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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Charts

the-hottest-songs-on-the-charts

  • Lost in “Mumbo Jumbo”: The Triumphant (?) Return of Air Supply

    In what may be an indication that a critical mass of the “adult” radio listening audience now has no first-hand memory of the band’s creamy cheeseball ballad 80s heyday, Billboard.com today reported that “Dance With Me”, the latest single by the Australian duo Air Supply, has reached #28 on the Adult Contemporary chart. This is their first appearance on that chart since the summer of ’93, and their highest placing on the chart since 1986 (that is: the year Lady Gaga was born). Although I’ve always kept a soft spot for the Air Supply of my youth, namely their fantastic run on the pop charts between 1980 and 1986 which I unironically maintain produced some of the era’s most enduring love songs – “Lost in Love”, “All Out of Love”, “The One That You Love”, “The Power of Love”, and, of course, their Jim Steinman-penned and produced magnum opus “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” – I’d lost track of them after the relative flop of their last album for the Arista label, 1986’s Hearts In Motion. I own that last Arista album, and I have to say, it’s not all that bad, and in fact, it’s lead single – you know the one that gave Air Supply their last best showing on the Adult Contemporary chart – remains one of my favorites of theirs, despite the fact that it rarely turns up on any of the myriad Air Supply greatest hits comps out there:

    I’ve been distantly aware that Air Supply have remained active both as a live touring act, especially in Asia and South America where their popularity has never waned, and as recording artists. They’ve put out 8 studio albums, a handful of live documents, and a Christmas record in the last 25 years, which makes them slightly more prolific than, say, U2. So my heart leapt a bit when I read that they were now enjoying an apparently renewed level of success in the U.S. It wasn’t just my 12-year-old self thrilling to see an old familiar face sharing space with Colbie Caillat and Kris Allen. But the sheer unlikelihood of this resurgence made me think that for any Air Supply song to recapture a larger American audience, it had to be friggin’ awesome.

    Well, okay, going by Air Supply’s website, it appears that their latest album Mumbo Jumbo is a sort of concept album with high art pretentions, strangely religious undertones and an indecipherable Adam and Eve type storyline, for which “Dance With Me” serves as an establishing chapter. Setting aside the looney-tunes conceptual context (someone’s been listening to Prince’s The Rainbow Children), there’s nothing wrong with the song itself. “Dance With Me” is, at least theoretically, a lovely mid-tempo charmer. And in the few live performances of the song you might find on YouTube, it seems to go over well in concert. But the recording of the song is embarrassingly bad. While Graham Russell (the tall one) has never sounded more like Art Garfunkel (nice!), those who remember the diminutive Russell Hitchcock‘s skyscraping tenor will be struck immediately by just how haggard and depressing his voice sounds now. Furthermore, the raw, all-foreground production does nothing to flatter either song or singer. It’s unfathomable to me that any self-respecting radio programmer would give something this amateurish airplay, and I’ve rarely regretted a 99 cent download more. Again, I am not an Air Supply hater, and I find the idea of a re-energized, re-popularized Air Supply a very heartening development. If only the music were good.

  • Big In Europe: Stromae’s “Alors On Danse”

    When I was a kid, most of the music I loved best was coming from Europe, and so I loved it when Casey Kasem would occasionally mention on his weekly American Top 40 broadcasts which songs were topping the charts in places like Belgium and Norway (and, yes, of course, the U.K.). Most of the time, this would be in the context of introducing a song that was a current hit in the U.S. Example, “Coming up on AT40, the hit by the Austrian native Falco that’s currently number one in Romania, Italy, Poland, The Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia.” I always thought it was fascinating not just that, you know, Romania could have a Top 40, but that songs I knew could be on it. And that Casey Kasem knew what was on the Romanian Top 40. In my head, I imagined Romanian 11-year-olds like myself sneaking out of church (did they have church in Romania too?) to sit in their parents’ cars and listen to Casey Kasem count down the Romanian Top 40.

    The downside of this all was that sometimes, Casey would announce the number one hits in these far-flung locales, but you wouldn’t get to actually hear them. Later on, I realized I could go to the library in Kenosha and they would have a copy of the current Billboard, and Billboard actually published the top 10s, 20s and/or 40s of various international territories, which was all good fun to read. But it always ended up in the disappointment of unrequited curiosity. Even if I’d had the money to buy a Fra Lippo Lippi album out of sheer Billboard-chart-induced curiosity, where was a kid in small-town Wisconsin supposed to buy it? And certainly no radio station was going to be playing it. Sad. And it just wasn’t right, because as it turns out, the difference in radio air-playability between Fra Lippo Lippi (who never had an American hit), and, say, Johnny Hates Jazz (who had a couple) is pretty negligible. Perhaps, after a-ha, U.S. labels and radio stations had decided that they had met their quota of break-out Norwegian pop acts.

    Today’s musically-obsessive, internationally-minded, geographically-stranded pre-teens no longer have this issue. You don’t have to go to Kenosha to read the latest copy of Billboard. You can go to Billboard.com. And once there, and once you’re curious about, say, the number one hit in Europe that isn’t a hit here (yet?), you can go to YouTube and watch the video for that hit. And so, with that, I’m introducing this occasional little column called “Big In…” where I spin- err, embed – the hits of exotic locations. (Sadly, Billboard.com does not publish the Romanian Top 40.) First up is the current number one hit on the pan-European chart. It’s by 25-year-old Rwandan-Belgian rapper Paul van Haver, better known as Stromae. It’s called “Alors on Danse”, and it’s accompanied by a very cinematic split-screen video that only magnifies the song’s message (in French) of dancing in the face of existential boredom. Oui, baby!

    [Update: So, okay, Universal Music France is mean. Click the link below to actually see the video]
    Stromae \"Alors on Danse\"

  • Zac Brown Band Shreds All-Stars – Grammys 2010

    JoBros in the house, and the screams start early.  Need You Now and Lady Antebellum take the stage.  They’re not really country no matter how much music companies want to slot them there.  Brilliant harmonies.

    CBS shills The Big Bang Theory during Best Comedy Album.  Six nominees and Colbert wins for a cute skit that turned into a record.  And for this we’ve given up a Kings of Leon or a jazz or a blues performance?  Or maybe even that, whaddya call it?  Classical.

    Off of commercial, Norah Jones and Ringo Starr.  Remember, Norah’s dad and Ringo go way back.  Bobby Darin gets a Lifetime Achievement Award as Mack The Knife plays.  Ringo pumps up the audience for Norah.

    Beyonce’s Halo, I Gotta Feeling by the Peas, Use Somebody by Kings of Leon, Gaga’s Poker Face and Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me are the nominees.   Kings of Leon pull off another huge upset.  Peas and Swift were safe here.  Good for the Academy voters.

    Robert Downey, Jr. is introduced as the most self-important actor of his generation which is a joke gone bad or a horrible intro.  He is Sue’s at Movie Rewind’s main dude. Gotta give it to Jamie Foxx who can make an intro.  Autotune at The Grammys is a big no-no in my book especially when we all know Jamie can sing.  Some weirdness when Jamie’s mic seemed to cut in and a different timbre was heard.  I’m just saying…  T-Pain who is never losing AutoTune regardless of venue prances a bit. The whole thing is a bit muddy for stars this talented.

    It’s the big jam as Slash enters with hat and blazing guitar.

    Katy Perry, kind of looking like his daughter, shows up with Alice Cooper.  They give  Florence Greenberg a posthumous  Trustee Award and start naming   Best Rock Album nominees.

    Best Rock (Kid Rock?  Rock of Ages?) whatever that means anymore, goes to Green Day.  That’s a strange choice with Dave Matthews and the album I thought had won, AC/DC’s Black Ice.  Insiders Butch Vig and Chris Lord-Alge get name checked by Billie Joe Armstrong who doesn’t let anyone else talk.  He writes great hooks, but I’m getting bored with Billie Joe again.   This happened after Dookie too.

    Chris O’Donnell shills one of the NCIS shows.  He throws a lifetime award to Harold Bradley.  He then gives way for Zac Brown Band and Leon Russell.  I would say Leon looks great, but between the shades, big white hat and beard, I couldn’t say.

    He sounded great though as did the protracted acapella version of America that opened the segment.  Brilliant, brilliant band.  Harmony.  Lyrics.  America.  Shredding acoustic guitar solo.  These guys will be around on a decade.