Like The Ravyns once sang, I was raised on the radio. But I wasn't conscious of it until I was 12. Before then radio was something that was just there, filling up the air while I sat in the backseat of my Mom's car on the way to wherever. All of a sudden I realized that music was actually created, and the people responsible apparently took it pretty seriously. I thought, hey, maybe I should take it seriously, too. I decided to not only care who sang "She Drives Me Crazy", but I needed to be driven out to the mall so I could to buy the cassette tape from whence it came. (The Raw And The Cooked, the first piece of recorded music I ever bought with my own money.) Now that I was a card-carrying music consumer, I started buying up (or dubbing from friends) my favorites from the Top 40: Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Milli Vanilli, C+C Music Factory, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Jesus Jones, Depeche Mode, and others. After about a year later I switched over to the local classic rock station, and started buying up or dubbing Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, and Who albums, along with the latest grunge and alt-rock bands getting played on MTV.
For me radio ended up being victim of its own success–I eventually bought enough tapes and CDs to not have to listen to somebody else's playlist anymore. And, like a lot of people, I never really looked back. Obviously, as a music delivery device, commercial radio sucked in a lot of ways. They played the same songs over and over, and many of them weren't very good. There were too many commercials. The DJs were annoying, obnoxious, and unfunny, and they were always talking over the intros and outros of songs. (Which is really infuriating if you're taping songs off the radio on your boombox–I never did get a decent version of Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" from the local good times-great oldies station) When I became a music writer, things got a little more complicated—I wondered whether (mostly) ignoring the country's most-played music was a dereliction of duty. Lately, however, the question has turned: In an age when you can sell far south of 100,000 copies and still have the best-selling album in the country, what does the Top 40 even mean any more?
Well—to answer my own question—it means something, whatever it is. Even if sales charts aren't as good at telling us which songs people really like these days, there's still no better time capsule than a weekly Billboard chart. By missing the radio for so long I feel like I've been missing an important piece of the present. So, I'm looking to do some re-discoverin.' But since I still don't like listening to the actual radio, I downloaded the top 10 from (the already out-of-date) May 12, 2007 Hot 100 chart and graded them, A.V. Club style
1. Maroon5, "Makes Me Wonder"
Maroon5 reminds me of the really good-looking guy in high school who was super popular, filthy rich, straight-A smart, and just a genuinely nice guy. Like that guy, that unbeatable hit machine Maroon5 is pretty hateable from a distance, but the throwback funk of "Makes Me Wonder" is pretty damn likeable if you get to know it. This song deserved to go to No. 1 in about two minutes. Grade: A-.
2. Avril Lavigne, "Girlfriend"
What a big, dumb song–the chorus is big, Avril's lyrics are dumb, and the drums are big and dumb. So, obviously, it's pretty good pop song. Avril–excuse me, "the motherfucking princess" –probably still can't pronounce Bowie, but at least her knowledge of pop history goes back to Toni Basil. At times like these I wish real punk were more like fake punk. Grade: B.
3. Timbaland featuring Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake, "Give It To Me"
I heard Timbaland's latest album Timbaland Presents Shock Value isn't that great, but why is this guy making albums anyway? Singles are his domain. And if Quentin Tarantino shouldn't star in his own movies, neither should Timbaland. At least the greatest producer ever named after a shoe was smart enough to make "Give It To Me" essentially another hot Nelly Furtado jam with some guest trash-talking from Justin Timberlake. Grade: A.
4. T-Pain featuring Yung Joc, "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')"