Just as I want every My Year Of Flops entry to be more than a movie review, I want THEN! to be more

In early 2010, A.V. Club writer Nathan Rabin decided to listen to and write about the bestselling, zeitgeist-friendly CD series NOW That s What I Call Music! in chronological order. Each one of the 34 American NOW! collections compiles a cross-section of recent hits from across the musical spectrum. Beginning with the first entry from 1998, this column examines what the series says about the evolution and de-evolution of pop music.
1. It s My Life, No Doubt 2. Toxic, travel nursing jobs for dialysis Britney Spears 3. Stand Up, Ludacris featuring Shawnna 4. Holidae In, Chingy travel nursing jobs for dialysis featuring Ludacris and Snoop Dogg 5. Gangsta Nation, Westside Connection featuring Nate Dogg 6. Bounce, Sarah Connor 7. Shut Up, Black Eyed Peas 8. Gigolo, Nick Cannon featuring R. Kelly 9. Me, Myself And I, Beyonc 10. Shorty Doowop, Baby Bash featuring Perla Cruz and Russell Lee 11. I Don t Want You Back, Eamon 12. With You, Jessica Simpson 13. Sunrise, Norah Jones 14. The First Cut Is The Deepest, Sheryl Crow 15. Everything, Fefe Dobson 16. I Hate Everything About You, Three Days Grace 17. Feeling This, Blink-182 18. Hold On, Good Charlotte 19. Falls On Me, Fuel 20. 100 Years, travel nursing jobs for dialysis Five for Fighting
With each entry in this series, I ve aspired to write about more than a bunch of randomly selected travel nursing jobs for dialysis pop songs. I ve tried to use each entry as a starting point to discuss the careers and contradictions of the heroes of this pop age, such as Liz Phair, Justin Timberlake, Aaron Carter, Britney Spears, Britney Spears, and Britney Spears. As some of you have noted, I write an awful lot about Britney Spears. That s because to me, she represents everything that s seductive, ridiculous, surreal, wonderful, travel nursing jobs for dialysis and sexy about pop music.
Just as I want every My Year Of Flops entry to be more than a movie review, I want THEN! to be more than a rundown of half-forgotten singles. Alas, the 15th entry in the series has defeated me. I couldn t find a song or an artist fascinating enough to serve as an anchor for an entire entry, so I m going to do something new: I m going to write about every song in the volume.
1. No Doubt, It s My Life When No Doubt began its ascent to superstardom, the band struck me less as a second- or third-wave ska band than as new-wave revivalists, the Missing Persons of its era. So it seems altogether apt that the group covered Talk Talk s It s My Life as the sole new track on its greatest-hits travel nursing jobs for dialysis album The Singles 1992-2003 . The result is one of my favorite No Doubt songs simply because the group understands how to get out of the way of a great song, and Gwen Stefani s melodramatic vamping perfectly suits the anthem s heightened emotions.
2. Britney Spears, Toxic The poorly kept secret of dance music is that the genre is so dependent on production and that fascist four-on-the-floor beat that vocals are sometimes irrelevant. Actually, vocals are overwhelmingly irrelevant. It doesn t particularly matter, for example, whether Britney Spears travel nursing jobs for dialysis or Kylie Minogue travel nursing jobs for dialysis , who was originally offered the song, is breathily whispering the mildly salacious lyrics to Toxic.
I admire Toxic as if it were a European sports car: I appreciate its sleekness, its impeccable engineering, the way every part is fine-tuned and perfectly in place. It s a triumph of pop machinery, full of racing synthesizers, atmospheric strings, and a beat so infectious, it lodges itself travel nursing jobs for dialysis into the human subconscious upon the first listen, then plants the squatters -rights flag and refuses to leave.
The cultural travel nursing jobs for dialysis baggage Spears brings to the song as a longtime participant in toxic relationships with widely reviled douchebags (Kevin Federline, cough, cough) gives it a little extra iconic kick, but mostly it succeeds travel nursing jobs for dialysis on the strength of pure craft. Sexy, sexy craft.
3. Ludacris, Stand Up Ludacris, on the other hand, is all about personality. From a technical perspective, he s tremendously gifted, travel nursing jobs for dialysis with an elastic, wildly expressive flow, but his impeccable comic timing and incandescent charisma are what made him such a superstar. Take Stand Up, for example, one of his best songs and earliest collaborations with Kanye West . The song contains arguably the best line in the history of music, better even than anything travel nursing jobs for dialysis in Shaggy s It Wasn t Me.
At the beginning of Ludacris epic tale of nightclub debauchery, Ludacris propositions a potential conquest with the words How we ain t gonna fuck? Bitch, I m me! (the radio version changes it to How you ain t gonna cut? Girl, I m me ) This is, clearly, the single greatest pickup line ever, though only people of Ludacris stature can get away with it. Men who have to follow Bitch, I m me! with You know, the guy who sits behind you in biology, for example, will find it doesn t work anywhere near as well.
4. Chingy featuring Ludacris and Snoop Dogg, Holidae In Alas, not even the combined star power of Ludacris and Snoop Dogg can save Chingy s Holidae In, an inane bit of pop-rap fluff about the glory of taking groupies to modestly priced hotel chains. Also, judging from the lyrics, it s unclear whether Chingy, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg are planning to feel on each other or merely bask in the bisexuality of their (ostensibly female) orgy partners. Is Holidae In the worst song on the compilation? Perhaps, though it faces a fierce challenge from Nick Cannon and R. Kelly s Gigolo. To settle the matter, travel nursing jobs for dialysis let s have the competitors compete in a high-stakes all-or-nothing terrible-off. Here are the respective choruses travel nursing jobs for dialysis for the two songs:
I think we can all agree that in a competition like this, we re all losers, especially Chingy. Incidentally, did anyone travel nursing jobs for dialysis see the Tyra Banks Show where the titular lunatic dressed up in male drag to go undercover travel nursing jobs for dialysis as a member of Chingy s entourage? That was some crazy shit, even for Banks.
5. Westside Connection, Gangsta Nation Considering how his career has progressed, and his ubiquity in family fare, it s downright adorable that Ice Cube still gets together with his friends and favored collaborators to make pretend that they re still scary, gun-toting gangstas instead of wealthy middle-aged men who home-school their children and are more concerned with TBS picking up their family sitcom for 90 more episodes than surviving another day in the mean streets of South Central.
In 2003, Cube and his pals Mack 10 and W.C. reunited to release Terrorist travel nursing jobs for dialysis Threats , an album of regressive 90s-style G-funk rooted in a bygone era where Cube could legitimately consider himself AmeriKKKa s Most Wanted travel nursing jobs for dialysis rather than AmeriKKKa s family actor of choice. On Gangsta Nation, Cube and the gang talk tough and posture, but Cube isn t fooling anyone, least of all himself.
travel nursing jobs for dialysis 6. Sarah Connor, Bounce If Sarah Connor s Bounce sounds travel nursing jobs for dialysis awfully familiar, it s for a very good reason: the song borrows the propulsive strings from Mary J. Blige s Dr. Dre -produced smash Family Affair for one of the compilation s many acid-tongued kiss-offs, this time to a cheating partner. For some reason, R B songs that sample hip-hop songs piss me off, though I have no problem with hip-hop sampling R B. Sampling travel nursing jobs for dialysis soul takes imagination and a broad frame of reference; repurposing a 3-year-old song, on the other hand, just feels lazy, especially when it pales in comparison to the song it s sampling.
On Bounce, Connor zings a cheating lover who won t answer his two-way or his pager, and consequently must be creeping travel nursing jobs for dialysis with another woman, in spite of the impeccably oiled cleavage Connor displays in the music video. Connor s reasoning isn t terribly clear. At one point, she opines, travel nursing jobs for dialysis I know that you re hating it, but you better stay with the one you re with, which is confusing on multiple levels. Is the one you re with Connor? Or the woman the man is cheating on? Connor is clearly a keeper; the woman knows how to crawl on the hood of a car in an appropriately sensual fashion. In his guest verse, rapper Mr. Freeman pleads for another chance and volunteers, I love it every night the freaky way we bone. Mr. Freeman better shape up, or he ll find himself with a lesser woman who ll only bone him every other night, and only in a semi-freaky fashion.
7. Black Eyed Peas, Shut Up Most pop-music compilations are full of inane love songs. NOW! 15, in sharp contrast, is so full of bile, bruised feelings, and insults, I half-expected Mary J. Blige to pop up in the middle of Bounce and offer a Rodney King-like plea for an end to hateration and holleration up in this dancerie.
On Shut Up, Will.I.Am and the other two guys discover that hell hath no fury like a Fergie scorned. At first, everything is copacetic: The happy couple travel nursing jobs for dialysis did them things that couples do when in love such as walks on the beach and stuff. They also did things that lovers say and do, such as I love you, boo and also I love you too. Ah, but soon conflicts and disagreements arose. One party would say I love you a lot, the other would counter with I love you even more. But then infidelity transformed love into hate.
It goes without saying that Shut Up is a stupid song, but in our shiny pop world, stupidity isn t necessarily a vice, and intelligence isn t always a virtue. Shut Up is about as fun as the Black Eyed Peas get. It s a cartoon battle of the genders, a sexual showdown complete with spaghetti-Western guitar and an appropriately theatrical turn from Fergie. At the risk of losing what little credibility I have left, Fergie is growing on me; her lyrics are almost inconceivably awful, but she has a hell of a voice, and, if I may damn her with some faint praise, she was easily the best part of Nine.
8. Nick Cannon, Gigolo How can a hit be a miss? When it s as all-consumingly awful as Nick Cannon and R. Kelly s Gigolo, a song that reached No. 24 on the Billboard , chart yet confirmed what everyone already knew: The former travel nursing jobs for dialysis Nickelodeon star, best known for being Mr. Mariah Carey, has no fucking business pursuing a musical career. It s a song of almost travel nursing jobs for dialysis unspeakable banality, a lazy R. Kelly knockoff travel nursing jobs for dialysis built around sugary flute, indifferently strummed acoustic guitar, and a generic breakbeat.
The