RTS Presents: I'm out of touch, I'm out of time: My Eventual Return to Pop Music After 20 Years

[jon_chaisson]

I just recently read this article on CNN.com by David Bauder about being a music reviewer who suddenly realizes he doesn't recognize half the songs on the Top 40.



Best quote in the story:
To gauge the effect of aging on a musical attention span, here's a good rule of thumb: At age 16, most fans know everything in the Top 40. Subtract one song for each year past that, and the number will be about what the average fan will know.

I have to admit I totally agree with that statement...back when I was in my midteens, I was an avid follower of Top 40 music, even when I first started listening to college radio. I think from 1982 to about 1987 I knew almost every song on the Top 40. Nowadays, I might know the artist mentioned, but the song might elude me, since I rarely listen to Top 40 stations now, not to mention that Top 40 videos are elusive unless I actively look for them.

Another point Bauder makes that I agree with is that most stations nowadays are so genre-specific that it's really hard to guage just what is on the Top 40. My question is whether a "Top 40" exists anymore. Back in the 80s the typical FM rock/pop station would get the Casey Kasem/Rick Dees-hosted American Top 40 feed in, and one could easily find the show in their local area. Nowadays, the Ryan Seacrest-hosted show is kind of hard to find unless A)you're within the transmission reach or B)the station is listenable online. Look at the stations listed on the AT40 site--out of all the stations in California, only three are listed: Sacramento/Stockton, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Extreme northern CA is out of luck. Added to the fact that the different genre stations have different top lists: the harmless "listen-at-work" stations that play the "hits" several times a day, the alternative stations that play their own stuff and push "new" stuff even more than their hits, and the straight pop stations that just play "hits all the time". And if you go on the Billboard Top Songs by Genre site, you'll see fourteen different genre listings, with multiple charts underneath those genres.

So now I'm going to put this to the test. Bauder actually went on iTunes and downloaded the Top 40 for that particular online store, but I'm going to go with Billboard instead.
Here's a list of the top 40 on Billboard's Hot 100. And out of curiosity, I'm going to put the songs I actually know in bold type. And artists I know (and actually know some of their songs, but maybe not that one in particular) are italicized.

1. Fergie, "London Bridge"
2. Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
3. Nelly Furtado w/Timbaland, "Promiscuous"
4. Cassie, "Me & U"
5. The Pussycat Dolls w/Snoop Dogg, "Buttons"
6. Beyonce w/Jay-Z, "Deja Vu"
7. Sean Paul w/Keyshia Cole, "(When You Gonna) Give It Up to Me"
8. Christina Aguilera, "Ain't No Other Man"
9. Yung Joc, "It's Goin' Down"
10. Panic! At the Disco, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"
11. The Fray, "Over My Head"
12. Young Dro w/T.I. "Shoulder Lean"
13. Rihanna, "Unfaithful"
14. Ne-Yo, "Sexy Love"
15. Shakira w/Wyclef Jean, "Hips Don't Lie"
16. Lil Jon w/E-40 & Sean Paul, "Snap Yo Fingers"
17. Cherish w/Sean Paul, "Sho'nuff"
18. E-40 w/T-Pain & Kandi Girl, "U and Dat"
19. Kelis w/Too $hort, "Bossy"
20. Jessica Simpson, "A Public Affair"
21. The All-American Rejects, "Move Along"
22. Field Mob w/Ciara, "So What"
23. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Dani California"
24. Chamillionaire w/Krayzie Bone, "Ridin'"
25. Chingy w/Tyrese, "Pullin' Me Back"
26. Yung Joc w/Brandy 'Ms. B.' Hambrick, "I Know You See It"
27. KT Tunstall, "Black Horse & the Cherry Tree"
28. Daniel Powter, "Bad Day"
29. Nickelback, "Far Away"
30. Paris Hilton, "Stars Are Blind"
31. Nickelback, "Savin' Me"
32. Natasha Bedingfield, "Unwritten"
33. Rodney Atkins, "If You're Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)"
34. The Wreckers, "Leave the Pieces"
35. Snow Patrol, "Chasing Cars"
36. Rihanna, "SOS"
37. T.I., "Why You Wanna"
38. Janet & Nelly, "Call On Me"
39. Nick Lachey, "What's Left of Me"
40. Five for Fighting, "The Riddle"

So my view of the top 40 of the Hot 100 is that it's predominantly Urban, with a lot of duets (and I use that term loosely) with guest artists. Straight-ahead rock is sprinkled throughout, but it's mostly dance-oriented, which is par for the course--the Top 40 has almost always been exclusively that type of pop. I'm not saying that the quality has gone downhill--far from it. I find some pop stuff pretty damn good, like that Gnarls Barkley song. And of course there's always going to be a throwaway novelty song, this time via Paris Hilton. A few years ago it was William Hung. They come and go all the time; they're the jesters of the Top 40 court.

All in all, though, it just goes to show just how diverse popular music has become. There's a hell of a lot more out there than just the so-called popular stuff, which itself has become just another genre on equal terms as modern rock, country, Latin, and pretty much everything else. It all boils down to what kind of music you want to listen to. I've been partial to alternative rock since the mid-80s, and even then I'm choosy. And the quality goes in cycles. I'm sure most of you know by now that I swear by 1988 as the best year for alternative music, but every few years it peaks again: 1992, 1996, 1998, 2002...every two to four years I hit a hear where I'm floored by the amount of great stuff out there.

I'm sure all the other genres out there go through the same thing as tastes and styles change.

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Also, for fun, let's compare this to the Top 40 from 20 years ago, when I was 15 years old. The same rules apply: bands I knew then are in italics, songs I knew then are in bold.

Top 40 Chart List - 1986
(courtesy of EightyEightyNine.com )
(Also, this is a year-end, not dated for a specific week)

1. Dionne Warwick & Friends, "That's What Friends Are For"
2. Lionel Richie, "Say You, Say Me"
3. Klymaxx, "I Miss You"
4. Pattie LaBelle w/Michael McDonald, "On My Own"
5. Mr. Mister, "Broken Wings"
6. Whitney Houston, "How Will I Know"
7. Eddie Murphy, "Party All The Time"
8. Survivor, "Burning Heart"
9. Mr. Mister, "Kyrie"
10. Robert Palmer, "Addicted To Love
11. Whitney Houston, "The Greatest Love Of All"
12. Atlantic Starr, "Secret Lovers"
13. Carl Anderson w/Gloria Loring, "Friends And Lovers"
14. Peter Cetera, "Glory Of Love"
15. Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls"
16. Billy Ocean, "There'll Be Sad Songs"
17. Simple Minds, "Alive And Kicking"
18. Heart, "Never"
19. Prince & the Revolution, "Kiss"
20. Steve Winwood, "Higher Love"
21. Huey Lewis & the News, "Stuck With You"
22. Simply Red, "Holding Back The Years"
23. Peter Gabriel, "Sledgehammer"
24. Starship, "Sara"
25. Human League, "Human"
26. Nu Shooz, "I Can't Wait"
27. Berlin, "Take My Breath Away"
28. Falco, "Rock Me Amadeus"
29. Madonna, "Papa Don't Preach"
30. Bon Jovi, "You Give Love A Bad Name"
31. Billy Ocean, "When The Going Gets Tough"
32. Janet Jackson, "When I Think Of You"
33. Heart, "These Dreams"
34. Glass Tiger, "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)"
35. Madonna, "Live To Tell"
36. Belinda Carlisle, "Mad About You"
37. Level 42, "Something About You"
38. Bananarama, "Venus"
39. Lionel Richie, "Dancing On The Ceiling"
40. Miami Sound Machine, "Conga"

So...
With the exception of a few songs that I may have known back then and had completely forgotten, I pretty much knew every single song on the chart. In all honesty, it was because these songs where what passed as normal airplay on popular stations. It's not a matter of musical quality (another point Bauder makes later on), but just what happens to be popular at that time. If you look at the charts in 1991-1992 (to save space and not bore you, I won't post them here), you'll still see some pop stuff, but there's a lot more straight-ahead rock then there is now. It's about that time that the charts started really splintering, as so-called "Modern Rock" was becoming more prevalent on a lot of stations. Its immersion into the Top 40 died out by 1994-1995, becoming its own radio genre by that time, leaving the pop stations for good.

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Anyway, I have to applaud Bauder for going out of his way to sample all the new songs out there to see what he thought of today's Top 40. It made me realize that my lack of musical knowledge as of late has not only been because of my lack of funds to buy music, but also that I've been relying too heavily on my own mp3 collection for tunes and rarely sampling anything new aside from what's on Live 105. I think it's time I change that and sample something new and see if I like it.

Comments

[madhatte.livejournal.com]

Kudos on an excellent post. I agree with you 100%.

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I love writing posts like this...I don't do them often enough!

[nimisha.livejournal.com]

Got to say, absolutely on the mark. I had my 15-year-olds fill out an inventory on the first day, and one of the things I asked was their favorite musical groups. I'd say at least half of them named people I've never heard of. And more named groups I've heard of, but I couldn't tell you a single song they sing.


But I don't know that I want to listen to it. I'm rather attached to my alt rock stations...

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was me for quite a long time. I think over the years I've just become more tolerant of "popular" stuff--in other words, I'm no longer the screaming nonconformist that I used to be... ;)

[enjoydivision.livejournal.com]

Very nice post. Funny as it seems, I can really relate to all of what you said (even some of the '80s music!). Some of what my friends listen to I've never heard of when they blare the pop music radio station.

I think music today has become very much pigeonholed & when you find a band like Sigur Ros or Zero 7, people start to freak out because they can't figure out what style/genre to put it in. Then again, even saying you listen to "good music", people will think "Yeah totally, Test Icicles & Babyshambles!".

Well just be lucky that you don't have the actual listening of the music to be practically everywhere with people of your age.

Once again, really nice post!

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks!

And I seem to remember that the "everyone listens to popular music" thing kind of fades soon after high school. It's there in college, but it's not nearly as prevalent. In fact, the weird thing was that I went to an arty college in that the alt.rock I listened to was deemed "not alternative enough" when I got there. But that's another post entirely. ;)

(Say, did you ever get a look at my Radio Radio posts? Let me know and I can give you the links. I figure you'd enjoy those, since there's an ongoing music-related theme going there in amongst all the 'feeling-sorry-for-myself' life stories... ;) )

[enjoydivision.livejournal.com]

Hah, now it's "You're not indie enough" to hang out with us type of stuff.

Ooh, no I haven't. Would love links :)

Shameless writer pimping ;)

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

You can find the links on my writing-only LJ die_joncswerk :
http://die-joncswerk.livejournal.com/2005/10/23/
(Don't worry, I just friended you on there so you can read them even though they're locked.)

(Post take 2: screwed up the html on the first one! :p )

Re: Shameless writer pimping ;)

[enjoydivision.livejournal.com]

Thanks! *Can't wait to read* :D