It’s hard to believe—the news being what it is right now—that this is the number one song in the country. It opens with Ms. Perry, whom I’ve never heard of (no surprise there), informing us that she knows a place “where there’s something in the water.”
Wait, let me guess: Is it oil? Burning rigs? Dead pelicans?
Nope. The song is about Southern California, not the Gulf Coast—yes, it’s another wish-they-all-could-be homage-off to the state where the “girls wear Daisy Dukes with bikinis on top” and have “sex on the beach” with “their butts hanging out.”
The white girl sings, the music producer equalizes, the Snoop Dogg raps, the inevitable Auto-Tune Auto-Tunes, and I sit here wishing I hadn’t agreed to do this.
Nine more songs to get through. Holy Christ.
We have the gays to blame for all this Auto-Tune abuse, right? When Cher used it in “Believe,” it was a hit with the gays, then a hit with the muggles, and Cher made lots of money, and now—what? Ten years later?—here’s Usher, who I’ve actually heard of, squeezing the last five bucks out of it.
This is a baby-baby song. “Baby, baby, I want to do this to you, that to you, then that first thing again, baby, baby, OMG, you’re so hot, baby.” Usher raps while Arsenio Hall’s old studio audience chants away in the background. OMG: People are supposed to dance to this shit.
“OMG” is merely tedious until Usher rhymes “dance floor” with “drop low” by pronouncing floor “flow,” which is when the song becomes offensive. Any idiot could find rhymes for anything using the pronounce-it-however-you-want approach. Orange is a tough word to rhyme—very nearly impossible—but, hey, if you pronounce it “orish,” then it rhymes with “fish” and “dish” and “swish.” Can I have my Grammy now, please?
A piano tinkles, a lady sings, some beats kick in, and… it’s another rap number.
Someone needs a wish right now—so they’re gonna pretend that airplanes are shooting stars, because, you know, what else is there to wish on? Besides, oh, wishbones, birthday candles, coins tossed in fountains, stray eyelashes, etc.
But, hey, I know the feeling, lady—I wish I’d said no to this assignment.
This could be an inspiring song for the Great Depression 2.0: There are a lot of people out there who could use a wish right now—the long-term unemployed, soldiers dying in Afghanistan, shrimpers on the Gulf Coast—but… no. The person who needs a wish right now is a rapper who just wants to go back to the days when he was rapping for the love of the “music that started this shit,” and not the money and fame and the game and blah blah blah.
You know how when you look at the charts from the ’50s and early ’60s and it’s nothing but Pat Boone and crooners year after year and you think, “Boy, popular music was repetitive and safe and boring back then—so white-bread!”
Isn’t that rap now? All of these monotonous rap songs are playing in Panera Bread cafes and suburban basements all over the country. Usher, B.o.B.—they’re today’s Pat Boones, boring and safe—so… brown-bread.
OMG—I liked this song.
Should I say that? Will it ruin it for everyone else—will it ruin Mr. McCoy for his target audience—if it gets out that a musical-theater queen liked this song?
Like—no, I loved it. I listened to it 23 times in a row. That’s how we roll, we musical-theater queens. Listen to it over and over, until you know it inside and out, until you can sing along.
Which is exactly what I’m doing right now.
“Billionaire” starts quietly—a guitar is plucked, some bongos (?) tapped, a gentle, swaying beat kicks in. It has an island lilt to it, almost reggae. And then—could it be?!?—someone actually starts singing.
Okay, then a rap starts—but! But! But! “Billionaire” doesn’t lose its light touch, its gentle soul. There’s no “nncha, nncha, nncha,” no shouting, no get-up-and-dance bullshit, no “baby, baby,” no ridiculously strained rhymes. It doesn’t sound like every other fuckin’ thing on this list. And the lyrics! Fucking funny and fucking smart—wait, did he just make a joke about illegal campaign contributions?
Excuse me for a second—I’m going to stick this one in my iTunes, where it’s going to sit between “Bigger Is Better” from the off-Broadway musical revue When Pigs Fly and “Bowler Hat” from Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking Kabuki musical Pacific Overtures.
Sorry about that, Travie.
So this little vulgarity spells her name with a dollar sign? That’s classy.
Anyway, we’re back to the usual bullshit. Beat, beat, beat, a white girl rapping about how she’s strung out and her heart is all fried because “your love, your love is my drug,” and she can’t get enough of him.
At a low point—one of many—KeDollarSigna describes herself as a “lovesick crackhead.”
I suppose you could dance to this shit—fuck, I expect there are gay bars full of fags dancing to this shit. That’s because most gay people, like most people people, have no taste. Plus, those fags’ drugs are actual drugs.
I don’t need to go on about this one—it’s being discussed everywhere—and I saw the video last week because I’m gay and I was just following orders. But while everyone’s talking about how Lady Gaga is ripping off/homaging the shit out of Madonna here—she wears a nun’s habit, she swallows a rosary—it sounds like she’s ripping off/homaging the shit out of ABBA’s “Fernando.”
I can totally hear the drums.
More brown-bread—a little singing, a little rapping. They call Mr. Cruz “the heartbreaker,” he tells us, and he’s only going to break-break-break your heart, so go away, little girl.
Donny Osmond got there first and did it better.
Eminem is not afraid.
I am afraid of Eminem, however. Even if he did endorse gay marriage last week—but only because he thinks gay people should be miserable, too, just like straight people. (However miserable your divorce was, Eminem, it can’t compare to the experience of being barred from your partner’s bedside as she lies dying because she was unlucky enough to have a fatal brain aneurism in “an anti-gay state.”)
I’ve heard that this is Eminem’s “nice” song. It’s rap, of course, and it’s dull. Nice or no, Eminem hasn’t gone soft—there’s a lot of “fuck you” in there, even some gunshots, but then… suddenly… uplift: “Everybody come take my hand/We’ll walk this road together, through the storm/Whatever weather [unintelligible]/You’re not alone.”
Um… I hope this doesn’t get me killed, but at the end there, Eminem’s “Not Afraid” sounds an awful lot like Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone”:
When you walk through a storm/Hold your head up high/And don’t be afraid of the dark/At the end of the storm/Is a golden sky/And the sweet silver song of a lark!
Walk on, through the wind/Walk on, through the rain/Though your dreams be tossed and blown/Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart/And you’ll never walk alone!
What do you suppose the odds are that Eminem is a musical-theater queen, too?
I’m running out of steam and patience here. All you need to know beyond the “rock your body” trope is that this song features what sounds like Alvin the chipmunk doing backup. Alvin is Auto-Tuned and rapping, of course, and Alvin wants you to rock that body, too.
No wait, it’s not Alvin—it’s… my God… it’s Crazy Frog.
I can’t take it anymore. I quit. 
if you had truly never heard of Katy Perry before this article you don’t get to make pop culture references ever again
Who the hell is Katy Perry?
I do like the Billionaire song, Dan. I just may add it to my iPod. Which has had no additions in at least three years. Because I’m old.
Oh, the “I kissed a girl and I liked it” singer. Yeah, you’d find her amusing, Dan.
Thanks for that, Dan. As a Show Tune Queen you have saved me the trouble of dealing with pop-culture once again.
Of course I had to watch the Gaga video. (Following orders) I love her “Joey Heatherton in a pant-suit” and the boys in Spanx and party-pumps.
I didn’t hear “Fernando”, rather “Olli ollie oxen free.”
Not one song on that list is rap/hop hop. Pop music.
Is the video/radio version of OMG “oh my gosh” and the original “oh my god” or am I imagining it. You may now rinse out your ears Dan. Sorry.
I love you, Dan.
i’ve never heard any of these songs. thanks for being the martyr dan. it’s like lindy reviewing ‘marmaduke’ y’all do it so we won’t have to.
thanks.
Thank you Dan. You suffered so that I don’t have to.
My morbid curiosity has been piqued… I almost want to listen to these songs and break my 15+ year moratorium on pop music. I do, however, fear my eardrums may collapse on themselves.
Bah. Pop music.
Listen to Sunn 0))).
Punchington Out
“Like—no, I loved it. I listened to it 23 times in a row. That’s how we roll, we musical-theater queens. Listen to it over and over, until you know it inside and out, until you can sing along.”
LOL – So true it hurts.
Gee Dan, thanks for the enlightenment. The mainstream sucks? It’s industry garbage served up for morons and force-few to the rest of us thru retail-PA systems and commercial radio? Well, Mr. Savage, who’da thunk it!?!??! I can’t believe you got paid to write what must be the most obvious, Duh! statement of the millenium. How about next week you tell us about how McDonald’s and cigarettes are -gasp!- bad for us??
Good feature yo. Sirius(XM) allows the no listening of billboard. Dan made me laugh AND spared me actually listening to pop music! Who is Justin Bieber, I am all about Katie Perry!
Oh man, at first I didn’t even realize this was Dan. I was like, “what the hell kind of righteous thespian bitch wrote this straightwad, obnoxious, gay-bashing, COMMERCIALISM BAD ACTUAL SINGING GOOD piece of garbage rant?”
Then I saw who wrote it. Nice one, Savage. I still love you.
Though Alejandro is obviously more a rip off of Ace Of Base. And where the hell is Kylie on this list? Isn’t she in the Top 10 already?
I just took it upon myself to listen to at least a few seconds of all these on Youtube just now.. and sure they all suck, but
about that Billionaire song.. I hate to burst your bubble, Dan, but it is absolutely worse than the Usher song.. (worse than Usher!)
(trying to fix the underline tag…)
Thankfully, there’s much more to music than the Billboard Top 10 and songs in musicals.
What a bunch of whining.
Most of these songs are way better than any I here whenever I’m in a gay bar or gay-friendly disco.
I haven’t heard any of these songs before…
You should hear them singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at Anfield when Liverpool walk out onto the pitch. Send chills up your spine, even if it is based on the Gerry and the Pacemakers version.
Also, the version opposing fans sing, with the lyrics changed to “sign on, sign on, with your pen in your hand, and you’ll NEEEEEver work again” is quite funny. Sometimes they shake wads of money too.
I heard Drake for the first time last night on NPR’s music talk show. (Yes, I am a stereotype.) Holy shit was the song they played boring. The fuckers who host the show where trying to hype it up as “The New, Thoughtful Hiphop” because thoughtful hiphop never happened before in their dumbass world.
A list like this without K’naan’s Wavin’ Flag on it is awfully provincial.
Sure it’s at least two years old, but one of its more recent versions is #5 on the world charts thanks to the World Cup (and Coke).
http://www.mediatraffic.de/tracks.htm
For nearly any other country, this will likely be remembered as the song of the summer.
Every generation finds its own musical voice, but yeah, music’s been in quite a state for several years now. And while pop music has always had a short expiry date, it wasn’t always meaningless and banal: male performers who look and speak like they just got out of the pen (save for the rings) and female performers who would be more at home in burlesque.
I think it’s the lack of music education.
And maybe I read it wrong, but Steve Lawrence had a hit with “Go Away, Little Girl” years before Toothy did.
At least that Lady GaGa video had some cross-dressing guys and a mock pegging scene. mmm…pegging….
Alejandro is much better when sung by Jesse Tyler Ferguson: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=tWvggPT4…
Not sure why my comment above seems to have been truncated. Anyway, Alejandro when sung by a musical theatre queen, i.e. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, is a far more enjoyable experience. Search YouTube for high-quality evidence of this!
One of my more liberating moments of the last ten years was the realization that current pop music wasn’t written/produced/promoted with me in mind. I had moved out of the target audience. I didn’t have to try and keep up. I’m sure I’ve missed some good stuff along the way but I don’t mind. “When Pigs Fly”? “Steel Pier” ? “She Loves Me”? You bet!
But Dan, what about, you know, good music? Good music besides musical theatre? It’s not like the only two choices are Broadway or the latest pop crap. I know you listen to other stuff – you mentioned liking the Dresden Dolls once. Give with more recommendations in the column. Support struggling artists! (Cue the Marseillaise).
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s reviews written by people who know absolutely nothing about what they’re reviewing.
This sucked. A lot.
@32>>>so did most of the music he reviewed.
it’s just pop music. it’s not supposed to be deep. relax. what’s fun about looking down on everyone else?
Who knew the nation’s leading gay spokesperson was such an aging curmudgeon?
AHHH Thank you so much. I have actually been listening to a lot more radio in the past few months (since my girlfriend is a DJ and works in the clubs and listening to the radio is kinda like homework) and am suffering for it. I am so grateful to hear your critiques. I feel like “I’m coming home” after a long stint out of show choir and theatre!
The ‘Billionaire’ song may find a second life in a TV commercial or movie, but beyond that, no one will give a flying F about any of these songs at the end of summer, and by this time next year they will be out of our lives permanently.