Sunday, October 18, 2009

My really belated two cents

Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" and Lady GaGa's "Paparazzi" are two of the biggest singles of 2009, and both are fantastic, as good as any megahits to hit the charts in any year this decade. BEP have always straddled a line between addictively catchy pop pleasure and wretchedly unlistenable annoyance, but then the fantastic David Guetta produced them, and all was good. In fact, I thought that "I Gotta Feeling" *was* the new David Guetta single the first couple of times I heard it. It was some time before I realized that the BEP's were on the record. How exactly did David Guetta manage to bring actual 4/4 dance music back to the charts for the first time since the Aqua/"Missing"/"Believe" era? Would it have been possible without Timbaland, i.e. without "Sexyback" and "The Way I Are" paving the way? (answer: obviously not) And through it all, despite the 14-week run at #1 for a song that is also featured on the producer's new album, Guetta's "One Love" topped out at something like #70 on the American album charts, as opposed to runaway success in virtually every other western country in the northern hemisphere. He needs to re-release "Love Is Gone" for the American market, like yesterday.

"Paparazzi" won a million MTV VMA's and deserved probably a million more, one for every different costume she wears in the video. If Peaches hadn't been on a mission to out-raunch everyone else in clubland, and given in to being a bit more of a girly girl (and why not, Gwen Stefani learned how to do it), then this could have been her career. And "Paparazzi" is the best hit song to crash the charts since "Umbrella".

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