iTunes Top 50 35-31

35. You Give Love a Bad Name-Blake Lewis

PAS: So I don't watch American Idol. Even so, you normally get a vague sense of what is going on through pop culture osmosis. For example I heard there was a South Asian with strange hair who was getting ballot box stuffed into the later rounds by off duty Mumbai call center workers. Somehow the Blake Lewis cultural phenomena completely escaped me. I work at a Karaoke bar, you would think I would get a larger percentage of white frat boy fucktards spitting all over my microphones. Apparently this guy got branded the “edgy youth” candidate by doing remarkably bad beatboxing on all of his tunes. I don't think beatboxing is something that has been culturally relevant in at least 20 years. There were kids beatboxing in my middle school talent shows, it was a bit past its prime then, and I am 31 years old. You Give Love a Bad name was released in 1986, the Fat Boys are Back was in 1985, he isn't updating this tune, he is backdating it.

TKG: His beatboxing is really sub-white frat boy doing fake Michael Winslow. But even if you ignore the gimmicky beatboxing this is stinky. He tries to make "You Give Love a Bad Name" into a really downbeat song. It's not a song that really can take a downbeat rendition. He doesn't have the vocal chops to pull off a sad Solomon Burke reading of the song. And the song itself just isn't deep enough to work that way. You can't take those lyrics and try to sell it as a tragic ballad. Even if he was a great song stylist, you just can’t read “You Give Love a Bad Name” as though it were “Strange Fruit”. His other vocal gimmick is he tries to pretend that his vocals are being chopped (but not screwed). Maybe he's trying to make it sound like someone is scratching the record. Not sure it just sounds like an awkward stutter. The backing band is also surprisingly shitty. They are trying to do guitar parts from Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" over "You give Love a Bad Name". I think they also may be lifting the drum parts from "Across 110th Street". The call and response drum and human beatbox section is not only marked by shitty beatboxing but equally muddled drumming. It's one thing for me to feel out of touch with current youth culture. It's another for me to feel this alienated from the type of mainstream schmaltz that comes out of American Idol. But there is nothing in this that feels like it would appeal to even the most rube musical sensibility. I don't get this at all.

34. Shut Up and Drive-Rihanna

TKG: Rihanna is a surprisingly great rock singer, and this is a really filthy rock song. But it’s hurt by using really anonymous mid 90s rock guitar. That kind of shitty guitar work isn't out of place on stuff by Daughtry, Nickelback or Pink. But Rihanna's vocal delivery is a lot better than those folks and really deserves either a dirtier or more angular guitar sound. Michael Jackson used Van Halen when that was relevant sound. Rihanna should have really grabbed Jack White or something. What is Neil Hagerty doing these days? Maybe its not a question of dirtier or more angular just sound with some personality behind it. It just needs to be a less anonymous session sound. I think if you did a mash up with this vocal over a Henry Vestine or Tom Verlaine instrumental it would be spectacular.

PAS: The percussion and bass parts of this song are ripped off from Blue Monday. New Order has a really great guitarist, so sticking the hack they used over the New Order beat really exposes it. I imagine Bernard Sumner would be stoked to work with Jay-Z. I don't want to Fantasy produce this song, as their is nothing shittier then criticism which is all about how the critic would write the novel or direct the film, but this could have also used a Freeway verse full of double entendres. So Bernard Sumner and Freeway really would have made this spectacular.

33. Rockstar-Nickelback

PAS: This song doesn't make any sense, it appears to be a screed against bands who sell out for fortune and fame, like Nickelback is Minor Threat. I wasn't aware there was a "scene" which Nickelback comes from. What could Nickelback do to sell out, that they haven't already done? Do Nickelback watch Stained videos and bitch about commercialization?

TKG: I'm unclear as to whether this is anti-selling out or pro consumerism. Is he saying that "cutting your hair" is selling out or is he embracing the actual pleasure of a clean cut and frosted tips. And is this song actually a rock song? This is more Garth Brooks then Chris Gaines. And what's the deal with bringing in the C&C Music Factory bass singer to do call and response sections?

32. Give It to Me-Timbaland featuring Justin Timberlake & Nelly Furtado

TKG: This is shitty. Really really shitty. Timbaland needs to work with Omarion, or Bubba Sparks, or Petey Pablo or Tweet, or Magoo, someone to recharge him. Furtado really feels like the anti-muse as she's destroying him. I tend to like diss tracks but these are some weak ass disses. Timberlake tells Prince "I missed you on the charts last week. damn that's right you weren't there." He's dissing Prince for not having a song on the charts? That’s really a weak diss. Functional equivalent of the Ivy League school's shitty basketball team yelling "Board Scores" as an answer to "Score Board". Funny but you’re still loosing. C'mon it's Prince. I like Alpha Dog but it's no Graffiti Bridge.

PAS: Yeah this is a song that fails on every level. The production is terrible, the hook stinks, the singing is pathetic, the rapping is corny, and the actual "diss" lyrics are embarrassing, if the South Asian girl on Wylin Out dropped these tracks she wouldn't even get a ding. I mean the idea of Justin Timberlake dissing Prince is obviously ridiculous, but this song is so bad that you start to think that Nelly Furtado isn't credible to talk about Fergie. Does Furtado really have the gravitas of a Fergie? Plus for a song that is basically a producer diss track, the production is bargain basement, if this is what Timbo is delivering he really can't talk about Scott Storch, shit for dissing a goofy dressed Jew producer this wouldn't even fuck with Clinton Sparks, hell if you are dissing a Miami guy with an expensive speed boat Timbo can't even fade DJ Khalid at this point.

31. Because of You-Ne-Yo

PAS: Ne-Yo is a third generation copy of Michael Jackson, as he is clearly a guy who is influenced primarily by Usher doing Michael Jackson, I think there is an argument that Usher may just be copying Tevin Cambell which would make Ne-Yo fourth generation. This is a conceptually amusing song which equates a girls pussy with heroin. It doesn't work with a guy as clean cut as Ne-Yo, if this song was performed by a legit wacked out junky like Akon or R Kelly it might have been really great.

TKG: Is Iggy Pop ghost writing teen pop? This is a ballad that is delivered as though its aimed at a highschool set but really the pussy as heroin metaphor doesn't work as teen pop. "I'm so strung out on you..I can barely move but I like it...I can't get nothing done, only concern is next time I gonna get me some". Really feels like the missing episode of Oz where Omar White tries to become a song writer. Ne-Yo's cousin ends up in jail. Omar pitches him the song. Ne-Yo's cousin agrees to pitch it to Ne-Yo in exchange for head. Ne-Yo cousin gets shanked by Alonzo Torquemada seconds before entering the visiting room to show Ne-Yo the song. That might make sense. But really this type of song being sung by R&B's Frankie Avalon really feels out of place.