Surprisingly, I’ve never featured Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ before, though I’ve blogged about four other tracks on the 9-song So album. This song was the record’s biggest hit, and Gabriel’s biggest North American hit, period.
Two other interesting bits of trivia I learned from the song’s Wikipedia page: the song ‘Sledgehammer’ replaced at #1 on the charts was ‘Invisible Touch’ by Gabriel’s former band, Genesis; and ‘Sledgehammer’ is the most-played video of all time by MTV.
The last time I featured a Maria McKee song on the blog — a little under two years ago, on another Random Weekend — I had the same thing to say that I was going to write now.
So I’ll just quote myself:
One of the nice things about Random iTunes Weekends is that I’m sometimes introduced to a brand-new song from my own collection.
I have no idea who Maria McKee is or how her album, Life is Sweet, ended up in my music library. I assume I got it at a dollar sale in a cut-out bin back in the days of CDs.
Maroon 5 have become one of the more reliable hit-makers in pop music today, good for at least one memorable jam per year. Over the past five years, they’ve delivered ‘Moves Like Jagger,’ ‘Payphone,’ ‘One More Night,’ ‘Daylight,’ ‘Maps,’ ‘Animals,’ ‘Sugar’ and 2015’s ‘This Summer.’
‘Don’t Wanna Know is their first 2016 single and its just harmless and catchy enough to make some Billboard waves. This week it’s at #10, right above D.R.A.M.’s horrific ‘Broccoli.’
Ariana Grande claims the 7th spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 with her Nicki Minaj-assisted ‘Side To Side.‘ At #8 is a dance song that feels a lot like the ‘Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)‘ of 2017.
I first stumbled across ‘TZ Anthem’ when reading up on ‘Black Beatles’ and seeing a mention of a viral video of a high school girl dancing to this song. I guess that clip, and others that followed, helped propel this quick jam into the Top Ten.
Rounding out Billboard’s top five are two more blog repeats — twenty one pilots with ‘Heathens’ and DJ Snake feat. Justin Bieber with ‘Let Me Love You.’ It’s been two months since I last did a Billboard countdown and yet half the top ten is intact. I guess you don’t see a lot of chart movement in the fall.
At #6 is Bruno Mars with ’24K Magic,’ his claim to retake the pop music throne after the runaway success of ‘Uptown Funk.’ And given that that track was actually a Mark Ronson tune, it’s actually been four years and two Super Bowl performances since Mars released his last album.
Meet Me In Montauk 