Like all discerning music connoisseurs (re: jaded douchebags), one of my favorite annual traditions is poking through every blog and magazine’s Top 50 Albums and Top Billion Songs lists, arguing about them, and discussing how that list reflects the publication’s personality.
My favorite specific phenomenon on these lists, though, and it occurs every year, is seeing how the indie blogs decide to deal with the annual super-popular Top 40 song that they know they must include in their Best Tracks Lists, justifying it with an obligatory “say what you want, but this is just a straight-up, well-crafted pop song…” writeup.
In honor of Kelly Clarkson’s hipster-approved mainstream 2005 hit, I propose that us bloggers henceforth refer to this annual event as the “Since U Been Gone Phenomenon“, and the noteworthy song — Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” for example — will be referred to as the “2007 Sincey“.
Here’s a list of the past five Sinceys, along with their corresponding position on Pitchfork’s “Songs of the Year” List for that year, along with an exerpt from Pitchfork’s customary over-intellectualized justification of the song’s merit:
2003 - “Crazy In Love” by Beyonce feat. Jay-Z; #2 on the Pitchfork List
It’s an old condescending approach to describe pop music as a genre of transient pleasures, but on the flipside, it’s worth noting when a hit song in heavy, heavy rotation takes months and months to grow stale.
2004 - “Toxic” by Britney Spears; #3 on the Pitchfork List
…the throttled strings of “Toxic” finally scuttled all that kneejerk sociology, being just too damn irresistible a pop song for it to matter what media super-entity it was attributed to.
2005 - “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson; #4 on the Pitchfork List
It’s undeniable that, for certain people, a lot of the fun in first hearing “Since U Been Gone” was figuring out the formula. It went something like Pink (vocals) + Interpol (verses) + the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” (right down to that crunching guitar noise on the bridge) + Max Martin (Swede-pop overdrive chorus)
2006 - “My Love” by Justin Timberlake; #1 on the Pitchfork list (bonus indie points for not going with “Sexyback”)
Some people still get gassed that we like Justin Timberlake, as if there were some honor in denying good songs. But Timberlake is the new King of Pop…
2007 - “Umbrella” by Rihanna; #5 on the Pitchfork List
The-Dream’s early demo of “Umbrella†was supposedly passed on by both Mary J. Blige and Britney Spears, but it’s hard to imagine how either could have improved on this world-conquering rendition.
Basically, the Sincey is what allows us bloggers to tell everyone, “Look, I’m not just some narrow-minded indiephile, I am open to all music,” but the obligatory nature of the annual practice and the nerdiness by which we go about explaining our mainstream affection merely reaffirms our individual hipster personas. It reminds me of the time one super hipster co-worker of mine played a mix on her ipod, and the songs were, in order, a really obscure Stereolab song, a really obscure Magnetic Fields song, and then “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes, complete with an instant “I don’t care what anyone says, I love this song” disclaimer.
Part of being a hipster is being deliberately mainstream at optimally calculated opportunities, and as long as that remains the case, I’m sure I’ll continue to find myself arguing in favor of the “unadulterated pop greatness” of “Hey Ya” with my t-shirt clad peers at many a Brooklyn bar in the forseeable future.
