Rolling Debutante Bubblegum Teenpop Thread 2008

Also, I'm collapsing Rolling Emo Thread into this. And, since we probably can't support it otherwise, Rolling Musical Thread. :)

Happy New Years!

Christina Aguilera performing New Year's '07 (last year):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vwfXWPWUe1c

Also, my sister is seeing (or saw?) High School Musical 2 on Ice this week. I'll get a blow-by-blow next time I talk to her. :-P

Four links at the outset of the thread. Please discuss.

TashBed's America album comes out soon, and the title song is "Pocketful of Sunshine", which was not on her British release. It's a good song: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9318frRhwNs

This is "Glorious" by Natalie Imbruglia, which was on the top 10 list I submitted to poptimists, but I'm guessing nobody else's: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fp3ehUd2odE

Wiki 2008 in Music, apparently an accurate source for upcoming pop releases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_in_music

No discussion of Amy Diamond on last years teenpop thread! I like her new album. This is "Stay My Baby", her Max Martin penned single, which was not on my top 10 list but just barely missed: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q2YN1pxXWsk

Last year's teenpop thread.

Dave M. does a good thing on a brand-new website, here.

"A brand-new website", huh.

Comments seem to require login? Is there any way to make it more non-member friendly? Site design is looking good, though. (I guess my "New Year's resolutions" should be "resolution" since I only listed one of 'em.) Feel free to list stuff I might have missed (esp. if it's the male R&B Autotune thang, which I kind of overlooked this year).

hey shop talk off-line yo

Frank, new Simple Plan album in Feb. Who'd do you like less? Simple Plan or Bowling for Soup?

Honestly don't remember what Simple Plan sound like.

Nice girls drink petrol in lush settings; men rasp (my Pazz & Jop singles ballot 2007):

1. Lloyd f. Lil Wayne "You" - An OK singer just doing the emotive bit, guest rapper Lil Wayne amusing himself by tossing lines at the carnival barker, while an obvious sample from Spandau Ballet provides pretty scenery. Why is this totally beautiful? Plush sadness, and Wayne strolls along making shit up: funny seduction, comic irrelevancies, against a backdrop of sad yearning.

2. Miley Cyrus, "See You Again" - Teen nice girl puts a rag of petrol in her voice. A reverbed guitar bends ominously, yet the girl retains her sweet eagerness. This voice could turn into a weapon, as it gets older.

3. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons "Beggin' (Pilooski Edit)" - Little editorial tweaks from the remixer make a monomaniacally desperate soul song (this is Frankie having discovered the Four Tops) even more monomaniacally desperate.

4. Ashley Tisdale "Not Like That" - Ashley's an actress who hasn't yet figured out that in music you have to let the music take you. She's too busy delivering the psychology of the character. So her voice seems explanatory. And the music is this round bounding thing, and it takes her anyway.

5. JoJo "Anything" - The opposite of Tisdale: JoJo is pure music, to such an extent that that I wish she would insert more personality. So, a beautiful voice atop an obvious but beautiful sample.

6. Britney Spears "Gimme More" - I still feel totally fucked-with by this song. I've written about it so much. Britney's voice is hedonistically warm, entirely self-contained, the warmth directed inward; meanwhile the surrounding sound contains snake-tongues and hisses. I'm listening to something dangerous.

7. Yung Berg "Sexy Lady" - Back to a mood of butter. Berg can veer in two ways, can sound hard and can sound pleading. The lyrics are foul, a standard kiss-off. So what's all this emotion doing in the air?

8. Paula DeAnda f. Lil Wayne "Easy" - She knows she's a hot hot shawty, wears an ache in her voice lent to her by the costume department, while she demands something more meaningful from the boys than sex and admiration. Lil Wayne drops in, tips his hat, plays card tracks, twirls his cane, skips off into the sunset.

9. Linda Sundblad "Lose You" - The voice is helpless with feeling, but Linda is one of those clear-eyed Scandinavian bombshells, and you know she's got claws in reserve. Beauty with bite.

10. Keak Da Sneak "That Go" - The man of a thousand rasps. A specter in the foreground, ghosts in the back.

7. Yung Berg "Sexy Lady"

Actually this is the seventh WORST single of 2007. FYI.

Yeah, I saw your dislike of it (and Al making snarky comments about me for liking it) over on last year's charts thread.

Omg. People have disagreements over taste???

Some people have actually listed "Bros" as the best single of 07. Like this guy: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/01/02/arts/music/03Kuochartready.html

(Brainwasher, this doesn't mean I'm not interested in what you have to say about "Sexy Lady." As you can tell from my write-up, I've got issues with it.)

From the country thread, replying to something Frank had said about Miley Cyrus's "See You Again"; should have posted this here instead:

Someone on livejournal suggested Duane Eddy in relation to the Miley song, which I can definitely hear in the guitar tone

Yeah, that's pretty blatant, now that you mention it. I forget if Frank had burned me "See You Again" on one of his mix CDs or not; if so, it somehow didn't jump out at me from them. But it definitely jumped out at me while I was listening to Z-100 in the kitchen today, and yeah, the rockabilly in Miley's vocal inflections wasn't hard to hear, either. What hell, maybe it will make my 2008 top ten singles list, since it will have more impact this year anyway. So...naive, uninformed question that I could easily research myself: Is "See You Again" off the Hannah Montana album from this year, or what? And what about "GNO Girls Night Out" (which Frank definitely did burn, and which I also like, though probably not as much)? Are they on the same album, or just spare tracks from somewhere, or what? I've got the first Hannah Montana album, which has nothing as good as these two songs on it, I don't think, but that's it. I am so out of it. (Among the other stuff I liked, very belatedly, on Z-100 today was Britney's "Pieces of Me," Fergie's "Clumsy," Rihanna's "Shut Up And Drive," Taylor Swift's "Teardrops On My Guitar" {on top 40 radio! In New York Fucking City! How weird is that? Okay, maybe not so weird after a year of "Before He Cheats"...} and some other girl-song I couldn't place, though I assume it's obvious and my ignorance is going to inspire guffaws and chortles from people who have been paying closer attention to pop radio than me in recent months: It sounded vaguely Pink-like, but definitely Pink in rocker -- maybe even slightly rockabilly too? -- mode, and I feel like it had one part that went something like "now I've got you where I want you." Any ideas, anybody?)

...Okay, yeah, just checked Amazon; both songs are on Disc 2 of Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus, which also has "East Northumberland High," which has a great title and which I've heard good things about but not to my knowledge actually heard per se'. Anybody have any opinions about how good the double-disc is? Or is Disc 2 available separately in any big-box establishment exclusive? (Should I bother?)

----

EXCLUSIVE TO THIS THREAD!

Also just noticed that two of the sappy boy songs that Z-100 played today -- the apologize one by One Republic and the sorry one by Buckcherry, who I've liked before but maybe not this year -- were about apologizing. And both songs sounded pretty damn sorry to me, too! (I've been boycotting pop radio, lately, though it's hard to explain why, and it mostly hasn't been a conscious thing. I have my reasons, not least of which is I never ride in cars anymore, and keeping up was seeming like work. But this year I am commited to listening while cooking and washing dishes, which I expect will be painless.)

some other girl-song I couldn't place...sounded vaguely Pink-like, but definitely Pink in rocker -- maybe even slightly rockabilly too? -- mode, and I feel like it had one part that went something like "now I've got you where I want you."

= Paramore! Wow, cool song. I had a feeling I should have checked out their album. Guitar reminds me of "Living La Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin -- not so much rockabilly as, well, surf, maybe? Or something.

Also, not sure whether anybody has mentioned this on rolling teenpop '07 or elsewhere, but now that my better half just started singing Corey Hart's "Sunglasses At Night" to the tune of Miley's "See You Again" it's fairly obvious that the two songs sound really similar. (There's also some Europop classic that part of "See You Again" reminds me of, but who knows if I'll figure out what it is.)

Poptimists year-end poll results (except for singles, where results are only partial so far, but exit polls promise strong showings for Britney, Rihanna, Girls Aloud, Robyn, Avril, LCD Soundsystem, Aly & A.J., M.I.A., and Miley).

Poptimists Poll Best To Dance To In 2007

T2 ft Jodie Aysha - "Heartbroken"
13 (26.0%)
Britney Spears - "Gimme More"
12 (24.0%)
Rihanna - "Umbrella"
12 (24.0%)
Rogue Traders - "Voodoo Child"
7 (14.0%)
Soulja Boy - "Crank That (Soulja Boy)"
6 (12.0%)

Poptimists Poll Trend Of The Year 2007

Stars going mental
16 (34.0%)
Dancing with an umbrella
10 (21.3%)
Bassline/Niche
5 (10.6%)
Emo
5 (10.6%)
Disco Re-Edits
4 (8.5%)
Balearic
3 (6.4%)
Indie getting less rockish
2 (4.3%)
Minimal
2 (4.3%)

Poptimists Poll Best Live Experience 2007

Daft Punk Alive 2007
8 (25.8%)
Glastonbury
5 (16.1%)
Roisin Murphy
5 (16.1%)
Carter USM
4 (12.9%)
Enrique Iglesias
4 (12.9%)
Rufus Wainwright
3 (9.7%)
Battles
2 (6.5%)

Poptimists Poll Most Horrible Musical Thing 2007

Kate Nash
25 (44.6%)
Pigeon Detectives
10 (17.9%)
Westlife
10 (17.9%)
Cute Is What We Aim For
7 (12.5%)
Panda Bear
4 (7.1%)

Poptimists Poll Lifetime Achievement Award

Tony Wilson
26 (56.5%)
Britney Spears
6 (13.0%)
Girls Aloud
6 (13.0%)
Max Martin
6 (13.0%)
Les Rita Mitsouko
1 (2.2%)
Pimp C
1 (2.2%)

Poptimists Poll Argument Of The Year 2007

Is Indie Too White?
11 (26.8%)
Britney at the VMAs
9 (22.0%)
Death of Oink
7 (17.1%)
Klaxons and Nu Rave
7 (17.1%)
Poptimists vs K-Punk
7 (17.1%)

Poptimists Poll Act Of The Year 2007

Britney Spears
25 (39.7%)
Rihanna
21 (33.3%)
Fall Out Boy
7 (11.1%)
Robyn
6 (9.5%)
Girls Aloud
4 (6.3%)

Poptimists Poll Album Of The Year 2007

Britney Spears - Blackout
22 (46.8%)
MIA - Kala
15 (31.9%)
Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
4 (8.5%)
Aly & AJ - Insomniatic
3 (6.4%)
Justice - (cross)
3 (6.4%)

(I suspect that the ratio of British to American acts in the results of "Most Horrible Musical Thing" is a close match to the ratio of Brits to Americans voting in the poll (though I do know that a couple Brits voted for Cute and an American chose Westlife).)

The "Sunglasses At Night" similarity is mainly confined to the first or the first two lines of the verse, I think, though I can't say I have "Sunglasses" burned into my mind. Perez Hilton commented on the likeness, and Dave commented on some friends commenting on it, though I don't remember if he did so on ilX.

Wait, so do British pop-fans-who-think-being-pop- fans-is-a-big-deal hate Kate Nash (who I haven't heard, but I've been looking forward to hearing) for the same reasons they hated Lily Allen last year, or what? (I never figured out what those reasons were, actually, but have no doubt they must have existed.)

Poptimists Poll Best To Dance To In 2007

Rihanna - "Umbrella"

Huh? Explain yrselves Poptimists.

^^^poptomists otm

haha, xhuxk with the slaaaaaaam = not what i expected to see

"Umbrella" is at the exact tempo where it's too fast to slow dance to and too slow to normal dance to.

Poptimists Poll Argument Of The Year 2007

Is Indie Too White?
11 (26.8%)
Britney at the VMAs
9 (22.0%)
Death of Oink
7 (17.1%)
Klaxons and Nu Rave
7 (17.1%)
Poptimists vs K-Punk
7 (17.1%)

GOOD WORK GUYS, COULD NEVER HAVE TALKED ABOUT THESE ON ILM

GOOD WORK GUYS, COULD NEVER HAVE TALKED ABOUT THESE ON ILM

Most of the comments were about how much all of these arguments sucked. My vote was for "Kelly Clarkson shoulda listened to Clive," which was at least interesting in it reversed the usual terms of the authorship critique...instead of "she doesn't even write her own songs," it was "she SHOULDN'T have written her own songs," which was weird because she co-wrote plenty of her own stuff on Breakaway. Also, sticking up for Clive Davis without knowing anything about what he was actually pushing for in terms of his own vision for the album is just weird -- I still think that his one suggestion that I know of, Lindsay Lohan's already-released "Black Hole," is pretty close to the sound she went with anyway, except all of Kelly's rock songs (even the not-great ones) are better than "Black Hole."

I mentioned the "Sunglasses at Night" connection...on Poptimists maybe? But pointed out that my friends dismissing it based on that similarity were missing the fact that the chorus is the best part and the six notes in the verse (even though they're the exact same) aren't the main hook, so it's not exactly banking on the similarity. I'm guessing it was more or less accidental (meanwhile, the chorus sounds nothing like the Corey Hart song -- which isn't that good to begin with -- tho I'd be interested in what other tune the verse reminds xhuxk of).

Also, "I Got Nerve" is a pretty direct "Sk8er Boi" rip in the verse and is also a better song. (Also xhuxk, if you want I can send you a copy of my makeshift Miley comp, which has most of the best stuff from all three discs she's put out.)

Here's what I wrote about "See You Again" earlier in the year:

"Disney popper Cyrus--aka Hannah Montana, and the daughter of Billy Ray--takes the rhythm and cadence from Corey Hart’s throbbing ’80s hit 'Sunglasses at Night' and transforms it into a clench-fisted rocker. And then adds a lovely splash of spaghetti-Western guitars. More effortless by half than Avril’s 'Girlfriend' or Kelly Clarkson’s 'Never Again,' this may well be the sleeper teen-pop hit of 2007. (4.0)"

That's 4.0 out of 5.0. I don't know why I decided to ignore it entirely when it came around to compiling my year-end Top 40--probably for the same reason I ignored a whole bunch of other things as well (too lazy to try and include and relisten to them all). Maybe I'll see how it fares this year (I can't say I ever heard it anywhere after reviewing it). (I also don't think I know what I'm talking about re: "cadence." I must've looked it up at the time, at least to ensure I wasn't completely wrong. But I think Frank's right that the similarity is confined to a couple lines in the verse. His is definitely more disco, hers is more rock.

Bunch of new-ish things I like now and hope to include in my singles column (that I think fit here):

DAvid Guetta feat. Cozi, "Baby When the Light" - Totally vaporous disco, perfect as far as that goes, I think it's co-written by Cathy Dennis.

Jordin Sparks feat. Chris Brown, "No Air" - Really growing on me, this one--very pretty in a power-ballady kind of way. I thought "Tattoo" was nice, but she sounded like she was trying a bit hard. Don't get that sense as much on this one.

Cascada, "What Hurts the Most" - Euro version of Rascal Flatts song--like the slow intro much better than the dance section, but it may grow on me, and I definitely prefer it to the original (though it's helped me hear the song itself better--I just don't like the singer in the RF version).

Ashlee Simpson, "Outta My Head" - This one's really growing on me also. This is only the second Ashlee song I've listened to. Nothing to say about it yet, though.

Estelle, "Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)" - Very jazzy, but not retro-annoyingly so... reminds me of another r&b one-off that was big about five yrs ago, but I can't recall who it was.

A couple I'm not liking much:

Natasha Bedingfield, "Pocketful of Sunshine" - I loved "Unwritten," but have otherwise found her a bit annoying. I'm kinda borderline on this so far, but I'm not hopeful.
Janet, "Feedback" - Exciting production, crap song, who-cares vocals.

"His is definitely more disco, hers is more rock." (I mean Corey vs. Miley here, obviously.)

Hers is pretty disco, though, too!

True--maybe I should say hers is more staccato-ey rock-disco, whereas his is throbbing synth-disco? There's not as much overt "rock" in his, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Don't know who r|t|c is, but the poll wasn't for the best arguments on poptimists, but best arguments period, wherever they were, and probably some of the people who voted in the poptimists poll probably did argue those things on ilX. (But then, there may be some people who didn't want to argue them on ilX.)

Or am I misunderstanding your point. What is your point?

(Didn't think any of those "arguments" were particularly interesting, actually, and voted for Britney VMAs by default.)

Wait, so do British pop-fans-who-think-being-pop- fans-is-a-big-deal hate Kate Nash (who I haven't heard, but I've been looking forward to hearing) for the same reasons they hated Lily Allen last year, or what?

Except that most of them liked Lily Allen, even if some of them were grudging about the liking. And the commentary on rolling teenpop about her mockney actually didn't seem to be a big reason for the disliking. Not sure what it was, maybe Lily being too pleased with herself with her zingers? Whereas I took Lily to be more desperate than self-pleased, but I also didn't mind her self-pleasure, to the extent it was there.

(Actually, none of the five nominated acts were close to the worst things of the year. Everybody had blocked Scouting For Girls out of their minds when it came to nominating acts for this category.)

My guess is that Kate Nash will make you shrug more than she makes you grit your teeth - though listening to "Caroline's A Victim" could be an interesting test of character. I'm thumbs up on "Pumpkin Soup," but only slightly up. The thing is, "LDN" was a beautiful melody, a sweet sample, a bright splash of color. "Foundations" isn't remotely as likable, to my ears.

"Cadence" has two meanings, one having to do with rhythm - "the measure or beat of movement, as in dancing or marching," says American Heritage, first edition - the other def'n being "A progression of chords moving to a harmonic close or point of rest," which I think is used only by music theory specialists. In any event, I assume someone means the rhythm unless the context makes it obvious that he means something else.

Xhuxk, Lily Allen wasn't disliked enough even to get nominated for "most awful thing" on last year's poptimist poll. Sandi Thom won overwhelmingly, getting 50% of the votes to "Indie Rock In General"'s 18.3% in second place; the rest of the tally was "Before The Music Dies" with 8.3% (a movie, got my vote as most awful, and would have gotten a lot more votes if more people had seen the videoclip of the coming attraction, since it's actually offensive, rather than merely stupid, like Sandi), Arctic Monkeys 8.3%, Westlife 6.7% (the only act to make the ballot two years in a row), Muse 5%, and the Streets 3rd album 3.3%.

Hey, I liked Muse! "Knights of Cydonia" or whatever is on Guitar Hero III, do they belong on here? Thumbs up to Muse!

"Knights of Cydonia" is insanely good. Every song needs a headbang section.

I kind of liked Sandi Thom's rhythm track, too, on the awful song about being a flower child, but it seemed to stop dead in its tracks and miss a beat at the start of every verse.

Xhuxk, fyi:

Poptimists Poll Act Of The Year 2006

Girls Aloud
17 (29.8%)

Lily Allen
16 (28.1%)

Justin Timberlake
11 (19.3%)

Cassie
6 (10.5%)

Paris Hilton
4 (7.0%)

Aly and AJ
3 (5.3%)

I kind of liked Sandi Thom's rhythm track, too

That was no rhythm track, that was the sound of THE PEOPLE grasping THE POWER by the scruff of the neck and saying:

http://valdefierro.com/fted008.jpg

Poptimists Tracks Of The Year 2007
(Tom collected top ten lists and scored it on a 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1; votes were for tracks not singles and hurrah my 1 point for "Blush" and my 4 for "Turn The Lights Off" made a difference. You had to get votes from at least two voters to make the list.)

40. FEIST - "My Moon My Man (Boyz Noize Remix)"
39. CASSIE - "Turn The Lights Off"
38. KATE NASH - "Foundations"
37. RIHANNA - "Lemme Get That"
36. CORTNEY TIDWELL - "Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan's Objects In Space Mix)"
35. ROISIN MURPHY - "Overpowered"
34. MIA - "Jimmy"
33. TIMBALAND ft KERI HILSON - "The Way I Are"
32. NELLY FURTADO - "Say It Right"
31. KLAXONS - "Golden Skans"
30. ASHLEY TISDALE - "Not Like That"
29. NATASHA BEDINGFIELD - "I Wanna Have Your Babies"
28. ALY & AJ - "Blush"
27. CASSIE - "Is It You?"
26. DRAGONETTE - "Competition"
25. COBRA STARSHIP - "Damn You Look Good And I'm Drunk (Scandalous)"
24. DIZZEE RASCAL - "Pussy'ole (Old Skool)"
23. FALL OUT BOY - "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race"
22. LLOYD ft LIL WAYNE - "You"
21. THE SOUNDS - "Tony The Beat (Rex The Dog Remix)"
20. T2 - "Heartbroken"
19. MIA - "Boyz"
18. GIRLS ALOUD - "Sexy! No No No..."
17. FREEMASONS ft BAILEY TZUKE - "Uninvited"
16. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - "Someone Great"
15. GROOVE ARMADA ft MUTYA BUENA - "Song 4 Mutya (Out Of Control)"
14. KANYE WEST - "Stronger"
13. BRITNEY SPEARS - "Get Naked (I Have A Plan)"
12. LIL MAMA - "Lip Gloss"
11. FALL OUT BOY - "The Take Over, The Break's Over"
10. AMERIE - "Gotta Work" (32 pts)
9. GIRLS ALOUD - "Call The Shots" (37 pts)
8. MIA - "Paper Planes" (42 pts)
7. KLEERUP ft ROBYN - "With Every Heartbeat" (43 pts)
6. MILEY CYRUS - "See You Again" (44 pts)
5. BRITNEY SPEARS - "Gimme More" (46 pts)
4. AVRIL LAVIGNE - "Girlfriend" (54 pts)
3. BRITNEY SPEARS - "Piece Of Me" (56 pts)
2. ALY AND AJ - "The Potential Break-Up Song" (71 pts)
1. RIHANNA ft JAY-Z - "Umbrella" (133 pts)

I kind of liked Sandi Thom's rhythm track, too, on the awful song about being a flower child, but it seemed to stop dead in its tracks and miss a beat at the start of every verse.

That was no rhythm track, that was the sound of THE PEOPLE grasping THE POWER by the scruff of the neck

Aha, so you're saying the unsustainability of Thom's beat reflects the unsustainability of Social And Cultural Revolution decried in her lyrics. Every generation's Revolution (and Verse) must start fresh, without the preceding generation's (Chorus's) momentum. And of course, when we listen to Thom we think of the unorthodox way in which she got her record deal, endemic of our current Online Music Revolution, which, by extension, will someday seem quaint as well.

So what, the Poptimists don't go for wry meta-textual commentary?

I think the top 3 on the Poptimist list are pretty perfect. I wouldn't put them in that order (Piece of Me before Umbrella, PBS third), but that's a solid list. Tho I'm surprised Girlfriend made it onto the top 10 - it's lost some appeal for me since I first heard it last year.

The more I hear Jordin Sparks/Chris Brown (which I probably like a lot more than love, even if my somewhat obsessive listening to it these last couple days suggests otherwise), the more I hear a mammoth attempt at a Roxette-style ballad ("Listen to Your Heart" or "Must HAve Been Love"), or maybe something like T'Pau's "Heart and Soul." All sorts of tinkling prettiness on top of a bombastic stage.

I've really only listened to the one single by Kate Nash, "Foundations," the music of which I thought was pretty great (esp. the unexpected gospel-house interjection) (second verse?), but I'm middling-at-best on her--a bit cute about "taking the piss" perhaps? Some of her rhymes made me cringe, though maybe not the words per so so much as her delivery of them (the "bitter"-"fitter" rhyme, I'm thinking--HATE the way she pronounces "fitter").

I said on a poptimists thread that "Piece of Me" is not in my top half of the Britney album. That inspired me to come up with an approx. ranking:

1. "Gimme More"
2. "Heaven On Earth"
3. "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)"
4. "Radar"
5. "Piece of Me"
6. "Freakshow"
7. "Toy Soldier"
8. "Hot as Ice"
9. "Break the Ice"
10. "Ooh Ooh Baby"
11. "Perfect Lover"
12. "Why Should I Be Sad"

Ah, so it is in the top half after all, barely.

Radio Edit of "Love Like This" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Official Video version

Cassie tracklist?

1. Turn The Lights Off
2. Sometimes (featuring Ryan Leslie)
3. In Love With The DJ
4. Is It You?
5. When Your Body Is Talking
6. Irrelevant
7. Hurting
8. Can't Do It Without You
9. Take It
10. I Know What
11. Free
12. Long Way 2 Go (International Bonus Track)
13. Me & U (International Bonus Track)
14. Would I Lie (iTunes Bonus Track)

Just wrote a paper for a Social Psychology course titled "The Faces of Celebrity" that basically uses Britney as a test case for discussing the role of persona in the presentation of celebrity in every day life. Goffman + Spears, in other words. If any of you are interested, I'll upload it and link to it. About 2,000 words or so.

oh please upload that

kk. The paper is in the context of the course, and as such, a bunch of questions that interested me didn't get written about (ethical problems, some artistic questions as well). I have no idea if it'll be interesting at all, but hey. How often do I get to write a paper about Britney?

The book I assume the reader (ie the professor and the other students in the course) has read is: http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Self-Everyday-Life/dp/0385094027/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199868513&sr=8-2

Lemmi know what you think:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfjrqr76_1292fjpqct

Oh, and it was for a social psych professor, not an English prof. So the writing is a little lazy. But oh well, enough excuses. C'est la vie.

Looking over the Tommy2 best of 2007 list, I noticed that Eisley, a band I have never heard of, was noted on it in a few places. Anybody know anything about them?

Tuned into Radio Diz for the first time in a while today and heard the new Jump5 single, "Shoot the Moon". It's a decent song that I liked more than I expected.

"Shoot the Moon": http://youtube.com/watch?v=rnpLWuVQoM8&feature=related
In the same vein as all the other catchy, high energy chorus teenpop songs of recent years, but much more mild.

Chuck Taylor in Billboard says, "Cyrus is as credible a vocalist as Hilary Duff or Avril Lavigne." From the context he seems to be implying that Hilary and Avril are credible vocalists.

Anyway, how would you characterize Miley's voice? It's a lot darker and rougher than Avril's or Hilary's. And she's not shy with it; rams the raw throat right into the mic. Her singing isn't particularly Southern in accent (though Chris Willman says that her speaking voice is that of a 40-year-old Tennessee barmaid), but does remind me of a certain type of country in-your-face delivery that you're getting these days from the likes of Gretchen Wilson and Sarah Johns and Miranda Lambert. (Of course you could also hear her as the latest in the Joan Jett line of rock chick yowlers.) Anyway, she's not playing cute, even if she is coming off as something of an oddball. Saw her show for the first time over Thanksgiving, a rerun from the first season. I talked about it here. I like Mordy's description of her physical movements:

I wonder if you noticed the rhythm that Miley naturally has (that you touched upon in her cat dance). She moves with a similar style to the way she sings - like she's got a natural goofy bounce in her step. (I think this shows up quintessentially in the episode where she gets poison ivy and does an itch-dance on stage at an interview.) Greg, have you noticed this? It's kinda jerky, goofy - almost like dancing the robot, but in real life.

Samantha Moore's version of "East Northumberland High." Miley's phrasing follows Samantha's fairly closely, though Miley sings with more emphasis on each word and less legato, and somehow Miley's version is a lot better.

(Samantha also has her own MySpace page.)

Thanks, Frank. I like Moore's voice. A little less aggressive than I've gotten accustomed to, but certainly a nice diversion.

I think Moore is better on the tracks on her own MySpace. Doesn't come across with a distinctive personality, but has a good teen wail.

East Northumberland was her high school.

My Blackout rankings

1. "Gimme More"
2. "Piece of Me"
3. "Radar"
4. "Toy Soldier"
5. "Break the Ice"
6. "Hot as Ice"
7. "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)"
8. "Freakshow"
9. "Heaven On Earth" (would be a lot higher if we were only counting its first half)
10. "Ooh Ooh Baby"
11. "Perfect Lover"
12. "Why Should I Be Sad"

Is there anyone who doesn't put "Why Should I Be Sad" in last place? (I think there might have been someone on poptimists, but I don't remember who.)

My sense of Miley is that she's actually NOT a very "credible" singer, and that this is a strength. Not sure what I mean by the scare quotes, except that my sense of her acting and singing is that she tends to fake her assurance when she's not in a natural comfort zone (hanging out with a friend tongue-swapping licorice maybe), which doesn't really translate to, say, outlandish physical comedy (the "jerkiness" to me just seems phony, like you can see what the idea for any given joke is on the show, and then the cast proceeds to screw it up with fairly wooden delivery). And (and now I'm getting much more presumptuous) similarly the forced delivery is hit or miss with her songs; hits when it's in a comfort zone, (usually) misses when it's out of range.

It's not always the song itself that determines the delivery working -- I've come around to admitting that "G.N.O." and maybe even "Nobody's Perfect" are fairly well-written and -produced songs, and that it's mostly Miley that makes me not care about them at all. (Some songs, like "Life's What You Make It" and "I Got Nerve" sort of split the difference, and it'd be interesting to see what her vocal range on these is compared to some of the other tracks -- my sense is that her range actually doesn't change all that much, and they cater to a limited range when writing the songs, so I dunno how useful my observations actually are.) Meanwhile, I think she has a pretty good delivery in, say, "Good & Broken," a passable song in which she actually indulges in some of that barmaid affectation. I would guess that that deeper delivery is closer to her natural inclinations as a singer (basically, to get just close enough to the notes so that it's not merely speak-singing) and that, say, when she goes for a high belted-out not, or even that dumbass screechy "WOO!" in "Best of Both Worlds," which she doesn't sell at all (it sounds like they did about fifty takes of it or something), her voice kind of gives out on her, or becomes blander-sounding and perfunctory -- it loses its personality. So it's nice to have the verses of "See You Again" to get the melody out in an obviously lower register, and then a raspier, less accurate (melodically) chorus that really emphasizes vocal tics (st-st-st-) and staccato phrasing (no sustained high or mid-range notes, except maybe one climactic "again," which features only once and doesn't make or break the song -- and I think she hits the note well enough).

I'm not sure if Miley's ever done a sorta bruised ballad-type song ("Good & Broken" is close), except for the one she performed on acoustic guitar in the first season (no idea the context; I just saw it on Youtube). And I can't remember what her vocals were like on that, or whether it was a good song or not. But when they stop making her sound so goddamn PRECISE all the time (which is a major weakness), and maybe in that respect more like someone like Miranda or Gretchen, she'll probably be much more consistent than she currently is.

I'd put "WSIBS" higher than "Perfect Lover," maybe higher than "Ooh Ooh Baby," but I think those three are generally less good than the rest, which are harder for me to rank.

The longest notes in the chorus are obviously the pattern that includes "she's just bein' Miley," and coincidentally those might be the lowest notes in the song, so that you get a snarl that appears just about nowhere else in any of her songs.

Also, I hate her fake-speak-sing, like in "Nobody's Perfect"; it reminds me of her failing to sell a joke.

"East Northumberland High" is also a very staccato pop song, it's clipped and rushes along, and the best part "just because I liked you back then/ doesn't mean I like you now" might also have the lowest notes in the song (and are similarly important as "she's just bein' Miley" in the chorus).

So for Miley, money notes are LOW notes, which is probably a feature that's much more common to country and rock than to pop and R&B, esp. post-Kelly Clarkson where rock and pop and R&B get sort of collapsed and the money note gets raised and extended with each passing song. (They seem to have reached a max point, pun intended, with the Veronicas, as P!nk's stuff and "About You Now" use a similar formula without the reliance on that high hook-note).

*in the chorus of "See You Again" in that first parag, obv.

Well, I'd say I'm only credible as a writer when I'm in my own range (i.e., give a shit about what I'm saying and know what I'm talking about or at least can pull off a reasonable facsimile by relating my subject matter to something I do care about/understand). Lou Reed was only credible within his range, and wrote his songs so as to be in that range.

But I don't get why the singing was so blank on "G.N.O." whereas so strong (if somewhat irritating) on "I Got Nerve" and "Who Says" etc. etc., since I way prefer "G.N.O." as a song. An answer is that she's young and basically none of the songs are ones where you can get by on youthfulness. No "Dur Dur D'être Bébé" in her repertoire. And being young, she's not always going to be there for a song. Or something.

I do think her version of "East Northumberland High" crushes Samantha's, and the song was written for and partly by Samantha.

Greg said over on the livejournal thread that, especially early on, the Hannah Montana TV show got over on its writing more than its acting, except that Miley is catching up as an actress. I only saw one episode, and an old one at that, but I wasn't pulled away from the story by seeing any obvious incompetence. I thought they should have ratcheted up the embarrassment more, since the premise of the episode was that dad gives Miley clothes that embarrass her. I did think she had a certain rapport with the bloke who plays her father. But as I said over on lj, the most alive thing on the show was the ridiculous dance Miley and Oliver do under the final credits.

Oh, Dave, you said "comfort zone" not "range." Hmmm. Maybe sometimes I'm better when I'm outside my comfort zone. Almost anything I write for the Las Vegas Weekly or that I wrote for the Village Voice is outside my comfort zone in one way or another, because I'm still not comfortable in the public prints and my voice freezes to some extent or another. And almost any record review I write for money is outside my comfort zone, since I never believe I've got a handle on the subject matter. And there are people who think the reviews are the best part of my book.

And ilX is out of my comfort zone now, too.

Shouldn't have used those phrases interchangeably, but "comfort zone" is closer to what I (think I) meant. Maybe she's finding more comfort in performing -- I only saw really early episodes and they struck me as more wooden as they needed to be (though I wouldn't say the same of the first episode, which was pretty charming. So maybe she's as hit or miss on her show as she is on her albums...)

Posted this yesterday on rolling country:

Just heard Jewel's country track "Stronger Woman," and it's terribly boring. The voice - weak and girly, sort of - could be a bubblecountry good thing if she had the verve of Alecia Elliott, which she most certainly doesn't on this track. The words are platitudes about her being her own best friend, believing in herself. An OK line about wanting to be the woman she'd want her daughter to be, but in general the lyrics are crap and the music is mediocre.

My Blackout Rankings:
1. "Heaven On Earth"
2. "Piece of Me"
3. "Radar"
4. "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)"
5. "Gimme More"
6. "Why Should I Be Sad"
7. "Ooh Ooh Baby"
8. "Freakshow"
9. "Hot as Ice"
10. "Toy Soldier"
11. "Break the Ice"
12. "Perfect Lover"

Samantha Moore's version of "Breakaway" (recorded two years after Avril and two years before Kelly), so recorded when Samantha was thirteen.

Having a hard time ranking <i>Blackout</i> (which was in a five-way tie for my #1 album of last year, at least according to my blog), but I definitely like "Why Should I Be Sad." I thought the consensus was thought the album could benefit from some changes of pace - not that it's a brilliant song, but it does accomplish that at least (my original iTunes playlist for the album included "Baby Boy," which is much better in that regard, but now that I have the actual CD I don't get to hear it anymore.) I don't like "Get Naked" nearly as much as many people seem to, and "Freakshow" is sort of annoying, though also sort of cool. "Ooh Ooh Baby" would be better if it actually sampled the Turtles (I know that's been dangerous territory in the past.) I adore "Toy Soldier."

Also, I relistened to Cassie's first album the other day, and it is truly marvelous - now I am even more psyched for <i>Connecticut Fever</i> (is it really called that?) "Is It You?" may be my favorite single of the last couple months. On the first album, I took particular note of "What Do U Want" - far from its best song (though it's not bad), but an impressive conjunction of disparate elements that would dominate various aspects of teen/pop circa 2007: a vaguely sinister/"eastern"-sounding riff plus breathiness (shades of H-Duff's "Stranger" and some others, and assorted resurgent Timbaland productions), cheerleader chants ("Let's Go!"), and a clunky schoolyard boom-bap (shades of "Girlfriend," "Lip Gloss" and others), and a steady, muted "rock" guitar part (like many things, but makes me think of "See You Again" and the general trend for rock guitar in R&B/Hip-Hop, as exemplified for example by "Is It You?" There's even some electronically distressed melisma, and vicious squelchy swoops that seem to come out of nowhere. A totally weird song, and mixed bag, and like nothing else on the album, or really anything I know.

my ranking:

1. Get Naked (I Got A Plan)
2. Toy Soldier
3. Freakshow
4. Piece of Me
5. Radar
6. Gimme More
7. Perfect Lover
8. Hot As Ice
9. Break The Ice
10. Heaven On Earth
11. Why Should I Be Sad
12. Ooh Ooh Baby

which was in a five-way tie for my #1 album of last year, at least according to my blog

??????????????

Ross, I like how the first Cassie album unexpectedly veers teenpop at the end, after cut-after-cut of r&b chill. I write about this here (about halfway down).

My favorite Cassie song ever is "Turn The Lights Off." I think it was my four points for it that got it into the Poptimists Top 40. Song would have ranked higher but for people like Lex, who were saving it for next year, reasoning that the track didn't officially exist yet. (I am perfectly willing to vote for a track two years in a row.)

J0rdan, you can find that blogpost of which Ross speaks here.

good blog

thanks!

according to the badboy website, the Cassie album won't be out until May 25. Which isn't even a tuesday, so who knows. I've listened to "Turn the Lights Off" a few times, but I'm not really sure what you guys hear in it. It's certainly not bad, but it sounds fairly normal, nothing very new by Cassie's standards, and without as good a melodic hook as a lot of the first record. (similarly not crazy about "Outta My Head.")

I think I prefer "Sometimes," which has a very unusual drum groove and accordion part (!) for an R&B song. (plus I have a soft spot for Ryan Leslies middle-eight raps.)

But I vastly prefer "Is It You?," with its straightforward, straight-talking lyrics and its irresistable build-up of hooks: simple but catchy verse with minimal guitar/beat accompaniement > hookier pre-chorus melody (hemiola!), with luscious bolstering piano licks > full-on synth and guitar lushness under the chorus, with a hook that keeps its cool but gets the job done. I particularly like how raw and effortless the guitar sounds, after a year of fun but implausible "rock star" posturing in the r&b/hiphop world - that snarl as it kicks into full chords on the chorus. Also, Cassie really sings this one - she's playing it a little cool, but it's far from the icy detachment of "Me & U"; she's just an easy-going gal, which doesn't make her search for love any less affecting.

was not previously aware of this song, "I'm in Love With You":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpzR_dzdAj8

Ross, I think I wrote something articulate on some thread about why I like "Turn The Lights Off" so much. Let's see... here it is: "I really like this. This may be my favorite Cassie ever." Hmmm. Well, here's another one. "This is my favorite of hers, even better than 'Me & U.' Gorgeous." Right. Maybe it was somewhere else. "Beautiful! She's one of the rare singers who consistently gets passion out of her restraint." (Which you can say about ten other Cassie songs as well.) Er, well, anyway, I like "Turn The Lights Off" because it sounds good, and is beautiful, and may even be better than "Me & U," which I also think is beautiful. Hope that clears it up.

OK, well the chilly arrangement of "Me & U" worked for me because Cassie's voice is not chilly but normal, slightly vulnerable, so the quiet vocals make me feel something very human about this woman, she being half dazed and half imperious standing amidst these giant stalactite-type icicles. Whereas "Turn The Lights Off" starts with blippy little bits of stardust, just as cold as "Me & U," but then her voice is given way more prominence, so it's her voice as a floating presence that's the main thing, and the stardust blips and the orchestral hums etc. all seem to be supporting her, not chilly at all, just an easy glide. (None of which explains why I think it sounds good, just my impression of the things that are doing the sounding.)

That doesn't explain it, does it. I'm also really taken by "What Do U Want?" "Turn The Lights Off" falls between that and "Me & U"; "What Do U Want" is lighthearted without losing its aplomb, and suddenly after a bunch of yeah yeah yeahs briefly goes desperately passionate when Cassie says "I'm gonna make you cry," more like she's sad about having cried rather than happy about getting back at the guy. Whereas "Turn The Lights Off" doesn't even need to assert aplomb. It's the most secure sounding of the three songs. (Secure not being inherently better than insecure, of course. But I think it's the song I'm most at home with.)

Translation: "Turn The Lights Off" is the sexiest.

Also, your calling it "normal" - by which you probably mean "average" - has something to do with my liking for the track; it's got beauty and the way she has of making her voice float along mysteriously, but it's not being so... intimidating... with any one musical element. (Of course, I like "Me & U" precisely because its chilly riff is intimidating, and I like her voice on that one because it seems no better able to handle the intimidation than I am.)

Stuff I've been listening to this last week:

V/A - 'And All the Pieces Matter...' (Five Years of the Wire)
(What it sounds like: Just an enormous amount of music from the Wire including numerous versions of 'Way Down in the Hole.' One of my favorite shows, so I actually grabbed both of the soundtracks the moment I could. Lot of Baltimore hip-hop and club music.)

Carolyn Mark - Nothing is Free
(Saw a review for this album on PFM, but what sold me was the Tara McPherson'esque cover art. Anyway, kinda Neko Case but a bit more bland vocally. Got that folk sound I love, though, and a couple really solid songs. If I had heard this last year, it would've been in my top 30-40. Love 'Happy 2B Flying Away,' and 'Pictures at 5')

Atmosphere - Strictly Leakage
(Got the heads up from Breihan's Voice column. Decent, though like all of atmosphere's stuff, it goes from really excited and punchy to totally lame. Nothing as good as 'Tryin to Find a Balance.')

Teenage Bottlerocket - Warning Device
(My favorite album I've heard this week. Pop punk that's both catchy AND has that rough punk sound I crave. Totally addicting and I highly recommend. What I WISH Bowling for Soup and Simple Plan sounded like.)

So is Kate Nash worth checking out?

god no

she is all over mtv now doing "stripped down" performances and it's ANNOYING

So these descriptions comparing her to Lily Allen are false?

i mean lyrically she shares themes w/ allen re: a woman's place in a relationship, dude hating, making fun of exes etc. but the music is not at all like allen

Aw. That's disappointing.

if anything it's more indie-starbucks kinda like feist. i like the sunny plastiska on allen's albums more than her personality so kate nash is really shit to me

album* (though a new one would be cool)

http://www.myspace.com/katenashmusic

In happier news, ASHLEE IS BRUNETTE AGAIN

http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/1042/ashleeisbrunetteagainfb6.jpg

Someone say Eisley? Yes they did. I heard them.

Eisley are alright - think they're all related in some way, poss. cousins, poss. brothers and sisters. Had a rather good single a few years ago called 'Marvelous Things' that I put in a year-end thing at Stylus that resulted in me getting a very long, rambling email from their webmaster that I should have replied to but never did. Haven't heard any of their other stuff, mind.

Figure I should put this here, as anyone I chat with on ILX probably visits this thread:

Gonna be in Israel until the 23rd. I'll try to bring back some sexy Israeli pop with me.

Peace!

"Younger sister Stacy (who was then 8 years old) became frustrated over their insistence that she was too young to be a part of the band and wrote her own song without their help. She was immediately inducted."

Eisley named after a spaceport town in Star Wars (or so says Wiki).

http://www.myspace.com/eisley

(I haven't listened yet.) (OK, am listening now; seems like arty, pretty folk rock with outer space in it. I think I like it, though the vocals should be more emphatic. Not particularly teenpop, but then neither is most teenpop.)

Sibling bands, classic or dud?

I'm on the fourth song out of thirteen (!) and the clear-blue beauty of the harmonies is giving way to lethargy. (Perhaps this is owing to the fact that I am drinking.)

On a Sunday afternoon? Alert the elders!

We yids are free to debauch a Sunday.

Eisley report: Up to track seven and all this slow beauty is getting dreary. Skip ahead to "Marvelous Things." Yes, as we proceed these women's dark beauty is more and more resembling a washcloth. A trance version would be better but probably would still fail to entrance, though I can hear what Will found likable, his having not heard seven like it previously.

Yes, the dorky dude (no, the other one) from Hannah Montana (Mitchel Musso) just recorded a kid-rap version of Lean on Me...this and Lucas Grabeel's new single (linked above) are both in the Radio Disney Top 30. Haley Joel's little sister is at #2. VERY CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT: this song by Miley Cyrus that's supposed to be pretty good.

Speaking of which, can anyone provide any info whatsoever as to whether "See You Again" was actually shopped to radio stations (other than Radio Disney) by Disney? I haven't found any conclusive evidence that it was (only an unverified sentence in a Wikipedia article). I muse on this very topic here.

Well, this is from "http://seeyouagainringtone-mileycyrus.blogspot.com/";, though I'm not sure what it means:

"See You Again is a great single by Miley Cyrus and is being played on radio stations all over the country. See You Again is also very popular on MTV, YouTube and iTunes. The song has enjoyed success on charts around the world. The See You Again Ringtone is one of the most popular ringtones in the world.

Click Here to Download the See You Again Ringtone

See You Again was officially solicited to radio in the United States on October 1, 2007. The song entered the Mediabase Top 40 chart, peaking at #34, becoming the first Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana song to receive significant airplay. The song has peaked at #31 on the Billboard Pop 100 chart. It is #48 on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest-charting single by Cyrus. However, four Hannah Montana songs have peaked higher."

Can something be solicited TO something else?

Whoa, and it's #3 on Z-100! Who woulda thought? I haven't heard it at all in Chicago.

Oh, but then I read your thing, so I guess you knew that. Keep up the good work!

Kara DioGuardi interview at the Chicago Tribune's web site:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-0113_karajan13,1,1110898.story

If you're interested, here's the Frank Kogan Affinity List for 2007, Part One (i.e., a list of everyone who had three or more items on his Idolator ballot that were also on mine); ascending order:

Three: Jon Caramanica, Josh Love, Bill Lamb

Four: Mordechai Shinefield, Tom Ewing, Chuck Eddy, Josh Timmerman, K. Ross Hoffman

Five: Jimmy Draper

Ten: David Moore

Not surprising that people with whom I pal around on message boards or trade emails that say "You've really got to hear _____, here's the link," or "I'll send you a duplicate promo copy of it" end up on the affinity list. The two most interesting names on here are Josh Timmerman and Bill Lamb, since I don't know who they are, though maybe they pal around with me under other names.

If you are insane you can look at breakdowns of which items on my list each of these people voted for.

Woulda been ELEVEN if you'd voted for Gogol.

There are 5 albums in common between the year end top 10 I posted on my blog and Frank's ballot (Aly&AJ, Britney, Miranda, Jordan Pruitt, and Kelly Clarkson). But if I had crunched in all of the 2007 albums I still hadn't heard at that point (e.g. Amy Diamond, Little Big Town), at least Kelly Clarkson and possibly JPru would have been bumped out.

Our singles list has 2 songs in common ("See You Again" and "Gimme More")

We would have had two artists in common (Armato/James and Brit)

So I would have scored a 7 or 8, depending.

Ha. Idolator misspelled Antonina Armato's name.

So I finally heard the Rihanna album, and I approve of it (though it wouldn't have made my '07 top 10 if I had heard it on time -- top 20, possibly.) Anyway, four thoughts that are probably old news to everyone else here: (1) "Don't Stop The Music," which is really good (though not as good as the Yarborough and Peoples or Bits N Pieces versions), and which Rich Juswiak says "is so housey it might as well come with its own gay-pride float" in his Idolator mixtape write-up, always reminds me of "La Isla Bonita" (which I prefer), at least til its "Soul Makossa" part (which I don't like as much as the "Soul Makossa" part in Chingo Bling's "Work That (Funky Manosa)") enters the picture; (2) "Question Existing" always sounds to me, at the beginning anyway, like Britney's "Piece of Me," screwed and chopped; (3) I like that Rihanna throws dishes in one song and buys furniture in another one -- very domestic!; (4) I don't like anything on the album (partly because nothing is sung as sweetly or in general has a vocal that grabs me emotionally) as much as Gwen Guthrie's "Padlock (Larry Levan Mix)," which is on Strut Records' new Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story: 1980-1986 compilation, which has nothing to do with Rihanna except they wound up in my CD changer at exactly the same time.

Paula Abdul (!!! ?!?!? LOL) comeback track:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IdYHnvPXKeg

it's nice.

Billboard article about Nickelodeon's attempts to cross-platform thru Sony/Columbia with Naked Brothers Band, Yo Gabba Gabba, and a couple other shows.

Suspicions confirmed:

SKYE: But it was funny because I actually talked to Dr. Luke right when Avril's stuff was coming out and he was like, "Oh, I was so inspired, it helped me write Avril's record!" working with me, which was kind of weird. But it's funny, because Avril's so big right now that if she does something, it's out right away, whereas I wrote three records before she even started writing her new one and everyone's like, "Oh you're just copying her." I wrote the whole thing before she even started writing her record! But oh well, that comparison's lived with me since the day I was born into this industry.

Cross-Posting from other thread:
I tried to get this girl to sing on a record i'm working on. Never happened, but i still digg her voice and this track

Or this one

I'm back!

Quick observations, though I want to write up something longer at some point:

1. Every time we partied (Israeli pubs on kibbutzim, American clubs in Jerusalem, etc) they played Rihanna. Without fail.

2. The greatest musical moment was surely crowd-surfing in an Israeli kibbutz while the radio played Smells Like Teen Spirit.

3. My new Israeli musical love: Aviv Gefen. Not really teenpop, but quite fab.

4. One of the soldiers who accompanied our tour group insisted that I sing the following with her: High School Musical, HSM2, and Hilary Duff.

Oh, and despite the last message, *this* is my new ILX SN.

A 16-year-old boy was arrested last night after the FBI believed he had plans to hijack a plane and crash it into a Hannah Montana concert. Her music is bad, but it's not THAT bad. He was taken into custody after getting off a Southwest flight in Nashville from Los Angeles. From Nashville he was supposed to fly to Louisiana.

The FBI said, "His stated intent was to hijack the airplane and commit suicide. He did indicate he intended to die in Louisiana. It appears he had a ticket to Louisiana."

Sources say he had intended to crash the plane into a Hannah Montana concert on Friday night in Lafayette, Louisiana. In his bag they found handcuffs, duct tape and a type of rope or yarn. His plans were to overthrow the plane. He is currently being held on several state charges and could face Federal charges.

The FBI dismissed the Hannah Montana claims, but methinks Disney got to their asses! They don't want anyone to know that some people are out to destroy their precious Hannah Montana.

He's going to overthrow the plane with duct tape? He should have just played the Hannah Montana CD on blast. That would have done the trick. The pilot, crew and everybody else on the plane would have called "mercy."

In his bag they found handcuffs, duct tape and a type of rope or yarn. His plans were to overthrow the plane.

or turn it into some awful bdsm dungeon

Tape Store, I like the way Priscilla Renea throws her voice over the cliff in "Cry." She's got a whole shitload of stuff up on YouTube. I like her "Upgrade You." And she sings "Smile" in Simlish.

What's her back story?

I don't think I've posted this here, though I have everywhere else I can think of: Taylor doing Eminem.

Don't know that much about her...She's a 19-year-old girl from Florida. I discovered her when I was writing a piece about Youtube artists (Esmee Denters, Mia Rose, et al.)

At the time, she seemed to be holding out for an offer from NextSelection, but that never happened. It's been six months, and her Youtube views have skyrocketed, and she's started to record more original tracks (before, she seemed perform only covers).

I just sent her another note; she's read it already but no response. Shocking.

Kat just introduced me to Scooter, who she says have been "going for donkey's years & are Germany's biggest selling artist (unless you count Boney M, I think) so to a lot of Europe everything else is a pale imitation of Scooter."

So, question for the Rolling Bubblegum masses, are Scooter worthy successors to Boney M? (I think Scooter are far more "rock" than Boney M, which for some might disqualify them, but in saying "rock" I am going back to a good def'n of "rock," i.e. music that rocks you out).

(But not up there w/ da Bonies, in my opinion.)

Good news! Priscilla Renea sent me a nice message the other day...There's a chance we'll collaborate.

hahaha, I thought you were talking about Scooch.

Is "Fuego" bu the Cheetah Girls a 2007 or 2008 song? I just heard the Ranny Remix and it's omg wicked!!

Metal Mike Saunders, via email:

here's some REAL music commentary/discussion on the world wide myspaceNet

and they say there's no intelligent artistic discourse in the network world

I Love Music rolling teenpop thread is an alright read for the analytical frank kogan nonsense, but still a couple levels removed from the "street" (ie actual multiplex participants on Day 2 or Day 3 of mylie-army time, as observers you understand) (her recordings are way to fucking ProTools stiff; saw her sing live-voice w/just karaoeke machine-type backing track, and she was very loose, super phrasing, a regular young country/pop natural like Brenda Lee or Tanya Tucker)

well, maybe after i post up the bulletin another 1/2 dozen times before sunday hahahah

just keep those screaming 8 year olds away from me ( = 9:40pm or 11:50pm showing, plus it's only 75 min long. when i get bored at the 60 min mark i can think up creative ways to get booted out for camera phone immortality. i'm sure the britney COCAINE AND SEX shirt could get things rolling with some late-night 6 year-old's overprotective Dublin-redneck dad).

oh, and i GOTTA remember to yell "Mylie Cyrus is a dyke!" near the end

Oops, this came first I think:

Friday, February 01, 2008
When are you going to go see the Hannah Montana Concert Movie this weekend?

it only plays for one week y'know (starting right now).

the closest one is 25 minutes away (10 highway miles)

annnnd i'm thinking either of these starting times =

9:40pm SUNDAY or

11:50pm SUNDAY (or Saturday? pre-Super Bowl right)

might be really trippy.

all the little kids wouldn't be there.

maybe some gayteen Will and Graces, and girly punks who regressed from having been Hilary Duff fans in the 4th grade

main selling point for those sunday evening times --

a) no screaming 8 year olds
b) i can watch the 1st half of the Super Bowl AT HOME, then set the VCR on record, and drive out to Dublin (white fucks' land 10 miles east) and go by the Goodwill before 7pm, then the big Borders bookstore across from the theatre hahahahaha AND be smart and buy a ticket hours ahead

ohhhhhh man

should i wear a

old Spice Girls/angry samoans t-shirt?
Britney SEX AND COCAINE t-shirt?
Lindsay SEX AND COCAINE t-shirt?
old Britney tour t-shirt?

fuck it, i'll take them all in a plastic bag

if it's a gayteen Will & Grace festathon at 11:50pm screentime sunday, i'll do a wardrobe change standing up every 15 minutes so the gay boys can see what a real "hetrosexual studmuffy man" looks like hahahahahaha

whoa

that would be classic to get kicked out of a Hannah Montana Concert Movie for misbehaving

anybody have a camera phone?

..> Comments
Listing 1-4 of 4

..> From Comment

Angry Samoans

Feb 1, 2008 8:48 PM
<< but your going to miss the super bowl for a movie??!!!!!! >>
no duhhh i know how to turn my VCR timer on duhhh i been to college you know, i know this shit whoa it would be so rad to yell "Mylie Cyrus is a dyke!" twice about 5 minutes before the end (it's 75 min long per the EW review specs). hahaha well man most rock girls are strapon stuffers uhhhhhhh you know what it would be CONTRARIAN to just put on one of the old standbys (i have like 5 copies, from the thrift stores) t-shirts, ie green day KERPLUNK (crazygirl Erica Pelino with the gun, eg billie's live-in GF at the BART West Oakland squat riight...uh greenday's 1990 pisstake on OpIvy's "knowledge" had to do with her two-timin' him with Tim OpIvy but zzzzzzzzz who cares, something never sounded right about that story either altho those two were legit wacko highschooler romeo/juliet crazy teenlove mach 10...THAT NUTJOB GIRL DROVE BILL HALF GAY FOR A WHILE, uh truth as i remember it). what was the question anyway? oh. yes, mylie cyrus, definite dyke by age 21. her and Taylor Swift on a cliff-top rock in their privates!

Uh, okay, maybe ignore parts of that one (which was a mass email to about a million recepients btw).

This is about older teenpoppish stuff:

did i ever dub you a cassette of the two CD-albums i brought back from germany last june, ie holland's CH!PZ GREATEST HITS and DJUMBO Jump! album (both excellent BubblegumDance, touching genuine greatness almost 1/2 the time. JUMP by Djumbo is probably one of the 5 best "60's girl group" albums ever, just from the Aqua/A*Teens drum machine generation) (one solitary producer/engineer/songwriter guy being its mastermind) (and in pop music Toy-Box tradition, the second album issued recently most sucks/not as poppy dancy).

More on Ch!pz, etc:

best music EVER. (my crap dialup froze our myspace photo page with the Ch!pz/Djumbo photos in html so i can't cut/paste the DJUMBO album/group photo from the same year 2006 ditto) (i wonder if these acts have T-SHIRTS in the holland/Amsterdam stores?)

also, that reminds me re t-shirts duhhh, all these years (like about half a decade and counting) i keep forgetting to forward to Tradewinds / Wind / Videls (? impossible to untangle what the hell Laguna was doing vocally with the final-Videls-lineup which then became the Tradewinds, besides playing keyboards and having by far the highest voice in the room, eg "Make Believe" by WIND, #28 pop 1969, ha! therefore the amazing super high voice on "New York's A Lonely Town"/Tradewinds #32 pop 1965 HAS to be mr Laguna, but how can you prove it?) top-harmony-vocalist extraordinaire KENNY LAGUNA, a 1997 boys size L #5 Kisha Ford WNBA/New York Liberty $1 thrift store jersey/t-shirt for him to pass on to his client/act joan jett (her size, and in BOYS not girls cut, duh). in trade for me crapping on/insulting both the runaways and JJ (once apiece) in the long Village Voice rave-review of Josie & the Pussycats ( = Letters to Cleo w/Kay Hanley vocals) movie soundtrack CD way back in 2001. how was I to know that lame old Babyface had stolen NOTE FOR NOTE joan (jett)'s demo (submitted to the soundtrack but not used, ie rejected) of "Real Wild Child" and had Letters to Cleo, uh Josie & the Pussycats, copy it note for note, phrase for phrase, without a single single sleeve credit word thanking its unpaid source. if this fact had been known by the reviewer (me), then i could've added a few nice insults/slams on dopey-Brian-Austin-Green-likes-me! Mr. Babyface plus industry thievery at large. to balance out the insults (i DON'T take them back. send me back in time, put me in charge, and the 3rd Joan Jett album will not see the shelves until it's got songs 10 times as good as the album's lesser uh, 8 or 9 tracks, which is to say almost all of it) to the Runaways (insults are too kind, outside of the great "School Days" 45 written/sung by Jett) and i'm sorry to say one of the 80's more obvious threw-it-away-by-1985-jeez-shoulda-gotten-better-songs you know who. Raspberries white Gibson Melody Maker or not Raspberries white Gibson Melody Maker. THE coolest guitar to ever see a front album cover, ever. i take it all back. ALBUM by joan jett is the greatest album of all time! just for the front cover of PF Keds and eric carmen/Raspberries' old uber-cool WHITE GIBSON Melody Maker! huhuhuhuhuhhuh, whatever.

and don't even get me going on how unbelivably great "Make A Change" by Darlene Love / Blossoms is. #1 HIT! #1 HIT! (its preceding-year archetypes radio hits "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" and "Love Will Find A Way" by JdShannon were #4 and #40 pop respectively, and not a fraction as great). UNISSUED. unfuckingbelievable. see you later, i'm going back to 1969 and raze this retarded industry to the ground long before Radiohead/MP3s/myspace/IPods beat me to it

Well, "Make A Change" has this really interesting combination of Kasenetz-Katz thin candy-cane production behind a medium-deep soul song, an early attempt at bubble-soul, I guess, but the song itself doesn't seem extraordinary for the era. It's one of Laguna's favorites of his own productions, however. (His absolute favorite is "I Love Rock 'N' Roll.")

Hi, my name is Tiffany, I'm Italian, and I can't sing. Isn't that cute? (This isn't utterly fun-free, actually.)

Hey Frank. Did you ever read Attali's Noise? I'm doing a reread for a thesis and I forgot how hard a lot of Attali's stuff works with teenpop and with the sortof musicology you've been developing. (He obv. takes it to different places too...)

Jesse McCartney has a new song out, called "Leavin'". Youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=uHJBBamyCHI

More R&B than his previous efforts, and it doesn't really sound like anything special to me, though it's a pretty good song.

Other note: One of the local top 40 stations in Atlanta has started playing "See You Again".

Yeah, "See You Again" is in the Top 20 in CHR airplay now! Still no sign of it at Disney, which has instead chosen "Rock Star" as the next single to push after "Start All Over." (I like both of those songs, but COME ON.)

More promising, "Teardrops on My Guitar" is at #3 on their Top 30.

You didn't link the Beavis and Butthead-friendly Tying Tiffany video for...uh whatever the song is called...that Kat Stevens linked to over at poptimists.

So xhuxk will probably post the Metal Mike review in full but I'm definitely going to see the Hannah Montana movie this week. I'm pissed because the latest showing is 9!

that's because it's for children.

No way, midnight showing would be great for everyone.

that Tying Tiffany video is awesome

The Tying Tiffany song is fantastic. A song like that doesn't really need, and isn't even helped by, "good" singing anyway.

Metal Mike, post-movie (and maybe during movie, even? Hell if I know; I didn't even read it yet, so don't blame me if some of this makese no sense):

1.
the hell with all you old e-mail-chained old folks,
i'm just gonna cut/paste the bulletin on the BradPaisleySpace that went out, and hell with it

and they say there's no intelligent discussion of music on those innernet sites! i have over 15 (and counting) messages in the In Box from yesterday's (several) posts and re-posts of the "when are you going to go see the Hannah Montana Concert Movie??" bulletin (2nd file, further below).

thanks to me and BradPaisleySpace, a 60's-loving-bubblegum/Tommy James/Beach Boys fan (female, age 17, don't even have any idea what their "real name" is; if 10,000 people have "angry samoans" in their Music list(s), that is all that is required to be our "band friend," any and all of them)
got so psyched up she talked her mom in driving her 35 miles to Dublin to see the movie RIGHT NOW any minute this afternoon!

before i go back to bed till Super Bowl kickoff, i'll find/cut/paste a good Hannah/Mylie sticker (photo) into the pictures (the Bubblegum Music Kicks Your Ass picture folder, definitely) so unnamed-kid in bekreley can post their review of the movie into a "permanent archive" forever.

yep i read/skim through lots of the I Love Music board. but HERE is where me (and the peeps in BradPaisleyWorld) do the heavy lifting.

more:

Date: Feb 3, 2008 10:31 AM
Subject: the Hannah Montana Concert Movie was AWESOME saw the 11:50pm
Body: and i mean like a WHOA pleasant surprise good. it is not just a REALLY good "concert movie," but the "arena show segments" (75 percent of the 75 minute movie i'd say, in maybe 4 or 5 or 6 chunks) are almost a flat out rock-concert experience (from the 2nd row on the floor, centered and looking up from what usually is 4 or 5 rows back at most screens/rooms).

the box office was insane. they SOLD OUT all but < less than 100 seats of the 8 straight run times on 1-screen only =

300/seats x 8 = 2,400, round it down to 2K for easier multilication-in-head
2,000 seats sold x 15/ticket = 30,000 bucks a day, ONE SCREEN
90,000 / PER SCREEN weekend gross in this theatre

anyone who knows hollywood is gonna shit saying "holy fuckingmotherfucking WHOA!!"

it has to have > 500 screens nationwide (of a possible 3,000 to 4,000 that hit movies fill up)

should = over $50million gross, opening (and only) weekend
and a runaway no.1 movie in America for this week

jeez man!

here's the IM i hacked out (quickly, lots of dodgy sentence construction) at 2am back home, to someone in Texas who needed to be alerted immediately
==================================
IM FILE cut/pasted --

mike_in_oakland (2am sat night/sunday morning): WHOA pleasant surprise -- the hannah Convert Movie (i caught the 11:50pm. didnt' check Fandango online, and when i got there at 8pm, the 9:50 run time had been sold out for over an hour prior)

was WHOA good.

not just a REALLY good "concert movie, " (3-D i don't care about, it was a little distracting i thought since i use mild-correction 1.50 reading glasses) but in lots of ways even worked as a straight "live concert". terrific editing too, perfect amount of intercut "candid sequences" from "4 weeks before opening night" rehearsals to "we dropped mylie on the 8-hands up/down toss last night, let's fix it before tonight's show!" (a solid 2 minute rehearsal sequence starting with mylie all, "no! i HATE it!") (they don't drop her again). bonus: the dancer (of 4) who is in green dress the 1/2 half ("hannah montana" wig/clothes the first 1/2 of her live show), then back to some other green by the end of the second 1/2 (the "myl

mike_in_oakland: "mylie cyrus w/o the hannah wig" half) ahhh, she's exactly my idea of a cute/hot dark-haired hispanic adult woman. (and w/o any boobs in particular, their oomphage is on the bottom). double bonus: billy ray cyrus and his kid have a genuinely goofy/fun sense of humor. mylie must laugh approx 1,000 times a day. yeah, she's a Sag. triple bonus: TONS of screen time for the backing band (esp the drummer, who has an old style small kit like a 60's setup). minus points: no "drum riser" for people to climb up on, it's a like "elevated cage" thing with steps on the side booooo. but, quadruple bonus: one of the 3 Jonas Bros songs (counting the one they sing with Mylie when they first come out) is the great "Year 3000" which is totally the shit. FINAL BONUS: the audiences (9:30pm which

mike_in_oakland: was the last of the 7 straight sold out (1 screen only, and disappears indeed at thursday midnight) screennigs starting 8:40am this morning (and every 2hr10min following / the movie itself is 75 min plus trailers), anyway at 9pm right before the 7:20pm let out at 9:05, over 200 of the (290 total seat by my math inside) ticketholders were cued up on the floor/waiting line, down and around and back around both walls. (i was FIRST IN LINE for 9:50pm the minute they went in, with my 1 book and 5 magazines and parents-with-8th-grade-BOY (a saxophone player and music-fan fanatic crossing almsot all genres 90's/00's, had his Ipod of course) kept me plenty entertained until 11:20pm to go in.

mike_in_oakland: = rating = MANDATORY. mandatory! the closest thing to a "rock and roll experience" you'll find in this sorry modern age. (the 250 heads that didn't quite sell out the 11:50pm sat night trailer time, and i'm talking 2/3rds or more of that GRADE SCHOOLERS wide awake and shrieking/screaming just like at a real rock concert at most of the appropriate monments)...ahhh the audience was a TRIP. 1/2 of the front row of the elevated section (behnid me on the 2nd of only 2 floor=rows; yep i got my exact favorite seat, with feet over the next chair too) were on the floor standing up (singing/dancing) the whole time.

mike_in_oakland: heard one of the moms-with-1/2-her-neighborhood(kids) in tow joke out in the lobby heading out, "so where's the Hannah Montana "after party?" (it's 1:20am right then). someone supplied an obvious straight line. ("sound asleep in their dreams in 20 minutes" i think they said).

mike_in_oakland: the usher on the left side, pre-show (the 30 min before trailer time), was a trip. i bullshited like-kind-6-degrees (hannah, hilary, britney, spice girls) movies with her (and ditto the once-in-a-lifetime Hilary 2nd-gig-ever 1000 seater club gig in Santa Cruz..ie, with the SALT N PEPA longtime black girl drummer) with them...apparently they had also seen The Perfect Guy stinkibomb with heather locklear (and movie-daughter hilary) becuase their face went white. (me referencing, "hilary duff has been in SOO many bad movies!!" hahahahaah maybe they had to usher Cheaper By The Dozen 2 as well hahahah.

mike_in_oakland: mandatory even if you have to drive to Houston or San Antonio on your day off (or halfway whatever). you would LOVVVE this "live concert." Mylie is a born performer onstage; from all accounts she really sings (they obvously had to record a fake live-album for the movie soudntrack before the tour started, with new vocals "rawer than the recordings" on it) and she is all over the performing side of things. she's a little fucking spitfire as a stage performer. INTERESTING KNEE-HIGH BLACK BOOTS TOO. (that she uses onstage). square heels, not high at all, they're regular stomping-on-bugs-boots.

mike_in_oakland: hahahaha i wonder if the dancer no. 4 (above) has a myspace page hahahahahaha. she made Eva Longoria types look like complete stick insect wannabes.

i'll pay $10 for info where that (the dancer, duh) womman's "online page" is so i can post comment.

mylie's mom is super cute too, but she's like, sort of married you know

3.

<< editor: CUT AND PASTE an entire IM file? that is...beyond retarded >> pt 1 of 2, here you go oh brave new Net 2.0 world where Hannah is obviously the ELVIS PRESLEY of a couple million grade schoolers, right now. yeah i know i said britney/2000 was her audience's Rolling Stones....ehhhh. Mylie/thefemaleElvis of her time, that's more of an apt teen-idol comparison. the recordings are awfully stiff/ProTools, but she can REALLY fuckin' sing! dang that hillbilly country singer DNA, man. and a born natural great stage performer. check out the "Stompin' Some Bugs" black knee-high boots! man! can't be 1 inch on the hells, chunky and square and...well, in Arkansas we called those things "hillbilly senior prom bug-stompers."

Hannah Montana movie ended up grossing around $30 million dollars on only 683 screens! Each of the rest of the top 9 movies were on at least 2,300 screens. So not only did it more than double up the next highest grossing movie of the weekend, it was right at around quadruple the next highest per-screen average. Pretty incredible stuff.

I'm wondering what kind of box office records this thing is going to set for fewest screens/biggest box office gross. (Waits for deluge of half-assed think pieces.)

Oh, everybody's using gorillas as drummers these days. Sort of a fad, like the chick bass-player thing of yore. (This is in regard to the Tying Tiffany video that Dave posted.)

Kat cautions against doing a Tying Tiffany image search at work.

Anyway, can't tell yet if Tying Tiffany ends up in the Another Dumb Bitch bin, but so far that "mp3" song is good for several buzzes.

Someone needs to do an update of Beavis and Butthead with a YouTube surfer who watches bad videos and mutters sarcastic comments to himself. After each comment he looks over, as if someone is going to acknowledge him, and then sighs and types it to someone on teh internet instead.

Also, Disney extended the Hannah Montana run in theaters for approximately "as long as it keeps making money." That's the spirit!

Mordy, I've never read Attali but Mark Sinker has, and Mark's also read me and Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer and he's listened to Xenakis and watched Xena: Warrior Princess and seen Daphne & Celeste on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. You can and should see what Mark says about all of us and all of these here:

The Rise And Sprawl Of Horrible Noise Part One

The Rise And Sprawl Of Horrible Noise Part Two

In any event, does Attali have any particular ideas that you think we can use here?

I now officially declare Ashlee Simpson a fucking trip and a half.

"Um, excuse me" (slurred) "but, uh, is this thing on?"

Now clocking in at #28 on the Radio Disney Top 30 countdown -- a little-known track from the Hannah Montana soundtrack called "See You Again."

How Ashlee says "ruuuule breaker" sounds a lot like McCartney saying "aaaaaah mater" in "Jet" by Wings. (For whatever its worth, I heard maybe six songs from the new Ashlee in the Billboard offices back in December, and this was probably one of my favorites.)

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g222/mink333/whitefania4.jpg

White boys, too.

So far my teenpop album of the year is probably Dolly Parton - Backwoods Barbie. She does a cover of "Drives Me Crazy" that I can imagine Taylor Swift doing live.

RIP KEVIPOD :(

The background music to Skye Sweetnam's Valentine's Day message seems to be the JAPAN ONLY BONUS TRACK (wtf) of her Max/Luke collab "Girl Like Me." Sounds much closer to a Kelly Clarkson ballad (or...Veronicas doing KC maybe) than "Girlfriend." So it's good that we have other anecdotal proof of Avril's thievery.

Don't you guys have enough of your own threads to amuse yourselves in? [ADMIN: referring to deleted asshole post]

RTT mainstay Amy Diamond is in the running to be this year's Swedish Eurovision entry. It's not exactly classic, but it's alright. She really seems to run out of breath very, very quickly, though.

Still, so far, this is her only confirmed competition. I am not sure if it has more or less of a chance.

Whoops, forgot there was a heat last night too - she's also up against this and this.

The only safe prediction thus far is that Sweden will not be winning Eurovision anytime soon at this rate.

What's the deal with using already-released songs? "The Worrying Kind" was a single from Prayer for the Weekend, wasn't it? So why no "Stay My Baby"?

A couple of these last bits of trolling (both deleted)have been totally over the line. Step off, please.

Has anyone actually seen the Naked Brothers Band TV show?

I'd pretty much dismissed them last year as just OK, some kids form a rock band and get a show and Nick backing, and so what? But now I'm liking the Naked Brothers Band album way way way more than I'd expected: they've got kid voices and are kid friendly but I wouldn't connect their music to much of what's been sold as teenpop recently (though I suppose they are "teenpop" just by virtue of being teen/preteen and playing pop and having a TV show). I'd describe them as '70s pop-rock formalists, except I'm not quite sure who or what I mean by that: Cheap Trick? Raspberries? I don't really know those bands. Anyway, very good melodies: pretty and sweet male voices, which I suspect will continue to be their style even after their voiceboxes deepen. And though of course they've got corporate backing, it's also a mom 'n' pop operation, in that Mom, an actress who used to be in <i>Thirtysomething</i>, is in charge of the mockumentary, and Dad is the music director. But as far as I can tell, the two actual brothers write all their own songs, which doesn't in itself make the music good, but given the fact that it <i>is</i> good, this is impressive. They probably would have been 9 and 12 when they recorded it, and the two tracks written by the 9-year-old are as good as his brother's.

Grr, forgot we weren't html.

Thirtysomething

is

This feels oddly relevant.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_bYd4A58Ki0

This is in response to Lex's saying over in Poptimists - in regard to Mariah's "Touch My Body" - "THIS IS AMAZING. I love the crazy bitch to much."

But the singing is far from crazy; in fact the only melisma you get is carefully and tastefully relegated to the background at the end; I think that Mariah was beaten down in the mid '90s - or she made a decision to veer more towards the r&b mainstream, which for her was a bad choice because it toned down her exuberance - and went much more for atmospherics at the expense of her former skyrockets, and the single syllables of the '00s subdued her even more.

That said, "Touch My Body" is really pretty, but it doesn't touch "Make It Happen" (which got only three ticks in the Poptimists canon poll! I was horrified!) or "Can't Let Go" or "Emotions."

Mordy, I think the English "Can You See The Love Tonight" is more emotionally expansive than the Hebrew is. The Thai isn't bad:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9d9I9wqnFhg

Will, I'm listening to Christer Sjögren's "I Love Europe": there's conscious irony in his singing "I Love Europe" in an American accent, right? Right? Right?

Frank: I, of course, have seen the Naked Brothers Band TV show. Actually I've only seen a couple episodes. They were decent, I didn't see much to compel me to keep watching. I'll check out the album.

Sara Paxton - Can You Feel the Love Tonight (f. Zanessa)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5C3-NRTWkIo&feature=related

http://i32.tinypic.com/2rpqw08.png

i didnt know that miley's real name was "destiny hope"

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20174585,00.html

i kind of like "destiny hope" more

Here's what I wrote about the Naked Bros' CD last year, before I sent my copy to Frank. Not gonna swear I didn't underrate the thing (I do like "I Could Be," which Frank burnt me on a mix CD he sent me last week) (apparently written by the nine-year-old Bro: "I could be a rapper, like for example Jay Z" I think he says once), but I really didn't hear much Cheap Trick or Raspberries; not enough power chords, for one thing. So: maybe closer to the Rubinoos? Or Bay City Rollers? (Blue Ash? Badfinger? The Shoes? I dunno.) But not nearly as good, I don't think, though I guess Jonas Brothers are basically a powerpop band too, when you get down to it. (Not sure if Hanson were or not, though I suppose they're the obvious template as real life brothers who write their own songs and play their own instruments, assuming these kids all actually do that.) Anyway:

Tried listening to the Naked Brothers album, too. Didn't get all the way through it, though I like the British invasion tuneage of "Taxi Cab", and some of the other melodies (in the fake reggae "Crazy Car" for instance) vaguely remind me of Abba/Boney M Europop (though nowhere near that good.) Sometimes I'm convinced a grown woman is singing instead of an adolescent boy, but closer "Alien Clones" is clearly a seven-year-old-ish kid saying he's going to feed snakes and spiders to his annoying older brother--kind of cute the first time through though I'm not sure what alien clones have to do with his brother. And the Coldplay or whatever attempt in "L.A." is pretty wretched, and lots of the rest is just dull.

-- xhuxk, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 12:39

The newest singer out of the Disney factory is Selena Gomez, who stars in a show called Wizards of Waverly Place (OMG the main character's name is not in the title of the show!) and sings the theme song (which is really good: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MIO-m6imd7o ).

Here's her somewhat rocked out version of "Cruella De Vil": http://youtube.com/watch?v=7H8LA0A1q_4 . I like her singing voice.

Interesting, the long-time (I think from the start?) programmer at Radio Disney (lackey of whose responded to an interview request of mine from about 2005-6 with a sarcastic rhetorical question, "why would we want to talk to an alternative magazine geared toward liberal college students?" to which I responded BECAUSE IT'S THE FUTURE) stepped down this year and apparently they're now courting older audiences with..."The Right Stuff" by New Kids on the Block.

After they waited four months to notice that "See You Again" was getting national airplay and finally sticking it in the countdown, I now suspect that Disney is actually preventing it from moving up their charts fast enough. Something's even fishier than usual with their Top 30 these days...maybe Hampton the Hampster was like a canary in the mineshaft. I think he's been gone as long as the new program director's been there (about six months, apparently). RD never really needed to totally control what was on the radio station since for three years they've been shopping Disney-produced tracks almost exclusively anyway (who cares if one song from the same place is more popular than another?), but I haven't listened to RD at all probably since the new guy came in and I haven't missed anything.

Well, Radio Disney has just started playing Taylor Swift's "I'm Only Me When I'm With You," which was a bonus track added to the Deluxe Edition of Taylor Swift (which I guess came out about three months ago). So far that's a track that's getting airplay on exactly one country station (KSOP in Salt Lake City); I don't know if the record company intends to push that as a single to country and Top 40 or if they're aiming it at Radio Disney alone. "Picture To Burn" is still rising on country, so I can't imagine that they'd be pushing another Taylor Swift track to country yet. Also, "I'm Only Me" is OK, but almost everything else by Taylor is better.

Current Idol controversy is that one of the male contestants (Robbie Carrico) was formerly in a teen pop group in the late 90's called Boyz N' Girlz United. They weren't on a major label but they toured with Britney Spears and had a somewhat well known song "Messed Around"?: http://youtube.com/watch?v=POhPdqsy5KA

The song kinda sucks. Anyways, I had never heard of them before.

Maybe New Guy sees Taylor as a potential crossover between the kids and their parents? I'm not sure how Taylor is received in country world. He's clearly going for an older demo, and maybe Hampton the Hamster was kind of a last gasp of the 2-6 age group that used to be catered to more directly? I imagine they just plain took the song out of rotation, but I find it hard to believe that it was just stuck in the top ten for ten years without any audience support, since as far as I can tell Disney never really made any money from that or Crazy Frog (except maybe as part of a bigger compilation).

I mean, maybe this will be a <i>good</i> thing, in that what, e.g., Aly and AJ and Miley-not-Hannah are capable of when they go slightly older than "kid-friendly" tends to be a lot better than....y'know, the High School Musical soundtracks.

There haven't been any essential, blow you away performances on Idol yet this year. The first week had the theme of 60's songs, and most people played it pretty safe, though the talent level was pretty strong overall. My personal favorite performance of the week was Ramiele Mulabay's performance of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (which should be up on youtube within the next couple of days). Judges seemed to prefer "Light My Fire" by Michael Johns and Carly Smithson's version of "Shadow of My Smile" (a song which I personally have never heard).

This clip of Kady Malloy features her impersonation of Britney Spears, which is pretty damn spot on: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4_jMqrjRw

Im surprised Christina said real big cock on new years eve. And it was censored live meaning someone new she was going to sing it and was all set to censor. which means someone probably asked her to take it out before hand and she didnt. which pretty much makes her the jim morrison of the american idol generation.

In whatever parallel universe will still play Ashlee Simpson on the radio I hope they keep her line in Boys, "Use your head but not that one, one track mind, your one track mind"...

Hat tip to Tape Store from the AI Thread, all AI performances from the week can be heard on rickey.org. Here's a link to Ramiele: http://www.rickey.org/?p=7121

Saw the Hannah Montana movie last night -- basically just two friends and me in the audience, except for two college girls and a couple that left halfway through. So for an "anthropological experiment" I guess I failed.

Movie was really good, though! Wasn't nearly the shrill ADD spectacle I was expecting. Basically just Miley and the band plus two back-up singers and a rotating crew of random dancers who didn't actually do all that much. For the most part it was Hannah/Miley up front really playing the crowd, actually baiting them in a way that surprised me. "I want to know which one of you motherfuckers is the biggest Hannah Montana fan out there tonight!" ('Course they edited it so there weren't any swear words but you could tell this is what she meant.) 3D was well done and only used a few times as novelty, confetti etc., but for the most part really did give a nice dimension to the stage space. Best part was when Hannah offers the mic to the "audience," which is to say she shoves it in your face. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying themselves a LITTLE a this thing, and if you like any of the music you should check it out while you can still see it in 3-D.

Never saw this vid, so didn't realize that a not-yet-known Zac Efron is in it. Not to make invidious distinctions, but the singer here is way better than the chick he usually sings with.

Oscars just reminded me that Betty Hutton died this year...so honorary teenpop thread in memoriam Youtube link is in order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGNm89GZBE

*last year I mean.

Frank over on the country thread:

A duo called the Love Willows, unsigned, describe themselves as "pop/country/southern rock," though in the tracks on their MySpace I hear show and girl group and old black pop more than country or southern rock. Oh yeah, I really like the lead singer, have for a while: Hope Partlow.

Huh, I think I'm gonna have to put this one in the post-teenpop category with Melissa Lefton et al. But I dunno, it's not as winky about itself and the tunes are too diverse to pigeonhole like that. And maybe that's not right, "Falling Faster" is pretty much straight-up singer/songwriter/country-leaning/reggae-lilt. (I guess that doesn't describe anything "straight-up.") Hope Partlow's great as always and way more stylistically diverse -- check the Casablancas distortion on powerpoppy "Keep Yr Head Up"!

Frank, how did you find this?

Speaking of post-people, Shut Up Stella's got a track called "Oprah for President," some kinda synth rap-metal novelty thing. "Diamonds on yer neck, diamonds on yer grill, why don't you take those diamonds up to Capitol Hill?" Damn, they try really really hard, don't they.

The key performance from Idol last night was David Archuleta doing "Imagine": http://www.rickey.org/?p=7176#more-7176 . I hate that song, but he does give a great vocal. Judge's praise maybe a little over the top, but this performance probably does establish him as the favorite at this early point.

I know that this is clearly three years late on the Ashlee front, but it finally occurred to me, two months after recognizing its utter brilliance, that Boyfriend is Modest Mouse's The View played by Franz Ferdinand. Except better, because it has more snarl and swagger and a Shanks chorus.

Frank, how did you find this?

site:myspace.com "hope partlow"

To watch from Idol: Two of the best performances in the history of the show (IMO) were given on Beatles night.

Chikezie - "She's a Woman" - Insane, manic, it's bluegrass then it's rock. Totally changes the song up to awesome effect. Did he come up with this arrangement himself or steal it? Regardless, it's something you gotta see: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Sk503UBX5w

Brooke White - "Let it Be" - On the other hand, Brooke plays it entirely straight and does one of my least favorite Beatles songs, "Let it Be". I've always considered this overly maudlin, but she's passionate and emotional and she's a pro. I felt manipulated afterwards, with her crying and what not but for a few minutes she let me really understand the emotion of this song, and that's something special. Like Holly Golightly, she's a phony but she's a genuine phony: http://youtube.com/watch?v=I87pxbeyu_s

OK OK, you also have to see this:

Kristy Lee Cook - "Eight Days a Week" - It's "Eight Days a Week" as Dolly Parton may have arranged it. A boot stomping bluegrass number. This is being called one of the worst ever Idol performances. Indeed, the performance is awful. But, the arrangement is interesting and worth a listen: http://youtube.com/watch?v=E9nx6hAR0Xs

Anybody else watching/have thoughts on Idol?

I guess the single from Eliot Spitzer's lady friend Ashley Alexandra Dupre is some kinda sub-sub-sub-Paris Hilton thing:

http://www.myspace.com/ninavenetta

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/nyregion/12cnd-kristen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Prosti-pop for prosti-tots!

Greg, Brooke White is my favorite in the competition: nice, heartfelt*, sexy. If it came down to the last two between her and David Archuleta, and I actually felt like voting - it's never occurred to me to do so - I might get an attack of conscience and vote Archuleta instead because his singing really is extraordinarily sweet and he's even more at ease as a singer than Brooke is - despite botching "I Should've Known Better" this week. But still, I'm rooting for Brooke. I wouldn't bet on her making the last two, however, my guess being that voters are going to want someone more exciting. As for the rest of them (I do bits of sampling on YouTube, by no means complete, so I don't know these people in and out), it seemed as if Ramiele Malubay was going to be this year's Designated Bore Who Gets Highly Praised, like Melinda Doolittle last year, except Melinda was actually creative and intriguing in what she tried to do, even if she never quite brought the feeling. Whereas I don't think Ramiele's going to interest people much.

Maybe Archuleta is this year's Bore, actually, but he has such a beautiful voice that I think he's the performer to beat, and I hope he ignores people's advice to "take risks" and that instead he sings within himself, doing what he's comfortable with. (Ditto for Brooke.) Someone's going to have to really show some great artistry week after week to overcome the advantage David's voice gives him. My guess is that Carly Smithson makes it to the final two, but to beat David she's going to have to really deliver the emotion and meaning of her material in the way she hasn't so far (from what I've listened to, that is). I thought the judges overpraised her "Come Together" (Simon actually compared her to Kelly Clarkson). It was an audacious choice, and she did well to sing powerfully and not ape the original, but she didn't come close to delivering the shock and loathing of Lennon's words. Not that great music has to deliver the words, necessarily, but if she's to win she's got to take advantage of everything she's given. I don't know. Do you think she has anything like Jordin's "I Who Have Nothing" in her?

Chikezie is likable and smart, strong on personality, but I'm not hearing the personality in his singing, though if he can consistently come up with arrangements like last night's, he'll keep things interesting. Jason Castro does a good job of hippy dippy mush, but he has too narrow an emotional range and his voice tends to recede. Amanda Overmyer is a barroom belter and is fine as that. The rest can't get voted off the show fast enough for me, though maybe you can link me some scattered good performances. (I recall David Cook doing a viable vocal once, but not "Eleanor Rigby.")

*as Paula Abdul points out

Actually, I just listened to a whole hunk of Smithson on YouTube and I think her voice is just too inflexible. So I don't envision her in the final two. But I don't know who else will make it either, if, as I suspect, the voters turn thumbs down on Brooke's relentless goody-goodyness. But Brooke has a lot more in her voice than anyone else in the competition does, including lots of nonniceness when the song demands it.

I like the Ashley Alexandra Dupré song, by the way. I like the the big drum creating a space of mysteriousness, though obviously a typeflight producer could create the space better. Ashley doesn't do seductiveness nearly as well as Paris, but I like the strain in her singing. And I like the style of music.

instead because his singing really is extraordinarily sweet and he's even more at ease as a singer than Brooke is - despite botching "I Should've Known Better" this week

Well, he should've known better than to sing that song, but it was "We Can Work It Out."

not amazed at all last night. ultimately, liked Chikezie more for what he was trying to do rather than what he actually did. and brooke = nice, but zzzzzzz

david cook is getting a big push, why?!?!??!?! he wouldn't reach daughtry level, right? whatever.

I think Brooke stole the show. She's one of the few people in the history of the show who can sing a song like "Let it Be" and actually mean every word. It felt like you were actually seeing a PERFORMANCE, instead of karaoke, in much the same way that Mcphee's best performances did. And unlike Mcphee, it was amazingly natural.

But kudos to Chikezie for giving the show some oomph.

the vocal melodies on the dupre song just aren't good enough. And the lyrics are awful; interesting (weird?) lyrics were part of what made Paris' record so fun.

Nice production though!

That Kristy Lee Cook performance is so mindblowing. The instrumentation is SO FAST. Who decided on that?! Is it a sped up recording or was the band over there shredding away?

Ashlee Simpson in Us Weekly, re: those pesky nosejob rumors: "anyone with two eyes should know the answer."

Billboard:

Second Lil Mama Hit Ushers In New Album
Lil Mama

March 21, 2008, 11:30 AM ET

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Having scored a second big hit without the benefit of an album, teenage rapper Lil Mama's debut finally has a release date. "VYP -- Voice of the Young People" will arrive April 29 via Jive.

The set has already spawned the No. 10 Hot 100 hit "Lip Gloss" and this week, second single "Shawty Get Loose" featuring Chris Brown and T-Pain exploded 92-19, the biggest gain on the tally this year.

"Shawty" is benefiting from further exposure in commercials for the MTV show "Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew," on which Lil Mama is a judge.

And although the track list for "VYP" is still coming together, it is expected to include songs produced by Swizz Beatz, the Runners, Nate "Danja" Hills, Scott Storch, Cool & Dre and Dr. Luke, among others.

"VYP" will also be available in a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and a DVD, with details to be announced.

As previously reported, Lil Mama will join Soulja Boy for a spring U.S. tour, beginning April 11 in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Ashlee Simpson gets no love from Radio Disney, whose call-in types KICKED "Little Miss Obsessive." Still not sure how I feel about the song myself, actually, though I'm glad she's still doing work in the Shanks/DioGuardi vein.

"Duri Duri" original version by Click

"Duri Duri" remake by María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser

Official tracklisting for Ashlee's new one

1. Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya) (Prod. by Timbaland, Royal Court & Jim Beanz)
2. Boys
3. Rule Breaker (Prod. by Timbaland, Royal Court & Jim Beanz)
4. Can't Have It All
5. Little Miss Obsessive ft. Tom Higgenson
6. Ragdoll (Prod. by Timbaland)
7. Bittersweet World (Prod. by Timbaland & Jim Beanz)
8. What I've Become
9. Hot Stuff
10. Murder ft. Izza Kizza (Prod. by Timbaland)
11. Never Dream Alone
12. No Time For Tears

Promotional website has a preview of Bittersweet World which is kind of reminding me of an inverted S.O.S. or Tainted Love or something.

Curious to see how far afield of "Ashlee" this album goes in an attempt to rehabilitate her career. Boys, Obsessive and Ay Ya Ya point to at least something successfully new. I'm not sure what this is.

has there been a thorough discussion on Rolling Teenpop thread about the Disney self-perpetuation machine? (radio that advertises music that advertises TV that advertises products that advertise movies)

also explains why this shouldn't be surprising:

Now clocking in at #28 on the Radio Disney Top 30 countdown -- a little-known track from the Hannah Montana soundtrack called "See You Again."

-- dabug, Saturday, February 9, 2008 4:07 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

TEENPOP DUDES:

explain how miley cyrus and hannah montana are alter egos. i dont understand. is this some david lynch type shit?

Curt1s, I think you've got my reasoning backwards. What I was surprised about in February was that they didn't put it in their playlist sooner -- it worked its way up radio charts (debuted in the top 100 on Mediabase sometime at the end of October 2007) long before Disney ever played it on Radio Disney even once. As far as I can tell, this model for a Disney-originating track is unprecedented -- occasionally there's crossover from Disney to radio airplay, but almost never the other way around (that's excluding tracks Disney imports that don't originate from Hollywood or Walt Disney Records).

I've talked a lot about the self-perpetuation machine here and elsewhere -- actually, I've noticed in the past few weeks there's been a bit less of a Disney-product overload on their charts. And they're playing "No Air" a lot (and no HSM2 songs that I saw), so maybe I should check it out again.

Has anybody here heard of/listened to Savvy and Mandy, who are now on the RD top 30? Or heard the Mitchel Musso or Lucas Grabeel songs also on the top 30?

Hannah Montana is the secret blonde drag queen persona of Miles ("Miley") I think.

Yeah, Curt1s, we'd been talking anywhere and everywhere for the last six months about Radio Disney not pushing their own song. "See You Again" was getting massive iTunes downloads and unexpectedly breaking big on Top 40 radio while Radio Disney was pretending that it didn't exist, the song apparently hitting despite the Disney machine not because of it. Very strange. So anyway, Dave's comment about the "little-known track" was obviously sarcastic, which was evident to anyone who was paying the slightest attention to the discussion and to pop radio.

And we've been talking for a couple years now about how Disney's dominance was potentially narrowing the field.

Alex, I think the photos in the I Am Me booklet and the stylistic variety on that album ("Burning Up" especially, and a Japan-only bonus track called "Fall In Love With Me," both reggae but with vocals that come from show music and pop and disco) foreshadow what she's doing now: a lot of role playing and exuberant comedy, which provide cover for playing around with vocal styles, and she still manages to end up as her passionate, hurtable, uneasy self. For a while her plan was to do the new album as the fictional "Vicky Valentine," a gangster's moll bad-girl type. "Murder" and "Rule Breaker" are pretty obviously in that persona. I'm surprised at how well she's doing the rhythms - seems quite at home, and "Outta My Head" beats the crap out of most of Timbaland's own album. The melodies to "Boys" and "Bittersweet World" fall short, and none of the lyrics on the leaked stuff pack the emotional wallop of her first album's, but "Outta My Head" and "Little Miss Obsessive" manage beauty and passion and humor with a nice light step. Definitely an achievement, even if the earnest Ashlee of Autobiography is my favorite Ashlee.

But the audience doesn't seem to be there for it. "Outta My Head" got airplay in Phoenix and Tucson and parts of Texas. "Little Miss Obsessive" is getting played in Peoria, Honolulu, and Burlington. That seems to be it. Maybe the album will start strong with support from longtime fans, but I'm not even expecting that.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THE FUCK MILEY CYRUS AND HANNAH MONTANA ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT LITTLE GIRLS?!?!!

chaki it's just a tv show fantasy thing that little girls believe/engage in

endulge*

BUT I DONUT UNDERSTAND

you see, hannah montana is miley cyrus' stage name. So in the day she's miley, normal high schooler Miley Cyrus, but when performing she is Hannah.

It's a little like Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton.

is she a superhero, or

I wonder what will happen in the very likely event that the new Ashlee album bombs. She's still very famous, and has a boyfriend with major connections in the industry. Can she get another album made just because she wants to? Will she pay for it largely herself?

She's a brilliant songwriter, and the whims of the marketplace killing her career would be a shame.

They're both superheroes.

Wait. Seriously?

you see, hannah montana is miley cyrus' stage name.

BUT MILEY CYRUS IS DESTINY HOPE CYRUS' STAGE NAME WHAT THE FUUUUUU

on the show, is her character's name miley cyrus? is billy ray cyrus her dad?

Yeah, that's what's confusing me here. What is the normal (non-superhero) character's name on the show itself? Hannah Montana?

(wait, or are they really both superheroes?!)

Matt, my guess is that Ashlee's got huge support from Ron Fair, who's president of Geffen, though that's based on reading a few quotes and seeing one interview with him where he was about to break into tears when he discussed how unfairly she'd been treated by the media. (I agree about the unfairness, but on the other hand she got a leg up in the first place, 'cause of her sister and her dad.) And of course Geffen is under UMG and - not that I know anything about this - may not be all that independent of Interscope anymore, so I can't imagine that Fair has free rein. If the album is a complete and utter flop, I'd think the record company would feel they have to ditch her, but if it does so-so they might keep her because they like her.

on the other hand she got a leg up

Hmmm. I'm mixing my metaphors.

do her dad and friends know that miley is also hannah montana?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_montana

PS I can't believe you got me to post to the teenpop thread, argh

i cant find any info on that page. cant someone just answer me? this is confusing!@?

This is Miley: http://webpages.csus.edu/~jak43/angry%20cat.jpg
This is Hannah: http://guidance.net.nz/images/happycat.gif

dont be a doof.

I'm not!

those are cats, dude.

What?????

How the hell did that happen?

ARRRRG..CAN SOMEONE (NOT 'HI DERE') ANSWER ME ABOUT HANNAH?

who the hell is destiny hope cyrus, btw?

is that her sister i think?

That's Miles' little sister, played by Emily Osment. She's a sad girl into phallic magical Hentai stuff :(

This whole show is pretty homoerotic with lots of restful brainless anal probing

????????????????????????????????????????

Chaki, I think you'd have to watch the episodes "Achy Jakey Heart" which feaures Miles' self induced colonic irrigation after Jake's rejection of his homosexual advances to understand what I'm saying better. The underlying metaphor is all about rising twin tides of globalism and consumerism, equally floating all boats.

yeah and how does hobbes work on calvin and hobbes? is he, like, magic, or is it all in the little boy's imagination?

thats a cartoon!

you are

So wild, standing there, with her hands in her hair
I can't help remember just where she touched me
There's still no face here in her place
So cool, she was like jazz on a summer's day
Music, high and sweet, then she just blew away
Now she can't be that warm with the wind in her arms

Valerie, call on me
Call on me, Valerie
Come and see me
I'm the same boy I used to be

Love songs fill the night, but they don't tell it all
Not how lovers cry out just like they're dying
Her cries hang there, in time, somewhere
Someday, some good wind may blow her back to me
Some night I may hear her like she used to be
No it can't be that warm with the wind in her arms

Valerie, call on me
Call on me, Valerie
Come and see me
I'm the same boy I used to be

So cool, she was like jazz on a summer's day
Music, high and sweet, then she just blew away
No she can't be that warm with the wind in her arms

Valerie, call on me
Call on me, Valerie
Come and see me
I'm the same boy I used to be

I'm the same boy I used to be