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$18.2B in Carbonated Beverages

2008 Nielsen Top 10 Ratings are out.

lil-wayne.gif

Comments

I recently posted a blog on this subject on MYSP click my name and it'll bring you there. Look for the one that says "Pulse" etc. If I was cleverer in HTML I'd just give you the link. As a professional pop DJ I have never felt MORE out of touch with the music than now.

I don't think I'm a prude, but the #1, Lollipop, is nothing less than pornographic ... I mean like explicitly pornographic. When Wooly Bully tried the same trick back in the sixties it was at least a new idea. This one is just ... over the top.

These songs are all pretty dumb to me. I hate being that guy, because I just love pop music but ... here I am. Getting old and judgemental, I guess.


Never underestimate the stupidity of American consumers.


I don't even know half those songs but think they are probably terrible by the name/artist combo alone.


Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.


Apparently, everyone wants their soft adult contemporary for free now. I know I do.

And congratulations to Low with T-Pain.


Wow--I don't know a single song on that list. I had no idea I was this out of touch.


Everyone on that list(with the exeption of Alicia Keys who can actually sing very well) Are walking, talking commercials for whatever products and companies are affiliated with their record producers. This music is targeted towards 13/14 year old white kids in suberbia so they can ask mommy and daddy for the new Iphone or Blackberry. they will grow up believing having an $100,000 car means you are a success. It teaches them that women come a dime a dozen and their only mission in life is to please them. The music is synthisized, the lyrics are not at all engaging or challanging, and when all is said and done, they get to leave the false world they were invited into for a brief period and go downstairs for dinner in front of the television where the proscess starts all over again. Gotta love corporate shills!


Ok, so slap Poison, Van Halen, Winger, and Motley Crue up on that list circa 1980-whatever and what kind of redeeming moral worldview do you get?

That you should fuck your teacher, bang seventeen year olds, talk dirty to me and that it's ok to drive around drunk in a $100,000 sports car and kill your friend as long as you're a big rock star.

I wouldn't want nikki sixx or lil' wayne to raise my kids, but that doesn't mean that the music doesn't kick ass for someone.


So, ah... couple more things in the Nielsen Ratings than the choochy ring tones I posted above. Srsly.


Mark, I am not blaming the artists. i am just saying this is what the music market is dictating these days. Used to be a lot of music was a very anti-establishment form of communication. Now, the establishment has taken it over and is profiting greatly at the expense of an ignorant public. All I am saying is people should be aware of this sort of things so they can be better media consumers. That does not mean these artists and record producers are responsible for what the people who buy their material do. The responsibility is on the public to make damn sure their kids know this is a major fantasy world that is being presented to them. By the way, there is a mock up video of a rape scene from a film interjected with clips from various butt-rock videos from the 80's and it is disturbing as to how many similarities there actually were.


they're "giving the people what they want"...


...by telling them they want it.

advertising, positioning, image and hype...all put together by some rich schmuck living in Malibu.

ain't that these kids can sing...some can...some can't...and some REALLY can't. it's not about singing. it's not about talent. this things have nothing to do with it.

it's about how that rich schmuck can make another few mil off an image.

i know that eventually, my kid's gonna get hooked on whatever the latest thing is at some point...and i'm not going to be able to make heads nor tails of any of it. just like my parents did. i'm prepared for it...

it all started going horribly wrong (for my parents, that is) when i discovered the Clash.


"You can't take that stuff to Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain.
...
You can't take it anywhere."


zra. At least the Clash had a message in their music that was more than 3 minutes of misogyny, crass materialism, cars, and violence. You should have seen my parent go pale when they figured out exactly what NWA stood for. I am a rabid hip hop/rap fan and people like lil' wayne and any of the other lil's are pissing me off to no end. Groups I grew up with like Arrested Development, Public Enemy, X Clan, and many others got you thinking about things, at least.


this is the most absurd critique of modern pop music. you don't ask if seeing a monte python movie or listening to a nick cave album teaches kids incredibly bad things. yes, the top music will try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. by definition it reaches the top by appealing to the largest possible audience. while i don't like a lot of the songs on that list, it doesn't mean they are without value. and without the original version of "whatever you like", you wouldn't have the very funny weird al version. and without katy perry's song, you wouldn't have the amusing SNL skit lampooning it. you guys need to lighten up. i definately have bigger complaints about society.


yeah, lighten up. do you remember what you were like when you were 13? are you a little different now that you're an adult? i would hope so. there are more "anti-establishment" options for musicians and listeners alike than ever before. the "music market" is fighting an uphill battle; hardly a dictatorship. i think there is more of a problem of people not giving the youth the credit they deserve.

"she's 16, she's beautiful, she's mine."
I find that lyric creepier than a song about a girl kissing a girl, and that was popular in what, the 50's?
of course these songs are ridiculous. of course, of course, of course!
it does make me shake my head, but honestly, meh.


My criticism is not with the music itself, but what it is promoting. So much bullshit had worked its way into mainstream music that an intelligent message could not even come close to being marketable. I feel this is a serious epidemic in America and it is nothing to lighten up about. Time will tell, I guess. Elvis was considered to be as dangerous as Ice T's Bodycount album in the 1950's. Who knows what place music will be in in the future. I am going to get off my elitist pulpit now and end this. Media study and criticism is a passion of mine and I get worked up about it.


"So much bullshit had worked its way into mainstream music that an intelligent message could not even come close to being marketable."

indeed.

But Elvis was at least an honest fool. He didn't have to lip synch his songs or run his microphone through a synthesizer to make his voice sound good.

IMO, Fear of a Black Planet is WAY more dangerous than Body Count.


You think so? I guess I am just basing it off of the fact that body count was actually banned because it was SO violent. I even think T went a little far with the "Cop Killer" tune. You are right , though. Fear of a Black Planet was dangerous for the "new" ideas PE put out!


while i agree with much that is being said here, i am old.

are all of you old?

get offa my lawn.


heh...i should have prequalified that statement by saying that, amongst suburban early 90's white folk...Fear of a Black Planet was more dangerous than Body Count. Granted, both were pre-Wu-Tang and almost predates the stuff Snoop Dogg was doing. (I may have my chronology wrong, so a little levity is needed.)

Plus, if NWA and PE were all that, how does one explain DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince?


this is why i listen to show tunes, dionne warwick and roger miller. a lot. with headphones on.


Yes but didn't Roger Miller promote being a Hobo? And Dionne Warwicke that quinessential Co-Dependent "Each morning I wake up ..." Naturally the LATE 80s (Mark) music, the stuff I liked as a teen was also considered the end of civilization by older generations

"Bad" values have always been a part of pop music. I was going more to HBH's point which is that I'm old and I don't quite get it. And I kind of wish I did. But then again I also think "why bother." It's crap.

I will say this though, from whooly bully, to cop killer to lollipop it does appear that we are running out of things to find shocking. Maybe you won't be so upset after all, Zra. Perhaps our kids will start back over with big band or jazz or something. That would be shocking, huh?


There is really nothing wrong with DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. The were just not very in your face like PE. I think they followed people like Run DMC with the mainstream thing. PE and NWA were provocative and were making a commentary about federally neglected neighborhoods in the late 80's/early 90's. That is ironic because when NWA split, the members cashed in on what they seemed to be angry about. Dr Dre brought Snoop Dogg in with The Chronic album and he made his money following the G-Funk movement. Have you heard him lately? 18 year old Snoop Doggy Dogg would be ashamed of what Snoop Dogg is today, musically that is. I don't know what everyone else thinks, but I like the Wu Tang Clan.


nah, not so shocked. perplexed, maybe, but definitely not shocked.

sidebar: It's never a good conversation unless you can bring up the Fresh Prince.


i show Merchants of Cool in my Teen Health class to illustrate how marketing influences us. however, the "cool" that is illustrated in that film is already hopelessly out of date, as was pointed out to me by numerous teenagers.


wait....is's bad to be a hobo?


It's no different than the 80's...

Tiffany, Debbie G, MC Hammer, etc.


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