1)Daniel Powter, “Bad Day”
SONG: I swear to God I’ve never heard this song in my life. It genuinely doesn’t ring a bell. It’s a basic four-chord feel-good pop-rock tune with a mildly catchy chorus. It seems to have a MELLOTRON in one verse, which is sort of nice. That being said I genuinely don’t remember it and probably still won’t a couple days from now. This was really the biggest charting song of 2006?
VIDEO: Sensitive Canadian dude with stocking cap warbles away at piano while attractive young people behave somber and go about their daily lives. Main actor in the video looks like the K-Mart version of Tobey Maguire. In one funny bit, he and the female lead sit down on opposite sides of a fountain (but in separate frames on the screen) to eat hot dogs and she somehow knows he’s there and gets up and leaves. Wooo wooo.

2)Sean Paul, “Temperature”
SONG: Stomping reggae-hip-hop stuff from a cornrowed guy who seems to be spouting incoherent gibberish–not without talent, mind you, it’s sort of impressive, but God knows who can decipher about 60 percent of it. (Video comment: “Three hardest languages to learn: French, Chinese, Sean Paul”) I thought that this was what Sean Paul performed on SNL when Adrien Brody did that cringe rasta-guy introduction bit and got banned from the show, but that was in 2003.
VIDEO: Dancers dancer their asses off while autumn leaves swirl around. Later the video gets bored with this and just shows dancers sunbathing in string bikinis. Then people party in an auto garage. Wheee.

3)Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland, “Promiscuous”
SONG: Hip-hop/dance-pop club-stuff that I only find notable for deliberately using loud, shrill, Casio synth-chimes from 1983 when the chorus rolls around. It’s an odd juxtaposition.
VIDEO: People in a club dancing. Yippie skip. I think there’s supposed to be a plot developing in this clip, but I wouldn’t know what it was. Since it was around this point that I sort of wasn’t really paying attention to the pop charts anymore (not that it was ever a forte of mine) I found myself wondering if people who were teenagers (unlike me, who turned 24 in 2006) were really really nostalgic for this era of music that bored me. The video comments reveal that they BADLY miss it–“the music industry should have stayed in this era,” “Don’t cry because this era is gone, be proud you lived in it,” etc. etc. It sort of made me muse on two points, neither of which was new to me: 1)that people are nostalgic for ANY era and 2)that I find the nostalgia for this era weird not simply because I was getting too old for pop music by 2006, but because I can’t even tell what’s changed since 2006–it doesn’t sound like an “old” song to me, but what would I know?

4)James Blunt, “You’re Beautiful”
SONG: DIE. Hated this then and hate it now. Hate his quivering voice, hate the lyrics, hate the trite arrangement and boring chord changes, hate. Hope I never hear this again. Kill, die, bleed, etc.
VIDEO: Scruffy-haired male model looking Mr. Blunt takes off his shirt in the snow, then jumps off a cliff into the fucking ocean. Hope he hits the water hard. Comment section has Hayden Panettiere conspiracy theories (“if ya know, ya know!”) in it that I don’t even want to know about.

5)Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean, “Hips Don’t Lie”
SONG: Average Latin-inflected rap-pop shizz. She sure has had a successful career for a woman who, when she first showed up, was denounced as a glorified belly dancer and was predicted to not last in the public consciousness for more than six months. This isn’t a very catchy song–no strong chorus or verses,
VIDEO: Shakira and Wyclef chase each other through pink curtains. Much of Mrs. Shakira’s midriff. Dancers doing a mix of tribal, African, Latin, Asian stuff, all at once sort of. Not that I’d have a great understanding of it. I’m sure that technological advancements will see to it that Mrs. Shakira will still be able to pass for about 27 years old when she’s 60, we’ll see if she still has that midriff. And if she’s still alive, she will.

6)Natasha Bedingfield, “Unwritten”
SONG: Generic female pop song. The chorus sounds like a lot of other songs (like that Dawson’s Creek theme whose singer I’ve already forgotten the name of), not just from 2006 but from the 90s and since. I guess I’ve heard worse, but if you asked me to guess what year this came out I could just as easily be 20 years off.
VIDEO: Generically super-beautiful blonde hangs around in an elevator, then goes out into a sun-kissed meadow and lays down a lot. Then she does hand jive with a black gospel choir. I guess she doesn’t really make an ass out of herself doing it, hey who am I to get on this chick’s butt about such shit?

7)Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”
SONG: Well, I do remember the chorus to this one, even if I wouldn’t remember who sang it. Probably takes a modicum of talent to sing that sort of falsetto. I do remember when the dude sung Radiohead’s “Reckoner” with that falsetto, remember that? It fit the song really well, and that’s not just any Radiohead song it’s one of their five best!! To me anyway. Not to go off on a tangent but if I had to pick one of these Top 10 songs to say I actually liked it’d be this one.
VIDEO: Chintzy computer animation that looks like Rorschach blots. Would have cost a fortune in the 90s but not in 2006?

8)Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone, “Ridin”
SONG: Okay, this gets points for inspiring that funny Weird Al video, the one that confirmed for all of us dorky suburban white kids that Weird Al wasn’t a completely spent force. Stupid of me, isn’t it? I bet there’s a lot of nerds who remember the Weird Al parody far better than the original song.
VIDEO: Dude’s grill could blind the sun.

9)Justin Timberlake featuring Timbaland, “SexyBack”
SONG: I remember people quoting the “I’m bringing sexy back” line song more than I remember the song, which consists of the world’s simplest drum machine going one TWO one TWO over approximately two and a half buzzing synthesizer blurp-notes. About the only musically interesting thing about the song is when it starts to sort of charge at you, getting a bit louder and more annoying with the chorus. Aside from that, I’m seriously convinced that Britney fucking Spears tried harder than this! Am I wrong?
VIDEO: Justin in a hotel room doing some Spy vs Spy shit with suits and guns and girls. I suppose he had a slight amount of acting talent.

10)Beyoncé featuring Slim Thug and Bun B, “Check On It”
SONG: Don’t think I remember either of the two “featuring” rappers and I also don’t think I remember the song, in keeping with the “I wasn’t paying attention very well anymore by 2006” theme. The song is annoying, one-note vocalizing over about two chords.
VIDEO: Scantily clad girls doing the usual hip hop dance moves in some sort of pink satin environment. Beyonce has huge 70s hair in one part, then big pink Barbie doll hair in the next. I swear about 60 percent of music videos I’ve watched for these posts are this exact same thing with minimal variations or interest. I can’t even feign getting interested anymore; I’m typing these posts while clicking back onto a separate tab to watch a few seconds of video. I can’t remember the last time I actually watched one of these videos all the way through without stopping.

SONGS FROM THE REMAINDER OF THE TOP 100 THAT I’M GLAD I DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO:

Red Hot Chili Peppers - “Dani California” (the song that got them in that weird Tom Petty controversy…bland as hell, it didn’t deserve the attention to begin with)
Nickelback - “Photograph” (for obvious reasons)
The Black-Eyed Peas - “My Humps” (die)

SONGS I LIKED FROM THE REMAINDER OF THE TOP 100:

Gorillaz - “Feel Good Inc.,” which may have been on the previous year’s list. I don’t even feel like checking.

NOTES:

There wasn’t any real “rock” song in the top 10, and most of the rest of the songs in the top 100 by “rock” bands are by bands I never liked or cared about at all, and I don’t remember most of them. Or most of the rest of this stuff. I see names I recognize, but I genuinely have no idea if I’d even remember a single other song from the top 100 that I haven’t listed anywhere else in this post. Thus the theme I already mentioned is reinforced. This is getting kind of depressing, like banging my head against the wall. I picked up Super Mario Kart used and have been revisiting that at least, let’s see if that makes me feel better.