My Preliminary Singles Jukebox 20 (not counting the top 16)

[koganbot]

Random thoughts in regard to the Jukebox poll that will create the qualifiers for the Jukebox year-end tournament which will also comprise polls:

--The chorus for Allison Iraheta's "Friday I'll Be Over U" works a lot better than I had originally thought, even if it still is too loud and crowded. The verses are the problem; they sound like a stumbling attempt at Joan Jett doing a Gary Glitter stomp, but without an appropriately Joan Jett–Gary Glitter chant on top. Fortunately, their only being verses, the chorus wins.

--Will says that, given the reviews he's received so far for the newly posted tracks, there is one with potential to break into the Top 16, and that we'd never believe him if he told us what it was. Well, I would not believe him if he told me it was Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," even though that's the new track I like best. Therefore, we can conclude that the track he is referring to is, indeed, something other than Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now." I mean, I don't believe it possibly could be "Need You Now." Unless of course my disbelief means that it is "Need You Now." I think I'm losing control of the logic here. I would believe Will if he told me the track was the DJ Khaled, which means it probably isn't. The Jukebox server seems to have gone down in the last hour and I don't remember which other tracks had received more than a couple of reviews as of last night (Iraheta had received none but now is up to one), but when it returns we can speculate as to what this unexpected high-scoring track is - and then determine to defeat it, unless it's Lady Antebellum or DJ Khaled. EDIT: Server back up, and the only other track that seems as if it had several reviews last night was Florence + the Machine's annoyingly mannered, "You Got the Love," but I'd believe Will on that one because people in this neighborhood tolerate her with enthusiasm, so now I'd disqualify it for credibility. Would two votes for Annie qualify her if they're both 10s? Roisin Murphy is up to four but I don't think she was last night (kinda liked that one). Oh yeah and there's Iyaz's "Replay," and I've done my best to lower its score.

--You should review the Lady Antebellum for Jukebox, so that it will get enough reviews to get posted and to be eligible for the year-end tournament. For fans of the Art Of Mush, it is state-of-the-art country MOR mush, quite moving in its mushy way, all about late-night drunk dialing, and mushiness.

--Speaking of the Jukebox year-end tournament, it is the subject of this post. We are in the process of qualifying tracks for the tournament. Those that the Jukeboxers already rated in the top 16 are in; if any new track gets rated high enough to break into the 16 it's in as well. The remaining 24 tracks (or 23 or even 22, in case one or two new tracks do break in) are chosen in a poll. And I am participating in the poll. I get to vote my top 20 among songs the Jukebox reviewed this year that aren't already in the top 16, and all the other Jukebox reviewers vote their top 20, and the top 24 are into the tournament as qualifiers. And then there are seeded contests, eight groups of five songs, like football playoffs! And then there's something else!

Here are my preliminary choices, subject to agonized reappraisals. Oh, and there are Amnesty Tracks, which I'm not going to explain, but three of my top six are Amnesty Tracks.

My Current 20:
1. Shystie f. DJ Deekline "New Style"
2. The Black Eyed Peas "Boom Boom Pow"
3. Love And Theft "Runaway"
4. The Lonely Island "I'm On A Boat"
5. Das Racist "Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell (Wallpaper Mix)"
6. Timberlee f. Tosh "Heels"
7. Girls Aloud "Untouchable"
8. Depeche Mode "Wrong"
9. Asher Roth "I Love College"
10. Tempa T "Next Hype"
11. Jeremih "I'mma Star"
12. Demi Lovato "Don't Forget"
13. Emiliana Torrini "Jungle Drum"
14. Eve & Benga "Me N My"
15. Britney Spears "3"
16. The Saturdays "Forever Is Over"
17. Maino f. T-Pain "All The Above"
18. Lily Allen "22"
19. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"
20. Eva Simons "Silly Boy"

Have a shot at displacing the last several:
--Britney Spears "If You Seek Amy"
--Marit Larsen "If A Song Could Get Me You"
--Pink "Please Don't Leave Me"
--Sean Kingston "Fire Burning"
--Tommy Sparks "She's Got Me Dancing"
--Kanye West f. Kid Cudi "Welcome To Heartbreak"
--Donae'o "Party Hard"
--Alexander Rybak "Fairytale"
--Wale f. Lady GaGa "Chillin'"
--New Boyz "You're A Jerk"
--Veronica Maggio "Stopp"
--Bashy f. H-Boogie "Your Wish Is My Command"
--Brooks & Dunn "Cowgirls Don't Cry"

Probably have more of a shot, since they're on my list of Songs That Need Lots More Listens:
--Stush "We Nuh Run (Sirens Remix)"
--Lady GaGa "Paparazzi"
--Lady GaGa "Bad Romance"
--Lady GaGa "LoveGame"
--Allison Iraheta "Friday I'll Be Over U"
--Fefe Dobson "I Want You"
--Professor Green f. Chynaman & C.O.R.E. "Upper Clapton Dance"
--Medina "Velkommen til Medina"
--Three 6 Mafia f. Webbie "Lil Freak"
--DJ Burn One & Pill "Trap Goin' Ham"
--Morandi "Colors"
--Cascada "Evacuate The Dancefloor"
--Cascada "Dangerous"
--KIG Family "Head Shoulderz Kneez & Toez"
--Cam'ron ft. Skitzo & Byrd Lady "Cookies 'N' Apple Juice"
--Walter Jones "Living Without Your Love"
--Rihanna "Russian Roulette"
--DJ Khaled f. Usher, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross & Drake "Fed Up"

Had they not already been in the top 16, I'd definitely have voted for Ne-Yo's "Part Of The List" and Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" and possibly would have voted for Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Heads Will Roll" and Medina's "Kun For Mig."

Reason to be cheerful:
In an unrelated note, I read in today's NY Times that cheerfulness and glumness and the like spread through social networks; so, in an attempt to create the cheerfulness of us all, I will cheerfully say that owing to the utter, wretched awfulness of the new Idolator site I no longer feel I am missing anything when I don't get a chance to look at Idolator. This brings me peace of mind, knowing that I am less out of the loop than previously, now that there is less of a loop. Also, the wretched Robbie who writes most of the new posts is most definitely not the woman named Robbie I know here in Denver. Next time I see Denver Robbie I will congratulate her on this fact, should we be in need of conversation starters.

Comments

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I would appreciate it if you did explain Amnesty Week, because I haven't got a fucking clue.

Denver Robbie should be delighted she's not That Other Robbie.

[koganbot]

Actually, it's pretty simple: the Amnesty tracks are a bunch of singles from the last year that Will never posted for review that various of us nominated for Amnesty Week so that the Jukeboxers could review them. You could have sent him a nomination two, but I'm inferring that you didn't. Next week we can start reviewing them, all blurbs due by 7 PM London time on November 22, which I think would be 2 PM your time. And the week following that he'll post scores and reviews, just like normal.

So that's how Shystie and Timberlee and Das Racist get on my list, since the Amnesty tracks are as eligible as any of the others.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

So are the Amnesty singles already eligible for our lists, or do we have to wait and see if they get enough reviews and get posted?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The deadline for our lists is Monday (I think) so I assume they're all eligible regardless.

[koganbot]

No, deadline is not Monday, it's Sunday the 22nd. Here's what Will wrote:

"The deadline for ballots: 7pm, UK time, Sunday 22nd November. That's 2pm EST and 5am Monday Australian. There will doubtless be wiggle room, but I want to get the groups sorted and drawn that night, and then allocate voters to groups accordingly."

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Despite my best efforts, my disorganisation is always a step ahead of me.

[koganbot]

I think they all will get posted no matter what (unlike some of the new regular songs, possibly). Until his bit of time off over the last five days, Will has done a good job of drumming up blurbs when a song was short.

I hope he's OK. He's done a terrific job, given what he's trying to do.

By the way, in regard to something you wrote in your lj: reviewing and rating songs doesn't come naturally to me, either. It's much more natural for me to post on comment threads, for that matter. Reviewing is actually something of a task that I force myself to do here and on poptimists, because it's how I stay abreast of music. Also, it's important to start the discussion, sometimes. In any event, I think it's important for you to start and lead discussions as well. Among other things, you're good at putting music into the context of a lived lives, if you know what I mean, and that's exactly the sort of thing that isn't done very well in music criticism. The Jukebox format of short blurbs and ratings may not be conducive to that, but that may just be because people don't try. Back in Why Music Sucks when we did the blindfold tests I actually told people that they didn't have to write about the song in their blurb, if they didn't want to, much less justify their scores. I pushed for personality and irresponsibility because I knew I had the writers who were responsible and talented enough to handle it. And even if the Jukebox's blurb-and-rating style doesn't seem natural to you, you should get your voice in there as best you can.

(Also, if you haven't, you should check out what goes on in the comment threads to Popular. When Tom reaches the late '80s and into the '90s, I think you'd flourish there.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole thing would have been irrevocably fucked within a week if I were the one running it -- I don't know how he manages to make it actually work.

But I don't want to stay abreast of music! I'm not being contrary here; what I meant when I said I don't like reviewing and rating stuff is that there's this emphasis on discovering and discussing new music on poptimists, and across all the related websites, which is fine if that's what people want to do, but it doesn't interest me and I hate forcing myself to listen to music in a completely unnatural way just so I can have something to say. Because most of the time I don't have something to say. The reason I'm good at putting music into the context of lived lives (thank you) is the same reason I'm not interested in frantically keeping up with what's new. Listening for the sake of listening doesn't do it for me -- if I'm going to have an opinion on a song, it'll be because I heard it coming out of someone else's headphones on the train, or because somebody said something about it that made me angry, or because it drifted across the street while I was sitting there with with windows open and suddenly it sounded different, or because it came on at 3AM when I was smashed and tired and everyone started singing along and at that moment I understood what it was for, or because it just reminded me of one of those things. Not because, like, I listened to it a couple of times. But listening to it a couple of times seems to be all people want to talk about.

The Popular comment threads were actually what prompted me to do the blind taste test (which I'll get back to you on, eventually, I'm just trying to figure out what I want to say).

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I mean, there are these whole narratives to talk about, if you just sit and spend some time listening to a single band -- the story of how the music grew and changed, and why it took the shape it did, and the relationships the band members had, and what it felt like to be a fan, and the in-jokes and the mythology, and how you heard their hits when you were a kid but it never really hit you till you were older and you fell in love with these songs, these people, and you just kept discovering more and more, how the albums fit together, how if you just paid attention you could see that they had this whole philosophy that was there all along.

But, you know, no. Let's talk about some song that we've heard four or five times at most, by some artist who's put out a single album. Exclusively. All the time. That's wayyyyy more interesting.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

That all came out grumpier than I intended.

[koganbot]

Oh, I've been chief grump and bottle washer on this subject for years, arguing that if we insist that music be news then we don't understand it. I've written polemics on the subject. I will say, nonetheless, that for me there's been a payoff for throwing myself or getting thrown at a bunch of unfamiliar new sounds week in and week out. And I'll just say that if you're in on a conversation it's more likely to be a better conversation, and if more people like you are in the conversations, then the conversations open up for even more people like you, and what people in the conversations allow themselves to do also opens up.

And now I have to go do my shoulder exercises, and go shopping.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Not to unnecessarily gender the discussion, but this perspective is something which a lot of amazing female writers I know take (inc other jukeboxers) - that their passion for music and writing comes from how it fits into their lives, not from hunching over their laptop listening to an mp3. Half of me thinks this is totally understandable, b/c commenting on a song which has no impact on your actual life is weird, put like that, and I don't know how/why I do it; half of me thinks it's a damn shame, as ideally I would like to read what all those amazing female writers (inc you) have to say about a lot more music.

(Often I find that the Jukebox is a good routine to get into - forcing myself to bash out a paragraph often loosens up my brain w/r/t whatever else I have to write.)

[koganbot]

Lex is wrong upthread. The deadline for lists is not this Monday, it's Sunday the 22nd at 7 PM London time, 2 PM your time, just the same as for the Amnesty blurbs. Noon my time, right when I'm due at an early Thanksgiving dinner.

[koganbot]

In any event, yes, all the Amnesty singles are eligible.