Bottom 10 of 2015

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I mentioned the other day having difficulty figuring out a Bottom 10; well, part of the problem was there was one annoying trend that was so often repeated, I probably could have made a Bottom 10 from just that one genre. What we’re referring to is, at least in UK charts, the propensity to take an oldie and ruin it, either by sampling a section of the original, helium-izing it, then repeating it ad infinitum, or by doing a mediocre rendering, or taking a song that wasn’t that good to begin with. That accounts for nearly half of my bottom 10, and that’s after eliminating a terrible remake of one of my favorite 90’s records, “This Is How We Do It,” which brought original singer Montell Jordan into the car crash. I only left it out because it barely scraped the top 20 and was gone in a week or two. Still, there’s plenty of embarrassing moments to reminisce over.

10. FIGHT SONG – RACHEL PLATTEN (#1 UK, #6 US) OK, so I’ve pissed off the feminist readers. Sorry, but the dramatics of this song always grated on me, particularly before the final chorus, where she half-whispers “I only got one match, but I can make an explosion.” Makes me want to blow HER up. “This is a Shite song…”

9. MARVIN GAYE – CHARLIE PUTH feat. MEGHAN TRAINOR (#1 UK, #21 US) For trying to make the soul legend a verb as a synonym for sex while sounding like the whitest version of the Glee Cast, this paltry bit of schmaltz probably deserves a higher ranking, but we’ll be content to leave it here.

8. GOOD FOR YOU – SELENA GOMEZ feat. ASAP ROCKY (#23 UK, #5 US) Aside from singing the word “good” with two syllables, this song of “I’m going to look sexy so my man will desire me” was not exactly the feminist anthem that “Fight song” tried to be. Not helped by ASAP (?) throwing in a “Yeah, you stay hot mama and I won’t dump you” rap.

7. AIN’T NOBODY – FELIX JAEHN feat. JASMINE THOMPSON (#2 UK, — US) A pretty decent song when Rufus and Chaka Khan recorded it 33 years ago, but not so when an Ellie Goulding breathy sound-alike was chosen to bland it up. Whereas…

6. SHOW ME LOVE – SAM FELDT feat. KIMBERLY ANNE (#7 UK, — US) … there have been so many re-workings of that percolator riff from Robin S.’s blasé 1993 dance hit “Show Me Love,” it was inevitable that someone would actually redo the song itself. Don’t understand why.

5, 4. EASY LOVE – SIGALA (#1 UK, — US) WISH YOU WERE MINE – PHILIP GEORGE (#1 UK, #4 US [Dance chart]) Oh, what a grand idea! Let’s flaunt the fact that we got the license to bastardize classic Motown tunes by sampling the original recordings, then put them through a helium filter, and repeat one or two lines over and over. Not even an original idea, as Euro DJ Eric Prydz did the same thing 11 years before with a Steve Winwood song, then suddenly came a barrage of one-shot remakes of mediocre 80’s songs that none of us really wanted to hear again, let alone with just one line repeated for three minutes.

3. WATCH ME (WHIP/NAE NAE) – SILENTO (#19 UK, #3 US) Usually each year there’s a stupid and repetitious record that I can have a love/hate feeling for. This one is not it. We’re not even sure what “nae nae” is except that the singer wants us to watch him do it when we’re not watching him whip. Sadly, this is the power of YouTube, in that a simple video of an even simpler song becomes a national sensation while not showing the slightest modicum of depth. The UK more or less passed on it, but it stayed in the US top 10 for 18 weeks!

2. HOTLINE BLING – DRAKE (#3 UK, #2 US) Aside from the fact that Drake sings like he just woke from a nap, the message underneath the droning repetition of “You used to call me on your cel phone” appears to be “You used to like to shag all the time when we were together, how dare you change your mind!”

1. I DON’T MIND – USHER feat. JUICY J (#8 UK, #11 US) But even worse is Usher showing what a liberal he is by telling his girl he don’t mind if she’s a stripper, “just so you’re leaving with me.” So it really is about YOU, then. It’s not even an original song idea, for Wyclef Jean’s “Perfect Gentleman (2001)” had the chorus “Just cause she dances go-go, that don’t make her a ho’ no.” And to steal another idea from days gone by, before Juicy J basically negates Usher’s “good” intentions in his rap 2/3 of the way through, we hear him yelling answer lines to Usher’s musings. Didn’t Puff Daddy do the same thing 15 years ago, contributing a few “uh-huhs” and “tha’s rights” throughout and getting credit as artist AND producer? Just when I first heard “Bills” by Lunchmoney Lewis and knew it would be my favorite song of the year, I knew when I heard “I Don’t Mind” back in January, it would take a lot to dethrone this one. Nothing did.

January 1st, 2016



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