Today's lonely pop stars..

[The Curmudgeon]

Take a look at this recent snap shot of the UK top ten. I imagine it's pretty similar to the US, give or take.

Observant eyes on, people. What do you notice?

1. Bingo Players - Get Up (Featuring Far East Movement)
2. Will.I.Am - Scream and Shout (Featuring Britney Spears)
3. Taylor Swift - I Knew You Were Trouble
4. Rihanna - Stay (Featuring Mikky Ekko)
5. Calvin Harris - Drinking From the Bottle (Featuring Tinie Tempah)
6. Conor Maynard - Animal (Featuring Wiley)
7. 50 Cent - My Life (Featuring Adam Levine and Eminem)
8. Justin Timberlake - Suit and Tie (Featuring Jay-Z)
9. James Arthur - Impossible
10. Pitbull - Don't Stop the Party (Featuring TJR)


Now, if you'd answered "they're all dreadful?" You'd be correct and get 10 points to Gryffindor. If you'd ALSO noticed that a depressing 8 out of 10 chart entries are "featuring" someone else, you'd get 20 points. The only acts to sing by themselves are Taylor Swift (not my kind of thing, but she writes her own songs, has a nice voice and is pretty damn smoking to boot. I have no problem with her being in a pop chart top ten) and James Arthur, current X Factor winner and future unemployed singer.

So think of that for a second. EIGHT of the biggest selling songs in the world right now are by artists teaming up with other acts. The entire fucking chart is littered with them. When did this start? Imagine back in the day if, say, Prince teamed up with every 80's star like Madonna or MJ? It just didn't happen. And when things like that DID happen, it was a major event, a combination of monster talents (think Bowie and Queen or Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney).

Now, it seems for a song to tick the right boxes and make the correct playlists for media saturation, it needs to "feature" some dickhead, show me the money rapper or some other pop prick. Oh, you want to break the US? Here, get a shoe-horned in rap from a current flavour of the month American rapper. Want some street cred? Here, Justin fucking Bieber, here's Ludacriss drop kicking his dignity into the toilet for your latest single.

Truly depressing stuff. And it doesn't look like it's ever going to change.

[Ben]

It's confusing, that's for sure. I'm sure it's all part of the marketing ploy to get these fools exposed to as many people and different demographics as possible, but since I'm not the kind of guy who's impressed with collaborations such as these I don't really understand why or how it helps an artist's popularity.

You're right, though- it's been going on for awhile. 5 years ago me and a buddy recorded half of our debut "gangsta" rap album titled "The Featuring" in mockery of this phenomenon. We so fly, nigga.

[trashcanman]

There's this creepy old lady at my work who's obsessed with Beiber. She told me she usually doesn't like those "black rappers", but that Beiber had them on his album so they were cool. That pretty much says it all. People don't like music or musicians, they like celebrities and they like celebrities that hang out with their favorite celebrities. So all of these stupid duets are pretty much just a way of gathering all of the celeb-worshippers into one big ball of money who will buy any and every major release. Also, before you give too much credit to Swift for writing her own songs, take a listen to said songs. Even Nickelback would find this shit shallow, childish, and moronic.

www.youtube.com/user/MondayMorningsTNT?v=BxsiZV79-sE

"The Featuring" sounds like a goddamn genius idea, Ben.