Ashlee Simpson: Emo or Oh no?

and if you call it marketing ill have to remind you that the sex pistols were nothing more than marketing for a fashion botique

Riddle me this, Batman. Apart from maybe wearing the odd punky t-shirt and a pair of Chuck Taylors (as if those trappings mean anything anymore), how exactly is her slickly produced, candy-colored pop ANY DIFFERENT AT ALL from that of Brtiney et al.?

i know emo when i see it

and as for avril, her approach to sex is different, lyrically she's much different, regardless of her immaturity.

But not when you hear it, obviously.

Better ballads, obviously.

Blame/credit her stylist, then.

lets face it, these girls are conceptual artists.

(bracing for the hit thats soon to come)

avril on the other hand..... ;-)

Understatement.

come on, Frame and Canvas is a great cd, and the new taking back sunday is so much better than anything NuMetal ever did

And, though nobody except Xhuxk will know what I mean, track 2 is a dead sound-alike for Artificial Joy Club's "Skywriting".

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By the way (not sure when this turned into the rolling post-teen-pop thread, but what the hell), I am i am playing the new Ashlee Simpson CD now and it is GREAT. First song and single, "Boyfriend," is now officially my favorite Franz Ferdinand song ever. No kidding, that's who its music sounds like, except with a really good singer for a change. Other parts, I'm thinking Stevie Nicks and Courtney Love a LOT, but also, like, "Broken English" by Marianne Faithful, or, well, what was that sleazy Deborah Allen rock-disco song in the '80s? Wow.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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Her music rocks the disco like Stevie's '80s solo stuff never did, I think, but like I always *wanted* it to. And she has more dance in her music than Courtney ever did, obviously. I am blown away.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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I mean, shit - Kim Carnes, Bonnie Tyler...I'm 95 percent sure that none of them ever made an album anywhere NEAR this good. I don't want to jinx it or anything, but this could end up being my album of the year. Just about every track ROCKS, and the ballads really seem to kick, too. (Weird, I saw Ashlee on SNL a couple weeks ago and that mature pseudo-classy whine weep tune she did bored me to tears; I did not have high hopes for this album at all.) (And by the way, Deborah Allen's biggest hits were COUNTRY hits, and Trick Pony covered "It's a Heartache" this year, so Ashlee can count as country if you want.)
Deborah Allen still looks pretty sleazy by the way:

http://www.deborahallen.com/

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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Hardest rocking Ashlee track MIGHT be "Coming Back For More," or might not. But the only one that turns into Led Zeppelin's "Trampled Under Foot" at the end, as far as I can tell so far, is "L.O.V.E."
xp

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

Also, "Catch Me When I Fall" reminds me "Cold Chills" by Kix, for some reason (the melody and open spaces and cold chilliness of it, probably). And "Burnin Up" reminds me of "Burning Up" by Madonna (the new wave evolved into rock-disco burning-uppishness of it, probably.) And the title track "I Am Me", while definitely not the hardest rocking track, is probably the most blatantly Courtney-grungey one.
xp

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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By the way, what I really meant to say about Ashlee's ballads isn't so much that they "kick" (which is not to say that they don't), but that there's generally a really visceral lushness and throb to them; they aren't just shrinking violets wilting behind the rock woodwork.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

http://www.zone1061.com/pictures/wallpapers/ashlee800.jpg

The Deborah Allen disco hit was... don't remember the title, actually (I'm too lazy to dig out my old Swellsvilles and find out), but it's the one with the lyric that Leslie deliberately misheard as "I know you like the back of my hand," in order to project some s&m content onto Deborah's burnt-voiced passion.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), October 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

Weirdest (probably misheard) album on the album so far: "Do you know how it feels to be a rape, lyng there frozen, with my eyes wide open?"

Not sure what else that word could be: "Erased"?? That's weird, too!

Why is Jon saying "bird" and "paedophile"? I thought he lived in BUSHWICK.

But to say that Ashlee's ripping Gwen off is ridiculous, since Ashlee doesn't sound like Gwen, and the reason for the comparison is Gwen = pop rock girl who goes funky reggae, Ashlee = pop rock girl who (occasionally) goes funky reggae, so they must be the point of comparison. Whereas actually it's John Shanks' guitar and production that's providing the reggae, albeit in consultation with the singer. Whereas if "Boyfriend" and "Burnin Up" had been the same except done by a guy, the obvious would have stuck out: It's the Clash, who were a rock band that played reggae, who are the most obvious comparison here, with the echoed laugh right off of "London Calling" and the clipped-short guitar crunch style from that very same song, and when it's not the Clash it's the Specials and Gang of Four (and Franz Ferdinand, for that matter) for Shanks' snapping-twig guitar riff that runs throughout the verse. And I think Shanks plays it more effectively than G of 4 or Franz Ferdinand, both of whose guitar work I like a lot.

(Now I disappear for several hours.)

is g-rated punk ever assumed to be authentic (eg. not a marketing move)?

Not when I remember her own father making comments on trying to market her as the total opposite of her sister (who was a famously beautiful virgin). The anarchy symbol at the Orange Bowl also comes to mind as something a bit contrived. Her music wouldn't be better if she was had a "rich punk heritage" or really believed in anarchy but the poster asked for her image, which I said was a bit forced. If he asked what her music sounded liked I might not even touch it.

Anyone else seen the TV show, or the videos (which my dial-up connection allows me to "see," but on postage-stamp size, stop-action "video" at Launch Yahoo)?

On Seventh Heaven she was not playing a fictionalized version of her music self (it wasn't a Suzi-Quatro-on-Happy Days situation). She was just another teen actress. There has been no attempt that I know of to tie the two jobs together - she seems to have simply decided making an album was a quicker route to stardom than being third-tier on a WB drama with no cred outside the Christian community. And she was right.

The videos are jammed full of standard "I'm rockin' out and wild" quick-cut iconography that's been the same since the early 80s. Young people partying in a house with no one older than them anywhere to be seen, jumping in the pool and dancing on furniture, some making out in the corners, etc., etc. Ashlee dresses "punk" (tight black jeans and Converse hightops like Billie Joe Armstrong wears, lots of bracelets, dark hair to start with but now blonde, retro rock band T-shirts)...you know the drill. Nothing surprising about them at all. The "La La" video features her and the extras cavorting in a laundromat like some kind of commercial for new and improved rebellious detergent.

As for image, what would you people (if you've seen it) say about the album photos? She entitles the record I Am Me and then gives us a whole bunch of very different looks, the Nico Ashlee, the Marlene Ashlee, the Debutante Ashlee, the Forlorn Runner-Up Prom Queen Ashlee, the Burlesque Ashlee, and - I don't know, the one in the brown two-piece, and her hair a dishmop - Frazzled Riverboat Harlot Ashlee. Pieces of her. Or pieces of her playing dressup.

(But I'm no whiz at identifying or describing fashions, so any insights you have would be a help.)

Stephen Thomas Erlewine at allmusic.com described Seventh Heaven as "square," and considered Autobiography an appealing makeover; and he was touched by its earnestness. (I don't know; "La La" seems lighthearted to me, though I suppose one can be earnest with a light heart.)

Xpost.

And not favorably enough on her desire for world peace?

(Do you consider her breasts rather ordinary?)

No, I consider her breasts pretty great. But I don't think her dad should be basically leering and pointing at them in public, y'know?

I knew what you meant about Daddy Simpson. I was just goofing around.

a toy for over 20 something pedophiles in the waiting

Well, here's another question. I'd originally assumed that her core audience was about 70% female, mostly teen or younger, but I don't really know this, and the knowledge available on the Web doesn't support this assumption, either. On Radio Disney you're hearing Jesse McCartney's cushy "Beautiful Soul" 10 times a day, just as you were 10 months ago, while "Boyfriend" is already fading, and is actually doing worse on Radio Disney than on regular Top 40, where it stalled early. I Am Me opened at number one on Billboard, but by the next week it fell out of the top 5. The first album also opened at number one but eventually moved fewer than 400,000 units. Now, if I do one twentieth as well with my book, I'd be ecstatic, but in the pop world Ashlee is not a superstar. And unless "L.O.V.E." gets "Hollaback Girl" attention on the CHR Rhythmic format (which I don't see happening, though it sure deserves the airplay), this album won't do as well as her last, since I don't hear anything as accessible on it as "Pieces of Me." I'd like to be proven wrong, since there's stuff on here that's as good as "Pieces of Me," but this is a fundamentally loud album - there are ballads, but they're all power ballads - and Ashlee's bruised, burnt voice is even more bruised and burnt than P!nk's was back on Missundaztood. By the way, P!nk not Gwen is the obvious source here, and her and Ashlee's loud confessional rock is what I assume propelled "emo" onto this thread title. If you want to call Ashlee "emo" I wouldn't necessarily argue, but I think Ashlee, Avril, and P!nk (and Liz Phair?) are a different loud confessional rock, though I haven't thought through what the differences are. I'd love to hear Ashlee sing "In My Eyes." "You tell me, that I'm better/You just hate yourself/You tell me that you like him/You just wish you did." Which is maybe what the best line in "Boyfriend" is about: "Hey how long 'til you look into your own life instead of looking into mine." Of course her income depends to some extent on our continuing to look into hers. And the reason she's falling between two stools commercially might be because she's trying to do two things at once: She's trying to model self-esteem and self-affirmation for the teen girls and tell them that can triumph through adversity and can survive without a man and that breaking up may be best thing that happens to them (you hear this message all the time in teen pop-rock, not to mention the adult pop-rock); AND she's trying to work punk rock into all this self-affirmation - which is not necessarily a contradiction; I would say that Lou and Iggy and Johnny and Courtney were/are all ultimately trying to affirm themselves, or affirm something, embrace life including one's own disastrous self. But certainly that quest takes them through a whole heap of self-loathing (at least self-loathing as expressed in song) so that "breaking up is the best thing that can happen to you" means "breaking down into pieces and destroying yourself might be the only way to save you from yourself." Punk rock gets off on this self-affirmation/self-destruction tension. I assume that the more thoughtful of you Ashlee haters (if there are any thoughtful Ashlee haters) aren't just being true to your school and therefore mad at her for belonging to the wrong social group and playing punk rock for the preps. (Why shouldn't preps respond to the self-affirmation/self-destruction dialectic?) Rather, you want someone who flies a punk flag to have some punk content as well. I don't get what anyone thinks is inherently wrong with her sound; she and Shanks rock harder than the Gang of Four and Franz Ferdinand, both of which sound like toy bands in comparison. (Sounding like toys isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course.) She goes tuneful and anthemic on her choruses, which may be too nonpunk for you, but doesn't seem so for me (one of the potent contradictions of "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" is that they're nice wrap-your-arms-around-each-other sing-along anthems about destroying everything). I surely can find stuff in her music that ought to be better; I think the anthemic choruses would be more powerful if they relied on her bare voice rather than souping everything up with double-tracked singing and 101 guitars. It's not a powerhouse voice but it is a tough little one, the bruised feel of it maybe too consistent, too solid, so I want to hear it crack up a bit. And I miss the excitement of music potentially veering out of control, which I do get but only a little from Franz Ferdinand (and Gang of Four) and a lot from long-ago bands like the Electric Eels and the James Williamson-era Stooges, the feel of somehow keeping your wheels under you while skidding close to the cliff. And right, we're not getting that from Ashlee. But we're rarely getting it from much of anybody - bits of the first Gore Gore Girls LP might be the exception - except in pale form. (And you're not serioulsy hearing this potential in Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt, are you?)

I don't see anything wrong with making demands on a performer, but what's the point of making demands on Ashlee if you don't think she's any good to begin with, if you don't hear anything with promise to live up to?

I also think her lyrics vague out too much - more than P!nk's, and vagueness was one of my problems with her, but I want to get back to this question I've been heading towards:

What do you think her constituency is? I know a few kids in their early teens, and when they want rock it tends to be stuff like System of a Down or Marilyn Manson, and their pop-rock leanings are towards Yellowcard and Hawthorn. On Radio Disney, you'll still get some teen confessional pop rock (esp. the ones that hit a few years ago, which get played to death), but neither P!nk nor Avril did a good job of following up on Missundaztood and Let Go, and though you'll hear some Ashlee and Lindsay, they're hardly dominant. And the "real" rock and alternative stations won't touch Ashlee because of who she is (rock stations don't like girls anyway); actually, I don't listen to rock stations much; from what I hear of rock and metal on record there are some fascinating things going on with form, but nonetheless these guys seem to want rock that slogs rather than rock that rocks. ("Rock that rocks" is hardly my be all and end all criterion fo rock, but everything else being equal, I sure prefer the rock that rocks.) And alternative is... [peters out]. Adult contemporary is no longer averse to rock, though it goes for the more classic in arrangement - Sheryl and Alanis - than for the teen wall of wail. Kelly Clarkson's very wailing "Since U Been Gone" was too undeniable not to rush the adult charts along with all the other charts it rushed, but her recurrent adult comtempo plays are her several million ballads. (And the fact that Marion Raven's similar - and almost as good - "Break You" hasn't even got a U.S. release is significant of something, though maybe just of the fact that it needs something better going on in the video than Marion having a screaming tantrum in her kitchen.) There's an amorphous "mainstream pop" audience for Ashlee, I guess, though I'm not sure who's in it. Her bruised voice is probably too bruising for a lot of listeners but not xy-chromosomed enough for the real bruisers.

Maybe she doesn't have a core fanbase but is just pulling people in due to her fame and to the quality of her music. (I was never as ecstatic about this album as Chuck was initially - I was hoping for a lot of "La La" and disappointed when I didn't get it - but I do respond to hooks and choruses and craftsmanship, and I like bruised voices and Courtney imitations (Chuck wasn't kidding about the title song.)

I tend to believe this. I don't much care about Ashlee - haven't heard either album all the way through - but man when the next Pink album drops next year I'm gonna be first in line. I don't understand how "Humble Neighborhoods" wasn't a single.

It's g-rated, but IT. IS. NOT. PUNK., goddammit.

She bores me, as do several other artists, because it doesn't seem to have occurred to her that art can be about anything but expressing one's inner soul (and please don't come at me with strawman "What do you want her to do - sing fist-pumping U2 pomp-"political" ballads?" There's a middle ground and you know it).

And yeah, I bristle at the hypocrisy: shortly after Autobiography came out I knew knew knew her next album was going to have a "Stop prying into my life" song. Which is trying to have it both ways. Which isn't a problem with a lot of other artists - sure, there's a difference between public and private, and I can just appreciate them on the basis of the songcraft. But when so much of what you are is tied into putting across the idea that "what you're seeing and hearing is real - this is the real me," you better go all the way with it. Which is why people (including me) came down much harder on her for the lip-synching thing than they would someone else.

And I hate her voice. Can't hit a note to save her life (I saw her before Autobiography came out, on a small stage that didn't allow for lip-synching technology), and the bruise in her voice sounds like run-of-the-mill Method acting to me.

I dunno if this qualifies as the thoughts of a "thoughtful Ashlee hater," but it's what I got.

This describes a lot of punk rock too, of course. (Not that I agree that it applies to Ashlee. Which is not to say that I necessarily *disagree* with it, either; more like, "hitting notes" has not much to do with why I like music. Whether she's hitting the notes or not, her voice has some power to it. And it did when I saw her live, too.)

I don't think there are any other blatant Franz Ferdinand rips per se besides "Boyfriend," Alfred, but there are for sure other excursions into '80s-style dance-oriented new wave rock (see my posts above.)

Idol was a member of both the Bromley Contingent and Chelsea. Tony James was a member of the London SS with Simonon and Mick Jones and Keith Levene. These men knew what actual Punk Rock was.

Cheeze-whiz often tastes real good, Monsieur Alex.

If you've got low standards, then suit yourself.

joan jett was prepackaged at the start and then she busted out! (as did the runaways)

Fair point on this one. The Runaways were indeed a svengali-steered project, but it's not like they were really about to trouble the pop charts with any severity. And Joan bailed out to follow her own muse swiftly enough. I wouldn't call her a fake.

And the best music often happens even when encased in prepackaged forms (Motown to thread).

Fuck Motown.

Okay, I was wrong.

(And somebody should mail Ashlee a Bromley Contingent T-shirt.)

They weren't a band.

>Please explain, in some detail, what the big schism is between whatever "punk" means in your greying head and what it means when Frank uses it to describe Ashlee Simpson's songs.

Because if all you've got is this:

>These men knew what actual Punk Rock was.

Then I feel bad for you. Punk wasn't real, Alex; it never existed. I know you think it did, but here's a hint for you: real revolutionaries don't make albums, they make bombs. It's all just showbiz.

So aren't lots of other T-shirts!

(Unless Bromley Contingent were a soccer team or something.)

Luther Vandross had a voice from the heavens and a brain in his head.

In 2005, it's a bit late to try to tack a definition on "Punk Rock," but in the same way Ashlee Simpson's vile product isn't, say, Metal or Polka, it isn't Punk. Regardless of your perception on the genre's/movement's origins (US vs. UK, etc.), Punk Rock was a reaction against, and a decideldy more organic one at that. Ripped T-shirts, Chuck Taylors, goofy hair colors, leather jackets, etc. -- they may be nice and all, but they don't make one "Punk." Ashlee Simpson is a living, breathing Mr. Potato-Head, all trussed up in conventionally "punk" finery, but her music, her message, her aspirations for stardom are strictly teen pop to the bone AND. NOTHING. MORE. If Mariah Carey started wearing a Damned t-shirt and spray painted a big Anarchy symbol on her next album, that wouldn't make her a punk either.

Regarding the Bromley Contingent (x-post), they were essentially a bunch of kids who were around when Punk was a going concern (and yes, they included Sioux, Idol and Steve Severin, among others).

For a start, why not take your patronizing tone and shove it way up your ass and swivel? Moreover, I never used to the term "revolution". It was purely pop culture (labeling merely "showbiz" is a bit too crass for my taste). Call it was you like -- showbiz, entertainment, expression, etc. -- it had a bit more substance to it.

So did Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye!

Sure, but it's more important in some kinds of music than others. A Siouxsie who can't hit notes would be fine; a Donna Summer who can't hit notes would be dreadful. I think Ashlee's music tends toward the latter.

A week late, I thought I'd point out that "Breakfast in America" is the song you're looking for.

As for Ashley, "Boyfriend" is an enjoyable radio confection, but I disliked the singles from the last album, and what galls me about her in general is the overarching feeling that, as with Paris Hilton, a lot of people are putting a lot of work into her career and she's not one of them.

Ha! I decree this thread closed.

Nope, but if she had a song that went "Someday the one you gave away will be the only one you're wishing for/Boy you're gonna pay 'cause I'm the one that's keeping score," it might. (Oh wait, she did.) (And I'm talking punk in the "Hey Joe"/"96 Tears" sense here, obviously.)

>Call it was you like -- showbiz, entertainment, expression, etc. -- it had a bit more substance to it.

In what way? Is it because the punk bands wrote songs and then signed record deals? I don't think that necessarily adds up to "substance" all by itself. If it was their lyrical subject matter, then you can keep "substance," because frankly I'd rather listen to songs about sex and cars (Motörhead, AC/DC, ZZ Top) than songs about anarchy. (And yes, Motörhead have written political songs, but they've written more songs about pussy than politics, to their great benefit and ours.) The only thing more boring than hearing someone yammer on about politics (particularly when the assumption is that the listener shares the speaker's politics) is hearing someone sing about them. If I'm gonna do that, I'll at least keep it interesting by listening to songs with political messages I disagree with (that is to say I'd rather listen to Skrewdriver than some lefty, if only because it'll be fun to see if the Nazis can convince me of the validity of their argument, whereas with someone I'm disposed to agree with I'll probably wind up picking apart all their logical fallacies that arise from trying to cram a civics lecture into a crude rhyme scheme).

Didn't you even watch her damn show? Whatever. Continue fooling yourself if that makes you feel better.

Luther Vandross had a voice from the heavens and a brain in his head.

So did Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye!

Sure they did. I just don't like Motown and find it all slavishly overrated, but that's simply my taste.

I apologize a little for the patronizing tone of my earlier post, but your stance just seems so...teenaged and dumb, and I know you're older than me.

Keep it up.

In what way? Is it because the punk bands wrote songs and then signed record deals?

Way to oversimply things. And no, that's not what I meant. Many of the Punks (and, summarily, many of the post-punk bands) actually had THINGS TO SAY with their music and were more interested in NEWER, FRESHER, SIMPLER, MORE INNOVATIVE AND/oR MORE DIRECT WAYS OF SAYING IT. It's not simply a matter of record deals (the `Pistols, the Clash, etc. etc. were all on major labels, yes I know).

The "substance" issue comes in because many of these bands (note that I am not saying "all," as there was a hefty share of the class of `77 and beyond that had nothing to say) were doing something that was a refreshing break from the norm in both sentiment and sound. You can say I'm wearing rose-tinted glasses and looking back fondly, but the case remains that you don't remember what radio sounded like in the late `70s, I do.

I don't think that necessarily adds up to "substance" all by itself. If it was their lyrical subject matter, then you can keep "substance," because frankly I'd rather listen to songs about sex and cars (Motörhead, AC/DC, ZZ Top) than songs about anarchy.

You don't find me decrying those things. And I was probably listening to AC/DC and Motorhead when you were but a stain on your father's underpants.

(And yes, Motörhead have written political songs, but they've written more songs about pussy than politics, to their great benefit and ours.) The only thing more boring than hearing someone yammer on about politics (particularly when the assumption is that the listener shares the speaker's politics) is hearing someone sing about them.>

It wasn't just politics. Consider the Buzzcocks -- not a political song in their entire catalog, but their self-deprecating, non-gender specific love songs (playe with the same spite and verve as the Ramones and the `Pistols et. al) was a completely fresh approach. There are countless examples

If I'm gonna do that, I'll at least keep it interesting by listening to songs with political messages I disagree with (that is to say I'd rather listen to Skrewdriver than some lefty, if only because it'll be fun to see if the Nazis can convince me of the validity of their argument, whereas with someone I'm disposed to agree with I'll probably wind up picking apart all their logical fallacies that arise from trying to cram a civics lecture into a crude rhyme scheme).

Well, this is all about you and your own perceptions now, so I have no retort to that. Skrewdriver -- even beyond their indefensible political leanings -- made bog-standard, uninspired music.

In any case, Ashlee Simpson has nothing interesting to say. She has nothing new to say. She does not seek to push any envelopes or strip things back to their basics. She is merely sculpted and dressed to fit a now well established and tired little mold. Cheeze-whiz aside, it may very well be perfectly well-crafted teen pop. Just don't call it Punk Rock. That's ultimately all I'm saying.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), November 9th, 2005.

God I'm going to regret getting into this, but is the lyrical content all that made "Hey Joe"/"96 Tears" a version of punk? I thought it was about how it stripped the MOR orchestral frippery and returned to something more audio verite. (Whether that automatically translates to a more direct, honest, "punk" lyrical expression is another question, and I make no claims there.)

Anyway, I'm not getting indignant like Alex, 'cause there's nothing wrong with teen-pop, but I would agree Ashlee S. isn't punk because the first wave of punk rock (as someone, I think it was Phil, specified) was (self-)consciously different from what was on the radio at the time. (Not that those bands wouldn't have taken radio play if it had been offered, but still.) Whereas Ashlee's got post-Green Day radio rock down to a T.

This all made a lot more sense before I 1) threw back some excellent cognac and 2) started typing.

I remember too. It was great, as great as any radio I've ever heard. And lots of times (compared to, say, "Ballroom Blitz" or "Highway to Hell" or "Hot Child in the City" or "Rock and Roll Hootchie Coo" or "Free For All"), punk rock really didn't sound all that different.

xpost

x-post

I certainly don't ever remember hearing "Ballroom Blitz" on the radio.

And Rick Derringer has always sucked.

TS: Rick Derringer on Weird Al's "Eat It" vs. Eddie Van Halen on Michael Jackson's "Beat It"

ISTR Sweet getting on the radio a lot in the late 1970s (at least Fox on the Run and Love Is Like Oxygen), but my family was stationed in Europe at the time, so that may have been more a function of weird AFN programming than anything else.

Right -- but I was singling out the stuff that sounded more like punk. (Maybe I should have said "Hey You" by BTO? Or, hell, "Headknocker" by Foreigner then.) Anyway, lots of the disco and soft rock on the radio was great, too, often way *better* than punk rock - especially the disco. And "Ballroom Blitz" got played all the time in Detroit, believe me.

you know, a year ago, id argue with alex on this one, but very simply, he's right. It really is nothing more than pre-packaged half assed songwriting and nothing more, at least FROM her. If you want to project some sort of loftier concept on to her brand of pop-"punk"-rock, then go ahead, but the material just doesn't back it up. the first record has some pretty good guilty pleasures, songs i wouldn't turn off on the occasional times i listen to the radio anymore, but like alex's view on motown, thats just taste, or my lack thereof. the new album sucks tho.

i think the more interesting thing going on with Ashlee is the earnestness issue. For all the disney/WB promotion, i think (and this is projection and NOTHING MORE) that the poor girl really WANTS to be credible, and probably deep down recognizes and hates the PR machine that brought her fame. but given the fact that shes lazy and not very smart (a simpson after all), she seems to have no idea on how to get herself out of her dilemma. Or then again, maybe not.

xp

But anyway, you guys do understand that there were *lots* of different radio stations, so you could switch to the one that was playing the *good* song, right? Well now you do.

In the first season of her reality show, she was utterly adamant about not being "pop", got mad at one of her producers for giving her too much of a pop sound, but "not pop" to her probably means something like Offspring or The Used or something - not that you can be sure, seeing as how she's never seen talking about music other than her own. But I think that given her background it's not unreasonable to say that she probably can't conceive of any way of doing music outside that kind of showbiz world (dissatisfied as she probably is with certain aspects of it).

By the way, my Ashlee opinions are almost entirely based on her MUSIC. I have only seen her on TV a couple times. (I much preferred her first SNL appearance to her second one.)

Mine too; but I reckon that from the very fact of making a reality TV show out of the making of one's first album a few conclusions can be drawn. For example, my above point, that you're meant to feel like you're getting the real Ashlee, straight from the gut, and that anytime it's made clear that you're not, you're entitled to say "what the hell?"

Late-'70s soft rock: "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight"! Also The Little River Band! "Slow Dancing"!

Debby Boone
Andy Gibb
Barbra Streisand
Mary MacGregor
Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr
Glen Campbell
Bill Conti
Alan O'Day
Leo Sayer
David Soul
Shaun Cassidy
Barry Manilow

i like this point, alex...

"Many of the Punks (and, summarily, many of the post-punk bands) actually had THINGS TO SAY with their music and were more interested in NEWER, FRESHER, SIMPLER, MORE INNOVATIVE AND/oR MORE DIRECT WAYS OF SAYING IT"

But I'm not sure if this defines punk apart from disco - the difference might be in what the two genres had to say, but... seems like a littl' too much mythologizin' for any one 'style' of music. then again, you could say that i'm still a stain on my father's pants.

King Harvest vs. Starbuck

Really good Andy Gibb singles: I Just Want to Be Your Everything, (Love is) Thicker than Water, Shadow Dancing, Time is Time, maybe Desire. All of 'em on pretty much the level as great Bee Gees singles of the time, though nobody seems to remember. (Robin Gibb's "Boys Do Fall in Love" from 1984 may well trounce every one of them, though.)

One thing to remember is that the radio did not just mean #1 singles; sure, some of those were bad. Big whoop. Again, that's why we were born with opposable thumbs -- To change the radio station to something better. You can't judge an era just by its *worst* songs.

Also, I left out "So In To You" and (especially) "Imaginary Lover" by Atlanta Rhythm Section (AOR guys, maybe, sure, but way more A/C). And "Lonely Boy" by Andrew Gold. 'Twas a great era for onanism songs.

>is the lyrical content all that made "Hey Joe"/"96 Tears" a version of punk? I thought it was about how it stripped the MOR orchestral frippery and returned to something more audio verite.<

Not really sure what MOR frippery is being stripped here (especially with "Hey Joe", which dates back way before garage punk). These songs weren't rebelling against any other *music*, as far as I can see. But they were definitely getting revenge on the people they were pissed off at. (I still don't believe '70s punk's main point was reacting against other music, either -- if that *was* its main point, it really *was* shallow, which I don't think it was. And as I've said repeatedly, the other music wasn't so bad anyway; it didn't *need* to be rebelled against. And I say that as somebody who loves punk rock. But either way, this may be the first time I've ever heard somebody suggest that *'60s* punk was rebelling against other music. Mostly it was kids imitating Beatles/Stones/Yardbirds, crassly attempting to get on the radio. You can't rebel against *Sgt. Pepper's* if it doesnt exist yet. But maybe I'm missing something here. And yeah, when crate-digging Creem critics and reissue compilers started remembering "96 Tears" and "Hey Joe" in the '70s, I'm sure *they* were reacting against what they perceived as an MOR turn in rock. At least they said they were. But that was the fans, not the bands.)

I dunno, that sounds pretty naive to me! Wouldn't the mere fact that she's willing to have a TV show make it *less* likely that you're getting the "real" her? TV is acting! Including reality shows. So is recorded music; we're not talking some blues octagenarian serenading his dead dog on the porch. But the TV part only compounds the issue. Why would you expect a TV star to be anything *but* an actor? Either way, I'm still not sure how that would change how her music sounds. The CDs are completely the same whether she had a reality show or not.

So there's no distinction between punk and rock that has some attitude?

And besides, Ashlee's songs sure aren't *long* -- on the new album, they range from 2:34 to 4:15; is that any longer, on average, than the average Sex Pistols or Clash, much less Public Image Ltd, song?)

Okay, but she doesn't have any that are like 30 seconds long. Or a minute and a half. Whereas loads of punk bands do. I think of breaking the four minute mark as getting a little long.

Chorus to "Boyfriend" isn't reggae, of course. It's a sing-along pop-rock anthemic chorus.

1 Holidays in the Sun Cook, Jones, Rotten, Vicious 3:20
2 Bodies Cook, Jones, Rotten, Vicious 3:02
3 No Feelings Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 2:49
4 Liar Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 2:40
5 Problems Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 4:10
6 God Save the Queen Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 3:18
7 Seventeen Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 2:02
8 Anarchy in the U.K. Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 3:31
9 Submission Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 4:12
10 Pretty Vacant Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 3:16
11 New York Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 3:05
12 E.M.I. Cook, Jones, Matlock, Rotten 3:10

It's just something I noticed when making a punk compilation for my lil' bro-in-law, onto which I was able to cram far more than the usual number of songs in the 80-minute span of the disc.

(And anyway, in listening to the Sex Pistols now I'm no longer feeling the scabrousness and throat-retching thrill, now that the scabrousness and the throat retch have been assimilated to normality by 50 million subsequent bands.)

Hillary Duff in /Loveless/ album cover to THREAD.

Fair enough, but if "punk" is such a fluid concept, how is anyone supposed to win that argument?

What about: she's not interested enough in pissing people off?

(And even if the Sex Pistols did break an old pattern, which they may well have in some ways, there are plenty of rock bands who break *other* old patterns that nobody, even me, would ever consider punk. So if breaking old patterns is part of it, it can't be *all* of it.)

Yes, but maybe intentionality is important here.

(Yeah, Chuck, I agree with your disagreement about "breaking old patterns" per se, but maybe not per se there's is something to it: not just breaking any old pattern but the thrill of defying old patterns in a punk way. (That phrase brought to you courtesy of the Department of Tautology Department.) So the pattern you're copying is breaking someone else's form. (Department of Specious Reasoning?)

But then again, I think Stevie Nicks' Fleetwood Mac songs c. 1977 were more punk than anything the Clash or Buzzcocks ever did (which is not to criticize the Clash or Buzzcocks), so obv. I'm not saying that defying old patterns is the only way to be punk. (Stevie Nicks once referred to herself as the antipunk, which just shows she has no self-knowledge.)

In the late '70s I used to force myself to listen to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every week, and I must see that except for the disco stuff the show was pretty dreary going for me. But maybe if I reapproached that era with my current ears I'd like it far more. For instance, I couldn't stand Hall & Oates, and I haven't really given them a relisten since, but I suspect I'd appreciate them far more.

I actually wish this would've spurred a Chris Rea discussion, but no such luck. (As in: In the U.K., or at least on the jukeboxes of the Irish bars in Sunnyside, Queens, he is apparently considered an AOR star, maybe an equivalent of Seger or Cougar or Petty or something. But in the States, to my knowledge, he has never been played on AOR radio, which makes him a one-hit-wonder who nobody heard of whose loan sad adult contemporary ballad hit #12 in 1978, then zilch.)xp

It's not that Ashlee is Punk or Punk Rock or Punky or not (and, for the record, she isn't)..it's that SHE DOESN'T WARRANT THIS MUCH DISCUSSION! She's a fucking momentary blip on the radar.

Well, he never wanted to tour in the States, which affected the degree to which he registered on the radar. Me, I like "The Road to Hell" and "Texas," though not nearly as much as "Fool." For some reason, the noncelebrity barroom rock of 1978-1982 has slipped through a black hole in radio, and so we miss out on not only Rea, but Paul Davis, Player, Gino Vannelli, Benny Mardones, and Greg Guidry. A shame, especially with Davis.

Sorry to digress, but you asked.

xp

Thanks, Joseph, you rule! I should totally check out Paul Davis; I want to have a more concrete opinion of "Cool Night," "I Go Crazy," and "'65 Love Affair" than I currently do. As for those other guys, let's see here, I definitely kinda like "Baby Come Back," I really like the Gino Vanelli song about those nights in Montreal, I have very little memory of Benny Mardones even though "Into The Night" apparently hit the top 40 something like 14 different times (always in the early summer), and I never heard of Greg Guidry til now. But if I see any of their albums in the dollar bins, I'll go for it! Ditto Chris Rea's other stuff; I bet he has a good best of CD. I should compare track listings on those Sunnyside jukeboxes (which also feature plenty of the Thin Lizzy by the way. And Thin Lizzy were sort of punk in a few different ways as well, it should be noted.)

I think if/when Ashlee is thinking about delivering a "punk" emotional and intellectual experience, she's probably aiming more at the Green Day/Blink 182/Sum 41 school of (pop) punk than anything. While her writers/co-writers/producers may have a lot more in mind, you're ascribing a lot to one kid who probably hasn't thought about it more than in passing. If she's consciously emulating anyone, it's the music she may have actually heard or her peers.

Punk-inflected pop rock.

I'm not talking about actual time in existence, I'm talking about the quality of their respective contributions. Twenty years from now, I sincerely doubt anyone's going to still be discussing the arguable merits of Ashlee's "La La," but I dare say people who still be talking about, say, the Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" and/or "(I'm) Stranded" by the Saints.

Not that I'm an expert or have any cred, since I'm still pretty new around here, but I listened to these recently, and for some reason "I Go Crazy" was a lot worse than I remembered, and "'65 Love Affair" was a hell of a lot better. "Cool Night" I can take or leave.

xpost

Chuck, you should have your facial hair vigorously waxed off for invoking Lydon's Bandstand appearance here.

Nice parallel, Chuck. Who's being cheated?

He does. 1989's New Light From Old Windows.

You could be right. But then again, if somebody had shut down discussion of the Count Five or the Saints way back then, there's a good chance that nobody would be talking about them now (inasmuch as anybody still is. Not sure when was the last time I heard anybody say anything really *interesting* about either of those bands. Maybe a decade or more ago, when Metal Mike Saunders told me that, when Alice Cooper came out, he thought they sounded like a Count Five ripoff.) Anyway, for that very reason, I don't see the point in shutting down discussion of Ashlee now. (Hey Lester, why the hell are you writing a Count Five essay? Who's gonna care about *them* in 2005, you dork?)

But what'd I like 20 years ago? "Roxanne's Revenge"!

There, that proves it.

(Proves what?)

http://datelinehollywood.com/wp-content/04092004153506-1.jpg

x-post

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), November 10th, 2005.

TALKING HEAD: Everyone in the entire universe was watching I Love The 80's 3-D. Where else could you get Nelson redoing a ToTo song? TOTAL INSANITY!

(pauses)

TALKING HEAD (looking at camera): Am I right or what? *nervous laughter*

(crickets.)

TALKING HEAD: Hello?

The CAMERA PULLS OUT TO REVEAL that the Z-lister is not in the studio where he thought he was in, but instead a vast gravely wasteland.

TALKING HEAD: WHERE AM I?

Johnny did a LOT more than just do a silly dance, xhuxhxhxh. Granted, none of it lives up to the hype to those who've never seen it. But the audience participation and the whole spectacle was definitely more than just a silly dance.

Ashlee's fundamental model is P!nk's M!ssundaztood, but though she sounds like P!nk, she's not doing what P!nk did, which was to overthrow a budding and already lucrative r&b career for hard rock/confessional rock. An incredibly gutsy move, whatever you think of the result (Sheffield complained that M!ssundaztood was the teenpop In Utero.) And gutsy of Arista to take the commercial gamble on it. And the result was raw and powerful and endearing, and original, even though it was sometimes maudlin and it vagued out too much. And for better or worse, P!nk's risk made subsequent rock moves by Avril, Lindsay, Kelly, and Ashlee much less risky. As I said, Ashlee vagues out even more than P!nk did, so all around - commercially, personally - she's not nearly as much on the line - which ironically may hurt her commercially, since in "Catch Me When I Fall," when she says that something's killing her, she owes us details as to what. Owes us aesthetically, that is, so we can feel the danger and the pain. If she wants to matter more, this is what she's got to do. She should make something up, if she has to; just give us something to make the song more powerful.

So, in courage, in mattering, P!nk beats Ashlee. But one thing: Ashlee made the record that - song for song, melody by melody, riff by riff, wail by wail - I'd much rather listen to. One could still legitimately say that P!nk is better just for doing what she did (I'm not a "sound-beats-all-other-criteria" man by any means), but I'm with Ashlee at least for now, as the better artist. Even if she's not as punk.

Right, but since they didn't call it punk rock at the time, I always thought that was why it was retroactively dubbed punk rock: Because it rebelled (consciously or not) against Sgt. Pepper or (going back) Fabian or whatever.

I dunno, that sounds pretty naive to me! Wouldn't the mere fact that she's willing to have a TV show make it *less* likely that you're getting the "real" her? TV is acting! Including reality shows.

Maybe.

So is recorded music; we're not talking some blues octagenarian serenading his dead dog on the porch.

No, but don't record titles like Autobiography and I Am Me suggest something? Or at least tip you off that they're meant to suggest something?

Either way, I'm still not sure how that would change how her music sounds. The CDs are completely the same whether she had a reality show or not.

And I don't like 'em on their own merits, as I said above. The TV business is my theory on why she gets more crap than others in a similar spot.

"Moonlight Feels Right" rules! That chuckle before the chorus!

Ugh. Einstien, Shakespeare, Stephen Hawking, Ashlee. The Littlest simpson would have to create an ipod that runs off cold fusion to come close to deserving her name in the same sentence as that word.

"I sincerely doubt anyone's going to still be discussing the arguable merits of Ashlee's "La La," but I dare say people will still be talking about, say, the Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" and/or "(I'm) Stranded" by the Saints. "

Does more than 1% of the population talk about either of those songs? The sad fact is that Ashlee WILL be remembered by a much larger segment of people, reformed tennyboppers and aging Gen-Y'ers, as an example when music was actually *good*. Everyone should shudder.

None.

Both the Count Five and the Saints singles have been re-released more times than you've had hot dinners (usually by those tireless folks at Rhino) suggests that YES, people do still talk about/care about the music in question.

I could be completely wrong, but I suspect Ashlee Simpson will be remembered more for her television show and her lip-synch catastrophe and her relationship with her equally irrelevant sister THAN FOR HER ACTUAL MUSIC. She's destined to be a footnote....an embarassing blemish on this part of the decade. She'll be a punchline at best.

And it will be mostly crap they aired. I got an ad from a 1992 GQ with VH-1 doing a Michael Bolton special...unironically! Three years from now they'll be mocking Fred Durst and a few years later some Black Eyed Peas.

What was the Hilary Duff/Loveless connection mendtioned earlier?

Nah, Fabian's last Top 40 single was in 1960. He would've been long, long gone and--after the Beatles and Stones etc--I would assume long forgotten by the time "96 Tears" came along. And like I said, *Sgt Peppers* didn't exist yet. So when '70s fanziners renamed all those bratty old one-hit wonders (and some two and three hit wonders) "punk rock", I doubt it was because they were rebelling against anything. More likely it was just because they sounded like brats. Tough brats.

i never said that people don't talk about those songs, obviously they do, but thats not really the idea. Many of the people that will get nostalgic about Ashlee many years of now will think they ARE talking about music, because they never needed/wanted to look beyond the radio or their immediate exposures.

Chris Rea's "I Can Hear Your Heartbeat" was a medium-sized hit on Montreal radio - pretty decent song (never heard "Fool" though). Greatest Gino Vannelli single ever: 1986's "Wild Horses" (a towtruck driver I worked with once told me his mom was Gino's cousin!)

I see your point. It starts sounding like "punk" means so many things that it means nothing. Which would hardly be the first word that that's happened to.

Just because "punk" might arguably mean many things, doesn't mean it means everything. Gloppy, cookie-cutter, glossy, sickly, candy-colored, slickly-produced teenybopper radio fodder it does NOT mean.

more likely guys who "took it" in prison.

Oh, I don't know. I mean, you're right, not every bit of gloppy, cookie-cutter, glossy, sickly, candy-colored, slickly-produced teenybopper radio fodder is punk, but "Hey Joe" (Byrds), "Hey Joe" (Love), "Cherry Cherry" (Neil Diamond), "Steppin' Stone" (Monkees), "Break On Through" (Doors), "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" and "It's My Life" (Animals, those songs included on this list for their Brill Building/Colgems associations), and "Kicks" (Paul Revere and the Raiders) - to name some tracks that were state-of-the-art in their time and had money and bizzers involved in their creation and were the sort of record that retrospectively got called punk rock once Marsh, Bangs, Barnes & Co. started batting the term around c. 1971. Not that I'd call any of those songs sickly, but I wouldn't call any Ashlee songs sickly either. And not that those songs have much of a punk effect anymore, neutered as they are by nostalgia and familiarity and sounding small these days given so much intervening musical roar and bombast, though maybe some kid who approached them with fresh ears would somehow feel the spark I felt in 1966. But then, the Sex Pistols don't have much of a punk effect anymore either except again on the kid who somehow makes his ears new and isn't impressed or put off by the bands' pedestal. Obviously my various uses of "punk" don't match all of yours, and I wouldn't call Ashlee a punk, just call her someone who occasionally veers punkward. But by and large as much or more good punk gets made by nonpunks as by punks anyway (in this part of this sentence I'm meaning people who think of themselves as making music in the punk-rock genre; maybe I think "punk-rock genre" is something of an oxymoron).

Yeah, why would a 21-year-old woman who's been in the music business for years have actually heard much "punk" music or emulate any of it, or think about what her image and sounds mean, limited as she is by her peers - who would be L.A. musicians and actors, right, who probably therefore only have access to a small amount of music, living in such a backwater. (Though L.A. does have a library. I know because I visited it once. Even went inside. Had books and stuff. Forget if it had compact disks.)

I mean the punks (not the nonpunks who make better punk than the punks do).

"Punk" not necessarily always meaning "good," obviously.

you know I agree with that! I'd think her collaborating with Tim Armstrong might have even been gutsier - and nobody talks about those tracks (not sure I've heard them!).

No, but it did mean the Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" before it meant the Sex Pistols' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" or S.O.A.'s "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" or Minor Threat's "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone." (But seeing as how these two meanings have nothing to do with each other, I can understand how things get confusing.)

Agreed. Second place: "I Break Things," by Erika Jo (about breaking things).

And Alex might be interested to know that the first place finisher "Kerosene" sounds exactly like an old Screaming Blue Messiahs song (and has the same title as old Big Black song).

But it doesn't.

Jeez.

(The "look at your life instead of looking into mine" line means "look and see what you did to drive your boyfriend away rather than deluding yourself into thinking I stole him from you.")

(I like Rancid and Transplants often enough. Actually, I've only heard the title track of Gangsters and Thugs, which disappointed me: I'd have as soon called it "Gangsters and Shrugs." Did anyone hear the Screwed and Chopped album?)

P!nk's vocal range is greater than Ashlee's (greater in variety as well as notes she hits), but I don't always like where P!nk goes in that range: She's a bore when she tries to be Janis, for instance. Ashlee does better with what she's got.

You should buy the third Pink album, Frank; it's the best one. The only shitty song is the first single, "God Is A DJ," and there's one on there, "Catch Me While I'm Sleeping" I think it's called (don't have my iPod in front of me), that's straight Philly soul. I'm really interested to see where she's gonna go with her next record. If she follows her current trajectory, it could sound like a mid-80s Lita Ford album or something.

More or less true, but come on....listen to fuckin' either of those two singles on her first record and TELL me they're not slickly overproduced dollops of soulless product.

Ironically, the "overproduced" part of "Boyfriend," the discoed "woah-woah HA!" part, is the only part I like. It's the raw guitar and vocal verses that strike me as blah.

I've always liked Joan Jett but always thought she came up viscerally short by oversinging and having the guitars too loud; wish she'd gone back and listened to Dixie Cups "Iko Iko" or something to learn how to get that elementary rock 'n' roll motion. Anyway, I think that "La La" pulls off what Joan Jett never quite could; it lifts the multi-guitar multi-voiced sound and makes it dance. But I wouldn't call either Joan Jett or Ashlee slick; and I think Ashlee's a much smarter singer. I think Ashlee and Shanks pull off the anthemic choruses on the new album but I also think they might have done better - it'd have been worth trying as an experiment (and for all I know they did try it, and didn't like the results) - to be less anthemic. Who knows? Alternate universe. I love Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me," but wonder if there might not be a great alternate version done by someone like the Dixie Cups in their "Iko Iko" mode: street corner rather than arena.

i have to admit i've never understand the seemingly universal notion that the sex pistols have aged poorly because they were "all attitude" or somesuch (odd that you never hear this argument levelled against the rolling stones or iggy pop or public enemy, but maybe it's just cooler to namedrop them than it is the cartoonishly ubiquitous pistols). i'm 23 and heard this album for the first time when i was 16, about a million years after the word "punk" ceased to have any real meaning, and it sounds better to me every year. one of the things i find so powerful about it is that all of john lydon's disgust, rage and bile comes in the context of what are basically great, well-produced pop songs, about a million times catchier and funner than anything i've heard by the likes of ashlee simpson (and i like quite a bit of modern bubblegum pop).

so i can't really agree with frank's assertion - but then i don't feel that any of the power has gone out of, say, little richard's "long tall sally," and i can easily imagine a teenager hearing it for the first time today and being blown away by it - *i* was. but maybe i'm wrong.

It's not that they've aged poorly (because they haven't), it's that they're no longer shocking, so to speak.

"shockingness" never EVER ages well!

Hey!

Because if it is, in fact, more hackneyed and cliched than Joan Jett, then I think the accusation of "gloss" is maybe valid. Gloss is dressing something that is nothing up to give it the appearance that it's something.

it is amazing, but nothing else on the album it comes from comes close. it's glaring in it's awesomeness if you play the whole benny santini album.

Dont spit on me and shame yourself
Because you wish you were someone else
You look so clean but you spread your dirt
As if think that words dont hurt
You build up walls no one can climb
The things you do should be a crime
You're queen of superficiality
Keep your lies out of my reality
And when you're nice its a pose
You're one of those

[Chorus]
Haters
Traitors to the human race
Haters
What a drag
What a waste
I'd like to see them disappear
They dont belong anywhere
Haters

Spinning a web thats hard to see
Of envy, greed and jealousy
Feeling angry but you don't know why
Why dont you look me in the eye?
You want my friends
You want my clothes
You're one of those

[Repeat Chorus]

Different life form
Different species
Broken promises and treaties
Talkin' bout exterminating
Not the haters
Just the hating
You say your boyfriend's sweet and kind
But you've still got your eyes on mine
Your best friend's got her eyes on yours
It all goes on behind closed doors
And when you're nice it's just a pose
You're one of those

[Repeat Chorus]

Haters
Later for the alibis
Haters
Any shape
Any size
I'd like to see them disappear
They dont belong anywhere
Haters

I hate you so much right now
I hate you so much right now
Aaaaah
I hate you so much right now

I hate you so much right now
I hate you so much right now
Aaaaah
I hate you so much right now

I hate you so much right now
I hate you so much right now
Aaaaah
I hate you so much right now"

(But I'm not saying it can't play a punk role, obv. But probably doesn't play that role for self-styled punks.)

But then again, "La La" doesn't even pretend to social convulsion; it's just girls doing their la la. Which puts it on the level of the Dixie Cups or the Marvelettes and such. And its artistic achievement is that it takes the weight of all that guitar overload and does bring it to the Marvelettes, does this far better than Joan Jett did. Ashlee has way more of a dance. The anomaly is Ashlee's voice, which isn't a cheery-deary party voice but is more like burnt rubber, and burnt rubber makes her party a better party.

I doubt that Ashlee even imagines that her party could spark a social convulsion, and I doubt that she'd want it to; she's more concerned with provoking her own convulsions as far as I can tell, and with subduing them. Thing is, for whatever one's convulsions, personal or social, I think that "La La" will make a fine soundtrack. It's got the beat.

that describes her dancing quite nicely, actually.

I still prefer Lohan's "First" by a mile.

She's got a whole bunch that are better than "Caught Out There," which I like for the "I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW" parts but not much else. I mean, it's a good solid Neptunes track, I guess. As for an Ashlee song that outpunks it, "I Am Me" just slaughters it, not in hatred but in bowling me over with a loud syrup of virulently beautiful sound: must be due to the overproduction, the loud pretty melody, like "I wanna be/an-ar-chee" was a loud pretty melody; and seizes your eardrum vocals, like "Go on take everything, take everything I want you to"). Jeesh, I can't believe I'm comparing her to the two greatest rock singers of the last 30 years. Well, I wouldn't say the song is in those two songs' league... not quite in their league... I don't think it's in their league. I'm playing it obsessively but I'll get over it, I'm sure. (Right?) The words aren't remotely as interesting. But the fact that I can even make the comparison, some starlet doing Courtney style vocals to an almost "Anarchy" quality tune and coming within range, despite not really having the pipes...

I completely disagree about Micky; he was a great singer on some of those tracks! Listen to "Sometime in the Morning" and "As We Go Along" for proof. He didn't have so great a *rock* voice, but as Carole King interpreters go, I'd rank him third only to Dusty Springfield and Carole herself. (Mean Grace Slick impersonation on "Zor and Zam," too.)

This isn't fair. I'm sure that Alex experiences the song as "glossy" and "slick." When he hears those massed guitars and that burr of a voice and those la-la-la melodies, his ears register it all as dripping with slickness and gloss. His reaction is quite visceral. I don't doubt him. What frustrates me about ILX - not just about Alex - is that too many people treat their experience as bedrock; nothing can challenge it, nothing can dislodge it, hearing is believing. So too few people try to say where their experiences come from. I don't only mean that they refuse to analyze what in the song provoked their response, but that they refuse to analyze why they in particular are having their particular response. What is it about your friendships and upbringing and social allegiances and individual identity that result in your hearing this song in the way you hear it, feel this music in the way you feel it? It doesn't just happen that one person hears gloss where someone else is getting rocked to his socks.

(X post: I haven't listened to Mickey Dolenz in years, so I need to hear again. His voice certainly wasn't within a thousand spacetime warps of Jagger's or Burdon's, but he had moments when he could achieve something close to their achievements anyway. Don't know what Jagger would do with Carole King. Burdon's "Don't Bring Me Down" is fabulous.

Interesting point, except the payoff on record seems rather extraordinary. I think Chuck once complained about Iggy method acting on Raw Power or somewhere; and I once complained that Courtney tends to overract, to try to hard when she doesn't realize that she's got the chops anyway and doesn't need to force it. (I'm complaining about one of my favorite singers. I'm a born critic is what I am.) With Ashlee, I don't think it's method acting so much as she feels she needs to hide behind the bruise.

(And all that stuff Chuck and I are saying about the garage bands and punks are to suggest that thinking of "punk" as a genre and "punks" as a social set misses where punk rock actually comes from in the first place, not from a genre or from punks but from people who found themselves in a punk mood or in a pissy-hissy spat or in sudden war with oneself or from other people who simply copied a mood-spat-selfwar but somehow got it down definitively on record.)

But Frank, are those factors necessarily relevant in this case? I wonder if you're making the assumption that the root cause of people's criticism of some of this stuff is social and psychological rather than aesthetic.

When I hear a piece of music that I don't like (assuming I have some understanding of where it's coming from), my reaction is generally not to question the social and psychological constructs of my life that led me to the reaction. It is merely to reflect on the fact that I think the music isn't well written, isn't well played, isn't inspired in any way, etc.

Did I? I may have (and it may be) (oh wait, there it is in *Stairway to Hell*: "method acted nihilism; Iggy gives himself top billing, sings "like" a coyote, but he's *lying*; of course I still say I like the album a lot and rank it #104, when I should have ranked it a lot higher.). Anyway, I *definitely* used to accuse Courtney Love of method acting (and still believe that about some of her earliest stuff). "Courtney Love's nag-rock therapy screaming is a shtick," I say in *Stairway* (#7 among '90s albums) but when *Live Through This* first came out I hated most of it, and was even meaner about it.

And this is because "La La" is fodder for the teenyboppers and has no redeeming social blah blah blah and hence isn't encrusted by the decades' worth of piety that adheres to things like "Anarchy in the U.K." The future punk rock, if there is to be any, won't be caught dead calling itself "punk rock."

This starts getting to the point, but it's backwards. (Not exactly backwards. It depends which side of the fence you're on. It makes as much sense backwards, anyway.)

Critics who favor transgression, who look for love in all the wrong places, who like it when punk pops up its head in music that's nowhere near traditional punk, will grab hold of an Ashlee Simpson as a totem. Her music is *better* than punk, because it's bringing punk to a place where there are still some unconverted to preach to. Even better if the artist is reddish rather than bluish, mallish as opposed to boho.

But the desire to make Ashlee one of those totems outstrips her success at transgression. Like, not *all* red-statish mallsters who adopt punk are going to be good at it, you know? So the reverse equation may also be true -- some people just can't conceive of someone from Ashlee's social demographic making bad punk, because someone who's so ripe a transgressive symbol as Ashlee can't possibly have missed the mark. Like, it's at least possible that Alex is saying that though he's down with transgression, Ashlee just isn't doing it for him. (If it sounds like I think he's right, I do, though I like Ashlee just fine. Not that I'm against transgressive totems, either. Big$Rich work quite well for me. But to me it sure looks and sounds like punk is something Ashlee picked up at the mall. She spent too much on it too, and didn't get the right kind. She looks uncomfortable in it, unconvincing, something that could never be said of Joan Jett. Which would all be beside the point if the hooks were better. You can reward her for trying, but if you reward her too much by comparing her to name-your-favorite-artists-of-all-time it oversells the case and turns people away from a useful line of argument. Overzealousness knows no ideology. Important half-failures are still half-failures. I mean, as Bob Christgau might say in a generous mood, B+.)

The main thing, maybe, is this -- for punk to have any power as transgression, there needs to be a little place somewhere where punk traditionalism, in all its preaching-to-the-converted, bohemian, elitist, purist glory, *exists*. Otherwise there'd be nothing to transgress. So the world sure needs its Alex in NYCs just as much as its Frank Kogans. Its when they're on the same page that it's time to start worrying.

Really? I've never met such a person, not even once. Where do such mythical beasts live?

(Not that I disagree with everything else you've said, mind you.)

>Really? I've never met such a person, not even once. Where do such mythical beasts live?

Maybe I lurk around on ILM too much, so you're right, maybe these mythical beasts don't live anywhere in the real world. But whenever these discussions come up, the artists in question *always* seem to be picked out of the same pool. Ashlee, Britney, Montgomery Gentry, Brooks & Dunn, Skynard, ZZ Top, whatever. And I like all of them, which makes my argument a tougher sell, admittedly. But when red-state artists tilt toward transgression, they seem to get the big benefit of the doubt. Where's a thread on a conservative artist who crosses genres and is *bad* ad it?

Not that people start threads too often on things they don't like. Argh, it's so hard to prove a negative!

Anthony, whether you hear punk in Ashlee or not (I don't see how the statement quoted in your first post in any way DEPENDS on thinking Ashlee has any punk in her), how exactly do Alex's comments on this thread NOT suggest that he "can't conceive of someone from Ashlee's social demographic making punk, because someone like Ashlee can't possibly have the attitudes that makes one a punk, can't possibly understand"? "Ashlee Simpson is a living, breathing Mr. Potato-Head, all trussed up in conventionally 'punk' finery, but her music, her message, her aspirations for stardom are strictly teen pop to the bone AND. NOTHING. MORE"? "Just because "punk" might arguably mean many things, doesn't mean it means everything. Gloppy, cookie-cutter, glossy, sickly, candy-colored, slickly-produced teenybopper radio fodder it does NOT mean"? "Teen pop", "aspirations for stardom," "teenybopper radio fodder", "trussed up in conventionally 'punk' finery" --sorry, but that IS her social demographic. I'm not even saying I necessarily agree with Frank's statement there; I'd have to give it more thought. And like Sang Freud (and Frank) I am *glad* Alex is on this thread; he makes the discussion *better,* and he exemplifies an important point of view. Hell, he might even be *right*, for all I know. But if his dismissals on this thread aren't an example of thinking punk from Ashlee's demographic is impossible, they're certainly a pretty good imitation.

But I guess what I'm saying is that if we're so sure about the future, maybe we'll be blindsided when it doesn't turn out like that at all.

Rolling 2005 Country Thread

People write as much there about what Big & Rich, Broooks and Dunn, Montgomery Gentry etc (and countless other such acts) do wrong as about what they do right. None of those acts get a free ride, and neither does anybody else. Doesn't seem uncritical to me at all.

Well, yeah -- see what Frank said about Latin freestyle in 1987 (which he mentions above). I think that was part of his point. But hey, being blindsided might be part of the fun, you know?

Well, if the Duhks or Donna the Buffalo or Patrica Vonne or the Warsaw Village Band or Dallas Wayne or Bill Kirchen (all of whom I like, and praise on that thread) (and who, first off, are in some ways MORE conservative than the Nashville acts you've decided to rope together as "conservative" for some reason I don't quite get) made as good an album as Miranda Lambert's, they might rise farther up the pole. I'm still not sure what your point is. That people there tend to prefer pop country to alt country? Well, some do. I do! But that doesn't mean I accept the former or criticize the latter blindly, or that I don't like lots of the latter better than lots of the former. (And there are people on there who like alt-country way more than I do. Edd Hurt and Don Allred defend it quite often, it seems to me.)

and ...

>"Teen pop", "aspirations for stardom," "teenybopper radio fodder", "trussed up in conventionally 'punk' finery" --sorry, but that IS her social demographic<

So, he's being accused of bias? It's not that he just thinks that Ashlee Simpson - 'trussed up in etc.' with her 'teenybopper radio fodder' - happens to stink; it's that he couldn't possibly conceive of someone like her ever doing something good?

(And people defend Steve Earle on there too, come to think of it!)

xp

But either way, this question should really end "punk," not "good," Tim. The question is whether Alex could possibly conceive of someone like her ever doing something punk (whether it's good or not).

Passive aggressively yours,

Frank

And Alex, I think you have a lot to teach me. I just wonder how to drag your knowledge out of you.

(Back to the day gig.)

Pure projection, and wrong. NO ONE actually thinks this. come on now, we are ten years past both Dookie and Nevermind, for God's sake. It's been done, and much better.

"Hell, [Alex] might even be *right*, for all I know."

He is.

Parting comment: Ashlee Simpson's is simply not Punk Rock. If an alien from another world appeared and earnestly asked to be shown examples of Punk Rock, would you cite Ashlee?

wiDow

"not until you explain why bad things happen to good people!"

= i. i want my zimmer frame and i WANT IT NOW
= ii. haha if ilm has demonstrated ANYTHING it is that in 20 years time we will still be discussing the merits of EVERYONE

i.&ii. are nicely contradictory hence mark s = punk-as-fuck

in communion (my second favourite film EVAH) christopher walken discovers the aliens DISCO DANCING

In other words, I'm not allowed to muck around with FACTS, specifically the FACT that Ashlee Simpson in NO WAY Punk Rock.

If an alien from another world appeared and earnestly asked to be shown examples of Punk Rock, i wd point to alex's heroically changeless mr.dadrock-gets-uptight declamations down decades of ilm, and say, "punk is the OPPOSITE OF THAT"

I've never claimed to be the embodiment of Punk Rock.

In any event, this thread has been terrific and has helped me greatly in pulling my thoughts together; especially thank you to Cunga and to Phil for your descriptions of the Ashlee image.

Also, thanks to me for suckering mark s back onto ILX.

now let us never speak of it again.

I know that someone might jump on that and tell me that you can't separate your aesthetic perceptions from your background and your psychological makeup, but what would someone be trying to establish by saying something like this?

Tim, someone (i.e., me) isn't trying to "establish" anything but rather trying to cajole, incite, inspire, badger you folks into saying why you hear a particular piece of music in a particular way. And that involves (1) describing what's going on in the music when you hear glossiness or rawness of punk or whatever, and (2) what's going on in your life that makes you hear glossiness or rawness or punk (esp. when other people are hearing something else).

Maybe social categories are aesthetic categories; it doesn't really matter to me which you use to explain the other; it does matter that you make an effort to explain - that is to say that you make an effort to communicate your experience and your ideas and that you make an attempt to explore where those experiences and ideas come from and why you in particular have and hold them. Of course, you can just spend your time stating an opinion and holding it against all comers. That's what a lot of ILX threads are, basically.

So, everyone who votes blue is a punk, and therefore is not eligible for "conversion"?

I don't think I've heard a Steve Earle song in my life, but I'll guess that one of the reasons that Montgomery Gentry might come across as "more punk" than Earle is that they're bullies and creeps and he apparently isn't a bully or a creep. (Nowadays Montgomery is dressing his creepiness in unctuousness and piety, which makes it even creepier.) Also, my guess is that Earle doesn't rock as hard as they do. That seems to be the general opinion. By the way, Montgomery Gentry are punk way way way way WAY more often than Ashlee is. I hadn't given a thought to Ashlee's being punk until I heard "I Am Me" a couple of weeks ago and read posted on this thread that her image apparently has something to do with punk as conceived by who knows who. Montgomery Gentry don't have punk in their image. They merely act like punks. (And I don't think anyone called them "punk" at all until a couple of days ago, when for half a sentence I did, when the discussion here spilled briefly back onto the Rolling Country thread. But I'm not seeing enough of the board these days, so you may be right, that they're being touted as punks.)

What in the world is "punk traditionalism"? What's a punk tradition? Killing your girlfriend? Dyeing your hair pink and purple? (I once saw Todd Rundgren with rainbow hair, in 1974. What a punk!)

I don't see Ashlee as doing much in the way of transgression either. So what?

"it sure looks and sounds like punk is something Ashlee picked up at the mall."

Again, so what? Where's she supposed to pick it up, in a whorehouse?

pauline kael, j.d. salinger, james thurber = more punk than ashlee simpson

it doesn't really matter to me which you use to explain the other; it does matter that you make an effort to explain - that is to say that you make an effort to communicate your experience and your ideas and that you make an attempt to explore where those experiences and ideas come from and why you in particular have and hold them. Of course, you can just spend your time stating an opinion and holding it against all comers. That's what a lot of ILX threads are, basically.<

Frank, do you realize how preachy and self-righteous this sounds?

Looking back at your posts on this thread, I don't see as that you've done any of this either! Where does your idea that a song like "La La" is good come from? Why do you in particular think that this is so? What's going on in your life that makes you hear it as "good?"

Montgomery Gentry also remind me of the Ramones:

"You Beat Your Brat (I'll Beat Mine)"

I've got Ashlee on now. Yeah, there are elements of punk, I guess. I little burr in her voice, some attitude. No more or less than, maybe, Pat Benetar, or Nancy Sinatra. One song sounds strangely like the Cardigans. Nice CD.

Sang, where exactly do you get this idea? Why wouldn't you just think that the intent is to describe how the music sounds, what it does?

wonderful. like im gonna get any work done today with that image floating around my head.

Intent is a tough thing to glean from a piece of writing, so it's more like a feeling, just based on having read lots of stuff in my life. I mean, I *wish* the intent were just to describe how the music sounds. But sometimes statements are made where the intent seems to be to incite, not describe. Like when Frank says up above that Ashlee "and Shanks rock harder than the Gang of Four and Franz Ferdinand, both of which sound like toy bands in comparison," it doesn't really help me understand what Ashlee's music sounds like. Admittedly that could be because I hear Ashlee differently than Frank does, so maybe it's just that his description doesn't connect with me. For instance, to me the Ashlee CD sounds like a lush studio construction, not a band at all, per se. Even when she gets angsty, every hair's still in place. Gang of Four sound positively ferocious by comparison. Certainly there's more money behind Ashlee than Go4, so yeah, the guitars are way fatter and the drums are deeper and the vocals are centered better in the mix. But the sound of Go4 is so completely different from Ashlee’s that the comparison isn’t useful to me on a descriptive level. To say that Frank is trying to “incite” Gang of Four fans with that statement is too strong, and probably baseless. But I think there is an element of that in there, of let’s push that button and have a little bit of fun with this.

I imagine that she is very attractive, though who knows.

OK, just scrolled up the thread and saw a picture; yes, of course she is.

pinefox -- 'la la' is the one song people (maybe including you?) have heard. it's really, really good.

xpost

by far the most intelligent thing said on this thread, yet it continues...

So what "same place" do Ashlee and Montgomery Gentry come from again?(Like, the United States? So do Living Things!) You're stating a tautlogy, I think: "When certain writers define bands as part of genres the bands are usually not associated with, those bands come from genres other than the one they're being newly defined as."

Only if it out of context, and leave out:

>the clipped-short guitar crunch style from that very same song, and when it's not the Clash it's the Specials and Gang of Four (and Franz Ferdinand, for that matter) for Shanks' snapping-twig guitar riff that runs throughout the verse. And I think Shanks plays it more effectively than G of 4 or Franz Ferdinand, both of whose guitar work I like a lot. <

Frank was describing how the record *sounds,* Sang.

(None of which to say that writers can't describe and incite at the same time. Nor that they shouldn't. Hell, inciting is punk rock too. {And right, it's the oldest cliche on earth, just like punk rock is.} But sorry, "that's not the way I hear it, therefore this guy must be trying to pull a fast one over on me" really doesn't hold much water.)

I'm a hair's breadth from waving the white flag. What I think I'm saying, though, is "When certain writers define bands as part of genres the bands are usually not associated with, those bands come from genres they feel are likely to get a rise out of coastal alternative newspaper readers." I.e. bands whose main audience has a different ideological makeup from the readers, more typically conservative than liberal. As a rule, though I'm sure there are counterexamples aplenty. I agree that Ashlee and MG don't share an audience, but I also suspect there are few readers of the Voice music section who cheerlead for either one, and that that has something to do with their ideology.

But you've made a lot of good points, and I don't feel strongly enough about my argument anymore to argue it vehemently. In any event, the wife and I will be soon be making the long drive up to Hartford CT to check out the Gretchen Wilson / Big$Rich show, so I must be signing off now. Maybe I'll report back on Rolling Country. Hope my directions are good.

Have fun! Drive safely! I hope it doesn't snow! (And by the way, you might want to note that Frank's Big & Rich piece in the Voice this week was basically about how they are pretty much the LEAST punk thing ever. Not sure how that might fit with your thesis or not....)

pauline kael, j.d. salinger, james thurber = more punk than ashlee simpson

I agree with this, actually. And I don't know if I'd call John O'Hara a punk, but he sure put a lot of punks (and punk) into his stories. As for what's wrong with The New Yorker, that's for another thread and another day.

Also, at the risk of getting called pompous and preachy again, I'm going to say that a lot of you need to make it a habit to reread posts before your respond to them. E.g., note the following sentence of mine, "I wouldn't call Ashlee a punk, just call her someone who occasionally veers punkward," and also note the phrase "occasional punk moments." And my reason for discussing the garage bands and the Kirshner Brill Building bizzers was to point out that from the get-go a lot of punk arose from such moments and such people. And I can't see why that particular point would even be controversial, though perhaps it's new to some of you. (Can't really tell how you took it, actually. Did you notice it?)

*I finally bought Autobiography several weeks ago, and the title song contains some of the same punkisms/Courtneyisms as "I Am Me" does. So the "punk" in the latter probably isn't just in its effect (on me) but in its deliberately placed signifiers. So I guess we can say that Ashlee herself, and not just Tickley, Cunga, and Natedey, raised the issue of punk. But for the most part there's a whole lot of other stuff going on in the music.

When I first read the phrase "punk rock," I knew intuitively what it meant. It meant the malicious laugh in the midst of Syndicate of Sound's "Little Girl." It meant the snidely obnoxious way Rudy Martinez said "You're gonna cry" in ? and the Mysterians "96 Tears" - made "cry" sound sick, loathsome. It meant kids who terrorized other kids in junior high school hallways, those years when such songs were on the radio. I remember when a couple of kids in my school picked a fight with each other and then made rules about the fight - no kicking, no punching, no hitting in the face - so they ended up just shoving each other around, across the pavement. A friend of mine and I were there watching, and I said, "This reminds me of that song from last year..." He laughed and finished my sentence for me, "You're pushin' too hard." So that's one punk rock, kids who tried to make themselves feel strong by terrorizing weaker kids and singing hatred of girls, with any old I'll-get-even-with-you song on the radio as soundtrack. It's guys like the Young Rascals, early on, and Mouse & the Traps, who heard "Like A Rolling Stone" and didn't get its adventure and romanticism at all, just heard it as a way to tell some bitch off. Of course, this was all mixed up with straight pop sap (listen to the Troggs' "Love Is All Around"), coolness, and a dance into the unknown - who the fuck knew what was happening, this new world - and remnants of rock 'n' roll bounce and intimations of the really cool psychedelia that none of the punks could master. Anyway, this is how I first understood the phrase "punk rock," when it appeared in the early '70s, and if it meant any modern music it didn't mean the Dolls or Stooges - who were too self-reflective, would turn the gaze and the knife on themselves and on their audience. Might mean "Brownsville Station" or even "Sweet Home Alabama" but not "Search and Destroy" or "Personality Crisis." But then once I realized that "punk rock" was also being used for the Ramones and ilk, then of course it did very much mean those who turned the gaze and knives on themselves - the Dolls and Stooges in retrospect and subsequently the Sex Pistols (and I'd say again in retrospect the Stones and the Velvets and Dylan). And from there it could mean noisy sweethearts like X Ray Spex and the Clash and earnest do-gooders like Sham 69 and on. So that's a whole bunch of different types of punk, and there were many more to come. The most interesting to me were the ones who were mixing it up between "we're just normal guys lashing out at our exes" and "we're tearing everything up big-time" and "we're wearing our broken hearts under our hate" and so on, Electric Eels, Stooges, Dolls, Pistols. In 1978 I was sure that the Clash were the greatest band in the world, but I felt that the Contortions were more punk; I felt that Stevie Nicks' occasional punk moments outpunked the Clash, too, but she was just a normal heartbreak girl lashing out, not part of the Great Tear It Up or of any movement, and Ashlee's "I Am Me" [and little or nothing else by Ashlee] gets to be punk too in the Stevie way, not in the oppositional tear-it-all-up sense nor in the turn-the-knife-gaze-on-yourself-and-those-around but as a normal kid doing her lashout. And I think normal kid doing the lashout and dancing to the lashout is the wellspring for a lot of the other types of punk.

(And as I said above, there's a different and maybe even deeper well-spring, some obnoxious 10-year-old at the back of the schoolbus deliberately annoying the hell out of the driver, the teachers, everybody, including me, by singing "You make me want to la la" over and over and over until you want to scream, and it's not because "La La" is particularly punk - it's not - but because it's annoyingly catchy. And so "La La" is a wellspring not by being punk at all but providing the dance of the inner brat, maybe the real proto-everything-else. Though to be realistic, given what's on the radio, the kid's more likely to pick "Laffy Taffy.")

(When I was ten, and this really happened, the kids - there were two of them - were singing "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" about two million times, and boy was it irritating.)

That is, might mean "Smoking in the Boys' Room" by Brownsville Station.

What IS punk about Ashlee Simpson? Nothing.
What IS NOT punk about Ashlee Simpson? Everything.

I mean, come on guys, I know you love to argue, but any part of this girl's image/"music"/success that works well is no thanks to her. It's a team of about 800 ppl. that is contractually obligated to ensure that this disturbingly average talentless shadow of a Texan virgin does not reveal her mediocrity to the world. Besides the boobs. But that was god's decision, really.

Well, one of those names was on the cover of the album, but certainly I wouldn't say that some of the others aren't also deserving to be there. But that goes against standard practice. Arrangers, producers, songwriters, stylists etc. tend not to get their name in lights. Nelson Riddle didn't make the cover of the Sinatra records, Sam Phillips didn't make the cover of the early Elvis records, Andrew Loog Oldham didn't make the cover of the Stones, Greenwich and Barry didn't make the cover of the Shangri-Las, Holland Dozier Holland didn't make the cover of the Four Tops, etc. etc. etc. But anyway, even if you want to say that "I Am Me" is primarily Shanks and DioGuardi rather than Ashlee Simpson, how does that make it not punk, or not good?

("Wild Thing," if you're interested, was written by Chip Taylor, who had previously affiliated with Chet Atkins, one of the architects of the Nashville countrypolitan sound (Taylor wrote a song for Bobby Bare, "Just A Little Bit Later On Down The Line"!); after "Wild Thing," Taylor went on to work with James Taylor and to write and produce the country-inflected hit "Angel of the Morning." So, does this make "Wild Thing" unpunk?)

I haven't read Lester Bangs' "James Taylor Marked for Death" in quite a while. Does he mention Chip Taylor? Did he know that there was a James Taylor/Troggs connection? A lot of the piece is about the Troggs, and one of the questions it's posing is why the MC5's version of "I Want You" isn't as good as the Troggs', implying that it was now hard for people in the MC5's position to pull off what the Troggs had pulled off a few years earlier.

Oh DO PLEASE give me a break.

I don't think my aesthetics blind me to the fact that punk can come from anywhere. It's certainly present in Wild Thing, though I suspect that there it derives less from the sheet music than from whoever had the idea to have the loud guitars and drums all emphasize every single beat all the time, and of course from the sneering, leering, over-the-top vocals. And from the sheet music too, though the Troggs inhabit the song in a way that Chip Taylor may never have imagined when he wrote it. It's kind of present in Steppin' Stone, though in a much more controlled way. (Think Eddie and the Hot Rods, vice the Troggs' Sex Pistols.) Mickey Dolenz pushes the "anger" button, and out comes "anger," fairly convincingly, but still in quotes. There's nothing about the Troggs song that's in quotes.

I'm not sure that I know where the Troggs or the Monkees are coming from socially. Too far away in time. And it probably doesn't matter. The point here is that while punk is an interesting lens through which to view Wild Thing, and perhaps Steppin' Stone, it doesn't help much in explaining Ashlee. She's the wrong test case for the "Is ****** A Punk?" meme. In Ashlee's case, the more-or-less clear consensus here seems to be, well, "no." It's not that she can't make music that could be called "punk," just that she doesn't. There indeed may be a line tracing through Stevie to Courtney to Ashlee, and that's a more interesting line to pursue than the thin one that might connect Wild Thing to her.

Meanwhile, I now work for MTV.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/arts/music/popcast-ashlee-simpson.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpopcast-pop-music-podcast&action=click&contentCollection=music®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&referer=https://www.nytimes.com/column/popcast-pop-music-podcast

first of two NYT podcasts on Ashlee

Boy, I was an angry young dad in 2005.