Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

1. CRAZY FROG - Axel F
2. HILARY DUFF - Wake Up
3. RIHANNA - Pon De Replay
4. ALY & A.J. - Rush
5. BLACK EYED PEAS - Let's Get It Started
6. BOWLING FOR SOUP - 1985
7. AKON - Lonely
8. CHEETAH GIRLS - Shake Your Tailfeather
9. JESSE MCCARTNEY - Beautiful Soul
10. B5 - Let's Groove Tonight
11. HILARY DUFF - Beat Of My Heart
12. HILARY DUFF - Come Clean
13. AVRIL LAVIGNE - Sk8er Boi
14. PUSSYCAT DOLLS - Stickwitu
15. JOJO - Leave (Get Out)
16. B5 - Dance For You
17. KELLY CLARKSON - Because Of You
18. USHER - Caught Up
19. WEEZER - Beverly Hills
20. CLICK FIVE - Just The Girl
21. GWEN STEFANI - Rich Girl
22. KELLY CLARKSON - Behind These Hazel Eyes
23. KELLY CLARKSON - Respect
24. SIMPLE PLAN - Shut Up
25. BARENAKED LADIES - One Little Slip
26. MADONNA - Hung Up
27. CLICK FIVE - Catch Your Wave
28. D.H.T. - Listen To Your Heart
29. LILLIX - What I Like About

"What's In It For Me?" is the big single.

Download. She's great.

Tim, I'm not so hot on Hilary's "Alex the Seal." The greatest Hilary tracks are the two DioGuardi-Shanks numbers - "Come Clean" and "Fly," especially the latter, which is catchy of course but also sounds haunted, gorgeous, as if there is some distant snow-capped peak she's flying towards; her three new New-Waveish Go-Gos-like tracks are more enjoyable than "Our Lips" (well, two of 'em, anyway).

I recall "What I Like About You" as one of the better cuts on the Lillix album. I'll have to go re-listen, if I've still got it.

xpost

Also, the word "safe," while not necessarily wrong, certainly is too simplistic. What's the dangerous chart pop that "Since U Been Gone" is making safe?

Jessica Simpson's "The Sweetest Sin" is still one of my favourite singles of the decade, though I imagine if anyone heard it and was turned off by it, they'd mostly be turned off by how "mature" it sounds. It's sort of an aching, grand piano-driven, bombastic elegance, a sound that, if it even exists in pop these days, I assume it would exist only in places like Josh Groban (places I assume I probably wouldn't care to visit)--much moreso anyway than in "teen" music. I can't think of a current pop song that less resembles Jessica's sister and Kelly Clarkson and Hilary Duff (or anyway, the little that I've heard by them). Not sure if this has anything to do with anything, but I agree with the point about teen-as-AC.

The teens I know listen primarily now to either (1) The Decemberists and Holy Modal Rounders and Nellie McKay and Baader-Meinhoff (2) Wu Tang Clan and Jedi Mind Tricks and Danger Doom and Kanye West.

Most slept-on teen-pop album of '05, by the way (unless Hope Partlow still counts): The *Darcy's Wild Life* soundtrack. Which goes like:

1 Take a Walk Sara Paxton 2:56
2 I Love Your Smile Tiffany Evans 4:17
3 Crazy Kinda Crush on You Nicholas Jonas 2:55
4 Bam Boogie Bent Fabric 3:15
5 We Need Some Money Brown, Chuck & The ... 4:28
Performed by: Brown, Chuck & The Soul Searchers
6 Hey Boy Fan-3 4:00
7 Walking the Dog Rufus Thomas 2:21
8 Monkey Man Specials 2:35
9 ABC American Juniors 3:22
10 Walking On Sunshine Nikki Cleary 3:41
11 Clothes Make the Girl Kristy Frank 2:42
12 There for You Sarah Paxton 2:07

Actually, Jessica's a subject for further research. I've got two singles: "I Think I'm in Love With You" and "Irresistible."

Chuck, Robyn's in the mail.

I won't even need the rest of ILM if this thread becomes successful.

xpost

Girls Aloud are "pop" sure but "teenpop", I don't know - by origin they're a reality TV thing and would have been initially marketed to a wide-spectrum pop consumer, the latest album seems to be trying to crack a market I really do think is out there, a kind of pop equivalent of celebrity gossip-mag HEAT (which sells TONS here) - trashy, knowing, girl-about-town pop, aimed at a kind of just-post-student, first-job crowd (or that's what it makes me THINK of - being 23, not 13).

Their most teen thing recently was the song on their Xmas cash-in album about being "too old for Santa and too young for the sauce".

Heard on Smash Hits so far:

Brian McFadden - Irish Son - Catholic guilt confessional wimp-rock by ex-boyband guy.
Sugababes - Ugly - self-help R'n'B with strings
McFly - I'll Be OK - basically McFly are a powerpop outfit with a pop-punk accent. I don't like them. I loved some of their brother band Busted's stuff, though, who had no real 60s/70s influence.

Eppy, I don't know! I didn't know European teenpop was stylistically related to chart pop. Just commenting more from a U.S. perspective. I think there's a market for teenpop that's more like the A*Teens in the U.S. Not too hot on U.S. kids just getting "safer" blandness (just generalizing again! I'd like to hear those Hilary songs you mentioned, Frank - we don't have a Radio Disney station here anymore) or sexed up stuff that's kinda inappropriate for them IMO.

xp - Chuck, I don't know if you were referring to my comments, but no, as I say here, I think U.S. teenpop seems like a hodgepodge of "safer" chartpop (Hilary, Jesse) and sexy celebrities (Gwen Stefani, etc.) that young girls are supposed to like,

Any YSIs anyone wants to provide will be welcomes with open arms.

I find this pleasing.

Anyway -

Seems to me that in the UK new teenpop acts are few and far between at the moment, the pendulum is perceived to have swung and launches are all solo acts from groups or proven winners from somewhere else.

Would someone provide a URL for Smash Hits radio?

(I was once on the Smash Hits masthead, albeit the Australian one.)

The "Smash Hits Chart" is weird, it may be a year-end or ringtone list, or it may be that Tony Christie and the Crazy Frog are still the favourites.

(Maybe other teenpop does this too, I'm not saying it's just a UK thing, though I recognise the tradition in the UK)

Amy Diamond - What's In It For Me?

interesting point about the supposed Girls Aloud target audience. post teen, Heat, T4 i see the drill. possibly the biggest consumers in repect to surplus cash and from my experience seems to be the audience you'd most associate with alot of the top 40 albums of the year thou not of course all http://www.coolclarity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=58888 no girls aloud but interestingly no frank fergusons oh and
38 The War of the Worlds - Jeff Wayne 446,000

back to teen pop the stuff i really liked last year that was teen pop was the sort of attempts of find a girl Busted, the teleological grail of all that is good, The Faders, Kim Lian and Lovebites especially The Lovebites but the teens said no it seems, perhaps sixth forms (moshercore! nmindie!) and "life style" (what girls aloud portray but James Blunt is actually a part of?) are more appealing than songs about beating up boyfriends and so forth.

I believe the kids still really like the pop punk, if I can judge by my 13-year-old half sister.

I've good feelings about this track, so far.

I've good feelings about this track, so far.

Yep. She had that Lustra song ("Scotty Doesn't Know") from Eurotrip up on her MySpace page for a while. (Sidebar: I think that song rocks.)

Also, they like the Yellowcard, I believe.

Some of that stuff is bad and boring, and some of it is foot-tappy and cute.

Chuck "I still haven't heard Robyn or Rachel Stevens or Girls Aloud, though though I want to. What's so great about them again?" Eddy, man, I'm happily anticipating the joy that awaits you. Not so much with Rachel - her few singles are fantastic (plus of course, 'Crazy Boys') but the albums really haven't endured in the same way that GA's 'What Would the Neighbours Say?' and 'Chemistry' have. And Robyn's Robyn works.

One thing, is that the new younger Emma Roberts/ Aly and AJ (who I believed to be teenpop antichrists pre- Rush) are remarkable in how LESS/ emptier their sounds are; watered down, less commited to either rocking or popping or punking out at all.

Lilix, they haven't been dropped yet? Bad songs.

The new Hilary stuff - as I tried to discuss in a convaluted mess with cis and Lex (?) was how neatly she's shifted from the grrl-rock game, now Ashlee and Lindsay are there, and into the electro 80s synth sounds, appropriating the Killers elements rather than Avril. Which, if 'Beat of my heart' is to be judged, and 'wake up', seems a smart move. The earlier 'come clean' era was good, but I'm liking the new shift. Didn't the Maddens produce those Most Wanted bonus tracks?

McFly - Dadrock indeed, only their aesthetic is bemusing now too, looking at the '5 colours' era to their latest video which was very '2002 nu-metal alienation graphics' - not at all teenpop looking, more grey suits and flat hair.

Has she really shifted genres, though? Or is it just some '80s electro accoutrements on the same style songs? Listening to the clip of "Wake up" on iTunes makes me wonder.

1 TONY CHRISTIE FT PETER KAY (IS THIS THE WAY TO) AMARILLO
2 CRAZY FROG AXEL F
3 JAMES BLUNT YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL
4 MCFLY ALL ABOUT YOU/YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND
5 SHANYE WARD THAT’S MY GOAL
6 AKON LONELY
7 PUSSYCAT DOLLS FT BUSTA RHYMES DON'T CHA
8 WESTLIFE YOU RAISE ME UP
9 2PAC FT ELTON JOHN GHETTO GOSPEL
10 MADONNA HUNG UP
11 DANIEL POWTER BAD DAY
12 SUGABABES PUSH THE BUTTON
13 MARIO LET ME LOVE YOU
14 NELLY FT TIM MCGRAW OVER AND OVER
15 SNOOP DOGG/WILSON/TIMBERLAKE SIGNS
16 NATALIE IMBRUGLIA SHIVER
17 GORILLAZ FEEL GOOD INC
18 MARIAH CAREY WE BELONG TOGETHER
19 BODYROCKERS I LIKE THE WAY
20 SCISSOR SISTERS FILTHY/GORGEOUS
21 BLACK EYED PEAS DON'T PHUNK WITH MY HEART
22 ROBBIE WILLIAMS TRIPPING
23 CHARLOTTE CHURCH CRAZY CHICK
24 COLDPLAY SPEED OF SOUND
25 WILL SMITH SWITCH
26 GWEN STEFANI FT EVE RICH GIRL
27 KEANE THIS IS THE LAST TIME
28 JENNIFER LOPEZ GET RIGHT
29 CORAL IN THE MORNING
30 UNITING NATIONS OUT OF TOUCH
31 LEMAR IF THERE'S ANY JUSTICE
32 OASIS THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IDLE
33 GREEN DAY BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS
34 STEREOPHONICS DAKOTA
35 SUNSET STRIPPERS FALLING STARS
36 GORILLAZ DARE
37 GREEN DAY WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS
38 OASIS LYLA
39 50 CENT CANDY SHOP
40 BLACK EYED PEAS DON'T LIE
41 KELLY CLARKSON SINCE U BEEN GONE
42 EMINEM LIKE TOY SOLDIERS
43 USHER CAUGHT UP
44 U2 SOMETIMES YOU CAN'T MAKE IT ON YOUR OWN
45 AMERIE 1 THING
46 ROB THOMAS LONELY NO MORE
47 SEAN PAUL WE BE BURNIN'
48 MVP ROC YA BODY (MIC CHECK 1 2)
49 RIHANNA PON DE REPLAY
50 GWEN STEFANI COOL

This is the Smash Hits Chart compiled

Well, with nine shopping days left until Pazz & Jop, I'm in the midst of what's always equivalent to the Bataan death march an end-of-year delight, which is to reevaluate my favorite records of the year for possible poll ranking, and trying to catch up on the many records I've missed. To report on the latter endeavor:
Madonna - I love the single, hate the rest of it. Lindsay Lohan - I hate the single, love the rest of it. (Isn't this what fundamentalists urge us to do: hate the single but love the singer?) Kelly Clarkson - way better than Christgau says it is, of course, but I can hear how incipient Faithisms and Celinetudes could weigh it down for him (and even for me, to some extent). Tatu - finely flimsied Europop at its finest, which surprises me (not the flimsiness or the Europop, but the fineness, since the single they emerged with several years ago had struck me as finely diced dime-a-dozen Europop and I didn't believe the hype; maybe the difference is no Trevor Horn this time).

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 17th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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Let's see, in the previous post I should have deleted the comma after "ranking" and changed "and trying to" to "and try to"; and I should have changed "way better than" to "far better than," so that the sentence wouldn't have been weighed down by a surfeit of "ways" and "weighs."

But to relate these albums to the putative subject matter of this thread:

Madonna wore a cowboy hat on the cover of her previous CD, which has nothing to do with the new album, or with the previous either, as far as I could tell, but here she is and I'm talking about her. The new CD is even duller than the others she's put out in the last fifteen years, which shocks me though probably shouldn't have, but I had hopes for this thing because (1) I love the single, and (2) I'd liked chief collaborator Stuart Price's Les Rythmes Digitales album from 1999 enough to have put it on my Pazz & Jop ballot (after which I totally forgot about him and it until seeing some ILM discussion several weeks ago lauding his subsequent career remixing any and everything under pseudonyms such as Jacques La Cont, Thin White Duke, Zoot Woman, Pour Homme, Paper Faces, Man With Guitar).

So the single samples the riff from Abba's "Gimme Gimme a Man After Midnight," putting it in a beautiful setting and when the riff is absent giving a beautiful texture to the chords. And the rest of the album has equally beautiful textures, and wonderful troughs and swells whenever a song transitions from verse to chorus or chorus to verse or verse to break. What it doesn't have is a single melody worth transitioning too, anywhere, except for that one Abba riff on track one. So you end up with soggy high-class mood music, all the beautiful swells and stuff just weighing everything down - er, wait, I mean, hold on, I can't use "weigh" again, um, dragging everything down? drenching everything up? (Oh, I don't know.) Her voice makes the tracks draggy too, I don't know why; it's the sort that needs a melody, not an atmosphere, I guess. "Hate" is probably an exaggeration - no, it isn't, I really don't like the thing, but I'll admit there are musically worthy moments. The obnoxious "I Love New York" song is as stupid as Joan Morgan says in her Voice review (she loved the album except for this track) but is actually one of the few signs of life, probably because it cops the chord pattern to Iggy's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (an odd riff for a Detroit chick to use in a tribute to New York, given that the Stooges' home base was Ann Arbor, but maybe she or Price didn't notice the resemblance to "Dog").

Maybe I'm listening wrong and can come to hear it differently.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 17th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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Ah, Lindsay. Her voice is a loose blat in comparison to Ashlee's tough little battering ram, and so far she hasn't pulled her music together as powerfully as Ashlee has; but the loose blat and the woman's basic Lohanicity make everything feel playful no matter how devastated or introspective she thinks she's being. The band sounds like it's having a rollicking good time. This is probably inaccurate - my copy has no album credits, but I assume that rather than a band there's just some guy doing overdub upon overdub, which is how most of these things are made. Some spirit is in this. (Strange if the tenth spot on my P&J list comes down to who is more fun: Lindsay Lohan or the Hold Steady. Craig Finn of the Hold Steady clobbers her in the category throw-you-to-the-floor funny lyrics ("Tramps like us and we like tramps"!), not too mention basic goofiness of vocal delivery, but she scores high on general pizzazz and ongoing shamelessness. Speaking of which, remember when words like "pizzazz" and "shameless" pertained to Madonna?
But to get bring us back to this thread, the best song on the Lohan, "I Live for the Day," matches "Kerosene" in virulence if not in stompability: "I live for the day, I live for the night, that you will be desperate and dying inside." (Glad to see that Lindsay has found a purpose in life) (though this was one of the songs she didn't co-write [writer's credits are available at allmusic.com].) And there's a meta moment worthy of Big & Rich where at the start of a the title, "A Little More Personal," she and a producer (or someone) are arguing over whether songs should have spoken intros (Lindsay in favor of them because they make the record a little more personal). But I kinda don't think Big & Rich will ever begin a song by singing: "God won't talk to me. I guess she's pretty busy." Or if they do, it won't get on the radio.

(My rationalization for posting this here is that by exploring what noncountry can and can't do, this tells us something about what country can and can't do. My real reason is that this is a more congenial thread than most to post on. And more fun.)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 17th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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Close parenthesis after "pertained to Madonna?" And "at the start of a the title" should be, "at the start of the title song."

Kelly Clarkson - She's someone who could conceivably jump to country if she wanted to, since several of her songs (esp. "Breakaway") aren't far from the basic land of pop-country crossover, if she were ever to choose it. I don't think she knows yet which genre she'll settle into. She's playing big on CHR pop and adult contemporary so she'll probably continue offering the loud-bright-rock-and-gentle-ballad combo special. As of now she wants wall of guitars on her wailing choruses, which is something country has yet to allow.

She's got a love-is-the-drug my-love-for-you-is-toxic song (called "Addicted," appropriately enough) that is more flat-out pained and less knowing than you'd get in the country equivalents (or in Sheryl's or Britney's, for that matter): "It's like you're a leech, sucking the life from me/It's like I can't breathe without you inside of me."

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 17th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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the first time i felt like i was invading, that i was engaging in something inapporite, that seemed too personal, too raw for public consumption in a v v long time, was the artless but heartbreaking video for lohan's too personal.
it was harder to consume than any of the confessional singer songwriter shit that i engaged in, and was liminal b/w public and private personae in a way that seemed genuinely transgressive/taboo breaking.

not in the sense of oh my god this is so shocking (ie the ultra conceptual madonna of like a prayer) but in the sense of leave the poor girl alone, hasnt she suffered enough...

its something i dont have the crtical vocab for--and it doesnt matter if its nto v. good musically (and it isnt)--strangely enough, that overshare personal detail stuff seems to come in two places, girl pop (and i hear it in the shangri las, in the crystals, in other places) and in country--and the only place i felt it this year was in my inital reaction to the awful mindy mccready situtaion. (ie:finally we have tammy back)

does that
a) make me a bad person
b) make sense

-- anthony easton (anthonyeasto...), December 18th, 2005. (anthony)

Another interesting topic might be the way that country utilizes the child-abuse trope. Child abuse has been the subject of songs (T. Graham Brown "Which Way to Pray": "A little girl down on her knees/Saying 'Now I lay me down to sleep/Lord bless us with a happy home/And please make daddy leave me alone'"). Hank Snow had been an abused child, and he spoke out about child abuse, but as far as I know (which isn't very) he didn't make it an integral part of his image. Whereas in modern teenpop - Pink, Ashlee, Lindsay - singing about their suffering (don't know if there was abuse or just the usual divorce and/or abandonment) is an integrity move, something that's supposed to give songs and singers depth. (Which doesn't mean that it isn't gutsy, especially Pink's Missundaztood!.
Ashlee's "Shadow" is a powerful song, but there are things in it that feel wrong to me.)

(This year on P&J's abandoned child front, M.I.A.'s said that she entitled her album "Arular" (which is her dad's political alias, just as "Lenin" was Vladimer Ilyich Ulyanov's poltical alias) in the hope that he'd see it and get in touch with her. That was one reason, anyway.)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 19th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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Listening to Linsay Lohan now. Kinda thinking that way too much of it sounds like the single! The Cheap Trick cover is okay. I like the new wave synthesizers in "A Little More Personal." Beyond that, I dunno. I definitely I think I prefer Linsay more when she's LESS personal. (Oh wait, "If You Were Me" is on now. What a bouncy little bassline:) But she may have no more business doing ballads than Gretchen Wilson.

I really liked a disco song Hilary Duff did last year that Metal Mike sent me the video of, but I forget its name. Thought both of her actual albums were okay, but not okay enough to keep them. Never heard the greatest hits CD. May still have a soundtrack that's half songs by her and half songs by other people in the storage garage.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 19th, 2005.

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There could also be a goth influence on country via Stevie Nicks (he says as Lindsy Lohan's seemingly quite good "Edge of 17" cover plays) or via Metallica (as in, say, harmonies on the first Big&Rich album). (What as Kim Carnes's and Bonnie Tyler's connection to goth, anyway?)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 19th, 2005.

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but which teenager doesnt over share, the adults around her should say something about it no?
we keep forgetting with the tits, and the voice, that lohan is still basically a child.

-- anthony easton (anthonyeasto...), December 19th, 2005. (anthony)

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"Who Loves You" on Linsay's album bounces too! I just may need to take more time with all those big bloated confessional slow ones.
(I really know nothing about her life, so I'm staying out of that discussion. She was really entertaining in *Mean Girls,* however.)

(By the way, speaking of lives, Frank, you know Ashlee supposedly collapsed after a show in Asia late last week, right? Last I heard, on Saturday I think, she was still being hospitalized. Hope she's OK.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 19th, 2005.

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Lindsay is old enough to join the Marines! Old enough to fight, old enough to direct your own video, I say. (I really don't know enough about the biz to know how such decisions are made.)
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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(Ashlee's back in the U.S. with her family. Official reason for the collapse is exhaustion.)
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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>I really liked a disco song Hilary Duff did last year that Metal Mike sent me the video of, but I forget its name.<

'Twas "Wake Up."

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 21st, 2005.

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(By the way, if anybody's interested, Lindsay Lohan does "I Want You To Want Me" better than Cheap Trick ever did. It was never even close to one of their best songs, I've always thought, but then again, not until now did I ever notice what a great line "I'll get home early from work if you'll say that you want me" is. Getting home early from work is such an important thing in everyday life! Lindsay singing that line hit me the second time through. I've heard the Cheap Trick version thousands of times, probably, and the line never grabbed me.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

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Also, the bassline in "Fastlane" comes from "Roxanne" by the Police!
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

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Now I'm up to Hilary Duff. Never in the course of human events have so many melodies been lavished on such a tiny voice.

Well, for the Churchillian effect I wanted I should have said, "Never in the field of human artistry was so much melody lavished by so many on such a tiny voice."
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 24th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

In terms of Max Martin rock action, let us not forget The Veronicas' awesome "4 Eva".

Anyway. *Come Get It: The Very Best of Aaron Carter.* More fun than the Backstreet Boys's best of album? Maybe, I'm not sure. Best tracks: "Bounce," "A.C.'s Alien Nation," "To All the Girls," "Another Earthquake" (which was his pop-punk move, apparently; never knew he had one). Fun: "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" (a "Parents Just Don't Understand" rip which I reviewed in a singles column in the voice several years ago), "My Internet Girl," "I Want Candy," "Oh Aaron."
Still pretty bad, though justifiable for its ridiculousness: "That's How I Beat Shaq." Missing: "Iko Iko"; he covered that right? Maybe people thought including it would be offensive in the wake of Katrina?

I heard the Veronicas album a couple months ago (listened to it to write a show preview of their New York show), and thought it was ok, not all that distinctive, and wound up trading it in. Should I not have? (I think I probably thought it wasn't teen-pop *enough.* Though I vaguely remember the singer vaguely reminding me of Joan Jett once.)

holy shit, stop the presses, on the stereo right now: 1982 john cougar song of the year: "crazy summer nights" by hope paltrow. sorry, silvertide, you just got beat!! (has metal mike heard this yet? he will spit out his diet pepsi for sure!!)
(okay, that had nothing to do with country, i guess. but i had to say it.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), July 25th, 2005.
Oh, you were asking about Anna Nalick: she's 21, did "Breathe(2 A.M.)"
-- don (dmxz...), September 28th, 2005.

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Is she considered country, pop, r&b, or what?
Also, who is Emma Roberts? Just got the CD in the mail; she appears Nickelodeon connected. (Also appears to have nothing to do with country music, but who cares.) It wouldn't play in my computer; gotta take it home I guess. But I really like these song titles: "Punch Rocker," "Say Goodbye to Jr. High," "94 Weeks (Metal Mouth Freak)," "Dummy," "Mexican Wrestler," "New Shoes"! I wonder if Shania has heard that last song. I already want her to be the next Skye Sweetnam or at least Hope Partlow, but she probably isn't, I dunno.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), September 28th, 2005.

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Anna's in September 26, 2205 issue of People.Yeah, I read it; gotta keep up, yknow. "Nalick has toured almost nonstop since her debut CD, Wreck of the Day, came out in April." College student. But also "kicks off a headlining tour Oct. 6 and opens for Rob Thomas starting on Nov. 6," so headlining tour's more a tourette. I've seen the "Breathe" vid on VH-1 and on CMT's aforementioned "Wide Open Country"(with Mellanin, Crow, Truckers, Hootie, etc.) "On Meeting Rob Thomas: I rewrote matchbox twenty's "Push" when I was younger. I told him about it. He was like, 'That's awesome. Wait. When you were 12, you thought you could write my songs better than I could?'" Somebody had to tell him.
-- don (dmxz...), September 28th, 2005.

On the other hand, I would definitely take the totally morally conflicted Hope Partlow song where she makes out with her friend's boyfriend ("Sick Inside") over the Big&Rich song where John Rich makes out with his friend's girfriend ("Never Mind Me") any day. (That'd be the second or third best song on the Partlow album, behind the great "Crazy Summer Nights", tied with "Everywhere But Here," slightly above "Cold" and the Disney hit "Who We Are", which has a cool blues riff by the way. Also, "Let Me Try" sounds like a cross between David Johansen's "Flamingo Road" and Lionel Richie's "Three Times a Lady," sort of. She has a really ace band, whoever they are. I forgot her album when listing top 10 candidates above; right now, I'd put it somewhere below Lambert/Carter but above MIA/Fannypack, I think, though logically I can see why others might totally disagree. Bottom line is, I'd rather *listen* to it than MIA or Fannypack.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 3rd, 2005.

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(Actually there's a good chance "Sick Inside" > "Cold" > "Who We Are" > "Everywhere But Here" , now that I think of it. But why nitpick?)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 3rd, 2005.

And speaking of noncountry singers whom we can talk about on this thread because Chuck talked here about someone whom she reminds me of, "Life After You" on the Brie Larson album is better than anything on the Hope Partlow - it starts with great sexy electro-disco oohs and ahs, similar to Pauline Rubio, then shifts effortlessly into a just-as-danceable Ashlee-Avril-Kelly-Marion I'm-over-you/I-will-flourish/I-will-survive brat-voiced bubblerock monster. The track is produced by the great Ric Wake, the man who helped invent Taylor Dayne and is usually the fellow working the dials on Celine Dion's best moments. The disco on the Brie Larson tends to fade after the second track, unfortunately, and the melodies plummet from "great" to "not bad, though there's another pretty good Ric Wake production (and a couple not so good) and a funny smart song about Brie's not getting along with her gym teacher (guess she doesn't want the gym teacher's perfume on her pillowcase, though she would like a C so she doesn't have to take the damn class anymore). Generally smart lyrics, mostly Brie-written. Promising. Exec. producer Tommy Mottola.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), October 18th, 2005.

Actually, "Life After You" eventually sounds kind of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"! But I like Hope's "Crazy Summer Nights," which sounds kind of like "Jack and Diane," about a hundred times as much. Brie sounds good, though.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 19th, 2005.

I like the "Finally Out of P.E." song on Brie Larsen's album more than the "Life After You" song; the former's just way more distinctive. There's something really generic about the former that I can't put my finger on (just like there's something really generic about Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone", which I like a lot but don't love, that I can't put my finger on; nothing generic to me about Ashlee's "La La" or Hope's "Crazy Summer Nights" at all). I mean, in "Life After You," I *guess* I hear the Rubio ooh-ahh beats Frank's talking about, *when I listen really really really close for them,* but even then they seem incidental; they're not nearly as in bubbliciously in-your-face and effervescent as they'd be in a great Rubio track. Honestly, I don't really even buy the comparison. Sounds more like pretty run-of-the-mill Hillary Duff gurgling to me. Which, again, is fine; I *like* Hillary Duff. And I like this song, but I think I like any number of other Brie songs just as much. (Right now it sounds to me like the album really picks up in the middle -- "Done With Like" which I keep hearing as "Done With Life," "She Shall Remain Nameless" which seems to have some really good high school cultural map specifics in it, "She Said," etc. That could change, though. Either way, a really good album. Better than any album Hillary or the Bratz have made. But not Partlow, I don't think. Yet.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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I meant "something really generic about the LATTER (i.e, "Life After You") that I can't put my finger on." "Finally Got Out of P.E.," in its own way, is unprecedented, just like "Crazy Summer Nights" in its own way is unprecendented. "Life After You," as the laundry list of teen I-will-survivers Frank likened it to suggests, is anything but. (But of course the thing about generic music is that it's great if you love the genre. I get the idea Frank has more use for that genre than I do. I also think John Cougar was better than Taylor Dayne!)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

Btw, Hope Partlow is a tremendously gifted singer who makes everything sound easy and natural rather than capital-S "Spectacular," while actually what she does with her voice is rather spectacular, if only she'd make a spectacle of herself - which maybe she should, this being art and not life. I'm sure she'd be a good country singer if that's what she were to choose. In fact, she'd probably be a good anything singer, even death metal. As a stylist she's got a lot more sense and smarts than either Faith Hill or Celine Dion has (Celine's somewhat rooted in countrypolitan when she isn't being rooted in disco). Definitely in the pop-country range if she wants to be (where the Faith and the LeAnn play, and Cougar-style rockers worm their way midstream these days, and the skies are not cloudy all day except whenever LeAnn cries rivers).
I haven't played the Partlow enough for it to really sink in. The things is, what Partlow would choose if she could, it seems, is to be Lisa Stansfield: stylized mastery and control and all that, with maybe an extra freshness in her smooth glides, and certainly more boom from the kick drums and more kick from the snare drums (I prefer Mellancamp riffs to Norman Cook beats, when it comes to backing one's stylishness); but veering Adult Contemporary nonetheless, which will be her destination unless the bucks lead her elsewhere. That could be a drawback, though not necessarily (AC is hardly devoid of passion and rock these days); but so far my other problem with the Partlow album is my failure to love any of the songs. This could change with more listenings; a stylist who makes things easy often sneaks her passion in on you. I certainly appreciate the girl, but I'm not aching for her yet.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), October 20th, 2005.

>kelly clarkson on mtv, the video that looked like some lost melodrama, all blonde on black, with heart break and a sort of undersung sadness/meloncholy...i dont remember the song, but how it was sung was more country and less girl singer, more lambert and less lohan...[anthony easton]
Could be either "Breakaway" or "Because of You" (the blonder of the two) either or which could be country with (or without) a few tweaks, as could Hope Partlow's "Crazy Summer Nights," if you want to vote for any of them.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 28th, 2005.

Hope Partlow's "Girlfriend" - fast ZZ fizzies on the guitars. Another reason to consider the album country, though my favorite track is "Everywhere But Here," which is the least country/most teenpop feisty wail of a sad-happy I'm gone 'n' you'll miss me lament-triumph Ashlee-Lindsay-Lohan thing.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 29th, 2005.

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I meant Ashlee-Kelly-Lohan thing. Otherwise, I'm being redundant.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 29th, 2005.

P.S.S.) I also liked the Hope 7 album last year. Which means, if nothing else, that 2005 was a *hopeful* year for U.S. teen-pop.

P.S.S.S.) So hey, whatever happened to Skye Sweetnam??

more fun hope'n'ashlee facts!
1. hope does a song where she makes out with your boyfriend and pretends to feel sorry about it; ashlee does one where you accuse her of making out with your boyfriend, and she pretends she didn't and gets pissed off. (except i don't really know if either is pretending.)

2. ashlee opens her CD with a song that sounds like franz ferdinand; hope opens hers with a cool blues riff, just like frank says franz f. open theirs with, though i didn't personally notice it yet. (i think he compared it to a '60s garage punk doing "smokestack lightning.")

3. hope's "don't go" is a red light green light song (see also: ashlee kix reference), though not for the reason its title suggests.

4. ashlee does a song called "boyfriend"; hope does a song called "girlfriend." "girlfriend" is probably 2005's best abba song.

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

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Yikes, the Abba song "Girlfriend" sounds like is "Does Your Mother Know," which could have been written by Vladimir Nabokov. Creepy! But it was also Abba's hardest rock song. Maybe this is an answer record?
Dullest track on Hope's album: Probably "Through It All."

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

"12. Skye Sweetnam, untitled (June 20): This is not necessarily an endorsement – just fair warning regarding which bubble-gum rocker the preteen at your house will likely be obsessed with this summer – you know, the shorty you already took to see Ashlee Simpson, Avril Lavigne and Hilary Duff."

It would not have been possible for me to forget it, in that this is the first I'd ever heard of it.

Ha, this just came in the email:

>

DAMONE RE-EMERGES FROM BOSTON ’BURBS WITH ISLAND RECORDS DEBUT
6-WEEK TOUR WITH LESS THAN JAKE BEGINS JANUARY 18th IN ATLANTA
5-song EP, “Out Here All Night,” making waves in advance of 2006 summer release
(January 3, 2006 – New York, NY) Damone is coming! After a recent local Boston show, The Boston Globe hailed Damone as the band that was “born for arenas and is simply biding it's time until it gets to headline in them.,” In advance of their long-awaited second album and first for Island Records, with a 2006 summer release, Damone hits the road for six weeks of shows with Less Than Jake, opening January 18th at the Masquerade in Atlanta.

Damone – charismatic lead singer and guitarist Noelle, Dustin Hengst (drums, vocals), Vazquez (bass, vocals), and Mike Woods (lead guitars, vocals) – took their sweet time putting the pieces back together over the past couple years and the early results are catching the ears of savvy programmers and rock cognoscenti via the Out Here All Night EP. The 5-song sampler – “Out Here All Night,” “What We Came Here For,” “Get Up And Go,” “Never Getting Mine (demo),” and “Time and Time Again” – serves notice that Damone has not lost its flair for “unbelievably hook-laden rock songs,” as CMJ raved back in the day.

Instilled with a strong love of ’80s glam-metal, some Runaways/Joan Jett-size girl-rock (to see Noelle in action is to believe), big Marshall stack guitar solos and badass attitude, Damone is all about the joy and excess of rock.

With the help of legendary mixing engineers Tom Lord-Alge (U2, Weezer, Marilyn Manson) and Mike Shipley (Def Leppard, Green Day, Andrew WK) putting the finishing touches on their upcoming self produced album, Damone has created a timeless piece of rock’n’roll, ready to be sandwiched in a “rock block” of Guns ’N Roses, Queen and AC/DC. “For me,” says newest member Mike Woods, “the story should go this way: it looked like it was going to end, quite literally for some of us, but it didn’t, so we made a kick-ass record and took over the world.”

For further information on Damone go to www.DAMONE.net<

Who are "Pantra"? Does she mean "Pantera"? "Tantra"?? Also, I hope she covers "Back in the Mud" on her new album!

>>Instilled with a strong love of ’80s glam-metal, some Runaways/Joan >>Jett-size girl-rock (to see Damone's Noelle in action is to >>believe), big >>Marshall stack guitar solos and badass attitude, >>Damone is all >>about the joy and excess of rock.

Damone was so not Marshall stack and guitar solo on their debut. And if it had been more like Joan Jett, I would have actually liked it. And she was as badass as my housecats. Nothing wrong with that, but geeez.

>>With the help of legendary mixing engineers Tom Lord-Alge (U2, >>Weezer, Marilyn Manson) and Mike Shipley (Def Leppard, Green Day, >>Andrew WK) putting the finishing touches on their upcoming self >>produced album, Damone has created a timeless piece of rock’n’roll, >>ready to be sandwiched in a “rock block” of Guns ’N Roses, Queen >>and AC/DC.

Ha-ha. I don't get the reverse in adsmanship. Damone's never going to pass as a bunch of heavy rockers. What's wrong with being what they were and just improving it with, like, some passion in those songs?

This blurb reminds me of the blurb that was being peddled with Hanson's live album. "Guitar brutality!" it was said, excerpted from a review from USA Today or Entertainment Weekly. So I asked for a review copy. Big mistake.

I don't know. Nothing else on Most Wanted comes close. You should try Lindsay Lohan's "I Live for the Day," which is doing something very different (a vengeance rocker, basically, and joyous on its vengeful terms), and oddly enough is one of the few Lohan songs that Kara DioGuardi has no hand in, but it nonetheless has the same reverbed-mystery-lament feel. And then you should try Ashlee's "I Am Me," which is even more of a ferocious Dance Of The Woman Scorned and so is even farther in intent from "Fly"'s tremulous beauty ache - but buried in the song's melody (especially during the dancing-on-your-grave ending) the beauty is there, aching. Which isn't altogether surprising, given that Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks are among the song's writers, and John Shanks is its producer.

So, Tim F., if you're worried that by going for Lindsay and Ashlee you'll be diluting your love for Hilary, you should instead conceive this as expanding your love outward via Shanks and DioGuardi.

Some will say that I'm counterfeit
But I will be who I want to
Some will look at me and vomit
But I will do what I want to

Which is extra funny because to make "vomit" fit the meter and rhyme you have to mispronounce it, which she does but without hamming up the mispronunciation. I think she lifted this comic device from that Billy S. guy she likes so much.

Also, in a behind-the-scenes making-of-the-video short for "Tangled Up in Me" she demonstrated to us how they prepared the instruments for the shoot, so she's showing us the muffles they put on the drums; then she turns to the camera and silently mouths "We're not really playing our instruments" to the camera, as if imparting a great but confidential secret.

I'm listening to clips of some of these on itunes. Sounds like a bigger production and she's got a good singing voice, but is it as ... believable or something? Does it not just kind of sound like some covers band doing a kind of average/blah assortment of songs, but dressed up in the studio?

xp - I always thought of Cheap Trick's version as a kind of believable '50s nostalgia. believable because it was about '50s rock and roll as a very rocking music! I think it's quite dynamite.

Speaking of Cougar rocks - though this is off-topic - last week I listened to Jessica Simpson's "I Think I'm In Love With You" for the first time in four years. It's the one that samples the brief bass-guitar fillip from "Jack and Diane" and otherwise is a basic dance-r&b number where she shows off Mariah melismas. It's likable, since she's willing to make the notes fluffy (which isn't to say that she fluffs any of the notes). But what's amazing is the Peter Rauhofer Club Mix that's included on the single. No Cougar notes, just driving, ominous techno and Jessica's "I think I'm in love"s sounding icy but heartbreaking, darting up and down above the jagged synths. Might as well be a totally different song.

(In general, I'm not one of these guys who says, "No, you gotta hear the remix.")

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 28th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

And yeah, she's 17 (and I think the songwriting is often really good).

Mikael Wood's appraisal of her, Brie Larsen, etc, can be found here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0552,wood,71326,22.html

And the fact that she picked peas on her family farm in Tennesse is pretty country, I guess! Perhaps country fans will eventually agree.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 28th, 2005.

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Hope Paltrow is far too pretty to remain in the peapatch, for sure.
-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), December 28th, 2005. (ddduncan)

Unfortunately, on first listen, it triggers loads of "naff" detectors in me – I think it's because being from "the rest of Europe" (ie not UK and probably Ireland), I've heard loads of terrible Euro stuff employing that not-actually-proper-reggae device, and associate it with Lame Continental Backwaterism. (Examples that have crossed over into UK/US(?) are "Live Is Life" by Opus and "Susanna" by "The Art Company".)

He more than made up for it on that DVD I reviewed early last year, where he looked like someone's scary old grandmother. It's those sweaters. I never liked "I Want You to Want Me" on "In Color" and even less on the Japanese album. There Zander says this song is called "I --- Want -- You --- To ---- Want ---- Meee" like he's talking to retards and lots of small children. I could never get it out of my head. Irritating.

So Hillary Duff is better at being Kelly Osbourne than Kelly Osbourne is.

i guess you could kelly's album does the new wave thing more sloppily than those new hilary tracks do, but i'm surprised courtney love fans would take offense at that.

?????????

:-0

only if you can't take the ribbing, ya old fart.

I'd also throw in "Suurbia," "I Can't Wait," "Red Light," and "One Word" in the replay corner, with the rest still being more listenable than "Beat Of My Heart."

Also, "One Word" is cartoon-doom synth goth that swells into massive disco voluptuousness in its chorus, whereas "Beat of My Heart," synth or no synth, is basically Go-Gos cheep-cheep wave. So I don't see how one outdoes the other, as they're doing different things. Also, I love "One Word," whereas "Beat of My Heart" has so far only reached the category "I Have To Admit That This Is Somewhat Catchy, Even If It Makes Me Grit My Teeth." But once I admit that something is catchy, I'm well on my way to describing it as "catchy."

(The rest of Kelly O's alb is more rock than dance, and her dead monotone is correspondingly deadening. Some of it I can tolerate for minutes at a time. The rest of Hilary D's album is... well some it's this, some it's that, and some of it is yet some other thing.)

If she doesn't self-implode, she'll be a great, great actress. Her sense of timing is impecable--she nearly blew Jamie Lee Curtis off the screen in Freaky Friday--no easy feat. And how many Disney queen-ettes jump from Herbie to Robert Altman or a David Chapman bio-pic?

Her voice has a fascinating timbre; she's singing from her throat which lends it that elastic-about-to-snap quality that makes it blend wonderfully with overdubbed Lohans.

And yeah--I always felt like Cheap Trick did their song like they were embaressed at having come up with such a confection. Lohan totally nails it.

xpost

I barely remember the Cheap Trick original, to tell you the truth. I suppose it's possible to like the two versions easily, but apparently this is not likely.

Smashmouth always sucked. I am filled with hate.

I admit I am dulled by the thematics/presentation of most mainstream pop as such these days, beyond what musical weirdness can be used to spike the punch. At the same time nothing could be duller than the NPR/KCRW/Pitchfork 'quality' cloud of horrors -- I will always hate the Arcade Fire more than 50 Cent (or for that matter Dylan, though not Springsteen). I don't need a recreation of a twenty-year-old 'entryism' in the charts because that would be mere nostalgic frippery designed to assuage my soul instead of intrigue it but I'll be damned if I can sense a flashpoint that works for me at present.

I had to review both a Duff film (sheer horror, and Christian too) and Herbie. They sent writers to a test screenings. Median age: 10.

My GF's niece is 14. She likes new goth stuff. And that's all I know of (literal) kids today and their listening habits.

I like the *idea* of Evanescence, enjoyed seeing them at Webster Hall in '04 or so, but I will probably never get over them sounding to me like a thinner, clunkier, less beautiful, and therefore compromised version of my fave Dutch new age goth-metallers The Gathering. (For thin, clunky, less beautiful, and therefore compromised versions of The Gathering, I prefer Lacuna Coil. Or Lana Lane. Or Lullacry. The last couple of whom kind of suck, so I am obviously a sucker for the sound somewhat. Wish I liked the Top 40 version more.)

I don't think there are any Blink-182 songs I like more than "1985" or "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" except maybe "Dammit" and "Always," but if so its by a small degree.

Also Bonnie Pink, who i got from Edward's blog I think and I seem to remember is Japanese. Perhaps others can provide more info but I'm liking her at the moment.

I want to like our new power-pop overlords in the UK, but the majority of them are in hock to complete shit (Son of Dork and Simple Plan, Rooster and Aerosmith, Freefaller and whatever the fuck it is they're listening to in order to sound that bad). I was hoping that The Faders would have songs as good as "No Sleep Tonight" in their repoirtoire, but it looks like we're never going to hear them now considering how little that and "Jump" sold. Love Bites aren't gonna happen either.

vs.

Country less snappy than teenpop?

Writer: Linda Perry, Stuck in the Throat/Famous Music Corp. (ASCAP)
Produced and Engineered by: Linda Perry at Royaltone, North Hollywood, CA
Assisted by: Chris Wonzer and Andrew Chavez
Pro Tools Engineer: David Guerrero
All Instruments and Programming: Linda Perry
French Spoken Female Voice: Alephonsine de Chambure
Mixed by: Bernd Burgdorff for Empire7
Assisted by: Shawn Parker

Agreed "Jump" was nowhere near "No Sleep Tonight" in quality terms.

What about the rest of the album? (Proving tough to find on s1sk this morning.)

Anyway, xhuxk, get 'em to send me a copy! What's this sound like?!

Anyway, are we actually saying they're teenpop? They seem more like a 90s nostalgia act to me. (Although a nice one.)

"Morningwood are an energetic and impressive bunch that have certainly speant lots of time with their Buffalo Daughter, Le Tigre and Breeders records, but not so much as to let in infringe on their own innovative sound and style."
Village Voice

But the Morningwood album also includes more than a few songs that are unnecessarily, even perversely, awful. The next record executive to complain about slumping CD sales should be forced to spend the day playing "Babysitter" on repeat, listening to Ms. Claret moan, "Your mama, mama, mama shouldn't let me baby-sit." At the Bowery Ballroom, she worked overtime to entertain: she brandished a baton; she climbed up to the balcony; during "Take Off Your Clothes," she invited a suspiciously well-prepared woman from the audience to strip onstage. When Ms. Claret sang she often rolled her eyes, and she wasn't the only one.

-- The New York Times, yestiddy

This energetic combination of glam, garage, and new wave has been cooked up by something approximating an all-star lineup of musicians. Morningwood bassist Pedro Yanowitz used to rock it with (Jake) Dylan in the Wallflowers, and guitarist Richard Steel was in Spacehog. The ringmistress of this motley crew is singer/frontwoman Chantal Claret, who has a sexy voice that can go from raspy and husky to over-the-top cooing, and an alluring look, if the album's cover is to be believed. All the assembled players seem to be giving it their all on every track here, and their unbridled enthusiasm is contagious.

What's more impressive, however, is the way Morningwood trips from style to style over the course of the eleven assembled tracks. "Nu Rock" kicks things off with a totally thrashing garage rock sound that wouldn't have sounded out of place coming out of Sweden a couple of years ago. Two tracks later, "To the Nth Degree" borders on disco, or at least dance-pop, ratcheting up the glam factor...um, to the nth degree, I guess. "Jetsetter," meanwhile, is reminiscent of Weezer's "Hash Pipe"-era stuff, and "Everybody Rules" has a jazzy swing that makes me, honestly, think of Gary Glitter.

-- ugo.com

New York Magazine called them "one of the hottest bands changing the New York soundscape," while the Village Voice and Entertainment Weekly offer similar praise.

-- Some college wrapper, seeing New York Mag praise something vaguely rock and roll would generally be a warning to steer clear, much like being recommended through, say, NPR. Maybe worse.

Morningwood, "Morningwood" (Capitol) You can't stop the unflinching rock 'n' roll of Morningwood. You can't even hope to contain it. It's bursting with sexual energy and so much testosterone that you have to hand it to singer Chantal Claret, who can rock out under the moniker Morningwood with the unbridled enthusiasm of Andrew W.K. and unhinged eroticism of Peaches

-- Denver Post

It's amusing that the reviews, including stuff I didn't excerpt from Lex-Nex are all over the place. Business-wise that tells me the label is spending a lot of money on promotion and artificial priming that's not even close to being recoupable.

In any case, that the NY Times basically hates Morningwood is like Rolling Stone "red book" rating. Quite possibly I'd like it.
Impossible to tell really from most of the press which is standard garishly-painted boilerplace.

xpost

And that album cover definitely screamed "teenpop."

He Phoned It In Yeah, Gary G. was the most jazzy of cats when it came to laying down the pitter-patterin' beat. But he's really really really the apotheosis of teenpop (with two meaning of "pop") now.

If Pylon tried to be Scandal.

This does not sound good. That would ruin Scandal. "Goodbye to You" to a G04 beat. Ouch, I'd hurt myself.

Two facts I like: The performers in the group all look the same, and they co-wrote t.A.T.u.'s "All About Us" (maybe the sixth best song on Dangerous and Moving, which is not a problem with the song but rather due to the excellence of the t.A.T.u. album, which Stephen Thomas Erlewine at allmusic described in this way: "As Dangerous and Moving wears on — hell, by the second track — the icy digital sheen of the production starts to grate nearly as bad as the flat, bored vocals of the girls." (I like Erlewine a lot, actually, since his descriptions of why he hates something often give me insight into why I like it; not that I always disagree with his judgments.)

None of the other songs excerpted in the Veronicas' electronic press kit sounded nearly as good (on brief listen) as "4Ever," though there was one that was pleasingly similar to Kelly Clarkson's "Behind These Hazel Eyes."

I did enjoy the Verry sisses' electronic-press-kit clowning, especially Lisa-unless-it's-Jess saying that what she likes about a guy is when he's in bed.

It was in a promo blurb for the Voice's Siren Music Festival 2005, so it's from promo copy, not from a piece of criticism. (This isn't to say that promo copy can't ever be right, or good analysis, for that matter.)

Haven't gone back and read all the Morningwood posts, but I'm confused -- are they being marketed as a teen pop act now, and if so, why? Or are they just on this thread tangentially? They've been bumming around NYC for a couple years, basically Yeah Yeah Yeahs bandwagon jumpers near as I could tell (which is to say, less intereresting than either Scandal *or* Pylon); the one show I saw, while I was DJ-ing between sets at Southpaw in Brooklyn a couple years ago, was completely awful, and very much as Anthony described it, and I said so in a gig-preview blurb I wrote for the Voice's listings section next time they came around: Unrocking garage rock fronted by an embarrassing loud woman who kept trying to hammer into our heads that they were all about SEX and they must be making us REALLY HOT even though, at least to my eyes and ears, there was nothing remotely sexy about either she or their music. They had a vinyl EP out locally at the time with a big pink tit drawn on the cover, furthuring rubbing in their dumb essence before existence we're-sexy-because-we-say-so baloney. Still, they weren't the worst band in town, I guess. Some people seemed to like them okay. I'd say most of the listings blurbs they got in the Voice were neither love em or hate em. Never saw the one quoted above, but yeah, it sounds like an advertisey Siren Festival supplement preview done by the promotions department, not something from the listings section. If they are indeed starting to take off nationally in some even meager way, I gotta say I'm kinda surprised. Jeanne Fury's review of their album (which I haven''t heard) should run in the Voice in the next few weeks....but anyway, back to my original question: What's teenpop about them?

If "Boyfriend" is teenpop, then "Nth Degree" - the single - is.

If they're getting marketed as teenpop, that's because they're on a major label and they don't know how else to promote them.

They've been on late night shows and such. Has anyone gotten a promo copy? Could you tell what market they were leaning toward? I know the song's getting played on the radio somewhere or other, I just don't know what kind of stations.

They're a group with roots in the NY scene that inspires audience stripping, dude!

Conveying information != repeating marketing strategy

I'd be a little more impressed if they actually claimed to be influenced by Ashlee Simpson.

If anyone wants to present evidence that Morningwood is being marketed as a teenpop phenom, we can continue discussing them, otherwise we can leave them behind all happy and stuff.

This is pop music, not stem cell research. I had a question, the reasoning which led to I've gone into -- twice. The band appeared to me to be marketed as teenpop instore. Nothing more. I was curious so I asked a question this thread. Da, verstehen Sie?

It seems to have worked - the disc came in at #6 on our weekly sales chart, 2nd highest chart debut for the week (behind Bleeding Through).

I'm listening now and... Well gosh, I think I love the band so damn much I don't much care if they're contrived or not. But I'm a sucker for female-led fuzzy-guitar power-pop bands (The Sounds are another one).

I think it's odd that the Veronicas are launching in the UK with "Everything I'm Not", which I guess IS kinda halfway between "Since U Been Gone" and "My Happy Ending", but with a lot less kick than either.

(And now Launch Yahoo is playing "All About Us," which is quite gorgeous. The video has the girls walking around wan and expressionless, as if they were forced to appear in a Depeche Mode video instead.)

OK, I'm watching Morningwood again, and I don't see how this doesn't dominate MTV. They're posing as Queen, then they're posing as Santana, then they're Kraftwerk, then they're Hole. And the song is more disco-wavy than I'd indicated (but DOR disco rather than British new-romantic disco).

And now Launch is playing Mariah's "All I Want for Christmas Is You"; the song achieves something I didn't think Mariah could pull off: a Ronettes-Crystals sound while Mariah still gets to be her vocal-trapeze-artist self. (I miss that Mariah. The new Mariah seems chastened and subdued in comparison.)

And now they're playing real teenybopper pop - that is, System of a Down's "B.Y.O.B." a song I find witty and catchy with its hammy la la la-la la-la-la-la ooooooo leading into a compelling r&b-ish party break, followed by thrash spinach concerning fascist nations and sending the poor to war. "Still you feed us lies from the tablecloth." I saw this band at the Pepsi Center; I was one of the two adults accompanying a couple of 12-year-olds and a couple of 15-year-olds. I told Naomi (my ex gf, mother of two of them) that I found this song very funny, and she said, "Funny? Frank, the words are very serious." In a serious tone of voice.

Credits: Kelly Clarkson's "Addicted" written by Kelly Clarkson, Ben Moody, David Hodges; Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" written by Amy Lee, Ben Moody, David Hodges; Moody was the guitarist in Evanescence, is the guitarist on "Addicted" and co-produced it with Hodges; "Hear Me" is written by Kelly Clarkson, Kara DioGuardi, Cliff Magness; produced by Magness who played most of the instruments; Magness produced and co-wrote the more melodramatically fraught-sounding songs on the first Avril album.

The song I hear echoed in a lot of these tracks: Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" (not the rhythm accompaniment, but Stevie's melody and her way of singing it). And of course Lindsay Lohan covers "Edge of Seventeen" on her recent album.

Ha! So Frank, you're saying the Morningwood goyl can't sing at all 'cuz Wendy O. sure couldn't even though I liked her. It gets really obvious and desperate on her recordings after Dieter Dirks did Coup d'etat which was the Plasmatics' most metal and probaby their most likely to appeal to teens. Hey, now maybe I'd like Morningwood, although I still don't know if there's someone like Richie Stotts in the band. No one wore a nurse's uniform on the cover.

I bet you could play "Concrete Shoes" for tweeners and a some of them would like it. That song never aged.

At one point she had points for being beaten by cops -- maybe in Scranton or Detroit -- who took exception to her being onstage with her bosoms covered only by whipped cream.

p.s.s.) I still like the Slunt album fine.

I STRONGLY FUCKING OBJECT TO THE IDEAS IMPLIED BY THIS STATEMENT

Which I really enjoyed. I thought they (Morningwood) were a lot more fun than Gang of Four. I was all rocked out by the time the old fellas came on stage. They were loud, fast, and catchy. I really don't get all the hate at PF and Stylus and so on.

I love the album, but I'm not yet sure how much of that is because its a good album, and how much is me being a contrary bugger.

Shit, I have the Karen Lawrence and 1994 reissue coming in the mail. There amps were bigger and they didn't even stick her on the cover of the first album.

That practice hasn't seemed to have made it to the Pasadena chapter. You can do it in Tower at their listening stations, but Morningwood wasn't on any of them.

>Samantha Jo, self-titled EP, available from cdbaby.com or samanthajomartin.com: Potential teen-pop country, but for the five songs *only* potential: the voice is there, and two songs ("He's Always There," about her Dad though maybe also about Jesus who knows, and "These Days") are actually about getting up for school despite not being a morning person and checking email and stopping by McDonald's in Dad's truck and doing homework, but the production isn't there, and the songs all seem too slow to pop. But then, BAM! track six, "time for summer," she makes her hope partlow "crazy summer nights" move, or maybe her undertones "here comes the summer" move (no kidding, that's what the chorus sounds like, totally kicking and bubblicious), or her hope partlow plus undertones equals skye sweetnam move, and the talking parts have a rap flow staight out of, I dunno, "we didn't start the fire" by billy joel maybe, and the band rocks, and it makes me want to go back and listen to the rest again to see what I may have missed, and I will, just not right this second.

Looks like the summer song (along with the get up in the morning and do homework and check email one "These Days") were produced by Karl Demer in Minneapolis, whereas the other four tracks were produced by Jim Kimball in Nashville. Odd how they save the great one for the end; maybe they're afraid it would scare away Nashville record labels?

Oops, the waltz is "Heart Over Head Over Heels." "That's the Way" is more like a zigzag (at leat that's what Samantha says: "gotta zig gotta zag gotta travel my jagged road." To Mexico with Romeo, maybe. But she also says she changes direction like a pendulum, and this song doesn't, and nor does it swing like England and a pendulum do.)

I did get Robyn, Frank, thanks! I like it, especially "Konichiwa Bitches," though I doubt I like that anywhere near as much as "Jam On It" or "Attack of the Name Game." Enjoy the rest; not sure yet how much. (CD-Rs are always hard for to motivate myself to listen to!)

hey Frank, is any of that Ashlee Simpson stuff in the book?

-- JD from CDepot (kicksjoydarknes...), January 23rd, 2006.

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In Real Punks, where I tell my story I'm not doing so just for its own sake but because there are resemblances between my story and some other people's, so by analyzing and probing my own predicament I'm analyzing and probing a lot more, too. I make this clear right on the first page of the preface, where I say that my sentences don't just come from my pen, they're a social product; and I ask, therefore, not just what do I gain by producing such sentences, but what does a society gain by producing people like me who write such sentences. So I'm saying that my story is relevant even for people whose experience doesn't match up with mine, since I'm still playing a role in the society of which they're a part. Of course, one can dispute this claim, but whether I'm being "subjective" or not doesn't touch the claim one way or another. Rather, what's at issue is whether or not my experience resembles other people's; and whether the principles I'm illustrating in telling my story can be applied to other people; and whether my social roles relate to the social roles of poeple whose story doesn't resemble mine.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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No, Ashlee Simpson's not in the book, since I wasn't paying much attention to her until about a year ago (and the book was finished by then, except for the copy editing and printing and stuff). But Ashlee and I have a lot in common, so maybe in a way we speak for each other. The first song on her first album is called "Autobiography," and (if you don't count the prefaces) the first word in the title of the first piece of my book is "Autobiography." So there we are. And no I'm not kidding. I recognize myself in her.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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And if that surprises you, then either you don't know me as well as you think, or you don't know her.

You think you know me?

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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Autobiography

You think you know me
Word on the street is that you do
You want my history
What others tell you won't be true

I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep
Nobody's really seen my million subtleties

Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt
Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh
Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark
If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me

I hear you talking
Well, it's my turn now
I'm talking back
Look in my eyes
So you can see just where I'm at

I walked a thousand miles to find one river of peace
I walked a million more to find out what this shit means

Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt
Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh
Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark
If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me

I'm a bad ass girl in this messed up world
I'm the sexy girl in this crazy world
I'm a simple girl in a complex world
A nasty girl, you wanna get with me?
You wanna mess with me?

Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt
Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh
I laugh more than I cry
You piss me off, good-bye
Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark
If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me

-- JD from CDepot (kicksjoydarknes...), January 23rd, 2006.

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If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me.

Except the lyrics on the page don't convey how sexy it is when she says it. It's a come-on. The song is like the world's most brilliant personal ad.

And I never in my life wrote a line as great as "I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep." I don't know if Jay-Z or Eminem ever did either. Or Dylan. It's like she's saying, "Here I am, stealth genius, and you didn't know." Of course, she's making promises in that song that she probably won't be able to keep, just as Dylan and Jagger and Iggy and Lennon and Johnny and Johansen never lived up to their promise.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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(Of course, it's possible that Shanks or DioGuardi wrote that line for her, but I can't find anything in their work with other people that has lyrics that come close to the ones on Ashlee's albums, which is why I surmise that Ashlee's the one in charge of the words. Or maybe she brings something out in those two. But there's not a song of hers where she's not listed as a co-writer. And Ashlee, like me, like everything, is a collaborative product.)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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And (speaking of Eminem) I do wish that Ashlee would sing a lyric along the lines of:

When I go out I'm a go out shooting
I don't mean when I die
I mean when I go out to the club, stupid

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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I walked a million more to find out what this shit means

It's actually "And I'll walk a million more to find out what this shit means."

See what I mean about her making promises? I admire her for making them.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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Chapter 1
The Autobiography of Bob Dylan

When I first listened to Bob Dylan's mid-'60s stuff I thought it was especially honest. It was honest to me because the vocals weren't pretty and didn't sound like singers were supposed to sound, and mistakes were left in. The lyrics to "Visions of Johanna," "Memphis Blues Again," etc. were honest because they were self-destructive. The earlier protest stuff, attacking power, prestige, and everyday commonplaces, fit into a genre of "folk" music; the electric stuff seemed more individual and true. Dylan got to be "honest" not by attacking power, prestige, and everyday commonplaces, but by attacking Dylan.

I thought if you were going to get to see Ashlee's come-on, you should see mine as well, so that's the first paragraph. Ashlee's has a better lilt. I should work on my flirting technique.

I wrote the piece 22 years ago, and it's not about any actual Dylan autobio. "The true autobiography of Bob Dylan isn't an account of his life, or how he got to be that way; but of how it got to be that way, how we got to be that way." In other words, I'm saying we get to complete Dylan's "autobiography" in our own lives and our own stories.

Harold Bloom to thread.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

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I walked a thousand miles to find one river of peace
And I'll walk a million more to find out what this shit means

I like these lines, but I don't think I'd like them as much if I didn't know about her family background (ie., ex-pastor father).
-- o. nate (syne_wav...), January 23rd, 2006. (onate)

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I should try harder to write something I'm actually going to get paid for, so I need to disappear in midthought.

First, to put some perspective on Ashlee, in one of her songs on I Am Me she says that the fact that her boyfriend is so sensitive ("You finish all my sentences before they begin") means that he must have been hers in a previous life; this is a really boring and unimaginative metaphor, far duller than anything you'll find in the early work of Eminem or Dylan or Johansen et al. Stuff like this is why I won't be altogether shocked if she doesn't follow through on the potential of "Autobiography."

Second, I've revived the Death of Pop thread; not only is it one of the all-time great ILM threads, it's the one that pulled me onto the board in the first place.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan) (tracklink)

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A couple more things about Ashlee and Dylan: Her second album was released a couple weeks after her 21st birthday. Dylan's first album was released a few days before his 21st birthday. Dylan only puts a couple of his own songs on that album, and their lyrics aren't all that interesting (nothing close to "Autobiography," which came out when Ashlee was 19); and nothing in those lyrics foretells what he's going to unleash a year later in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," going out into that storm he'd called forth on us. But actually, the first Dylan album is my favorite of his four early acoustic records; on that one you can hear him twisting and stretching and distorting the musical forms to make them do what he wants them to. He finds all sorts of different ways to sound intense. In "House of the Rising Sun" and "In My Time of Dying" his voice calls down the storm even though the words don't. Nothing on Ashlee's albums has her imposing her musical will like that, and I'm not sure if there is a way for anyone to drastically twist and distort and reshape her style of music. Which isn't to say that there's nothing special going on in her music or that of people like her. The various reshapings/recombinings are slow and not as ear catching. (And maybe they need to be the subject of another post.) Basically in today's teenpop you're getting admixtures of goth, '80s arena rock, singer-songwriter confessional, various retro dancepop styles, funny novelties, sugar-sweet melodies, hard dark melodies, and blissful r&b, and what's most interesting is the tendency to do them all at once. What's immediately striking about Ashlee is her voice, which sits somewhere between Pink's and Courtney's except that she doesn't sit with it but lets it play around, especially on I Am Me. I Am Me is lighter on its feet than Autobiography; she's found a way to ease up on her bruised intensity without losing it, so she keeps its power while not burying the music under it, which sometimes happens on Autobiography. On the first album she's declaring her identity, on the second she's romping from style to style saying "Look what I can do," so she's the disco slut, then she's the ingenue, then she's the wrathful woman scorned.
But you know what? My heart's with the first album. That's the one where more feels at stake, in words and in sound. Stephen Thomas Erlewine at allmusic.com complains about the second album (he liked the first much more): "The problem is this album is presented with utter seriousness, as if her garden-variety changes in emotions and fashion were great revelations instead of being just what happens in adolescence." That's obviously not how I hear it. Is it possible to listen to "L.O.V.E." and "Burning Up," for example, and not get into the goofing around? I guess it is for Erlewine, who's always worth reading anyway. He's right that her changes in emotions and fashion are garden variety. That doesn't mean they can't be revelations. The situations and emotions in Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" and "Visions of Johanna" and "Sooner Or Later" are just as garden variety. What is amazing is what he makes of them. Any 23 year old can say that even though he sometimes looks and acts like a weasel, he still feels like there's a hero somewhere in him (you hope that a 23 year old hasn't yet lost a sense of his heroic potential). But most won't then come up with anything like "Well, I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like Jesse James" to call forth the legends of weasels and heroes past, not to mention calling forth the fear that he'll get shot in the back for it (and the subtext that says, "Look, I can make my little blues song go anywhere, try and stop me"). The risk with Ashlee is that she'll put everything into perspective - that she already has - that she'll decide that a weasel is just a weasel and a breakup is just a breakup and they have no resonance with any larger perfidy or heroism. Maybe "Autobiography" and "Shadow" and "I Am Me" and "La La" are just the pop machine making a couple of lucky shots, and maybe this garden-variety celeb (Dylan: "I know there're some people terrified of the bomb. But there are other people terrified to be seen carrying a Modern Screen magazine") won't make much more that's extraordinary out of her ordinariness. If a Sophie or Alanis or Lucinda had come up with a clumsy line like "Does the weight of consequence drag you down until it pulls you under?" (in the title song of I Am Me), I'd mutter, "Go take a walk in the park, or a nap, or something," but in Ashlee it gives me hope. If she's still got pretensions, maybe she'll push herself to make her mind worthy of those pretensions. You know, like she's got a million miles to go before she sleeps. Or not. In the meantime, at least she gets to speak to my inner 19 year old. Important not to lose that guy.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 24th, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

What I mean is that the reshapings and recombinations are unfolding over years in the genre as a whole rather than happening - blam! - all on one record.

But of course there are lots of teenpop songs that are fast and/or ear catching.

(their website is creationband.org if you're feeling ambitious.)

Fefe Dobson, "Stupid Little Love Song"
Hilary Duff, "Fly"
Skye Sweetnam, "Billy S."
Skye Sweetnam, "Tangled Up in Me"
Joss Stone, "The Choking Kind"
Joss Stone, "Super Duper Love"
Avril Lavigne, "My Happy Ending"
Avril Lavigne, "Together"
The Beatles, "Yellow Submarine"
Jojo, "Leave (Get Out)"
Alicia Keys, "Karma"
Michelle Branch, "Are You Happy Now?"
Kelly Clarkson, "Miss Independent"
Kelly Clarkson, "The Trouble With Love Is"
Kelly Clarkson w/ Tamyra Gray, "You Thought Wrong"
Avril Lavigne, "Sk8ter Boi"
Avril Lavigne, "Complicated"
Loretta Lynn, "Family Tree"
Kelly Clarkson, "Behind These Hazel Eyes"
Kelly Clarkson, "Breakaway"
Kelly Clarkson, "Since U Been Gone"

(But I'd only claimed she was upthread so that someone could challange me and I could respond with, "Oops, I misunderstood. It turns out she was merely a teenmom." But no one took my bait.)

I don't really know what in Evanescence other than the opening to "Bring Me to Life" sounds like "Fly," which generally flies to undark regions.

Let the rain fall down and wake my dreams
Let it wash away my sanity
'Cause I wanna feel the thunder, I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down, I'm coming clean

However, the remix of "Come Clean" on Most Wanted does have a short break that vocodorizes the vocal and moves into a techno pound-pound-pound that could propel you into the dark romantic sublime if that's what you are absolutely set on. It functions similarly to ye olde Yardbirds rave-up or a James Brown gospel vamp. (This, in fact, is what a lot of techno is shooting for.)

So, anyway, for the time being (until someone thinks of a better term), I'm thinking of calling "Hear Me" and ilk "secular goth," the word "secular" not just meaning without religion but also without all the mists and shadows and bright-side/dark-side salvation angst. Or, more accurately, the shadows and bright-vs-dark salvation angst is appropriated by pop romance for its s/he-loves-me, s/he-loves-me-not, I-am-free, I-am-trapped stories. Musically the "dark" chord intervals and progressions are less prominent but still there.

(Avril's "Naked," by the way, is another song in which the music isn't quite willing to listen to the lyrics, which are about finally getting someone to love and trust. The sound won't altogether let go of its menace.)

(Jeez, I'm just losing it as a proofreader.)

>Lots of catchy tough glammy post-Runaways girl rock songs on the *Rollergirls* soundtrack (apparently there's a TV show, though I never heard of it since I never watch TV except *Everybody Hates Chris* these days) - the obvious Donnas, but also gals I never heard of called Angie Heaton ("Rollerskate," copyright 1988), The Addictions ("Rollergirl," copyright 2004) and the Sweethearts ("Never Give Up," copyright 2004.) Also some good country and disco stuff.

(george explains the TV show on the metal thread, if you're interested)

And 'Break Me Shake Me' was the underrated gem of that album!

I might buy a Savage Garden comp!

Rolling World Music 2006 Thread

I dunno. I am kind of liking "Animal Song" (especially its Diddley/glitter drum rumble start) and "Love Can Move You" (fast beautiful high-register electro disco building momentum toward rock and at least partially about New York) and maybe "Affirmation" (long list of stuff they say they believe in though they're probably lying about a lot of them) and "Hold Me"s boy-band prettiness and the funk and Jesus references and Calvin Klein Obsession references and train rhythms on some of the other B-sides on this new best of. Seems like a smartly chosen selection, and in general I'd forgotten how weird these guys' words could be. I'll always have a sentimental attachment to the debut, but if Anthony's gotta buy one or the other, I can't swear that the best-of wouldn't be the better long-term investment. (Debut's more *manageable* at 11 songs not 17, though, and it's got their best ones.)

So...

With a name as common as Dan James googling didn't get me anywhere immediately, though I may try again when I have more time. Googling Leah Haywood, however, I got a young Australian singer who hit in 2001 in the Antipodes with a dance pop album, some of which had input from the Cheiron Swedes, some of which was recorded in Los Angeles, little of which sold in the States. I don't know if this is the same woman as the Aly & AJ Haywood, and I never heard the Haywood album. Any info?

"Truly Madly Deeply" was maybe my second or third least favorite on the first album, though I haven't listened this century. I think I've got a promo cassette of it somewhere. Hayes has an amazing voice.

Last week 'Breaking Free' by Zac Efron & Vanessa Anne Hudgens debuted at number 84 on the Hot 100. This week, when it moved to number 4 it rewrote the history books as no single has ever jumped from such a low number to the top in one week. Also, last week Zac Efron was the first artist to ever have two singles debut simultaneously. This week that record was tied by Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Gabreel with 'What I've Been Looking For' and 'Bop To The Top.'

Billboard Hot 100

4. Zac Efron & Vanessa Anne Hudgens - Breaking Free
23. Zac Efron - Get'cha Head In The Game
28. Zac Efron & Vanessa Anne Hudgens - Start Of Something New
34. High School Musical Cast - We're All In This Together
35. Ashley Tisdale & Lucas Gabreel - What I've Been Looking For
43. High School Musical Cast - Stick To The Status Quo
62. Ashley Tisdale & Lucas Gabreel - Bop To The Top

There's also the input of "C. Michalka," who as far as I can tell is their mother. She (co-)wrote the one about kidnapping that, not surprisingly, hasn't made it to RD yet.

According to Allmusic, it's the same Leah Haywood (worked with Jorgen Elofsson and Andreas Carlsson...interesting). Dan James did random production work in "world" music (again AMG's words, not mine).

I was actually asked to pitch a version of the rollergirls soundtrack. Looks like the one that made it was better than mine in that it had actual rollerskating content.

http://youtube.com/w/don?v=ISBzaPPURvI&search=miranda%20don

[Oops, clicked submit too soon]

nameom, you seem to know your way around allmusic better than I. I tried Dan James and all I got was his name. (They really did make that site difficult to navigate, even if it does contain a lot of info.)

So, has anyone here heard the Leah Haywood album? Tim F.?

http://img.epochtimes.com/i6/5082342541470.jpg

I'm halfway through the album and it's disappointing. Not enough guitar or drums, bleeps too laid-back. Ah well.

"Checks & Balances" US Secret Service-ready teenpop, sung by guy who looks like a homeless person. Simple Plan/Yellowcard, if they were protest bands. Amusing, catchy. If he were famous he'd be a demon on Fox or wiretapped, both probably.

http://myspace.com/jaikwillis

I also noticed that Ashlee's "Boyfriend" sounded way muddier than it does on CD or on Launch Yahoo, which may indicate that Smash Hits have a defective track, or may indicate that you can't trust the fidelity on anything they play.

In any event, here are my notes:

Anastacia "Sick and Tired" - My Anastacia album from a few years back is strong-voiced disco-soul with almost all boring songs. This track, though, is sweet-tuned pop, Anastacia's voice giving the music a bright-rough "character" (not unlike Alanis) without sabotaging the sweetness. Not totally great on first listen, but a nice surprise.

Friday Hill "One Night Alone" - Blah '90s harmonies. [What did I mean by "blah '90s harmonies"? Not sure, since the track didn't stay in my mind. Similar to the harmonies in "Hey Jealousy" if "Hey Jealousy" had been blah instead of nonblah?]

The Cribs "The Modern Way" - Affected Brit sadboy voices: I don't always hate 'em, but I never love 'em.

Sugababes "Ugly" - No, not ugly, just plain, and really disappointing compared to "Freak Like Me" and "Blue" and "Round and Round." My one Sugababes album is unique in being the only one I've heard that goes from great on the first few tracks to not-so-great on the next few and continues on a perfect gradual decline through mediocre, tepid, barely tolerable, and, by the last track, terrible. On that album they get worse the closer they get to "real" r&b. "Ugly" isn't r&b but still lands in "tepid." I don't remember why I think so, actually; something about the harmonies having been through the wash once too often.

[Track order on U.S. alb may not match up with that on the British.]

McFly "Ultraviolet" - Band already denounced on this thread, but I enjoy this. '60sish Yardbirds or Hollies–type harmonies but with no '60s zing, which can be a drawback if you insist on zing in you sing, but likable nonetheless.

Shayne Ward "That's My Goal" - Agh! Gawd! Horrible! I'll go for ten of Robbie Williams to avoid one of these. Amazing that human beings choose to listen to this. It's a ballad, but it's not even "safe" and "gentle" and "comfy" in its zinglessness. It's loud and slow and pelts and pummels you with feeling.

Rachel Stevens "Sweet Dreams of My LA Ex" - Damn, maybe she's as good as the Poptimists say. [But I was so busy tracking down the performer name and song title - the Smash Hits site doesn't show the title of the song being played so I have to do a quick google on the lyrics while a song runs - that I didn't attend to what it sounded like or why I loved it so much. Maybe love it 'cause an ex of mine is from L.A.]

Girls Aloud "Biology" - My first Girls Aloud song! And it's... tuneful... and OK, I suppose. It's a fuller-sounding Robyn-type number, strong beat, but not a melody in the class of "Be Mine!" You think maybe Robyn knows what she's doing in her slightness?

"We Think It's Love" - I hated this at the time, it represented everything I disliked about Australian pop at that point, very much in the mould of Bachelor Girl (who were themselves like Savage Garden with all of the manic energy, the oddness and the expansive production removed, replaced by unthreatening mushy guitar backdrops derived from 90s Tina Arena), but even more straightforward and anonymous in feel. Quite memorable chorus though, but maybe it's just that I used to send it up a bit.

"Taking Back What's Mine" - this definitely sounded like Cheiron, a sort of hard juddering plastic pop groove in the vein of N'Sync's "It's Gonna Be Me" or Britney's "Stronger" or (perhaps closest) Britney's "Don't Go Knocking On My Door". But - and maybe this was just my biases at work - it seemed unconvincing, a really awkward chorus and a general tinge of desperation obscuring the pop dynamics. Soon after this local boyband Human Nature also went down this route with similarly lacklustre results.

But otherwise, yes to what you said.

News to me: Lacuna Coil covered Dubstar's plum trip-hoppy confection "Stars." before my hyphen key wears out--trip-hop-secular-teen-goth?

(LC is playing with Rod Zombie. I'm sorely tempted to go, for the Coil, I mean. Has anyone seen them?)

Yep! Saw them open for Moonspell at late lamented L'Amours in Brooklyn maybe four or so years ago. Four monkish looking guys, banging heads in unsion, with a beautiful Italian girl up front. Much more fun live than Evanescence (whose US audience I still hope Lacuna Coil get, but I'd be surprised if they do.) By the way, Ian, if you like Lacuna Coil, you should really check out the Gathering sometime as well. They're still the genre template as far as I'm concerned. I list a bunch of other such bands upthread, but my latest obsessions in the genre are unsigned bands Persepone's Dream from Pittshburg and Twelfth of Never from Massechusetts, both of whom I discovered via cbbaby and I discuss on the metal thread.

Where did Frank make this assertion? I missed it. (Weren't they a shoegaze band, though?)

Oh and the new Pink single will most likely grow on me. Saw the video for it. Girl power, bitches.

I had to go to google to figure out this joke (assuming that it was intended as a joke).

It was to assert her goth cred.

(One of my favorite Xgau reviews ever is his pan of White Zombie's Soul-Crusher: "People consent to fascism because they think fascism will be more fun than this. They could be right. D+")

(My guess is that they're better to look at than to hear - aggressively "fun" and "satirical" bands that are "taking the piss" almost always bore me, unless they're the Sex Pistols - and I won't spend precious dialup time downloading until someone else does first, but the bandname is excellent, as are the...)

[Eligibility for this thread is vague association in my mind between what they and Morningwood do. Also, twelve-year-old boys will love them on principle.]

"I'm the singing voice for the new Barbie movie 'the Barbie Diaries'... totally rad right? Who doesn't love Barbie? C'mon she's my hero!"

(Song's kinds disappointing, though; sorta halfway betw. "Billy S." rehash and Lohan-Duff imitation, which isn't bad in principle except "Billy S" is her worst song and there are better Lohan and Duff tracks and anyway we've already got Lohans and Duffs.)

Proper album pushed back to mid July, but word on the street is she's recording some songs with the Matrix (possibly just a rumor). I imagine she didnt have much say in the writing/production of the Barbie tracks, but she wrote and recorded everything on the new one (not sure about the re-recorded version). Billy S her worst song? I don't really hear it in the Barbie track.

you were right about the kelly clarkson song, but i think that the best proof of its country tendencies is its obsessive seeking of solution wrt domestic melodrama

We're talking about "Because of You" (most of the discussion was on last year's thread), which I'm now trying to make sense of since it's only been on the charts for half a year and gone double platinum as a single (not to mention the 5 million the album has sold). When I first heard it I pretty much dismissed it as an OK adult-contemporary heartbreak song, suitably quiet and sad but not up to the Kelly's previous three singles. Now, having paid attention to the lyrics and thought hard about where its music is coming from and so forth (and finally doing what I can to study the video on the postage-stamp screen that Launch Yahoo gives you in dialup), I'm hearing a completely different song, something of intensity, something that feels loud even with the quiet accompaniment and the controlled singing. And I think it is out of bounds for country. Which is to say that though I can imagine Faith singing in this style she probably wouldn't go for this melody or these words; and though I can imagine LeAnn going for both the melody and these words and totally nailing it in performance, she'd probably decide that it would be bad for her career at this point to release it.

First the words: it isn't just that they're unremittingly despairing, since you could say the same about country classics like "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "The End of the World." But those don't feel like despair, or they take a different approach to despair, or something. (I've always considered "End of the World" a beautiful, sweet delight.) In general, country's "life falls apart" story belongs to its standard romance cycle: "My heart is broken, now I'm drunk, now I'm going to fuck up again and again," is mined for a lot of rue and a lot of comedy. It's something country is comfortable with. Whereas "the relationship was fundamentally pathological and has left me unfit to live" is not standard for country, even if it's fine on Oprah and adult contemporary and Radio Disney.

Also - and this is interesting - I'd never thought of it as a domestic drama until last night when I started examining the video: house in the suburban night, we're looking in through the window at a couple arguing, then we're in with them in the fight, a child watches glumly, a man upends a table in anger; then a different scene, the little girl shows daddy something she's made, daddy burns it on the stove; a woman leaves, a little girl leaves.

Before studying the video, I'd just naturally assumed this was a romance-and-dysfunction song like most of the ones that precede and follow it on the album, that the narrator was addressing a former boyfriend who'd left her devastated. In fact, that's a perfectly good way to read the song; the "you" is never identified. But if we factor in the video, the narrator has to be the little girl grown up, and she's addressing her parents: "I heard you cry every night in your sleep/I was so young/You should have known better than to lean on me/You never thought of anyone else/You just saw your pain/And now I cry in the middle of the night/For the same damn thing/Because of you/Because of you/Because of you I am afraid/Because of you I never stray too far from the sidewalk/Because of you I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt/Because of you/I try my hardest just to forget everything/Because of you/I don't know how to let anyone else in/Because of you/I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty/Because of you I am afraid/Because of you."

Anyway, I don't know of anything like this in country, though that may not be because it's not there but just because I don't know the genre well enough. Haggard's "Hungry Eyes" suggests something difficult (like, maybe sometime mommas are too hurt to try); maybe there's more. (Subject for further research: Hank Snow.) But "Because of You" is more in the territory of Faster Pussycat's "House of Pain" and Everclear's "Father of Mine" and Pink's "Family Portrait" and Lindsay Lohan's "Confessions of a Broken Heart" and Ashlee Simpson's "Shadow." The country equivalent? Maybe LeAnn Rimes' album track "No Way Out" if you decide she's talking about her relationship to her dad. (But didn't the country audience make clear that they didn't consider that album country?)

I'll continue this thought later, but there's something going on - though subtly - in the sound of "Because of You" that also isn't yet a part of country, and that's goth. [Which I have talked about on this teenpop thread but still haven't worked out.]

Also, the way the song is, the way it's sung, it was easy for me to not pay much notice to the words the first 20 or so times I heard the song, and for a while after that not to take much more away from them than "Because of you I am afraid." Whereas "Addicted" nails its point in the second you hear it: "It's like you're a drug/It's like you're a demon I can't face down/It's like I'm stuck/It's like I'm running from you all the time/And I know I let/You have all the power/It's like the only company I seek/Is misery all around."

Departure from her 'heavy' pop-rock sound, and the ballad, towards more blues-pop-based sounds; the initial strong chords get buried under the synth beaths. First impressions say not at all as strong as 'Since U Been Gone' or 'Behind These Hazel Eyes'

The verse is pretty much identical to the verse sections of 'Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen' by La Lohan - cadence, rythm etc. even though her enunciation is very pronounced.

Chorus is very familiar to me, I'm sure someone can identify what it's reminding me of...

Aparently written by Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace

(My favorite of the remaining nonsingles is "Hear Me," which has probably the greatest wailing quasi-goth torment on the album: the emotions of "Because of You" and "Addicted" amped up to 10.)

http://s64.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1Q5R4YXR74O661AVSK830JDQUH

But for all that, the sound is way more tepid than it ought to be. Or that's how it seems right now, with my not yet having swamped myself in her songs.

Anyway, this is the Sugababes covering "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor":

http://www.popjustice.com/downloads/sugamonkeys.mp3

The song, by the way, sounds good but not great. Nice to hear Pink's voice.

One of the themes of this thread is that teenpop is hardly just play play play joy joy joy kids kids kids fun fun fun.

Tash Bed launched her solo career with a track called "Single", which was a kinda P!nk-esque "I am a WOMAN and will take no shit from you MEN" track with a few catchy bits and an awful video. I always got the feeling that the reason for "These Words" as the second single was so people wouldn't assume she was a lesbian.

I think my problem with calling her teenpop is that she always has been, and always has been marketed as, the dance-wing of Dido.

It's about the Sugababes covering "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor"

So, I sort of want to like this mohawked and punkabillified (where, um, "billy" means "ska" I guess) Horrorpops album *Bring It On!* on Hellcat. Bang Sugar Bang made my top ten last year after all. I guess the idea is making the Dance Hall Crashers or early No Doubt rock as hard as the Distillers or something. And I don't *not* like it; it's not *not* catchy; it all sounds perfectly pleasant, but also nothing on it is reaching out and grabbing me. I'm thinking the problem might mostly be the singer (whose hairdo makes it look like she has devil's horns); her voice is probably too thin, but then again the rhythm section is probably too thin too. But at the same time, I'd say both the vocals and rhythm are COMPETENT. Shrug. Jeanne, have you heard this? I have a feeling I'd trust your Horrorpops judgement implicitly. Also possible that they just don't have songs (where Bang Sugar Bang have NON-STOP songs). And if they DO have songs, which they might, the Horrorpops singer just can't put them over, for whatever reason.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), February 15th, 2006.

Back to the Pink vid, and to repeat something I said over on the rolling country thread: I may not know much about videos these days, but I know from stupid, and whatever you think about Jessica Simpson's cocktease routine in "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'," it's not stupid: Get out of car, swing your hips, prance into rowdy redneck club, get guys to beat themselves up over you, flirt with Willie, sashay out, leaving the joint in shambles. You may not like that version or that vision of girl power, since it's not the one that the enlightened We-who-know-better embrace and doesn't prefigure Our hoped-for social transformation, but it's not stupid.

I'm not sure that the U.S. has a Dido equivalent: Sheryl and Alanis would be occupying that social spot, but neither is hitting big at the moment. Maybe the spot is currently occupied by Kelly Clarkson heaving her voice and guts at us. (She seems to be occupying twenty or so spots.) Hooray for us!

I would also like to ask our English friends for thoughts about Mercury Prize nominee KT Tunstall, whose imminent (here) *Eyes to the Telescope* (especially "Suddenly I See" and maybe "Miniature Disasters" and "Heal Over" so far; "Universe & U" kinda stinks) I have been enjoying this weekend in a sort of vaguely jazz-folky post-Laura Nyro/Rickie Lee Jones stewardess-pop (stole that idea from an old Xgau Quarterflash review!) sort of way, which is to say approx. 15 percent country maybe, though I could see her appealing to an '06 US country audience if they heard her. Have no idea how she's heard or thought of in England. If I pay closer attention to the words will I hate her? I am sort of scared of that.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 1st, 2006.

The KT Tunstall tracks I don't like are probably more Natalie Merchant than to Nyro/Rickie Lee. Second most energetic and therefore likeable song after "Suddenly I See" (which is a real good dance track) might be "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," with its sort of Diddley beat.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 2nd, 2006.

Joseph, is "Black Horse and Cherry Tree" really about a horse asking KT to marry him, and she says no? That's what she seems to be singing about. Wacky! Though it would be even wackier if she said yes! Also, tracks # 2,3, and 8 have good power-ballad buldups, I have decided.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 3rd, 2006.

is "Black Horse and Cherry Tree" really about a horse asking KT to marry him, and she says no?
Yup: Her black horse is Joni Mitchell's Coyote, I figure.
-- Joseph McCombs (jmccomb...), January 4th, 2006.

(Also, Scottish IS British, isn't it?) (Or are you saying that, for Scottish women, being propositioned by a horse is perfectly normal?)

*some ambiguity, though, as to whether Holly's resurrection is a living one or occurs after death, e.g., she stopped loving dope today, they placed a wreath upon her door, perhaps.

**I assume that Breakaway is basically a collection of songs rather than a concept album, and the song order has as much to do with sound and mood as anything; so the story that gets inadvertently told is just the way the songs happened to fall. But even on random play you get the basic story, the anguish is so prevalent. And being good pop music, there's always another story anyway, 'cause there's usually a dance and an enticing come-on no matter what the words are saying, and there's always a voluptuousness of sound, even in despair. Especially in despair.

KT Tunstall says she has a big lesbian following after 'accidentally' wearing rainbow braces on the cover of her album.

"I have a massive lesbian following," she told the Mirror. "There's always a gay crowd up the front at my gigs. It's a huge compliment. No one thinks Katie Melua is gay.

"I think it's because I'm a singer-songwriter with a personality - balls and some sassiness."

KT believes she unintentionally sent out mixed messages about her sexuality when she wore a pair of rainbow-patterned braces - a gay symbol - on her record cover.

She says she only realised the implications when a friend in the U.S. sent her a text saying: "The girls in San Francisco are loving your braces."

KT adds: "I was onstage in Dublin when I heard a girl in the crowd shout: 'KT, you're a lesbian!' What the hell do you say to that? I didn't want to upset the lesbians but I didn't want to make out I was one.

"I said: 'You can't say that!' Then I realised that none of the other 1,500 people there had heard her. So I said: 'That girl just called me a lesbian.'

"At the end of the gig, a roadie handed me a note from the woman. It said: 'KT, I was saying 'legend'."

Copyright © 2006 Ananova Ltd

As a side note - Delays - Valentine. What we r reckon to this, then?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000DN5VJY.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Well, making fun of dumb blondes seems pretty status quo to me. (As opposed to raping and killing your mom, which is Eminem's idea of the forbidden.)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0007A0GD4.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

That's gotta be a pretty relative scale. And Pink sure acts like a *kid* with her license plate reading No. 1 Superstar and her comparing her life to Vietnam because her mom's going to change her last name and her family won't pretend they're all really happy. I didn't hear Try This, though.

Fr Kog: links at the bottom of this page should prove more amenable.

How is this sort of thing perceived in Britain? As just more indie poprock, or is the Hi-NRG dance sound recognized?

(Yeah, I know

Now, I won't pretend that Messina or Pinson are teenpop, but I bet lots o' Brit teens and teeny-weenies go for the Kaiser Chiefs. My impression is that their official category is "indie" (though they're major label).

Interestingly, I was just listening to the NEW Buzzcocks album *flat pack philosophy* today, and what's clear to me is that Pete Shelley's voice just doesn't hold up; he seemingly can't get it high or nasal or swishy enough to convey his old sweetness and manic excitement anymore. which might not be that big a surprise, except that i actually liked the buzzcocks's *modern* album in 1999 (or at least i did at the time; maybe if i pulled it out now, i wouldn't be so impressed.) band still sounds like they might be fairly tuneful, if not nearly as energetic as they once were. without shelley's voice, though, it just doesn't matter. i gave up after five or six songs.

I've got to get this message to the press
That every day I love you less and less

It was refreshing after all that country be-a-tough-babe/this-is what-makes-a-man bullshit, and all that earnest romance.

xpost

Well, he's basically using a rock beat on this album, in keeping with contemporary teenpop, though he's not particularly trying to rock out. But that I heard Justin and Darren when I heard him might indicate that MJ-type soul could work.

actually this might be true but I meant I'm not sure what the MOVIE'S about (though I'm guessing it might concern going to the beach. Matter of fact, one of the 3 girls on the CD cover is a mermaid.) xp

Smoosh - "Rad": It is a well-known scientific FACT that a key ingredient of Great Pop is YOUTH. Smoosh back this up nicely. They are sisters Asya, 13, and Chloe, 11, and on 'Rad' Asya raps charmingly about how you should be a little happier and if you want to play then GO PLAY over insanely melodic electric piano. I am sure all Poptimists will take Smoosh to their hearts with no further prompting, but should you need further convincing here are some TEAM ANECDOTES: 1) While recording their album, relations between Chloe and the band's producer got so fractious that she had to be locked out of the studio, whereupon she scrawled "DO U WANT A FIGHT!" on a piece of paper and pressed it to the window; 2) They were once told by an over-excitable interviewer that they could be "as big as Led Zeppelin", to which they replied, "Is that big?"; 3) When I went to see them at Cargo a couple of months ago I got to the venue early to find them playing tag amidst all the bemused punters. CUTE!

actually her Aquamarine song "Connected" is not bad, and not really all that sensitive, and even slightly boppy, though I'm not sure what I think of its self-help lyrics about soulmates.

My fave song so far (and by far) on the *High School Musical* OST is "Bop To The Top," which reminds me of early Conga/Dr Beat-era Miami Sound Machine almost. (Or really, I guess, of MSM a little later, when Gloria was doing that 1-2-3 song.) More on this soon I'm sure.

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez Red Dog Tracks, Brad Paisley Time Well Wasted, Sara Evans Real Fine Place, Aly & AJ Into the Rush. I'm looking forward to listening to them - I'm especially eager to hear Red Dog Tracks, since I've never heard Uncle Chip's actual singing voice.

My favorite Mariah is the early Mariah, "Somebody," "Can't Let Go," "Make It Happen" era. After that she helped pioneer a bury-your-voice-in-the-r&b-mix style, which I'm not against in principle (is one of the things that helped her also to pioneer the thug'n'hug mating of hip-hop guys and r&b chicks, which I usually don't love but have nothing against in principle), but it knocked down her exuberance, and "We Belong Together" is far more conversational and less melismatic in its approach - again, I've got nothing against the principle, but all of these things toned down her natural exuberance, which may be the conditions of her staying acceptable to r&b but is too bad.

Anyway, I just heard "Stay the Night," one of the album tracks from Mimi. Reminds me a LOT of Teena Marie, which from me is a high compliment: the rhythm has more or a '00s push and counterfunk than Teena's had back in her prime, and Mariah works the voice well against the rhythm. I'll wait to say more when I listen more. It isn't in what's necessarily my favorite of Teena's various styles - kind of jazzy, Riperton fly the breeze - but the voice does move.

("We Belong Together" isn't bad; it never really sticks for me, though, despite its having living atop the charts for months and months in mid '05.)

--at least one song from the *high school musical* OST, "breaking free", sounds as much like a pop-country power ballad to me as a teen-pop power ballad (isn't that one of the big download hits? i think so, since it's one of two tracks with a "karaoke instrumental" version at the end of the CD. and come to think of it, the instumental - which i I kind of like; when I first heard it, it was in my random CD changer, and I guessed it was by either tea leaf green or the tossers! -- sounds somewhat rural or pastoral or whatever as well.) the non-karaoke rendition is said to be sung by leading man troy + leading lady gabrielle.

despite tracks i mentioned above, i should note that i'm pretty sure *high school musical* isn't a very good CD. most of it, i'd classify as "lame show tunes." i'm guessing the music is closer to *rent* (which i've never heard) than to *fame* or *grease.* and i'd rather hear almost any Radio Disney star than the singers on this thing. A couple okay tracks, though.

Might be why B5's version of "Getcha Head in the Game" seems to be more popular than Troy and whoever's version (as well as "Breaking Free") on Radio Disney. I thought this might be an interesting phenomenon in the Disney to Top 40 tradition, but it seems to be a downloading fluke.

Whether that fits on this thread or not I don't really know, but I just thought I'd let you know. 'Valentine' is one of the best things on the album, but its ambition is definitely matched elsewhere.

(I don't suppose this is the thread to discuss it, but I can't fathom why Reynolds would say, "Because its internal socio-cultural dynamics force it to keep on generating freshness, black music has never really needed to borrow from white music." History of 20th century to thread? (But not this thread.))

By the way, the rush I'm getting from Aly & AJ's "Rush" beats the rush I'm getting from "4Ever" - in fact, probably beats the rush I get from "Everywhere" and "Complicated," its obvious progenitors. Its not getting airplay beyond Radio Disney, however. Can we all get together and do something about that?

I don't understand why her album isn't getting a U.S. release. What is there to lose? Maybe we can do something about this, too.

Shooting for, that is. (I don't think of Simon Reynolds and Shooter Jennings as being all that similar. Shooter, by the way, is conducting a conversation between country and L.A. sleaze metal.)

Marion Raven acoustic tracks

Clip from Break You video

Frank, have you listened to all of Into the Rush yet? "Rush" was good enough to kind of blind me to a few other songs (which for the most part sound more like "Rush" than "No One" or the covers) with some strange, even frightening content. Not in the vein of previously discussed "Because of You" or "Confessions of a Broken Heart," either...there's something even darker happening in a few Aly & AJ tracks (particularly "I Am One of Them" and to a lesser extent "Sticks and Stones").

apparently he never heard kanye west! (a minor 2005 footnote, but still.)

"Shooter" by Lil Wayne may well be Southern hip-hop conversing with Shooter Jennings too.

Random musings: There seems to be a lot more rock in contemporary pop songs (Duff, Lohan, Clarkson kinda) than there was just a few years back when R&B and dancey hip-hop seemed to be the favored angle (Britney, Xtina). Then there was the teen version of songstresses (Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton). I dunno, pop sounds *younger* now than it did. Granted, I don't think the Duffs/Lohans have the voices to carry R&B songs, so that could explain it.

I mean, I suppose THIS is Simon's real point. But honestly, anybody who believes indie rock (and maybe grime or crunk) is the cutting edge of innovation anymore (anybody who believes indie rock has been the cutting edge of white popular music in. like, the past 20 years) hasn't been paying attention. (And that said, I'm not at all sure that indie-rock *hasn't* somehow miscegenated with grime or crunk. And I'm even less sure that I'd give a shit about it if it did.) (And what do "cutting edge"s have to do with good music anyway?)

I like "End of Me" more, despite the thing being more pretentious. (Despite?) The music to that one sounds like a doomy version of "Theme from a Summer Place" (at least in the part where she sings, "If I'm caught in the middle I know it will be the end of me"); her voice climbs cliffs and takes sharp turns.

By the way, she lives in NYC these days, so maybe you could drop by and ask her what's up with the U.S. release. (I suspect the record company just doesn't think she'll sell big here. M2M really didn't get much play in the U.S. after "Don't Say You Love Me.")

Marit was the self-effacing one, would sometimes trade leads with Marion but often seemed willing to stay back and do the harmonies. Her voice was matter-of-fact whereas Marion's was emotive. I really didn't know what to expect. In the four years since The Big Room, in occasional postings on her Website, she'd mention her admiration for Paul Simon, Conor Oboerst. This doesn't sound like either of them. The rest of the album may still be a surprise. I like it, that I don't know what to expect.

I hate to say it, but she does sound refreshingly grown-up (she's probably 20 or 21) compared to all the angst-kids of approximately her age we've been talking about on this thread. This doesn't necessarily make her better. Or even more genuinely grown-up. But it's attractive, playful.

I think Simon is talking about music made within the UK in his comments quoted upthread, rather than simply that which charts there.

Probably true, though I swear I read an interview in a metal zine once where Cristina Scabbia said one of her favorite bands is Destiny's Child! Not sure if or how that ever manifested in her music, however. And it's possible that certain of Amy's, Annete's, and Cristina's goth forebears (Kate Bush? Siouxsie?) mixed up soul and goth in ways that they don't. If you go back to the '80s, certain gothy singers definitely did, I think: Jeanne Mas, Mylene Farmer, Laura Branigan, maybe Pat Benatar. And beyond women, the obvious king of soul-goth pop will always be Michael Jackson! But where is Michael Freedberg when we need him? This is totally his territory. Yet I still agree Kelly might be doing something new.

Psychedelic meaning, like, the Yardbirds? Uriah Heep? "Manic Depression" by Jimi Hendrix? Or what? (I probably agree too though.)

Am I misreading the piece in thinking that there's a tilt that says that the Kaiser Chiefs and Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys are amiss for not taking in crunk and grime, whereas crunk and grime aren't amiss for overlooking Kaisers et al.? (Not that such a tilt - if it's there - is necessarily wrong, but it shouldn't be a habitual tilt.)

Anyway, one of my long-time (over)generalizations is that most r&b-soul-hip-hop is still pre–Rolling Stones, and most rock is pre–James Brown (which implies something that probably isn't true: that somehow Brown and Stones represent everybody's future). Anyway, by "pre" I don't mean that James Brown's children don't draw fruitfully on the work of the Rolling Stones children and vice versa, but that they draw on it without understanding it (or the understanding is in the mind but not in the heart or the social practice). So they use what they draw on for their own purposes. But then, while I do think that most subsequent r&b etc. does understand James Brown, I wouldn't say that most rock gets the Rolling Stones either. (And maybe it doesn't have to, but anyway...). And "most" doesn't mean "all," of course.

Maybe the Rolling Stones don't get the Rolling Stones either.

Anyway, thinking about the white-black convo means thinking about the miscommunication and noncommunication.

A friend

Last night I heard "Our Truth," the new Lacuna Coil single, and I was disappointed. Starts with eerie plinks, ominous bass, a distant female wail, none of which is surprising and all of which I'm used to (whether the genre be goth or crunk), then metal guitar and the woman enters the near frame singing but not wailing. All of which is fine, except they've crunched me and moved me far more in the past. You basically have to wait to 1:10 for the harmonies to kick in, and that's where I start liking it: a jump from gloom to glorious consonance, which is usually what I like most about Lacuna Coil and the Gathering anyway. Which is to say, their tracks rarely hit me overall (the way the great Evanescence singles do), but the interplay between gloom and pretty harmonies provides a lot of good moments.

Video's up on Launch Yahoo, if you're interested.

Also heard Reggaeton Ninos' version of "Oye Mi Canto": "The remix with kids on it!" Great song anyway, and I love the kid chants.

Also - RBD. Latino Electro-pop of vaguely indeterminate origin that's all over the South American charts like a quite good rash. Any ideas?

She had a second album somewhere along the way that came and went without my even learning of its existence.

Mr. Swygart, move your eyes up a few posts for info in regard to Marit Larsen.

The Larsen's pretty quality, yes. Very much liking the handclaps.

In return You Hurt Me is the new Hooverphonic single, and the video can be found on this page. Like Marit, this may not be teenpop, but it's damn close - closer than, say, Goldfrapp, for instance. It has a piano bit.

(Chuck, I worry about getting scooped by talking too much about unpublished writings on the internet, but yeah, there's Yardbirds in there in my psych/goth thing and tons of other stuff!)