Radio Hits One: fun.'s "We Are Young" Brings Indie Pop To The Super Bowl And The Hot 100

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Lindsey Byrnes
Last week Billboard published the Hot 100 chart covering the post-Super Bowl week, and unsurprisingly the most notable leap on the chart was made by a song featured on the telecast. The surprise was that it wasn't "Give Me All Your Luvin'," Madonna's new single, performed during her halftime show performance with the help of some controversial hand gestures from critical darling M.I.A. Instead, "We Are Young" by the New York-based band fun. (with the help of Pazz & Jop-beloved Janelle Monáe) rocketed up 38 spots to No. 3 on the Hot 100 after being featured in a Super Bowl commercial for the Chevy Sonic. (Madge's latest settled for a piddling No. 10 in its second week on the charts.)

Since being released in September, "We Are Young," the lead single from the band's new album Some Nights, has seen a steady rise in profile. Its Hot 100 peak comes primarily from sales—the song topped the Digital Sales chart with nearly 300,000 units sold—but it had already sold more units that that before the Super Bowl ad aired. So far, it's only made airplay waves on rock radio, rising to a new peak of No. 6 on the Alternative Songs chart last week. But it's hard to imagine that the song won't quickly cross over to pop radio in the same way as Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks," which peaked at No. 3 last year.

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Raise Your Hand (Or Your Finger?) If You Didn't Realize M.I.A. Flipped Off The Super Bowl Until You Read 4,035 Breathless Headlines About It

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Well! When I went to bed last night I figured I'd be writing about a couple of aspects of Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show, during which she ran through her catalog with the assistance of Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green, LMFAO, a marching band, a choir, and gladiators. There was the whole notion of bringing voguing, which she plucked out of the gay underground two decades ago, to the most heteronormative major event America's spectacle has to offer; there was the nitpicking over the set list (sure, it's a relatively minor hit in the Madonna catalog, but "Causing A Commotion" would have slotted into the medley nicely); and there was, of course, the cruel exclusion of Shufflebot from LMFAO's cameo. (Seriously, what?) But this morning all the chatter was about the controversy stoked by the controversy-stoking M.I.A., who flipped off the camera as a way to put a period on her verse on the still-underwhelming new Madonna track "Give Me All Your Luvin." Just when you thought it was safe to bring pop music back into the halftime show... a finger happens. The only way this could have inspired more silly outrage is if her finger had been drizzled with truffle oil first.

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Top 10 Super Bowl 2012 Halftime-Show Possibilities

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Let's all do our best to keep this from happening
So another enjoyable terrible Super Bowl Halftime Show is in the books, and as we wash "I Gotta Feeling" out of our eyes and ears for the thousandth time, the question becomes: Who will grace the stage in 2012? How old will their most famous album be? Will your mom like it? Will Twitter? Will you? Let us now gather the most likely suspects and complain about them in advance.

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The Black Eyed Peas Take The Super Bowl: In Defense Of Fergie, In Condemnation of Slash

This probably won't last, so enjoy it.

They were better than the Who. Give the Black Eyed Peas that. Look: Super Bowl Halftime Shows are atrocious as a matter of principle, an overblown tribute to the startling decrepitude of our old rock stars or the appalling tackiness of our new ones, and with apologies to Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, and even Bruce Springsteen's crotch, I'll take young tackiness every time. So the Peas wore porno-Tron outfits, don't so much sing as just yell at you semi-rhythmically, have no good songs other than "I Gotta Feeling," and had to literally airlift Usher in just so they had one guy available who could do the splits. And yet, as a dumbfounded nation watched Fergie bray "Sweet Child O' Mine" while grinding awkwardly against Slash, you felt way more affection for her than for him.

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