Backlash after Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" removed from Billboard Hot Country chart

did you hear the song/watch the video? i'm sry my post was a bit deranged but it was very much a response to the latest offering from alleged marketing genius lil nas x

lol ok

I thought the take on Lil Nas X was that here was finally a superstar who didn’t debut two decades ago

Sir this is a Wendy’s

you misspelled "booming post"

Pop music is still better now than it was in the 00s, maybe I just hated myself more then

I enjoy when dyl goes off, but I also feel like pop music – or at least the sliver of it that I love & choose to engage with – is better than at any other point in my lifetime. Granted, I don’t listen to Top 40 radio or anything; I’m sure that’s pretty tedious… but then it always kind of has been, no?

Morrisp, I don't think Top 40 radio was tedious in the years 1977 through 1986.

I am certain that it's a total coincidence that my own personal tween/teen years happened to be the precise era in which radio was good. Surely no one else ever has had this phenomenon occur. Sometimes I gaze wistfully into the middle distance, feeling mild pity for those poor unfortunate souls whose youths did not coincide with good music.

It's funny - when I think back to the mid-'80s (grade school), the time I probably listened to Top 40 radio the most, these are the only songs that specifically survive in my memory (in terms of, "I can recall the radio playing them at a particular time/place"):

Eddie Murphy - Party all the Time
John Waite - Missing You
Falco - Rock Me Amadeus
Sly Fox - Let's Go All The Way

(Apparently these are all from 1985... may be something there about neurons firing at a specific childhood age)

Anyway, I know I heard, uh, lots of other stuff as well... but imagine that adult culture mavens of the day weren't enthusiastic about this particular slice of pop music!

Oh, “La Isla Bonita” is another (that one’s ’86)

"Missing You" did get a lot of positive attention from older people, I remember. Like I recall a high school teacher of mine saying, "now that's a good song." Andy Warhol even mentions it approvingly in his Diaries.

The others you listed, not so much

my middle school years were 97-99, and what I loved about pop radio was how much of a grab bag it was - you had a swing revival, huge Latin pop stars, boy bands, alt rock, country, "Mambo No. 5", whatever the hell Chumbawamba and the Barenaked Ladies were, stuff that heavily sampled disco like "Steal My Sunshine", and it all had this crossover appeal too. I mean sure some of it sucked but there sure as hell was a lot more variety than you've got now. which is why I loved Old Town Road, like its not something I'd want to own the record of but I appreciate such a weird crossover tune where nobody can quite explain what makes it so catchy. it reminds me of being a teenager.

not crazy about any of the tunes he's done since, or more accurately I just don't remember any of them. I appreciate the way he unapologetically keeps poking at conservatives - hell even I think his desecration of religious imagery goes a bit far, but I still respect him for doing it

I'm sorry wait do we not like "Rock Me Amadeus" now????

always got the impression that people mocked "Rock Me Amadeus" a lot at the time but the song was so hooky that it ultimately won out in the end. sort of an "Ice Ice Baby" situation.

kind of disappointed the American copies of Falco 3 didn't have the original radio mix on it, but rather some 9 minute remix, which at least hilarious has a section listing off all of Wolfgang's major accomplishments and the years they occurred, ending with "1985: Austrian rock star Falco records ROCK ME AMADEUS!!"

Yep! I remember that section playing specifically, on the car radio… Lol

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres86.php

Had no idea late-model Stevie Winwood was so beloved by the Pazz & Jop crowd. Anyway, "Higher Love" way too high, "Walk Like an Egyptian" way too low.

In about 1980-1986 I loved absolutely everything emanating from my bedside clock radio. It was an intoxicating mix. Casey Kasem just smoothly rolled it all out for us.

You would hear the Clash (at least, "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go") and then Cyndi Lapuer and then Menudo or Madonna and then the Boss and then Cameo and then "Valley Girl" and then "My Darling Nikki" and then you get Pat Benatar or "The Glamorous Life" or "Life in a Northern Town" or "One of Our Submarines" or "Everyday I Write the Book" or whatever.

All of it was magical.

Well yeah but you were also young. (I mean, that was my phase of top 40 radio listening/chart countdowns as well, almost to the year -- 81 to 86 in my case, ten to fifteen years old. Do I value it? Very much so and a lot of it due to the (relative, conditional, hardly universal) kaleidoscopic nature. But also because I was that age! It overdetermines my cultural memory as a result, and that often frustrates me.)

Several hours ago I had an exchange with a certain rock critic/author on my FB wall on this very point: while he loved Tara Kemp's "Hold You Tight," I hesitated: it came out the summer before my senior year when at least half the AT40 boasted a hook, lyric, vocal, and aural effect worth savoring. Strip nostalgia away and it's sound, solid track.

But we need nostalgia too.

Frogbs, the local radio stations sometimes got to do promo cuts that were like: "1985: Q107 was the first to play... ROCK ME AMADEUS."

The Eddie Money song "I Wanna Go Back," from 1986, also had a section that was editable. Instead of "I... was listenin' to the radio," it could instead say "I... was listenin' to Q107."

Pretty sure that the Huey Lewis song "The Heart of Rock and Roll" had radio edits allowing local stations to put their cities in.

SAINT LOUIS! DETROIT! SCRANTON PA! FAYETTEVILLE!

But we need nostalgia too.

I absolutely don't mind it but I don't want to live there. I kinda think of it this way: there's a clutch of artistic work encountered from my youth that I still have an active interest in one way or another, like 'pop music' widely defined as such -- Peanuts, Star Wars and its derivations, and probably unsurprisingly Tolkien given my podcast. While Tolkien is the one whose work I end up engaging with the most regularly now precisely due to said podcast -- it's been almost five years of low key but still steady rigor and reflection -- the others I mention also benefit from me looking back that way, as I tend to do, recognizing where I was at, considering the lingering impact, but not pretending to be a naif in first full flush. What I *can* do in turn is recognize how so many things catching my interest and attention now, whether wholly new or encountered belatedly for the first time, result as a part of a continuum from those early fascinations. So you could say it's less nostalgia for the cultural product as nostalgia for the cultural process, perhaps.

I mostly agree: I've been in too many battles over every revision to the book on phony Beatlemania. I didn't want to deny my humanity, though. It sometimes needs affirming.

Ned Ragget, I sympathize. You are a professional and (I gather) you feel a moral duty to analyze art on its own merits. As opposed to how most civilians get to experience art: "this is what reached me in my formative years, when I was most porous to art."

Me? I am a civilian and I am also just too old and tired to care. "Yep, I admit that I love the music that I heard when I was in middle school."

Guilty as charged. Judge me negatively if you wish; I don't give a shit. And no, I am not gonna go research lo-fi trap-dance-crunk-core (or whatever) just because it is what the kids are into these days.

I don't think you can analyze art "on its own terms." Interpretation depends on context and attitude and setting, thus re-engaging a beloved album will by necessity deal with nostalgia.

Alfred, one of the things I admire about your writing is how much of your own listening history and context you bring.

you feel a moral duty to analyze art on its own merits

Hmm, perhaps. But, as Alfred notes, context does have a place, whether within my own memory or considering wider scopes. None of which is to say that your own approach -- which is evidently the one more broadly shared by people in general -- is strange or invalid, it clearly is not. As for me, I don't really follow what 'the kids' are into on a defined and specific basis, it's more like "Oh this is out there and new and I like it? Great!"

great post dyl

My sweet spot for top 40 is 1982-1984 (ages 14 to 16, which fits the cliche) but I can also recognize that 1962-1968 was an incredible stretch for top 40 even having no memory of that time and even though I discovered most of those hits when I was over 18 (didn't listen to oldies radio till around 1987). That's really easy to hear. Other periods sound great to me too, such as the WWII-era '40s, while more recent periods don't do it for me at all - like the 2010s. I think maybe an unappreciated factor here is how we respond to the prevailing rhythms of a particular era. Rythms affect us in subconscious ways to a major extent, and besides that we may just have natural preferences for certain types of grooves.

One thing I want to make sure the thread understands is that “Let’s Go All The Way” is an absolutely badass song

WHEEEE

Stupid brag but I saw Sly Fox do that song live at Disney World in 1986

Had never heard that song before today, it is good

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 24, 2013 12:28 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

AHHHHHHHHH

― Call me at **BITCOIN (DJP), Wednesday, April 24, 2013 12:42 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

LET'S GO ALL THE WAY!

― Camp Macaroni Style (snoball), Wednesday, April 24, 2013 1:30 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

chuff chuff zinny ninny, chuff chuff zinny ninny

― ledge, Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:53 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― how's life, Wednesday, April 24, 2013 1:30 PM (ten years ago)

It's difficult to engage with popular culture in a way that doesn't unconsciously elevate certain contingent contextual parameters into some sort of universal and permanent set of rules of engagement. More than "nostalgia" for particular cultural artefacts, it's this which makes talking about the past versus today such a fraught exercise.

Specifically in this case, I don't understand why we would even talk about "top 40 radio" in a 2024 context - how many people engage with it today? It's not how most people are exposed to or consume new music. It's difficult for me to even think about whether "the kids" today have a better or worse deal because the rules of engagement have transformed so radically.

Maybe there was some benefit to me, as a teenager, in being forced to engage with the radio and with music video shows, and then more attentively with specific music on an album by album basis premised on how much pocket money I could save, but there were a lot of false starts along the way, e.g. being inundated with the video clip for K's Choice "Not An Addict" until I convinced myself that I liked it and bought the album, which I then listened to until I convinced myself that I liked that, only to realise that in truth nothing about it did anything for me. These are the kinds of experiences that my mid-90s nostalgia skips over, just as I struggle now to remember the stresses and boredoms and minor irritations of whatever was going on 10 years. I'm sure kids today have equivalent underwhelming experiences in engaging with popular culture, but trying to reach some overarching view as to whether the sum total of experiences is worse now seems to me like a thankless task.

Xxp DJP speaks wisdom. That song rocks nonstop

LOOKS LIKE AN APPLE CORE

Looking at the Billboard Hot 100 for 1995 vs 2022, the main thing that sticks out is the ‘95 lineup seeming more adult-oriented. We were getting Montell Jordan at school dances but my parents would also put him on at parties. I don’t know if parents of junior high kids today are living the Jack Harlow/Morgan Wallen life.

Taylor Swift, who still dominates the charts, is as much or more parent music than teen music

Many xps but: Also I didn't have cable, and therefore didn't have MTV, and therefore didn't see music videos until most of their heyday had passed.

There was a network show called "Friday Night Videos," but if you weren't poised in front if the TV when it aired, you would not be able to see moonwalking Michael Jackson or Cyndi's checkerboard hairdo or Van Halen's thing with words about right now or REM's thing with the wings or the thing about how everybody hurts.

You just simply didn't. Until later, when you somehow managed to see them and you figured out what people had been talking about for the previous several years.

I have lost track of why we are discussing this in a Lil Nas X thread

Point of order, “Not An Addict” is great (but not the type of song that would ever entice me into buying a band’s album)

"Rock Me Amadeus" was catchy as hell, but it was no "Der Komissar."

“Der Kommisar“ > “Vienna Calling” > “Rock Me Amadeus”

I would put “Jeanny” in there but I don’t remember how it goes

Many xps but: Also I didn't have cable, and therefore didn't have MTV, and therefore didn't see music videos until most of their heyday had passed.

There was a network show called "Friday Night Videos," but if you weren't poised in front if the TV when it aired, you would not be able to see moonwalking Michael Jackson or Cyndi's checkerboard hairdo or Van Halen's thing with words about right now or REM's thing with the wings or the thing about how everybody hurts.

You just simply didn't. Until later, when you somehow managed to see them and you figured out what people had been talking about for the previous several years.

I have lost track of why we are discussing this in a Lil Nas X thread

― CthulhuLululemon (Ye Mad Puffin),

Same. I watched the Friday Night Videos re-runs on Saturday mornings; I've vivid memories of watching the videos for "The Reflex," "We Belong," "I Feel For You," many others. We got a VCR that same year. When pop music obsessed me I recorded FNV in 1989-1990. Until I did that, though, I relied on those monitors that big department stores like Burdines/Macy's installed in the kids departments. That's where I learned about Culture Club, Cyndi Lauper, Pet Shop Boys, Wham!, Madonna, Bruce, etc.

We had a small PBS station, broadcasting out of Broomfield, Colorado, whose most popular show by some distance was "Teletunes." They played the stuff that MTV didn't, and without any of the extraneous material. Here's an interesting 2020 piece from the local free paper:

https://www.westword.com/music/sounds-on-29th-season-looks-at-music-videos-and-revisits-teletunes-archive-11826452

One of my favorite bits was their signoff every night, which was "Goodbye to You" by Scandal.

“Der Kommisar“ > “Vienna Calling” > “Rock Me Amadeus”

correct ranking of Mitteleuropean 80s rock songs that are not as good as "99 Red Balloons"

Until I did that, though, I relied on those monitors that big department stores like Burdines/Macy's installed in the kids departments. That's where I learned about Culture Club, Cyndi Lauper, Pet Shop Boys, Wham!, Madonna, Bruce, etc.

Looking at the Billboard Hot 100 for 1995 vs 2022, the main thing that sticks out is the ‘95 lineup seeming more adult-oriented. We were getting Montell Jordan at school dances but my parents would also put him on at parties. I don’t know if parents of junior high kids today are living the Jack Harlow/Morgan Wallen life.

I noticed this a lot with 80's and 90's totp reruns, not just stuff that adults could enjoy but also tons of older artists still hitting the top4 on the regular, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Phil Collins ofc. I do see a lot of headlines about veteran artist x topping the album charts these days but I think they're safely siloed off from the hot100.

Anyway, re: nostlagia, I've been playing a lot of those Sporcle music clip quizzes Limmy plays on his streams and I'll tell you I'm a fucking beasy when it comes to identifying two second excerpts of hit songs from the 50's to about 2005 and utterly useless after that. This would break the heart of 18 year old me who envisioned my future as a fearless chronicler of pop history, keeping my ears to the ground and my mind in the trenches for as long as I breathed.

but think how embarrassing it would be to know the difference between some awful dubstep pop monstrosity and the Chainsmokers, or the difference between any of the “stomp clap hey” bands of the early teens

Lol re:older acts hitting the top 100

Taylor Swift and Drake debuted around 18 years ago. It’s the equivalent of Grace Slick on the charts in 1986.