HEAVEN IS OVERRATED: iTunes announced today that America hates music, though technically the phrase it used was "'Hey, Soul Sister' was the most downloaded song of 2010." Is this the most anachronistic new song ever to get this popular? A band whose previous peak was over a decade ago (on the foaming crest of fake-alternative rock radio) name-checking Mister Mister and making a big deal about radio/stereo? I predict that in 2030, the number-one song transmitted directly into consumer brains via neural embedding will mention downloading a Train song via iTunes.
In the nearer term, I see two major related consequences. First, Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and Randy Jackson almost certainly have heard the first verse of this song a million times in AI auditions. Second, the biggest loser here is the band that owns the rights to the song previously used by every male AI contestant with a preference for inoffensive mainstream rock -- "Drops of Jupiter."
As someone who can't stand "Hey, Soul Sister" or anything Train has ever done, all this does is further convince me that my misanthropy and self-superiority have at least a partial basis in fact.
ReplyDeleteYou and I will both be wallowing in our Ida Maria, I imagine.
ReplyDeleteSo Train joins Golden Earring on the very short list of Two-Hit Wonders. (The two hits should come from two different, preferably non-consecutive albums.) Others?
ReplyDeleteActually, Train's had 4 top 20 Hot 100 Singles--"Meet Virginia" and "Calling All Angels" in addition to the two Isaac references, and "If It's Love" hit #1 on the "Adult Top 40 Tracks" chart this year.
ReplyDeleteMy sister bought "Drops of Jupiter" at Borders. She went into Borders, having heard the song, and bought that album, for 16.99. I was bereft.
ReplyDeleteHuman League?
ReplyDeleteI still sort of like "Meet Virginia." I am sorry.
ReplyDeleteI liked Train so much better when they're naked(ly commercial).
ReplyDeleteThey seem to be good for one massively overexposed song every few years, so wake me up in 2013 when "I Am So Earnest, So Very Very Earnest" is atop the iTunes charts.
ReplyDelete<span>I somehow managed to avoid this song until now. Had to look it up on YouTube to see what the fuss was about. </span>
ReplyDelete<span>The song, meh -- yeah, it's bad, but I suppose I need to hear it another five thousand times before it fills me with rage -- but the video... oh my. It deeply offended me.
I suppose the director's pitch was "Let's rent a street corner for a day and shoot from the most unflattering possible angles on these already remarkably unappealing bandmembers. To get some artsy/sensitive cred we'll hire some crappy CGI finger-doodlers to rip-off of the Italian graffiti artist BLU, and let's see, how about we throw in the Matrix camera effect to make it egdy. Bam, done!"</span>
The only positive thing I can say is that was a nice looking ukulele.
I still like "Meet Virginia" too. However, in the pantheon of terrible songs, "Hey Soul Sister" takes the title from "We Built This City" as the worst song in the history of the world.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I have "Hey Soul Sister" stuck in my head.
No, you are wrong, that is just the availability heuristic speaking. "We Built This City" remains the worst song in the history of the world. To this day, Starship remains the only collection of mad scientists to have successfully weaponized art.
ReplyDeleteI'll confess to loving Drops of Jupiter so much that I bought the album based on the one song. I don't like any other Train songs and truly hate Hey Soul Sister (the Mr. Mister line is absolutely dreadful), but I'm still a huge fan of Drops of Jupiter to this day. I've always been kinda surprised it hasn't become an American Idol staple. It's the kinda cheesy anthemic big-voiced song that seems tailor-made for AI.
ReplyDeleteAnd a quick Internet search on "Drops of Jupiter" and "American Idol" confirms Isaac's notion that it already was an AI staple, though I frankly don't remember having seen anyone perform it on AI before. Oops. Maybe most of those performances came in the early rounds (I don't watch AI typically until they get to Hollywood).
ReplyDeleteBut in terms of GOOD songs, a buddy just sent me this link (I"m not rickrolling you all, I swear) and it's some good, fun stuff.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY0NOS7Snd8
(This may, or may not be a hint that we haven't had a "what are you listening to?" post in a while. I don't think. I buy half my music based on what you guys recommend, so I just sit aorund a wait for those posts. :))
Train makes my ears bleed. Their whole catalog. I do not celebrate it.
ReplyDeleteNagel?
ReplyDeleteOkay, and Erte, and LeRoy Nieman, and Mitch Albom, but really, when you step back a bit, just Starship.
ReplyDeleteIt's a catchy song with a powerful hook, and it's nostalgiac to boot. Yes, it was overplayed, but it wasn't as bad as Boom Boom Pow.
ReplyDeleteI think the point of "Hey, Soul Sister" is that it DOESN'T have a hook, i.e. a constantly recurring instrumental/vocal motif. It had a chorus, but I wouldn't say it had a hook.
ReplyDeleteAlso, nostalgia? Really?
I also had to look it up (thanks for the link). This is exactly why I just listen to my iPod and wait for you people to tell me what I need to buy: so I can avoid dreck like that. Does that guy remind anyone else of smarmy Wes from The Bachelor?
ReplyDeleteIt is the "unshaved chest" line that makes my ears bleed. Why, why, why do we need that image?
ReplyDeletemaybe it's the ukelele, but I'm not bothered by the song. It's just inoffensive background noise.
ReplyDeleteI never hadn't realized they did Meet Virginia. Drops of Jupiter and Calling All Angels, to me, are both identified as "that Train song that sounds just like the other Train song."
ReplyDeleteI'm no fan of Hey Soul Sister, but this time of year, I'll listen to anything that isn't Christmas music with the lyrics changed to remind me that I could get my cheaply made trinkets even cheaper at T.J. Maxx.
It is kind of cool that Howie Mandel is in the band though.
ReplyDeleteTHIS. I mean, really, how much personal grooming info needs to be included in what is presumably a love song?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you say recalling 80's things like "Mister Mister" and "madonna" is nostalgiac? Also the hook is "Hey Soul Sister, ain't that mister mister on the radio stereo, the way you move ain't fair you know".
ReplyDeleteI have a theory. No matter what format of music you listen to on the radio or through the internet, you will only like about 20 percent of it. The rest will be just filler or background noise, and 10 percent will truly annoy you.
ReplyDeleteCan we at least consider Paul McCartney's "Freedom"?
ReplyDelete"Marry Me" is getting a lot of airplay as well.
ReplyDeletegirard31, Sturgeon's Law beat you to it: "90% of everything is crap."
ReplyDeleteOne of the many funny jokes in "Easy A" is that our heroine gets a birthday card with a chip that plays "Pocketful of Sunshine" in it. Initially, she tosses it aside in frustration/anger about how stupid the song is--slowly, the song wears her down to the point where she has it installed as a ring tone on her phone. I kind of wound up feeling the same way about "Soul Sister." HATED it with the fire of a thousand suns at first, with that being intensified by its ubiquity, but it slowly wore down my resistance.
ReplyDeleteI actually just watched Easy A last night. Very funny, if not a little reliant on some tired tropes.
ReplyDeleteAs for "Pocketful of Sunshine", well, it's a far better song than "Hey, Soul Sister". I wouldn't call it good, but it's nowhere near as reprehensible as Train's audio detritus.
I actually went through kind of the opposite process with regard to "Hey, Soul Sister." It's so catchy and it was ubiquitous from the very beginning- I sang along without really listening to the lyrics. It was the posting on this blog that made me realize how incredibly, swfully stupid they are, and now I can't listen to it. At all. I hear the opening ukulele and "Hey-ey" and I'm out.
ReplyDeleteDo we know if it's just the Train original? Or if the figures are unnaturally inflated by the Darren Criss/GLEE cover version? Because much as I hate that song, and for that matter, GLEE, I am powerless to resist Darren Criss' considerable charms.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he was an awesome drummer for Kiss.
ReplyDeleteI just realized two things about Train.
ReplyDelete1) I actually saw Train perform back in 1996 (opening for Cracker and Sparklehorse) and if my mom hadn't thrown out my poster from that show eons ago, I could apparently now sell it for $33. I think I did not like them in 1996.
2) I had no idea that Hey Soul Sister was a new song. Until this post, I was absolutely convinced that it had been around for years and years.