Top Ten Death Match No.8!!!!!

It’s Top Ten Death Match Time!!!! In which we attempt to determine, has pop music actually gotten worse, or are we just old and nostalgic and dreaming of a retro golden era that did not exist.

We do this through our Top Ten Death Match, comparing the charts of NOW! With the charts of a randomly generated THEN!

In this case THEN is the year 1983!

Our current score, as we go into this months contest has THEN slightly in the lead.

NOW: 3
THEN: 4

Sooooo close. We can not authoritively say therefore that music has gotten worse, although signs do appear to say that it has.

We need, in other words, another test.

Let’s do this then!


1. Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow 2/5

There’s always been something band-wagon jumping and opportunistic about Black Eyed Peas even once you do realize that sampling Pulp Fiction soundtracks and doing duets with Justin Timberlake are just part of the job as being the biggest hop-pop band in the world. In some ways, I’ve often admired them, since they’ve managed to take the essence of early 90s hip-pop (home of one(or sometimes two)-hit wonders such as MC Hammer, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Vanilla Ice) and created a decade long career out it. In doing so, a third of their hits are guilt pleasure, a third are only bareable, and a third are almost painful. And they unleashed Fergie onto the world (can someone please shoot her). There are many reasons to hate them in other words.

In looking at this video, the first thing you notice is that they are starting to look rather old. This makes their bang wagon jump onto electro-rap begin to look like what it is. A desperate attempt to look relevant. Kind of like when Michael Jackson pretended to be down with hip-hop (which he had previously dissed) and “hardcore” by hiring one-hit hip-pop wonder Heavy D to rap on “Jam.” No-one fell for that shit. Then Prince did the same (after making an album a few years before that was almost entirely based on the concept of telling the world how bad rap was). The whole situation was embarrassing. You’d think the Black Eyed Peas would know better than to just jump blandly onto the latest trend themselves.


2. Eminem – We Made You 2/5

I was wondering, how old exactly is Marshall? Because he still looks a bit like a kid, and he has a school boys puerile sense of humor (this is for example the first song in a long while – possibly ever – to get to No.1 with a fart joke). So I checked with Wikipedia and he is 36 and a half. That’s practically middle-age! Maybe it is middle-age (when does that start exactly).

Knowing this, I can’t help but think: Marshall, you need to grow up! It was one thing acting like a twerp in your mid-20s. The late 90s were a very immature time in Western culture – it was the era of Bloodhound Gang, “Jay and Silent Bob” “South Park” and when the most important political issue in the world was whether or not the President considered a head-job to count as sex - and that made you culturally relevant.

These are different times now. And you are ten years older. But you haven’t changed at all. Isn’t this slightly embarrassing?

Having said that, in a world full of pop stars falling over themselves to show who love Obama the most, it’s nice to have you keeping it real, and keeping with your redneck white trash roots, and rapping about how you’d like to nail Sarah Palin.



3. The Script – Breakeven 2/5

I’d like to continue my musings on the impact of the economic crisis on pop music. Maroon 5 have been one of the biggest singles bands during “the boom” largely because they wore sharp suits, and sounded like the kind of cover bands that play in single bars where young ladies try to snare a guy with an impressive sounding job involving stocks or investment banking.

That strategy doesn’t seem too clever now.

So Maroon 5 and their starched suits are out and The Script, with pretty much the same sound, and pretty much the same voice – maybe a bit more on the Sting tip – but with leather jackets and a bit of rough facial hair, are in.

Will Maroon 5 keep their suits for their next video? Only time will tell.

4. Lily Allen – Not Fair 5/5

Since they haven’t been allowed to use the big “SEX” font on their billboards, the Advanced Medical Institute have been desperately looking for wacky marketing ploys. As a result, it has now been announced that shall be sponsoring the Lily Allen tour in June.


5. A.R. Rahman & The Pussycat Dolls – Jai Hao! 5/5
In an attempt to bond with my Indian co-worker (he lives in the suburbs of South Dehli. We communicate via MSN) and hoping to foster some sort of national pride, I informed him that “Jai Hao!” had been Number One in Australia! He appeared to be rather non-plussed by the information.

The question is, will the success of “Jai Hao!” uncover a previously unsatisfied demand for Bollywood tunes on the Australian charts? Let us study the past form of freakish ethnic flavoured hits…

“Moscow” by Genghis Khan did not appear to inspire a cosack/disco dancing fusion, at least not outside of Eurovision contestants.

“Sadeness” by Enigma did apparently lead to a short-lived mania of Gregorian monk chanting across Europe, although in Australia its impact was little more than causes world music stores to introduce a Gregorian monk section.

The success of Deep Forest did seem to lead to several years infatuation by progressives with liberal guilt complexes, reaching its peak in 1994 with the Top Ten hit “Seven Seconds” by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry and some very minor hits by the very wonderful Angélique Kidjo, although this may have been due to metalheads with speech impediments attempting to buy Ugly Kid Joe records.

More successful than any of these however was the “Macarena” which revealed the previously unsuspected existence of a mass sub-culture of people who loved pseudo-Latino novelty songs, leading to “Mambo No.5” - both the Lou Bega and Bob The Builder versions.

Who knows what the ultimate influence of the Pussycat Dolls shall turn out to be?


6. Lady Gaga – LoveGame 2/5

Why do we hate Lady Gaga? A topic that is puzzling the world, and clogging up the blogosphere.

Here is a sample:

“Lady GaGa, I just don’t get you, you make no sense to me, I can’t even
pretend you do. When I first laid eyes on you I was convinced
you were a Tranny Hooker But then I came to find out your actually a woman.
Your face is devoid of emotion as if you have no soul. What possesses your
insides to make you devoid of any human emotion. Your real name is Joanne Stefani Germanotta. You’ve been pretentious since birth apparently.”

Still you have to admire someone who allows a thread discussing the question “Lady Gaga, are you a man?” on her own official website.

When Lady Gaga says all she cares about is fashion, I think she takes that literally. She’s soulless and appears to care way too much about her freaky sunglasses or what have you, on purpose. Because she is purposely being all style and no substance. Substance would just get in the way.

“The outlet for my work is not just the music and the videos, it's every breathing moment of my life. I'm always saying something about art and music and fame.”

Saying something, representing something, other than fame, would just get in way. Although she is starting to talk a lot about being a sex addict now. Well of course. Sex is always the favorite topic of most attention hungry exhibitionists.

Is the reason we hate her because she is such an exhibitionist that one suspects that she started the rumor that she was a “well hung young man” herself, on purpose, in the hope that it would cause people to look at her crotch?

Enough about Lady GaGa. Let’s talk about the damn song.

“Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick/ I want to take a ride on a disco stick.” That’s a good line. It’s probably the best thing she has ever written. It shows that Lady GaGa has, if not a soul, at least a tiny bit of a sense of humor. Although the rest of the song could be used as an argument against it.


7. Miley Cyrus – The Climb 3/5

Miley goes country in a song currently being played at every motivational seminar across the globe. Every female teeny bopper star has to have one motivational anthem, to inspire a new generation of teenage girls to believe in themselves and not succumb to eating disorders. Debbie Gibson had “Electric Youth”, Britney had “Stronger”, Hilary Duff had "Fly"

But not to worry, Miley’s going to be back in fun form in a month ago when the next single “Hoedown Throwdown” – you “pop it”, you “lock it” and then you “polka dot it” - shall change the fucking game! It’s “Achy Breaky Heart” would have been like if it had been performed by Kriss Kross (and if Kriss Kross were girls). That’s soooo 1992.



8. Taylor Swift – Love Story 4/5

This a has been in the charts for so long that I’ve run out of things to say, and I really don’t want to have to mention how much I want to bang Taylor Swift again, and I am sure you don’t want me to mention it again either.


9. P!nk – Bad Influence 2/5

When P!nk is good she is very very good, but when she is annoying she is horrid.
Personally I like the songs where she hates herself. Fortunately she does that a lot. Unfortunately she is an petulant annoying brat almost as often. In that way she is the opposite of that other anti-Britney (which if you can remember back a decade ago, was how she was originally marketed), Avril Lavigne, who is only ever any fun when she is being a petulant annoying brat.





10. 3 OH! 3 – Don’t Trust Us 4/5

Eminem is back ruling the charts. Linkin Park have a new single. And 3 OH! 3 (who I can’t help but think are just Blink 182 with some music software) are the most obnoxious party band in the world. It really is like 1999 all over again. It’s like we went straight from the 80s revival to the 1999 revival, and skipped the bit in the middle. That’s a bit of a shame. I wanted to see an Urban Cookie Collective revival.

That's a total of 31 points out of a possible 50!

Not too terrible. But not too great. Let's see how 1983 fares.

For 1983, and the top three positions are taken up by three of the biggest pop icons of their time, at the height of their hit-making ability. How can it possibly fail? Well let's see.

1. Michael Jackson – Billie Jean 5/5

Although I’ve always liked “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” (“the force… it’s got a lot of power… it makes me feel like… it makes me feel like…. WOOOOO!!!!” best spoken intro to a song EVER!) and “Beat It” (the screaming! the dance moves! The guitar solo!) better, some songs you just can’t argue with. Blender claimed it “The No.1 Song Since You Were Born” (apparently you were born in 1980) Q Magazine rated it the No.1 song of the Eighties. These people know their shit. You don't argue with them.


Being stalked by a woman who says you are the father of her child. Funny topic for one of the biggest hits of the decade. But Michael had always been different. His first solo hit was about a mouse. Soon he would sing about zombies. As I said, he was different.

Rumor has it that if you listen really closely you can hear the sound of his feet dancing while he sings - when the groove hit him, the kid just couldn’t stop dancing – you can certainly hear every breathe, every “heee!” and gosh are there a lot of them.

2. David Bowie – Let’s Dance 5/5

Aah…aaah…aaaah….aaah….Okay, what is the deal with this video? What is Bowie doing playing a gig in a crappy pub in outback Australia? What are the local thinking, looking at this fey skinny man with bleached hair and pointy shoes? No one get’s out of a place like that alive. Not dressed like that! What is the connection between an Aboriginal girl wearing red shoes and a nuclear bomb going off? Somehow all of this actually does make me feel proud to be Australian.



3. Prince – 1999 4.5/5

“Don’t worry, I wont hurt you… I only want you … to have some fun” Given that later in the album he sings a song featuring an S&M solo, I don’t know if I can trust you Prince. That’s how the song starts before launching into a party with a little something for everyone, a keyboard riff so catchy that even Phil Collins, possibly the whitest person in rock, felt he had to rip it off, pseudo political lyrics about everyone’s favorite paranoia in the eighties (nuclear annihilation) and the first signs of Prince’s infatuation with the color purple!

4. Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes – Up Where We Belong 3.5/5

Who the hell was Jennifer Warnes? She had this and she had the Dirty Dancing song. Did she even have a non-duetting career? I know who Joe Cocker is though. He's that guy who perfected the gruff, I’m-about-to-cough voice that has been used to varying success by other artists ever since, to the extent that it is practically now a cliche.

And like all hit duets of the eighties it’s at once both unlistenably smooshy whilst somewhere hidden in your DNA you realize that it is actually some kind of wonderful.


5. Men At Work – Overkill 3/5

The thing that surprises most people about Men At Work is that they had other songs than “Down Under”. Then, when you play them to people, they are further surprised when you tell them that they were big hits.

“Overkill” is - it must be admitted - a wonderfully seedy mood piece with some lovely saxophone – an instrument that experienced a surprising resurgence in the eighties, probably because David Bowie played it – and a video showing what St Kilda – the capital of Australian seediness – looked like in the eighties. It's just not an obvious pop song.



6. Duran Duran – Is There Something I Should Know 3/5

Simon, Simon, Simon. Please please, tell me now, why don’t you write songs with notes that you can hit?

This has always annoyed me and I’m glad I got that off of my chest.

Bizzarro lyrics were always part of Duran Duran’s package, to make them sound more space age and mysterious resulting in song titles such as “The Union Of The Snake” and leading to more puzzlement over what their songs meant than is usually received from foppy boy bands, until everyone realized that all the songs were just about sex. But there is one lyrics from “Is There Something I Should Know” that has always puzzled me more than any other. How easy exactly is a nuclear war (ANOTHER reference to nuclear war!)? Does this mean that the girl is easy, or not easy?

Nice harmonica solo by the way.



7. Chris De Burgh – Don’t Pay The Ferryman 1.5/5

All I know of Chris De Burgh – all anyone knows I’m sure – is “Lady In Red”, so I was expecting some schmaltz by an ugly looking dude. Instead this sound a bit like Meatloaf singing Queen’s “Flash”. Even the rather odd lyrics based apparently on Irish mythology and death and a cameo by Giles from Buffy (apparently… he might be the guy on the boat at the end but its hard to tell under the cloak), doesn’t improve matters at all. Even Chris can’t take himself seriously, as he wonders around the video in a Dracula outfit, and campfire-ghost-story lighting effects. Just terrible.



8. Redgum – I Was Only 19 5/5

I am a firm believer that Australian culture reached its peak in 1983. “Australiana” became the biggest selling single of all time. We got a Prime Minister who was elected largely because he held the world record as the world’s fastest beer drinker (1.7 litres in 11 seconds!) Daryl Somers won the Gold Logie, and Paul Hogan was throwing another shrimp on the barbie.

And Redgum had a hit with a song even more Australian that their floral name suggested. Filled to brim with Aussie-ness: references to matership, tinnies of VB, and the Channel Seven chopper, sung by a guy who has the kind of beard usually seen of bushrangers, hosts of gardening shows and members of Architecture In Helsinki.

If they had offered this as Australia’s constitutional preamble in 1999 I would have voted for it.




9. Midnight Oil – The Power And The Passion 4/5

In 1998, the lead singer of Redgum, John Schumann would run for the Federal Seat of Mayo for the Australian Democrats, up against Alexander Downer. He almost won.

In 2004, Peter Garrett, lead singer of Midnight Oil, won the ridiculously safe Labor seat of Kingsford Smith.

This wasn’t the first time that Peter had achieved something that John could not. In 1983, he managed to fit in even more Aussie clichés into a song than “I Was Only 19” could.

Zinc cream. Beaches. Fucking panel vans. Pubs. Footy. It’s all here. All it needed was for Peter to go “oi” and it would be complete.

The video also features some of Peter Garret’s best dance moves, and an early look at him in a suit. I went to Canberra last year, and saw him in question time. It was weird. He was subtly, but distinctly, rocking back and forth. You could just tell that he was waiting for a chance to wave his arms in the air like a spazz.



10. Kajagoogoo – Too Shy 3/5 but a 5/5 for that HAIR!!!

Kajagoogoo might be the band of the 80s to be given the hardest time. Partially it was because of the name. How on earth did they expect to be treated seriously with a name like Kajagoogoo? Partially it was because of the HAIR!!! It would become a joke amongst the oldies who were pissed off that video was killing the radio star, that all the kids listened to these (those) days was “hair bands” with the suggestion that all of that hair spray was effecting their hair.

Three-quarters of “Too Shy” is embarrassingly dull (that would be the verses bits), as Limahl tries terribly to be sexy and seductive (he is, it needs to be said, no Barry White), climaxing with the even more embarrassing “hey girl… come a little closer” plea. This is not helped in any way by the presence of slap bass.

But the chorus, as stupid and inane as it is, is absolute pop gold.

The lead singer would end up singing the “Never Ending Story”, whilst their sound – synth pop with effeminate vocals and slap bass – would re-merge at the end of the decades in Bros.

That's a total of 37.5 points! 39.5 points if we include the hair!

1983 WINS IN A LANDSLIDE!!!!

That means that the big score is now:

NOW: 3
THEN: 5

Things are looking good for THEN.