The Tris McCall Report

Critics Poll 2007 -- The Singles

"We're not moving toward Hitler-type fascism, but we're moving toward a softer fascism. Loss of civil liberties, corporations running the show, big government in bed with big business. So you have the military-industrial complex, you have the medical-industrial complex, you have the financial industry, you have the communications industry. They go to Washington and spend hundreds of millions of dollars. That's where the control is. I call that a soft form of fascism, something that is very dangerous." -- Congressman Ron Paul, using the f-word on Meet The Press.

 

A quiet life with no surprises

This December, while holiday shopping in the Garden State Plaza, I participated in a retail ritual that has become all too familiar to me. During checkout, the nice girl behind the counter of a chain store asked me for my name, number, and address. Since I actually am, believe it or not, a proper sweetheart off the Internet, I smiled and gave her what she wanted. A minute later, it occurred to me that, alas, that nice girl was not really interested in who I was, where I lived, or how to get in touch with me. She was stationed there by her corporate overseers; the pretty face administering a subtle interrogation techique. Her job was to feed information about me -- and you -- into the company's hungry database so that the marketing department could use it as a permanent resource.

Rewind a few months. Radiohead has made news by removing the (overt) price tag from In Rainbows, making the album available for download at a price selected by its purchasers. As always, the band's detractors got the headline wrong: many called this a cheap gimmick, or misplaced altruism, or cagey and hypocritical, since the group also sells the record in stores and through their site. Few read the fine print on the website: as part of the deal, Radiohead required a valid e-mail address, a physical address, a name, buying proclivities and other demographics, and the right to send you an unspecified amount of marketing material. What's more, Radiohead gets another crucial bit of information out of the transaction: they get to find out how much you're willing to spend on the music they make. Turns out that Radiohead wasn't precipitating the dismantling of the music industry after all. They were building a database of their own.

This is the part where somebody calls me a paranoid douchebag for implying that Radiohead is a branch of the Gestapo. Believe me, I don't think Thom Yorke is Big Brother, any more than I mistake the girl behind the counter in the GSP for a jackbooted government thug. That said, no matter how heartwarming he sounds when he sings about all those fake plastic trees, he's still not somebody I have over for tea and philosophical conversations. I have no way of knowing to whom Thom Yorke is going to show -- or sell -- my demographic data. My willingness to turn private, personal information over to him (or whoever it is in Radiohead, Inc. whose job it is to build the marketing grid) is a gesture of profound trust, one that would've been inconceivable to me before horsing around on the Internet desensitized me to the act of coughing up my particulars to any authority that asks.

If there's anything the past seven years should have taught us, it's that databases have a funny way of getting shared, probed, inspected, merged, and absorbed into bigger databases -- and that no invasion of privacy, no matter how tarted up it is, is an innocuous one. All that spam that made you close your AOL and Hotmail accounts for good?, that came from marketers who noticed via magic cookie that you'd been somewhere on the Internet, and decided they stood a puncher's chance of getting you to click a link. Junk mail and spyware are blunt instruments, and they appears to operate without context, but they're just a crude manifestation of something that goes on all the time. If you're an participant in the American credit economy -- if you've visited websites and made purchases, or just chatted with others -- your name, contact information, demographics, and behavior has probably recorded on thousands of cross-indexed lists. And the Justice Department wants those lists.

Although our Internet service providers and the corporations that make our machines are hardly above abusing our trust, the electronic devices of the present moment are still, nominally, private. The President's men may be poking through your web cache as we speak, but we can still go to bed kidding ourselves that our computers are our own. But The NSA controversy only confirmed what we already knew: the government is principally in the business of snooping and database-compilation and has been for longer than the current administration's tenure in office. Telecoms have made it clear that they're happy to turn our communications over to the Federal Government in exchange for protection against prosecution and lawsuits.

In the future, we will be expected to participate in our own monitoring and self-cataloging. The next step -- and it's coming fast, folks -- is some kind of perpetual digital identification, hardwired into our handset or cellphone or pocket computer, laying us bare to domestic spies. And when it arrives, it's not going to look like 1984: it'll be marketed much as Apple has sold its iPod and iPhone. It'll come with all kinds of fabulous features, and it'll give us access to some Potemkin version of that uber-database that we're all in the process of compiling. We'll be able to get every song ever recorded, every movie ever shot, all the celebrity access we want -- and we'll be able to share it all with our secretly-monitored social-networks (no more need for McCarthy to ask if you're part of the Communist Party, since every member will be part of the same e-group on Facebook). The deal will be the same one that Radiohead offered its audience: free content in exchange for detailed personal data, a record of purchases and proclivities, and information about where we are and what we're doing. The entertainment industry has become the bait on the hook of the police state; one nation under surveillance, its members happily downloading and uploading, pixel by pixel, feeding ourselves to the machine.

Lest you think I've been reading too much Philip Dick (as if that's even possible), let's review some of the actions that the United States government has taken over the past several years, and you tell me if you think the executive isn't obsessed with control, surveillance, and data compilation:

• The original USA Patriot Act, mandated that, during the course of a Federal investigation, banks and ISPs must release private, personal records to the government. Much of the act gutted decades-old ECPA restrictions on electronic surveillance and remote monitoring.
• Claiming a need to monitor terrorists and pedophiles, the NSA felt authorized by the Act to tap hundreds and thousands of phones without obtaining warrants.
• "Webtapping", allowed under the Patriot Act, gives the FBI the go-ahead to record the ISPs of all visitors to all purportedly seditious websites. Moreover, the government wants your Google search history, and is very likely to get it.
• The executive created CIFA, a classified counterintelligence subdivision of the Defense Department operating within the United States. Nobody knows what they do. They're supposed to be in the business of protecting military installations from attack, but there's good evidence to suggest that the Pentagon is spying on American civilians.
• The Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows the government to jail you and hold you without a trial for as long as they like. No shit. Read that again; I'm going to write it again: The Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows the government to jail you and hold you without a trial for as long as they like. All they've got to do is declare you an unlawful enemy combatant; you know, a terrorist. Habeas Corpus had been a part of American life since the Civil War. It's gone now.
• The Central Intelligence Agency set up a system of secret overseas detention centers -- the so-called "black sites" -- and either outsourced torture to unscrupulous foreign interrogators or went ahead and tortured prisoners under our own flag.
• The 2007 National Defense Authorization Act allows the executive to declare martial law in the event of an emergency. Who gets to determine what constitutes an emergency? The executive does, of course.

Many have responded to the encroaching police state with abject denial; those laws are written to enable the government to go after other people, criminals, Arabs, etc. Whitey still feels relatively safe. But security and comfort are two completely different things. Ras Kass's judgment aside, Americans aren't evil people: we know that something has gone wrong. We attempt to lose ourselves in mass entertainment, but he sound of our national principles falling apart shakes us, from time to time, from our reverie. We sing out, too, in strange, coded voices. Your 2007 single of the year is a song that is, on its surface, as apolitical as it gets: a rock-R&B fidelity ballad, a statement of faith in the face of serious trouble. But "hard times" aren't theoretical anymore. In '07, we didn't have to look out the window to know that it was raining more than ever. We barely needed to turn on the news. What we'd always feared hung in the air around us: a country we love, sliding toward the unspeakable.

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Your singles

1. Rihanna – “Umbrella” (292)
2. Amy Winehouse – “Rehab” (189)
3. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” (179)
4. Spoon – “The Underdog” (162)
5. Band Of Horses – “Is There A Ghost” (160)

What characterizes an umbrella? It's an analog device; if you let somebody under your umbrella (ella ella), you're making a connection with them that doesn't rely on technological mediation. It's tactile, it requires concentration and dedication; it needs to be opened, held steady in a stiff wind, shaken when brought indoors. An invitation to share an umbrella isn't made in a vacuum -- it presupposes some kind of uncomfortable condition that requires shielding from. By comparing her love to an umbrella, the singer is not just making a joke about her genitals; she's also suggesting that it's possible to be protective and erotic at the same time. Because it is, you know. And when the sun shines, we shine together.

Winehouse's "Rehab" drew 64 points in Poll XVI. It wouldn't have changed the order of finish if I'd included those, but it would've made Rihanna's margin of victory much smaller. As for the Boss, well, what can I say?, his return to straightforward pop songwriting was undeniably glorious. Every now and then, he stops the allusive storytelling and the political advocacy, and reminds us all that the Top 40 tunesmith is still very much alive within him.

6. Feist – “1,2,3,4” (145)
7. Kanye West – “Stronger” (143)
8. The National – “Fake Empire” (139)
9. Alicia Keys – “No One” (133)
10. Justin Timberlake – “What Goes Around… Comes Around” (129)

Mr. West has always cleaned up in the singles category. "Slow Jamz" won in '04, "Golddigger" finished second in '05; in '06 he had no new album, but "Touch The Sky" snuck into the Top 30 anyway. "Heard 'Em Say", "Jesus Walks", "All Fall Down", these accumulated points for Kanye; "Izzo", which featured West's typically-soulful production, topped the competition in 2001. This year, three cuts from Graduation made the list: the Nietzsche-biting "Stronger", "Can't Tell Me Nothing", and the goofy but oh-so-banging "Good Life". Add them all up, and you've got a grand total of 321 points: more than any other artist on Poll XVIII. ("Shut Up And Drive", if you're curious, was named on only one ballot, and nobody bothered to list "Hate That I Love You".) Call the Louis Vuitton Don the victor if you want to, God knows he doesn't take defeat too well.

The National also had a split outcome -- "Mistaken For Strangers", the official single, scored 82 points, while "Fake Empire", the lead track on Boxer, tallied 139. "Fake Empire" is a much catchier number, but I don't think it received a separate release. In this case, the voters did a better job of picking the single than Beggar's Banquet did, so who's quibbling?

11. Maroon 5 – “Wake-Up Call” (127)
11. LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends” (127)
13. Peter, Bjorn & John – “Young Folks” (122)
14. Crowded House – “Don’t Stop Now” (121)
15. The White Stripes – “Icky Thump” (118)

While we're on the subject of vote-splitting, LCD Soundsystem's total also suffered from it. "North American Scum" nearly missed the Top 30, and indie tearjerker "Someone Great" drew support, too. But "All My Friends" was the track from Sound Of Silver that everybody ended up hearing in trendy bars at 2AM, so it's fitting that it rose to the top like a maraschino cherry. Top five artists by total points earned: 1. Kanye West, 2. LCD Soundsystem, 3. Amy Winehouse ("Rehab" plus "You Know I'm No Good"), 4. Justin Timberlake ("LoveStoned", "What Goes Around... Comes Around", "Summer Love", 5. Maroon 5 ("Wake-Up Call", "Won't Go Home Without You", "Makes Me Wonder").

"Don't Stop Now" didn't get placed in heavy rotation on MTV, or VH1, or on Z100. It wasn't a featured download on any high-profile weblog. It wasn't a bestselling ringtone, and it didn't get used in a Hollywood movie. It wasn't featured in an Apple commercial, and it wasn't flogged by the IRCE or any music-review site. Nope, it was just a great song. Thank God there's still room for those on the Poll.

16. M.I.A. – “Paper Planes” (117)
17. Lily Allen – “Smile” (116)
18. The Shins – “Phantom Limb” (108)
19. Justin Timberlake – “LoveStoned” (100)
19. Rilo Kiley – “Silver Lining” (100)

A few minutes after sending out a general announcement that the album poll was up, I got two email messages from two separate non-voters, both of whom wondered where the hell M.I.A. was. At #47, I told them, with 94 points and two #1 picks. Truth is, she didn't do much better two years ago. Not many persons of color (however you want to define that) have ever voted in this poll, but these days, lots of girls do -- and strangely, none of them voted for M.I.A. this year. That included the girls who cast ballots for Arular in '05. Weird. I'm not sure whether there's something about Kala that turned women off, but I'm sure as hell not going to sit through it to find out.

21. UGK featuring Outkast – “International Players Anthem” (96)
22. Kanye West – “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” (91)
23. Caribou – “Melody Day” (89)
24. R. Kelly – “I’m A Flirt” (88)
25. Kanye West – “The Good Life” (87)
25. Lil Mama – “Lip Gloss” (87)
27. Justice – “D.A.N.C.E.” (86)
28. Dude ‘N’ Em – “Watch My Feet” (84)
28. Calvin Harris – “Acceptable in the ‘80s” (84)
30. My Chemical Romance – “Teenagers” (83)

I admit I was relieved that Tay Zonday didn't make the Top 30; I was worried he would. I don't have any problem with viral video -- hell, I (sorta) defend Soulja Boy Tell'em in the Abstract -- but there was something not quite kosher about the popular reception of "Chocolate Rain". Tell me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Zonday enthusiasts were responding more to the novelty of his freakazoid performance and bizarre post-ethnic appearance than they were to the song. I don't think "Chocolate Rain" works without the visuals, and I'm curious to know whether anyone has encountered Zonday's music somewhere other than YouTube. There's a long history of video-assisted singles doing well on the Poll, but those are generally reactions to first-class performances: Christopher Walken in the otherwise-pedestrian "Weapon Of Choice", for instance. We ought to be awed and dazzled by singles artists; if we're sitting there patronizing them, they may as well be in indie bands. At any rate, "Chocolate Rain" isn't as good as "Teenagers", so no matter how actual Zonday's entertainment talents might be, it's more than fair that he isn't here.

Same bat channel tomorrow for the miscellany, people. No more politics, I promise -- at least not until the closing essay.

 

Yesterday I felt so old, I thought that I would post the album results.

Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be miscellany.

Well, you know I'll post my own on the day after tomorrow.

Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too; Thursday I don't care about you; but Friday, I conclude.

 

Prior Singles results online:

Poll XVII (2006)
Poll XVI (2005)
Poll XV (2004)
Poll XIV (2003)

 

Go on and let your e-mail pour, I'll be all you need and more.