In our universe, meanwhile, I’d expect “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper to land on, like, Now 69. Bradley Cooper is music. 14. Now That’s What I Call Music! 64

NOW That’s What I Call Music! 46 [US] - Genius NOW That’s What I Call Music! 46 [US] - Genius

Across 67 albums, only 14 songs received a perfect 10 in the Essential Score category. “Teenage Dream” is one of them, and because I don’t have much else to say about Now 36, now is a good time to do a mini ranking of all the most essential Now songs. To appropriately rank the Now albums, I devised a formula to take into account the commercial success, accolades, and feeling of essentialness of each song featured. Half a point was awarded for every week a song stayed on the Billboard Hot 100; five points were awarded for every Grammy nomination a song earned, while 10 points were awarded for a Grammy win; lastly, one point was awarded for every MTV Video Music Award nomination, while two points were awarded for every VMA win. Those numbers were then totaled and averaged. The Essential Score for each album was determined by rating each song’s essentialness on a scale of 1 to 10. How do you determine how essential a song is, you ask? I’ll answer that question with a series of questions: How efficiently does the song conjure a sense of time and place? How well does it capture where popular music was as a genre when it was included on Now? And lastly, how good is the song to this day? Taking those questions into account and assigning each song an Essential Score, I—again, I am the authority here, which is valid because as Now doctrine states, all people who started the sixth grade three or four years before or after the first Now are Now experts—averaged those numbers to arrive at an Essential Score. Each album’s Points Average was then multiplied by its Essential Score to give us a Now Score. Simply put, the higher the Now Score, the better the Now album. I’m beginning to suspect that T-Pain has a problem interpreting the messages sent to him by various strippers. “I’m ’n Luv (wit a Stripper),” which appears on Now 22, is not the only song in which T-Pain documents his unrequited love for a stripper. The subject of “I Can’t Believe It,” whom T-Pain reportedly puts in a mansion somewhere in Wiscansin, is intimated to be a dancer. There’s also the song “Bartender,” and while it’s never specified whether this bartender is working at a strip club or just a regular bar, the dynamics of a relationship between a patron and a bartender and that of a patron and a stripper are similar enough to conclude that T-Pain has once again misinterpreted “working for tips” to mean “true love.” He and Wyclef Jean need to talk about this in group. 34. Now That’s What I Call Music! 57 It’s strange: People are pretty rude about mumblerap, but I don’t remember anyone throwing their hands up about Mystikal yelling “Danger!” into a microphone over and over again. 32. Now That’s What I Call Music! 19 If your song ends up on a commercial, especially one featuring a person dancing, congrats, dude—your song is probably music. 40. Now That’s What I Call Music! 63people would be a lot more willing to concede that “Panda” is a pretty good song. 12. Now That’s What I Call Music! 55 Toxic” by Britney Spears is the best song and video Britney Spears has ever released, please do not @ me.

NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 [US] - Genius NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 [US] - Genius

Now 43 is an inflection point in the Now nexus, capturing most of the artists either on the downslope of their careers or headed toward their apex. On the wrong side of the peak are artists like Usher (“Scream”), Maroon 5 (“Payphone”), and Ne-Yo (“Let’s Go”). On the rise are One Direction (“One Thing”), Ellie Goulding (“Lights”), and Calvin Harris (also “Let’s Go”). Now 43 also features M83’s “Midnight City,” which is great, but random. T35. Now That’s What I Call Music! 26I have complete faith in the all-knowing “I,” but sometimes I wonder … 62. Now That’s What I Call Music! 67