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A Moment Like This

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cyberjudge

On July 19, 2007

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A Moment Like This by Kelly Clarkson (2001) was covered by Leona Lewis in 2006. See the following (noncomplimentary) article from today's New York Times:


"Seasonal Signature: Pop Goes the Summer


By KELEFA SANNEH

Published: July 19, 2007

There have been ominous signs for months. Like the pair of flip-flops that showed up in the mail, courtesy of some record label looking to influence the outcome. And the half-hearted arguments among friends who seemed to be merely going through the motions. And the stagnant pop charts, which all but eliminated suspense.



Taken together, these and other omens point to one sad conclusion: It’s probably time to stop talking about the so-called Song of the Summer.


The winner probably would have been Rihanna, who seemed to wrap up this year’s competition almost as soon as it started. Her smash, “Umbrella,” with Jay-Z, is just about perfect: a lightweight pop confection with a heavy hip-hop backbeat, a breezy love song enriched by those unexpectedly goth-sounding keyboards and by the incongruous hint of anguish in Rihanna’s girlish voice.


“Umbrella” ascended to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart just after Memorial Day, and there it has remained. The new chart, to be published today, will reveal whether she has managed an eighth consecutive week at No. 1. But we’re more than halfway to Labor Day, and it seems unlikely that anyone will match Rihanna’s run. (Though no doubt Sean Kingston — the 17-year-old behind the surging hit “Beautiful Girls,” about the young women who leave him either “suicidal” or “in denial,” depending on the relative timidity of your local radio station — will give it a shot.)


What’s so special about a summer hit?


It’s an old-fashioned idea, but it was revived in the 1990s, with the dominance of hip-hop, when that genre pumped new life into silly love songs. Any brief history must include “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By,” the duet by Method Man and Mary J. Blige, which was ubiquitous in the summer of 1995. Open windows, crowded boardwalks, roofless cars, lazy barbecues: Somehow, summer’s traditions combined to make big songs feel even bigger. And in 2005, it seemed as if the entire country was listening to Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together,” which dominated the charts from May to September.


But looking back, it’s clear that summer unanimity is the exception, not the rule. Last summer’s crowded field was more typical. “Crazy”? “Ridin’ ”? “Hips Don’t Lie”? “Promiscuous”? There was no clear champion. And even the big winners aren’t quite as omnipresent as we obsessives sometimes think. Plenty of people in America — most, no doubt — can’t hum “We Belong Together” and couldn’t pick Rihanna out of a lineup. (A helpful hint: her legs start somewhere near her armpits and, as they say, reach all the way to the ground.) As entertainment options multiply, even mainstream pop is starting to look like a niche market.


This isn’t merely a popularity contest: by tradition, the modern Song of the Summer has to have a certain sound. The basic template is hip-pop; duets are encouraged but not required; the preferred subject is love (although lust works too, so long as there’s plenty of flirting); and the preferred feeling is breezy. In an earlier era, when bombastic R&B ballads and earnest rock songs regularly scaled the charts, this summery sound might have seemed like a break from the norm. But it has been over a decade since Toni Braxton howled “Un-Break My Heart,” and these days the sound of summer is the sound of pop music, period.


Certainly Beyoncé’s winter hit, “Irreplaceable,” could easily have been a beachgoers’ delight. The same goes for recent hits by Akon, Fergie, T-Pain, Justin Timberlake and Gwen Stefani, who all specialize in sending breezy hip-pop songs up the charts year-round, brazenly ignoring seasonal etiquette. Maybe the return of the singles market (thanks to iTunes and other online retailers) has made the Top 40 more youthful, de-emphasizing the ballads that radio programmers love. Whatever the cause, the result is that the pop charts look like Al Gore’s worst nightmare: 52 weeks of summer.


Maybe it doesn’t matter that the Song of the Summer contest is a goofy fiction. {+Certainly it’s no goofier than Britain’s seasonal contest: the annual race to see who will be atop the pop chart on Christmas Day. By tradition, the winning song is often ghastly: last year’s champion was Leona Lewis, winner of the TV talent show “The X Factor,” singing “A Moment Like This,” the old Kelly Clarkson single.+} The contest pretends to celebrate context while actually creating it: Leona Lewis’s song is associated with Christmas because it won, not the other way around. Similarly, lots of American listeners probably associate “We Belong Together” with long days at the beach, even if they never actually heard it there. And something similar may be happening to “Umbrella”: a song about rain may come to seem inseparable from sunshine.


History

Comment by abbamatic
2008-01-03 08:58:16 UTC

added.

 
Change by shs
2017-02-12 13:07:14 UTC
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