Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Trax Poll Results: TOP TEN TODAY)

chill-fi & glowave

it hardly ruins anything, tho i wld be curious to hear from people who voted for it about its good qualities

yeah i'm no fan of the BEP or that song but getting upset over its placement is dumb on a few levels

Indeed! Especially when it's really not as awful as everyone's making it out to be.

I mean, is Boom Boom Pow the weirder and better BEP track of the year? Probably. Was I Gotta Feeling a totally ubiquitous presence any time I was drunk and in a club this summer? Totally. Unavoidable, and once it beat you into submission, sort of awesome.

NB: I didn't vote for it, but I have discovered that mysterious zone of inebriation and sleep-deprivation wherein it suddenly becomes AMAZING.

TS: Lust for Life v I Gotta Feeling

In that ever-so-dire predicament, I'd go BEP.

imo "I Gotta Feeling" just has a very effective combination of wistful and celebratory, it feels like summer, and the way the drums never seem to get going like they seem like they're gonna, and eventually get overpowered by the vocals, creates an interesting dynamic. calling it 'manipulative' only makes any sense if you think that other fun or moving songs just happen by accident and there's no intentional pulling of strings on the part of the songwriter.

the idea that "i gotta feeling" is somehow more poisonous to this list than fucking "empire state of mind" is crazy -- at least one is open about its shamelessness and is better because of it

xp sure, but the difference is that in this case, I can see the strings

haha, I hadn't thought about it that way, but both those songs have the same effect

Feel like we should have a thread on the relationship between catchiness and annoying-obnoxiousness in current pop music. It seems like there's been a lot of singles in the past twelve months or so which some people love immediately and some people hate immediately, but a decent proportion of people in the second category grow to love it, while perhaps an equal number of people in the first category get sick of it - e.g.

"I Gotta Feeling"
"Party In The USA"
"Poker Face"
"Hot 'n' Cold"?

I guess "Tik Tok" falls into this category but it's too soon to know whether people will come around to it in the future.

Obv a big unifying factor is this big, brash, perhaps kinda grating electro-pop production.

Was it ever thus? It feels like a heightened trend at the moment. I would assume it was a case of "lol u old" (as applied to me) but I actually like or don't mind a fair amount of these tunes.

it's a song that sounds better in the moment -- it's a big ass stadium song that you have to submit too -- i didn't really like it the first few times i heard it, but the "tonight's gonna be a good night" part is undeniable no matter how corny it is

xp: I haven't at any point liked any of those songs.

i like all the songs tom lists except for "hot n cold" because it's so brittle & flimsy and doesn't have... a world beating, submissive quality that i think the other three have

i guess there's vapid and then there's exceptionally vapid.....like, i don't care if ppl sell their songs for commercials but you shouldn't write with that goal in mind

haha i dont really like any of those songs but i'd rank them "i gotta feeling" > "party" = "h&c" > "poker face" > "tik tok"

I've come around to Tik Tok, Poker Face, and Hot 'n' Cold, but can't get there with Party or I Gotta Feeling...and part of it has to do with being annoyed for extra-musical reasons with Will.I.Am and Miley Cyrus. If someone else were singing those songs, I could conceivably be a-okay with them.

i guess there's vapid and then there's exceptionally vapid.....like, i don't care if ppl sell their songs for commercials but you shouldn't write with that goal in mind

― call all destroyer, Monday, February 1, 2010 7:28 PM Bookmark

this goes for phoenix, too

i mean, i don't think it's an undeniable song like other big pop songs of the year (i don't even like it half as much as "boom boom pow" which i voted in my top 8 iirc) but i mean to absolve yourself of this good & eclectic list because of it is kind of crazy imo

i don't think writing a song that could be catchy enough & desirable enough for a commercial is a bad thing at all

the idea that "i gotta feeling" is somehow more poisonous to this list than fucking "empire state of mind" is crazy -- at least one is open about its shamelessness and is better because of it

― big hoos state of mind (J0rdan S.), Monday, February 1, 2010 10:24 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm i was happy ESoM was as relatively low as it was

xp: I was just putting in a cheap swipe where I could.

My problem here is that I bascically hate

big, brash, perhaps kinda grating electro-pop production

except maybe in its more bass-y and/or hiphop-driven variants, in which category I would include "Boom Boom Pow".

That whole trend is about 90% of why mainstream pop is currently awful imo.

this goes for phoenix, too

― The Reverend, Monday, February 1, 2010 10:30 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'd say this is solved by the lyrical diff between "i gotta a feeling it's gonna be a good night" or whatever and "fold it fold it fold it"

wait until the fabric softener ad

lol

i think "one day" might make the top ten. i can't remember if i voted for it or if it was nommed but i(t) should've.

goddammit can people not pull the fucking "how could you possibly avoid mainstream song x" thing on me?

I know but I don't watch TV, hardly listened to the radio at all in 2009, and never go out to do anything fun any more, but I still heard this song, repeatedly (probably while eating out or shopping).

i think "one day" might make the top ten. i can't remember if i voted for it or if it was nommed but i(t) should've.

― samosa gibreel, Monday, February 1, 2010 10:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

word. this was in my top 5 & i totally forgot about it. it could get up there bcuz of votes for the surkin rmx

When did ILM regress from pro-pop to anti-pop? Post-pro-pop-guilt?

rudipherous you must lead a charmed life my dude

don't think anti-gotta feeling = anti-pop. that would be like anti-taco bell=anti-food.

I'm not anti-pop, I just want better pop.

Tim F, i don't like any of those other songs, except "Hot 'n' Cold" which i don't know, so i don't fit with that theory. Might not hate them as much as others, possibly, judging by what we've seen!

'i gotta feeling' on snl
watching this made me feel very alex in nyc D:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Y_E6YmFE0

they are the uncoolest people in the universe

does that mean you're posting something worse than the single, so you can hate even more?

CHALLOPS OF ALL CHALLOPS:

"I Gotta Feelin" (almost) = "One More Time"

hahaha good challops

Stevred Shastoto, Lord of Challops

serious tho, throw Romanthy on there instead of will.i.am, it's not a stretch.

Jody Rosen summed up why "I Gotta Feeling" resonates for me beyond its ubiquity in one of his posts to Slate's Music Club end-of-the-year roundup for 2009:

Listen to the lines Fergie sings: "I feel stressed out/ I won't let it go/ Let's go way out/ Spaced out/ And losing all control." Listen, also, to the plaintive "woo-hoo" refrain, to the foreboding synthesizer strings, to the minor chords that give a somber downward tug to that second "Tonight's gonna be a good night" in the chorus. If John Rich's "Shuttin' Detroit Down" and Cam'Ron's "My Job" are this Great Recession's equivalent of the Great Depression's dustbowl protest anthems, then "I Gotta Feeling" is our dark, grand "Let's Face the Music and Dance"—a song about partying to forget about the ruins outside the dancehall.

http://www.slate.com/id/2237677/entry/2238149/

i love how it seems like every time someone admits to liking/loving something deemed unworthy by general consensus there's a groundswell of likeminded guilty pleasures making themselves known, which then just snowballs til next thing you know 'i gotta feelin' = 'one more time'

you got a ways to go if you want me to buy into the ruins and Great Depression of "fill up my car -- Mazel Tov!"

I always assumed it was "fill up my cup -- Mazel Tov!"?? The other doesn't make sense surely??

Tim F, i don't like any of those other songs, except "Hot 'n' Cold" which i don't know, so i don't fit with that theory. Might not hate them as much as others, possibly, judging by what we've seen!

My theory isn't that people either love all these songs or hate all of them; rather, that their catchiness is intimately related to their obnoxiousness/annoyingness, such that while people usually come down hard on one side of the fence or the other they often change their mind later. If anything I would expect that everyone disagrees on which are good and which are bad - unless you hate obnoxiousness-in-pop per se, which is foolish.

fancy is only my second vote that made it!
yay for ilx dream bloc!

i thought he just got the phrase wrong! anyway that review makes me dislike the song even b/c it falls so short of the high literature the reviewer is spinning.

on the "obnoxious" pop song, i definitely find that songs that seem unbearable during their initial go-round sometimes strike me more favorably a year or two or five later -- when they've faded from ubiquity and i realize (usually reluctantly) that even while consciously hating them i was unconsciously absorbing them through massive exposure and now they light up my neural pathways even if i don't want them to. it almost seems like a biological response to me, but the net result is that i end up "liking" something that i used to "hate."

(that may eventually prove true of "i gotta feeling," but it's too soon to say. i'm still in resistance mode.)