DJ Earworm’s mashup of the top 25 pop songs in 2010:
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DJ Earworm’s Website
Some of the original songs don’t suck, but I still like the 2009 version better.
Also, I am officially Old, because I’ve been mixing up pictures of Kei$ha and Taylor Swift, which would annoy both of them, not to mention the 97% of you who think knowing either of those names is a bad sign. Too, I now believe it was a good thing that Katy Perry got un-invited to her Sesame Street guest spot, because you know there are too many parents who would assume the official ‘California Gurls’ video was safe for preschoolers.
freelancer
Agreed. This seems to be the consensus. This year’s mix just seems to die, melodically, about halfway through. Oh Nine’s is just way way better.
That said, Earworm is talented and prolific, but if you want a mashup hero, I’d go with Girl Talk. Gillis’ album “All Day” is a stunner. And it’s free!
de stijl
Ke$ha, lad, not Kei$sha.
(ETA: Sorry, I just checked the byline and it was Anne L. I know you’re not a lad. Would you accept lady? (Desperately trying to think of the best female equivalent for “lad.”)
Gozer
@de stijl: I think the gender appropriate term would be lass.
de stijl
@Gozer:
I’m not Scottish, so it seems inappropriate to steal their words.
de stijl
“Babe” is super inappropriate unless we have a personal connection, so I’m gonna man up, cut thru the sexual tension, and lay a manly wink on Ms. Laurie.
; – )
Okay, now on with the rest of the comments.
BTW, it’s Ke$ha, idiot!
harlana
Ke-who?
Comrade Javamanphil
It may have been a crap year in pop music but it was an awesome one for IMSs (Insufferable Music Snobs). The 2010 Teenage Fanclub release, Shadows, is a beautiful work and alone made the year for me. Bouncing Souls, Crowded House, KT Tunstall, Matt Pond PA, Mumford & Sons, Soft Pack, Rogue Wave, Elizabeth and the Catapult: all great releases in 2010. Anybody else got some faves?
OT, Anne, did you get a note from me about my rescue pets (and the recent loss of one of them?)
Bill E Pilgrim
@de stijl:
It does? Does that mean that we have to give words like golf, clan, caddy, tweed, scone, plaid, and gumption back to them?
I wonder if it’s sort of like the Greeks wanting their statues back. “That’s our wurrd, laddies, and it belongs heayrr!”
Okay that’s the last time I try to write a Scots accent phonetically.
de stijl
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Gumption doesn’t seem very Scots. There is that latinate “shun” thingy at the end.
jeffreyw
All these you may keep except for
Eurthe scones. Never touch my scones.slightly_peeved
@Comrade Javamanphil:
If you like Crowded House’s work, have you heard the cover albums “She will have her way” and “He will have his way”? Songs by the Finn brothers covered by female artists on the first, male artists on the second. Some beautiful versions in there.
Bill E Pilgrim
@de stijl:
And yet
Origin:
1710–20; orig. Scots
__
A lot of Latin influence on Scots just as on English.
de stijl
Ke$ha’s sing/talk thing initially reminded me of Sinead O’Connor until I remembered that Sinead O’Connor is a goddess genius and Ke$sha is just five or six IQ points over being forcibly institutionalized.
Google youtube+”I Feel So Different” and compare / contrast “Tik Tok”.
Idiocracy was prophesy.
PeakVT
I’m so glad I almost never hear pop music these days.
Cat Lady
I’m so old that I remember when people who could sing actually sang, instead of pumping everything through AutoTune.
I blame Peter Frampton.
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady:
You DO feel like I do!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cat Lady:
Can’t blame Frampton, he used a Talk Box. Nothing to do with AutoTune, thank you VERY much!
:)
harlana
Well I don’t even know what AutoTune is, so I am quite obviously the oldest, most out of touch curmudgeon here
Cat Lady
@jeffreyw:
Ha! Now get off my lawn! Also.
alwhite
One of my favorite nieces posted that bit of scheiße “Dear Lord last year you took my favorite . . . this year please take that horrible so-solisht” on facebook.
We had a discussion on immigration that didn’t go as well as it should have with someone as smart as she is after she ‘liked’ Jan Brewer.
Jan 2 and I have already given up on hoping that 2011 will be better than 10.
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady:
Mornin’ Ma’am.
Hal
More like Ke¢ha. All her songs are some variation of dah dah dah, [name of some liquor] dah, dah, dah…Admittedly a great way to make it in top forty radio though.
BTW, did y’all know to type the cent sign you hit num lock, hold down the alt key, and type 0162? I just learned that a few seconds ago. Look at me! My first computer trick of 2011!
Southern Beale
LOL. Well, both are Nashville girls. Kesha is like Taylor Swift’s trashed, slutty alter ego. Interesting idea: what if they were the same person?
MikeJ
@Hal: Shift + AltGr + C works for me.
¢
Comrade Javamanphil
@Hal:
Some of us, the smug Macusers™, just type Option-4 (¢).
MikeJ
@Southern Beale: I’ll take Jemina Pearl for young blonde Nashville singer.
Steeplejack
DVR Alert!
Chris Rock’s Good Hair, the documentary we were discussing a few days ago, is on HBO again at 1:00 p.m. EST today.
de stijl
@Southern Beale:
I’m still trying to get over the fact that I kind of like Taylor Swift. What’s worse? I actually kind of like Ke$ha, too.
You know what? Fuck it! I’m too old to care what other folks think about me and my odd musical crushes. I like ’em both.
mr. whipple
Aren’t they pretty much interchangable?
Ross Hershberger
Pop music has always sucked to anyone 20 years older than the demographic. Examples abound. Cue Socrates bitching about Youth and the way they dance.
I buy a lot of new music and much of it is excellent. It just takes a little attention to sort out the Gomezes and Rogue Waves from the also-rans. But it always has.
Comrade Javamanphil
@slightly_peeved: I have not heard these but will definitely look for them. I’m never disappointed by the Finn Brothers.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Ross Hershberger: Oh man it definitely has never matched what it was in Socrates’ day. Toga parties, mosh amphitheaters, the old hemlock maneuver of taking just enough of it to get high, those were the days. What happened to music since then is tragedy, I tell ya.
de stijl
@Comrade Javamanphil:
New Crowded House? I’m very intrigued. Actually more than intrigued: that’s a definite buy. Teenage Fanclub, too, although nowadays it’s probably Forty-something Fanclub.
@Cat Lady:
I cross my heart swear that the Finn bros used the early 90s version of auto-tune on a few songs on Crowded House’s Woodface era stuff. I distinctly remember Tim singing into a distortion megaphone at 1st Avenue in ’92/93 on at least two songs. I can’t find the songs I’m thinking of on youtube. Any help, please?
WarMunchkin
I’m not sure if, after seeing something like that, I’m thinking “wow, that’s a great mashup of the popular and liked songs” or “wow, if that’s the best we’ve got, we’re fucked as a culturally developed/sophisticated society”. I mean WTF katy perry.
Another random thought – If I showed that video to a culturally conservative person, I’d probably add 25 data points to their repertoire of reasons they hate Teh Libruhl.
Sputnik
I do actually enjoy some Top 40, but when I got to the “throw your hands up!” refrain, I realized how much of it sounds the same.
Adrienne
@WarMunchkin:
The only thing even remotely offensive was Katy Perry’s nekkid-ness, and if pushed I might add Rihanna’s Caribbean style hip gyrations–also known as “windin”. They’re just uptight asswads.
Also, can everyone stop ragging on the “the state of pop music”? It’s POP music for FSM’s sake and is not meant for deep reflection. If it makes you wanna dance and forget your problems for 4 minutes then it has served its purpose. Lighten the hell up you old geezers!
Adrienne
@Sputnik: B/c they’re all party songs. The top 40 consists of the songs that had the most reach across all segments of the under 30 demographic, and what activity does almost every person in the demographic like to do whether they’re a 20 y/o urban street kid or a 22 y/o suburban college attendee? You guessed it… Party! It’s not rocket science.
Also, a lot of older music is the same. If they did a mash-up of the hottest songs of say, “1982”, it would probably have a lot of songs that sound similar.
NobodySpecial
I stopped hating on ‘pop’ music when I grew old enough to realize that the flavor of the month is still usually better than straight up 70’s disco.
Plus, you know, I like Robbie Williams, so guilty pleasures and all that.
Brachiator
@Ross Hershberger:
Yeah, and old farts would alway try to crash the goat dances.
And as always, there would be some oldster shouting, “get off my agora!”
That said, I like much of the new music, and just can’t tolerate the whining of people who want to insist that music was better xx number of years ago. Some people are doomed to become their parents, you know, those people who used to insist that Perry Como or Tennessee Ernie Ford were the essence of listenable music.
But it’s fun to see kids sort through the mix and rediscover music, claiming it for their own. Over the holidays, my 15 year old nephew was practicing a little ditty he got off iTunes that he really liked, Here Comes the Sun.
This also reminded me of all the tech heads who insisted that all the old Beatles fans had already bought all the Fab Four stuff they wanted, and Apple’s acquisition was no big deal.
And I say, it’s all right.
Omnes Omnibus
Katy Perry and Taylor Swift are harmless. They are attractive young women with a reasonable amount of talent and an incredible drive to “succeed” in Pop music. It is reasonable unlikely that either of them will break any musically boundaries, but whatever. Ke$ha is basically a novelty act. None of this is worth worrying about. Good music is still being made, and the majority of people still prefer crap. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
de stijl
I’ve had a very good morning, trying to find a Crowded Hose song from the early ’90s obviously led to Crowded House songs, yum, and then I saw Split Enz stuff I had to listen to, and then that weird OMC How Bizarre which popped one a rec for one of my all time fave stupid / fun songs Len’s Steal My Sunshine.
I’m happy.
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: Steal my Sunshine is one of those songs the just makes me grate my teeth.
de stijl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Then find another stupid / fun song you like and makes you happy and listen to it 13 times in a row.
Trust me on this.
It’s good to be happy.
Omnes Omnibus
@de stijl: I am perfectly happy right now. I also wasn’t criticizing; that song is definitely a love it or hate it thing. It works for you, but not for me. Chacun a son gout.
Brachiator
In keeping with a The Times They Are A’Changing theme, Wikipedia turns 10 years old this month.
And I noted when Andrew Cuomo was sworn in as governor of New York, standing beside him was his companion, Sandra Lee, as reported in the NY Times and elsewhere. And the world did not come to an end.
I don’t keep track, but this led me to wonder how many other contemporary governors have significant others who are not spouses.
And might we soon see a president sworn in with a First Babe or First Dude? Or would that be First Hottie?
de stijl
@Brachiator:
First Sweetie? First Pookie?
Imagine a Governor or Presidential presser and in the background you hear a ringtone “You’re my pookie bear, my pookie, pookie bear.”
Comrade Javamanphil
@de stijl:
Heh. I see what you did there.
de stijl
@Comrade Javamanphil:
“Je suis intrigue” would’ve been too gauche and frenchy. Some might even call it snooty.
I try not to do snooty. Sometimes I fail. (Imagine an emoticon here)
JMC_in_the_ATL
I definitely preferred the 2009 version. I have bizarre fondnesses for both Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson. I don’t even know what that’s about.
jinxtigr
If you DID try to stop the pop, you’d have to be REAL quick before it just evaporated and there was nothing left. Holy crap, was that a lot of nothing. They had to throw bad-walkie-talkie effects to sound any different from each other, the music combined seamlessly and you couldn’t tell where one song started and another stopped, and someone or other sang that it was ‘unforgettable’.
Wow, it must be opposite day. Pop’s gotten so good at being forgettable that there’s literally nothing there anymore. Fascinating in a meta sort of way :)
And speaking as a sound engineer we are all frustrated by this stuff. It’s not at ALL an unreasonable claim to say it’s all alike when all rhythmic elements are snapped to grid, and all melodic elements are snapped to pitch with extreme ruthlessness. There literally aren’t any distinguishing factors, by design. Such things are considered ‘wrong notes’ in pop. So it is all literally forced to be perfect- which removes distinguishing features very aggressively.
Nutella
Anybody notice that, according to NPR, pie is now the in thing? Cleek’s pie filter was way ahead of the fashion curve!
Sputnik
@Adrienne: I was talking about Top 40 in general. I don’t believe that I mentioned 2010 anywhere in my comment. In general, the songs that we often remember as the great songs of any given year, were not actually in the top 10.
Mnemosyne
The thing that makes me feel old is that I can hear the influence that my favorite 80s British pop bands had on the new ones that are coming out now. Listen to “I Predict a Riot” and tell me I’m wrong to hear a bit of Specials in there.
Anne Laurie
@de stijl: Just call me “Ma’am”, and I won’t have to retaliate with more Genshiken, okay? ;)
de stijl
Yes, ma’am.
UU
skippy
taylor swift actually writesnher own songs which gives her cred in my book. plus she’s cute. kay perry to me plays her sex card way out of proportion to her talent imo, and tho shr’s gorgeous, her “music” does nothing for me.
dj earworm is brilliant. here’s my fav of his: george michael, the scissor sisters, paul mccartney and aretha franklin in no one takes your freedom.
JasonK
Taylor Swift is talent and its amazing at her age she’s not letting the success go to her head. I like her a lot.
Katy Perry knows how to play guitar, can sing pretty well, and is hot. What more can you want? She also has been giving it a go for a bit now and had some setbacks prior to becoming a huge hit. I give her a lot of credit for sticking with it.
I just “discovered” both of them recently (Katy Perry like a month ago) and love them both. Fantastic stuff. It’s not Beethoven’s Symphony #9 but not much is.
@JMC_in_the_ATL mentioned Kelly Clarkson. Another one I like a lot and that woman can sing.
@Omnes Omnibus says ‘Katy Perry and Taylor Swift are harmless. They are attractive young women with a reasonable amount of talent and an incredible drive to “succeed” in Pop music. It is reasonable unlikely that either of them will break any musically boundaries, but whatever. Ke$ha is basically a novelty act. None of this is worth worrying about. Good music is still being made, and the majority of people still prefer crap. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.’
Dunno. People were saying the same thing about Madonna from the beginning and she still keeps reinventing herself. Oh…and the majority of people didn’t *always* prefer crap. At least not when Baroque and Classical music was the only game in town ;)
@Sputnik: ” In general, the songs that we often remember as the great songs of any given year, were not actually in the top 10.”
You’re kidding right? That might be true as of 2010 but it sure wasn’t true in the 1980s. Hell…take a look at the Billboard top 10 (of 100) for 1983:
1. Every Breath You Take, Police
2. Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
3. Flashdance…What A Feeling, Irene Cara
4. Down Under, Men At Work
5. Beat It, Michael Jackson
6. Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Tyler
7. Maneater, Daryl Hall and John Oates
8. Baby, Come to Me, Patti Austin and James Ingram
9. Maniac, Michael Sembello
10. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Eurythmics
OK. Maybe I’m wrong. #7 from 1986 was “Party All the Time” by Eddie Murphy. And people are complaining about Katy Perry.
I just turned 40 last Fall. I’m getting to old to have to explain or somehow justify what I like and dont like in music. Something like that is way too personal. We should all be glad that we have so much freaking music easily available now.