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Year In America September 18, 2008
The Top Five is all T.I. and M.I.A., in a glorious feat of initials. Well, not quite: Pink is 1 and Rihanna is 3. But T.I. is 2, M.I.A. is 4, and there they are together holding hands and smashing feats at number 5. And five new tunes tick for the full circuit, Jazmine finally pushing through to the Top 40 from her base in the urban leagues.
T.I. & Jay-Z f. Kanye West & Lil Wayne "Swagga Like Us": Kanye swaggas like Jagga, while M.I.A.'s voice on the sample is as hard and cutting as Keef 'n' Brian in '64. TICKA LIKE US.
(Has this ever happened before, a song and its sample sitting next to each other on the same chart? Or is "Paper Planes" a first?)
Taylor Swift "Love Story": "You were Romeo, I was the Scarlet Letter." She sings songs about songs and songs about stories, flashes to what she was, what she might be, what ought to be and what isn't. This time she gives herself a happy ending. TICK.
"Fall Out Boy "I Don't Care": Big fat boogie beat, the Boy stompin' their heavy-footed way through ferns and forests, melody fighting its way into the density. Dumb, but strong enough for a TICK.
Kevin Rudolf f. Lil Wayne "Let It Rock": More rockin' thickness, stacked-up harmonies, Wayne just poppin' by, as home here as anywhere. TICK.
Jazmine Sullivan "Need U Bad": Sullivan takes a delicate reggae floater and powers it through the ceiling. This ought to be a mismatch, but it mostly works, the beauty managing to hold its own. TICK.
(Thought this was basically a reworking of Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)," but a Net search reveals its actual source as "Queen Of The Minstrels," a sweet 1969 Studio One classic from Cornell Campbell & the Eternals.)(EDIT: Wait, further searching finds that the Eternals track is a cover of the Impressions' "Minstrel and Queen"; but the Eternals' version is better, and it's the basis for "Need U Bad." RE-EDIT: OK, but listening to the Impressions and the Eternals tracks, they don't sound so similar: the latter maybe takes a lick from the former, and the words "queen" and "minstrel," but seems to be its own song.)
T.I. & Jay-Z f. Kanye West & Lil Wayne "Swagga Like Us": Kanye swaggas like Jagga, while M.I.A.'s voice on the sample is as hard and cutting as Keef 'n' Brian in '64. TICKA LIKE US.
(Has this ever happened before, a song and its sample sitting next to each other on the same chart? Or is "Paper Planes" a first?)
Taylor Swift "Love Story": "You were Romeo, I was the Scarlet Letter." She sings songs about songs and songs about stories, flashes to what she was, what she might be, what ought to be and what isn't. This time she gives herself a happy ending. TICK.
"Fall Out Boy "I Don't Care": Big fat boogie beat, the Boy stompin' their heavy-footed way through ferns and forests, melody fighting its way into the density. Dumb, but strong enough for a TICK.
Kevin Rudolf f. Lil Wayne "Let It Rock": More rockin' thickness, stacked-up harmonies, Wayne just poppin' by, as home here as anywhere. TICK.
Jazmine Sullivan "Need U Bad": Sullivan takes a delicate reggae floater and powers it through the ceiling. This ought to be a mismatch, but it mostly works, the beauty managing to hold its own. TICK.
(Thought this was basically a reworking of Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)," but a Net search reveals its actual source as "Queen Of The Minstrels," a sweet 1969 Studio One classic from Cornell Campbell & the Eternals.)(EDIT: Wait, further searching finds that the Eternals track is a cover of the Impressions' "Minstrel and Queen"; but the Eternals' version is better, and it's the basis for "Need U Bad." RE-EDIT: OK, but listening to the Impressions and the Eternals tracks, they don't sound so similar: the latter maybe takes a lick from the former, and the words "queen" and "minstrel," but seems to be its own song.)
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JAZMINE!
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btw my hip-hop dance class tutor played 'He Said She Said' by Ashley Tisdale last night! it was awesome.
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I'm not as high on "Need U Bad" as you are - seems a bit clumsy when compared to the Eternals' or the Impressions' tracks I linked, or "Doo Wop (That Thing)" - but it's an easy easy easy tick, so much better than most of what the chart has been giving us recently. And I'd say the same about "Swagga."
As for the rest: "Love Story" is better than other recent Taylor songwriting (the excellent, recently charting "Should've Said No" is two years old), gets to the fragile-sad-elated-pissy combo she did so well on album one, on last year's Xmas originals, and on those r&b covers she's been tossing at us in concert, but... not sure what's falling short here; she evens out the emotions too much in comparison to her at her best. A sure tick, though.
Interesting thing about Fall Out Boy is that as a rock band they barely stumble into competence, and I've never been a fan of Stump's straining voice, either, which means if they don't come through on the melodies and harmonies they're a bore. (And I assume you'd say they're a bore no matter what.) Rudolf I don't know what to make of. Lighter touch than FOB, but as with them, his prettiness is more crucial than his rockingness; don't know what he's doing on Ca$h Money. Both tracks are a bit better than borderline, but neither ranks with, say, "The Break's Over" (which itself was hardly transcendent).
As for the tumbleweeds and steer skulls that have overtaken this corner of livejournal, we do seem to be wandering in the prairie without much company, don't we?
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I mostly end up going back to ILM to talk about new music; the conversation there might not be as good as it could be here (though it has improved again!) but at least people have heard/care about new music. Poptimists isn't dead though, they all come crawling out when Girls Aloud or shitty '90s indie is the topic of conversation.
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