{"id":260,"date":"2010-03-25T19:13:39","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T19:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=260"},"modified":"2010-03-25T19:13:39","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T19:13:39","slug":"number-1s-of-2010-21-march-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=260","title":{"rendered":"Number 1s of 2010 – 21 March 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of late, the charts seem to have slipped back into their old habit of having records enter high on release, and drop from there.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The last three number ones all entered at the top – though admittedly, one of them was a charity single, which is a special case.\u00a0 Thankfully, this week we’re back to a record that has seemingly taken forever to climb the chart.<\/p>\n

“Telephone” by Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce<\/strong> is one of the bonus tracks from the “Fame Monster” special edition of Lady Gaga’s debut album.\u00a0 It first charted as an album track download back in December 2009, when it got to number 30.\u00a0 It’s been hovering around the top 75 almost uninterrupted since then.\u00a0 A slow-build towards promoting it as a proper single led to it re-entering the top 40 several weeks ago, and make a painfully slow 39-39-34-37-31-12-1 climb to the top.\u00a0 Why the sudden leap up the chart this week?\u00a0 Well, mainly because the video came out.<\/p>\n

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This is the full length version of the video, by the way, so set aside ten minutes if you want to watch the whole thing.\u00a0 To be honest, I’m not really sold on it.\u00a0 I think it’s trying too hard.\u00a0 “Telephone” is a basically straightforward song about being pestered with phone calls when you’re out clubbing.\u00a0 Lady Gaga videos are generally eccentric, which is fine, but bits of this come across as rather blatant controversy-baiting, and that’s not so good.<\/p>\n

It’s directed by Jonas Akerlund, the sort of video director who gets retrospectives at film festivals.\u00a0 He was also responsible for “Paparazzi”<\/a>, which is a pretty good video.\u00a0 But he lapses into shock tactics from time to time\u00a0 – see, for example, his video for the Prodigy’s “Smack my Bitch Up”<\/a> (NSFW, duh), which still gets wheeled out regularly on late-night music channels.<\/p>\n

That said, his videography is actually pretty varied – he was responsible for things like “Ray of Light”<\/a>, not to mention a bunch of videos for the likes of Metallica and even Roxette and James Blunt<\/a>.\u00a0 He’s not a one-trick pony by any means.\u00a0 And one of his most heavily censored videos in the UK was an accident.\u00a0 The Cardigans’ “My Favourite Game” from 1998 was not supposed to be especially controversial; Akerlund apparently thought that a few edits would make it fine for daytime airplay. What actually happened was that the whole concept was deemed objectionable on the grounds that it encouraged reckless driving.\u00a0 The UK daytime edit ended up as a spectacularly boring video of the lead singer driving along uneventfully in a car.\u00a0 Here’s what it was meant to be like.<\/p>\n

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Digression: the point of making gratuitously controversial videos used to be to get them banned, or possibly get some friendly network to give you a special showing after the watershed.\u00a0 These days, the point is presumably to get people to search you out online.\u00a0 There is in fact an edit of “Telephone”, and that’s hardly surprising because all else being equal you’d quite like the added airplay from the TV music channels.\u00a0 But the rise of the internet has somewhat changed the dynamics of making unbroadcastable videos.<\/p>\n

It may also have put an end to the sub-genre of what you might call “anti-videos” – videos so cheap, amateurish or dull that the joke was the audacity of submitting them for broadcast in the first place.\u00a0 That only works if you’re sneaking it on to late night MTV or the backwaters of BBC2; it’s not really funny if you do it on YouTube.\u00a0 I’m thinking of things like the Wildhearts’ “Red Light, Green Light”<\/a> (go on, guess) and the Pixies’ “Velouria”<\/a>.\u00a0 Extreme examples, admittedly, but you don’t seem to get this sort of thing as much any more.<\/p>\n

Where was I?\u00a0 Oh yes… Lady Gaga.\u00a0 “Telephone” is her seventh top 40 hit in only 15 months, and her fourth number one.\u00a0 It’s an extraordinary strike rate and the sort of thing that Madonna used to manage in the 80s.\u00a0 Beyonce’s guest appearance gives her an 18th solo hit, and her fifth number 1 (the others being “Crazy in Love”, “Deja Vu”, “Beautiful Liar” and “If I Were A Boy”).<\/p>\n

Also charting over the last couple of weeks:<\/p>\n