Back To You

Someone's Been Doing Situps

"Cooler Than Me" Mike Posner ft. Big Sean

I was fortunate enough to have access to a car this past week that a friend let me use while she spent a week out of town, and as I flipped through the preset radio stations I realized that due to a combination of my own decision to rid my life and ears of any Clear Channel owned pop radio and the subsequent premature death of my own car, it had easily been nine or ten months at least since I last listened to Top 40 radio at all. Of course, I now follow the current pop music scene closely and regularly enough to have a general idea of what is currently running in the typically limited and repetitive repertory, and for the most part I found no surprises over the week in what was played.

There was, however, one notable exception. I first heard the track while driving with the significant other, whose musical sensitivities have gotten similarly alert as his input has proven increasingly useful to this blog, and for whatever reason both of us paid attention. I commented near the song's conclusion that I had no idea what song or artist it was and that I particularly enjoyed it, although I suspected I would have been even more won over were it to be a different singer performing, not initially much enthralled with the unique, raspy, racially ambiguous young male voice performing the lead vocal. Then today I heard the tune a second time, this time on the wonderful relatively new non-Clear Channel station, which is the first and only station to survive as long and solidly as it has despite being a direct competitor with the mighty Clear Channel flagship KIIS-FM (in the past, competition on the Los Angeles airwaves has been sporadic and reliably short-lived due to Clear Channel's "nip it in the bud" approach to potentially competitive new media), and I was fully sold on the mid-tempo mid-tempo lightly humorous ode to/denouncement of a narcissistic, insufferable but yet addictively appealing femme fatale.

 
Mike Posner (who I must admit not having heard of before this, but after a bit of research reveals that the 22 year old is just getting started) has put together a thoroughly enjoyable track with the equally skillful talents of rapper Big Sean (who proves that the art of the featured rap is not a dead one), and its apparent success at winning precious airtime on a major Top 40 station whose usual M.O. involves a greatly limited repertoire at any given time - maximizing airplay by minimizing variety is cheaper and more efficient in promoting favored artists - suggests to me that "Cooler Than Me" could be a the heir to Kevin Rudolph's unlikely success of the genre-spanning hit "Let It Rock" last year. The writing is clever enough to please the indie music songwriting snobs, too, meaning it could even get a little crossover attention.

Perhaps most importantly on the record's side is a pair of simple qualities "Cooler Than Me" has: first, it's catchy as heck, with lyrics and attitude interesting enough to capture a first-time listener's attention and a simple and clever chorus repeated just the right number of times to facilitate memorization without activating fatigue (yes, we get it Rihanna, you're "hard"...e.g.). And second, it's four minutes of plain old fun, neither too mean-spirited nor too stickily romantic, maintaining a tone and tempo with more universal appeal than most of what is currently in rotation on the radio. It's the kind of record that teems with so much personality that it makes my excitement about a split second of facial expression in Britney Spears' latest video seem exhausting.

And, thanks to some ingenious HTML jimmy-rigging with the technical assistance of Vertigo Shtick's chief graphic designer and designer of the Vertigo Shtick website that will be launching not long from now, I think I have come up with a serviceable alternative method of offering the music I discuss here free to readers, so you can click the "play" button below and enjoy one of the only new records that have really won me over so fully so quickly.

"Cooler Than Me"

Mike Posner featuring Big Sean

One Foot Out the Door

J Records, 2009

\"Cooler Than Me\" Mike Posner ft. Big Sean

(In case the controls don't seem to appear for you, simply click above the bottom row of text and the song should begin.

Kiss the Cook

Purple Rain

Thinker

Starting Up a Brand New Day

Friday might seem like an odd day for the theme of starting anew, but if you've followed my various web endeavors you'll probably understand why. Unlike with angry "I hate you" songs, of which I have surprisingly few (I see people fight and be negative all the time in my real life, so I don't need much in my recreational), of upbeat, invigorating revival motivational anthems for this kind of day I have scads. I thought, since it's early appropriately quick, why waste time with metaphors when you can make Sting sing the crucial three-word triplet? And what better luck, as a seeker of a copy of said track, than to first come across, as I did, not the studio track from the 1999 album of the same name, but rather the cut from 2001 live album ...All This Time, which is a great, bouncing, uptempo jazz version of the eerie electronic original, complete with jazz band, male and female backup singers, and of course Sting, whose voice is tailor-made for jazz. The live album was recorded on the night of September 11, 2001, at the famous concert that was an ultimately helpful gesture showing that life would go on, despite the disaster mere hours earlier.

The relevance of that to this current morning was the first flag, what I heard from our small-scale rehearsals even better, then finally the perfect relevance of the lyrics not only to my goal but to where I begin. The past is now the past, and it is time to start anew for myself personally, once again as my own individuality and solidly single.
'

"Brand New Day"

Sting

...All This Time 

A&M, 2001)

Brand New Day - Sting

Why don't we turn the clock to zero, honey

I'll sell the stock, we'll spend all the money

We're starting up a brand new day

Turn the clock all the way back

I wonder if she'll take me back

I'm thinking in a brand new way

Turn the clock to zero, sister

You'll never know how much I missed her

I'm starting up a brand new day

Turn the clock to zero, boss

The river's wide, we'll swim across

We're starting up a brand new day....

In the Shade

Curls

He Walks Away/The Sun Goes Down

A wonderful thing about music is that it can take on a very personal meaning or role unique to an individual alone. Sometimes a song can bring back memories as evocatively as a particular scent, be they good ones, poignant ones, humorous ones, or sad ones. Pop music in particular is useful in certain significant times, moments or events in a person's life: why else would so many couples have "our song," or wedding dj's scour the world for the perfect track for a first dance, or the recent breakup victim find solace or strength in one of any number of tunes appropriate for the desired reaction, be it sadness, anger or reaffirmation of strength.

As it happens, even the most resolutely anti-romantic smiling singles among us, including your humble blog author, can unwittingly or reluctantly find themselves, sometimes quite suddenly, in that last category, despite what seem like one's best efforts to avoid getting in deep enough that someone could have the power to place them there, even after seven solid years of comfortable conscientious objector status. As difficult and unfamiliar as the emotions may be, though, I am a pop music blogger, and damned if I'm not going to use that fact in whatever way I can to help guide me through the breakup mires as quickly and effectively as possible, and to the most positive extent it can as well. Therefore I naturally spent a bit of thought on finding a song that could most appropriately summarize, symbolize, and proselytize the whole unfortunate affair, mentally flipping first through some of the lighter ballads (I've done the heavy ballad breakup once...about seven years ago).

But not even the more optimistic laments seemed to really capture the true spirit of the moment, it being for me as rare and blind-sided as it has been; instead, my thoughts turned toward an atypically positive tune by an artist also not immediately obvious in my endeavor, and instantly I knew I had it. Sure, few singers today can warble about pain as believably and realistically as Amy Winehouse, but it wasn't one of the more despairing tracks from the great album Back to Black I knew was my winning ticket. No, if I were to sing from my heart this evening it would come out something like the amiable and knowing "Tears Dry On Their Own." Set over the accompaniment to the celebratory 60's love duet "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Tears Dry On Their Own" reads the way a rationalist who still appreciates at least the notion of (fictional) romance would approach the end of a love story.

So, like the mega-beehived British chanteuse in the song's loveable music video, I must work on getting out of the hotel room and walking down Hollywood Boulevard again with the same acceptance and open-minded hope as the track promotes. It's my cathartic way of saying goodbye to a person and a relationship I enjoyed. And why shouldn't I carry my headphones along with me as I do so?

Tears Dry On Their Own - Amy W...

"Tears Dry On Their Own"

Amy Winehouse

Back to Black

(Republic, 2007)

Lyrics by Amy Winehouse, 2006

All I can ever be to you
Is a darkness that we knew,
And this regret I've got accustomed to.
Once it was so right,
When we were at our high,
Waiting for you in the hotel at night,
I knew I hadn't met my match,
But every moment we could snatch,
I don't know why I got so attached.
It's my responsibility;
And you don't owe nothing to me,
But to walk away I have no capacity.

He walks away;
The sun goes down;
He takes the day but I'm grown.
And in your way, in this blue shade
My tears dry on their own,

I don't understand:
Why do I stress a man
When there's so many bigger things at hand?
We could a never had it all,
We had to hit a wall,
So this is inevitable withdrawal.
Even if I stop wanting you,
A perspective pushes through:
I'll be some next man's other woman soon.

I shouldn't play myself again,
I should just be my own best friend,
Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men.

I wish I could say no regrets,
And no emotional debts,
Cause as we kiss goodbye the sun sets.
So we are history.
The shadow covers me;
The sky above a blaze that only lovers see.

He walks away,
The sun goes down,
He takes the day but I'm grown,
And in you way,
My deep shade,
My tears dry on their own.