Other musical thoughts…

I hit most of my main thoughts on the current music scene in last week’s post, but a few things didn’t quite make it out of my noggin. Here are few more missives about today’s pop music.

• When did Maroon 5 become Jamiriqui? Seriously, I heard the last couple of Maroon 5 songs, and they sound like a wannabe funk band. After playing mostly regular pop-rock, their latest album is an interesting departure. Sounds different… just not too terribly original (although their debut album wasn’t exactly Pet Sounds).
• I keep hearing Quietdrive’s remake of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time.” Something just doesn’t work here. I think it’s that they just took the original arrangement, sped it up, and added some guitars and drums. Nothing too impressive. If they had made it a bit darker, changed it to a few minor chord progressions… maybe that would have worked better.
• At some point, I’m going to have to come up with a list of 80s songs that current artists should remake. Can’t we get Justin Timberlake to remake WHAM’s “Wake Me up before You Go Go?”
• Right now in the Billboard Top 50, I counted 13 songs that have a “featured” artist. Five are in the top 10.
• Beyond the “featuring” craze, perhaps my favorite trend is rap and R&B with poorly-spelled homonyms for names. They’ve been around for a while – Ludicris, Timbaland, Fabolous, Ne-Yo – but my new favorite is Soulja Boy. That’s just terrific.