Project X Misses The Summer Like A Child Misses His Blan-ket
As part of Idolator’s continuing effort to geekily analyze every music chart known to man, we present a new edition of Project X, in which Jackin’ Pop editor Michaelangelo Matos breaks down rankings from every genre imaginable. After the click-through, he tackles the Sept. 8 Billboard Top 10 and catches its No. 1 up close and impersonal:
Original plan: file this column on the Sept. 1 Billboard Top 10 from Sept. 1 before Labor Day weekend so I can go to Seattle’s Bumbershoot festival free of deadlines. A week goes by, I do nothing. Friday rolls around, changing the Top 10 only slightly. But just enough.
Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 for September 8, 2007 1. Fergie, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (will.i.am/A&M) 2. Soulja Boy, “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” (ColliPark) 3. Kanye West, “Stronger” (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam) 4. Timbaland ft. Keri Hilson, “The Way I Are” (Mosley/Blackground) 5. Sean Kingston, “Beautiful Girls” (Beluga Heights) 6. Plain White T’s, “Hey There Delilah” (Fearless) 7. T-Pain ft. Akon, “Bartender” (Konvict/Nappy Boy/Jive) 8. Fabolous ft. Ne-Yo, “Make Me Better” (Desert Storm/Def Jam) 9. Rihanna ft. Jay-Z, “Umbrella” (SRP/Def Jam) 10. Plies ft. T-Pain, “Shawty” (Slip-N-Slide/Atlantic)
For the week before, you just replace “Shawty” with Hurricane Chris’s “A Bay Bay,” and order the rest: Sean Kingston, Fergie, Timbaland, White T’s, Kanye, Soulja Boy, T-Pain, Rihanna, Fabolous. Ho-hum, another week on the pop charts. Except that for me, this one coincided with a music festival near my apartment that was co-headlined by the singer of the new No. 1. Which is how I got to see Fergie this weekend.
First, let me register a complaint. One reason I wanted to do the Sept. 1 Top 10 was to gloat that my favorite single of the summer–favorite pop single, I mean, since Brad Paisley’s “Ticks” is country and Mark Ronson ft. Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie” isn’t a single, per se–was also the country’s favorite. That my two favorites were in the Top 10, actually; “Umbrella” still sounds great when I (frequently) come across it.
But “Beautiful Girls” first stupefied then flattened me. I first encountered the song when trawling through then-current Billboard lists and seeing it at No. 9 on the Rhythmic Top 40. At that point iTunes didn’t have the song–part of a strategy to build anticipation for sales once the thing blew up on radio, apparently, though given Sony’s hire of Koch to push physical sales on Kingston’s album, maybe that wasn’t necessarily the idea at all. (That’s aside from Sony’s hiring Koch being a reversal of everything you thought about how the music business works–not that this should surprise anyone at this point, of course.) Googling the artist and song title, I found a passel of homemade videos for the song on YouTube and wondered if it wasn’t a viral hit, a la “Aunt Jackie.”
Well, it was and it wasn’t. Kingston’s label was sponsoring a homemade-clips contest on Votigo.com, but the song’s momentum seemed to come from the tune itself, a feeling confirmed when everyone I showed the link asked, “What the hell is this?” The song’s reign over the season helped in some way to further the illusion for me that summer isn’t over yet. Especially given how glorious Seattle summers tend to be, and how not-especially-glorious this one has been. It may not have been Sean Kingston’s aim to make up for the deficiencies of Pacific Northwestern weather, but pop music has shouldered far worse burdens. Like, for example, the raging goddess-storm that is Fergie.
I was willing to give this one a chance. Even while I’ve never enjoyed a note of her music, I’m willing to hear a decent argument in its favor, not that I’ve come across many. But my skepticism has been overcome before: A megastar connecting with a crowd of lovers, if not believers, can teach you things about fan-artist connections that you aren’t likely to get from a club show or a DJ night. (And vice versa, of course.) Still, Fergie entering with a clumsy cover of the Temptations’ “Get Ready” did not bode well. Nor did this week’s No. 1, placed a third of the way into her set. I was sort of disappointed by this; I’d hoped for a show climax featuring the song’s stupidest line–“I’m gonna miss you like a chahld misses his blain-ket“–sung as stupidly as possible. On this, at least, Fergie delivered.
The show declined from there. “Have you ever gone through a really crazy time in your life?” she asked the audience during one introduction. “They’re all 12,” my friend Jacki replied. “Raise your hands if you want to be on PerezHilton.com!” Fergie shouted, and dozens of tiny arms whipped upward. “Do you guys like reggae?” Fergie asked, before performing a tune about Mary Jane shoes that may well have been the worst reggae song I’ve ever heard. “Do you guys like rock?” Fergie asked, and then she covered “Barracuda” without mentioning that its creators, Heart, were from Seattle. That’s not even a value judgment; I saw enough shows at Minneapolis’ First Avenue where the people onstage felt compelled to mention Purple Rain to value such gifts of omission. Still, for a performer as show-bizzy as Fergie, it seemed odd, like she and her handlers hadn’t sufficiently reviewed their notes. Then again, she ended “Barracuda” by screeching, “Do you know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby! You’re gonna diiiiiieeee!” So maybe I’m expecting a little too much here.
A few years ago I came up with a simple formulation. You know how movies go straight to cable? I decided that some songs should go straight to karaoke, like the Journey catalogue: I never want to hear Journey again, but it’s occasionally enjoyable to hear other people singing their songs in drunken, dimly-lit circumstances. Fergie’s got lots of these songs: “My Humps” of course, “Fergilicious,” which was truncated on stage into an under-two-minute finale thanks to poor timing. (The show was scheduled for 9:45 and began at 10 p.m.) But when the hype guy asked, “Y’all want to watch the dancers battle, Seattle?” while Fergie changed outfits a third time, I had another idea: some shows should skip the sheds and the festivals and go straight to Vegas.
