Itunes Top 50 11/18/06 TOP TEN

10. Gwen Stefani- Wind It Up

TKG: So I read the title of this song and was expecting Stefani to be doing a fake dancehall tune. Maybe a Scott Storch does 90s dancehall beat (think Lighter's Up) with some toaster doing guest rap (maybe Elephant Man, Beanie man, whoever). What I got was so much worse. I complained earlier about Diddy not creating an expensive enough sound. When your an international pop superstar, there's an expectation that you're going to try to do River Deep Mountain High everytime you go out the door. And well "Wind it Up" does feel expensive. I'm assuming this is Pharrell trying to do a fake 90s euro club tune with Sound of Music samples, and clydesdale/beerstein beats. It does feel expensive. If she had spent the same money on a fake dancehall tune I imagine she could have afforded to track down all of Ward 21 to do guest raps, the one member of Musical Youth who didn't die from AIDS to sing the hook, and still have money left over to help treat the polio of at least two members of Israel Vibrations. But it is not enough to just spend money. As this sucked. Was their really a demand for fake 90s Euro Club? Is that a genre that still plays in clubs anywhere? But even if there was this lacked the soul of Aqua, the heart of Rednex, or the socio-political smarts of Ace of Base.

PAS: I wouldn't think anything could make me nostalgic for Fergie, but you listen to this song and you start reevaluating London Bridge. "This is for the club and the cars that go boom", this appears to be a song without any real bass. Is it for the cars that normally go boom, but whose woofers could use a rest? For the club? Clubs with retro night don't usually retreat to that part of the 90's.

9. Hinder- Lips of an Angel

PAS: This is a list with a fair number of power ballads, usually they are power ballads done by bands with other aspirations. Stone Sour wants to be Magnolia Electric Company, Snow Patrol wants to be Stiff Little Fingers. Hinder wants to be Warrant, they have achieved their goal, as this is a great Warrant song.

TKG: When I first hear this on the radio I thought it was being done by a ironic band. Kind of like if Darkness was inspired by Bon Jovi and not Zeppelin. But I don't think there is anything ironic here. Just letter perfect tunesmithing from a sadly forgotten style of music from a previous era. This could easily fit on Alfred Molina's "Awesome Mix Tape". Acoustic strumming falls at the right points. The rocking out parts fall at the right moments. The failed attempts at falsetto (to say goodbyeee) rule. Best rock ballad on the top 40.

8. Snow Patrol- Chasing Cars

PAS: These guys are apparently Irish, and are the only UK rock group to break the Billboard Top 5 in 13 years. So we have to ask ourself are The Pogues good enough to outweigh the horribleness of these guys and U2, or would popular music be better if the Potato Famine really finished the job.

TKG: I have never seen an episode of the OC or Laguna Beach but I swear this is the song they played when Donna Martin lost her virginity to Luke Perry.

7. The Fray- How to Save a Life

PAS: This song is virtually indistinguishable from the Fray song which is at #48. I honestly wouldn't not be able to tell them apart if I heard a verse without the hook. What makes two identical songs have this big a variation on a list like this. I mean this has to be more then two standard deviations apart, there is statistical significance. You have all these really successful Sport Economics books, some University of Chicago Econ professor should come up with a punchily written book full of formulas for analyzing shitty pop music. Feels like a bestseller waiting to be written.

TKG: So the Snow Patrol song felt like a song deliberately written to be played over the montage at the end of a TV season. I'm not sure if that was the Fray's actual intent but I think I actually watched the TV show with this playing over the ending montage. Grey's Antomy? Scrubs?House? I don't really watch any of those...but I swear this was a season ending montage song on a show I actually caught. Thats my guess as to why this is so much higher than the other Fray tune: "the Michael Andrews' Mad World music as auxiliary product effect" .

6. Jay-Z- Show Me What You Got

TKG: Did Jay-Z really compare himself to post retirement comeback Michael Jordan? I live in DC, I watch Wizards games. It seems like an accurate statement but, I don't think that was Jay-Z's intention. This is ridiculously catchy in the same way that the "Fitness made Simple " jingle is ridiculously catchy. But there really is nothing there. No urgency. I remember when Iggy Pop briefly got really into rap music and every interview with him was all about how much he loved rap because he really liked the skits, the clips from kung fu movies, adverts for next record and the posse cuts and the sense of guys who finally got a chance to record deciding that they were just going to put everything possible on their albums. Pop liked the palpable sense that the artist wanted to get the music out. He may have also been collecting old S1W memorabilia. No sense that Jay-Z really wants to get this out. Jay-Z is an infinitely better rapper than Unk. Better wordsmith, better flow, better use of rhyme, better ability to tell a story, better ability to create an image. But sometimes content matters. "Shots of patron, now she's in the zone, not talking about the 2-3, Miami in the Zone like the 2,3, Jordan or James it makes no difference" may be infinitely more clever than "on once again/Patron once again, threw my head back and froze like the wind"... But honestly which is more interesting? Which has more immediacy?

PAS: Jay-Z is a label president, really current hip-hop music is based around constant mixtape releases, really over produced album tracks like this are really dated sounding. Jay-Z verse on the Hustling remix was great, but he was kind of eaten alive by Jim Jones of all people, when he did his mixtape beef track. Lil' Wayne talks about how he is "The greatest rapper alive, since the greatest rapper retired." Well he is out of retirement now, and Lil Wayne is still the greatest rapper alive. Wayne did a mixtape cover of this tune and it just kills Jay-Z's original.

5. The All American Rejects- It Ends Tonight

PAS: These guys are ostensibly a punk band right? It is amusing to me that current "punk" is virtually indistinguishable from the music which punk was formed as a response to. This is a Journey album track.

TKG: I have never seen an episode of One Tree Hill or The Hills but I swear this is the song they played when Pacey lost her virginity to Dawson.

4. Justin Timberlake- My Love

TKG: This is pretty fucking great as everyone brings their A Game to the table. The early cowbell Brazilian style beats into the almost human beatboxy beats into the Brazilian cuica squeakyness, meets Whisper song style tissue and comb squeaky beat. Timberlake isn't Aliyah. Aliyah kind of kept it together, kept songs grounded up against whatever Timba threw out. Timberlake is willing to go out wherever Timba wants to go.

PAS: Often the only thing that saves modern popular R+B songs is your Southern Rap cameo, Lil Wayne is the only reason to listen to Soldier, Bun B is the only reason to listen to Check on It, Jeezy is the only reason to listen to Say I. However T.I. seems really superfluous to this song, there are a thousand individual great things to remember, he really isn't one of them. In a way that may be the songs crowning achievement.

3.Fergie-Fergalicious

PAS: I am as big a JJ Fad fan as the next guy, but Will I. Am is not Arabian Prince and Fergie sure as shit aint Sassy C.

TKG: I liked when Diddy improved on Sting and Zeppelin, but this pisses me off.

2.Beyonce-Irreplaceable

TKG: Beyonce really can't pull off this type of Mary J Blige material, can't pull it off at all. I mean I bought 16 year old Usher singing about breakups and confessionals more than I buy Beyonce here. Beyonce is the opposite of Janet Jackson as Jackson's emancipation from her family and their tight "Control" really is what put her on the map. Here you get the sense that Beyonce made a big mistake trying to do something without dad.

PAS: As a rule Beyonce has really good dance tunes, this starts with "To the left, to the left" but outside of being able to move to the left twice, there isn't really anyway to dance to this song. You really need to have a "To the right, to the right" as well or else everyone is just going to smash into the side of the club.

1. Akon- I Wanna Love You

TKG: Wow that was spectacular. I mean I wasn't expecting the number one tune to be this good. Akon was on the amazing Akon, Pimp C, MJG, Paul Wall, R. Kelly and Too Short "I'm in love with a Stripper Remix". Akon just said fuck this why not just do a better original. and holy shit is this a great tune. I can't wait to hear a remix with Paul Wall, MJG, Pimp C, R Kelly and Too Short. Lately Snoop has been doing a lot of really unthreatening stuff and so hearing him do this type of Luke stuff is neat. Not sure wether I want a "ripe pussy", myself. Akon is also just amazing here "You know my pedigree, ex-dealear used to run 'phetamines". I had just begin to adjust to post-Mac Dre Oakland rappers talking about E...I'm not sure if I'm ready for amphetamine dealing rap. Some ex- B2K guy is going to start singing about dealing shrooms and white people will have no drugs to call our own.

PAS: Akon is a guy who sounds like absolutely no one else, I mean it is 2006 pretty much everyone else in music is a derivative of something else, who sings like Akon? He is the only truly original artist in current music. The wind chime bells were spectacular.