Waka Flocka Flame - No Hands

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Waka Flocka Flame
No Hands
Impress the Girl
#18 (HiMid)
Oct 28, 2010
Myspace

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I may have to re-think my song selection process-- while #3 in the charts has a lot more flexibility from week to week than #1, it doesn't really change enough for me to get a lot of new music. Nelly held the spot two weeks in a row, so I skipped down to #4 last week and got Rihanna. Nelly's no longer #3 this week... but guess what: Rihanna is. I had to skip down to #5 to find a song I haven't already reviewed-- and that gave me another mass produced, cookie cutter techno-pop song. Seriously: I tried to write a review of "DJ Got Us Fallin in Love" by Usher, but it was like trying to review a McDonald's cheeseburger: I didn't like it, but it was too generic to inspire any kind of criticism other than “why do people buy this?” It all points to me needing to find a different number in the top 10, a little further from the traffic jam around #1... but that will be next week.

So... moving on: I've already hit this week's #17 too, but as far as I'm concerned, Cee Lo can stay in the top 20 forever (if there were any justice in this system, the zero-personality Rihanna and Usher tracks would be eating his dust). This brings us to Waka Flocka Flame: it's no surprise I don't know this guy, but man is that an awesome name. I'm not sure I could say it aloud and keep a straight face.

Thankfully, Waka doesn't live in the pre-fab pop wasteland that houses the godawful Usher track I narrowly avoided-- this beat wasn't pulled from the factory demo of an old Roland groovebox. There's some clever movement to the kick, and the rapid hi-hat is always bouncing around in the stereo field. I don't want to blow it out of proportion, but somebody actually worked on this beat and got creative. And the hype man's part in the beginning of the first verse is an awesome almost-synth-kick: “bow bow bow bow...”

And, hey, this answers a question I've been asking myself for a little while: I've been hearing a lot of soulless autotuned singers over funkless raver beats, but didn't there used to be rappers in this genre? Everyone on this track has better style, flow, rhythm... well, better everything, than the guys on Chris Brown's track. Lyrically, it is a club track: lots of bragging, calling out the song's guest stars, and appreciating the booty, but it's nice to hear some wordsmiths simply ply their trade. It's a nice change from the empty non-song I thought I was going to write about today.

Add N to (x), an all-vintage-synth band, has a song called “The Regent Is Dead,” which evokes a kind of swords and sorcery, epic fantasy landscape... musically, “No Hands” reminds me of that piece. I think that's both cool and sort of hilarious: the synth progressions are kind of epic. 80's fantasy movie epic. This might be the most gravitas booty's ever had. (ha!)

Overall, I think there's some pretty cool stuff in here, and it is a huge step up from a lot of what I've heard while doing this project... but I'm not ready to call myself a Waka Flocka Flame fan. I'm not calling “No Hands” a bad song; I'm thankful it broke up a rut I needed to escape, but I'm also not keeping a copy.
 

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

This was the hardest "style" category I ever tried to lock down... it's not entirely a bragging track, but it's also not all about the awesome booty; it's a little of both.  So I'm going with "Impress the Girl"-- it's boastful, but it's boastful to win the hottie.

Genre: Impress the Girl

I came up with this one on the fly-- it's part Brag track, and part seducer.  The middle ground was undefined enough that Impress the Girl manifested in my head as all those songs where the bragging had only one goal: to get the girl.

Linkin Park - The Catalyst

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Linkin Park
The Catalyst
Complaint Rock
#99 (Low)
Oct 21, 2010
MySpace

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Oh sweet Jesus.

Linkin. Fucking. Park. I know I claimed not to be clued in to the legacy and backstory behind these tracks, but I've known about Linkin Park for many years-- if anything, I'm surprised they're still around.

(maybe this #99 thing wasn't such a good idea after all.)

I used to use Linkin Park as an example about how fads and media hype dull anything original that crops up. Though I'm not a fan, Korn kicked off a wholly unique sound when they first came out; it's actually kind of amazing they became popular. Their impact rippled out into bands like Limp Bizkit, which shined up the nu metal thing and made it mass consumable for the frat boy crowd. But wait! We can water this trend down further!

And so Linkin Park was constructed and packaged for the crowd that just wasn't ready for something as hard (dude!) as Limp Bizkit, already a more mass-consumable Korn. A copy of a copy... and that was ten years ago.

If my first reaction was “Oh no, not these guys again,” my second though was... well, it's nice to see a band on the list. I was starting to wonder if people still listened to bands-- everything I was getting up to this point has all been a singer and a producer, and I'm much more interested in a group of musicians working and playing together. I've actually done both, and I prefer my band to my studio work. Personal preference.

Good news first: Linkin Park is no longer playing rap rock infused nu metal, so if you want to find juvie rebellion at Wal*Mart, these are no longer your guys.

Now the bad news: Nothing that starts with polka intro this long is allowed to sell us this much tortured artist angst.  With the organ washes, plaintive pianos, and plinky raver synths, the tortured vocals make me think someone's been taking Reznor lessons.

The somber, self-serious vibe is more annoying when you figure out that the song doesn't actually make any sense-- it seems like it might be a kind of anti-oppression or brink of self destruction song... but it's not.  I'm wondering if Linkin Park have turned into an anti-music Dadaist collective, and threw endless chanting, polka beat intros, self important rock posturing, a Creed-like "save me" coda, archaic synth stabs, and nonsense bits of purple prose into a blender as a statement against the modern music world.  That would make the endless chanting of "God bless us every one" make some sort of sense.

I sort of wish that were true...

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Complaint Rock

The Complaint Rock song is always painfully earnest: someone wants you to feel their torment.  Since Complaint Rock values drama over coherence (see: Pearl Jam), these songs always communicate the artist's pain, but may not actually be clear on why they're in pain.  Clarity or no, self indulgence is the order of the day.

Adam Lambert - If I Had You

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Adam Lambert
If I Had You
Backdoor Brag
#51 (LoMid)
Oct 21, 2010
iLike

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Continuing my muli-post confession of ignorance, I never know what these people look like until I've listened to the song and done some of the writing; I go to Google and enter the artist name and song title, and search for the image I'll use in the article (as an aside: Cee Lo Green didn't look anything like I imagined). That's not the case with Adam Lambert: he opens "If I Had You" with a line about his boots, leather, and applying black eyeliner. Immediately, this guy's image opens the song; I know we're listening to a pseudo-goth peacock in guyliner and black nail polish.

Hey, look at that. I wasn't wrong.

What's worse, after Cee Lo's entry of easily the best song so far, we're back down into the bad, bog-standard techno pop hole Rihanna dug. This is almost the same kind of animal: this is the song that the DJs spin to get the dim ones on the dance floor between real club songs... it does most of what club tracks are supposed to do, but it's also a four chord pop song. Like Rihanna, Lambert's not doing the Autotune-As-Effect trick, these vocals are just autotuned because he can't hold a note, and there's really no need to correct it gracefully since we're all used to the sound of an out-of-tune singer being jerked into key by a computer.

The differences between this and "Only Girl (in the World)" is that Rihanna's song only had her in it because they needed a voice as a lead instrument-- she was barely there. Adam Lambert is front and center in this song: it's all about him, all the time. So Lambert isn't a bland shell: his personality is all over this track.

Unfortunately, it's the kind of personality you want to cuff on the backside of the head.

Let's not focus on the “Rock It” era Herbie Hancock stolen drum fills or the “Owner of a Lonely Heart” bridge, but more on the attempt to borrow retro cool and 80s rock. This is a song is an example of a joke from 30 Rock: back door bragging (“It's hard for me to watch American Idol, because I have perfect pitch.”) The whole song is about how rich, famous, and sexy Adam Lambert is... bit if he had just the right girl, all of the fancy cars and sheik clubs he keeps mentioning would pale in comparison. Oh, wait, did he mention his fame and money? How about his eyeliner?

It actually feels like it was constructed around an image, the kind of thing you expect from an American Idol alum. (checking Wikipedia... yup. Woo-hoo! I swear I didn't know that until I looked it up.) That adds a whole new level of bad to this song: not just because it implies Lambert didn't write a single word or note of "his" song (can someone find out if I'm right about that?), but for a song about being famous and rich, this guy probably makes less money than I do. Not that the song's not popular or his album doesn't sell-- and even that's questionable-- but the profits will mostly go to the American Idol machine.

The one thing that makes this one stand out for me is the curiosity of whether or not anyone will remember this singer or this song in five years. I have a hard time imagining Adam Lambert's breakthrough third album and continued presence in the spotlight. It's easier to imagine him as the assistant manager of a Target and maybe getting recognized at karaoke on Saturday nights.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Backdoor Brag

These are songs that seem to be about one thing, but are actually about how wonderful the singer he/she is.  Backdoor Braggers can sing about anything from the state of poverty in Africa to the pain of the Prozac nation... but the songs are always actually about themselves, and how they see themselves in the lens of everything around them.

Cee Lo Green - Fuck You

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Cee Lo Green
Fuck You
Trash Talk
#17 (HiMid)
Oct 21, 2010
IndieShuffle

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I've got a couple qualifiers that send me into these songs from a slightly different angle from almost everyone who hears them:

1. I live in a hype free world (at least as far as pop music goes). I've never even heard of Cee Lo Green before, I was surprised when Nelly turned out to be a guy, and I only know about Chris Brown and Rihanna because I liked reading Amelie Gillette before she packed up The Hater and went to write for TV. I'm usually blind to a performer's legacy and backstory, so I usually don't have any prejudice when I'm hearing them for the first time.
2. I don't listen to the radio, so overplay isn't an issue-- If I'm digging into a song to write about it, it hasn't been crammed down my throat three times an hour, every day, by an annoying DJ... so it's always going to be fresh on my side.

With that on the table, I'm going to try and avoid hyperbole while I come out in support of Cee Lo Green. Everything that Only Girl (in the World) does wrong, Fuck You does right; it's got some slick funk in its beat, the music calls back to Motown, and it manages to be modern while it turns its influences up to 11. And I didn't mention Rihanna's autotuned voice because she barely existed in that song... but there's not a hint of tampering on Cee Lo Green: from what I can tell, this guy is an excellent soul singer.

And he actually has the balls to name the song Fuck You. I expect that from more underground guys: Overkill has a song called Fuck You (and Screeching Weasel covered it)... but they were never going to be in the top 20. I think the one that plays on the radio is adjusted to be “Forget You,” but still... balls. Big brassy yar blockos.

Lyrically, the whole thing is fun, and actually pretty funny, especially with the Motown milieu raging (even if Smokey Robinson asked “ain't that some shit?” I can't imagine the Miracles harmonizing an “ain't that some shit” response), and “I guess she's an Xbox and I'm more an Atari” is endearing. And kind of clever. The whole thing bustles with personality, and the hysterical, on-the verge-of-tears “Why? Why? I still love you!” bridge made me laugh the first time I heard it.

Musically, they threw in everything but the kitchen sink: shakers, hand drums, drum kit (with big stompin kick), piano, organ, electric piano, clean bright guitar, and layers of vocals... I was worried about the lack of bass until the bridge lets the bass part come up front and pop through. Nice.

Pulling back a bit, the song isn't more than it is-- it's still verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, and done. So we're not blowing the roof off the music world here, but it is the first song I've come across in this experiment that I've actually liked. I'm going to keep this around for a bit.
 

Stay

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Rihanna - Only Girl (In the World)

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Rihanna
Only Girl (In the World)
Club Anthem
#4 (High)
Oct 21, 2010
YouTube

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I guess it was bound to happen, but I didn't expect it so soon in the project-- Nelly's not letting go of that #3 spot. Makes sense that the upper echelons aren't going to move much, packed in at the front of the line and pushing... so in order to avoid repeats, I slid back one.

And, hey, look, it's Rihanna! I've never listened to her before, but I have at least heard of her: I know one thing about Rihanna (I'll just link you back to Chris Brown). So this is the first of many techno-themed pop songs in my cue this week... I'm calling it a club anthem because this thing doesn't really seem to live by its lyrics. But techno seems to be my overriding theme this week.

A little backstory (looks like this project is going to be rife with backstory, anecdotes, and colloquial asides... sorry, but that's just me)-- I remember when a group of friends, gathered in a living room, had someone break out a tape of new music, called “house.” The rave scene was still underground, and though electronic music had been around for a long time (I had a thing for Art of Noise when I was in high school), none of us had heard of house music. The stuff I had at the time didn't age well, but for a short bout it was exciting simply because is was so different from everything else.

A lot of that music's elements are everywhere now-- current music is awash in boonch, boonch, boonch beats and fixed-interval oscillator detunes. Don't get me wrong: I'm not against any kind of electronica in general, and I'm very much for new sounds entering the musical lexicon: it gives us all a bigger sandbox to play in.

Some of this problem might be my preconceptions, because I usually assume that the R&B stars have a bedrock of funkiness, and I'm heading into week 2 and haven't heard a hint of funk yet. The house movement might have had one thing on it's mind (just like this song): Dance Dance Dance! But with the robotic mechanics of the inhuman beats and sequenced synths, it was profoundly unfunky. It was the anti-funk.

I can't hold this song responsible for my pre-conceived notions, but my other problem is, while I think it's cool that myriad styles can be incorporated into new music, this doesn't borrow from the house movement: it's basically the same bad dance music that hit mTV in the early 90's. It's a 2 Unlimited song. And I'm not about to champion 2 Unlimited, but at least they were working with the new trend in music... this doesn't borrow from dance music from the early 90's, it doesn't incorporate elements of, draw inspiration from, re-interpret ideas of, borrow a cup of sugar from, or sneak down the alley behind 20-year-old techno-pop songs. It is a 20-year-old techno-pop song.  The call is coming from inside the house!

It's just so played out. My problem with that cliche'd autotune effect-- that cliché is newer than this cliché. The prefab backing track of this song actually has dust on it... but I'll bet the club goes crazy when they play it on a saturday night. It just baffles me when I hear this kind of thing spilling out of the radio via the open window of a passing car.

Why would anyone listen to this while sitting down?

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Club Anthem

Being anthemic, the Club Anthem is single minded: get to the club.  It's all about clubbing-- go to the club, dance at the club, hook up at the club, drink at the club, dance more at the club.  If a singer is going to tell you to put your hands up, you're probably listening to a Club Anthem.

Week one

Wow-- I wasn't lying about my ignorance. After one week, it's been thrown into sharp relief how non-pop my music collection is. I've probably listened to A Senile Animal a hundred times, and I consider it a great album full of accessible rock songs that most people would probably like... and all of my friends agree the Melvins are awesome, but they're a world away from the stuff that climbs the Billboard charts.

So far, so good, I'd say. I'm enjoying my little experiment, even if I haven't really dug the songs that got picked. I am thinking I'll add another song to the listing: #99. This week, the upper numbers 3 and 17 were fairly slow and kind of weepy, and it wasn't until #51 that a was less interested in crying into a beer and more keen to actually drink one. Well, maybe not a beer. Maybe an appletini.

Regardless, I'm hoping the jump in energy between 3 and 51 is similar to the difference between 51 and 99. Of course, this is all arbitrary... it's my first week, so I can't really see any trends in the chart positions yet, but I am looking forward to how different songs line up in the charts.

I also haven't given up hope that, as the weeks move on, I'll find a song that I won't immediately delete from my mp3 player. In the first week, I'm 0 for 3.

Last-- anyone have a good place to play these songs-- as of right now, my play link is invariably YouTube... but I'm listening to songs, not watching videos, and I think videos change things a little.  I'm only listening to these songs... I haven't watched the movies set to music where the singer cast themselves as the heroes.

Pink - Raise Your Glass

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Pink
Raise Your Glass
Party Anthem
#51 (LoMid)
Oct 14, 2010
YouTube

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Hey-- that's different. The first two songs were both pretty maudlin, down-tempo affairs, so it's nice to hear something move a little quicker. The house beat that drives it might be about 20 years late to it's date with a rave, but the song's got some energy to it, and that's a step up from both the Nelly and Chris Brown songs this week.

I think the most effective thing about this song is "Wooooooo! Party!" I'm not so cynical as to ignore the fact that the Party Anthem is never going to go out of style-- off the top of my head, the oldest versions of these things I can think of are out of Tin Pan Alley, but I'll bet someone more knowledgeable than myself can find older party songs than that. Somewhere out there, Dr. Andrew W.K, Esq has published several papers on the origins and evolution of party anthems... but Doctor W.K. is published in the kinds of specialized journals a layman like myself can't readily access.

The least effective thing about the song is a "if you're wrong in all the right ways" message of craziness and non-conformity presented in the most bland way possible. It reminds me of a third hand dig at the radio I picked up somewhere (“of course I don't listen to the radio. I'm not a fifteen-year-old girl.”) I can imagine 15-year-olds finding this song as freaky as it claims to be... and maybe not even real 15-year-olds, maybe the twentysomethings playing kids in a PG-13 movie, this is song at the party they throw when their parents are out of town.

There are others who this song works on... it sort of reminds me of my (thankfully brief) time in an accounts receivable office-- it was an oppressive place, everyone was dead eyed, lethargic, and out of shape (I can't really evoke this place for you: the best analog I know is Bruce McCulloch's bank teller). This is the kind of thing that would have been a big hit at the office party that ended by 10:00PM, but for a song that proclaims “5AM, turn the radio up! Where's the rock & roll?” I can't imagine it being listened to by rock fans. I can imagine it being listened to by someone who would call the cops if you were to crank up some rock at 5:00AM.

Regardless, it is nice to hear something with a pulse after two pretty maudlin, down-tempo songs. It's slick sounding and well produced, but it's not something I need to listen to any more than I just have.

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Party Anthem

Like any anthem, the Party Anthem has only one thing on its mind: partying.  These songs are meant to party, and be played by party people at parties.  Nuff said.

Chris Brown - Deuces

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Chris Brown
Deuces
Trash Talk
#17 (HiMid)
Oct 14, 2010
YouTube
 

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Ah... now there's the Autotune. I do remember a time when Autotune was a tool used to nudge a slightly flat note into place in an otherwise great vocal take-- you didn't want the singer to go back and do it again if the performance was really, really good... but you just needed to tweak that one sour note. When Cher turned all Autotune's knobs to 11 on Believe, the robotic, atrifacty sound was added to the book as a record selling effect, and it was already a cliché about three days later. And there it remains.

Now that everyone's adapted to hearing obvious Autotune effects on the radio, it's opened the floodgates for... well... people who can't sing. Not at all. They can basically just talk into a mic and have Autotune make a melody out of it later. I'm still sort of torn between thinking it's sort of cool from a composer's standpoint and thinking it's the nastiest sort of false prophet fakery, making stars out of singers who can't sing (and often don't write their own songs, either).

Basically, I have no idea if Chris Brown can sing. This is my very first time hearing him, and the only think I know about Chris Brown is that he beats up girls.

Okay-- that might be too flip. The only thing I know about Chris Brown plead guilty to physically assaulting Rihanna... another star I don't know. I do know photos of her bruised and beaten face are online, and I know that Oprah themed a show around this abuse, and Chris Brown called it “a slap in the face.” Oprah had the gall to call the beating “a problem,” so I can see why Brown would be offended. Poor guy.

This is a long and roundabout way of saying: I have no way of knowing if Chris Brown is good at anything. His voice is autotuned into oblivion, so there's no way to know if he's singing, or if he phoned in a scant three lines and had a computer write a song around it. And since I know only one thing about Brown (he hits women), a song about how he needs to shake off a no-good bitch who always made him feel small doesn't really make me want to like him or his song.

The song itself is so paper thin it feels like it might blow away-- Brown has a few lines in the beginning (she “ain't nothin but a vulture, always hoping for the worst, waiting for me to fuck up”), but he sings maybe eight bars total in the song. The rest is just a couple samples and loops of his voice in between the song's guest stars-- it's like a movie where the star hardly ever left his trailer, so it's mostly footage of the back of a stunt double's head.

And I think the guest stars sound clunky. I may not have a PhD. in flow, but I know what works and what feels off-rhythm and forced; both rapped verses by Tyga and Kevin McCall have a stunning lack of groove. Past that, the one and only thing I know about Chris Brown (back to the domestic abuse thing again) makes the guest rappers' lines like “like Tina did Ike in the limo, it finally hit me” rankle... not only are we evoking Ike & Tina, we're making Ike the victim. Classy.

Like I said, this is my first time hearing Chris Brown, but it's such a lazy song, one where he does very little, my immediate reaction is to consider him a hack. But... maybe I'm missing something.

Add the lyrical content and the context of a woman's bloodied face, and he's a hack with terrible taste.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Trash Talk

Trash Talk is most common in hip-hop and other intensely verbal styles-- someone has composed myriad reasons (with any luck, they're cleverly worded) why another person or group sucks.  If the writer is skilled at talking trash, this can be an amazingly fun genre... if they're not, it always makes the writer look like a self indulgent whiner.

Nelly - Just a Dream

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Nelly
Just a Dream
Power Ballad
#3 (High)
Oct 14, 2010
YouTube

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I've had a theory for a while-- when grunge seemed to kill the vapid, narcissistic beast that was hair metal (see also: butt rock), the whole personality of that scene reemerged in R&B almost immediately. So when the rock stations turned dour and serious, the pop stations started to feature songs by guys who sang about how much money they have, how awesome their cars are, how wild and excessive their parties are, and how many sleazy women are in their bed nightly.

I think I've discovered another parallel between those two genres: eventually, any party rockin' hairspray consumer would pick up an acoustic guitar or plop down behind a piano and write a sad, sensitive song about the girl who is now peeling the spandex off another (probably inferior) rocker.

So my first entry is a type of song I haven't heard in many, many years: the power ballad. From the guitar opening, it easily could have been the intro to a lost love song by Warrant or Extreme circa 1989... and honestly, the programmed beats and electronic flourish that fill out the body of the song don't change all that much-- this song is totally a lost love power ballad.

Going back to my ignorance, this is the first Nelly song I've heard, and while it is sort of what I expected from a chart topper (in that it's incredibly bland-- I couldn't have asked for a more average song), I'm pleasantly surprised by a few things.

First, it's not noticeably autotuned, which is nice, and indicates that Nelly might be actually be able to sing... it's still a dodgy bet, because anything might have been done to his voice with the sparkly, platinum dusted production on this song.

Second, the bridge is awesomely ironic-- it mixes the club anthem “put your hands up” with the power ballad pull-back. So all of the beats go away and all you've got is a very quiet, plaintive guitar. Kinda makes you cry, eh? And then (remember, there are no beats here) the lyrics are “If you've ever been in love, put your hands up.” I don't know if someone's being clever and subverting a cliché, or if it's just the most misplaced “put your hands up” call-out since Jon LaJoie. Either way, I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Not a bad start, but I don't see myself becoming a fan...

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Power Ballad

The Power Ballad is the sensitive side of those who rock.  While the song does incorporate softer elements of balladry, it can't let the bigger and more flamboyant (read: arena-sized) elements go, and has to turn up the star power at some point during the song.

A shot across the bow

I'm going to start listening to some Billboard Top 100 singles on a regular basis, and do a little writing about what I glean from a fresh dose of popular music. There's a few reasons I'm curious about this, namely that I don't know anything about the AV Club's reporting about current trends, and Greta's blog where she watches a horror movie a day as we approach Halloween has been a lot of fun: there's the impetus and the method. More importantly-- I'm completely ignorant of a large slice of modern culture.

When I say I've never heard anything by such-and-such artist, my friends always assure me I must have heard them somewhere... but they're usually wrong. I'm completely ignorant of most popular music. I never listen to the radio, I don't have TV (I'm not an anti-television snob; I watch the stuff when shows come out on DVD), and I try not to shop at piped-in music places. No broadcasts, no commercials. I really am in the dark about pop music.

I think it's kind of funny that I can argue the merits of 500 Days of Summer against the annoying tragedy of The Backup Plan without any real love of romantic comedies, but I have no idea what Jay-Z or Katy Perry sound like. If one of her songs weren't featured in a lousy tween adventure movie we've been making fun of for months, I would have no idea what Lady Gaga sounds like.

Plus-- there are good pop songs in the world. Even my most intolerant friends will cop to liking something that was a Top 10 hit sometime in the last 30 years, and so will I, and I'm not so curmudgeonly that I'll insist pop hits were fine in the past (even if the keepers were few and far between) but "everything totally sucks now."

So here's my plan. I'm going to listen to three songs a week from the Billboard Hot 100... really listen to them. More than once, even. I'm picking #3, #17, and #51 from each week. Mostly, I don't want to deal with #1, so I'm skipping down to #3 for a chart topper. #17 seems like it's far enough down from #3 for some variety. Finally, I want to have access to the kind of things that never make the Top 20... so here's hoping #51 can put a different kind of song in the mix.

I'm going to pull these songs every Thursday (dunno how that lines up with Billboard's schedule), and go from there. The numbers might slide around if something is in the same spot two weeks in a row (I'm not going to do the same song twice). Also, after looking at the charts, I'm not doing anything from Glee; I'm looking into new music, so I'm passing on all of the retro hits that constantly swamp the charts in Glee form.

It'll take me a little bit to figure out how I'm going through all of this, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Wish me luck.

addendum #1...

Trouble with songs stagnating in the top 5 has inspired me to pick different numbers.  As of Week #4, I'm hitting these chart positions: #11 (High), #33 (HiMid), #66 (LoMid), and #99 (Low).

 addendum #2...

The Keep/Delete measure wasn't allowing for any shading between the "delete" songs that I wouldn't really listen to for fun and the "delete" songs that make you want to do egregious harm to everyone involved in its creation.  The new measure is like this:

	Stay	I want to stay with this song; this is a cozy tune I will listen to in my normal life, like any song I'd listen to as a normal guy listening to music I love.  This is the highest praise I can give.
	Walk	I can walk away. It's not bad... it may even be good, but it's not good enough for me to stay.  Even if I appreciate this song, it's not good enough to hang in my headphones for weeks; even if I'm not keen on this tune, it's not so bad as the music that inspires RUN!
	RUN!	Oh please, make it stop.  It's hard to believe anyone can listen to music this empty and soulless without being sucked into a terrible void.  Your best bet is to run like hell and hope the zombie apocalypse doesn't catch up to you.