Perfect Pop Tart Meme

[jere7my]

...oh. It's pop songs? Because I had this strawberry frosted Pop Tart that was toasted to sublimation....

John Scalzi asks us to look at the 3:00 songs in our music libraries and determine which of them are perfect three-minute pop songs.

• A Little Time (The Beautiful South): Well, obviously. Wry wit, one character taking her wandering lover to task, a little story in three minutes. And as bouncy as you like.
  
  
• Accidents Will Happen (Elvis Costello & The Attractions): Another gimme.
  
  
• After You've Gone (Django Reinhardt): Nice toe-tappin' jazz guitar, but not perfect pop.
  
  
• Chucking Out Time (Marine Research): It opens with the lines "La lala la la, la lala la la, la lala la la, la lala la la / La lala la la, la lala la la, la lala la la, la lala la la." So it's pop...but not perfect.
  
  
• Clowntime Is Over (Elvis Costello & The Attractions): Straining and aching: great for pop in the lyrics, anathema to pop in the vocal quality!
  
  
• Club Limbo (Squirrel Nut Zippers): Better listened to in a New Orleans alleyway. Not perfect pop.
  
  
• Corner To Corner (Sarah Vaughan): Great song, but not pop. Ache ache, little heart.
  
  
• Dark As A Dungeon (Johnny Cash): Too gravid to be a perfect pop song.
  
  
• Destination Venus (Man Or Astro-man?): Perhaps their poppiest song! It has lyrics and everything.
  
  
• Dick's Maggot (Bare Necessities): Not the least bit pop. Ask me again 300 years ago.
  
  
• Don't Worry About The Government (Talking Heads): Much as I like it, and while it seems like pop if you don't listen, it's too right-brain for pop perfection.
  
  
• God Bless The Child (Billie Holiday): Slow jazz, good for swaying in the dark, not so good for pop.
  
  
• Going Through the Motions (The Cast Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer): Can Broadway pastiches be pop? This is hard; it's catchy, but it opens with a long overture. Not perfect pop.
  
  
• Gooseberry Pie (Dean Kohler): It's Devo before there was Devo. Honest. Poppy!
  
  
• Greatest Love Of All (Big Daddy): They turned the bad kind of pop into the good kind! Go, Big Daddy!
  
  
• Green Lights (NRBQ): Nice enough rock & roll, not perfect pop.
  
  
• I Feel The Earth Move (Carole King): Can there be any doubt? "I feel the earth—" BAM! "—move—" BAM! "—under my feet."
  
  
• I Hope You're Happy Now (Elvis Costello): Ironically, the original might have fit, but this version from the Ryko Goodbye Cruel World doesn't.
  
  
• It Takes Two (Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston): Can you not tap your toes? Perfect pop!
  
  
• It's A Wonderful Life (Sparklehorse): Funereal, not poppy.
  
  
• Me Gusta Mas El Son (Beny Moré y Su Orquesta): Tippy-tappy pop, más perfecto!
  
  
• Miss Patricia Meagher (Silly Wizard): Finger-flickering squeezebox action, but not perfect pop.
  
  
• New Ride (The Dragstrip Syndicate): Sorry, Dragstrip Syndicate.
  
  
• Oliver's Army (Elvis Costello & The Attractions): If a song about class discrimination in armed forces conscription can make me bob my head and sing along, it must be perfect pop!
  
  
• Payday (Elvis Costello): Nice enough blues, not perfect pop.
  
  
• Railroad Boy (The Magnetic Fields): Far-off-look-in-your-eye sort of pop, but perfect pop indeed.
  
  
• Rusty D-con-STRUCK-tion (Ashley MacIsaac): Sort of a thrash jig. Bzzt.
  
  
• San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) (Scott McKenzie): I may draw some flak for this, but I can't grant this one the crown.
  
  
• Satisfaction (Otis Redding): Otis Redding covers the Stones? How could that be pop?
  
  
• Settled Down Like Rain (The Jayhawks): The Jayhawks produce a lot of perfect pop songs, but only this one is three minutes long.
  
  
• Shotgun (Jr. Walker & The All Stars): "It's your thang! Do what you wanna...oh, no, wait."
  
  
• Somebody To Love (Jefferson Airplane): Thundery pop perfection: go, Slick, go!
  
  
• Song For The Dead (Randy Newman): What do you think?
  
  
• Sweet Dreams (Elvis Costello & The Attractions): Perfect country-pop heartbreak.
  
  
• Sweet Leilani (Les Paul): It makes me want to go back to Hawai'i and lie on the beach at Haunama Bay. Which sort of eliminates it from consideration.
  
  
• The Day Walk (Never Before) (The Byrds): Perfect rock, yes. Perfect pop, no.
  
  
• The Dream Police (David Byrne): Can a cha-cha be pop? If so, I'll grant this the title.
  
  
• The Flirting Kind (Elvis Costello & The Attractions): Lovely ditty, but there are perfecter pop songs on Punch the Clock.
  
  
• The Great Unknown (Elvis Costello): Perhaps with a different mix....
  
  
• The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan): The definitive folk song...which means it can't be perfect pop, I daresay.
  
  
• The Water Is Wide (James Taylor): Too sad!
  
  
• This Old Town (Nanci Griffith): "And this ol' town / shoulda burned down / in 1931." Country-fried perfect pop.
  
  
• Time To Go (Sarah Vaughan): Slatternly blues.
  
  
• Trepanned (The Donner Party): Well, no. But it's about trepanation!
  
  
• Unfinished (Barenaked Ladies): Nah, which is a little surprising, given that it's BNL. It lurches.
  
  
• Watch Your Step (Elvis Costello & The Attractions): "When you're kicking in the courtroom / And you're drinking down the Eau de Cologne / And you're spitting out the Kodachrome / You better watch your step." Slow groovy pop.
  

Thanks to Vardibidian.

Comments

[foxfour.livejournal.com]

i dispute some of your selections - oliver's army, for example, while an excellent song, is, in fact, 2:58 long. thus, disqualified.

or am i nitpicking?

more to the point, of all my exactly-three-minute songs, only one is vaguely pop - the rest seem to somehow be mozart or puirt a baroque. that one song is "crazy horse" by stereo total, the lyics of which consist almost entirely of "crazy. crazy horse in paris, france." on repeat. in a french accent.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

i dispute some of your selections - oliver's army, for example, while an excellent song, is, in fact, 2:58 long. thus, disqualified.

Ah, but how do you know it is 2:58? All of these are 3:00 long according to iTunes, which is a fine arbitrary standard to apply.

[foxfour.livejournal.com]

i was using the same standard. my itunes says it's 2:58.

:poke:

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

All right. There's only one way to settle this:

iTunes-a-thon death match TO THE DEATH!

(Now, where do I find a little spiked collar that will fit iTunes?)

[miraling.livejournal.com]

!!!!

THIS INTERACTION IS ADORABLE!

!!!

::swoons::

[foxfour.livejournal.com]

raaar! let's do it!

[god-of-belac.livejournal.com]

Itunes, I choose you!

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I prefer the original question. The perfect Pop Tart is Mud & Bugs.