Today's Top 40 Spectrum: Blair + The Dude From Midtown
I usually tend to wait a bit longer between Top 40 Spectrums for two reasons: A) it usually takes a while until something on the radio waves is either good or bad enough to merit writing about and B) usually nobody cares about the new pop jams that are marketed to tweens besides me. Welly welly welly well folks, while the four songs below our top of the pops song for August of 2009 are mostly throwaways (minus a couple of surprisingly delicious tidbits), I must at least plead for your attention to the first track listed below, especially if you are a fan of Gossip Girl and/or Drive Thru Records emo-pop circa 2001. And so I present to you, with Lala widgets so you can listen while you read, Today's Top 40 Spectrum...
"Good Girls Go Bad" by Cobra Starship feat. Leighton Meester: So ever since they rocketed onto the scene with some lame non-catchy song for the Snakes On A Plane soundtrack, I knew that this band featured a member from some other emo-pop band, but I never cared enough to find out who. Fast-forward to last week, when I saw their performance of this, their latest single, on Conan and fell head over heels with it, featuring a guest verse by Estelle and the lead singer looked eerily familiar, like I had met him in person-familiar. Fast-forward once again to right now when I Google the band, watch their vid, and realize that the album version of the guest verse is sung by none other than Blair from Gossip Girl, aka Leighton Meester. Estelle's a better singer, but Blair singing makes a lot more sense for mall-pop. Oh and I also realized I have met this guy, back when he and his band Midtown played The Rave Bar in Milwaukee to a crowd of like 20 when I was a junior in high school, and I shyly walked up to him at his band's merch table and told him they were awesome. Anyway, this song's awesomeness is pretty self-explanatory. Listen!
"Radar" by Britney Spears: Best Britney song since "Toxic"? I'd like to say that I don't know why they reserved this single for later in the album's Billboard longevity, because it is clearly better than "Circus" and "If You See Amy" combined, but I do know why. Its minimalist beat and sleeky slimy synths aren't necessarily in style now (and haven't been since No Doubt epic failed at successfully bringing minimalism to the mainstream with "Hella Good") nor will they ever be, but if the vocal multi-tracking was dialed down just a bit, this could be a genuinely good pop song. Too bad it's compressed to death and it still has Britney's signature nasal "quack" (though the more-subtle-than-usual AutoTune does somehow make the quirk advantageous to the song's robotic motifs at some points, such as the chorus's eponymous loop), otherwise it could have been a contender for Top 40 summer sleeper.
"Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon: I want to be monumentally crystal clear here. I hate Kings of Leon. With a fiery passion burning deep within my own fake Southern-fried loins, I abhor their very existence, much less their recent grimy climb to fame almost a full year after their breakthrough album's release date. They embody everything that is wrong with rock music in the late 00s, even more so than Nickelback, who represent a bygone era still trickling along flacidly to a crowd of goatee'd lite-grunge holdouts. Even more so than U2, who at least have some kind of honest beginning before they became caricatures of themselves. No, Kings of Leon are the band that will not save rock 'n roll (doesn't need saving anyway), but the group that will put rock 'n roll in a rhinestoned straitjacket and throw it off a ten-story building until it impales itself on a shame-spackled fencepost. It's soulless spectacle rock with grainy, straining vocals that pierce and manipulate and highly affected guitar atmospherics that are computerized to the nth degree. And this song has no right to have such beautiful backing vox that almost negate the ugliness of everything else about the band. I spit on you, KoL, as I press repeat on your 11-month old new hit single.
"Battlefield" by Jordin Sparks: When Jerksica and I first heard this song sans title/artist info, we said almost simultaneously, "uhh I hope this isn't the new Rihanna." How sad would it be, we continued to discuss, if her first single after the Chris Brown incident included the refrain, "Why does love always feel like a battlefield? / Better go and get your armor"? Good thing it turned out to just be a young pop ingenue (and of course, American Idol winner) pretending to project, utilize vibrato, and have a producer emulating beats similar to Rihanna's. Originality quibbles aside, it's a solid ballad that is pretty powerful without crossing over into cloying territory, even though it does just kinda limp there like a generic-but-pretty piano riff with an airy, vapid hip hop beat on top of it like most songs by AI winners/runners-up that aren't Kelly Clarkson. The one thing the song does have going for it though besides its proficiency at emotional dynamics: that whooshing bass-synth that wobbles and careens through the pre-chorus! It's so bizarre and scrumptious. Love it.
"Wanted" by Jessie James: And then there are songs that sound like the world is playing a mean joke on you. Rarely do I like to think about making "worst of" lists, but this song, tripled with that "Goodbye" song by Kristinia DeGarbage and "Love Game" by Ms. GaGa make the summer of 2009 seem like a wastebin for female-fronted pop songs that disgust via blandness and/or lyrical content. And as I finally got through listening to this trash all the way through for the first time, I feel myself riddled with pain to press play again in order to say something of substance about said song before we put this baby to bed. I really don't know what to say except that it sounds like a combination between a boot-cut jean commercial, anthropomorphic throat bacteria, and the color "burnt sienna." Please go away Jessie James, and never ever ever come back.
Labels: chris, music, Today's Top 40 Spectrum
This entry was posted by chris, on
Tuesday, August 18, 2009.
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