Of the new top songs and their respective videos that have come out I have selected five and have written a commentary for each. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. 
Mariah Carey — We Belong Together
There is a reason people have dubbed Mariah Carey, Mariah Scarey. Over the years she has become not only emotionally unstable but severely musically challenged not to mention engulfed by her fried, head-consuming weave. I guess she and Beyonce Knowles are competing over who will be the next young artist to succeed Diana Ross as the queen of monster weaves. Currently they are tied but Mariah is mentally ahead in the race as she speeds towards greater heights of career insanity with her crazed divadom.
Poor Mariah, she used to be so unique and had such a pretty voice. And her high-pitched vocal gymnastics were impressive though they did grow old after a while. These days she sounds exactly like every other R&B and Soul singer on the market. If it wasn't for watching the video I would have no idea who was actually singing the song.
Mariah has become yet another canned act. This is evident in her new single, We Belong Together. While mildly catchy melodically, Mariah's singing is flat and emotionless. She spends more time concentrating on making her vocals smooth and lovely. The result is in-key singing that has absolutely no emotion to it whatsoever. When it comes time for the parts that are really emotionally charged she does this whole affected but controlled yell-thing with her voice that results in the lyrics being mushed together.
The video itself is another manufactured tragedy. Apparently when "Mimi" was emancipated she had to flee so fast that she didn't have time to grab her pants, let alone a bottom of any kind for that matter. Mariah spends the entire video in heals and a slip, sometimes a pull over sweater, singing heartbrokenly about how she and her man belong together. Well put some pants on woman and maybe you can actually go out in public and see him...
When Mariah finally does decide to put on something more substantial she opts for a ginormous white wedding dress with a train so long it makes Princess Diana's wedding train look like a table cloth. The dress itself is so huge southern brides with Texas big hair obsessions would be terrified of its ability to actually swallow Mariah's dead mane whole. There is so much material in and under the skirt that she can barely walk let alone run down the steps of the fairytale castle where the wedding takes place.
I don't understand the appeal of Mariah's new hit. It's completely uninteresting and isn't unique sounding. Yet people are eating it up like ice cream on a hot summer day. What the fuck? Am I the only one who sees that this song is nothing more than a total fluff piece?
Kelly Clarkson — Behind These Hazel Eyes
Kelly Clarkson is a very talented vocalist, the problem is that she is controlled by a big name record label that is more concerned with making money and hollow songs rather than quality works. The woman has a voice and stage presence that can sell records people, why don't you stop holding the leash so tight and actually let her make music that is actually good!?!
Her latest single, Behind These Hazel Eyes, is yet another emotionally orchestrated Top 40 Delight that demonstrates once again how sad it is when a true talent is controlled by a record label. The song itself is good but Kelly's singing suffers from a lack of genuine emotion and sincerity, which can be directly linked to her lack of experience both artistically and personally. You don't get the sense that she is truly feeling the emotions and meaning of the songs that she is singing. With less stylized coaching and more time she could be a truly knockout talent. Unfortunately American Idol and the record company's desires to have a quick buck will drive her already faltering career into the ground. Truly sad.
As for the music video, runaway brides and broken marriages are apparently in vogue this season as both Kelly Clarkson and Mariah Carey both used this motif in their latest vids. For Mariah it's leaving some stable looking dude at the altar for a young kid in a tux and high-tops. Yeah that's a good move. For Kelly it's leaving a cheating fiancé at the altar and running through a graveyard and then diving face first into the mud and trashing about. Guess the female pro wrestler couldn't make the shoot so Kelly had to hold her own.
Shakira — La Tortura
Does anyone remember the last really huge Brazilian female vocal act to take the US by storm and then fizzle out faster then grease flames on an open burner? No? Let me remind you then: Carmen Miranda. Yes, Carmen Miranda, the ruffle skirted, fruit basket hat wearing samba soultress from the 1940's and 50's who came to America with a dream to achieve greatness. Instead she was sold as the top sex act of the day, made canned Americanized salsa songs and overnight became hated in her own country and tossed aside by the US when they got bored with her. She also tragically died a few years after her career crash, but I digress...
Shakira hit the scene several years ago and shook her tits and ass into the hearts of horny wanker boys everywhere. Armed with a Spanish-English dictionary she penned an album of unoriginal bilingual dance hits and gained instant cult popularity. Think Jewel but Latina, with a tight body poured into skin tight leather jeans and lots of open leg, cooch exposing moves a-la-a Lil' Kim. After her big debut she went silent on the music scene and those of us with good taste hoped her flash in the pan career was over.
Looks like we hoped to soon. Shakira is back, and this time she's armed with a two album project. The first album is entitled Fijacion Oral Vol. 1 and is all in Spanish while the second is entitled Oral Fixation Vol. 2 and is all in English. Again the overt sex theme is apparent from the beginning, which doesn't really bother me, except that with Shakira her sex image somehow comes off being dirty like a back alley hooker or Madonna circa Erotica. Take your pick. It's not sexy but trashy. Very trashy.
So anyway, I listened to Shakira's new single La Tortura and watched the video. For those of you who don't speak Spanish, "La Tortura" mean "The Torture" which is exactly what listening to Shakira's music is: torture. She doesn't really sing so much as speak the words along with the melody. Multiple "aiy's" and guttural grunts make up the staple of her musical compositions, replacing the vernacular one would expect from a bilingual singer songwriter. The song itself isn't even good. It's just sub-par, manufactured Latin rythms married with pounding bass and Shakira's overtly husky (she sounds like she has bronchitis) vocals.
To make things more interesting she has made the song a duet with some really hot Latin singer by the name of Alejandro Sanz. He's about the most interesting thing to watch in the video, though his player antics and multiple simulated rapes of Shakira are extremely disturbing.
Which brings me to the actual "content" of the video. Shakira's "role" in the video is basically to get rapped and hump anything with and without a pulse while showing us that she can spread her legs really far apart. Apparently pumping one's breasts and abdominal muscles to the beat like Tom Cruise pumping his fists on Oprah's couch while covered in motor oil(!?!) are supposed to make up for the bad cinematography and lack of followable, let along disinteresting content of the music video. I could put on a porn movie and see less solo furniture humping and more believable fabricated sex. Shakira getting dry humped by Alejandro against the counter while slicing vegetables is real classy. I'm sure her legion of hard-up wanker boy fans are thanking her at this very moment for those visual images. Just think, somewhere out in cyber space some guy has just shorted out his keyboard watching this video. You know I honestly I kept waiting for her to slice her hand off or stab the guy and actually bring some element of surprise to the video. Guess I hoped for too much because it never happened.
I also love the message conveyed by the video itself. Apparently we need more justification for voyeurism, breaking and entering, and rape. Yeah. You've come along way in helping to empower women Shakira. In case you hadn't noticed it is illegal, even in Brazil, to rape someone. Though when you are a green card crazed nymphomaniac I guess that doesn't really matter.
Shakira's act has always been, and will continue to be cheap and flashy with a shelf life of your average orgasm. You only have to look at her to see that she is $2 away from being a red light district special. She'll more than likely go the way of Carmen Miranda. Hmmm could Shakira be just a tutti-frutti hat and a flamenco skirt away from making history all over again? Hopefully Shakira's "Oral Fixation" or "Fijation Oral" will stay with her through the next stage of her career: as a McDonald's drive thru cashier. Aiy-aiy-aiy would you like a some fries with that?
Jessica Simpson — These Boots Where Made For Walkin'
Time and again I ask myself how long Jessica Simpson's last second of fame can last? You know when her career started to cool down at the end of the 90's along with The Backstreet Boys I had hoped we would be released from the clutches of yet another untalented, dumb blonde, hack. Though stupid me I know for a fact that when one blonde goes brunette three more brunettes jump in the bottle to take her place!
Let's be real people, the girl is about as dumb as an entire ward of post-lobotomy patients. On top of which the bitch can't sing! The only reason she has risen to fame is because she is some horny straight man's idea of sexy. Her most recent single, These Boots Were Made For Walkin' demonstrates this perfectly.
The song is a "remake" (try total desiccation) of Nancy Sinatra's 1960's pop classic. Jessica's version is a disaster as horrific as the sinking of the Titanic. In a matter of seconds she successfully proves without a shadow of a doubt that she is a little bit country and a whole lot white trash, and reaffirms what we already knew: she CAN'T sing! Is it any wonder that people in other countries are willingly strapping bombs to themselves and detonating them? I have a theory their attempted take down of America is solely directed at the virally bad pop entertainment that has become our mainstream...
Almost all of the lyrics have been rewritten for no apparent reason, though you'd hardly know it since Jessica mushes all the words together to the point of near inaudibility in her attempt to sound trailor trash sexy. Not helping matters is the noise from the honky-tonk brawl going on in the background. You can barely make her voice out at all, though this is really a blessing from the sound engineers who are apparently trying to spare the masses by drowning out her twangy, sticky-sweat vocals. The addition of Willie Nelson on guitar and backing vocals is enough to drive listeners to the razor blades they keep in their bathrooms so that they may be put out of their misery.
As for the video it is completely floated and based around Jessica's Daisy Dukes. You can't even see her red boots for 90% of it. As the country freak show continues soon all of the women in the video are sporting denim hot pants, and given the fact they are all in a very dirty and nasty honky-tonk bar I hate to think what that set must have smelled like after their collective vaginal infections (produced by the skin tight denim panties—I mean "shorts") flared up. And just to add an extra level of pukability, Jessica gives Willie a big ol' kiss on the mouth!
The video and song are so painful to watch and listen to that I had to turn it off halfway through. I had seen more than enough to finish casting judgment. The original song was not musically brilliant but Jesus Christ it was 100% better then this shitty, half-baked, country calamity. I swear, if this doesn't kill what remains of Jessica Simpson's faux-career nothing will!
Black Eyed Peas — Don't Phunk With My Heart
And last but not least Black Eyed Peas, more evidence that a stupid band name conotates stupid music. The "dance" music they attempt to create is so completely mindless not even Britney Spears would try to cover it. And yet despite the obvious, the public seem to be eating them up (no pun intended) anyway.
Their latest single, Don't Phunk With My Heart, showcases the very best (try very worst), of their faux-funk sounds. Not only is this song and its composition un-enjoyable, but it is also unoriginal and down right annoying. You can't dance to it, despite it being a "dance" song, and the endless litany of dialogue makes you feel like you are listening to poorly dubbed Mexican talk radio.
The music video is bizarre, and set up like Love Connection on crack. The female singer (Sorry I don't know any of their names because their website has ZERO info about them but tons of advertisements for contest and merchandise...) basically spends the whole video laying on a couch rubbing her legs together a-la Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and sporting hideous Heidi of the Mountain braids which are in desperate need of a cut and cream rinse. The primary male singer is dressed like the typical gansta rapper wannabe playa and attempts to woo her with such gems as , "I always want you with me, I'll play Bobby and you'll play Whitney." Yeah, that's a turn on, because those two are such a stable, healthy couple, minus the drugs and domestic assaults that is.
Adding insult to injury, or in this case bad to worse, is the main lyric of the song, "No, no, no, no, don't phunk with my heart" which is delivered in the most unbelievably lame way. The chick doesn't even make an effort to put any emotion into it on top of which it sounds like she is sporting a faux-Latina accent when she delivers it, though it's hard to tell. The song by itself is just plain awful and coupled with the video is worse. This is another one I turned off half way through. It was just too painful.
With any luck someone will realize soon that the Black Eyed Peas have long since hit their expire date and will be purging them from the shelf shortly. Perhaps the Jolly Green Giant will do the honors personally. Until then, cover your ears whenever their crap comes on the radio or is spun in the clubs.
BONUS SONG! Destiny's Child — Cater 2 U
This one's a quickie and quite frankly an easy one. After all anything with Beyonce Knowles in it is an easy target. Over all Destiny's Child is a hit or a miss with me. Some of their stuff is good and some of it isn't. Their final single Cater 2 U is beyond bad. In fact it pisses me off, not just because it's a bad song, but because it's so ANTI-feminist it sets the movement back to the 50's. I swear, this song is worse for women's lib than Shakira's entire catalogue of clothing and music videos combined.
The lyrics basically go on about how they want to worship their man like a God and give him manicures, prepare and serve his meals, wash his clothes, draw his bath, help him dress, and serve him like slaves all for the sake of keeping him happy. I shit you not!
Destiny's Child should be ashamed of themselves for even agreeing to sing such despicable lyrics. Do they not realize that as strong, independent, African-American women they have a social obligation to be a positive example to all of their female fans, especially the young impressionable ones? Gloria Steinem should scalp all three of them and burn their weaves (instead of a bras) at her next women's lib rally!
Is this really it? Is this what we have come down to as a society musically? Soulless, over-sexed, unoriginal, sexist garbage?! Urgh! I don't know why I let myself get so upset over this. I know better than to turn on mainstream music. I know from experience it is all trash. Once again, this is why I listen to independents and not so famous mainstream artists who actually CARE about what they put out there. I strongly encourage all of you to do the same.
