Patti Smith vs Patti Smyth

"4 Seconds" was much bigger on US radio and charts than "Hung Up," alas.

can't believe i forgot weird al! plus 'white & nerdy' is genuinely one of his biggest hits, and tbh if you gave me odds on most likely to score another top ten hit and it was weird al vs the field (and the field is 'anyone else who had a video introduced by alan hunter') i'd take weird al in a heartbeat.

I suppose it was some kind of envoi to have "Sometimes Love..." and "How Do You Talk to an Angel" be the early nineties Heart and Starship proxies.

man I always forget "This Used To Be My Playground" hit #1.

yeah it wasn't until some of the younger 'people' started doing '4 seconds' at karaoke that i accepted that maybe it was kinda a hit and not just this thing that access hollywood showed ten second clips of for a few days and madonna fans managed to buy onto the top ten for a week. is that the last timberlake appearance in the top ten also?

well, he had the appearance on T.I.'s hit the same year.

and I think the Ciara collab grazed the top ten.

o right. i think the last time i regularly listened to commercial music radio the republicans held the senate.

was that when "Separate Lives" hit #1 or

hahaha. you have no right!

oh hey, J.Lo had maybe the biggest song of her career at 42 last year

i guess Santana was the last real baby boomer w/ serious hits though

I don't think its possible to overstate the degree to which the Britney/Backstreet Boys/Eminem era fundamentally changed the dynamics of the pop charts. No other era in pop displayed such a schizm between what is typically thought of as "kid's music" and what is "adult's music," the former all but obliterating the latter as a presence. The blockbuster albums of any previous era (think Thriller, of course, but also the Bodyguard soundtrack and whatever that one Shania Twain album was) had a definite across-the-board appeal that nevertheless skewed slightly more towards the adult side of things; even in the case of something like Jagged Little Pill, I remember quite a few adults buying it at the time (the Grammy wins undoubtedly helped here). These days, with the likely exception of Adele (and possibly, though I hesitate to say it, Maroon 5), it is pretty much unheard of to have something with such flexible appeal hit the pop charts hard. It is simply impossible to imagine how something like "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough," or "Change The World" (was this really that big of a hit? I mean, I remember hearing it a lot around '96, but it never seemed to quite reach the same level of ubiquity as some of these others), or even "My Heart Will Go On" happening these days. Movie soundtrack ballads used to be a sure thing, but can anyone even name any of the ones from Avatar, or The Lord of the Rings movies?

Most of the big sellers of the last decade that seem to be purely adult appealing all seem to fall into specialty categories: Josh Groban, Susan Boyle, those horrible Rod Stewart Great American Songbook records, etc.

Also, never knew that "This Used To Be My Playground" hit #1. Don't even remember it getting that much airplay at the time. My main memory of the song, in fact, was being at a grade school party and someone complaining when it came on the radio cause it was bumming everyone out. Credit Madonna's sheer unstoppability at the time, I guess, and the power of the 90s movie ballad!

http://images.nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/lyricopener110718_fig_1_560.jpg

from a piece nabisco wrote last year: http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/narcissism-2011-7/

around the same time i also wrote a thing about how "Someone Like You" was the first honest to god ballad #1 in years (6 since "We Belong Together" and i don't know how many w/ something with no thumping drum machine) and part of Adele's huge commercial triumph probably was that she was someone in her early 20s who could appeal to people who bought Susan Boyle records.

ha no wait it was Fergie who had the last ballad #1 before Adele: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/09/adele_someone_like_you_billboard_charts.php

"Change The World" was goddamn ubiquitous down here for most of '96: it and "Head Over Feet" and the "Friends" theme and Jann Arden's "Insensitive" were on loop.

19th biggest Hot 100 hit of '96!

How 'bout Aerosmith, "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing"?

well, "Jaded" was a top 10 hit even later than prob any boomer hit besides a couple of the Santana singles

but good call w/ Aerosmith in general

I've never even heard of "Jaded," but I wasn't paying much attention then. Just checked Blondie's "Maria" -- wasn't a huge chart hit in the U.S. but went to #1 in the U.K.

"Jaded" was definitely not as big as the Armageddon song but it was kinda the last gasp of Aerosmith as pop culture force, was all over the radio and they played it at the Super Bowl

"Insensitive" even made it outside of Canada?!

Smyth's duet with Don Henley from the early 90s, "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough" was a decent bit of MOR slush, superior to anything I've hard by Smith, which granted isn't much. (I heard bits of Horses back in the day.)