mildly-amusing story with a gratuitous butt shot can be found here. Kylie Minogue is apparently a star now, which I find odd.  My only real exposure to her is from pictures like this or these, but I remember hearing of her years ago, I think late 80's, when she had a hit with a cover of Do the Locomotion, or something like that.  My only memory of that was a Wham-looking video with lots of Up With People looking actors dancing poorly, and Kylie with an enormous bad perm, smiling and bouncing around like the star of a Noxzema commercial, while wearing a thin leotard with no bra and very pointy pointies, if you know what I mean.  They claim she is 33, which doesn't seem quite possible, since I thought she was 25ish way back then, which must be 12 or 15 years ago.  Anyway, she's got a cute butt and isn't afraid to show it off, (there appear to be nearly infinite shots of her easily found, and then tons more on every celeb nude site) plus she's from Oz, so topless photos aren't any biggie.  Which means she's obligated to show more than that all the time to get any attention.  Pity this doesn't hold true for US celebs.  *cough*

Anyway, I find it funny that they're selling the hot pants she wore in a video, but more over that she's now famous.  Every year, sometimes twice a year, there's some new pop song from some otherwise unknown or forgotten artist, and it's suddenly a huge hit, before vanishing mercifully.  Who Let the Dogs Out and The Macarena are two that spring to mind by bands no one had ever heard of before and will never hear of again. Both of those are basically cover songs anyway, popular bar songs from somewhere that one group happened to record first and got famous for.  Artists do the same thing, Ricky Martin had that Living la Vida Loca song some years ago, Cher had some sort of dance song last year, Kylie has this song with the hot pants, etc.  You can throw in every Britney Spears song as well, I'd say. My point is that I've never heard any of them, at least not while they were famous (I've had to hear the fucking Macarena and that goddamn Dogs Out song at work about 50x, but since I'm not there by choice, it doesn't count) just heard of them, in magazine and internet news about things.

Pop songs are so far off of my radar; whenever I see a listing of the top 40, I've heard of maybe 10 songs/artists, and actually heard maybe 5 of the songs.  And usually 4 of those are some wimpy rock/alternative songs that have "crossed over", whatever that means.  I don't know who listens to top 40 radio, I guess teenagers, girls mostly? I never listened to that crap when I was 16, I was all into Thrash Metal then anyway, Megadeth and Metallica and such, back when both bands were good.  Apparently someone listens to that stuff though, and magazine people think it's popular and worth writing articles about.  Music is funny, in that it's so ghettoized and segregated.  I don't mean by race necessarily, though obviously that happens, but mostly in terms of groups of people listen to the music they like, and seldom to other types of music. Yet somehow one particular type of light pop/R&B is branded "top 40".  Once in a while a rock album sells a ton of copies and some tracks off of it end up on the top 40, but does that mean that pop stations are playing Creed or Pearl Jam or whatever socially-acceptable rock tracks are deemed "top 40"?  I can't see them putting that on after a Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, n'synch song block...  And no, I'm not going to listen to find out, I loathe top 40 music.

I guess my point, if I have one (other than an excuse to link to pics of Kylie Minogue nude), is that it seems odd to brand the most popular songs of one genre of music as "top 40", and post lists of it, when there are so many stations that play zero songs of that type ever.  Shouldn't the top 40 be the top 5 or 10 songs from all different genres?  Rock, alternative, country, rap, R&B, etc?  That would make for a goulash sound that no one would listen to for long though, since really no one has the taste for all different types of music.  I certainly wouldn't sit through some Destiny's Child shriek-fest to hear if the next song up was Godsmack, fer 'nst'nce.

I've long thought album reviews to be pointless, since I'm never going to listen to any country album, R&B, etc, no matter if it gets 5 stars or 1 star.  And fans of those types of music aren't going to get the new Sepultura album even if critics say it's the best crushing metal sound in 20 years.  It's meaningless to compare across musical genres; they should just have rating scales by type of music, and only compare pop to other pop, metal to other metal, etc.

Odd how this is the case, while Movies are much more universal.  Obviously there are chick flicks and art flicks and action flicks, with their proponents, but the biggest mindless action movie fan (you've already seen The Scorpion King twice) won't find it too painful to sit through Titanic, though he'd probably not go by choice.  And could say if it were well done or not, and if he enjoyed it, which he might.  TV shows are somewhat the same; there are obvious genres, but the top shows are watched by all types, and sit com fans will watch a drama if it's good, and enjoy it.

Which I guess explains why the Academy Awards are one of the biggest shows of the year, while the Grammys are on the UPN at 2am on a Wednesday.