I am NOT letting anyone take this today. Sorry in advance. This is a top-five best-top-ten-hit-of-all-time for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYAc7gB-0A

Glad to see Tom give this a high score. For me it’s a #1 that is entirely deserving of its success. And I’d argue that the chorus melody is actually fairly sophisticated by radio music standards: each time you sing that line the words are landing on slightly different notes– I reckon you’ve gotta have a very good sense of pitch to sing along with it properly. Anyway, I guess I’m lucky in that I remember hearing this song a lot, but somehow never to the point where I got really sick of it. (Something I can’t say about many of today’s radio hits, which for me stay in rotation waaaay too long, some seemingly for years!)

Wait…did someone say “Polka Face?”

@Virgindog did!

https://www.tnocs.com/theoretically-speaking-s4e6-what-makes-polka-polka/

My Line of the Day: ““Jump off that sofa! Keep watching… Oprah!” (Maybe that’s a Tom Cruise reference, but it seems to imply that you’re supposed to watch Oprah while standing up, which nobody has ever voluntarily done in the history of the world.)”

Stars Reached

After retiring as host of the historic American Top 40 radio program in 2004, the great Casey Kasem finally stepped away from radio countdowns for good over the July 4th weekend in 2009. Kasem technically got to sign off from two shows. American Top 20 used Radio & Records’ Hot AC chart and Shinedown’s “Second Chance” was the last Kasem-announced #1 on the program. American Top 10, on the other hand, relied on the same publication’s AC chart and Kasem ended it with Taylor Swift’s topper “Love Story.” (R&R had coincidentally ended the month before, but its data source Mediabase continued operation as a radio survey and now monitors airplay for Billboard).

At the same perch exactly thirty-nine years before, Kasem got to announce the Beatles’ previous #1 “Long and Winding Road” as part of his first Top 10. Now, he began his own final journey down the road, leaving an immense legacy in his wake.

“I’m Casey Kasem. Now, one more time, the words I’ve ended my show with since 1970. Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jWVJAaESEE

Too bad Dave Grohl was already busy

*girls

stop marding (don’t stop marding)

Meanwhile Lil Wayne did this and didn’t lose an ounce of sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g762REJWcg

Since Monday’s column, I’ve had this half-baked theory about the Black Eyed Peas brewing in my head. The Black Eyed Peas are the Village People of the late-aughts.

We listen to BEP through 2023 ears and it may sound like a hodgepodge, like they’re trying to do everything and not picking a lane. But 2009 was such a different time — we were all still devastated from the economic meltdown that had landed in 2008. We had just elected Barack Obama, and the feelings of optimism were super high — like we were in a bad place, but we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In this context, you’ve got an almost comically diverse band (black man, white woman, Latino man, black Filipino man) who aren’t just rap or rock or hip-hop or club music — they’re everything. They brought optimistic and vaguely futuristic sounds that pointed to a brighter, perhaps even more inclusive, future. Music lovers like ourselves may not have bought their charms, but they could hit a wide swath of the United States with such an approach — they were completely living in the moment, not just with their sound, but with their identity.

Maybe the Village People is a stretch, but they performed fun and optimistic music in the style of the day (disco) at a time when the economy was in the doldrums and people were looking for escape and reason for hope. Why can’t a Native American, a biker, a construction worker, a GI, a cowboy and a cop all come together and make music that brings us together? And 30 years later, we have a ethnically diverse (rather than occupationally diverse) group doing the same thing.

I was never a huge fan of BEP at the time, but I enjoy their music more now. It evokes that time and really goes as far as danceable beats. I’d give “Boom Boom Pow” an 9/10 and “I’ve Gotta Feeling” a 8/10.

so la it hurts, but a fantastically underrated record nonetheless