Top 40

For lack of a CD player in our car, or even a working tape player to commandeer for my iPod, I've been listening to a lot of radio this summer, including top 40 stations. As with most forms of music, most of it is pretty terrible, but there are always gems. Instead of doing actual work, I thought I'd provide some examples of those two categories. The worst is not from Shakira, whose chirpy goat-voice weirds me the hell out, or even Paris Hilton, whose loungy sub-Blondie attempt at ska, "Stars Are Blind," is sort of listenable if you pretend it's not Paris Hilton singing. No, it's from her fellow non-entity Brooke Hogan.

Dear paparazzi, please stop paying attention to the talentless children of the rich and famous. You're just giving them something to whine about when they decide that they want to be pop stars. Take Brooke Hogan, for example: she didn't exist to me until I heard her hit single, "About Us," on the radio. In it, she complains that "I'm just trying to live but you're all up in my grill / How's a girl to breathe with all the media staring down my mouth with a four inch lens / I just wanna hit the mall with some of my friends." This is a very bad song. Very, very bad, and mostly because Ms. Hogan is a terrible singer. She makes me long for the days when Britney Spears was still a pop star. Modern producers can make just about anyone sound like a decent singer, so the fact that Ms. Hogan still sounds so bad despite all the money in the world is a testament to her profound lack of talent. Her thin voice wavers as it strains to hit the high notes she's trying to force out of her underfed body, and then it breaks down, sounding sometimes like she has her nose plugged, and other times like she's got something chewy in her mouth. In an attempt to cover her deficiencies, the producer layers her vocals, often from dramatically different takes, which makes it sound like Ms. Hogan is not a person at all, but is in fact the latest in computer voice technology. Added to the sonic despair is a rapper named Paul Wall, who sounds somewhat ashamed to be participating as he encourages Ms. Hogan during the chorus.

On the brighter side of the dial is Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man," the lead single from her self-reinvention album Back to the Basics. It's very good. It's 1960s, pre-"Who's Zooming Who"-Aretha-Franklin-good. It's brassy and assured, layered with a sampled big band horn section, and it showcases Aguilera's marvelous voice and attitude. I might just make this the first pop album I've bought since I don't know when.

That is, if I don't give in to Justin Timberlake's Futuresex/Lovesounds, on the promise of the lead single, the Timbaland-produced "SexyBack." I find this song's dreamy androgyny captivating: the first time I heard it, I couldn't tell whether it was by a man or a woman, and the lyrics didn't help very much: "If that's your girl, baby watch your back / 'cause you're burning up for me and that's a fact." Who's burning up for whom? I don't think it matters. Anyway, Timberlake, in a song produced by Timbaland (and I used to think they were the same person—you can tell how little I listen to top 40) croons fuzzily about his willingness to be whipped as Timbaland encourages him to "get your sexy on." It's all packaged in a fuzzy, electronic drone that I think I could listen to on repeat. Of course, the thing about top 40 stations is that I've practically been listening to it on repeat, and I'm not sick of it yet. That's a good sign.