The best pop music song this century?

In the late 1990s there was a Swedish pop star who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and had a big hit or two. Her stage name was Robyn and after trying to replicate the success of her initial couple hits here in the states she faded into relative obscurity.

It took over a decade for her to regain a sort of foothold in the UnitedStates music scene and her small bit of success should shave been much larger with hits like Dancing on My Own and the even better Call Your Girlfriend. She performed both of those hits on the venerable SNL but that never translated to radio airplay.

No matter what happened, those two songs -- especially Call Your Girlfriend -- are pop music gems. They are high energy, ultra danceable and have an infectious beat. The video for Call Your Girlfriend is a classic continuous-shot video but as fascinating and odd as Robyn's dancing is, the making of the video is even better. I, for one, love seeing the work it takes behind the scenes to produce a perfect four minute music video.

Here is the finished music video...


Here is the making of the video feature...

An introduction to something new

Earlier this week I hinted at something new in this space. This blog have been in a near-constant state of evolution and if you’ve followed me at all in the past few years you’ll know that I am an experimenter. I’ve toyed around with a couple twists on photo blogs (one featuring my own work and another aggregating the work of others), I have another blog featuring the most ridiculous Star Tribune comments from their website, another where I share my own video playlist (another twist on aggregation). Some of my projects gain traction while others simply fail fast and are cast aside.

But this place has been around since late in 2003. That’s about three generations in internet time. I’ve gone from a diary of sorts to rambling political commentary to a focus on happenings in Minnesota to general interest sort of stuff. It’s a constantly evolving space that seems to change with my interests.

But now things are changing again. As I made a somewhat veiled post earlier this week (typing any amount of text on an iPod’s touch screen is a test of one’s patience) I considered a number of ideas but then it dawned on me -- why do something gimmicky when I could take a semi-dormant project and revive it. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it or get bored again and fall back into a regularly updated series of general interest content but why not get back to some of the most fun stuff I’ve ever written for another website -- “Talkin’ ‘bout TV”

As I think back and look at the archives here, I don have some sort of sick interest in pop culture. I also watch a shit-ton of TV but quickly weed out the garbage. I feel that everyone (or every program in this case) deserves at least a first look. I’ve never played favorites (hell, I actually enjoyed the first couple seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy”) but I do get hooked on a few shows and find those to be appointment television. But why stop at TV? I also pay at least somewhat close attention to our nation’s ridiculous obsession with pop culture and am genuinely intrigued by local and national media happenings. So for the time being that’s what you can expect.

So if you like what you’ve read, keep coming back. If you don’t like what you’ve read or feel uneasy about this change, keep coming back because even if you hate TV (which I sort of do), pop culture and media happenings you’re bound to find something you like. And it probably won’t be exclusively content in those three areas but for now my goal is to test the waters in those areas and see what I am capable of writing.

I'm open to catchy names so if you have any drop them in the comments. Thanks!