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  • Infatueighties #66: Fast Car

    Story-songs peaked in the early Seventies with songs like “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”. It might be diluting “Fast Car”‘s overall message by classifying it as a “story song”, but it’s very easy to see Tracy Chapman’s 1988 breakthrough hit as a TV movie the way “Ode to Billie Joe”, isn’t it?

    The premise is simple: a couple aims to improve their surroundings by leaving their thankless, luckless ife behind. Beneath all that, though, “Fast Car” is a very simple love song. “The city lights came on before us/And your arms felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulders”. Tracy’s impassioned vocal makes you believe that those surroundings will be escaped by sheer force of will…and the power of love. Aw, shit. Hand me a tissue.

    Seriously, Chapman arrived in the summer of ’88 as an anomaly…not only a folk singer, but a BLACK folk singer. An explicitly political artist in a world of Taylor Daynes and Paula Abduls, someone who didn’t have model looks, but got video play anyway. Everything about her was different from what was popular at the time. Nevertheless, her self-titled debut hit #1 on the charts, won a shelf full of Grammys, and “Fast Car” became a Top 10 pop single, setting off a career that’s still going strong twenty years later.

    It’s hard to imagine someone like Tracy Chapman becoming a superstar in today’s musical climate, isn’t it? Makes one pine even more for the good old days.

  • So Much for Prognostication: The 2009 Grammy Award Nominations

    Well, for the most part, it was out with the old and in with the (fairly) new when the Grammy nominations were announced last night. With 8 nominations for Lil’ Wayne, 7 for Radiohead and Coldplay, and 6 apiece for Jay-Z, Kanye West and Ne-Yo, the hipness quotient got raised quite a bit. There were also a couple of surprise shutouts, as Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige, both Grammy favorites, got relegated to minor categories despite two of the biggest selling albums released during the eligibility period. There were a ton of surprises. Here are a couple of them.

    *Ne-Yo for Album of the Year: An album that kind of slipped by unnoticed on the critical scale, Ne-Yo’s third album is sharing space with Lil’ Wayne, Radiohead and likely winner Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for Album of the Year. Pretty impressive.

    *Where’s Leona Lewis for Best New Artist? “Bleeding Love” got nominated for Record of the Year and Leona got a nod for Best Female Pop Performance, but she got beat out by Duffy, Adele (who scored a surprise nomination for Record of the Year), The Jonas Brothers (!!!), Lady Antebellum and Jazmine Sullivan (with an unexpected 5 nominations) for this award.

    *AC/DC gets nominated for Best Rock Performance, Group: Not so much a surprise, but I bet our own Mikey Hersh just peed his pants.

    There are plenty of other surprises-and surprise omissions-but you’ll just have to rifle through the list of nominations yourself.

  • …As The Best of Lists Come Floating In…

    Check out this list of iTunes and last.fm’s top downloaded singles of 2008. As you can see, it was quite the year for Coldplay and Rihanna, both of whom will probably figure heavily when the Grammy Award nominations are announced tonight. Every year, I predict the winners of the February award ceremony, and I generally call the winners pretty closely (which says as much for my prognostication skills as it does the Grammys’ predictability). Here are the artists and albums I think will be nominated in the three major categories.

    Record of the Year: Coldplay’s Viva La Vida is the front runner here. Leona Lewis and John Mayer are probably sure things for Bleeding Love and Say (which I also think is the front runner for Song of the Year), Rihanna will probably be nominated for either Take a Bow or Disturbia. Katy Perry could snag a nod for I Kissed a Girl. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kanye grab a nomination for Homecoming. We might see some love for Chris Brown’s With You, with outside shots for M.I.A.’s Paper Planes and Adele’s Chasing Pavements, and don’t count out Mariah Carey’s Touch My Body or Madonna’s 4 Minutes, despite the relative disappointment of their album sales.

    Album of the Year: Coldplay is again the front-runner in this category, far and away. Also look for Radiohead’s In Rainbows to score a well-deserved nomination. Lil’ Wayne had the year’s biggest selling album with Tha Carter III, but Grammy generally doesn’t roll out the red carpet for hardcore rap acts. Alicia Keys is almost certain to get a nod for As I Am, while labelmate Leona Lewis could score big here, too. Dark horses here include Jack Johnson, Metallica and Carrie Underwood, and we can’t forget The Eagles’ huge-selling Long Road Out of Eden.

    Best New Artist: Leona Lewis is the obvious front-runner here, but we could see love for a variety of different artists. Fellow Brit chanteuses Adele, Duffy and Estelle (whose American Boy could also see a Record of the Year nomination) could all follow in the steps of last year’s winner, Amy Winehouse. Indie faves Vampire Weekend and The Ting Tings could pop up in this category, as could Timbaland proteges OneRepublic. Also watch out for country group Lady Antebellum as well as American Idol’s Jordin Sparks and Jennifer Hudson.

    We’ll do a recap of the nominations tomorrow after the announcements have been made!!