US #1's

What a strange year it's been. I've missed the days of songs remaining in the top spot for only two weeks at a time, the days when four weeks at #1 was practically forever. In 1989, I got hooked on listening to Casey Casem's America's Top 40 nearly every week (this is not the same as the Billboard Hot 100, I know, but they were fairly similar in that year). That year, 33 different songs hit #1.

2005 is nearly half over, and there have been only four #1's. Sure, compared to the present day, the chart tabulation methods were completely different, but mainly, I miss the days when there was actually week-to-week excitement over what song would be #1. Now, once a song hits #1, you can be fairly sure that it'll be there for several weeks so it becomes fairly straightforward to predict which artists have the popularity and/or momentum to unseat it.

First, there was Mario's "Let Me Love You". A return to 90's slow jams. It was number one for two months but it's been forgotten already (does it have a lower profile in Canada than in the US? Its run at the top already feels so long ago). Then we had 50 Cent's "Candy Shop" -- a good record that would have been a great record with nearly any other rapper on it. Surely, any other rapper, when presented with such a strong backing track, would have rapped with a sliver of intensity, a modicum of prescence, something? This song is the quintessential example of a guy phoning it in because he knows his record is going to sell no matter what he sounds like. Then we had Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl". Little did I know that those camp cheers that we used to invent in ten minutes at the start of the summer could be worth something someday. I should have written them down, recorded them with a recording walkman at every camp-wide dinner, waited fifteen years, asked the Neptunes to produce one of them, and taken it to US #1. Finally, Mariah Carey's 16th #1 hit, the current chart-topper "We Belong Together", has me furiously flipping calendar pages looking for 1995 and the remnants of Boys II Men's career. I'm not feeling this one at all.

The #2 hits make a far more interesting package ... Green Day nearly had the first rock #1 in four years ... ditto Kelly Clarkson ... let me repeat that ... ditto Kelly Clarkson -- two years ago, who would have believed that the former AI winner would nearly top the charts with one of the best rock singles of the year? ... Ciara's "Oh" would have been the shortest-titled song to hit #1 but if it's any consolation to her, it might be my single of the year.

Speaking of American Idol, they're releasing Bo and Carrie's singles simultaneously, thereby decreasing the chance that either one of them will hit #1. "So what", you might say, "they did the same thing with Ruben and Clay", to which I will answer "yes, but Ruben and Clay didn't release the exact same song, thereby making the fans choose between different versions and lessening the need for anyone to buy both singles". Also, pre-sales orders have Bo outselling Carrie by a 3-1 margin. Why must the AI svengalis be so dumb? The guy needs to record a rock single (the B-side of his debut single is a rock song, but this doesn't count), and he needs to do it pronto.