So thanks to the fine Paul O'Brien from If Destroyed, Still True, who for quite a while now has featured a recap of the Number 1 hits of the United Kingdom with their respected music videos for giving me the go ahead to bring it over the pond.
Without further ado, I bring you the #1 songs for February 2009 according to the Billboard Hot 100:
(Luckily for us Americans, the US version of YouTube is full of leeching users uploading official music videos that can be embedded behind the record label's back. I will be using those for ease of reading. If they go down, I'll surely edit in a link to the official studio release.)
The first two months of February were dominated by the new single for Kelly Clarkson, "My Life Will Suck Without You."
With all due respect, this seems to be Kelly's apology for her last CD, which can still be heard bombing if you listen closely enough. Gone are the angst ridden lyrics and darker images and we're back to Kelly throwing her boyfriend's clothes around, just like America likes her. The song is definitely no "Since You've Been Gone," and for those who actually enjoyed the darker sound of her last CD, it's a bit of a letdown. But the video is fun and it has the guy from Serenity, so it's hard to stay too mad at her for regressing for the sake of salvaging her career.
A marked difference that I can already see between the UK and US charts are the fact that a lot of US #1 singles just don't have videos yet thanks to leaks to radio or iTunes. So with our 2nd #1 of February, Eminem's "Crack a Bottle," YouTube seems to have erupted in a bunch of halfassed video remixes in lieu of an official video, so here's one that doesn't suck totally:
Eminem comes back from his hiatus sounding a bit more laid back than previous singles, and the song definitely has its own bounce to it. Thank god the first single of the CD isn't a song about how he's Slim Shadey full of insults against celebrities, as has been the trap of his prior releases. It's a decent single, but will he still be relevant by the time the CD is actually released? And with the last release, there was a lot of talk about when Eminem would "grow up" like Jay-Z did... this does not seem to have happened yet. Oddly, the whole song sounds like it could be a Crank Yankers theme song.
And our final #1 of February, we have Flo Rida sampling Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me (Right Round Baby Right Round)"... for "Right Round."
This is one of those rap songs where you see the title and think "Dear god, please don't let this mean he sampled that song." And Flo Rida adds nothing to a song that's already been killed and buried by being covered by every metal and industrial band under the sun. The song has a good beat and you can bop your head to it, but when the YouTube comments feature such genius thoughts as "It reminds me of Dead or Alive" you've got to wonder just who is in on the joke here. The comments also appear to suggest the song is about strippers going down on men in lap dance rooms, but that makes no sense when the female repeats the same line, unless everyone gets oral sex in Flo Rida's strip club world.
