Maroon 5 - Week of September 29, 2012

No, I am not missing a parenthetical number in that title.  A ton goes down in the craziest countdown week in months.  Huge jumps, huge drops, a mistake by the DJ, a couple interesting debuts, and a totally out-of-nowhere new #1 song.  Before we get on to this week’s Fresh 45, here’s a list of all the songs we’re saying good-bye to this week.

• Jason Mraz - I Won't Give Up
• Alex Clare - Too Close
• The Wanted - Chasing the Sun (DTHNOBx2)

The Countdown:

1. Maroon 5 - One More Night (#22) [First Week at #1]

2. Owl City Ft. Carly Rae Jepsen - Good Time (#2)

3. fun. - Some Nights (#3)

4. Pink - Blow Me (One Last Kiss) (#12)

5. Neon Trees- Everybody Talks (#5)

6. Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (#20)

7. Linkin Park- Burn It Down (#11)

8. PSY - Gangnam Style (#27)

9. Ellie Goulding- Lights (#9)

10. Nicki Minaj - Pound the Alarm (#10)

11. Matchbox Twenty - She's So Mean (#7)

12. Rudimental Ft. John Newman - Feel the Love (#19)

13. Train - 50 Ways to Say Goodbye (#18)

14. Carly Rae Jepsen- Call Me Maybe (#14)

15. fun. feat. Janelle Monáe- We Are Young (#32)

16. Ne-Yo - Let Me Love You (#15)

17. One Direction - Live While We're Young (#41)

18. Karmin - Hello (#25)

19. Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa- Payphone (#1)

20. Flo Rida- Whistle (#8)

21. The Cab - Intoxicated (#24)

22. Timomatic - Set It Off (#13)

23. Imagine Dragons - It's Time (#44)

24. Usher - Numb (#40)

25. OneRepublic - Feel Again (#30)

26. Olly Murs Ft. Chiddy Bang - Heart Skips a Beat (#17)

27. Allstar Weekend - Life As We Know It (#26)

28. Enrique Iglesias Ft. Sammy Adams - Finally Found You (#38)

29. Conor Maynard - Vegas Girl (#31)

30. Ed Sheeran - The A Team (#35)

31. Ke$ha - Die Young (DEBUT)

32. Flo Rida - Let It Roll (DEBUT)

33. Kelly Clarkson - Dark Side (#16)

34. Martin Solveig - The Night Out (#29)

35. Katy Perry- Wide Awake (#4)

36. will.i.am - This Is Love (#21)

37. One Direction- What Makes You Beautiful (#28)

38. Nicki Minaj- Starships (#36)

39. Demi Lovato- Give Your Heart a Break (#6)

40. Gym Class Heroes feat. Ryan Tedder- The Fighter (#43)

41. Cher Lloyd- Want U Back (#33)

42. BoysLikeGirls - Be Your Everything (DEBUT)

43. David Guetta feat. Sia- Titanium (#23)

44. Karmin- Brokenhearted (#39)

45. Flo Rida feat. Sia- Wild Ones (#34)

Biggest DDDDDRRRROOPPP!!!!...of the week: Demi Lovato – Give Your Heart a Break (-33)

Biggest Jump of the Week: One Direction – Live While We’re Young (+24)

More on jumps and drops below in the “Blurbs” section.  First, onto the new entrants.  You may all have been wondering where Ke$ha has been all this time.  Well she’s back with a pretty good song in Die Young (#31).  Ke$ha’s artist image is undoubtedly one of a crazy party girl that comes packing not-so-subtle innuendo.  Most of her previous work, save for Your Love Is My Drug, generally carried with it melodies and sound effects that made the tune sound as trashy as the lyrics, with varying degrees of success (Tik Tok on the high, Blah Blah Blah on the low).  Die Young brings along the trashy lyrics, but the melody is significantly more upbeat.  It’s not Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe in that regard or anything, but consider it a large step in that direction from most of Ke$ha’s previous songs.  Come to think of it, Your Love is My Drug is a reasonably decent comparison.  Whether this is a new style remains to be seen, but so far, it works.

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of the last time we had a countdown without a Flo Rida song.  Sure enough, you’d have to go back to October 1, 2011, the week before Good Feeling debuted.  Let it Roll (#32) is the 4^th song that Flo Rida has brought to the countdown in this stretch, and it’s terrible, if only in the sense that it’s all starting to sound the same, and that guy really needs to go back to the drawing board.  Or he would, if he wasn’t making millions off of crap like this.  Wild Ones remains the only winner of the post-10/1/2011 bunch, and that one got beaten to death so hard that it’s tough to sit through anymore (said me at least 20,324,316 times since May).

The final new entrant comes from BoysLikeGirls, a group that was on the countdown after I started listening, but before I started really recapping it.  I was a huge fan of Love Drunk and a decently big fan of Two Is Better Than One as well.  The first time I heard Be Your Everything (#42), I was a little disappointed, but it has since grown on me.  The lyrics are far from inspired, but the singing and the melody are both pretty good.  I guess they really did have to boot Jason Mraz – I Won’t Give Up off the countdown; Be Your Everything is a slow song.  God forbid there’s two.

Blurbs:

-- If you listened to the countdown last weekend, you may have noticed that they played OneRepublic – Feel Again twice, both at #25 and at #12.  It was a mystery until Spyder Harrison did his recap of songs #11 - #15, when he announced that #12 was Rudimental Ft. John Newman – Feel the Love.  Guess those song titles are sort of close?

-- I really did think PSY – Gangnam Style had a shot to be the first song ever to be the Biggest Jump of the Week for two consecutive weeks.  Just so happens +19 wasn’t good enough.

-- The +21 jump of Maroon 5 – One More Night represents the biggest jump for a #1 song since Katy Perry – Last Friday Night hit #1 for the first time last July (+32).

-- Last week we didn’t see a single song move by more than 11 spots.  This week, 7 songs had a jump of at least 14 spots and 4 dropped at least 17 spots, including two of 30 or more.  Life is always more fun when the countdown gets crazy.

-- 5 of the top 8 songs weren’t in last week’s Top 10.

-- I’m going to miss Jason Mraz – I Won’t Give Up.  This countdown sometimes doesn’t give a fair slice to legitimately good songs.

-- Longevity Watch:  One Direction – What Makes You Beautiful, the countdown’s most tenured song, has just shy of two months left to go make it a full year on the countdown.

Whew.  Did I cover everything?

Editor’s Picks – Top 5 Songs

1) Usher – Numb

2) Ke$ha – Die Young

3) Imagine Dragons – It’s Time

4) Owl City Ft. Carly Rae Jepsen – Good Time

5) Enrique Iglesias Ft. Sammy Adams – Finally Found You