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crapfromthepast
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| Posted: 27 November 2007 at 8:44pm | IP Logged
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Stop.
Hammer time.
Couldn't resist. This song is indicative of the turmoil in the US singles market - it peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, but just barely; for the first few weeks of its radio life, it wasn't on the Hot 100 at all due to the unavailability of a single. It showed up on the chart when the 12" became available, the week of 4/28/1990, and peaked at #8 on 6/16/1990. Meanwhile, on the R&R CHR chart, which tracks only airplay, the song hit #1 for a week on 6/8/1990. This record was big.
I have the 12", which was the only commercially available format at the time. For some reason, it runs at 45 RPM.
A-side:
- U Can't Touch This (LP Version) printed 4:15, actual 4:15
- U Can't Touch This (Video Mix) printed 4:06 actual 4:05
- U Can't Touch This (Instrumental) printed 4:42 actual 4:41
B-side - Designated as "Bonus Tracks":- Dancin' Machine (Funk Mix) printed 3:34
- Dancin' Machine (Funky Club) printed 6:30
I didn't bother timing the B-side tracks.
As for the A-side tracks, the LP version is widely available, and is the "hit" version that got all the airplay. The Video Mix has other production elements throw in, like snippets from other songs. Interestingly, the Instrumental is not an instrumental at all, but is another hodge-podge mix similar to the Video Mix, but has other samples in place of the "Super Freak" sample until the last 30 seconds or so. A weird thing.
The LP version is readily available on lots of CDs, but the sound quality of these CDs is really all over the map. I'll try to make sense of them, and rank them more-or-less from good-to-bad:- Living In The 90s (Razor & Tie S22-18601, 1995) - The most natural-sounding EQ of the bunch, but it chops off the first 1.5 seconds of the song! HUGE mastering error! The version I use is this version, with the first 1.5 seconds grafted on from Time-Life's Ultra Mix
- Ultra Mix - Dance Hits Of The '80s And '90s (Time-Life M188517, 1999) - Good EQ, but compressed/maximized.
- Mega Hits Of The '90s (Time-Life R143-35, 2001) - Compresed; sound very close to that on Ultra Mix
- Now 1990 (Virgin EMI PolyGram 8 27080 2, 1993) - Good EQ, no compression, but a little muffled - second-generation tapes?
- Mega Dance Party '92 (Columbia 471345 2, 1992) - EQ also pretty good, but a little muffled. Also 2nd generation tapes?
- Millennium Hip-Hop Party (Rhino, 1999) - Compressed/maximized.
- Monster Trax (Quality QRSPD-1123) - Boomy EQ, like the "loudness" button is on.
- The Greatest Hits Of Dance (Telstar UK tcd2616, 1992) - Horrible, thin-sounding EQ. Terrible.
- Pop Complete (EMI Australia 5-CD box 4 98604 2, 1999) - Sounds like 15th-generation tapes. Really awful, like Hammer is underwater.
There is one more fascinating version that turns up on a German compilation called Hot And Fresh - Die Neuen Internationalen Superhits (Ariola GmbH 353984, 1990). It's just like the LP version, but with the "Super Freak" sample completely removed until 45 seconds from the end. For the first 3:30 of this version, it's ridiculously empty-sounding - just Hammer, the drum machine, the male backing vocals and the synths in the breaks. "Super Freak" shows up 45 seconds from the end, just in time to repeat a few times and fade out. Crazy! Has anyone else run into this version? It runs 4:20.
Edited by crapfromthepast on 27 November 2007 at 8:47pm
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 27 November 2007 at 11:30pm | IP Logged
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Wow, impressive write-up on this song! I appreciate the detailed analysis of the sound for each CD. (Especially since I'm pretty sure I have that "Living in the '90s" CD.)
For some reason, I always thought the Video Mix was considered to be the "hit" version, but I'm not sure why I thought that.
If the song had been issued as a cassette and/or CD single, it surely would have hit #1 on the Hot 100. (As would several other songs I can think of, such as "Oops I Did It Again" and "Bye Bye Bye.") I had forgotten how early the "no single release to pump up album sales" thing started.
But 2000-2004 were definitely the "dark days" of the Hot 100.
Edited by Brian W. on 27 November 2007 at 11:37pm
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aaronk
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| Posted: 28 November 2007 at 12:33am | IP Logged
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I've always been curious about the video mix and how it differed from the LP version. I thought the video that MTV played was just the LP version!?! I don't remember any snippets of other songs in any version I've heard.
By the way, the version on that German compilation sounds like the "Club Mix," which was included on the US promo CD single.
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80smusicfreak
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| Posted: 28 November 2007 at 5:18am | IP Logged
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Brian W. wrote:
| If the song had been issued as a cassette and/or CD single, it surely would have hit #1 on the Hot 100. |
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Half right - cassette, yes, but CD, no. As someone who's never seen the entire history of pop music as two-formatted (read: vinyl and CDs), like 99% of folks seem to, my perspective has always been quite different, so I offer the following: Again, you have to remember, this was 1990, and the cassette was king - and that applies to both albums AND singles! (CDs didn't pass cassettes in album sales in this country until 1992; singles in '98 or '99.) In fact, the cassette had over 80% of the commercial singles market in the U.S. that year; there were VERY FEW commercial CD singles/maxi-singles at that time, and therefore, the buying public was not used to seeing them, nor had retail stores figured out yet where to place the dozen or so higher-priced CD singles they did have, if they carried them at all...
So the fact is, the addition of a commercial CD single/maxi-single (along w/ the 12" vinyl, but still no cassette) for "U Can't Touch This" would've boosted the song to only a #5 or #6 peak, at best. However, had there been a commercial cassette single, yes, there's no question the song would've had at least a month-long run at #1 on the "Hot 100", which undoubtedly would've boosted it to #1 in airplay as well. (Check Whitburn's "Top Pop Singles" - believe it or not, "U Can't Touch This" only got as high as #2 airplay!)
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| I had forgotten how early the "no single release to pump up album sales" thing started. |
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Well, I've reported this here on Pat's board at least a couple other times now, but time for a refresher, I guess. :-) Due to the surprising and overwhelming success of the fully-supported launch of the cassette single in early '87, the whole "singles-sales-must-be-hurting-album-sales"-phobia among the U.S. record labels started in the summer of '89, and actually included several tests...
Columbia/Sony was the first to experiment, when they deleted the cassette single of Martika's "Toy Soldiers" just as it hit #1 on the "Hot 100" - and had reached gold status - in July of that year (and thus starting the "turmoil" that crapfromthepast referred to above). As 1989 rolled on, other labels began using that same tactic of deleting the cassette singles as hit songs reached the top five, until Capitol was confronted w/ M.C. Hammer's quick-rising smash in the spring of '90. So the label actually decided to perform a test: As crapfromthepast correctly notes, issue "U Can't Touch This" as a commercial 12" single so it was at least eligible for "Billboard"'s charts, but withhold a cassette single altogether, just to see what would happen. Well, we all know that it ended up stalling at #8 pop. Although my copy of the issue is currently packed away in storage at the moment, I remember toward the end of the song's chart run, "Billboard" actually ran an article detailing all this, and the folks at Capitol acknowledging in hindsight, "to have a #1 hit, you need a cassette single". (BTW, Capitol & Hammer didn't forget that - when he released his follow-up album, "Too Legit to Quit", in October of '91, he paid us cassette fans back w/ several bonus tracks on the cassette edition that weren't included on the LP or CD! That event also warranted an article in "Billboard".)
But w/ the labels' fears about hurting album sales continuing unabated (Vanilla Ice's #1 platinum smash, "Ice Ice Baby", was another classic example of a hit cut off on cassette single just as it hit the top), that "test" only held off the inevitable for another six months: In January of '91, Geffen would be the first label to not issue a hit song commercially in ANY format when The Simpsons' "Do the Bartman" became a radio & MTV hit. That essentially opened the floodgates, as more and more labels then followed suit w/ no commercial single at all (see the "Airplay" lists at the end of each year from 1991-98 in Whitburn's "Pop Annual"). And thus we still have the commercial singles mess here in the U.S. more than 15 years on... :-(
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torcan
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| Posted: 28 November 2007 at 5:13pm | IP Logged
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80smusicfreak wrote:
| And thus we still have the commercial singles mess here in the U.S. more than 15 years on... :-( |
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I agree that the last 15 years have been a "singles mess". As a collector, the last 15 years have been frustrating at times, to say the least. While well-connected people have sources to get all the promo CD singles, to the average fan there was never any rhyme or reason to what was released, and what format it was released on; and promos are hard to come by.
Sometimes a hit song would be 7-inch vinyl only, other times cassette and 12-inch only, other times cassette and CD single only. And the labels weren't even consistent over who got what release. In other words, if you collected 7-inch vinyl singles, there were always gaps in artists catalogs - same with cassette, CD and 12-inch too.
There are so many songs I liked at the time which I don't own on any single format - and after all these years some of them I can't even remember how they go! There's a lot that "fell through the cracks" in the '90s that radio doesn't touch today. The oldies that do get played seem to be primarily the same ones.
A radio station near me actually had a "90s weekend" not too long ago, and it made me realize how much '90s stuff hasn't been played in years.
Which brings me to another disturbing trend: the digital-only release. There are a couple of current titles I'm interested in purchasing but have recently found out they're digital only. I really want the titles on a factory-pressed CD, and would even buy an import if I could get them. Unfortunately, Canada seems to be following the lead of the US on these titles as they're not available here either.
I think we've seen the future - the days buying commercially-released CDs of our favorite music are quickly coming to an end. :(
Edited by torcan on 28 November 2007 at 5:14pm
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 29 November 2007 at 2:58am | IP Logged
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torcan wrote:
| There are a couple of current titles I'm interested in purchasing but have recently found out they're digital only. I really want the titles on a factory-pressed CD, and would even buy an import if I could get them. Unfortunately, Canada seems to be following the lead of the US on these titles as they're not available here either. |
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Well, it's not a factory-pressed CD, but have you checked to see if they're available as lossless downloads on Musicgiants.com? I've purchased lots of download-exclusives there. They're in Windows Media Lossless format -- big files, not for putting on your media player, but for burning to CD.
In fact, I've been able to purchase the past twelve consecutive #1 singles there as lossless downloads, with the single covers as 800x800 jpegs, more than big enough to print on a 5X5 CD card insert. Here, for example, is the jpeg you get with the current #1 single, Alicia Keys's "No One":
Edited by Brian W. on 29 November 2007 at 3:02am
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80smusicfreak
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| Posted: 05 December 2007 at 12:55pm | IP Logged
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torcan wrote:
| As a [singles] collector, the last 15 years have been frustrating at times, to say the least. |
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If you're dedicated to only one (or maybe two) music format(s), then yes, I agree. But I could make the same argument about the singles market in the '70s and '80s, which are my two favorite decades for music - because as a huge fan of the cassette format, there weren't too many choices on cassette single prior to early '87...
Had there been universal release of singles & maxi-singles on cassette as well as vinyl when I first started buying music in the early '80s, then my personal collection of singles would unquestionably be a lot larger, as I no doubt would've taken a similar path as vinyl lovers - i.e., started out buying cheaper singles, and then slowly moved up to higher-priced albums. But alas, if I wanted cassette, at that time (1983) I literally had no choice but to jump in buying $8-$10 albums in my mid teens. In fact, I can honestly say that the lack of a singles market on cassette was what kept me from buying any music at all until I was 15 (a bit later than most folks here, no???); otherwise, I would've started as early as '79 or '80 - when I was 11 or 12 - and those cheaper cassette singles were what would've been within budget... :-)
Heck, the cassette became the #1 album format in the U.S. in '83 - the universal launch of the cassette single in '87 was clearly more than five years late. (Yet the suits at the record cos. were somehow totally surprised by its quick and overwhelming success when they finally did get behind it?!?)
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| While well-connected people have sources to get all the promo CD singles, to the average fan there was never any rhyme or reason to what was released, and what format it was released on; and promos are hard to come by. |
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By early '91, when labels first began to not release hit songs in any commercial singles format at all, my interest in then-current music had started to wane. And ironically, it was that transition that turned me into more of a singles buyer vs. albums for current music; during the '90s/early '00s, I bought as much as 80% of my music on cassette or CD singles & maxi-singles. So yes, over the last 15+ years, there were PLENTY of times when the songs I liked weren't available commercially as cassette or CD singles (although I've usually had a preference for maxi-singles, actually). But because I've never been out to collect EVERY top 10/top 40/top 100 pop hit as a commercial single, the "singles mess" hasn't phased me as much as others here. (But I DO recognize the value of the commercial single as a marketing tool!)
Over the last five years or so, I've also begun tracking down the promo CD singles of those hits that I couldn't buy commercially in the '90s/early '00s. Although I sometimes have to pay prices that are higher than I'd like, in most cases, they haven't been too difficult to find...
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| Sometimes a hit song would be 7-inch vinyl only, other times cassette and 12-inch only, other times cassette and CD single only. |
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Well, from 1991-98, if a song was available commercially as a single in the U.S., 95% of the time it was issued on cassette, so the labels were actually very good when it came to tape. (That changed after '98, though.) But w/ vinyl and CD, I agree - no consistency, whatsoever...
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| And the labels weren't even consistent over who got what release. In other words, if you collected 7-inch vinyl singles, there were always gaps in artists catalogs - same with cassette, CD and 12-inch too. |
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True, but a lot of the "gaps" can be attributed to those radio/MTV hits not being released commercially in ANY format at all, which has always made absolutely NO sense to me. And really, how many hit-making artists during the '90s and '00s have had most or all of their singles released commercially in at least ONE viable format??? The only two that immediately come to my mind are Madonna and Mariah Carey (and kudos to both of them for supporting commercial singles!)...
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There's a lot that "fell through the cracks" in the '90s that radio doesn't touch today. The oldies that do get played seem to be primarily the same ones.
A radio station near me actually had a "90s weekend" not too long ago, and it made me realize how much '90s stuff hasn't been played in years. |
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Agreed, but can't the same be said for ANY decade??? When it comes to the '80s, I know I've heard more than enough of "Love Shack", "Walk Like an Egyptian", and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"! "You Don't Want Me Anymore", "Don Quichotte", or "Tokyo Rose", anyone??? (Okay, just for you, had to throw in a classic Canuck song that sadly wasn't a hit here in the U.S., lol...)
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Which brings me to another disturbing trend: the digital-only release. There are a couple of current titles I'm interested in purchasing but have recently found out they're digital only. I really want the titles on a factory-pressed CD, and would even buy an import if I could get them. Unfortunately, Canada seems to be following the lead of the US on these titles as they're not available here either.
I think we've seen the future - the days buying commercially-released CDs of our favorite music are quickly coming to an end. :( |
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Unfortunately, I have to agree. :-( I've had to resort to import CD singles on several occasions over the last 7-8 years as well. But frankly, most of today's music just doesn't appeal to me - at least what's at the top of the pop charts, anyway. I know there's still some good current music out there somewhere, but it's just WAY too hard to find (I'm talking about just being EXPOSED to it); consequently, my collecting focus has long since switched to digging deeper into the music of the '70s and '80s. Luckily - and frankly - if Taylor Swift's or Kanye South's current hits don't exist on commercial CD single or are available only as a digital-only release, it's no loss for me...
On a side note, I just want to say that as you've probably figured out, my interest as a music collector has always pretty much been to find music which I actually LIKE, as opposed to collecting EVERY top 10/top 40/top 100 pop hit from the entire rock era or specific decade, etc., like I know a lot of folks here do. I simply use the charts as a good starting point, and branch out from there; IMHO, collecting by the pop chart alone is WAY too rigid, as there was a LOT of great music from all decades that was just as good as anything that made the top 40 on the pop chart at any given time, but for whatever reason, didn't (*steps off soapbox*)...
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aaronk
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| Posted: 05 December 2007 at 1:26pm | IP Logged
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80smusicfreak wrote:
| my interest as a music collector has always pretty much been to find music which I actually LIKE, as opposed to collecting EVERY top 10/top 40/top 100 pop hit from the entire rock era or specific decade, etc...as there was a LOT of great music from all decades that was just as good as anything that made the top 40 on the pop chart at any given time, but for whatever reason, didn't (*steps off soapbox*)... |
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I don't think anyone will argue with you on this point. If I had to guess, I'd say pretty much everyone on this forum has many favorites that never came anywhere near hitting the pop charts. For example, I am an avid hip hop collector from the late 80s and early 90s. I've spent more money collecting promo CD singles in that genre & era than any other part of my collection. (Many of the hit versions played on Yo! MTV Raps were never available, and still aren't, on anything but vinyl.)
But since this forum is dedicated to "Top 40 Music On CD," that's generally what we stick to talking about. Yes, you're right, there are some of us who try to collect every song from the top 10/top 40/top 100, and that's just because some people are "completists." It gives us a project to work on and a goal to achieve, and it's fun. Also, I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "Do you know where I can find..." and lots of times I've been able to say, "Yep, I have it!"
Edited by aaronk on 05 December 2007 at 1:28pm
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Hykker
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| Posted: 05 December 2007 at 4:29pm | IP Logged
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80smusicfreak wrote:
But I could make the same argument about the singles market in the '70s and '80s, which are my two favorite decades for music - because as a huge fan of the cassette format, there weren't too many choices on cassette single prior to early '87...
Had there been universal release of singles & maxi-singles on cassette as well as vinyl when I first started buying music in the early '80s, then my personal collection of singles would unquestionably be a lot larger, as I no doubt would've taken a similar path as vinyl lovers - i.e., started out buying cheaper singles, and then slowly moved up to higher-priced albums. |
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I never got the whole point of cassette singles. The audio quality was mediocre at best, and they often used really el-cheapo shells. They were kind of a PITA to listen to...get up, rewind last tape, take out of player, put in a new one, lather, rinse, repeat. Not even really all that portable...who was gonna bring a basketful of cassingles to play on their Walkman?
I kind of lost interest in collecting singles when most releases went to that format.
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: M.C. Hammer - "U Can’t Touch This"
