{"id":867,"date":"2006-12-01T11:08:24","date_gmt":"2006-12-01T11:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/01\/top-of-the-pops\/"},"modified":"2006-12-01T11:08:24","modified_gmt":"2006-12-01T11:08:24","slug":"top-of-the-pops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/01\/top-of-the-pops\/","title":{"rendered":"Top of the Pops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friday&#8217;s a good day for silly pop music lists, so here&#8217;s a couple adapted from a &#8220;meme&#8221; via <a href=\"http:\/\/jsbowden.livejournal.com\/138881.html\">Jamie Bowden<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Go to http:\/\/popculturemadness.com and find the Greatest USA Hits of the year you turned 18.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I refuse to spend a bunch of time dinking around with typefaces, and I&#8217;m not going to list all 75 of the songs they provide for each year, but if you&#8217;d like some insight into my formative pop culture experiences, here&#8217;s the top 20 from <a href=\"http:\/\/popculturemadness.com\/Music\/Pop-Modern\/1989.html\">the year I turned 18<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. Love Shack &#8211; B-52&#8217;s <\/li>\n<li>2. Funky Cold Medina &#8211; Tone Loc<\/li>\n<li>3. Bust A Move &#8211; Young MC<\/li>\n<li>4. Wind Beneath My Wings &#8211; Bette Midler<\/li>\n<li>5. Like A Prayer &#8211; Madonna<\/li>\n<li>6. Joy and Pain &#8211; Rob Base &#038; D.J. E-Z Rock<\/li>\n<li>7. Put A Little Love In Your Heart &#8211; Annie Lennox and Al Green<\/li>\n<li>8. All I Want Is You &#8211; U2<\/li>\n<li>9. Patience &#8211; Guns N Roses <\/li>\n<li>10. The Best &#8211; Tina Turner<\/li>\n<li>11. Paradise City &#8211; Guns N Roses<\/li>\n<li>12. Keep On Movin&#8217; &#8211; Soul II Soul<\/li>\n<li>13. Wild Thing &#8211; Tone Loc<\/li>\n<li>14. Every Little Step &#8211; Bobby Brown<\/li>\n<li>15. I&#8217;ll Be There For You &#8211; Bon Jovi<\/li>\n<li>16. Another Day In Paradise &#8211; Phil Collins<\/li>\n<li>17. Love In An Elevator &#8211; Aerosmith<\/li>\n<li>18. Kiss &#8211; Art of Noise featuring Tom Jones<\/li>\n<li>19. She Drives Me Crazy &#8211; Fine Young Cannibals<\/li>\n<li>20. Lay Your Hands On Me &#8211; Bon Jovi<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s actually a lot better than I was expecting. The Bette Midler song is a world of pain, and the Phil Collins entry is a fairly low point in his catalogue, but other than those, I either like or am indifferent to these songs. I was never fond of Bobby Brown, but I don&#8217;t even remember that song, so it couldn&#8217;t&#8217;ve been too horrible, and I don&#8217;t remember the two Bon Jersey songs at all. It&#8217;s not a bad set of songs, given the state of pop music in 1989.<\/p>\n<p>Odd fact: I believe that Young MC is responsible for three of the top 20 for the year, as if I remember correctly, he&#8217;s the guy who wrote &#8220;Funky Cold Medina&#8221; and &#8220;Wild Thing.&#8221; I say this not so much because I&#8217;m proud to know such useless triva as because misery loves company.<\/p>\n<p>The other classic version of this is to punch up the hits of the year you were born, so here are the corresponding tracks from <a href=\"http:\/\/popculturemadness.com\/Music\/Pop-Modern\/1971.html\">1971<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. You&#8217;ve Got A Friend &#8211; James Taylor<\/li>\n<li>2. Joy To The World &#8211; Three Dog Night<\/li>\n<li>3. Brown Sugar &#8211; Rolling Stones<\/li>\n<li>4. Stairway To Heaven &#8211; Led Zeppelin<\/li>\n<li>5. Imagine &#8211; John Lennon<\/li>\n<li>6. Behind Blue Eyes &#8211; the Who<\/li>\n<li>7. What&#8217;s Going On &#8211; Marvin Gaye<\/li>\n<li>8. Proud Mary &#8211; Ike and Tina Turner<\/li>\n<li>9. Friends &#8211; Elton John<\/li>\n<li>10. Maggie May &#8211; Rod Stewart<\/li>\n<li>11. Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) &#8211; The Temptations<\/li>\n<li>12. Hot Pants &#8211; James Brown<\/li>\n<li>13. Love Her Madly &#8211; Doors<\/li>\n<li>14. Wild Horses &#8211; Rolling Stones<\/li>\n<li>15. She&#8217;s A Lady &#8211; Tom Jones<\/li>\n<li>16. Black Magic Woman &#8211; Santana<\/li>\n<li>17. River Deep-Mountain High &#8211; Supremes &#038; Four Tops<\/li>\n<li>18. Oye Como Va &#8211; Santana<\/li>\n<li>19. Revival (Love Is Everywhere) &#8211; The Allman Brothers band<\/li>\n<li>20. Colour My World &#8211; Chicago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Amazingly, this is a significantly better set of songs. I mean, sure, &#8220;You&#8217;ve Got a Friend&#8221; is cheesey as all hell, and &#8220;Imagine&#8221; is the weakest song in the John Lennon catalogue, but neither comes close to the level of &#8220;Wind Beneath My Wings.&#8221; In fact, &#8220;You&#8217;ve Got a Friend&#8221; multiplied by &#8220;Imagine&#8221; and raised to the power of &#8220;Colour My World&#8221; doesn&#8217;t come close to the awfulness of &#8220;Wind Beneath My Wings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, both Tom Jones and Tina Turner appear in the Top 20 for both the year I was born and the year I turned 18. I have no idea what this means, but it&#8217;s sort of interesting.<\/p>\n<p>(You might think that I&#8217;m just truncating these lists to hide the fact that there&#8217;s some real horror-show stuff lower down in the 1989 list. You might be right.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday&#8217;s a good day for silly pop music lists, so here&#8217;s a couple adapted from a &#8220;meme&#8221; via Jamie Bowden: Go to http:\/\/popculturemadness.com and find the Greatest USA Hits of the year you turned 18. I refuse to spend a bunch of time dinking around with typefaces, and I&#8217;m not going to list all 75&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/01\/top-of-the-pops\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Top of the Pops<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}