Similar Interests

Yes, yes, I know-- I haven't been doing this work for a while. Occasionally, I look at the Billboard charts, listen to a few songs, and groan... which is not to say I'll never tackle this stuff again, but right now I'm not loving the bad, bad music.

On the other hand, I found this:

...which does a fantastic job of crystallizing my feelings on one of the worst contributors to this site: Chris Brown.

It is also worth noting that the content provider, Todd in the Shadows, has been doing the job I've been neglecting for as long as I've been neglecting it (and still am.  Ha!) and, unbeknownst to me at the time, started a few months before I did.

Error!

Wow... that just keeps happening, eh?

Another computer failure breaking my rhythm.  I'm not sure when I can get that thing replaced and get back to this project, but a hiatus is no bad thing-- the pop charts are sluggish and still propping up songs I've already covered, so it's not like there's new content I'm scrambling to keep up with.

Lag

Yes, there has been a long wait for new content.  First, the free wifi around my place grew a password, and this changed my ability to upload and post... not impossible to overcome, but inconvenient.

Then, my netbook died.  Truth is: I do most of this work in transit, and I don't actually spend my free time listening to and writing about bad music (and, let's face it, most of this stuff is pretty bad)-- if it ain't done when I'm sitting around waiting, it ain't done.  I've done my repairs, but, since I don't upload and post as soon as these pieces are written (see: point 1), all previous entries were lost.  Another P!nk song that sounded just like the last P!nk song, but mopier; my first Katy Perry song, which brought new context to the term "pop tart;" and the actually pretty funny "I Just Had Sex."  I have no intention of re-writing these things-- one pass is all I'm willing to give those songs.

I've fixed the machine and the netbook is ready to roll once again, so there will be more to come.

Sorry about the wait.  I have a good excuse.

Rebuilding

We're one-for-everything on the keep/delete measure, so I'm thinking that my categories are far too broad.  From now on, instead of a binary system, I'm splitting music into three categories.  Retconned immediately:

Initially, I really wanted to make a cultural reference, but I just couldn't find a way to make a magnificent trio into something that split into something I loved, was okay with, and hated.  Seriously, if you were a great trio (like Groucho, Chico, and Harpo), I loved all of you... the best I could do was Butters, Kyle, and Cartman, and even that was a poor measure.

Over a time, I went back to square one: run, walk, or stay.  This should be pretty easy to understand, but let's clarify:

	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.

I kept trying to make it more fun, but I like Blossom, Bubbles. and Butterercup equally.... and I tried Zim, Dib, and Gaz... Michael, Buster, and GOB...  even Team Venture, Sphinx, and The Guild... but I can't actually find a trio where I love one member, am ambivalent about another, and hate the third.

For right now, you're stuck with my arbitrary rating system

Gwyneth Paltrow - Forget You

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

Cannibalizing what you're tying to sell as you're selling it. Are you sure that's a good idea?

Gwyneth Paltrow
Forget You
(void)
#11 (High)
Nov 25, 2010
(void)

Artist:
Song:
Style:
Billboard:
Week of:
Play:

We're not getting a review for my #High slot this week-- instead, this spot is reserved for a music industry rant.

I remember several years back (2001-2003ish) when the record industry was complaining loudly about how their #1 record of the year had sold something like 1/10^th the number of copies that a #1 record would have sold ten years before, and they blamed illegal downloading and pirating for their failing sales. The year's top 10 records, as far as sales were concerned, were largely greatest hits collections of pop star divas and collections of songs from the American Idol crowd-- this is what the big record labels were offering.

Somehow, nearly ten years later, they're still baffled by their failing sales. It hasn't dawned on these clowns that pirates aren't nearly as big a problem as their own personal failure to support, produce, and sell anything that isn't a greatest hits package or collection of cover songs people got to know on television. While the last fifteen years have been a boon to anyone who is willing to look for interesting music (they can find this music directly from the artists, in any genre, by way of independent blogs, internet radio, or even [gak] MySpace), they've been downright funereal for the big record labels, who keep shoveling the same drivel down the public's gullet and wonder why they aren't swallowing as quickly as they used to.

I'm only bringing this up now because, as I stated in post #1, I will not be reviewing anything from the cast of Glee, and I'm standing by that declaration. I'm only going off on my personal rant because Glee's cast is holding the #11 slot this week with Gwyneth Paltrow singing “Forget You,” which is, of course, the polite title of Cee Lo's “Fuck You,” currently at #9 on the charts. My pro-Cee Lo stance is no mystery on this blog, but I have to be equally as vocal about the fact that Cee Lo and Gwyneth Paltrow are now in direct competition on the Billboard top 20, and they're singing the same song. This is precisely the reason big music companies and radio stations are crumbling.

I say: good riddance. 

When the companies shilling Music Product fail, music's not going to stop-- hell, music might experience a resurgence when product gets culled from the herd. We can all make and distribute music now, and without the moronic Big Business selling us 15-year-old girl pop... well, that could result in popular music becoming a meritocracy. Imagine that! Between independent labels and completely unsigned musicians publishing themselves online, internet and XM radio, and simple word of mouth, the whole world of pop music would look much like the current world of “underground” music. This probably wouldn't affect Cee Lo in the least, but may possibly devastate Gwyneth Paltrow's career as a soul singer. 

One can only hope.

An Open Letter to Skinny Puppy

Dear Sirs,

While I'm aware that Skinny Puppy's reuniting and touring has been a success, I have also heard the side projects (such as Download) where synthesists and programmers stretched out to broader and less commercial horizons. If the cEvin Key and (before he passed) Dwayne Goettel were willing to stretch in the one direction, it's feasible current writing unit within Skinny Puppy could confront the other extreme and create music for some fashionable commercial acts. This would be an amazing benefit to both yourselves and the current climate of popular music today.

Though the history of Skinny Puppy is more abrasive and confrontational than anything likely to be on pop radio, much of the band's music was labeled “industrial disco” and features the heavy, four-on-the-floor dance beat that is currently in fashion in popular music today. Transmuting Skinny Puppy's gifts with synthesizers and original beats would be a boon to an music scene stale with 20-year-old techno clichés.

This may seem like an odd compromise, but remember: writers reap more rewards than singers. The benefits of penning a quality tune for the likes of T.I. or Usher would not only break a generic stranglehold on today's dance music, but also help finance future Skinny Puppy projects.

Thank you for your time,

Eric Charles

Recalibrating

Well, the #3 spot is kind of a pain: the top of the charts is pretty static and doesn't move around much... so I'm re-picking my numbers.  Originally, I just thought I'd move #3 up, but the whole system was lacking balance, so let's try #11, #33, #66, and #99. I'm hoping 11 is far enough down to be dynamic.

Since all the numbers have changed (and may change again), I'm tagging/labeling these things by their relative position.  I know my nerdy engineering side is showing, but from the top of the charts down I'm calling these High (#11), HiMid (#33), LoMid (#66), and Low (#99).  There-- fixed; if I have to change numbers again, at least posts will stay consistent.

...and I wanted to pick the numbers before the Billboard site updated, and with any luck Taylor Swift will be out of #11 next week.  Oh please god, no Taylor Swift.

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.

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.