Billboard's Tropical Songs chart rounds up the top hits getting the most radio airplay in Música Tropical genres like bachata, salsa, cumbia, vallenato, rumba, and merengue.
This (very) popular Beatles-inspired modern rock quartet from Sakura tend to do a lot of video game theme songs. (Also: it must be said, they're babes). Here they wear Rock 'n' Roll Fair Isle sweaters and play an inspirational ballad for a high school romance music video. As band names go, Bump of Chicken isn't any worse than Pearl Jam.They have an album called Yggdrasil and dedicated a song to Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Wistful to a T.
Grade: A
Billboard's Regional Mexican chart, launched in 1994, catalogs airplay of regional Mexican folk genres like norteño, mariachi, and banda.
The band portrays the entertainment at a luxury ruins resort. Driving a BMW to a secluded ancient temple. High heels poking holes in the grass of an outdoor tent. The video mimics the plot of the song's lyrics, about loving your lady despite being "not similar at all" and beseeching her not to break up with you for being a jerk with a wandering eye. Basically the Tony and Carmela Soprano story.
Grade: B+
Katy Perry wanted nothing more than for her album Teenage Dream to generate six straight number ones (thus beating a bunch of existing chart records), but her latest single wasn't quite generating the same sales hype as the others, despite a lavish cinematic video and tacked-on verse B.o.B. remix rerelease. In a The Gift Of The Magi twist, Russell Brand opted to divorce Perry over the holidays thus new baptizing "The One That Got Away" as a Katy Perry accidental Nostradamus self-clown. Perhaps Brand was only attempting to explain the abiding love Brits have for irony in their comedy but it worked, and Katy got her wish the hard way. Now she has to perform this song on stage while the public speculates about her personal life. Maybe that June and Johnny Cash reference wasn't so very far off. Teenage Nightmare?
Grade: B+
The keyword for the Billboard chart in 2011 was "ANTHEMS." Anti-bullying anthems (Selena Gomez, "Who Says"; Katy Perry, "Firework"; Lady Gaga, "Born This Way"), party rock anthems, anthems for regular weekday night non-rock pre-work partying. Tons of pop-rap pap where diet-inspirational verses were soldered awkwardly to soaring adult-contemporary choruses. Videos with cinematic spoken intros (The Script, "For The First Time"; Katy Perry, "The One That Got Away"; Rihanna, "We Found Love") and further attempts, some very successful, to make VEVO the baby big screen it wants to be. These are my personal picks for a top ten from the Billboard 2011 Top 100 chart.
Genres must be judged on their terms. Just as we have with recent country and latin-pop charts, this week we grade Billboard's top 10 rock songs. The '90s are owning! The top three songs are the Last Man Standing of rock: nostalgic, familiar, and unsurprisingly resilient.
1. Foo Fighters, "Walk"
This is a VERY generic Foo Fighters song. Those are Foo Fighting words but I can't get too excited about the ultra-compressed go-get-'em alt-rock crunch of this song because I've heard it so many times already before. It gets a lot better toward the end when Grohl starts screaming about how he never wants to die. Grade: B
