Sometimes I get angry, c'est la vie

Mix 27: Salvaging a few good comments from a sinking (er, sunken) ship, followed by an around-the-world pop sampler

The people’s champion

Will probably write a separate post about the end of Tom Ewing’s People’s Pop Polls, the highlight of my online existence through the pandemic. Congratulations to its final winner, same as its first winner, Donna Summer, for “I Feel Love.” Tom wrote a great post about the project — what it started as and what it became — so go read that.

The end of the polls also likely marks the end of my time on the website formerly known as Twitter, which will now be a Facebook-like zombie platform for keeping up with a select few people I don’t hear from anywhere else. So I thought I’d go through my hundreds of posts about the polls over the last few years and salvage some that I think made for decent music criticism in their own right. These go backward from the final poll, RAGNAPOP, to the earliest comments I could access (just after the first poll I participated in — will try to find those comments later).

RAGNAPOP: Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill” vs. Donna Summer, “I Feel Love” (final) // Madonna, “Like a Prayer” vs. Deee-Lite, “Groove Is in the Heart” (third place match)

“Running Up That Hill” is a song that sounds and feels bigger in your imagination than it could possibly live up to when you listen again, but you can impart that imagined bigness onto it each time: it gets bigger.¹ This is pop’s sublime magic trick.

“I Feel Love” gets at the sublime from a different angle, immerses you in a set of contradictions — solid, ephemeral, contained, immense — that feel easy. Every time you think you’ve figured it out there’s another corner to go around. (Also there appear to be no corners.)

The other match has form and strategy crossed— “Like a Prayer” the funhouse to explore (all corners, secret rooms) but still requires you to feed its myth back to it, “Groove” the rickety little vessel that makes you imagine you’re on a yacht but you don’t think twice about it.

2003: Beyoncé, “Crazy in Love” vs. Outkast, “Hey Ya!”

Always thought “Crazy in Love” was an oddly wan song, like looking at the extravagant plans for a party no one bothered to throw.

“Hey Ya,” by contrast, sounds like a party that started spontaneously in the weirdest possible place — an accountant’s office or in line to get your driver’s license renewed.

Late Work: Neil Young, “Fuckin’ Up”

“Fuckin’ Up” is one of my favorite songs. In this way I am like Thom Yorke, who loved the song so much that he went and made his own “Fuckin’ Up” and it’s maybe Radiohead’s best song (“There There”—and it STILL wasn’t as good as “Fuckin’ Up”).²

Summer Jams: Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”

Meredith Brooks said the word “bitch” and lost the adult contemporary format to giggling schoolchildren for 30 years. (They had to censor Alanis, and anyway the funniest part of “go down on you in a theater” was the way she said “…a THEATER!”)

US #1s: Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Baby Got Back”

One guard likes big butts and cannot lie. The other likes big butts and cannot tell the truth. How do you determine which door leads to that rap guy’s girlfriend?

Charity Crusher (Modern): Clean Bandit & Marina, “Disconnect”

“Disconnect” has absurdly low odds here [ed. note: it received only 5% of the vote!] but it’s a remarkable song, manages to pit Marina’s dispositional melodrama against Clean Bandit’s just-shy-of-anonymous sleekness to get across the yearning for disconnection while implying it’s impossible: the wires are too pretty.

1985: Rare Silk, “Storm”

Rare Silk somehow combining opposite sides of my taste spectrum by getting Manhattan Transfer in the studio with Mark Hollis.

Soundtracks: Lauryn Hill, “Lose Myself”

“Lose Myself” is a song whose wrongness makes me like it more—the kiddie bounce house arrangement feels like it was taken from a fast food commercial and shoehorned in behind vocals sped up from a four-track recording. But Hill is listed as the song's only producer! Lester Bangs was astonished when he learned the band behind Van Morrison on Astral Weeks was totally secluded from Morrison, mostly improvising. I feel exactly the opposite about this song, can't believe it was anyone's vision to put all of these elements together this way. And yet it's great.

Second Chances: Rihanna, “Fire Bomb”

Remember, if you don’t vote for Rihanna she will blow up your house with her car.

Title = Artist: Big Country, “In a Big Country”

This song grew on me a lot this tournament, always found it charming. Was surprised at how insular and tricky it really is when I listened closely, only really becoming airy and spacious in memory.

Black Pop History Month (‘73-’77): Billy Paul, “Let the Dollar Circulate”

I can't cosign Billy’s plan to use massive fiscal stimulus to fight inflation and rising interest rates, but it's the rare disco ball [“A-side” nomination] that rockets to the top of my Golden Beat list [best song I’ve never heard]. Puts the "mm" in MMT.

1994: Tori Amos, “Cornflake Girl”

Amos uses the piano well as a rhythm instrument. Was listening to a bunch of Ramsey Lewis (during the ‘66 poll) and was reminded of his genius for finding the party in the piano & keeping it in the foreground. A lot of “rhythm piano” hangs out in the background.

1994: Towa Tei, “Batucada”

Oh no Towa Tei hacked my taste centers like malware and I’m actually rewarding this behavior, it is the Zoom [dot] us of People’s Pop challengers.

1994: Soundgarden, “Black Hole Sun”

“Black Hole Sun” was probably my favorite song in 1994, and it also had a video that terrified me—twice: the original video had one or two computer-manipulated smile stretches, but then they re-cut it a couple months later to add a few more particularly gruesome ones.

1994: Ini Kamoze, “Here Comes the Hotstepper”

“Here Comes the Hotstepper” will forever be associated with the time I listened to it on repeat while I ate an enormous bag of cheddar popcorn on a long bus trip in 5th grade. Accidental Clockwork Orange conditioning side effects be damned, it's an all-timer. [Post-script from Kat Stevens: “For me it was listening to the cassingle on my walkman while deadheading daffodils on my parents’ front drive, when I looked down and saw an ENORMOUS stag beetle on my LEG”]

Death: Arvo Pärt, “Cantus In Memoriam Britten”

I have wept to Arvo Pärt before, but the distance between “an Arvo Pärt song I have wept to” and “meh” is shorter than you’d think.

Death: Van Morrison, “T.B. Sheets”

I could give three more minutes to ten-minute “TB Sheets,” a song where you can even feel the musicians trying to avert their eyes while they jam out, the harmonica the only thing screaming the truth at the center of the room.

1966: The Four Tops, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”

Thinking of “Reach Out” as an homage to Dylan has been a revelation. I absorbed the ‘60s through oldies radio, which, crazy as it seems now, hardly ever played Dylan. It collapses my oldies ‘60s with my music nerd ‘60s.

Album Closers: Marit Larsen, “Poison Passion”

Marit Larsen’s album is one of my faves, arch-sounding but well-studied character sketches about people who lash out or lash in the closer they get to someone. The finale’s ambiguous: is she singing to her reflection like Kermit or Snow White? That would make her passion poison.

2021: MC Kono, “Il Jini Song Wapi”

Didn’t vote for the MC Kono track but I am prepared to die for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4-Letter Words: Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris”

I was once stuck in an airport terminal with a sociopath who had set his text message notifications to the chorus of “Iris” and was furiously corresponding with someone. “AND I DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE ME! AND I DON'T! AND I DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO! AND I! AND I DON'T! AND I DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE ME!”

4-Letter Words: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”

My biggest issue with “Maps” is that “Hysteric” does the formal thing “Maps” is doing but better: repetition as brute force attack to hack into the sublime.

1999: Eminem, “My Name Is”

Best Eminem radio edit rewrite: “since age 12 I’ve felt like a caged elf”

Short Songs: Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, “Svatba” vs. Mountain Goats, “Dance Music”

It’s the Suckums/Dustin Beeper of songs that have made me cry suddenly and without warning before 10AM.

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Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25 // Mix 26

MIX 27: SOMETIMES I GET ANGRY, C’EST LA VIE

1. Asake, Central Cee: Wave

Have been enjoying the eclectic bunch of Central Cee features I’ve heard this year, but this is the first one that I’ve heard that stands on its own as a song. Sounds similar to “Chalé,” which I didn’t realize was anticipating the mainstreaming of Afrobeats/amapiano (Afropiano?) crossover as it was happening (to no small degree via Asake himself).

2. DJLYAN f. JRiley & Mahlan Wala 59: Calm

Another British rapper on an international collaboration, this time with Punjabi rapper Mahlan Wala 59, who comes in reminding me of…Scatman John?

3. Dj Breen Paixão, Dj Kaua Jesus, TOMAS f. Mc India: Bota com Vontade

Smoother than I usually like my funk, but worth it for the Mc India feature.

4. Nia: Idem si svoje

Slovak pop whose horse-gallop hook (dun duh-duh dun, dun duh-duh-dun dun) runs away with it.

5. Segreta: Morte/Mare

A lot of Italian pop has made it through my filter this year — this eclecto-pop on simmer, sinuous, almost wriggles away altogether.

6. Hala, R3: Ghasb 3ani

Egyptian rap that mostly avoids signifiers of Arabic pop, a whole sound/region that I tend to have a hard time parsing based on what I get from Spotify.

7. MFS: Don’t

Japanese rapper whose decision to abandon rhyming altogether when necessary is a strong choice.

8. ALALA: แวร์อิสความรัก (WRU?)

The T-pop highlight from Ryo Miyauchi’s midyear roundup. (The K-pop roundup is here.)

9. Уляна Шуба [Ulyana Shuba]: 2 Хвилини [2 Hvilini]

Ukrainian electro earns its chunky neon rollerskates on the cover art, even in a minor key (but perhaps any Ukrainian rollerskating jam worth its salt is in minor).

10. Tanner Adell: Cowboy Break My Heart

11. Lainey Wilson: Hang Tight Honey

Two country picks, one from “Buckle Bunny” singer Tanner Adell and the other a recent well-liked Singles Jukebox entry from Lainey Wilson. I agree with TA Inskeep that it’s “gasoline-revved” and also with Jonathan Bradley that it’s “brick-walled bonhomie” — a little bit roadrunner, a little bit coyote, but still a [7].

12. Luis R Conriquez, Tony Aguirre, Deorro: Derecha la Flecha

More cheesy EDM slathered over regional Mexican music, exactly the sort of cheap trick I need, even if I’m not proud of this.

13. Truzman: Si me lleva la corriente

Light summer fare from a Barcelona-based artist whose top listeners on Spotify are all in Latin American countries.

14. Clodelle: Rien ne m’étonne

15. BéLi: G4ME0VER

Two different varieties of vintage iPod commercial pop from, you guessed it, Montreal.

16. RJ Pasin: Lobster

Have started incorporating a few “viral global” charts into my playlist sources to get the occasional left-field popularity cascade, like this barely sketched-out Ratatat-y dance ‘n’ shred number from the TikTok content mines.

17. Penza Penza: Much Sharper, More Focused

Not sure how my ears became completely attuned to Estonian composer Misha Panfilov, but this marks his third appearance on a mix in two years, this time sounding nothing like his other instrumental fusion work — this is straightforward gnarly garage rock from a band he leads.

18. Menahan Street Band, Rogê: Tropical Man

Some kinda all-star 45-fetishist soul band assembled from pieces of El Michels Affair and the Dap-Kings, who have probably been in my NPR-adjacent musical periphery for a decade now via records by Charles Bradley, Elvis Costello and the Roots, and others. This one is breezy Brazilian pop, featuring samba artist Rogê.

19. Maréchal Papillon: Moulongo [1995]

An archival release from Soundway of a Cameroonian artist who, according to my quick Bandcamp pit stop, is “best known for his Sakissa style—his own uptempo take on the Makossa of Cameroon” and on this song features Toto Guillaume, whose “Douala mbedi na sawedi” I nominated for a People’s Pop Poll. Serendipity’s everywhere if you look for it.

20. Naira Marley: Giddem

Naira Marley gets on the Afropiano bandwagon to kick off an amapiano-indebted final stretch.

21. NegoO, Moonshine: No Piano

This one’s merely amapiano-esque, with some log drums mixed into a melange of batida-leaning dance. NegoO is from Montreal by way of Lisbon, and Moonshine is the DJ collective whose collaborative album with La Fédération Internationale du Bruit, Noir Fever Présente, I featured on an earlier mix. Should probably give another listen to it as several albums continue to fall out of my top 20 — sorry Charli :(.

22. Cubique Dj, PeeKay Mzee, West Rhythm: Panakisi

23. Dlala Thukzin, Funky Qla f. Zee Nxumalo: Ama Gear

Two three-steppers to close things out. I was tempted to open the mix with Dlala Thukzin’s incredible collab with vocalist Zee Nxumalo, but they have annoyingly stuck 30 seconds of silence at the end of the track, so closer it is.

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That’s it! Until next time, back up any comments you’ve written on the internet that you want to save. (No cute closing sentiment this week…just actually go do that.)

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Clodelle’s “Rien ne m’étonne” (“Parfois j’m'énerve, c’est la vie”)

1. I suspect one reason the song took off in Stranger Things is that the show added the orchestral OST bombast to it that you imagine is there but really isn’t — they made it the song from your memory.

2. From Blender, July 2001:
Q: Which song would you end your last concert with?
Yorke: Neil Young’s “Fuckin’ Up!”