Only Girl In The POLL: Female singers of the 21st century (so far)

needs an option for "specifically not ke$ha"

Had we done this in a week or two, she would've probably had another Top 10 to her name.

LeRoo do you have lists of each's top 10s for the decade? if not i might attempt to throw that together since it would help me figure out who i actually like based on their recent material and not just earlier stuff

ah nevermind i thought this was just for the 2010s, it should be easy to remember what stuff is from the '90s or later

Would be nice if something about this being mostly Anglophone chart topping pop music the thread title since that's all it is.

Otherwise, the list is a travesty considering some of the others out there.

Taylor Swift. Does she not count because she's country?

ah yeah she's had six top 10s, must be an oversight

i'm still overthinking this and wondering whether i should be voting based on the artist in general or their top 10 hits (if in the latter case lol Fergie could have a fighting chance)

Hmpf. Write in for TS then.

Taylor Swift is definitely supposed to be there. Not sure what happened :-(

Surprised to see that Norah Jones doesn't qualify ("Don't Know Why" is her only top 10 single).

NO. 1 AT STARBUCKS

I guess Destiny's Child could've been included. They had 8 top 10's from 2000 and onwards.

Taylor Swift is definitely supposed to be there. Not sure what happened :-(

The Internet became self-aware and intervened on our behalf?

Surprised to see that Norah Jones doesn't qualify ("Don't Know Why" is her only top 10 single).

― canonical casual cordouroy (Eazy), Thursday, September 27, 2012 12:02 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't remember her having any other songs

new norah jones album is decent

also since somehow noone else has posted this yet: THIS IS EASILY BEYONCE PLZ

Voting Gaga cause I like her more, but yeah, balls is basically right - - - nobody else here even approaches the sense of "star power" and dominant force, or even just consistency of material. She's put out a few stinkers ("Girls" is actually probably the only one of her singles I straight up hate) but a ton of killer material. Britney maybe up there too but it's just been too rocky of a road, IMO. Rihanna's highs are really high but there's a lot of meh in those twenty-two (!) songs IMO.

Not one of these femme fatales inspires me like Harriet Wheeler, Dionne, or even Nancy Sinatra...

Guess it has to be Madonna for her staying power...

CIARA

lol seriously?

Guess it has to be Madonna for her staying power...

― Tyler Burns (burns46✧✧✧@ya✧✧✧.c✧✧), Thursday, September 27, 2012 3:11 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you vote for Madonna, you're not voting for her '80s and '90s hits, you're voting for "Music," "Don't Tell Me," "Die Another Day," "Hung Up," "4 Minutes" and "Give Me All Your Luvin'" fyi

Why on earth would you vote for Ciara over Beyonce?

if you vote for Madonna, you're not voting for her '80s and '90s hits, you're voting for "Music," "Don't Tell Me," "Die Another Day," "Hung Up," "4 Minutes" and "Give Me All Your Luvin'" fyi

which is very defensible

ciara unhesitatingly for me (not nec for her actual top 10 hits, for her general output this century)

C'mon, who's trying to pretend that Hung Up isn't a grade a weapons fucking banger

Still find it difficult to take Ciara seriously as a pop star in her own right rather than the slightly boring girl they give everyone else's offcuts to. Even when she's made records I love it's not hard to imagine them being better without someone else fronting them.

i wasn't saying "Hung Up" is bad (i don't love it but "Don't Tell Me" is a personal classic), just that voting for Madonna for 'staying power' is missing the point that her 21st century catalog is not remotely better than many others here

Still find it difficult to take Ciara seriously as a pop star in her own right rather than the slightly boring girl they give everyone else's offcuts to. Even when she's made records I love it's not hard to imagine them being better without someone else fronting them.

one of the oddities of ciara's career is the way she ended up carving out a very distinctive persona even as she completely fell out of commercial relevance (and at the same time as desperately trying to cling on).

There is nothing distinctive about her persona, that's the problem.

Like she's this amazing dancer plus thin voice plus apparently nice enough person but her persona itself is oddly translucent and seems to change completely according to whoever is writing the songs and what they're about.

Rihanna
P!nk
Alicia Keys
Cristina Aguilera
Missy Elliott

I have not put these in order yet, but these are my top 5.

in terms of top 10 hits i'd probably go with Kelly Clarkson or Missy Elliott (or lol Fergie). for overall catalog i might go with Pink or Beyonce but they've put some pretty annoying songs in the top 10 (and most of B's best missed the top 10).

Probably would've voted Beyonce, but I tend to hate the songs of hers ILM loves and love the ones ILM hates, so voted Missy instead.

Ciara has at least four all-timers, tho.

Ciara is the most boring female singer in pop R&B who isn't named Keri Hilson. Also everyone thank your lucky stars that people en masse finally got tired of Ashanti.

Voting Beyonce, probably

I mean Promise + Oh + Ride + Like A Boy alone are better than what most of the people on this list have managed, but they've never found a way to make her a compelling or interesting pop star.

+ 1, 2 Step + I Run It + spot on Lose Control

(mostly reacting against the "everyone else's offcuts" angle, more so than the "she's boring" one)

The only Ciara song I care about is "Goodies"

100% I would have voted for Taylor Swift, but given the choices I'm gonna pick Beyonce, though I think that all of these have good songs.

FWIW I would vote for Ciara a billion times before I voted for Taylor Swift

it is kind of nice that we've been denied the depressing inevitability of a swift landslide

decided to vote for Missy, just because i'm still delighted that she made "Gossip Folks" a top 10 hit

the swift landslider, flex the white-gold tarantula

Missy would have this easy if she hadn't kind of vanished from the radar right around "Lose Control." Everything up through that was pretty much the best shit on the radio.

Missy is a very strong contender against my Beyonce kneejerk

then again I don't know if Missy has a video like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibauCcnPpas

i will admit that i have developed a really strange liking for that current taylor swift song but in general i hate her and her weird little cat face plus she let that hulking monstrosity john mayer touch her which speaks volumes abt her ability to make decisions

but Beyonce as singles artist is clearly at the peak of her powers, "Run the World" aside.

wow, actually reading that article it is even stupider than I thought:

"While pure pop has comprised more than 60% of all Pop Songs top 10s each year since 2008, the sound encompassed just 41% in 1993, when R&B from the likes of Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and TLC infused format playlists. "

R&B is pure pop!

guys it really isn't complicated

they're just distinguishing pop-as-genre artists (Gaga, Katy, Kelly, Pink) from top 10 acts who might be primarily identified as R&B or rock or country or hip-hop

i mean the article is about the Pop Songs chart, they're talking about popular artists who aren't also successful on, say, the R&B chart like Beyonce, Mariah, etc.

"the likes of"

we all remember how Pink's career started, right

showing her vagina to some guy, right?

her first album's singles were all more successful on Pop Songs than Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, aesthetics notwithstanding (xpost)

Gaga, Katy, and Kelly have all had #1 singles on the club/dance charts. Pure pop = disco-pop?

Madonna has had a bazillion club/dance #1s, that chart's makeup is more artists considered 'pop' than any particular strain of dance music

More clubs mostly play top 40 (or dance remixes of top 40) than you'd think.

yeah unless someone actually wants to make the argument that there's anywhere near the crossover between the r&b and pop chart as there was eight to ten years ago then anyone agog at this is showing a bizarre unfamiliarity w/ the concepts of 'radio', 'charts', 'billboard', 'r&b', and 'pop'.

sorry I'm not going to buy into this "pure pop" thing

ok joe morgan

who's joe morgan

unskewed billboard charts show jazmine sullivan has actually had several top ten pop hits, not peaked at #31 on hot 100.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

kinda surprised by the showing for Rihanna. so few of all those top 10 hits are actually memorable or good at all.

she's the pop equivalent of that overplayed Kael meme: I know nobody, including non-critics, who likes her. And there she is.

Surprised by the lone vote for Britney. Glad Ke$ha beat K. Perry.

Rihanna has always been inconsistent but I unabashedly love about a dozen or so of her hits.

i liked not loved rihanna when she was starting out - ok pop dancehall (which i'm pretty much always in favor of, though 'pon de replay' fell far far short of lumidee or nina sky), and she managed to inadvertantly smuggle schaffel onto the radio. 'umbrella' was the first thing she did that i loved, the first thing she did that sounded better in reality than on paper. it was also the last thing she did that i loved. enjoyed her ti guest spot and 'rude boy' enough and 's&m' was fun enough (though tbh she's so fucking hot that i can't accurately gauge how good a song where she's basically going 'spank me james' actually is) but the others, the foundation her superstardom is built on, haven't really made an impression favorable or otherwise on me. not that i would've voted for either but gwen's got two hits i like as much as almost anything by anyone up there and nelly furtado's got one.

11 votes for rihanna is insane

i mean i like her as much as the next person but c'mon

Taylor swift

Poll is invalid

's&m' was fun enough (though tbh she's so fucking hot that i can't accurately gauge how good a song where she's basically going 'spank me james' actually is)

lmao

rihanna's likability really outweighs the importance of her % of great singles with many ppl. she's a great pop star

does Rihanna inspire next persons?

i remember us having a whole convo around the time of the chris brown thing about how she was finally starting to do more on-camera interviews and finally have a recognizable personality and be kind of likable, as opposed to just widely liked for her music or her beauty. but since then i feel like she's just become another celebrity who constantly says snide, obnoxious shit on twitter.

oh is that a problem, her twitter personality is basically the main thing i attribute to her likability

i liked not loved rihanna when she was starting out - ok pop dancehall (which i'm pretty much always in favor of, though 'pon de replay' fell far far short of lumidee or nina sky), and she managed to inadvertantly smuggle schaffel onto the radio. 'umbrella' was the first thing she did that i loved, the first thing she did that sounded better in reality than on paper. it was also the last thing she did that i loved.

― balls, Tuesday, October 2, 2012 9:11 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah same basically. i liked pon de replay & umbrella but i would never have guessed she'd have this kind of longevity

cant remember if i voted, seems hard to justify voting for anyone other than beyonce. would be tempted by ciara just for the first time i heard 'goodies' (have to hold the next 7000 times i heard it against her though) and for 'oh' being the most perfect musical evocation of what an atlanta summer night feels like. always dug 'like a boy' too

am i nuts for getting twigged by this little factoid: rihanna's most un-carribbean sounding hit ("cheers" -- a nu-metal drinking ballad with avril lavigne yelping) is the one where her voice sounds most trinidad again? am i way off here

i liked the britney version of s&m way better

"S.O.S." came on the radio last night and i don't think i ever appreciated how much of a banger it is. absolutely bursting at all seams with energy. she's quieted down in her old age (24 ew) but imo we take for granted how effortlessly she defines her songs by her personality. if she didn't release a new album every month her singles batting average would probably be higher

Can't find the thread, but I remember a discussion on ILM not that long ago about how Rihanna was mostly a puppet or a robot and had no personnality for someone as big as she was. It seems that perception has changed.

well no, I think ppl totally accept and celebrate that she is a robot now

what is better about the britney version of "s&m"?? brit sounds so timid on it, practically

it works cuz she sounds like she'd rather be getting tortured than be doing a remix for rihanna

entirely prejudice on my part, i just like that kind of palpable bridesmaid-party desperation less on rihanna

tbh I can't deal with "S&M" since it came out after Rihanna had the shit beaten out of her by Chris Brown

consent vs non-consent, what

that is exactly the point; releasing a song about how getting whipped sexually excites the narrator of the song after publicly getting her ass beat fuels the "she probably asked for it/did something to deserve it" narrative floating around Team Breezy

Rihanna obv can do and say whatever she wants, but other people do actually get to have opinions on whether those decisions are stupid.

ok my opinion is more power to her for not giving a shit about people who hate her for being an abuse victim

i don't think that's exaaaactly what DJP is saying there

yeah. fuck off with this "people who hate her for being an abuse victim" shit.

I think he's talking about Team Breezy, not me

had to double-check that zachylon was also the "imo this is about people shaming a woman for making choices" guy

uh yeah i'm talking about team breezy here

yes i am that guy