17. "Raise Your Glass" - Pink - There doesn't strike me as there being an incredibly obvious will-be-instantly-forgotten number one single as a lot of years have, but if I had to pick I'd take a stab at this (with relatively little confidence, but got to pick something).
If your going to be a fan of pop music, or really music general one thing you need to do, or should try to do, I think is separate the song from the artist. What I mean is that, try your best to not let the fact that you hate an artist's first ten singles influence your listening to the artist's eleventh single. Will you like it? Probably not - but you should judge it on its own mertis and not bring in your preconceptions. Normally I'm good at this, and over time I've come to enjoy many a song by artists I haven't liked in the past, and certainly wouldn't have in my early college most pretentious phase. But everyone has their exceptions to rules, and mine I admit it, is Pink. There's just something about her and her songs that pisses me off, and I certainly don't dislike them all equally, but I can't shake that predisposition to dislike them.
My relationship with Pink is like that with an annoying friend - the most you hear them, certain things start to get on your nerves that wouldn't if anybody else did them - the way they say certain words, or make some gestures - when you step back they seem like they should be innocuous, but they drive you crazy. It's a Max Martin production and I don't hate the music but some parts of the song just irrationally irritate me, such as the line when she says "What's the dealio?". I can't explain why it pisses me off so much, but it does.
My relationship with Pink is like that with an annoying friend - the most you hear them, certain things start to get on your nerves that wouldn't if anybody else did them - the way they say certain words, or make some gestures - when you step back they seem like they should be innocuous, but they drive you crazy. It's a Max Martin production and I don't hate the music but some parts of the song just irrationally irritate me, such as the line when she says "What's the dealio?". I can't explain why it pisses me off so much, but it does.
16. Love the Way You Lie - Eminem featuring Rihanna - In a year of repeat artists at the number 1 spot (12 of the year's 17 number ones were recorded by the same five artists), it's about time to hit on a collaboration of two repeaters.
Why so serious, Enimem? Gone any semblance of playful or wit lyrics and in are superserious messages about spousal abuse. Heavy shit.
In addition is the strange coupling in the music video of Maxim Hot 100 head Megan Fox (of toe thumbs and all) with former hobbit/drug-addled one hit wonder bassist Dominic Monaghan, though I suppose Fox's boyfriend in the video is no less likely than her real life squeeze relevant-fifteen-years-ago Brian Austin Green (unfair much probably - he did play Metallo in Smallville and was in the Sarah Connor Chronicles). Maybe Fox in a video would help resurrect Green's rap career.
15. Firework - Katy Perry - Perry's third number of the year capped off a year in which she firmly established herself as one of the biggest women in pop today clearly "making" on the make-or-break second album. The first many times I heard Firework, it suffered from a case of "All I Need is a Miracle" syndrome. The Mike and the Mechanics song is the prevailing example of a song which, upon listening to it, it takes until the chorus to recognize. You maybe kind of think you recognize the song and you spend the whole first minute trying to peg what it is until you get to the chorus at which point you smack yourself in the head for how you could not have realized what such an obvious song was until that point. With Firework, I suppose it might be at the end of the pre-chorus - once it gets to that "Fourth of July" part, the mental light turns on identifying it, making me sigh and say to myself, next time I'll remember it.
Anyway, Katy Perry suffers from a mini-Pink problem - but I realized later that it is actually her sound and not just her (though the more I see her talk, the dumber she sounds - this classic proactiv commercial is prime example - skip to 55 seconds if you don't want to watch the whole thing - the line "I'm talking about zits here people" has entered my vernacular and the scene in which she uses a shoe as a fake phone is not to be missed), so I feel less bad. Anyway, there's two later Katy Perry entries to discuss that.
Also, fireworks are clearly coming from her breasts in the video. I don't really get it. I get that she has big breasts, but the California Gurls video seems like a more typical way to show them off.
Moving on.
14. "Not Afraid" - Eminem - Okay, if I someone cut this list into tiers, the next cut would be either her or after the next one. Basically, half of the people I know think this song is better than "Love the Way You Lie" and half think that is better, and I'm a member of the former. It's still a disappointing effort for Eminem but it has going for it over "Love the Way You Lie" a distinct anthemic quality -the whole everybody chorus and all that and it's a little catchier. I do also appreciate his ability to knock on his last album, rapping, "let's be honest/ That last Relapse CD was 'ehh'." It's more super serious shit. To be clear, I have nothing against serious rapping. If it was from, say, Nas, I wouldn't expect any less. I just have something against Emienm serious rapping, and not for any other reason except that it is far inferior to his earlier songs. I mean, it's cool that he's off drugs and if it actually inspired others I guess it doesn't matter the quality of the song anyway. That's all.
13. Imma Be - Black Eyed Peas - Say what you will about the quality of Black Eyed Peas songs, I think it needs to be admired that their singles really all do sound significantly different, especially in the days of uber-similar Dr Luke synth riffs. I've liked probably the majority of their singles, and I like the other four top ten singles off of The END (Boom Boom Pow, I Gotta Feeling, Meet Me Halfway, Rock That Body), I just don't particularly like this one. The constantly repeated "Imma Be" like gets a little grating. Okay, kind of a lot grating. I just watched the video and considered counting how many instances there were of it, but quickly gave up. Well, you can't win them all.
12. "What's My Name" - Rihanna featuring Drake - The way I feel about Pink and Katy Perry, I think I feel the opposite about Rihanna songs. Before this year, I've generally liked almost all of them, and because of that I probably came into the new ones expecting to like them. However, after this year it didn't end up that way. I didn't particularly care for just about all of her songs this year (well, I liked "Hard" and that peaked in 2010, and she, uncredited, sings the hook in Kanye's great "All of the Lights"). Honestly, I'm hard pressed to say anything too bad about "What's my Name," it's more that I really don't have much good to see either. For all the super steamy lyrics, I find it to be kind of a boring song. The Drake part is okay, and yeah the Rihanna part is, um, okay. It's a song that if done right should be caught in my head, especially with the amount of times I've heard it, and it really hasn't. That's about it.
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