Frank Kogan

Best-ofs for 2017 are already appearing,* and here I am finally posting my Top Singles for 2016. It's not that I've been ruminating all these extra months about 2016's music: I was done with this list in February, and I've refused to add to it since. It's just that I wanted to write something good before posting, or at least something interesting about some of these songs. And it kept just not happening, a combination of busyness and some sort of block. But here we are; I worked hard on the list back then, which is odd and deserves some explanation, that I worked so hard on it then and that I still feel it should be posted, no matter how late.

So here's a quasi explanation/justification, followed by an embed of the YouTube playlist, all 100, then the Top 100 list itself, and then maybe something interesting about several of these songs.

Quasi Explanation/Justification

When I was 12 I drew up lists of songs I liked, drawing stars next to each song to show how much I liked it: 1 star was good, 2 was very good, 3 was better than that, 4 the best. A very positive rating system. "Turned Down Day" by the Cyrkle was one of only two that got a 4, though I don't remember what the other one was. It's possible "Eleanor Rigby" got the 4, though she might have only been a — still impressive — 3. "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" certainly would've been a 4 except I stopped making the lists by then. And "Hanky Panky" and "Mother's Little Helper" were surely 4's as well, except they were older, from back in the summer, so I didn't feel I needed to list them. At least, I don't remember listing them.

(Why 'Turned Down Day"? That's a question to return to some other day, maybe.)

"Sunny Afternoon" was a 2 or a 3. "Sunshine Superman" was 2 or 3. Obviously they're connected in my memory. "Last Train To Clarksville," the band name Monkees meaning nothing to me yet, got 2 or 3. When the show appeared several weeks later, "(Theme From) The Monkees" got a 1. (That's a good score, remember.) Those are all I can recall, though I surely listed far more than just those.**

Why did I make such lists? Was one reason to remember song names? To remember which band did which song? Did I even write down band names?

One reason, I think, was that the lists made listening more exciting. And the ratings, they made it a competition, a car race, a competitive event. Making it a race drew me in, maybe even kept me listening more than I'd have listened otherwise.

Several years earlier when I was alone I'd run marble races on a track I had. Spent hours at a time doing it, scoring which marbles did the best. I'd play a game outside — also alone — where I'd throw a tennis ball against the basketball backboard nailed to a tree at the side of our driveway and try to catch the ball. One "team" was the thrower and the other "team" was the catcher, and if the catcher missed, the thrower scored a point, assuming the throw was in-bounds. First team to score 12 was the winner. I'd have tournaments. The teams were called Pic, Poc, Pook, and Peek. Each had its own throwing style and personality. Different windups, different arcs, sometimes different hands. Poc was my favorite and, not surprisingly, a frequent winner.

In retrospect this seems like a very boy thing: listings, scoring, winners and losers, competing.*** The imaginary tennis-ball competitors, though, had more specific criteria for winning and losing than songs do.

I never showed anyone my song lists, the ratings.

This doesn't mean there was no public purpose in this: remembering songs, knowing where I stood. But it was its own adventure, too.

So here we are. I'm still making lists, pitting songs against each other, sort of. Anyway, almost a year late, my 2016 list: as I said, I worked hard on it, listened a lot. Besides my public ongoing list I had a private YouTube playlist called "Borderlines" and another called "Interesting Songs Maybe, 2016," kept mining both for new entries, at the end had an extra 12 or 14 remaining on Borderlines that I kept relistening to, to make sure they shouldn't make the main list. I thought a lot about which songs deserved to be higher or lower, as if there was a difference between 58 and 68. (I'm going to be more casual tossing things in order this year. Just not going to spend the time.) All this on a blog which almost nobody reads anymore.

But I keep wanting to do these lists. It's one way of organizing my listening, keeping at least some of it contemporary, now that no one's paying me to review and I myself am not remembering to even look at the Great Competitive Election like the Voice's year-end poll (if it's still even a thing; I have no idea who won last year).

Of course there are plenty of other ways I organize my listening, and plenty of other questions I ask of music and of myself besides the big blunt-instrument ones, "How good is it?" and "Do I like this more than that?" But there's something pretty basic here, the question "Do I like it or not?" and "What's good?"; maybe even basic because the answers are so unsteady and the reasons so opaque.

Also, you're not seeing enough of my other questions anymore. I keep saying I'm going to post more. Maybe one reason the lists at least get posted — even this one, so horribly late — is that they have a timeline: first quarter, half year, three quarters, year's end. This one sort of has a deadline too (I'm on my sixth or seventh): at what point is it even beyond ridiculous to post it?

Here's an embed of the playlist. Honestly, I'd be surprised if anyone gives it the afternoon it would take, but I urge you to anyway. Just let it go in the background.



1. HyunA "How's This?"
2. Britney Spears ft. G-Eazy "Make Me..."
3. Crayon Pop "Vroom Vroom"
4. 4minute "Canvas"
5. FAMM'IN "Circle"
6. Céline Dion "Encore un soir"
7. Tiffany ft. Simon Dominic "Heartbreak Hotel"
8. Era Estrafi "Bon Bon"
9. DLOW "Do It Like Me"
10. Wonder Girls "Why So Lonely"
( 11 through 100 )

( Commentary: Céline, Tiffany, Kenji Minogue, Yoonmirae, MOBB, Tacocat )

1. 4minute "Canvas"
2. FAMM'IN "Circle"
3. Aommy "Shake"
4. Tiffany ft. Simon Dominic "Heartbreak Hotel"
5. NCT U "The 7th Sense"
6. Tiggs Da Author ft. Lady Leshurr "Run"
7. BTS "Save Me"

For some reason I'm picking mood pieces here (tracks 1, 2, 5), sound that's atmospheric but with its sleeves up and muscles flexed, floating fields of toughness. Tiffany, tall and lithe (track 4), is in a mood too, ol' r&b sadness, integrity in heartbreak.

Tiggs isn't playing tough. He'd rather do fear, if it's got speed and a beat.

Aommy is cute and hot and fiery, seems working class to me: in the video, power is kicking the people who can kick you, and imagining (imaging it as if) they'll take it as just hard flirting, and so will the viewers — 'cause the woman doing the workout still needs to flirt, her boundaries not really protected, and maybe she wants to flirt as well, or works it well, anyway, and isn't really seeking an alternative. At least, it feels to me as if the video wants to have its cake and eat it too. Or maybe it's just a workout vid with fantasy advice for women getting by in what remains primarily men's space. The coda is good-naturedly inclusive. I don't know Thailand, so these are distant guesses.

Not keeping up, obviously; four of these I scarfed up only this week.

And 4minute are no more, by disagreement, not choice, it seems (reading between lines of the public reportage).

Of three recent albums by K-pop big shots (SNSD, 2NE1, and After School, w/ 4minute and Super Junior-M in my to-do pile), After School's is head and shoulders above the rest, once again. I still have no sense of the members' individual musical personalities, if they have any, and not much sense of a collective personality either, sonically. "Smooth vocals with forceful accompaniment" is what I come up with, pretty much, plus occasional strong pangs, the latter more often in Korea than in Japan. In their early days, feisty was good, gentle was bad. Now gentle feels deep, and when the vocals go to what I call "easy vocal washes" the resulting mist is like a sharp shower, rather than blah.



The album (Dress To Kill) is in Japanese, its two singles written and produced by Shinichi Osawa. Listening to Shinichi Osawa's Works 2008-2012, which also tends to go for a smooth front and a propulsive engine, I'm nonetheless thrown back to the feeling of distance I often get from J-pop, without knowing if the distance is mine or theirs. And I say to myself "I don't get it." Whereas After School's Japanese work gets to me every bit as well as their Korean.

( adjectives, arbitrary_greay's keybs, Euro-ish songwriters )

(My previous two posts entitled "After School's Good Year" are here: 2013 and 2012.)

Quick opinions:

SNSD Love & Peace. Japanese, Scandinavian, consistently tuneful, not trying to overpower us with muscle and rhythm.

[EDIT: Video no longer available and I don't remember what it was that I embedded. Might have been "Love&Girls" but it could've been any of the others from Love & Peace. Sorry.]

Tymee "On The River." Strong, harsh, and plaintive at once, is the hurt, pummeled, and scarred Tymee. She's been doing this since her sad "Diary" days, but it was usually a sideshow to the artplay and to her being the fast sprite and melody-flinging cut-up. A lot of that's on hiatus since the name change: instead, she's been aggressive and angry; now she's knocked back in pain.



T.O.P "Doom Dada." Beats dig into the dark desert to match T.O.P's rasp, which sounds quite amused by all the dust.



Also: good album from Vixx, dull album from Myname, very good "Lonely Christmas" from Crayon Pop, T-ara's "Hide 'N' Seek" not as good as Miss A's "Hide & Sick," Nine Muses' "Glue" not as good as Nine Muses' "Gun," 2013 Flashe single not nearly as good as 2012 Flashe single but I'm glad they're still in business and that strong-voiced Songhee is still singing, disappointing single ("It's You") from D-Unit after a very good year, disappointing single from Super Junior ("Blue World"/"Candy"), third set of the year from SHINee (Everybody) not as good as first two.

[EDIT: Again, video's been taken down from YouTube and I can't tell from what I wrote here which one I embedded.]

GLAM's "I Like That" entered the Gaon Chart this week at 57. This was way lower than I'd anticipated, my expectation being based on an Allkpop story saying "I Like That" had finished number 3 on January 2 on the Bugs Chart. I don't know what the Bugs Chart does, actually (the chart is in Korean, not surprisingly). I assume it records daily numbers, though I don't know of what. "I Like That" isn't in today's top ten.

GLAM began promoting the single on December 29, performing it on SBS's Gayo Daejun accompanied by their Vocaloid friend SeeU. The video didn't go up until three days later, though teasers had started on December 26. Full-throttle comeback performances started on January 3. So, anyway, I don't know whether or not the song had a full week in the public consciousness to post numbers — Gaon's week runs Sunday to Saturday, so the current rankings are based on December 30 through January 5; next chart will cover January 6 through today.

SNSD's "I Got A Boy" is number 1 with a rather unimpressive 28,479,080 points. Its numbers might not reflect a full week either: video wasn't up until Monday December 31, and I don't know when sales started. Also, it's a weird song.

On YouTube, "I Got A Boy" is at 26,564,464 views. Are there Korean video sites I should be taking account of too? YouTube views for "I Like That," which are divided up between LOENENT and GLAMofficialvideo, total 291,414. A couple orders of magnitude of difference, there. Gaon points for "I Like That" are 3,376,761, which makes up one order of magnitude but is still way behind. So Allkpop's lead, "GLAM have been giving Girls' Generation a run for their money with their new single, 'I Like That,' which is rising up on music charts," seems very wrong. Premature, anyway.

I'm rooting big for "I Like That," which I'll write about later. Is a good song, not a great one, but socially this group matters. And they dance well. And the lyrics engage in fairly subtle arguments with themselves, aren't just slogans. Though as slogans they're good, too.

Chuck Eddy on K-pop:

http://www.spin.com/articles/k-pop

Chuck wrote this over a year ago, told me he didn't think Spin had made it available online so I didn't look, but it turns out they had. Excerpts:

"horse-whinnying Cypress Hill–style nasal frat-hop" (Seo Taiji & Boys)

"hiring hotties as much for dancing as singing" (H.O.T.)

"tunes about shy boys, kissing, and snow" (S.E.S.)

"threw samples hard and soft — notably, traditional Asian gorgeousness — into the pot" (Drunken Tiger)

"unprecedented combination of talent, looks, ambition, healthy living, and multilingual studiousness" (BoA)

"Maybe somebody somewhere raps faster than E.via on 'Shake!' but no way as adorably." (E.via)

"G-Dragon and T.O.P. from long-standing boy bunch Big Bang begin by banging big" (GD&TOP)

"mega-delectable mega-hit 'Gee'" (SNSD)

While searching "Oscar song meanings," I incidentally found this thread where non-Koreans talk about how they discovered K-pop and why they love it.

"I'm just wondering...... I see many people who aren't Korean listening to Kpop.

"How did you find out and learn about kpop?
"Why do you love it?
"What is your ethnicity/nationality?
"What are your favorite groups and why? What are your favorite songs and why?"
"Do you prefer boy groups over girl groups or both?"

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120412182534AAbtXrF

I don't think nationality matters at all because puppies of all countries listen to kpop. A norwegian puppy or a belizean puppy - they all love it! I'm central european, now living in Phnom Penh where local khmer kids dance to kpop in parks. Few nights ago they were swaying their hips to Abracadabra :D

Three people like that the groups don't have to sing about sex, money, and drugs.

( Favorite meta, best food reference, most emblematic authenticity argument )
Anyone reading this can answer in the comments, if you'd like, even if you are Korean. How does one define "Non-Korean" anyway? I'd say that I'm non-Ukrainian, non-Belarussian, non-Russian, non-Polish, non-Austrian, nonshtetl, non-European, non-Yiddish, etc., though I could claim all those ethnicities (or whatever) under certain circumstances. By the way, the first-released (though unauthorized) version of "Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)" was not by SNSD but by an Uzbek. Not that Uzbekistan is anywhere near the Ukraine. But it's closer to the Ukraine than to Korea.

"Dineyra - Raqsga tushgin uzbek song" (Watch on YouTube)

Those of you who don't frequent the SNSD Free For All missed The Adventure Of Taeyeon And The Moth:



Favorite YouTube comments:

"This is gross, it wasn't necessary to kill the moth
How can people celebrate this? you guys are sick!"

"2 true SONE here. One willing to die and one willing to kill for Taeyeon's attention."

("Sones" is the name for SNSD fans.)

Q: What do the following have in common: Good Day, Dum Dum Boys, Get Away With Murder, In My Eyes, Try To Follow Me?

A: Damned if I know — other than that they're all song titles, modern (i.e., post-nineteenth-century) popular music.

The question arises because those titles are together on a piece of scrap paper from last week, in my handwriting. What was on my mind? I have no memory of writing this.

I have mp3's of some but not all of these, so I wasn't trying to remind myself that I'd been dicking around with their tags, or needed to.

Performers, if you're interested: IU (아이유), Iggy Pop, Ashlee Simpson, Minor Threat, 2NE1 (투에니원). Robyn does an "In My Eyes" too, but I'm sure I've given it no thought in the last year and a half. The Ashlee song is really entitled "Murder."

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Your search - "good day" "dum dum boys" "get away with murder" "in my eyes" "try to follow me" - did not match any documents.

Did any of you write about those songs last week?

Also on that piece of scrap paper: my guesses as to who is who in various group photos of SNSD. I've decided it's about time I learned to match name and face for them. So far I'm doing real poorly. They keep changing their damn hairstyles. First photo, I only got Sooyoung, Yuri, Sunny, and Seohyun correct. Next photo I got Tiffany, Yoona, Sunny, Hyoyeon. How did I miss Sooyoung? Third photo, I got Taeyeon, Yoona, Sunny, and Sooyoung. Sunny's the only one I always get instantly.

Wow! I'd never heard this before! Writer Kenzie* and producers Bloodshy & Avant take a dramatic "Reach Out I'll Be There"–type melody, throw it into waltz time, and make it a funny, bumpy promenade. [EDIT: I meant to say they throw it into SWING time. My brain went herky-jerky there for a second. In any event, this most certainly isn't a waltz; it's 4/4, but each of those beats then subdivides further into triplets.]



The dance is terrific too, each of SNSD coming in from the side or down the aisle and then out onto the runway.

So Lazy Reblog Week continues here on Koganbot, hat-tip this time to just_keep_on. "Chocolate Love" was part of the promo campaign for LG Electronics' Cyon division's Chocolate BL-40 phone, back in '09. Also in on the campaign, the group f(x) did an even dancier, bumpier version; not quite as good, though, owing to their singing not being as warm as SNSD's. Also, being the Electronic Pop version, it lacks SNSD's tubas and honky-tonk.

(Phone commercials seem to have an important role in K-pop: especially there's the epic Lee Hyori video for Samsung's Anystar, the third of three major video productions she did for Samsung. This video also served as trainee Park Bom's debut, Bom going on to fame in 2NE1. And according to Wikip, Miss A's early public performances pre-Min, in China, included appearances on behalf of Samsung China's Anycall campaign.)

*EDIT: See comment thread. Checking the Korean Copyright Association writers' credits, Kenzie isn't listed at all for this song, whereas Bloodshy & Avant (Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg) are, as well as Henrik Jonback, so that's three of the four writers of "Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex." But when we get to the fourth credit, Cathy Dennis is missing and Karen Poole is in her place. Checking Wikip's page for Karen Poole, though, and it doesn't include "L.A. Ex" among her compositions, so I don't know, except I think I've done all the research I want to do for today.