The nation was near the bottom of its worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, but you wouldn’t know that from “Right Round.” Social realism is not what this song is about. But in “Right Round,” the surface meaning- From the top of the pole I watch her go down-is as lewd as the hidden one. And the hook was a double entendre for oral sex! Now, in my day, songwriters used double entendre toconceal the real meaning of the song. It concerned a man in a strip club watching the pole dancers spin. You spin my head right round right round When you go down when you go down down I missed the lyrics at first, but thanks to the repetitiveness of the CHR format-the playlist was closer to Top 10 than to Top 40-I didn’t have to wait long for the song to come right ’round again. Sprays of words follow the jackhammer beats, sung-rapped by Flo and assisted on the hook by the barbaric yawp of the artist Kesha. EEeeoooorrrroooannnnnwwweeeyyeeeooowwwwouuuzzzzeeEE The song begins with a swirly sound that goes right ’round your head in a tight circle. What strange song machines made these half-brass, half-stringedsounding noises? It was the winter of 2009, and “Right Round,” by Flo Rida, was the number-one song on Billboard’s Hot 100. Moreau, had he been a DJ rather than a vivisectionist. The speakers produced sounds such as might have been heard on the Island of Dr. Was this music? The bass sounded like a recording of a massive undersea earthquake. Thumpa thooka whompa whomp Pish pish pish Thumpa wompah wompah pah pah Maaakaka thomp peep bap boony Gunga gunga gung Hadn’t I reconfigured my parents’ radio to play my music hen I was his age? And since there are only so many times you can listen to the guitar solo in Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” without going a little numb yourself, I made the Boy my DJ, at least for the day. I was irritated at first, but by the time we had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and arrived at school, here he was a fifth-grader, I was pleased. No sooner seated up front than he reprogrammed the presets, changing my classic and alternative rock stations to contemporary hits radio, or CHR-what used to be called Top 40. VIRGINIA WOOLF,THE WAVESīring the hooks in, where the bass at? IGGY AZALEA, “FANCY”ġ | You Spin Me Round IT STARTED WHEN the Boy got big enough to claim shotgun. One cannot live outside the machine for more perhaps than half an hour. Speed Chess Katy Perry: Altar Call Melodic Math Kesha: Teenage Nightmare “Umbrella” “Ester Dean: On the Hook” Stargate: Those Lanky Norwegian Dudes “Rude Boy” SECOND VE RSE: Factory Girls: Cultural Technology and the Making of K-Pop My Ancestral Hit Parade The Dragon’s Teeth The Doldrums American Idol “The Sign” Big Poppa Martin Sandb erg’s Terrible Secret Britney Spears: Hit Me Baby “I Want It That Way”ĬHORUS: The M oney Note: The Ballad of K elly and Clive For Harry and Rose: The Melody and the Beatġ You Spin Me Round 2 A Continuity o f Hits FIRST VER SE: Cheiron: M r.