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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Charts

the-hottest-songs-on-the-charts

  • (Return of) The Daily Awesome – January 4, 2011: Mindi Abair “Get Right”

    On my personal Tolerability Index, the radio format (I dare not call it a “musical genre”) known as “smooth jazz” generally falls somewhere between Sarah Palin’s Alaska and gnawing my own arm off. But last year, I discovered that Billboard actually compiles a weekly Jazz songs chart and every now and then, I give it a look. And it’s not just the curiosity of someone expecting to be repulsed: As it turns out, Sade landed three tracks from her latest album in the year-end Jazz chart, and Wake Up!, the great collaboration between John Legend and The Roots (and friends) has also landed a few hits on the chart.

    But my curiosity isn’t entirely pure either. As Sunset Boulevard‘s Joe Gillis might have said, sometimes it’s fun to see how bad bad music can be. And so, every now and then, when I have nothing better to do than watch the Chiefs lose the last game of the regular season, I arm myself with a few titles from the Jazz chart’s upper reaches and head on over to YouTube. The results are predictable. Lots of alto and soprano saxophones and wooshy textures. Lots of clips from The Weather Channel where the songs are used as soundtracks for seven-day forecasts and temperatures for cities around the country.

    Mindi Abair’s ”In Hi-Fi Stereo”
    Recently, I noticed that saxophonist Mindi Abair had a new album out. Now, Mindi Abair’s a name I actually know, although I can’t honestly count myself as a fan. Here’s the deal: for several years, I shared office space and a boombox with a crusty old man who kept a copy of the 1966 edition of the company’s employee handbook in his desk. For a while, there was only one radio station he could tolerate – a Wisconsin Public Radio station that played classical music until it was time from Terry Gross. I didn’t mind that. But then, a smooth jazz station was launched in Madison, and we started listening to that a lot. It wasn’t all bad. They played Steely Dan. But they were also really hot for a hottie sax-blower named Mindi Abair and they played her songs all the time. Despite that fact, there’s not a single Mindi Abair melody I could hum for you. Her music was entirely forgettable, and as a result, I’d forgotten it – entirely.

    So when I saw Mindi Abair’s name on the charts, I thought, y’know, why not give it a try, and see what it does for me? The song I checked out was called “Be Beautiful”, and I actually found myself – well – sort of – gulp – liking it. It had a nice, understated groove that felt organic and live even if it wasn’t terribly distinctive. The sax solo was fine and tasteful – though, admittedly, still a sax solo – and it was tempered by a soulful vocal chorus that felt made-up-on-the-spot which made the whole song feel a lot more intimate and real than (I suspected) it deserves to feel. More recently, another song from the same album – it’s called In Hi-Fi Stereo and the cover art shows Abair spending some quality time with her vintage vinyl collection and portable turntable – has started showing up on the charts, and this one’s even better.

    The new one’s called “Get Right” and it features vocalist Ryan Collins, who bears more than a passing vocal resemblance to John Legend. The song, too, sounds like something John Legend would record. It’s got an immediate retro soul groove, driven by electric piano, a stylin’ horn section, and a great singalong chorus. Abair’s sax doesn’t even show up in the spotlight until halfway through, and even then, she cedes the floor to Collins after a brief solo, choosing, in essence, to be featured artist on a song where she’s credited as the lead – an act of both confidence and restraint that demands applause. Give the song a listen here:


  • Taylor Swift Puts Up Huge First Week Numbers

    Is Taylor Swift pop music’s biggest star?

    Check out my man Big Money Mike’s Chart Stalker post for this week:

    Well, reports immediately started flying around suggesting that Taylor would come close to the coveted million mark, and now the dust has settled for the week, and Swift scores the biggest debut week for an album in half a decade. “Speak Now” starts with nearly 1.05 million units, EASILY making it this week’s #1 album.

    Mike goes on to note that Swift is only the second female artist to sell at least one million albums in the first week of release. Britney Spears performed the trick with her second album, at a time when many more albums were being sold weekly.

    So who is pop music’s biggest current star? Eminem? Lil’ Wayne? I still go with Swift. She reaches so many different demographics, including the one that is most important when the goal is to sell albums. She reaches the music buying audience.

  • Big in the UK: Cooking the Charts with They Might Be Giants

    This is the sort of thing that probably wouldn’t happen here. I just don’t think Americans take their pop charts quite as personally or as democratically as they do in the U.K. Earlier this summer, a brand of kid’s shoes put out an ad featuring “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, the 1990 major label debut single by They Might Be Giants. The duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh have, since they started recording original songs onto a standard answering machine in the early 80s, become the godfathers of nerd-rock, and now that their original fans (like me) are pushing middle age with mortgages and children, the band have found renewed success recording four albums of “children’s music”, and performing alternate shows for grown-ups and kids on tour. The idea of sticking TMBG’s loving ode to the nightlight into an ad for kids’ shoes might’ve been genius if it weren’t so self-evidently perfect.

    I don’t know how it’s working out for Clark Shoes, but it seems to be doing well for They Might Be Giants. The song re-entered the British Top 100 pop songs late last month. Of course, songs featured in popular ads often get enjoy a run on the pop charts here as well – just as Sara Bareilles, Yael Naim, or Phoenix – but those successes seem more like happy accidents. In the case of “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, a strange populist cause – okay, a facebook group – has formed around keeping the song on the charts and trying to advance it to the top spot. That said, after four weeks, the song has only gone so far as #70 (on the chart dated 8/21; the song falls back to #72 on the 8/28 chart).

    But that’s not to say it couldn’t eventually succeed. This isn’t the first instance of the Brits attempting to cook their pop charts. See also: Buckley v. Burke. In 2008, after Alexandra Burke won the TV talent show The X-Factor, a campaign by apostles of the tragic 90s singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley attempted to thwart Burke’s cover of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” from making its predicted number one debut over that year’s Christmas sales week by urging fans to download Buckley’s own version of the song.

    It’s a Brand New Record for 1990!

    The campaign failed, but just barely. Buckley’s song charted at #2 behind Burke’s. Still, the TMBG song, while it may linger on the chart for as long as the ad airs, probably won’t reach those sorts of heights. For one thing, “Birdhouse In Your Soul” isn’t being pitted against another version of itself, or even another song. Moreover the Alexandra Burke debut was a one-off event sales week; it was also a holiday week, and it’s a holiday week that The X-Factor has annually co-opted for just this eventful purpose. So Buckley v. Burke was framed as the classic battle over artistic legitimacy between a tragic rock icon and a freshly minted “mass-produced” pop idol for the very soul of the pop chart.

    As a fan of both Burke and Buckley (although, when it comes to “Hallelujah”, count me in with Team John Cale), I, frankly, prefer not having to choose sides. They Might Be Giants‘ Elektra debut record Flood was essentially the first record of 1990, and “Birdhouse In Your Soul” was instant classic that still makes me giddy and giggly every time I hear it – even more so now that I’ve got two kids singing along with me.

    Here’s the original video from 1990: