Katy Perry (ft. Snoop Dogg) – "California Gurls" (2010)

California girls, we’re unforgettable

Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top

Sun-kissed skin so hot, we’ll melt your popsicle

Here are the ten states that the folks at the Musicoholics website believe had the most impact on American popular music.  (Drum roll, please!)

10.  Minnesota

  9.  Illinois

  8.  Texas

  7.  Michigan

  6.  Mississippi

  5.  Tennessee

  4.  Georgia

  3.  Louisiana

  2.  California

  1.  New York

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2 or 3 lines thinks that Musicoholics ranked a few of those states too high.

One of those states is Minnesota, which was assigned the #10 ranking based almost entirely on the strength of Bob Dylan and Prince.  But two musicians are not enough to justify a spot in the Musicoholics top ten, especially when one of them is Prince.  (Sorry, but I never got Prince.)

Illinois was home to a lot of great jazz and blues musicians, but those aren’t my favorite musical genres – I’m more interested in pop, rock, and hip-hop.  Chicago and Cheap Trick are very good but I would say they are great – there are quite a few rock groups I would rank ahead of them.  And while Kanye West is truly a genius, you need more than one genius for a state to be ranked in the top ten.

The one, the only Kanye West

A lot of great blues musicians (including B. B. King, Muddy Waters, and especially Robert Johnson) came from Mississippi, but Musicoholics ranked that state #6 mostly because Elvis Presley spent the first 13 years of his life there.  I think Elvis is the most overrated American popular musician of all time, so I would drop Mississippi way down in the rankings.

Two of the states ranked in the top five by Musicoholics – Georgia and Louisiana – probably don’t belong there.  A lot of great rappers have come out of Atlanta, and Little Richard and Otis Redding were one-of-a-kind talents.  I’d rank Georgia in the top ten, but #4 is a little high.

Louisiana’s #3 ranking is even harder to defend.  New Orleans produced a lot of great music back in the day, but has been resting on its laurels for quite a few years – what have you done for me lately, New Orleans?  The greatest Louisiana musicians – e.g., Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis – are older than me, and I’m pretty old.

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That leaves five states standing.

I’m going to leave Tennessee right where Musicoholics put it – ranked fifth.  After all, Nashville is the center of the country music universe, and Memphis is almost as significant when it comes to R&B.  

I’d rank Texas ahead of Tennessee by a nose because Texas produced musical standouts in every musical genre – also, a lot of the great country and soul music to come out of Nashville and Memphis was recorded by artists from other states.

I would put Michigan at #3.  I’d like to rank it even higher because so many of my personal favorites – including the MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and the White Stripes – came from there.  Of course, Detroit was the home of Motown and its mind-boggling roster of recording greats.  

One possible Mt. Rushmore of Detroit musicians

But I don’t see how anyone can argue that New York and California don’t deserve the top two spots.

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I don’t agree with Musicoholics’ ranking of New York ahead of California.

My decision to rank California #1 comes not from my head, but from my heart – especially that part of my heart that hasn’t changed much at all since the sixties, when I was a teenager.  

If you had asked the teenaged me to choose between Los Angeles and New York City, I would have picked Los Angeles in a heartbeat.  

That choice would have been influenced by southern California’s natural beauty and balmy weather – also by the fact that the prospect of life in New York City was more than a little intimidating for a 16-year-old kid who had lived his whole life in Joplin, Missouri.  

But a lot of the appeal of California derived from music that came from there – the music of the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, Arthur Lee and Love . . . the list goes on and on.

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I was going to feature “California Girls” by the Beach Boys – the quintessential California pop group – but decided at the last minute to switch things up and go with Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.”

Katy Perry was born in Santa Barbara, and spent most of her formative years in California.  (Her parents were Pentecostal ministers who referred to deviled eggs as “angled eggs.”) 

Snoop Dogg, who contributed a couple of verses to “California Gurls,” is also a California native.

“California Gurls” was the first of four consecutive #1 singles that Perry released in 2010.  Each one of them went 8X platinum – meaning that each of them sold at least eight million copies.

But compared to “California Girls,” “California Gurls” is fool’s gold – or, more accurately, fool’s platinum.

Barbi Benton

“California Girls” is like an all-natural Playboy centerfold from the sixties – it’s the Barbi Benton of pop singles.

“California Gurls,” by contrast, is a little like a reality-show star who has had lip augmentation and breast implants – she looks good from a distance, but isn’t entirely convincing when you examine her more closely.

Click here to watch the oh-so-over-the-top official music video for “California Gurls.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: