53. Phil Collins, "Another Day in Paradise" [1991]
52. The 5th Dimension, "Up, Up and Away" [1968]
51. Olivia Newton-John, "I Honestly Love You" [1975]
50. Celine Dion, "My Heart Will Go On" [1999]
49. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, "A Taste of Honey" [1966]
48. Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry, Be Happy" [1989]
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When you go see a movie at a Saturday half-price matinee, should it count toward that weekend's box office? You paid less than the guy who saw the movie Friday night. Does that mean your viewing shouldn't count?
What about if you see an old movie at a revival house: Should that count toward the box office? I don't just mean a big, nationwide rerelease like this year's The Lion King in 3D. If enough people pay to see a restored print of Blade Runner, should it make the lower rungs of the box-office chart? What if that showing of Blade Runner was only playing at one theater, like the Ziegfeld in New York or Graumann's Chinese in Hollywood? Should that count?
These questions probably seem like no-brainers. Sure, count it all, you're saying. What's the big deal? Maybe the matinee-priced movie should count half as much as the full-price, but otherwise no one would object to all movies at all theaters competing for the weekend title. In fact, that's exactly how box-office tallying works. If it screens somewhere open to the public, it's counted and charted.
Switch the medium from movies to music, however, and answering these questions becomes a matter of hot debate.
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It's a common dilemma of the booty club: You're buzzing off the overpriced drinks, two-stepping with the opposite sex. The lighting is right and you're getting closer and closer to each other... and then DJ Lack-of-Direction throws on some bullshit. You know, one of those songs that wack DJs use as crutches to hold up their mediocre-at-best sets. 
This should probably not be how you do it.
The song being spun might not have been bad on first, second, or even 20th listen. But when you've heard it at every party you went to that week and it's not even new, being subjected to it again can throw a monkey wrench in your flow. And then, to further kill the mood, cornballs start singing along in unison. "Here we go yo! Here we go yo! So what, so what, so what's the scenario?!" Cool out, dude—we know you know the whole song by heart (though you mumble your way through most of Dinco D's verse). We know every word, too, and have since it came out in 1991.
Buzzkills like this aren't the patrons' fault, though. I blame the DJ and his/her lack of crate digging, lethargic mixing, and desire to get cheap thrills out of the crowd. (The DJ's probably the least intoxicated individual in the building, so it's not like they can blame their predictable choices on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol like the rest of us partygoers.) Below, and just in time for the long weekend, a list of 10 songs that any DJ in the know should already have banned from their sets, and any DJ with sense should probably get to swapping out soon.
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Chart fandom makes strange bedfellows. Six months ago, if you'd asked me what act I'd root for in a head-to-head chart battle between pop princess Katy Perry and electrodance goofballs LMFAO, I'd probably have picked Perry, whose song catalog includes at least one or two gems. Her current hit, "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)," isn't one of her best—it's nowhere near as well-crafted as "Teenage Dream" or "Hot N Cold"—but it's a charming, goodtime trifle, and marginally less stupid than LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem."
Now? I'm rooting for the goofballs over the princess all the way.
LMFAO's single (which, to be honest, has kinda grown on me) is the last firewall standing between Perry and her fifth Hot 100 No. 1 from Teenage Dream. Were "Friday" to hit that mark, Teenage Dream would tie a record that has so far only been reached by one album: Michael Jackson's Bad. Perry and her people are trying to hit that mark by cheating... or, to be fair, by taking advantage of a legal but shady tactic.
More >>MTV turns 30 today. To celebrate, we're running a bunch of pieces on the channel, its legacy, and its future.
Earlier today, we counted down the best music videos directed by people who took home (or, more likely, left at the podium) the Razzies' "Golden Raspberry" award for worst director. Now we're counting down the best music videos by those directors' raised-brow, Oscar-winning counterparts. Let's get right to it.
What was the first rock and roll song? Ask music historians and you'll get a range of '40s and early '50 candidates, from "Good Rockin' Tonight" to "Rocket 88."
Ah, but when did the Rock Era begin? That's easier. Everybody knows that Bill Haley and His Comets' rendition of "Rock Around the Clock" was America's first-ever No. 1 rock and roll song, topping the Billboard charts in the summer of 1955 and launching the Rock Era as we know it. Occasionally, musical epochs can be demarcated easily, with a bright temporal line.
So it goes with the era of the music video. The promotional-music-clip format is more than a half-century old, dating to the 1940s and raised to a high-pop-art form by such pre-'80s acts as the Beatles and Queen, among others.
But the music video era, better known as the MTV Era, began unequivocally 30 years ago this weekend—on August 1, 1981, the day Music Television went live on cable TV. The No. 1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 that week was "Jessie's Girl," by a guy so telegenic he was crossing over from a soap opera: General Hospital's Rick Springfield. Appropriately, "Jessie's Girl" came packaged with a fairly slick (for its day) music video.
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If, like me, you've been putting together your annual summer playlist to pump at block parties and barbecues, you may have found yourself with a historically odd problem: a relative dearth of hits this year by dudes. After you've rounded up buzzy tracks by the Queens of Pop—from Adele to Nicki Minaj to Robyn—you might find yourself hunting for worthy male vocals, just for diversity.
On the charts, the guys have reasserted control—at least for this week. Cuban-American club-rapper Pitbull assumes the throne on Billboard's Hot 100 with "Give Me Everything," his first chart-topper. The Miamian born Armando Christian Pérez is the first lead male to top the authoritative song chart in, no joke, 20 weeks.
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In last week's breakdown of Lil Wayne's chart ubiquity, I noted that while Lady Gaga's Born This Way and its singles seemed to be everywhere, she hasn't staked out much additional Billboard territory with collaborations. Her only charting collab of late is "3-Way (The Golden Rule)," a little orgy-themed ditty with The Lonely Island and Justin TImberlake that debuted on Saturday Night Live's season finale last month. The episode aired after the release of the Lonely Island's latest album, so the song was thrown out as an iTunes single and spent a week at No. 3 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart (which charts songs that haven't yet made the big singles chart, but are just scraping its bottom). "3-Way," like previous Lonely Island/Timberlake viral hits "Dick In A Box" and "Motherlover," is a catchy R&B tune full of dirty jokes. But it's also an opportunity for two of the world's biggest pop stars to make a song together while shrugging off the kind of expectations that would ordinarily accompany such a high-profile duet.
Pop music may be more collaborative than ever, but that's almost entirely due to hip-hop. The nature of its loop-driven production style and the traditions of posse cuts and guest verses have made it all too easy to cut and paste 16 bars of one rapper into another MC's song, or use a rapper's verse as a bridge in a pop song, or let a pop singer belt out the hook for the rapper's radio-friendly single. As hip hop's influence has seeped into almost every corner of the pop charts, it's become increasingly rare to find two pop stars simply singing a song together.
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The upcoming Michael Jackson album, Michael, will be available on December 14, just in time for the holidays. The album's lead single, "Breaking News," is out now and begins with static-infused soundbites about Jackson's controversial life and death. "Everybody wanting a piece of Michael Jackson...," it begins. Maybe the entire project is some sort of meta-commentary, because now some are claiming that the song is a sham and features vocals that were not performed by Jackson himself. Sony claims the song is legit, while Michael's nephew, sister and much of the internet think otherwise. 
Though Michael Jackson's 52nd birthday would've fallen on this past Sunday, his music was pretty much the official soundtrack for the whole weekend in Prospect Park, blasting out of vendor trucks and ballfields, picnics and stereo-mounted bikes--pretty much everything with a speaker on it. Spike Lee handled the official ceremony; his second annual Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson Birthday Celebration, headlined by Brooklyn-born Jackson obsessive DJ Spinna ("I honestly feel like while I'm playing, he's living through me and talking to me," he told us last week), took over the park for most of yesterday. Snoop Dogg, already in town for Rock the Bells, decided to drop by, donning a sparkly glove and rapping a few bars from "Gin and Juice." Then he used "Drop It Like It's Hot" to wish MJ a happy birthday:
Photo via the Rap-Up
