Please identify the latest pop sensations for an ex-pat

Cafe Society
1

I live in Tokyo, and the only opportunity (opportunity?) I get to hear the latest American pop music is when I go to my local gym, which for some reason insists on playing nothing but. However, it works on a “cable radio” type system, so there are no announcers to come on and say “that was xxxxxx, with her new hit, xxxxxx!”

So I’m going to throw out lines from a few of these songs, and if anyone can identify the title and the singer, I will be eternally grateful.

  1. Hip-Hop, R&B, female voice singing about her “baby.”

  1. Hip-hop, R&B, female voices repeating the “hip to the hop to the hip to the hippity hop hop…etc.” line from the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” Endlessly annoying.

  2. Hip-hop, R&B, female vocal with male rap, woman sings:

  1. Rap, sounds like Eminem on the rap, I’m guessing from the 8-mile soundtrack, but just to verify:
  1. Sh*tty girl pop: i’m pretty sure the same girl sings these two:
  1. Probably same artist:
  1. Either the above one, or Avril Lavigne’s newest one, or another offender:
  1. Country, male
  1. Country, female, fabulous voice

  1. Country, female, halfway decent cover of “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mack

  2. Grating, terrible, no-talent, makes me want to kill someone, preferably the singer, alt-rock band. Sounds like some odd combo of Nirvana and Jimmy’s Chicken Shack.

There’s so many more, but I can’t think of how they go at the moment. Which sucks, because there’s one hip hop song in the vein of Soul II Soul or Snap that’s pretty cool…really catchy. And this weird alt song that’s a guy with a really really looow voice singing very sadly, but somehow always strikes me as somehow a cut above the usual “alternative” schlock. Maybe I’ll ask some more next week…

2

  1. Vanessa Carlton-- A Thousand Miles

  2. The Dixie Chicks

3

  1. keith urban (he insists upon a lack of capitalization), “Somebody Like You.”

  2. The Dixie Chicks, “Long Time Gone.” I assume, anyway. “Been a long time gone, no I ain’t hoed a row since I don’t know when, long time gone and it ain’t comin’ back again…” (fiddle)

  3. Also the Dixie Chicks.

  4. I believe this is the latest from Puddle of Mudd.

4
  1. One of the girls from “Destiny’s Child,” whose name escapes me (Not Beyonce Knowles). She performed that song as a duet on Saturday Night Live recently with rapper Nelly.
5
  1. “Dilemna,” Nelly featuring Kelly Rowland.
6

Actually, marinwood, that’s #3. #4 is Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself.”

#11 is “She Hates Me” by Puddle of Mudd.

7

Tokyo, huh? How are Puffy and Namie Amuro playing on the radio these days?

8

#3 I know is Nelly (the guy, not the woman). He also did the “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes” song that was playing every hour last month.

DR, Puffy’s been releasing some new albums, but no hits recently. Amuro just divorced SAM (all caps), and hasn’t been doing too much. The big female stars now are Ayumi Hamazaki and Hikaru Utada (an American-born Nisei who just got married to a 34-year-old during her freshman year at Columbia).