Year In America October 16, 2008

[koganbot]

Britney jumps to number one, Carrie and Abel make the long trek to the Top 40, and Akon and Weezy finally have a week where no one invites them in as guests, so they invite each other.

Britney Spears "Womanizer": A tick, but I feel at a distance from this: has the same niggling, disturbing dance crud and hedonism as Blackout but brightened up and therefore not nearly as gripping or unsettling. TICK.

Saving Abel "Addicted": "I want to take my love and hate you 'til the end." Well, that's honest, but not very eloquent. This has grind-it-out force, but the adenoidal singing is a drag. NO TICK.

Carrie Underwood "Just A Dream": Heart-wrencher, best cut on Carnival Ride, Carrie's blatant wail the right thing for a big blast of grief. TICK.

Akon f. Lil Wayne "I'm So Paid": The same prettiness Akon's done a hundred times, a bit lighter than usual and sprinkled with auto-tune. OK to have on, though it doesn't stay in the attention. NO TICK.

Comments

[koganbot]

Also, "Ooh Ooh Baby" isn't even in the top eight or nine songs on Blackout.

less of a song, hardly any melodic variation

I agree, but I also think this argument is a good candidate for the Boney Joan Rule, since I can think of a lot of better songs that have way less melody, and so can you (The-Dream's "Ditch That" jumps to mind immediately). I'd say the difference is that "Ditch That" is mesmerizing in its repetition, its lack of variation being compellingly oppressive. (And this gives what variation there is a big impact.)

But I agree with Tom that "Womanizer" is still pretty good.

That it jumped so fast to number one is probably a sign that Britney has been rehabilitated in the public/tabloid mind. She's "sane" now. (Assuming that going to trial rather than taking a plea on a driving-without-a-valid-license charge is sane. Of course, it doesn't make sense that California is wasting its time on this charge, given that Britney did have a valid Louisiana license, Cali just saying that she'd lived in CA so long that she should have had a Cali license too. Maybe there's more to the case than that. I only read the People squib.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think 'Womanizer' lacks melodic variation in exactly the place it needs it, the chorus, because the verses are really melodic (haha 'Happy Together' again) and set you up for a full-throttle chorus which never arrives.

Isn't the jump to No 1 symptomatic of how singles consumption works now? It seems like every time I check out the US chart, the record for biggest jump to the top has been broken. And 'Gimme More' had a similar huge jump, and was her highest-placing single in the US for aeons, and she definitely wasn't sane then. I do think she's been "rehabilitated" in the public/tabloid mind - as have all our girls gone wild, really, none of them are doing much hell-raising these days - though. Have no idea what to expect from Circus at all.

[koganbot]

Well, the three choices for hits are jump and then quickly fall (like Clarkson's "Never Again" last year, and Britney's first two Blackout singles to a smaller extent), jump and hold on (like T.I. right now), and build slowly (like Miley's "See You Again" and Pink's "U and Ur Hand" last year). So we'll see what happens to "Womanizer." But "Gimme More" didn't jump as long or as high. And it was a lot better than "Womanizer," and Britney was much more in the news then than now.