Modal Nodes: The Throne is Taken! Winners of Summer Jam 2009!

Today in my neck of the woods was a day that students dread with every bit of terror in their trembling hearts. The first day of school. Thus, in many sad ways, the summer is over. Indeed these are dark times.

But we also have a Crown to bestow! As you know, there can be only one. It's been a long, mostly shitty summer full of dumb songs, but out of many, there becomes few. To refresh your memories, here is my list of contenders as described here and more intimately, here .

1. Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"/"I Gotta Feeling"
2. Jamie Foxxx, "Blame It"
3. Lady GaGa, "Poker Face"/"Love Game"
4. Flo Rida ft. Kesha, "Right Round"
5. Green Day, "Know Your Enemy"
6. Kelly Clarkson, "I Do Not Hook Up"
7. Jeremih, "Birthday Sex"
8. Drake, "Best I Ever Had"
9. The Ting Tings, "That's Not My Name"
10. Pitbull, "I Know You Want Me"
11. Katy Perry, "Waking up in Vegas"
12. Keri Hilson ft. Kanye & Ne-yo, "Knock You Down"
13. Sean Kingston, "Fire Burning"
14. 3OH!3, "Don't Trust Me"
15. Kings of Leon, "Use Somebody"
16. Kid Cudi, "Day and Night"

Now, out of this debacle, we can obviously pull a list of seriously serious contenders. Now to me, this required at least 1 - 2 exposures per day for a period of no less than two months of summer, hopefully with some straggling exposure outside of its most intense, overwhelming airplay. As you can guess, this is the bear minimum. Like the Anti-Christ, for years you wonder who will get the Throne, and you may make many guesses, but in the end, you know in your gut who it is. So, let's narrow this list down to seven:

1. Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"/"I Gotta Feeling"
2. Lady GaGa, "Poker Face"/"Love Game"
3. Drake, "Best I Ever Had"
4. Pitbull, "I Know You Want Me"
5. Katy Perry, "Waking up in Vegas"
6. Keri Hilson ft. Kanye & Ne-yo, "Knock You Down"
7. 3OH!3, "Don't Trust Me"

All of these songs had great runs, but we can still take a few off the list. Pitbull, while surging immensely in August, has declined the past few weeks, leaving its dominance quite short. The same could probably said of Katy Perry who broke late with a much weaker song than "I Kissed A Girl" last year. 3OH!3 and Drake performed strongly all summer which is frankly surprising, but never cracked that 1 - 2 times a day airplay that I was listening for. I never truly suffocated under their songs, so while long-lasting, generally weak. So we come down to Black Eyed Peas, GaGa (penis or not) and Keri Hilson.

Now, I'm sure there is some controversy here because I've given BEP and Man GaGa two songs. Assuredly pulling double duty, it'd be a tough race, but I'm sure the Peas would have an edge with "I Gotta Feeling" nicely filling in the gaps that "Boom Boom Pow" left behind (I heard that song three times on the radio today). Let's look at the billboard charts for each song:

"Knock You Down" has been on the docket for 23 weeks, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the week of 6/20/09. It did not, however, sink below #4 until 8/29/09 where it went to and still is #8.

"Lovegame" has had 19 weeks, entering the Top 10 on 6/13/09 and staying until 8/15/09, peaking at # 5 in mid-July. GaGa's other summer opus, "Poker Face" I believe is safe to say peaked far too early, breaking the Top 10 on 03/07/09 but impressively staying there until 6/20/09, with numerous #1 gains in its early triumph, but more of a #2 when summer came along.

"Boom Boom Pow" has had 26 weeks on the charts, including an awesome twelve weeks at #1 from 04/18/09 until sister hit "I Gotta Feeling" dethroned it on 7/11/09, controlling the One Spot from until the current week. "Boom Boom Pow" dropped out of the Top 10 on 8/22/09. I'll apologize now if there's any inconsistencies here, Billboard.com is incredibly retarded to use to find out this information.

So, as you can tell, I'm leaning in a certain direction here. What really blew my load, though, was the Channel Fuse's Top 20 Songs of Summer. This is like an all-time list here, folks, this is some serious stuff. Because apparently Fuse doesn't have a listing of its own, you can find the whole shebang right here. Check out #13, #3 and #1, all from Summer of '09. #1, of course, "I Gotta Feeling." Although it hit Rochester relatively late and feels to me more of an Autumn College Pre-gaming song, I feel compelled to grant it the Crown of Summer Jam 2009.

So there you have it. Black Eyed Peas, one of the most worthless shitty bands in the history of mankind, earning the undeniable title of Kings and One Queen of Summer 2009.

See ya next year!!