I left Tumblr open overnight and this was the top post I came back to, and it feels like a reassurance (Thank you, all of you; I’ll get back to you when I can) that everything’s gonna be okay. It’s also fucking awesome.
Woman-beating rage-broccoli Chris Brown lip-synced his single “Turn Up the Music” (without being threatened by Sir Elton John) and danced roughly as well as a third-rate Chicago footwork dancer. He ended his performance by back-flipping off the stage, though sadly not off the earth.
Whatever the merits of “Set Fire to the Rain” as a song—honestly, to me, it’s one of the middling tracks on Adele’s album—it’s fascinating as a chart phenomenon, the culmination of the evolution of pop promotion in the post-single, post-digital era. For nearly a year, all the songs on 21 were laid out like a buffet for listeners. About 700,000 of them gravitated toward “Set Fire” with no outside prodding (not even a cover from the Adele-happy cast of Glee). The label listened and promoted accordingly. Arguably, it’s the first focus-grouped No. 1 song.
CLUE 1: “went to short dogs house, they was watching Yo MTV RAPS” Yo MTV RAPS first aired: Aug 6th 1988 CLUE 2: Ice Cubes single “today was a good day” released on: Feb 23 1993 CLUE 3: ”The Lakers beat the Super Sonics”
I’m way more amused by dogs barking the Imperial March than I should be. Also, Volkswagen did not pay me to post this. (Though they can, if they wish!)
By now, you’ve probably heard the Jessie J song, “Domino”. Currently, it’s peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, which means a lot of people like it. Perhaps you’re one of them. I’m not going to talk much about Jessie J, because I don’t know a lot about her beyond this song and “Price Tag”. But if you’re interested in some observations about how she makes a claim on what kind of artist she is in the first ten seconds of the song, keep reading.