This Is Ludicrous

Tim McGraw has the most popular song of the decade based on radio play?!?!?

Ok, so I live in an area of the country where country radio, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist. So, by that margin, the song should be a crossover hit, a Carrie Underwood or a Rascal Flatts, a song that is everywhere and everyone knows it. Now, I am still amazed that there are "popular" songs that I don't know. Maybe I do know this "Something Like That" if I heard it, maybe it's that countryish song making the rounds that I can never pin on down who sings it. But no, as this song was big in 1999-2000. Is that really fair? It's older than all the other songs on the list! It had the most time to get played! How in the world did it beat out "Smooth", Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana's blockbluster that was everywhere those two years? It had radio play on several different formats!

Let's go down this list.

Some of them are so obvious. "Drops of Jupiter"? Dear God, that's a song no one can forget, still completely memorable. (I might still know every word of it.) "Low" is also unmistakable, completely owning 2007 just like "Drops of Jupiter" owned 2001. You can't help but sing along to both of them. Usher owned 2004 (forgive me for overusing the verb, but it's true), and it's a song, like "Low", that defined the decade. My local Top 40 radio station named "Yeah!" their top song of 2004, a rare case of it matching the reality.

Album rock is a radio genre I'm not super-familiar with, mainly because rock stations have gone through myriad format changes in the last several years, so it's too hard to decipher when there's only one or two in a given market. Staind was one of those early '00s bands that bored me to tears; I found Aaron Lewis' vocals to be whiny and monotone, and I couldn't stand "It's Been Awhile", in addition to all their other leaden singles. The fact that the band fizzled out dampers the honor; it's like awarding Creed the label.

"Last Resort" is also an odd song to win "most played" status. Obviously Papa Roach's biggest hit, they scored huge on TRL back in the day (remember, it was in 2000, so this was a big deal), and it being such an angry song, it connected well with the teenagers (me included). The band itself also fizzled out somewhat, sticking to genre formats; like the rock problem above, they need a place to go.

And of course, to the Urban label, aka rap for many of those who don't speak radio. "Drop It Like It's Hot", Snoop. One of those hits that's big, but sticks around for awhile. Like Lil Jon, it was great to parody, which extended its life; all I think of is a haze of marijuana smoke and some ho'ed-out girls in black leather nothings droppin' to their knees. Completely awful in so many ways, but so effin' catchy. Snoop never had it so good.

I can't speak for the other categories, including country. But Urban Adult Contemporary? Who knew such a thing existed, besides Billboard aficionados?

It's interesting to look at the dates--2004 comes across like a banner year here--but it also makes sense that nothing from this year or last made the cut; time works on your side in these categories, with things hitting in the middle of the decade doing well because they have time to bubble, to grow and be loved, without being completely forgotten or even overexposed, which is what more recent hits turn into before they have time to fade away and rediscovered.

Of course, such a short list based on radio play ignores bigger trends and the bigger artists, but that is what other lists--iTunes downloads, album sales--pick up. Notice there is no Beyonce, Destiny's Child, Rihanna, Maroon 5, Kelly Clarkson, Coldplay, Norah Jones, Green Day, Kanye West, Jay-Z...all of these artists made the '00s, and one hotshot single, when many of them had multiple, won't cover the impact they had.

On End-of-the-Year Countdowns

In another sign of I’m getting old, the number one song on Z100’s Top 100 Countdown of 2008 is Chris Brown’s “Forever”, and for the first time, I could not conjure up the song in my head. While I’m familiar with many Chris Brown tracks—“Kiss Kiss”, “With You”, "Run It", “Wall-to-Wall”, his duet with girlfriend Rihanna “Hate that I Love You”, “No Air” with Jordin Sparks—I had no clue about this “Forever”. I was mystified. The number one song according to the Top 40 station in one of the biggest cities in the world and I do not recognize it? What?

So I looked up the song online, and yep, I don’t know the song. Ok, maybe I’ve heard it once or twice (though I see how it became the jingle for Doublemint gum, though because I rarely watch TV now, I don’t know the commercial), but it doesn’t ring familiar at all. Strange…Oh. Wait. I do vaguely recognize the opening chords, but that was a signal for me to skip it. Okay then.

I’m beyond getting mad at countdown crap like this. I realized, wading through the list, that I listen to so many stations and because I purposely skip over songs and artists I don’t like (I think I’ve managed to not hear either of Leona Lewis’s singles in their entirety, a feat I’m proud of), my perceptions of what is popular and what is not is somewhat skewed. I used to try to guess what the number one song of the year would be, trying to nail it earlier and earlier in the year. A number one song has to hit its peak at the right time of the year, in a certain time of July/August, be inescapable, yet not annoying, and not a fad. I also realized that I had to tailor my guesses to the individual outlets—VH1’s top songs were not mutually identical with PLJ’s, even though they overlapped a lot. But I’ve consistently fallen short, with my guesses coming up in the second (or fifth) spots. This year, I considered (frightfully) Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love”, since avoiding it became an Olympic sport (alas, number one for VH1), and Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music”, since that music never stopped for several months. Do not underestimate staying power.

I checked out some other stations that did countdowns. The lovely thing about the internet is now I can just read their lists; Z100 thankfully put theirs up before all the airings were done, so you don’t even have to listen to the whole countdown! (Which, as we all know, drags on and on in the 60-80 range.) Obviously Lil Wayne, Rihanna and Chris Brown rule in terms of singles and even cross genres; if the New York metropolitan region had a country station, the same would be said for Taylor Swift, who I think does much better in all genres outside of this region. The ubiquitous (and best sing-along chorus of the year) “Low” actually came out late in 2007, or else it would have undoubtedly been #1.

The problem with countdowns is I have never understood how they figure out what song places where. You can argue relative placement (and I have), but even that strange mix of sales figures and airplay does nothing for me. I remember “Sorry” being pretty damn big, a lot bigger than #98, which is a spot reserved for songs you heard once back in May, or a song that was released December 1^st, but somehow that doesn’t register. I guess I just made sure to crank up that tune whenever it was on VH1. There were many other “huhs?” when skimming through the list--“Hot N Cold” is a bigger hit that “I Kissed a Girl”?—as well as good half-dozen or so songs about which I just had no clue. When I didn’t listen to a station for a week or so, or ignored FM radio for several days on end, I just felt so behind, even if day-to-day, even week-to-week, playlists don’t change that much. But then one day you realize that you haven’t heard Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” in a while, and that that song has already peaked. And then you’re kind of sad, because you really liked that song.