Is anyone playing current Top 40?

[bikeplate]

Nope

 

[Neil Folkard]

Well, as I'm in four original bands, ha, the answer would be no. I don't even know any covers!!

 

[gln1955]

Many wars and genocide especially in Rwanda
A few schools shooting
Bombing of World Trade Center
Bombing in Oklahoma
In my part of the world there was a big school shooting, something that never happened before and never happened since.
In my part of the world there was Gulfs war
We had a flood and an ice storm that took a year to get over if not more and stuff that never reoccurred. People still talk about those events
In the 90s in Canada was the introduction of taxes on goods we buy
Québec almost got independent from the rest of Canada

The 90's weren't anything special. I take it you weren't around in the 60' and 70's. Vietnam and a whole lot of other craptastic stuff.

 

[Bunk McNulty]

You're 100% correct about how most popular music is created these days.

Just to be clear, those are Seabrook's words, not mine! I just started reading the thread and his piece kinda popped into my head.

 

[51PRI]

Well, as I'm in four original bands, ha, the answer would be no. I don't even know any covers!!

Yes, you're in a whole different world!

Not necessarily in the Top 40 charts right now, but we strive to keep up to date and include "current" hits from the last year or so.

Recently added:
Don't Start Now - Dua Lipa
Blinding Lights - The Weekend
All I Ever Wanted - Rag'n'Bone Man
Typhoons - Royal Blood
Waiting On A War - Foo Fighters.

"Don't Start Now" is a well crafted song, and well done.

So you don't know who BTS is, then? The chorus in the number one song right now by Olivia "Good for you" is like a Descendents song sung by a teenage girl. Bruno Mars has very danceable songs. So does Dua Lipa. But the Weeknd, and the ones you mention above are lame.

The Weeknd does have some good songs, though.

I don't of course, but just out of curiosity, what is top 40 now? Where do you hear it? Is it the top on Spotify, radio, or what?...

There's a Top 40 today?

I would guarantee that there is a Top 40 radio station in your area.

I'll cop to not having any clue what current top 40 sounds like...

I guess, if you like being out of touch. Have you heard of Doja Cat?

We do everything from 1957 to 2020 (haven't added anything from 2021 yet) in many genres and we stack our setlist to favor the clientele at the venue....

Can you post your songlist?

I’m looking it right now and can’t find any Grunge song piercing the top 40 during the 90s weird how our perception isn’t the reality

Yeah, grunge, as popular as it was on FM radio, didn't have many songs on Top 40 Radio.

I'm familiar. It's a jam.

No, "Don't Start Now" isn't a jam. It's a well crafted pop hit that CAN be played live with real musicians. Notice the bass player switch between bass guitar and key bass.

Also a major factor. I have a friend, young woman with a record contract, not a big name but she was on the X-Factor at one point. There was a point when we were trying to get a band together to gig some of her originals and some covers locally. Didn't work out, but one huge issue was - how would an actual band playing instruments execute her originals? It was all Protools stuff. Could be done, but not in an obvious intuitive way.

See above.

Same. Either that or Uptown Funk, not sure which is newer.

Theory is that you want to play music that's current but not too current. If you try to play stuff in current radio rotation, you risk having to revamp your book constantly as songs unexpectedly fall our of the vernacular completely.....

Shouldn't that be part of the fun? A song comes in, is a big hit, then goes away, and maybe even comes back. "Uptown Funk" was kinda that way.

I tried to listen to the Spotify Top 40/50 the other day and stopped by the 3rd song, I didn't recognize anything and it was pretty emo, not in a rock way but r&b/rap.

Our most current song is Levitating (Dua Lipa) from 2020, then a few pop songs from 2014-2015.

"Levitating" is a good song, but you can't just listen to Top 40 radio occasionally. Just like anything you have to live with it for a while. Get familiar with the songs.

I just had a look in my countries top 40.
I know one song and four of the artists (at least by name).
Phew, that's a way to make one feel old.

Just start listening more.

 

[aetheldrea]

Too many people have rose tinted glasses…

top 40 or whatever always been meh. The good songs of the 70 (50 years ago) aren’t that much better … where are all the bands people are so proud and happy and rave about here ? No where that is where. People only remember the good.

Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1970 - Wikipedia

Those are some damme fine songs there. I was a baby at the time of this list, but I have played at least 20 of those songs in bands over the years. I bet that 50 years from now, no one will be able to say that about today’s top 40.

I believe that the first song on that list alone has more musical value than all the songs in the top 40 over the past 20 years, combined.

 

[gln1955]

Those are some damme fine songs there. I was a baby at the time of this list, but I have played at least 20 of those songs in bands over the years. I bet that 50 years from now, no one will be able to say that about today’s top 40.

I believe that the first song on that list alone has more musical value than all the songs in the top 40 over the past 20 years, combined.

I was in high school in 1970. That is quite a lot of great music coming out of one year.

I teach twenty-somethings and it's interesting how many are familiar with the classic rock I play and are not that into current top-40. The fragmentation of music delivery and other media is letting people find what they like and not be glued to the radio and TV. At least those with working brains.

 

[pepj]

No, "Don't Start Now" isn't a jam. It's a well crafted pop hit that CAN be played live with real musicians. Notice the bass player switch between bass guitar and key bass.
quote..

might have to be live but pretty sure it was written in the Producers DAW.
But it works anyhow..
great song

 

[groovepump]

For a few years, like around 2016-2018, I had a cover trio called Six Cowards, whose concept was to cover the top indie/alternative bands' hits from the last 20 years or so (since 2000). We played Arctic Monkeys, the Black Keys, Cage the Elephant, Death Cab for Cutie (this is my ABC list of artists...), etc.

The band was not a bar-circuit success, and I eventually shut it down a couple of years ago.

We played well, and got a lot of positive feedback. I'm not entirely sure what to attribute the lack of success to. It may have been simply that we weren't a bunch of party animals with gangs of hard-drinking friends who would follow us around. It may have been that we were "aging hipsters" (as our guitarist often dubbed himself) and older than the crowd that otherwise might have liked the set list.

Right around the time the band shut down, I was talking to a younger woman, a former student, who I would have thought of as the perfect target audience we were aiming for - 30, college educated, had a kind of alternative background life, etc. I invited her to gigs and hoped she would bring like-minded friends. She never came. When we talked music, and I asked what kind of artists she was into, her answer was - Meatloaf, Elton John, Hall and Oates, KISS...

There probably are some venues in each market where a current-pop setlist would go over great. There's always some contemporary song (All About that Bass, Exes and Ohs in the last few years) that everyone knows and women love. But I see young people on college campuses wearing AC/DC and Led Zeppelin tshirts. At my nephew's wedding a few weeks ago, my niece's boyfriend went absolutely bonkers dancing to Cottoneyed Joe. The assumption that "young people like new music, only old people like old music" is ITSELF an artifact of Boomer culture that no longer really applies.

I think that the digital revolution has made two really fundamental changes in the market.

First, it's fragmented. I like lots of contemporary artists - Samantha Fish, the Ben Miller Band, JD McPherson, Lake Street Dive, Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas. None of them are in the top 40, and I hear lots of current music yet don't even recognize anything on the top 40. I don't think it's just me; the top 40 no longer dominates the listening habits of young people (which I no longer am) the way it used to.

Second, it's leveled things. What I mean is that in the world of digital streaming and youtube, a young person exploring music can find Queen or Frank Sinatra as easily as they find Billie Eilish or the Weeknd. You no longer have this kind of "chronological hierarchy" where new music is everywhere and old music fades deeper and deeper to the back of the record store or the ends of the radio dial. A 30-year-old in a bar is as likely to be an Elton John fan as an Ed Sheeran fan.

That's not a reason to avoid playing new songs, if they fit your sound and your crowd. But it just doesn't seem like contemporary hits translate into cover-band world the same way as one might expect.

Interesting perspective. I think I see the same thing at the wine bars we play at. It surprises me how "younger" people are so into the 70's rock stuff, and how the dance floor fills up with some of the older stuff I think is overdone. The stuff that bores me to play it, but it brings dancers with their tips. The modern stuff, I mean, "today" top 40's, people sit through it, but jump when you play Wagon Wheel, Sweet Caroline, Pretty woman, AC/DC, Guns & Roses, ZZ Top, etc.

 

[two fingers]

Yes, you're in a whole different world!

"Don't Start Now" is a well crafted song, and well done.


The Weeknd does have some good songs, though.




I would guarantee that there is a Top 40 radio station in your area.


I guess, if you like being out of touch. Have you heard of Doja Cat?


Can you post your songlist?


Yeah, grunge, as popular as it was on FM radio, didn't have many songs on Top 40 Radio.


No, "Don't Start Now" isn't a jam. It's a well crafted pop hit that CAN be played live with real musicians. Notice the bass player switch between bass guitar and key bass.



See above.


Shouldn't that be part of the fun? A song comes in, is a big hit, then goes away, and maybe even comes back. "Uptown Funk" was kinda that way.


"Levitating" is a good song, but you can't just listen to Top 40 radio occasionally. Just like anything you have to live with it for a while. Get familiar with the songs.


Just start listening more.

I think you take your pop music, and us, a little too seriously.

 

[Pazelaya93]

The only celebration type song i can think of that is recent is the one from trolls by Timberlake.
BTW, that song has a really good bassline

 

[Lesfunk]

Y’all mean like “bougie like natty in da styrofoam “?

 

[tbz]

most of the Billboard Hot 100 seems to be Kanye.

I thought you were joking. But wow. Yeah.

That is quite depressing.

 

[tbz]

I only saw him once, with the Experience, and they opened with Come On Pt. 1. No Part 2. That was the first time I heard it. I figured any Hendrix Part 2 would either be a typo, or something released by Experience Hendrix that I don't know about.

The song was written by Earl King, and youtube has this with his Parts 1 & 2.

Based on the running time, listed on the 45 of the two songs, shown in the video, the first 2:20 of the song in that video, is part one. From 2:21-4:35 we’re hearing part 2.

Part 2 in the Hendrix song would technically happen at the 2:10 mark.

It’s basically the interlude before the last verse, the last verse, and outro.

As a result I’m pretty sure the original reference in this thread wasn’t quite accurate.

 

[generalduncan]

Is there anything in Top 40 that is playable with regular instruments like guitar, bass or drums?

 

[LBS-bass]

As a result I’m pretty sure the original reference in this thread wasn’t quite accurate.

I'm not sure if you mean that what I posted as part 2 isn't accurately part 2, or what? This is what bands around here are commonly calling part 2 and that's what the guitarist learned and plays under the name part 2. That's about all I know, but if you ask the blues guys around here to play part 2 all of that stuff in the video I posted is what they will play

 

[two fingers]

I'm not sure if you mean that what I posted as part 2 isn't accurately part 2, or what? This is what bands around here are commonly calling part 2 and that's what the guitarist learned and plays under the name part 2. That's about all I know, but if you ask the blues guys around here to play part 2 all of that stuff in the video I posted is what they will play

Are you guys really debating a Hendrix song in a current top 40 thread?

Talk about a useless derail....

 

[Pings Bass]

The hilarious thing about playing in churches (or schools) is that the pops arrangements they get are always years out of date. The 50- or 60-something music directors think they're being hip with the kids, but the kids either haven't heard of the song or, if they have, recognize it as hopelessly old and uncool. This is how i came to play a 2008 Coldplay hit ca. 2016 with a high school hand bell choir.

I've hated pops arrangements since i was forced to play the Association's 1967 hit Windy in fifth grade band ca. 1976.

Anyway, sorry, i know that's not the same as actually doing covers of current pop, it's just as close as I've come.

 

[LBS-bass]

Are you guys really debating a Hendrix song in a current top 40 thread?

Talk about a useless derail....

Hey, I just put it in here as an example of the crazy stuff young people will dance to. It's everyone else who wants to fix the title for me.

 

[Chicken Wing]

Thanks for asking but no, my band hasn't hit the top 40 yet.