This is the first Sade song ever featured on this blog. I guess that’s not a major surprise, but between Random Weekends and mining my own collection, I figured I would have settled on one of her tracks by now.
I’m not a big Sade fan, though I do love her voice. Her genre is just one of the few that I have never gotten into. Smooth jazz R&B is great in the background but that’s about it.
Here is one of the sillier songs from Arcade Fire’s 2013 album, Reflektor, which as a whole is a pretty silly record.
This song is pretty basic (there are only about 25 words in the whole thing) and it contains the same theme as much of the band’s recent work — the dehumanization of technology. When we all live on and in front of screens, what does that say about humanity?
The song at #9 in the Billboard Hot 100 is a perfect example of a relatively recent change to Billboard’s tracking formula.
The chart now reflects not only radio play and sales data but online streaming on sites such as YouTube. This is a good change, because looking at the millions of views amassed by popular artists, it’s clear that online video streaming is a major means of consumption in the 21st century.
One Republic is still hanging out in the Billboard top ten with ‘Counting Stars,’ spending its 39th week on the chart at #7.
Right behind it is Beyoncé’s ‘Drunk in Love,’ the second single from her surprise self-titled album. I’m still expecting ‘XO’ to rule these charts one of these days — I just can’t imagine such a magnificent song by such an iconic artist flying below the radar — but this one will do for now.
In Billboard’s sixth slot is ‘Team,’ the latest single from Lorde’s juggernaut Pure Heroine.
‘Team’ is a sister song to ‘Royals,’ with the same “we live in cities you’ll never see onscreen” message and disdain for hip-hop excess. Here she sums up that boredom with the great line, “I’m kind of over gettin’ told to throw my hands up in the air… so there.”
