The year is now 2006. This is the first full year that digital sales have been part of the Hot 100 formula, and as we can see, there’s quite a difference from the last few years, both in the number of songs and the genres represented. This is the biggest post-1991 chart we’ll see, with a total of 19 songs to choose from including Mariah’s carryover.
Justin Timberlake. I could not vote for Shakira, her success mystifies me. Besides Justin I could have went with James Blunt, Daniel Powter, Sean Paul or Fergie. Beyoncé’s songs suck also, “Irreplaceable” has aged like crap.
For the fourth straight year, this race is tighter than a Texas tick on a bull’s scrotum on the Fourth of July. “Hips Don’t Lie” just barely beats “Temperature” and “Ridin’” in the world-famous Ponch8 Music Rating System. BTW, today is Chamillionaire’s birthday!
Most years, “Bad Day” would EASILY finish in dead-ass last place. However, “You’re Beautiful” is so profoundly horrible, it walks away with the dubious honor this year.
OK so finally in the second half of this list I start again recognizing multiple entries. Geez, what difference charting methods make.
(Y’know, “feat. Timbaland” seemed for a while the second half of just about every hot hit credit. Pretty sweet spot to find yourself, if you ask me.)
So in this installment we have “Hips Don’t Lie” which is as of this writing Ms. Mubarak’s only US regular-Pop Chart #1; and there’s Justin bringin’ Sexy Back in more ways than one. Nelly is the Promiscuous Gal we all don’t want to bring home to mother, Beyoncé actually gets in some tracks superior to her prior couple of years’, and OK so Fergie’s entry is a hot beat but with all due respect, stupid. They can’t be all masterpieces.
Much as it pains me to deny her, having had a soft spot for her since way back, I feel that the best material so far from the Colombian lady with the uncommon voice and the stunning core conditioning is from BEFORE Oral Fixation 2, so the boy-grown-to-manhood, bringer of the wardrobe malfunction, gets the advantage.
I just wanted to add my realization of how much of a boost Ridin’ got from Weird Al. I’m not sure I’d have felt as strongly about it if not for White & Nerdy’s contribution.
“White and Nerdy” has to rank in my Top 10 songs by “Weird Al” (as does the video, which is even more awesome). I’m not actually sure if I’ve heard Chamillionaire’s original from start-to-finish.
James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” is awful. “Weird Al’s” parody, “You’re Pitiful,” is brilliant and was meant to be the lead single from the album until Blunt’s record company vetoed it at the last second. So Al released the song anyway as a free download on his website to stick it to the Man who jerked him around.
Anyway, I voted for “SexyBack” although “Promiscuous” was a close second and “SOS” and “Hips Don’t Lie” were in the general conversation.
Fergie’s “London Bridge” isn’t quite as funny as “Fergalicious,” but still catchy, even if it’s lyrically garbage.
As a side note, Nelly Furtado never quite found her niche. Promiscuous didn’t quite work. The other song of that album, Maneater, has a bangin’ groove - absolutely love that hook - but ultimately, I get the impression that she took a shot at the sexy persona Timbaland crafted for her on this CD and it didn’t fit.
(and did I mention that I find her pretty damn beautiful? I would’ve enjoyed having her more regularly on the charts…)
Yeah, her voice is awful and I do not buy the argument that she sounds better in Spanish. I have heard it and she sucks; many singers I have heard sing in a foreign language with beautiful voices. Her songs from her first English album was not bad, as was the 2009 single “She Wolf”. But she has big gaps and they should stop trying to make her a sensation in America, it will never happen. Earlier this year, she had single with Rihanna and song vanished. Happens with her often. Simply put Shakira is not superstar in the U.S.
With Shakira, her very characteristic voice was a bigger hook in the very early part of her career – she started in her teens as something more of an alt-Latin type and an unconventional voice helps stand out from the Pasteurized Processed Voice Product that fills the pop charts. For those of us first exposed at the time it was different, plus her lyrics and her delivery thereof were quite good for someone so young at the time. She then has gone on to reinvent her performance refocusing what are her strengths in different times, markets and life stages – if someone catches her “MTV Unplugged” from 2000 they’ll see her just before she undergoes the really big glamming up for the “crossover”, but already hinting at some of the future directions: quite a contrast.
The Rhianna duet was 19 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 and made it to 15, She-Wolf was 20 weeks and peaked at 11. So not that bad, though in 2014 it probably helped a lot to have RiRi there.
Not likely, it’s her only #1 ever in the US Hot 100 Pop chart in spite of her better stuff. Part of the problem is that after that one, a lot of the public filed her under “Hips. Pelvic gyrations. My abs hurt just watching that. What was the question again?”
