The Show, The After Party, The Hotel 11.19.08: Played Out

Posted by Weng Yu on 11.19.2008

Jump around even though you've heard it thousands of times?



Good day all and welcome to my column. This week in wrestling:

- I love the new Jeff Hardy. Finally he's getting a proper personality to go with his daredevil style. Scary Jeff as champ would be rather entertaining.
- The card for Survivor Series looks pretty good, and there could be some significant title changes.
- Why didn't the Honk-a-Perfect-Mountie meter get more time?!?

Anyway, back to music. Justin Timberlake's new tune "Magic" is definitely his track and not a forbidden track. I played it at a gig on Saturday and hardly anyone knew it, remember, you heard here there first!

This week, I've decided to write about songs that I feel are just totally played out.


Can you look at her a thousand times?

DJ don't play that song

One of the perils of being a DJ is that you often get some inane requests. I've played at nights which are clearly r'n'b/hip hip nights, and I get people coming up to me asking for all sorts of random stuff, like techno or hard house. Um....hello? Are you deaf? It's annoying when you're concentrating on music, but when you look back it can be quite amusing.

Going hand in hand with this is that I'll often get requests for songs that I really don't want to play. There's varying reasons for this:

1. I don't like the song
2. It's played out
3. The song won't go with what I'm playing at the time (eg. asking for a song with a much slower/faster beat that what I'm currently playing).
4. The song has already been played.
5. I don't have it.

Most of those reasons are pretty obvious, but its the first two that will upset the punters. If they really love a song, why shouldn't the DJ play it?

However, there's a few songs out there which have been played so many times that I feel like busting someone's head open everytime I hear them. I'm sure there's a few clubbers out there who feel the same way. This isn't just in clubs - commercial radio has to bear a lot of responsibility for pretty much squeezing all the enjoyment out of songs by playing them 15 times a day.

The problem with a lot of these songs is that they are like the DJ's equivalent of gaming cheat codes. If you're struggling with a crowd, most of these tracks will instantly get them jumping straight away. On the flipside, just like cheat codes, if you use them too much, it completely sucks the enjoyment out of the whole experience.

I'm sure everyone can pick out a few tracks they're fed up of hearing. Here's a few of my personal beefs:

House of Pain - Jump Around: Man, I hate this song so much. It's really sad as I absolutely loved this song growing up and could spit the whole thing from memory. You could go to any kind of party, from r'n'b nights to cheesy retro nights, and hear this song because it's so freakin popular.

Run DMC & Aerosmith - Walk this Way: See above.

Shakira - Hips Don't Lie: I once got so many requests for this song I actually told the last girl to ask me to eff off. I feel kinda ashamed about it now, but this wasn't a great song to start with, and, like the previous two tracks, this song is EVERYWHERE. You can't hide.

Fatman Scoop - Be Faithful: If you don't recognise the title, you will recognise the song. It's the one which uses the hook from Faith Evan's "Love like this". It was fresh when it came out, but after being played in nearly every single club night since it came out, I'm sick of it.

Usher - Yeah: I confess, I wasn't even a big fan of the song when it came out. Still, it sounds good in clubs, but four years and thousands of nights later I really don't want to listen to L'il Jon's shouting anymore. Sorry.

Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha: Chick anthem, but seriously, how many times can you play pretend while singing along to this song? Give it up already.

Teriyaki Boyz - Tokyo Drift: This is a major beef of mine from playing lots of Asian parties. I'll admit it's catchy, but for a long time this was a monster on the Asian party scene. Thankfully it seems to be played a lot less now, which means good times for me.

There's a lot more than I've listed, but I wanna keep this within the word limit so I'll stop now. Clubbers and DJ's alike, think about what you're playing/listening to sometimes. If you're willing to open your minds a bit, you'll have a lot more fun.

To encourage more feedback, readers please let use the comments section and let me know what tracks you think are played out. It should be interesting reading!

News

Ciara has an alternate personality too! - This came out a while ago but I only just noticed it. Personally I think this is ill advised as she just comes off as trying to copy Beyonce, but she desperately needs some hype for her new album.

Violence breaks out at Urban Music Awards: The Urban Music Awards were formed in Europe to promote up and coming urban music artists, however it seems the spectre of knife crime in the UK is going to haunt us for a while. For the Americans, violent knife crime is a big problem in the UK (as owning guns are illegal). It's sad to see that a night which was supposed to celebrate urban music ended up being an exhibition of gang culture.

Kanye West compares himself to Princess Di: To be fair I think this is slightly taken out of context, as he's referring to what the paparazzi did to the Princess, rather than directly saying his situation was like hers.

Kanye is the voice of his generation?: I wouldn't go that far. Kanye is getting a bit delusional now, first with the use of auto tune, and now this. I wouldn't be surprised if his new album bombs.

50 Cent's album delayed: Before I Self Destruct has been delayed to coincide with the release of his new movie. I don't give a damn about either to be frank, and I'm not sure if that many other people will.

Eminem dropping new album in 2009: The new album, Relapse looks to be coming out early next year, which is good news for all.

New Tracks

Ne-Yo - My Diamond: Just like "Set it Off", this is another killer slow jam from Ne-Yo that didn't make the Year of the Gentleman. I have no idea why - he lifts a generous portion of the style from Michael Jackson's "Lady in my life" to make a really classy track.

Ne-Yo feat Fabulous - How I do: Another smoothed out midtempo swayer. Why are there all these good songs that didn't make the album? I can safely say that if these songs had replaced some tracks like "Part of the List" and "Single" this would have been a much better album.

Jamie Foxx - Baby Baby Damn: Produced by the slow jam masters the Underdogs, this is everything you'd expect. Put this one on and get freaky!

Brisco feat L'il Wayne & Flo Rida: This sounds a lot like Flo Rida's big hits "Low" and "In the Ayer". Should be a club monster.


The Hiplist

Same as last week as I haven't had time to update it. Sorry!



Video of the week

Time for a bit of education, so I've picked a video from Korea. If you don't know, the Koreans are crazy about dance, and they were also the World B-Boy Champions last year. This is from something called the Star Dance Battle, a TV special where they got a bunch of artists to face off with each other. It'd be pretty cool if something like that was done over here, imagine Usher and Justin going head to head?



Peace.