, and my memories of the radio at the time are little more than resoundingly positive. It seemed like everything had a driving beat, but deceptively simple riffage at its core.

I absolutely love the celebration aspect of this thread, and, in that spirit, I ask the following question:

What do current pop songs have in common with pop songs of the past (particularly ones like the above, that seem to carry more "street cred")? What makes them the same, rather than different?

Not being a student of the current pop trends in music, I sincerely would like to know if I am missing out on any legitimately good tunes. :)

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

ninjahedgehog posted:

Man, I hope they're right this time. Fun at least has two charting singles, but Gotye's sitting at just the one. If I were his producer I'd be frantically trying to release another one soon before he starts running the risk of being a one-hit-wonder.

I imagine Gotye will find himself in a similar position to Peter Gabriel; he will be successful in countries other than America and he will always be respected as an artist, but beyond his big hit mainstream success in the USA will elude him.

Benne
Sep 2, 2011

STOP DOING HEROIN
Here's the latest Billboard Hot 100, courtesy of a Youtube compilation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIHXQQYTz3Q

Some random observations:

--Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed A Dream" took a big tumble, down 19 spots to No. 93. Her song was one of the few highlights of the Les Mis movie, and I never thought it would last long in the public consciousness. It's still good enough that she should be prepping her Oscar speech right now, but it's a non-starter on the mainstream charts.

--Justin Timberlake's comeback has an uphill road. "Suit & Tie", his collaboration with Jay-Z is dripping with star power, but it only debuted at #84. Will be interesting to watch how this single tracks.

--Rihanna had a big climb, with "Pour It Up" jumping 14 spots to #76. Doesn't look like she's taking a break anytime soon.

--The movie "Pitch Perfect" still has a strong presence on the charts, and Anna Kendricks' "Cups" climbed 13 spots to #68. This movie is slowly gaining a cult following, and I can't wait to see it myself.

--Is Tim McGraw back? His "One Of Those Nights" is up 12 spots to #57 in its seventh week on the chart.

--I'm so loving sick of the Zac Brown Band. Country pop groups are bland enough, but why do these guys still show up in my football games making GBS threads all over the National Anthem? Could've sworn I saw them like 80 times during the college bowls and NFL playoffs. Go away already :mad:

--Still have no clue what the gently caress Nicki Minaj is doing anymore

--Looks like Ke$ha has another ubiquitous hit on her hands. "C'mon" jumped 17 spots to #48 and is only in its 4th week. This isn't the last we'll hear of that song.

--Blake Shelton had the highest debut with "Sure Be Cool If You Did" at #44, solidifying himself as the new Keith Urban with bland but competent country ballads. Also like Urban, you'll be loving sick of him in 2 years.

--Goddamnit why can't Maroon 5 just go away already. "Daylight" is up 9 spots to #25 and will probably be their latest #1 hit by the end of February :suicide:

--Ke$ha dropped 4 spots to #16 with her best song yet. Just as well, it had a good run at the top.

--fun.'s "Some Nights" spent nearly a full year on the charts, yet it actually moved up one spot to #14. This song has serious staying power, and I don't see it leaving the charts anytime soon. fun. really hit this one out of the park.

--Swedish House Mafia moved up 4 spots to #7, confirming my suspicions that the Euro-Dance wave in America isn't done yet.

--Bruno Mars and Macklemore are 1-2, something I never thought I would say 6 months ago. Fast-changing trends, indeed.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Benne posted:

--Justin Timberlake's comeback has an uphill road. "Suit & Tie", his collaboration with Jay-Z is dripping with star power, but it only debuted at #84. Will be interesting to watch how this single tracks.

I'd say appearances are deceiving; it debuted after only a couple of days worth of airplay and once it had been available for a full week it went up eighty places to #4. The same thing happened to "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" last year; it debuted at #72 based on early radio attention then shot straight up to #1 as soon as it was available to download.

Sprat Sandwich
Mar 20, 2009

Metal Loaf posted:

I'd say appearances are deceiving; it debuted after only a couple of days worth of airplay and once it had been available for a full week it went up eighty places to #4. The same thing happened to "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" last year; it debuted at #72 based on early radio attention then shot straight up to #1 as soon as it was available to download.

Too bad that, while 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' is an amazing song from a pretty great album, 'Suit & Tie' is a bit poo poo, especially coming from the man who brought sexy back. Doesn't fill me with confidence for his next album.

Same goes for 'Scream & Shout' - a collaboration between dreadful hitmaker Will.i.am and Britney Spears. Is partly saved by Britney's ridiculous British accent.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Sprat Sandwich posted:

Too bad that, while 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' is an amazing song from a pretty great album, 'Suit & Tie' is a bit poo poo, especially coming from the man who brought sexy back. Doesn't fill me with confidence for his next album.

I actually think the Max Martin songs are the weakest on Red, but I guess that's a pretty generic opinion. I guess I don't think she has the voice for them.

OldTennisCourt
Sep 11, 2011

by VideoGames
It's pretty depressing looking at Maroon 5 now. Songs about Jane wasn't GREAT but it at least had some level of uniqueness between songs and Sunday Morning is a drat good song. Now they're releasing some of the worst stuff in music right now. Payphone is loving atrocious and One More Night is such a bland mess of ugly that I can't stand more than 5 seconds of it.

Sprat Sandwich
Mar 20, 2009

Metal Loaf posted:

I actually think the Max Martin songs are the weakest on Red, but I guess that's a pretty generic opinion. I guess I don't think she has the voice for them.

Well my overall tastes lean towards Max Martin-ish stuff (seriously, what a guy), but this is pop so everyone has something they like/dislike.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

OldTennisCourt posted:

It's pretty depressing looking at Maroon 5 now. Songs about Jane wasn't GREAT but it at least had some level of uniqueness between songs and Sunday Morning is a drat good song. Now they're releasing some of the worst stuff in music right now. Payphone is loving atrocious and One More Night is such a bland mess of ugly that I can't stand more than 5 seconds of it.

I'm not really a Maroon 5 fan. I liked "This Love" when it was a hit but that's about as far as it goes for me. Anyway, it's basically Adam Levine and his backing band at this point.

Sprat Sandwich posted:

Well my overall tastes lean towards Max Martin-ish stuff (seriously, what a guy), but this is pop so everyone has something they like/dislike.

Oh, I've no enmity towards Max Martin or the songs he writes (between Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, P!nk and a host of others, you could probably argue he's the most influential pop songwriter of the past ten years). Like Holland-Dozier-Holland or Stock Aitken Waterman, he knows what makes a hit.

Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Jan 29, 2013

Christmas Jones
Apr 12, 2007

nuklear fizzicist

Alvarez IV posted:

What I'm really waiting for is for EDM influenced pop to start getting a bit more distorted. The current dance-pop is very upbeat and uplifting and major key and I think we might collectively get bored of that and start mixing in more gritty types of EDM. I doubt we'll ever hear Skrillex or Deadmau5 types on the radio but there's got to be a halfway point between the very accessible Guetta stuff and the less house-y stuff. Deadmau5 is already sort of getting there by getting featured vocalists that aren't the traditional diva sopranos, but he doesn't seem to want to be at that level of mainstreamness that Guetta is.

What did you think of Calvin Harris's latest? He does the Guetta thing of inviting tons of pop celebrities (more British than American, overall) onto his album, but his hooks are a lot rougher and darker sounding. He tends to lean on the traditional trance/house build pretty heavily, but at least the builds are fun and he breaks it up with the occasional clever instrumental.

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Alvarez IV
Aug 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 8 years!

Christmas Jones posted:

What did you think of Calvin Harris's latest? He does the Guetta thing of inviting tons of pop celebrities (more British than American, overall) onto his album, but his hooks are a lot rougher and darker sounding. He tends to lean on the traditional trance/house build pretty heavily, but at least the builds are fun and he breaks it up with the occasional clever instrumental.

I do like Harris a lot; he made me like a Ne-Yo vocal by somehow knocking the treacle out of his voice and making him sound decisive, and he managed to get Florence Welch some airplay while showing off her versatility. You're right about his reliance on traditional EDM song structure as well as his instrumentals, but it's still very clean even if it's comparatively rougher and darker. When I say gritty, I mean like Leftfield gritty, or in a modern sense Deadmau5 gritty (Deadmau5' low-end synths on Professional Griefers sound like fuzzy guitars run through lots of processing).

Also, I want to see more diversity in the featured vocalists used here. The guy who sings on Swedish House Mafia's Don't You Worry Child has a lower and rougher voice than Usher and Ne-Yo, and the women who sing on house songs are almost always diva types with their voices. I know this comes from the influence that disco had on house in the first place and I like it, but my theory with music is that diversity is good and welcome and I like it when incongruous elements come together (I didn't like Somebody That I Used to Know until I heard the radio remix).

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