Ashlee Simpson 'Bittersweet World'

Early days, but I'm very much on the fence.

It all sounds very sparkly and interesting and crammed full of ideas and good production etc. etc. but I'm struggling to hear the Ashlee that I loved on I Am Me. She's obviously going for a Gwen style gonzo eccentric chart-pop star kinda vibe. Perhaps the difference is that Gwen built up to her debut album over the course of several No Doubt albums where she'd already laid the groundwork for this gonzo approach - such that "What You Waiting For" etc. was surprising but still felt recognisably her. There's no precedent for Ashlee's gonzo so it feels much more forced (not forced in a "strategy laid out by a record company way", but forced in a "okay, I'm gonna deliberately inhabit this headspace" kinda way).

My favourite tracks to begin with are the beautiful ballad at the end and the bonus track "Invisible", which sounds a bit like Smashing Pumpkins' "Here Is No Why" in parts - the guitar, not Corgan etc.

It occurs to me that Smashing Pumpkins' second and third albums would have been excellent source material for Ashlee to plunder more thoroughly - turns out "Invisible" is in fact a cover version of some other band's song and an outtake from I Am Me to boot. But as usual with that kind of material Ashlee's vocal just makes it her own.

Ashlee's probably the only pop star where what I most prize (or prized) is/was her presentation of authenticity. Less because I was pleased that she "meant it" (I dunno ultimately) but because I thought she sold it completely. Aesthetically, she works selling grunty rock songs with personal lyrics.

I might just need time to adjust. The carvinalesque pop songs (the title track, "Murder", "Rulebreaker" etc.) all sound very interesting. I doubt that the bizarre "Hot Stuff" will be my jam any time soon though. Even Gwen would have sent that one back for redevelopment.

wtf?

the video to In My Head made laugh in a very very sad way, that's about it.

sorry that's Outta My Head

I like the album a lot, though definitely not as much as her previous one, and possibly not as much as her first one. Here's what I wrote about it:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/05/ashlee-trashlee.html

I hosted a BBQ this afternoon, and "Outta My Head" and "Little Ms Obsessive" went over VERY well.

She's obviously going for a Gwen style gonzo eccentric chart-pop star kinda vibe.

You were expecting what? Krautrock?

She'd been setting this up as an "alter ego" record (Vicky Valentine, who's basically Roxy Hart, which she played in Chicago in London) and it sounds sort of halfway between that concept and the lighter side of I Am Me ("No Time for Tears" and "What I've Become" really split the difference and lean toward her last alb, but they're also not really strong).

I like it a lot, actually, in a way I largely (with a couple exceptions) don't tend to like her other albums -- for their novelty, for one thing, and also the way she actually pulls off a lot of styles that I wouldn't think suit her very well. Like she finally basically does a Jessica Simpson single ("Boys") that's better than most of what I've heard from Jessica Simpson, and her Timbaland/Santogold track ("Outta My Head") is probably the best on the album. And I've started to care less that she duets with Plain White T's guy on "Little Miss Obsessive," which finally clicked a little after I had the whole album.

I like "Hot Stuff" in theory, but yeah, it's not really much of a jam. Although I kind of like that about it, too.

Good convo about it (that xhuxk links to) here.

There's no precedent for Ashlee's gonzo so it feels much more forced

Yeah, several reviews I've read say that the Gwen kitchen sink-pop stuff is some kind of natural progression for Ashlee but it's very unlike anything else she's done.

How much "kitchen sink pop" is there, though? "Hot Stuff" (which I admire more than I actually enjoy listening to, too) is the only track that really makes me think "Gwen." And Ashlee's a warmer singer than Gwen. So even though I don't think her newfound emotional detachment is an improvement, I wouldn't say the direction hits me as "forced," either, and I'm not sure I agree about it lacking precedent. "Outta My Head", "Rulebreaker", "Boys," and "Ragdoll" are basiclally new wavey, dance-oriented rock -- they aren't really all that far from "Boyfriend," are they?

I guess so -- maybe it's more like there are a lot of kitchen sink intrusions, like the electro music box in the (otherwise standard rocker) "No Time for Tears"..."Murder" counts as kitchen sink, and "Outta My Head" and "Rulebreaker" (and maybe "Ragdoll") all sound pretty strange, I think.

A lot of this is in light of the rest of her stuff, which tended to use rock as its foundation, where as here the guitar is usually just another decoration used on the dance beat, exceptions being "Little Miss Obsessive" and "What I've Become."

And the guitar spikes along in "Boyfriend," too, but there's something about that one that isn't trying as hard to be weird (which is why I think Gwen comes to mind).

Ha ha I guess "Hot Stuff" casts a long shadow... But "Murder" and "Boys" and "Rulebreaker" are both tracks I'd put in the Gwen camp, though I like it a fair bit more than "Hot Stuff".

It's true that some of those tracks aren't a huge departure from "Boyfriend" or "Burning Up" or "L.O.V.E.", but all three of those earlier songs strike me as being new wavey, dance-oriented rock tracks that are put in service of very Ashlee performances. Maybe that's just down to the laconic singing style she had on I Am Me which is mostly abandoned here, but even the backing music for those tracks was almost trying not to draw attention to its dancey quality. This backed up by the video clip for "L.O.V.E." which was shockingly unglamorous.

Frank likes to argue that I Am Me was Ashlee playing dress-ups, and while I agree I think she tries to have it both ways on that album, like the school goth who makes some concessions to the formality of the prom by wearing a dress while still being identifiably and inimitably her.

By comparison much of Bittersweet World has that Stephanie Kaye quality of a person deliberately trying to make a fresh start with new outfits.

This isn't a bad thing necessarily - I might even decide that I really like that aspect to the album. It's early enough in my listening that all I can hear is the stuff I liked from the previous album that's not carried over. But this a typical response for me (one of the values of hearing new albums from artists that you like being that it crystallises what it was you liked about their earlier work) - I've gotta give this album a chance to develop its own identity in my head.

I never thought Ashlee was any good at dress-up, in the sense of trying on something that "isn't you" (she wasn't good at disguising herself, but that was a good thing for the music, which felt more unified on I Am Me despite bringing in new styles). Before now I just thought she took everything and made it Ashlee-rock. But here she's not doing that, she's gotten better at the disguise element of dressing up. I'm wondering, if she gets a shot at making another album (who knows), whether or not this is basically a vacation (which is what it feels like) or a jumpstart to a new career.

FWIW, the album still refuses to disengage itself from her other two albums for me, so I find myself appreciating its craft but still wondering where old-Ashlee is and reading into the album through the old version instead of letting the new one have its own voice.

I do hope she hasn't broken ties with Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks, who were obviously important, maybe totally responsible, for the old sound. (Neither of them get thanked in the liners, despite a Billboard article with Kara taking a call from Ashlee asking for advice at some point during production.)

"Vocal production" on Bittersweet World is largely by Jim Beanz, who had the same credit on Blackout so this: laconic singing style she had on I Am Me which is mostly abandoned here might be due in part to his influence. Vocals aren't treated that much differently than on Britney's album, where the voice is distinctively hers (Britney's or Ashlee's) but layered on itself in service of the song as a whole. (Britney's almost always doing her vocals in service of song-as-a-whole, so I actually think the vocal production there made her more present in the tracks, whereas here Ashlee is usually up front and now is kind of evenly mixed into the tracks more.)

*before she was up front, I mean

You were expecting what? Krautrock?

Dude, it's 2008. A teenpop star going Krautrock would be about as radical as a teenpop star going punk.

I like this one more than the others, which puts me in the minority, I know, but whatever. She's become so good at being a chameleon.

A teenpop star going Krautrock

I would love this. Maybe the next Miley album gets some work from Czukay?

Wait, guys, Ashlee was Gwennish from the get-go and has never not been Gwennish. The earliest track of hers that's seen the light of day - the only one that's surfaced from the sessions she did with Stan Frazier and Steve Fox - is a very No Doubt-like bit of ska-punk called "Just Let Me Cry" from the Freaky Friday soundtrack. My guess is that, to the extent that the people who were contemptuous towards her actually listened to her stuff, one thing that was unsettling was her somehow managing to meld a Gwennish ingratiatingly cutesy girl-pout with the Courtney urge to rip your face off. This would have been a combination that made no sense to me except when she did it it made perfect sense and her lyrics even explain why: "Shut up/Come back/No - I didn't really mean to say that/I'm mixed up/So what?/Yeah you want me so you're messed up too."

OK, I know there's a difference between Gwennish pout and Gwen gonzo eccentric - by the way, a potential influence might be the Jessica gonzo eccentric of "Push Your Tush" and "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" - but I think Ashlee doing "gonzo" sounds far less mannered than Gwen, mainly 'cause unlike Gwen she doesn't sound like she's suffering from infantilism. But then, she's a vastly better singer than Gwen is. And also, it's 'cause she's not pretending to gonzo, actually; what she's coming across as is a dreamily sweet oddball with a penchant for play acting.

Ashlee's singing is way stronger and more assured than on her first two albums. The Courtney in her has been reduced to a burr, but it's that burr that prevents showbiz blues like "Boys" from merely sounding "quirky." There's a warmth that's absolutely 100 percent there and that makes every current singer-songwriter with a tendency towards "cabaret" sound pretentious and mannered in comparison, even Marit. But "strong" and "assured" and "unpretentious" and "not mannered" don't necessarily make the music better overall, and the strained, torn-up nineteen-year-old who made Autobiography pulled more out of the sounds and also out of the strained torn-up thirty-three-year-old who helped her write the lyrics.

But I also think she's growing up well, so someone else can be the 19-year-old while Ashlee turns the ongoing strains and tears of life into a lark. Of her three albums this one comes in third place, but it's a joy and I keep playing it over and over and finding things I'd overlooked or underrated. "Murder" makes far more sense on the album than it did as a leaked track last August. On the old teenpop thread I was complaining that I didn't want to hear Ashlee Simpson waste her time being saucy and naughty and risque and hiding behind opaque double entendres. It's not that I've changed my mind, just that I'm now hearing this as a nice girl who doesn't get away with murder and doesn't want to get away with murder inventing a wild child alter ego to pour forth wild words that play at sense rather than making sense. It seems sweet and honest, actually. Still wish the words were more vivid though, and not "titillating." (But where "Rule Breaker" and "Murder" come through is in the way sudden moments of real beauty emerge from the pretend mayhem.)

Btw Tim, get 1x livejournal. What I'm typing here tonight feels pale in comparison to what I and others have written there. I hate various things about the livejournal format, especially the nested threads and that there's no way to track new changes, hence threads are functionally dead in 24 hours. And I feel that ultimately you lose more than you gain when you create a protected environment. It's too bad that so many of the smart people decamped from ilX in late 2005, apparently deciding in their unconscious that this board was no longer worth saving, and by their departure helping to make that decision into a fact. But it's a fact we've got to deal with. And it isn't that any discussion there will be better than the equivalent discussion here; but rather, if the discussion does happen there first, reiterating it here just feels like going through the motions; this is one of the many reasons rolling teenpop lost its roll in mid 2007. In any event, follow the six or so links from xhuxk's article.

Btw, within the first fifteen seconds of "Outta My Head" I thought of Gwen.

Yes, absolutely Ashlee is less mannered than Gwen. But I sort of feel like Gwen's mannerisms and infantilisms actually come naturally to her, like she's probably quite a bit like that in real life. Whereas if Ashlee is like "Hot Stuff" in real life I'd prefer not to know, I prefer to think she's like "Eyes Wide Open" etc. (of course the likelihood of her being "like" either (or like any single song in her oeuvre) is very small).

Possibly the missing third term here is Pink, who I think has negotiated a vaguely similar transition quite carefully on tracks like "Stupid Girl" and "Because I Can" (Nb. I never bought I'm Not Dead, so I'm basing this on the album's slow emergence as multiple singles marathon winner - which benefits Pink enormously, as it makes the transition's success seem more assured and inevitable).

but I'm struggling to hear the Ashlee that I loved on I Am Me. She's obviously going for a Gwen style gonzo eccentric chart-pop star kinda vibe.
Thats an incredible description...anyway as for ASSlee, while she has never quite driven me to dark thoughts I've always thought she's been a bit hit and miss and consistently infantile actually. I've seen little points aside from perhaps her debut where she's maintained a sort of progressive move into more 'adult' pop instead she's kept the infantilism and then tried to tinge it with vaguely/overtly sexual lyrics which just irritate the fuck out of me. As for Bittersweet World I really hated Outta My Head then I loved it almost obsessively and the same goes for Murder (EXCEPT the rap) and the breakdown of Hot Stuff but she's not pulling this stuff off. She just seems confused like; 'Am I really doing this? I'm not really sure what any of this means but its hot right?" The production is really hype and I think her disguising herself as a new-wave-ish pneumatic ice electro pop princess might work if she really takes some time to think about it first instead of just squeezing shit together and hoping that it fits.

It works fine for me; the Terry Bozzio drag suits her better than the Jane Wiedlin power-punk.

Am I the only person who thinks the expression, "I was invisible" is completely played in music? I think the sentiment is done much better here http://youtube.com/watch?v=K1AbxBrr8A8 (though of course this is Broadway transposed onto film and maybe pop gets a pass for rearticulating the same cliche over and over and over again).

Possibly the missing third term here is Pink

True. Though I think Ashlee got away with doing what Pink has been trying to do since M!ssundaztood nearly effortlessly, and she certainly gets away with going frivolous with less effort than Pink does in "U and UR Hand," say, which is still one of the more overworked (and unsuccessful) variations on the Max/Luke "Since U Been Gone" thing. Which doesn't make it bad by a longshot, but that's a pretty high standard...

Ashlee has it both ways -- frivolousness and earnestness -- in a way that Pink can't because she seemingly fails on BOTH fronts at the same time. Which also makes Pink more interesting to me in a train-wreck sorta way, but I always listen to what she comes up with incredulity at least and a kind of stunned disbelief at most (and you should check out her full album for the times when the stunned disbelief is a major plus -- "I've Got Money Now" -- and a major minus -- maybe "Dear Mr. President"). For the most part the songs that were released as singles don't really nail the schizophrenia I'm hearing (utterly bipolar where Ashlee just kind of ignores the binary, or makes it FUNNY, like in the line Frank quoted from "Love Me for Me") like the rest of the album. (Literal schizoidness in "Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)," which is like "Love Me for Me" failing so miserably it's pretty interesting in its own right.)

The funny thing with that Pink album is that I don't "get" any of the singles all of which have become massive and YET I love love love "U + Ur Hand" nearly as much as any "Since U Been Gone" bite (the best of which I think is Marion Raven's astonishing "End Of Me", which is the darkest of them, and Pink's, along with The Veronicas "4eva" which is the frothiest).

I haven't heard Bittersweet World yet but am going to investigate because ironically Tim's on-the-fence evaluation makes it sound as if it's going to hit my spot completely. "I Am Me" though is bloody hard to live up to - I still wish "Dancing Alone" had been a single to this day.

I can understand not liking the sound of Gwen Stefani's voice but saying that Ashlee Simpson is a better singer really just shows that you don't quite grasp the concept of singing.

Ashlee is a decent singer but is, from what I've heard, both very limited in vocal range and inconsistent in vocal production. Gwen doesn't have the biggest range in the world, either, and the sand in her voice is at a much higher frequency than Ashlee's, meaning that where Ashlee purrs, Gwen yelps, but one thing I can say for Gwen, particularly as her career has progressed, is that she is a solid, consistent singer, particularly in arenas where people are notoriously off or out-of-tune like awards show performances (see all of Adam Levine's recent crashes and burns or the lead singer of OneRepublic completely fucking up "Apologize" on American Idol). Also, Gwen has a better sense of phrasing and far superior breath control.

It should also be noted if it hasn't already that Gwen honed her vocal chops singing and touring with an actual band for many years. Ashlee is ultimately just a studio creation and precious little more than that. And that's being generous.

I don't know that that matters; singing is definitely one thing you can hone without being on the road in a band, particularly if you're a solo artist working with session musicians since every time you record and/or tour, you need to recreate the ensemble's synergy anyway.

"It should also be noted if it hasn't already that Gwen honed her vocal chops singing and touring with an actual band for many years. Ashlee is ultimately just a studio creation and precious little more than that. And that's being generous."

Alex, you can always be relied upon to supply the absolute worst reasons for liking or disliking any given piece of music - I salute you for that!

I don't particularly think "consistently staying in tune during award shows" is the best reason to think somebody's a better singer, either -- Though Hi Dere's purr vs. yelp dichotomy is still really interesting, I think. To me, though, Gwen's singing sounds really pinched and cold compared to Ashlee's; I like Gwen okay, but Ashlee is way more emotionally expressive, way more capable of selling a song -- there's just no comparison to my ears. Gwen sounds piddly, even ice-queeny, in comparison. If that means I "don't quite grasp the concept of singing," then fuck it, I guess I don't.

They practically have the exact same voice; Gwen has the higher version, Ashlee has the lower version.

i wish I had enough time to have opinions on this. I really do!

"It should also be noted if it hasn't already that Gwen honed her vocal chops singing and touring with an actual band for many years."

So?

I don't think Ashlee's a good singer. I don't think Bob Dylan is a good singer either. And he's done a lot of touring with actual bands.
--
I always just kind of assume that Ashlee's lyrics will be terrific, but the more I listen to it, this album just doesn't hold up to the first two. There isn't the kind of poetry that you find in songs like "Better Off." The best moments are more silly and fun ("Outta My Head") than profound.

But the bigger problem is that the hooks just aren't that great. Structurally, most of Ashlee's best songs are just to-the-point pop-rock-- nothing earth shattering, but intensely pleasurable. Songs like "Girlfriend" are made greater by the additions of her vocal melodies and lyrics, but they're all built around guitar and synth hooks that would have made good songs on their own.

On this album, the only songs that really leap out to me in that way are Little Miss Obsessive and Outta My Head. Both are absolute classics though, so it's hard to be too disappointed by the album overall.

I don't think Ashlee's a good singer. I don't think Bob Dylan is a good singer either. And he's done a lot of touring with actual bands.

Did you actually just compare Ashlee to Dylan??? I don't even like Dylan and I'm blown away by that.

My point, however, is that like her or not --- Gwen is more of an accomplished musician. She's put in the hours and she can pull it off live. Can Ashlee make the same claim? I fuckin' doubt it.

alex why does it matter if gwen stefani is a better live performer than ashlee? and you're not even a disgruntled musician so why do you care about how many "hours" either of them have put in

I've never seen Gwen live, but Ashlee was great live when I saw her. Natural performer, solid singer, and she was giving hints on her I Am Me tour of her new direction too -- some cabaret stuff and maybe even her cover of "Sweet Dreams." I don't think there's much evidence to prove that Ashlee is a "studio creation," but she's certainly using the studio more obviously on Bittersweet World (see comments on Jim Beanz above).

I don't think that Gwen and Ashlee's personalities (Gwen solo versus Ashlee pre-Bittersweet) are very similar, even if their vocals might technically be the same. But I'm not sure what "technical" even means in pop without prioritizing the sense of personality you get from the voice. (When I told my friend that Kelly Clarkson's "high" money note was an Eb he told me that that wasn't even a high note for an alto, but we weren't really using the same yardstick. I might be misremembering exactly which group of singer he mentioned, but point's the same.)

(I'm also not sure where the "never tours" idea is coming from, but Ashlee's toured with all of her albums.)

"Did you actually just compare Ashlee to Dylan??? I don't even like Dylan and I'm blown away by that."

They're both mediocre singers. That's why I compared them. I'm not saying Ashlee is comparable to Dylan in all ways.

This is strange course of argument for you anyway, because you don't even think that Mariah Carey is a good singer.

When I told my friend that Kelly Clarkson's "high" money note was an Eb he told me that that wasn't even a high note for an alto, but we weren't really using the same yardstick. I might be misremembering exactly which group of singer he mentioned, but point's the same.

Kelly's high money note is a G, which is pretty fucking high when you're belting. These days, every woman out there who is going to call themselves a "singer" needs to be able to hit the Eb on the staff (which is what I assume you're talking about). Most classical mezzo-sopranos still have arias in their rep that take them up to Bb or C.

(Bb or C above the staff, I mean.)

Yeah, I was referring to what I thought was the high note in "Since U Been Gone," but actually I think I was referring to the highest note in the Veronicas'"4ever" (we talked about this at some point on the '06 teenpop thread)...Kelly gets up to the G in "Haunted," I think.

FWIW I think Ashlee hits the Eb in "La La" ("You make me wanna LA la")...not sure if Gwen tends to go that high, but then neither does Ashlee.

She hits the G in "Since U Been Gone". (She also has severe problems doing it live.)

Ohhhh, wait, I forgot about that part (after "you had your chance you blew it" etc.) (duh).

(I was thinking of the hook, which only gets as high as C)

She hits a D on the "yeah, yeah".</lolmusicnerd>

It's too bad that so many of the smart people decamped from ilX in late 2005, apparently deciding in their unconscious that this board was no longer worth saving, and by their departure helping to make that decision into a fact.

That was me four days ago. Reading it now it seems really obnoxious. Let's just say that when I wrote it I was feeling isolated and under attack, and sour towards some people who really did not deserve it. Which doesn't mean that some things haven't spun badly wrong on ilX over the years, but that I should remember not to underestimate people.

are you guys serious.

Serious about what? Not purposely provoking, just honestly curious.

Because if you mean 'serious about thinking this is worthy of discussion' than yeah. It's an interesting album and a decent listen, both on its own and in contrast to Ashlee's old sound. It hasn't clicked with me personally the same way Autobiography did, but that's just me.

Besides that, there doesn't seem to be a uniform claim being made with regards to the value of Bittersweet World, just an attempt to engage with it, which seems unobjectionable. I mean...it's music, right? And thus, fair game.

I like "Outta My Head" a lot, haven't heard the rest of teh album ("Little Miss Obsessive" is kind of awful), but yeah.. such a wordy thread on an Ashlee Simpson album seems kind of like.. I dunno.

Some things aren't meant to be analyzed to this extent

Welcome to ILM circa 2002.

(I kind of agree with you, esp. re: Ashlee Simpson, but I will take practically any opportunity I see to give an opinion on someone's voice.)

I like "Outta My Head" a lot, haven't heard the rest of teh album ("Little Miss Obsessive" is kind of awful), but yeah.. such a wordy thread on an Ashlee Simpson album seems kind of like.. I dunno.

-- The Brainwasher, Thursday, May 29, 2008

I'm curious, The Brainwasher, why do you think that Ashlee Simpson doesn't deserve to be discussed at length?

IN DEPTH.

Change one mind, CHANGE THE WORLD

I dont really know how to answer that without this turning into a whole longwinded argument about rockism or some shit like that. I just think if Ashlee Simpson read this thread she'd be like "wtf"

No one would bat an eyelid about this level of discussion or a Britney or Gwen thread. I'm not sure what the difference is really.

I would kind of bat an eye. I don't feel like subtext was a huge concern for any of them until recently.

ctrl-f: "kenna" = nothing. wtf?

wait waht

xpost

This is a miniscule number of words on Ashlee compared to some other convos I've been in. Miniscule. But also this is a meta discussion that feels like old territory. One reason to talk about the album is none of us here seems quite sure what's going on with it.

Anyway, as per voice, I think that Ashlee scores high on "plays well with others," or more accurately, "gets others to play well with her." Does that make her a good singer? I don't know if she could be viable without the modern recording studio (which doesn't mean some of her live clips on YouTube aren't a blast), but then I don't know how Sinatra or Jagger would have done without a microphone. (And I'm not saying she has either of those singers' originality.)

“Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)”

Single by Ashlee Simpson
from the album Bittersweet World
Released February 11, 2008
April 20, 2008 (iTunes)
May 19, 2008 (CD)
Format Digital Download, cd single
Recorded 2007
Genre Pop rock, electropop
Length 3:38
Label Geffen Records
Writer(s) Ashlee Simpson, King Logan, Jerome Harmon, Santi White, Kenna
Producer Timbaland, King Logan, Jerome Harmon

that explains a lot

lol Kenna AND Santogold! I need to hear this (again; I think I heard it once but wasn't paying attention).

my problem with her is that i've seen her in interviews

i know it "shouldn't" matter but her whole steez when she talks just makes my skin crawl

haha at brainwasher lurching in and proving frank's point just as he rescinded it! wow i expected better though i've no idea why.

i don't know why anyone thinks ashlee would go wtf at a thread about her music any more than, i dunno, mia or radiohead or the hold steady or whatever indie losers are currently ilm favourites, i have no idea.

when will you lamers learn that it ain't about 'rockism'/'popism' blah bullshit zzz, it's about wanting to talk about a great album that people like. oh wvs, bye again, wasn't worth coming back for this at all.

One thing I can't seem to get past...why did she name the album after a cliche from the worst song on the album? (Precedents for this?) Pretty sure every other song title would have been better. (Actually, I'm thinking she shoulda gone with the original insane cover and title, Color Outside the Lines.)

http://tommy2.net/2008/ashleesimpsonbw.jpg

("Autobiography" and "I Am Me" are at least provocative, and more appropriate to the respective albums.)

shut up lex

my problem with her is that i've seen her in interviews

This can definitely be a problem. Also a problem for Santogold, if for completely different reasons. But I don't think "boring and kind of vapid in interviews" is enough of a reason to think she's not in control of any of the music.

"Outta My Head"

Vocal production by Jim Beanz, who did a lot on Blackout and Welcome To The Dollhouse, and I'll have to figure out to what effect.

I think Logan's and Harmon's beats are terrific, the tone deliberately cracked and thin.

She can be a deer in headlight in interviews, and goes to giggle as a default mode. But Tracer, you need to get ahold of the first season of the reality show.

Second season is worth watching too, in contrast. It feels a lot less spontaneous (and there are a lot more obvious "PR clean up" moments, esp. re: SNL and the Orange Bowl performances).

I had forgotten that Lex was so annoying. I really didn't miss him and his lack of substantive contribution to discussions at all.

I'm not coming back to this thread until I've actually heard stuff from this album since right now all I'm doing is pontificating in the abstract.

(xpost: She does come across amazingly well in the first season of that reality show; that was the number one reason why I was rooting for her when her first album was released although the SNL debacle kind of put the kibosh on that.)

I don't know if she could be viable without the modern recording studio..., but then I don't know how Sinatra or Jagger would have done without a microphone.

Which doesn't mean she's a "studio creation" any more than Sinatra is a microphone creation. (Think of all the singers the studios have failed to create.)

yeha pontificating sarcastically and insubstantially in the abstract isn't annoying ~at all~~

i thought you were leaving.

Dan, I think Lex is the greatest writer on current r&b. But I can see why that particular sentence of his was missing a certain amount of elaboration.

Er, xpost.

o don't worry, i'm leaving now, i just wasn't going to let someone who as far as i can tell has posted nothing but unfunny dick jokes/lame music theory oneupmanship over people who aren't even trying to compete/"pontificating in the abstract" for like half a decade or whatever call me insubstantive

i didn't see dom post in this thread

anyway lol @ lex getting all mad at someone saying that they think it's a little silly for people to spend so much time thinking/pontificating about an ashlee simpson album

a lot of us think this and it has nothing to do with oneupsmanship

"a lot of you" are fucking dumb, jordan sargent. "lol" @ you.

This argument is very boring.

Rather.

exactly what im saying

yes it wasn't boring before at all, people kneejerking "b-b-but it's ASHLEE SIMPSON" and acting all shocked that people want to talk about her music A-FUCKING-GAIN

at least we can all agree this doesnt need to happen again

hey lex did u miss the part where i posted the songwriters of 'outta my head' and dan got excited about that and said he would talk more about the album after he'd listened to it?

(I tend to assume the Lex has been drinking heavily whenever he appears on ILX these days as he never does so when sober and his posts are more foaming-at-the-mouth in rage than usual. But he's right in that the "why do you want to talk about this at length?" thing is really tired and dull at this stage and no one needs to go through it all yet again).

agreed brainwasher shouldn't have come in here and said that but lex should have also ignored him

Lex feel free to come back when it occurs to you that one poster (to whom it might not have occurred that one can take pop seriously) does not constitute THE RETURN OF OLD PEOPLE'S HEGEMONY. You're sharp and I enjoy your contributions to pop threads.

xp Yes and yes, respectively.

(I shouldn't really be here either as I haven't actually heard this album or to my knowledge any Ashlee Simpson song so bye)

fwiw i've got nothing against you lex. i think you're very shrewd wrt your self-constructed genre box but as matt says if you're gonna come back and post here don't do it in rambo mode plz

xpost xpost xpost

Lex, take a breath, the people you're mad at aren't here.

Brainwasher, here are some serious though rudimentary answers to your question (which I summarize as wtf people?): I'd describe Ashlee's first two albums as absolutely towering achievements except that (or maybe because) nothing about them comes across as "towering achievement." They're just workaday pop rock albums, albeit with a distinctive singer. And they, especially Autobiography, have some of the most emotionally moving and complex lyrics I've ever encountered. The only other album to come close this decade in that regard - for me, based on necessarily limited listening, and the fact that I actually often don't pay attention to lyrics - is The Marshall Mathers LP. But it's not obvious to me why the words are so good, since the situations are basic straightup girl and boy stuff (w/ one girl and sister thing and one personals ad and one about being pinned down in terror) with no attempt to get beyond everyday words and often no clear story being told. So I can go back to them and keep wanting to talk about them, to figure them out. And then lots of talk on this thread is, ok, how come the person who was once doing that is now doing this? But also, the fact that you asked the question is just further evidence that Ashlee has been a cultural flashpoint around here almost on the order of someone like M.I.A. That is, it isn't standard to assume on ILM that you don't go on about music at ridiculous length, in fact that's what ILM is here for. So when that assumption is suddenly supposed to shut off, and when people are puzzled enough to ridicule and even attack the discussion and the discussers, some of the attacks being astonishingly vicious (without Ashlee, there'd have been no rolling teenpop), the question arises as to why.

Also, as Matt DC so eloquently put it on another thread (I'm thinking of getting a t-shirt with this emblazoned on it), we are Self-Important People With Wonky Tastes. Also, John Shanks, the producer and main musician on the first two albums and a co-writer of a lot of songs, is astonishingly inventive but again I can't figure out the why or the what. I'd say he's someone who plays mushy chords but in a jagged and sometimes even lacerating way. I also don't think the previous sentence is all that intelligible. And Shanks is consistently good with Ashlee whereas he's sporadic with almost anyone else, and that's also puzzling.

And I haven't even mentioned Nurse Kara. Kara DioGuardi wrote (with her band Platinumn Weird) the words "And then you'll see my greatest gift/Is falling down and taking it" (Nia points out that the word "gift" can have two meanings, that Kara's gifted and that the gift she gives you is that she'll fall down and take it, which has a lot of disturbing destructive overtones) and then in the exuberant Ashlee song "La La," which Kara helped write, Ashlee sings "I like it better when it hurts," so you think that must be Kara, so you go to the next song on that Ashlee album and Ashlee's singing "I'm the one who's crawlin' on the ground/When you say love makes the world go 'round," and you think "That must be Kara too," but it's not, read the credits and it's Ashlee on her own (I'm guessing that co-writer Shanks had no hand in those lyrics, though I could be wrong), and the falling down and breaking and taking it/not taking it theme seems so much more developed on the first two Ashlee albums than on Platinum Weird, especially on "Love Me For Me," which Ashlee wrote with Shelly Peiken not with Kara - it's not that it particularly matters on some philosophical level who wrote which words, but if you're interested in the creative process at all, or the cultural process, there's this question: how is it that these themes and these people came together at this time, all of whom seem ordinary enough?

And then of course the "meta" question, which is why are so many intellectuals and music fanatics proud of the fact that they don't notice such lyrics, or even bother to think that such lyrics might be there to be noticed, when in any other genre people would want to notice or care and would want the songs to reveal riches? And some people who celebrate pop are just as disturbed by our kind of conversation as are the people who disparage the teenyboppers. It's not meant for such analysis! (But why should we limit ourselves by what something's meant for? Imagine, for instance, if hip-hop producers cared about what sounds were meant for.)

Ashlee's now beyond the original situation that fueled her (which is a whole nother discussion) and she's abandoned the original collective that created "her" achievement, so there's been real wonder (by the ten of us who care) what she'd do next.

I've barely scratched the surface. But believe me, there are some performers I love (Midi, Maxi & Efti and Boney M come to mind) whom I've never been able to find the words for. So, that I don't talk as much about something else doesn't mean that the other thing is less worthy (or less worthy of discussion, and I'd be eager to hear someone who could discuss Boney M well, and I'm really glad for someone like Dan who can discuss things differently from how I do, even if he finds most of what I say boring and might suspect that people like me are mentally ill).

Btw, I love Lex, but if there is a position that a lot of people take, and I get mad at the position, my getting mad at the position isn't going to help me understand why people take it. One thing I got disparaged for on the Hilary Humbert thread was that I went around asking teenagers what music they listened to, but a reason for my asking was the understanding that often the teenpop I was loving might be felt to have an oppressive effect by some people who were growing up surrounded by people who liked it, and it's not like there's no good reason for that feeling, or that it might not carry on into adulthood. So I wanted to get the sense of how the music I was loving worked in that cultural landscape as well as my own. Not to say that that cultural landscape is any more valid than mine, but being able to compare landscapes helps one see what's happening in one's own.

I have listened to this and my first impression is that I don't like it very much but I think I would like to try it again. I don't have a problem with her voice (a little less interesting than on I Am Me) or the slightly less bruised songwriting (compared to Autobiography), or the production..

I'm just not that into most of the songs, but I'm willing to give it a chance because the last two really did pay repeat listens (even though at first blush I liked them a lot more than this).

Good point re ILX hegemony by BIG HOOS there. Weird personal attacks are one thing, but stupidity like Alex in NYC or Brainwasher's comments have always been with us, and they've always just reflected badly on the poster themselves. The notion of going through such arguments again is exhausting in itself, which is why no-one bothers. But the only alternative is a closed community and that really doesn't appeal to me - even in its Hellenistic period ILX has produced a lot of interesting debates, primarily prompted by (relative) newcomers.

Personally, I suspect that if I tried to act appalled that people think Ashlee and critical debate are mutually exclusive, I'd come off a little disingenuous. Not because I believe it's true in the slightest, but because if I'm honest with myself I have to admit that it's partly the prevalence of that kneejerk assumption that makes me interested in this music - in addition, of course, to it actually being very good music at times.

In some ways music crit is a process of articulating ways to relate to music, and even in these relatively enlightened times there remains a deficit of that process-of-articulation for music like Ashlee's in comparison to its market presence and cultural impact. One-dimensional observers see this state of affairs and pronounce it "natural" in the same way that contingent historical arrangements have always been pronounced "natural" by one-dimensional observers. So the attraction of this area of music from a listening and crit perspective is that you get to be involved in articulating those relationships in full for the first time - a journalistic scoop as it were. Whereas in indie or even in dance music there's about a month's lead time at most in which that can happen before consensus is formed (as an example of this, I felt a fair amount of haste in trying to write an article about UK Funky House for Idolator, like, I wanted to get my take on the music out there before I was beaten to the punch too many times - I'll freely admit this is a rather ignoble attitude)

I am assuming that the same holds true for other people writing about teenpop seriously. To some extent hostile observers taking positions of uncomprehending disgust at yr decision to write about Ashlee or Paris or whoever only makes doing so seem more interesting. If nothing else, it's a rock against which to sharpen yr own opinions.

To tie this back to Ashlee, perhaps part of my ambivalence with this album is that the confessional rock of her first two albums was a more confronting strategy in the context of teenpop. You can see this in Alex in NYC's triumphant smirk a while back (on another thread) about Ashlee getting her nose job and appearing in Chicago - like, "we always knew she would turn out to be just another pop star." Whereas when he first started attacking Ashlee on ILX it was like she had both affronted and personally wounded him by daring to lay claim to his sacred rock tropes (interestingly, the dynamic works very differently with Avril, who I suspect is perhaps more offensive to people like Alex in NYC the less grrr-rock she is).

Of course such smirking is well beneath the level of meaningful intelligible debate, but I did enjoy the way that earlier Ashlee unsettled such people.

By comparison, Nu-Ashlee makes more sense as a teenpop star. Which is probably (hopefully) good for her market share, and neither necessarily good nor necessarily bad for her music, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of frission generated by her former Courtney-Love-gone-pop strategy. Which is kind of unfair for Ashlee, but there you go. Still, I have to listen to this album a lot more before any of these reactions are anything more than provisional.

Excellent post by Frank too!

Whatever, if it makes you guys happy to talk out of your collective asses at length about Ashlee Simpson be my guest. It's so fucking self-indulgent and masturbatory, no wonder I hate music criticism.

Don't read anything at all ever again.

with the greatest of respect, music criticism about ashlee simpson is really no less interesting than any other music criticism

Words to live by: if you don't like the thread, DON'T CLICK ON IT.

that's no fun

plus, how will I know I don't like it if I don't click on it first.

But really brainwasher, I'm interested: why is it more self-indulgent etc. than any other talking-at-length about any other music?

Tim, shh, you'll piss him off!

Ashlee...well, she was bubbly and sorta defiant, but the new thing is just numb-y.

However, the new Veronicas' Cd is fabulous and possibly THE best Georgio-Moroder-meets-Yaz-meets-Sparks-meets-The-Cranes electro glisten-pop record this year.

so much competition though!

And when the big confessional-teenpop-metal guitars do show up, they sound arch, knowing, like post-emo readymades.

And the cello/viola samples that open "Untouched" sound like an original Kurzeill in a metal band and then it just keeps getting smarter/funner.

Indeed! The Georgio-Moroder-meets-Yaz-meets-Sparks-meets-The-Cranes electro glisten-pop market is so glutted and so The Veronicas' triumph all the more sweet.

But really brainwasher, I'm interested: why is it more self-indulgent etc. than any other talking-at-length about any other music?

-- Tim F, Friday, 30 May 2008 02:35 (2 hours ago) Link

But really brainwasher, I'm interested: why is it more self-indulgent etc. than any other talking-at-length about any other music?

-- Tim F, Friday, 30 May 2008 02:35 (2 hours ago) Link

-- Tape Store, Friday, May 30, 2008 5:17 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yes, and?

I can copy and paste old messages as well.

And avoid the question, fantastic!

Hey, Brainwasher, I'm assuming that you're an interesting person who may have interesting reasons for your stances, and I wish people weren't trying to put you on the defensive here and you weren't trying to put us on the defensive here. And let's not gang up on Brainwasher, please?

Thanks Frank. I shouldn't have singled this thread out - really, this is a problem that I have with majority of what passes for music criticism.

It's bizarre how in literature the question "why are you discussing this album like this when the artist didn't intend it" is basically totally dead (Barthes put the nail in the coffin decades ago), but on ILX, there's no concept of "death of the author." If it limits the discussion, who cares what Simpson intended? We're critics. The texts are there for us to read; we have no obligation to honor the creator. (Derrida really emphasized this: The critic is no less than the text he's reading.) So if it produces interesting conversations, fab. If it doesn't - that should be the only criteria for dropping the analysis.

So Brainwasher, if you're like - a new historicist or whatever, and the artist's opinion is really important to you, then cool. But obviously a lot of critics in a lot of fields don't necessarily have those hang-ups anymore.

i guess despite tim's explanation i just dont get the appeal of music with virtually no social function for me. to talk about this music id have to either a) be on this thread or b) hang out with teenagers all the time. neither am i particularly interested in; the music im into generally serves some sort of function. i guess if for tim its an expression of the real frontier of music crit or something and thats enough for him cool, but i can entirely understand why someone wouldn't take it seriously; its very very much a niche thing. even within the age group buying it.

i started to write a bunch more and realized i was rehashing the old pro/anti teenpop thread arguments

xp to myself

(Just wanna say - not trying to gang up, or "put Brainwasher on the offensive." Just assuming there's an essential disagreement about the role of the critic V the work. It doesn't necessarily make sense to rehash it here.)

i dont think brainwasher's point was that ashlee's opinion of what the music is about matters as far as authorial intent, it was an attempt (right or wrongheaded) to give some perspective, to say that sometimes the point of a song is to be fun and brainless. i dont like analyzing shit sometimes - i dont spend hours writing up essays on why 'say yeah' by wiz khalifa is fun, or what his audience thinks about it, its just FUN. Like, in my writing i want to be balancing the emotional, overall impact w/ some intricate nerdery but here it seems like its just all this weird left brained mega-male analysis without any perspective on PURPOSE. Not neccessarily authorial purpose, but purpose as perceived by the listener

If it limits the discussion, who cares what Simpson intended?

What if it enriches the conversation? Which is to say, I don't see how saying we can't talk about intention is any better than saying we must be limited by what we imagine is the intention, or who the intended audience is. (But for what it's worth, I can't imagine why Ashlee wouldn't want adults - she's been one since she started recording - to listen to her music, since it's not at odds with the adult rock which is her source material. Since when are Courtney, Alanis, Gwen for teens only?)

And I'm being prejudiced here, since I don't read much lit criticism, but I'll take rock criticism over lit criticism in a snap. Not that they're mutually exclusive, mind you.

ultimately i think a long ashlee simpson thread is annoying kind of like the way a ghostface thread is, who cares, overrated dawgs, on to the next, except also there is no one irl i can talk to about ashley simpson w/out seeming like a weirdo. so why bother? theres enough great music out there that i love that fills functional purposes for me as a human being on earth

Then that's totally fair. I personally don't like Ashlee Simpson, but I've definitely been guilty of intellectually analyzing pop music that really was appealing to me on a non-intellectual level. (Stuff that was emotional resonant, or just awesome to dance to, or just crazy/hilarious/imparted good memories of listening to in bars with friends.) And I think if you came to one of these threads and said, "You guys aren't hearing what I'm hearing - which is this time we were in a bar, and some guy turned on an Ashlee song, and we thought that was hysterical and really ironic - because none of us like teenpop music - but just mocking the album and telling nasty jokes about Ashlee's nosejob was really an awesome time." And you said that like it was just another way of listening to the music, and that you didn't have the exclusive interpretation or experience - then no one would call you a troll or throw a fit. They might disagree (just like you disagreed with their over-intellectual analysis), but how could they contest your experience?

What if it enriches the conversation?

Totally. That's why I said only if it limits the conversation. If talking about authorial intent opens up a dialogue, then go for it. (And hell, if you want to limit the conversation cause you're shooting for some kind of Foucauldian power dynamic, then more power to you.)

my only problem with the teenpop critics (frank, da bug, mordy, lex whoever) is that, even tho i usually enjoy reading your guys' crit, i get the feeling that in the midst of good discourse you guys get to the point where you're truly grasping for shit that isn't there. true, some of this comes from my own prejudices re: music i deem ultimately devoid on an emotional level (for instance, ashlee and a lot of teen pop), but i would roll my eyes at a thread like this that dissected a 'concept' album like 'american gangster' just as much as i roll my eyes at a thread that goes this in-depth into an ashlee simpson album

Jordan, that's what I was trying to say before about critics V authorial intent. At least acc. to numerous lit theorists, it doesn't really matter whether it's "there" or not. Or rather, you can put it there itself. It's about who has ownership over the text. If Frank wants to say it's there, who gets to tell him it isn't?

if i heard an ashley song i liked tho i wouldnt be 'ironic' about it! id just say "yo im kinda feeling this ashlee simpson song." but i dont really come across that stuff at all - its not like with 2step where no one i know irl knows it, but if i play it at a club they'll be like "hey danceable R&B!" If Ashlee drops some nelly furtado style trax i'll be the first one lining up to talk about how hot the single is. (and maybe it is that good, i just havent heard it). i just see a LOT of thought going into one artist and it weirds me out in a way that rockism does in general. i dont think its so revolutionary to treat ashlee like bob dylan, i think its weird

yeah i AGREE with you that authorial intent should have no bearing on what becomes a 1000 post thread on ilm and what becomes a 10 post thread, which is why i brought up 'american gangster' a recent album that was thrust out to us as an album that the author intended to be 'dissected'

and i don't think any of you guys should be told not to do anything, which is why i don't come in these threads, as brainwasher did, and go "guys this isn't worth the effort youre putting into it"

xp 2 mordy

See, the way I figure it is - I like to read music writing. I don't really care what it's about, as long as it's interesting. Frank writes some interesting music writing. So I'll read it about Ashlee.

What happened with me was - I started reading all the music writing, and so I started trying the music too. And then I started finding teenpop music I liked (Aly + AJ, Britney, Meg & Dia, etc). It wasn't music I was naturally drawn to, but because I was reading this stuff, I was more exposed to it.

Maybe it's weird to spend so much time on one artist. But seriously, who cares? If the writing stands up, and Ashlee is used as an interesting springboard to get at more general topics, then why does it matter where the conversation started? If the thing stagnates and Ashlee gets boring, then I'll stop reading the thread. I didn't participate in every teenpop conversation on Rolling. Just the ones that piqued my interest.

I just dislike modern criticism a lot - when people extrapolate and project and come up with cockamamey, longwinded theories and analyses that have nothing at all to do with the intention of the author/artist.. it just irk's me. I'm kind of a formalist in that regard. And also, like deej said, sometimes music is just music - a fun song is just a fun song and not something else. Teen-pop critics in particular seem to overcompensate for their genre-of-choice's perceived vapidness by totally overanalyzing and over-intellectualizing music that is just supposed to be fun. Kids listening to Hannah Montana aren't doing post-feminist analyses of her music.

here it seems like its just all this weird left brained mega-male analysis without any perspective on PURPOSE

I think, in part, this is because the "weird left brained...analysis" is perhaps easier to articulate than the fun/brainless aspects of the music. Which isn't to say that Frank or Tim or Dave or I don't use the music in that fashion, but simply that's one of a multiplicity of ways in which the music can and does get used at any given moment. I'm not sure if we're expressing our responses to the album so much as analysing and prodding at our responses.

Also, a lot of the sheer joy at the fun of Bittersweet World hit on first listen, and having already expressed that fairly early on, and listened to the album a fair bit, delving further into it is the next stage of my response. FWIW, this tends to be how I interact with most albums, whether it's Ashlee, or the new Wolf Parade, which I'm still listening to on a surface level, or pretty much any hip-hop album, where the sheer weight of the lyrical stuff often prevents me from absorbing them on anything but a "how does it sound" level on the first few listens, rather than concentrating on meaning. But that's just me.

And to be completely honest, if it weren't for the previous two albums, I wouldn't think the album was worth the effort we're putting into it either. Ashlee's having fun with the album, and so am I, but that's about it.

Teen-pop critics in particular seem to overcompensate for their genre-of-choice's perceived vapidness by totally overanalyzing and over-intellectualizing music that is just supposed to be fun.

i second this

Brainwasher, I've got no problem with you feeling that way. But obv. a lot of people disagree, not just here, but in other places as well. There are like a million books written about Ulysses, or Hamlet. And many of them are the exact kind of modern criticism you don't like. But this has been the trend for the last 50 years or whatever. It's not like poptimism V rockism. It's some sort of New Critics V Stanley Fish feud. Like I said above, you can feel the way you do, but it seems silly to argue about it here. But Fish does have a NY Times column with comments enabled on it...

And yeah. Maybe there's some attempt to legitimize teenpop music by over-intellectualizing. But since that's only one thing that's happening (and in the meantime, some cool writing is being produced), aren't the motives not that important?

Teen-pop critics in particular seem to overcompensate for their genre-of-choice's perceived vapidness by totally overanalyzing and over-intellectualizing music that is just supposed to be fun.

I mean, the only thing I'd say about that is that just like in any other genre of music, there are songs/artists that seem worthy of intellectualization/analysis and those that seem to not be.

And Frank (from what I've read of his work), who probably reads more into "Ashlee" than anyone talking about her music, appears to analyse and intellectualise her music no more or less than he does that of the Rolling Stones or the New York Dolls or Teena Marie or Eminem. So I'm not sure if this kind of critical impulse can be linked to a perceived sensitivity about a particular genre so much as the writing style of particular individuals.

This is going around in circles. A long discussion on Ghostface would interest me depending on what people said in the discussion, not depending on how I rate Ghostface. But I'm just not sure where to go with this discussion about why we're discussing Ashlee, since I think Ashlee (and Kara and John and Shelly and Kenny and Beanz etc. etc.) have provided plenty of reasons for talking about Ashlee. And if anyone can find my reasons in the thousands upon thousands of words I've written about her, then I throw up my hands. As you are with Ashlee (whom I identify with pretty strongly), you're either interested in what I say or not.

And Mordy, of course it makes a difference whether what I see is there. But there doesn't necessarily mean "the singer or the producer or the music industry intended to put it there."

But there's no question that "I'm the one who's crawlin' on the ground/When you say love makes the world go 'round" is there, as is "And then you'll see my greatest gift/Is falling down and taking it."

And frankly, I'm fed up with today's particular meta conversation (I also have to leave it, but I would even if I weren't fed up) since I don't think most of you guys are interested in what I have to say about Ashlee.

And if anyone can find my reasons in the thousands upon thousands of words I've written about her, then I throw up my hands.

Hah! Typo! Anyone who can't find my reasons.

A long discussion on Ghostface would interest me depending on what people said in the discussion, not depending on how I rate Ghostface.

Frank, that's all I was trying to say. I'm only interested here in what people are saying. As far as whether something is "there" or not - I guess I don't have a stake in that question. I don't really care. Klosterman sometimes writes long, really interesting arguments about stuff, and I don't always buy that what he says is "there" is really "there." But I find the argument interesting anyway. That's all I'm saying.

(And I'm definitely guilty for making a meta-discussion. Maybe it should be moved to another thread. But conversations about conversations about music interest me too. Why do we talk about music? Why do we talk about talking about music? Etc.)

But Alex in Montreal OTM.

And speaking of Alexes, seeing Alex in NYC here gave me a pang of nostalgia.

I love meta-discussion. It just seems this one's hit a rut.

so i guess i can't extricate the quality of the discussion from whether or not the discussion is about something that is "there" then, and the frequency of there-ness re: teenpop determines when i bail on the conversation and when frank does

I mean, it seems to come down to:
A) It is there and it's worth discussing.
B) It's not there, and not worth discussing.
C) It doesn't matter whether it's there - the conversation should be judged on other merits.

With some dipping of one opinion into the other. Unless this really is possibly about something else?

(By which I mean, Jordan - where else did you think there was to go?)

nowhere i think you got it

assuming you mean "worth" in a personal sense not a universal one

OK, I keep getting suckered in. A kid might see a vacant lot as a chance for a pickup soccer game. A real estate man might see it as an investment opportunity. A builder might see it as a chance for a particular type of construction. All these are "there." Personally, among other things, I've seen Ashlee's words as a potential model for my own writing. Anyway, now I'm tired and cranky and had better stop now, but I put some blood and sweat into my rudimentary answer to Brainwasher above, and I don't see how anyone's putting what I said in "perspective" by ignoring it completely and telling me instead what my motives actually are.

Nighty night.

xp
Yeah. So -- that's the impasse. I mean, it's such a sophomoric cliche to say "you're entitled to your opinion," or "it's a subjective/objective argument!" but sometimes that's where you end up. I don't think anyone here (but me) is interested in weighing the merits of various literary theorists.

And Frank, I wasn't trying to tell you your motives. I was just saying - even if you want to believe that there are ulterior motives for this kind of conversation, that shouldn't make any difference. Cause I don't care what the motives are. I wasn't conceding the point so much as saying that it shouldn't make a difference if true.

btw since there is no rolling teenpop anymore ill post this in here:

One Bare Shoulder: The Effect of Dream Street on the Sexual Identity of the Teenipopper

the writing is only okay but i'm sure there is some stuff that would interest you guys

I think my problem with Ashlee--or lack of reaction--is the lack of trauma in her stuff.

A neat trick 'teenpop' performs is that it can be overwrought without its main audience complaining--I mean, its core audience *is* overwrought.

The melodrama opens up all kinds of neat, often very, very weird musical avenues. The trauma/melodrama aspect--I find it in some taTu, some Lindsay, and all over the new Veronicas--somehow elevates it from 'teen' to universal, sorta like Buffy wasn't about high school or vampires at all.

I don't 'get' the narrative floating around Ashlee, which doesn't mean there isn't a viable one.

This is hard to explain this late.

"i guess despite tim's explanation i just dont get the appeal of music with virtually no social function for me. to talk about this music id have to either a) be on this thread or b) hang out with teenagers all the time."

Deej this seems like a demand that you're making of teenpop that would seem ridiculous to make of heaps of other music. Do acoustic singer-songwriters have a "social function" for you? If they don't, are you baffled that people want to talk about them?

Man, I didn't want to get sucked into this thread either, but what the heck...

First off, to state what to me seems obvious, "talking about music" is a social function. By definition. I don't believe for a second that Ashlee doesn't serve a social function in Deej's life (even if he's actually never heard her music); if she didn't, he wouldn't be on this thread, socializing about her. To pretend talking here somehow counts less as "real life" than, say, talking in a bar seems completely bizarre to me.

That said, I have talked about Ashlee Simpson's music in a bar. At least once. With grownups, no less. Maybe a year and a half ago, a bunch of Billboard folks went out to lunch on a Friday, and somehow she came up (I think people were talking about tabloid stuff, which I never really pay attention to me much), and I mentioned that I Am Me had been one of my favorite rock albums of the previous year. One guy, who later went on to do entertainment business reporting at the NY Post, gave me a weird look and asked "rock??" And I said, uh, yeah. Not sure how much more in depth it got from there, but maybe it's not weird that Billboard people would classify music by "the audience to whom it's marketed" rather than "how it sounds."

Then again, I'm not even sure who Ashlee is marketed to anymore. Like Frank said, that detractors here keep dismissing her as "teenpop" here is kind of goofy (almost as goofy as people pretending that she's liked for her "innocennce and naivete," or that she does songs about "being rich and white"), though maybe a function of her having once figured prominently in a thread with "teenpop" in the title has something to do with it. But her music reminds me of Marianne Faithful or Stevie Nicks or Franz Ferdinand (or, as Frank said, Courtney or Alanis or Glen) more than it reminds of, say, Hilary Duff.

"Boys" reminds me of Chic. Totally. So I'm a little stumped about why Frank keeps calling it "showbiz blues" (which would mean, what, Amy Winehouse type crap, right?) The Jessica Simpson comparison Dabug makes way upthread makes a little more sense ('cause it's sort of light on its feet, I guess?), but I sure don't think "Jessica" when it comes on. (Though maybe I would if I listened to Jessica more often.)

I also don't hear nearly as much genius in Ashlee's lyrics as Frank, etc., do, by the way. Which isn't to say it isn't "there," but I've listened to her albums plenty, and maybe the fact that one would seemingly need to intensely examine them under a microscope to get all their minute nuances might be part of what bugs some people about Frank going off at length about her words so much. I find what Frank says in that regard consistently interesting myself, but that doesn't mean I hear what he hears. I hear some of it. But is it enough to justify an ENTIRE THREAD? Maybe not; there are so many albums out there now that devoting so much time to just one album always strikes me as a little odd. (In the last week, I had to write, or was assigned to write, reviews of, let's see: John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis, Los Lonely Boys, Trina, the Lady Tigra, Birthday Massacre, Scooter, Foxboro Hot Tubs, Jamey Johnson, Little Jackie, K'Naan, Restless Kelly, plus two Joan Jett reissues and a bunch of other stuff...) I know most people aren't as anywhere near as obsessive as I am, and it's not they're job to keep up with so much stuff, but still -- there are a lot of records out there, always! Which is why I always preferred the rolling threads, in general, to individual album threads, which I've always tended to avoid. Which is what made the teenpop thread worthwhile, no matter what certain assholes and idiots here thought about it. Though then again, the discussion on this thread sure goes much farther toward justifying devoting a whole thread to Ashlee than, say, the threads on fucking Battles or Destroyer or whoever I've seen in the past. (Maybe I missed something interesting on those; who knows.) And if I went to those threads, would I see trolls coming on and saying they can't imagine why anybody would devote an entire thread to Battles or Destroyer (or Ghostface, or Jay-Z)? I don't know, maybe I would. But somehow, I doubt it.

On the other hand, if on the rolling teenpop thread, people had just come on and said things like ""yo im kinda feeling this ashlee simpson song" and left it at that, it would have bored me stiff. Go figure.

I keep looking for someplace upthread where I thought Frank complained about people complaining about him spending too much time analyzing Ashlee's lyrics (and lyrics in teenpop in general) (even if Ashlee isn't really teenpop per se'), when nobody ever has any problem with anybody spending time analyzing lyrics in other genres, but damned if I can find it. Maybe I dreamt it. I hope so. Because if Frank really said that, he's way wrong. Lots of people have always had problems with rock critics spending inordinate time on the lyrics (in all genres), and I've often been one of them. A record review is not a book review (or a lyric sheet review), and turning it into one, 99 percent of the time, is booooooring. But I'm probably completely Rorschashing (old Why Music Sucks word!), and Frank never actually said anything of the sort.

Also, Frank -- Did you really mean to single out Autobiography, not I Am Me, as having the whatever-you-said-about-its-lyrics-since Eminem? Or was that a typo? Because if it wasn't, I probably need to go back and listen to the debut album more.

my only problem with the teenpop critics (frank, da bug, mordy, lex whoever) is that, even tho i usually enjoy reading your guys' crit, i get the feeling that in the midst of good discourse you guys get to the point where you're truly grasping for shit that isn't ther

that's because YOU don't find Ashlee Simpson interesting. Substitute "Bob Dylan critics" or "Public Image Ltd critics or "Atlas Sound critics."

ok, i will. lots of times all those guys talk about shit that isnt there too

thankfully there isnt a 'rolling atlas sound' thread

tim f, if i was looking for an explanation of why any grown adults are listening to teen pop and nerding out about it, yours is the only one so far that has made much sense to me - as a music critic u like the idea of it basically being an open frontier, right?? the fact is, there are amazingly talented singers and songwriters performing music that i ignore all the time, and not just doing teenpop. i can come up with kinda arbitrary reasons to ignore anything. its not like im dismissing this genre out of hand like a classic rock dude talking about rap. i just dont see the advantage of taking up brain power with stuff that doesnt serve a function for me.

and you can say its a ridiculous demand of music and you're right ... assuming im talking about intentionally avoiding this stuff altogether, but im not. Im just choosing not to engage w/ this stuff in the way you guys do!! if i hear an ashlee song on the charts and it resonates ill say so. its less about the music not serving a social function and more about the way you guys address it not really having any sort of appeal to me

as a music critic u like the idea of it basically being an open frontier, right??

Not to mention that it's ignored by cognoscenti yet is listened to by a large swathe of the population. A lot of the stuff I end up loving initially began as part of an anthropological experiment.

People like a type of music, thus like talking about it on a board devoted to talking about music. It's not hard.

Also maybe people are thrown because people on this thread are talking in long paragraphs and sentences and things but it's not like anyone's analysing it like it's Schoenberg or something.

xp yeah but the "why are we persecuted??" stuff from grown men listening to music that is listened to pretty much exclusively by pre teens strikes me as disingenuous. (not defending libel here btw)

One Bare Shoulder

Talked about this over on Poptimists and at Bedbugs, where the author herself responded. One thing that might pertain to some stuff being said upthread that I said after learning more about how the article was written (she did 500 interviews with Dream Street fans and has talked to several of the members personally):

"it's good to get the cold water in the face of 'what 500 people told me' in opposition to the personalized (and occasionally agenda-leaning) canon-making that can happen from a more rock-critical context."

Of course the problem here is that I don't like Dream Street, or any of the other bands she's singling out here, and I'm also not as interested in stuff like fansite networks and teenybopper magazines where some of the interaction is happening.

This is a non-issue for Ashlee Simpson, who as xhuxk says simply doesn't have as clear of an audience, particularly for this album (which is another way of saying she doesn't seem to have much of any audience). One of the interesting things about the teenpop threads was that for a lot of the artists discussed most regularly and passionately, it was nearly impossible to actually do a "500 people told me" style observational "know the real audience" survey that would be required to figure out "what teenagers actually think" or whatever. And it was obvious that that was only part of what interested most of us anyway, and usually wasn't was primarily interested us, though I've always thought there should be MORE stuff out there like "One Bare Shoulder," occasionally dull as these sorts of surveys can look (I think this article hits a nice balance of fact and humor until a few of the final points about sexualization that I took issue with).

I've never quite understood, though, why so much audience research has always been expected of a lot of the teenpop thread regulars, especially since usually prolonged discussion of it meant that we were basically talking and arguing about it as, for all intents and purposes, music that was "supposed to be" for us. And I'm not going to pretend that there aren't a lot of reasons that people might think that's weird, but I'm also not going to think they're right about it.

To use Hannah Montana as an example here, the vast majority of her music doesn't register with most of the pro-Ashlee posters here, and yet she has a handful of songs that really are worth checking out for anyone who likes any kind of pop music (and "See You Again" is continuing to do pretty well in pop airplay, which is to say it's no more or less "for teenagers" or younger than "No Air," in fact subject matter's not too far off).

Ashlee, on the other hand, has always seemed trapped by the expectation that she's any more youth-oriented (or just-fun-oriented) than the influences that xhuxk is rightfully citing here. That was something that took me a bit to really understand, especially re: her first album, but once I did it no longer made any sense to have the anthropological-leaning arguments OR it's-just-fun-pop arguments with people about it (especially with people who have absolutely no intention of holding this standard to anything else). Bittersweet World, on the other hand, is basically just-fun-pop, and as the discussion is suggesting, we are kind of grasping for something, because we're looking for some of the richness and not finding it, or just finding a different, and maybe not as easy to talk about, richness.

And just as a final note, it's easy to project onto a lot of Ashlee lyrics -- they're all personal, and they're a lot more sophisticated than almost all other confessional rock (from Alanis to Avril). When I play "Better Off," I can instantly see situations and feelings that I recognize from my own life (as opposed to, say, "Complicated," which feels like a jumble of cliches). And I also imagine that "situations and feelings that I recognize from my own life" isn't the kind of analysis that moves all people to obsess about a pop song. (That said, I don't think that we spend that much time on lyric analysis, aside from a few good ones that get thrown out a lot, and that when we do it's to try to evoke the whole context that those lyrics contribute to and not make it just some kind of literary analysis. I personally have a hard time with this, but then most people probably do because it's really hard to describe music! The best I came up with for John Shanks is that he somehow found a way of "lilting violently.")

xposts

And the fact that a preteen and I might find value, if not necessarily the same kind (how could any two people?), in a line like "You think you know me? Word on the street is that you do. You want my history? What others tell you won't be true..." doesn't seem strange to me at all. Anymore than "School's Out! For! Summer!" might hold value for someone who's not actually in (elementary) school.

Or YAHHHHHHH TRICK YAHHHHHHHH for that matter.

i think part of this for me to is that even when i was a preteen i was never into this stuff and always had this sorta 'music training wheels' attitude towards it so maybe for some of you dudes its like, remember when i was innocent like this? i have no idea im just trying to fathom the appeal

Maybe the appeal is that it's pop music and is kind of designed to be fun and catchy and appealing? It's not rocket science.

You were never in love or trying to figure shit out?

Maybe there's something I'm missing here because Ashlee Simpson doesn't actually have an 'audience' per se in the UK but if and when she does I can't see it being much different to Gwen's or Kylie's.

Ashlee's not singing about innocence at all, but "See You Again" definitely taps into something like that. But "See You Again" is also cute and nostalgia-friendly where Ashlee usually isn't.

maybe for some of you dudes its like, remember when i was innocent like this?

Yeah, again, who is saying Ashlee has anything to do with being "innocent"? I have no idea where that comes from; has anybody writing about her anywhere on ILM ever said they like her for her "innocence"?

innocent is a misleading word, im talking about buying what shes selling

btw i liked 'lala' lol but i have no problem with a token interest in teenpop, its this analyzing of the persona that is bizarre to me, like wtf guys - why does this have so much meaning for you???? i really dont get it!

Ay-ya-ya-ya-ya you're talking way too much, you boys are messin' with my head.

buying what shes selling

What IS this? I don't mean to seem like I'm badgering, but there's nothing even approaching "innocence" being "sold" by Ashlee. It's not just misleading, to me it has nothing to do with her -- what is it that we're supposed to be "falling for" here?

that's because YOU don't find Ashlee Simpson interesting. Substitute "Bob Dylan critics" or "Public Image Ltd critics or "Atlas Sound critics."

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, May 30, 2008 7:47 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

nah it's the same reason why the vampire weekend and no age threads are just as insufferable at times as this one is at times

i just think it happens more frequently with teenpop, for one because there is a higher rate of fertile discourse among the genre's critics, but also because, as i mentioned upthread, sometimes i get the feeling of "overanalyzing for the sake of legitimacy"

for one because there is a higher rate of fertile discourse among the genre's critics

lemme say real quick that i mean in relation to something like ilm, before you guys go pasting metal livejournal urls or something

I'll agree to "overanalyzing" if it appears (to someone not interested) to be "too many words spent on _____," which is something I feel, too. But not "overanalyzing" as "looking too much into" or "seeing things that just aren't there." In which case (again) I think it probably is just a matter of some people really not finding it -- the music or the discussion, not necessarily both -- that interesting.

Something I feel not in relation to teenpop, but probably other bands.

>what is it that we're supposed to be "falling for" here?

My question as well. And what is her drama? Musically, personally, or even meta? Where's the friction or arc?

(I still haven't had a chance to relisten to this yet but I wanted to give a hearty "THANK YOU" to both sides of this debate for talking to each other rather than yelling at/making fun of each other.)

"btw i liked 'lala' lol but i have no problem with a token interest in teenpop, its this analyzing of the persona that is bizarre to me, like wtf guys - why does this have so much meaning for you???? i really dont get it!"

I think this is perhaps the core of the debate here. Deej I'm also thinking I've probably given the impression I like Ashlee etc. purely for obscure rock crit reasons which really isn't true. My point in raising that angle was more to say that it'd be disingenuous for me to complain about arguments like these because on some level they do heighten my enjoyment.

But in that case why/how do I like Ashlee?

I remember when I first read Frank on Ashlee (comparing to Bob Dylan etc.) and I thought "okay, but why would I want to think of pop in terms of Bob Dylan? I've had long arguments defending my right not to have to think of music in terms of Bob Dylan!" (At this stage I hadn't heard anything bar "Pieces of Me" (which I disliked and still don't love) many times, "La la" once (no opinion) and "Girlfriend" which I thought was an ace pop tune)

On the other hand, thinking in terms of persona was something I was already doing heaps for pop music. I had, without really thinking about it, constructed quite elaborate ideas about Teedra Moses, for example, and my conception of her was influenced by her melodies, her lyrics, her voice, the whole package coming together. This is an interesting sidepoint: many people who say "how can you take teenpop so seriously?" have no problem with taking R&B seriously, even though often the lyrics in R&B are, generally speaking, more rudimentary, infantile etc. This is not true for Teedra obv! But anyway, if at any formal level I had decided that pop should be embraced for its ephemerality, this wasn't the only way I was relating to it in practice.

For me not all or even most teenpop would merit this. The Veronicas' "Untouched" is some days my favourite single of 2008 (I really wish anything else on their second album hit me nearly so hard) but I have zero interest in, um, the psychic life of The Veronicas. There the enjoyment is purely functional: the 1987 string riffs, the warpdrive surge, the harmonies, the sheer perfection of the chorus which strike me as having the same rising-tension-inevitability as ABBA's "Mamma Mia", but better...

Whereas when I listened to Ashlee's I Am Me, I found that the lyrics that kept catching my ear as much as the hooks, and the way that Ashlee sung them seemed U&K to my enjoyment. But this wasn't reminding me of enjoying teenpop as a teenager so much as enjoying Hole's Celebrity Skin or Ani DiFranco's Not A Pretty Girl as a teenager - records that were immensely important to me in terms of the image of the persona they evoked, records that seemed to warrant endless over-analysis. Even still, if I listen to those records what comes through very strongly for me is a sense of who the performer is, I recognize them as comrades in my past struggle for adolescent autonomy.

So yeah, Ashlee did remind me of a period of my own adolescence (only about 9-11 years ago though), but not in the sense of being innocent; rather, she hooked in to that sense of disenchantment which is so stereotypically adolescent - that desire for musical artists who will be honest with you and "tell it like it is" because you sense the world has offered you candy-coated lies (of course such things always seem a bit silly in retrospect). So yeah, much of it has to do with nostalgia, and remembering the dark thoughts of my 14-16 year old self (okay so this is relative - I probably remained a boringly pleasant teenager even throughout this period), and liking how neatly Ashlee can articulate these same dark thoughts within the framework of what are in many ways quite generic pop-rock songs. Where the "teenpop" bit becomes relevant is that Ashlee not only speaks to my adolescent-self (as DiFranco and Love did) but does so from the apparent perspective of adolescence.

The drawback of Bittersweet World for me is its inability to serve this role for most of its songs.

I still can't cosign Frank's specific statements about Ashlee - I don't hear the connection with Bob that he heard, although perhaps this is more because Bob is a fairly peripheral figure in my music taste. More relevantly, Frank might pick out lyrics of Ashlee's for discussion that strike me as less interesting or notable than others. But this should hardly be surprising - he's coming to this music from a different perspective (most fundamentally, and I stressed this on the Hillary Duff thread too, I cannot talk about my enjoyment of any of this stuff without some acknowledgment of the way it's shaped by my experience of being gay -but then, this applies for Hole and Ani DiFranco as well).

Even when I think a particular line is really ace in context, I can see how it would appear unworthy of much discussion when quoted in isolation on an internet music board. What's behind this though is the difference in impact of a particular lyric when you've already been won over by the singer's persona - and this difference is applicable to any other music but especially any kind of confessional pop-rock, of which Ashlee formed a teenpop variant. So I could quote an Ani DiFranco lyric that was really importantly - say, this one from "Light of Some Kind":

in the end the world comes down to just a few people
but for you it comes down to one
but no one ever asked me if i thought i could be
everything to someone
there's a crowd of people harboured in every person
there are so many roles that we play
and you've decided to love me for eternity
i'm still deciding who i want to be today

... and tell you how at the time this seemed to sum up something really integral to me about the relationship between fidelity, promiscuity and self-identity. And your most likely response is to go "WTF?" because a) you're not in a position to know or care why the relationship between these things might have been important to me, and b) the lyrics can only carry that weight of revelation in the context of the persona constructed over the course of an entire album if not several albums.

Perhaps intense over-analysis of Ashlee is attractive to me because I didn't have anyone to do this with w/r/t the music I was listening to at 14-16 so it was all in my head. There was an awful army cadets camp I had to go on at 14 that I think I only survived by reciting the songs from Joni Mitchell's Hejira in my head and trying to puzzle out their meaning, and wishing I knew someone who cared about this stuff*... Needless to say a very different kind of rock crit to the kind of thing I mostly do now.

*Ironically, several of my friends, gay and otherwise, would happily have over-analysed Celine Dion or Spice Girls ballads with me. It was the confessional stuff that I had no-one had to talk about with.

The main reason I was unable to keep up with the teenpop threads was that for me Ashlee (and specifically I Am Me) was the only time that I had this kind of relationship to that kind of music. Although I can still love, say, "Untouched" in a rather different way.

In certain ways it's hard not to engage in some kind of "over"-analysis of Ashlee's persona (in particular) just because she had a whole TV show about her in addition to her intensely confessional lyrics... the way she is presented and read (which is to say as a whole package, personality, music and lyrics combined) means that if you want to be serious about "reading" Ashlee's music you sort of have to read "Ashlee" too.

Personal doesn't necessarily sync up with musical or meta: personally (according to her reality show) she wanted to sound like Courtney Love without actually being very fucked up (tho who knows how fucked up she might be in her brain), fears that she's going to be turned into a "pop starlet" in sound ("I do NOT want to sound like Hilary Duff!").

Musically it's precocious twentysomething blues -- she'll tell you everything about herself if you ask her, playing on the archetype of someone who seems to keep getting screwed and realizing at some point that maybe the problem is her (not unlike Liz Phair). Except she keeps answering the "who are you" question a little differently and frankly she's (rightfully) terrified no one's going to want her no matter what she says or does (parents -- says she's over it now, but I don't believe her -- boyfriends, basically anyone and everyone) (last line on "Autobiography" is "don't walk away," which she howls as her voice all but gives out).

Meta: she was RIGHT, no one really "wants" her. Comparing her albums is interesting because her first two were reasonably popular while being more direct and more honest(-seeming), but her audience was always ambiguous and a lot of people, many outside her audience, were ready to turn on her as soon as she publicly fucked up (I'm not convinced there's any great reason for it either, and I honestly wonder what her career would have been like without the SNL/Orange Bowl mistakes). Which she did, bigtime (and they politely gloss over both incidents on her show -- the latter of which is like the ending in that Monty Python "Bicycle Tour" episode, where they just insert a "scene missing" and the crisis has been miraculously solved).

So on this album, she's clearly trying something else, because being "herself" (in her music, which again, may not sync up with her personal life) isn't getting her anywhere anymore. Can't read too much into the personal stuff, but as I said, there's a difference in tone between the first and second season of her show, and since then she's been extra extra extra careful about how she's being perceived in public.

I relate to her ambivalence a lot, and I think about it a lot. She nails details -- she uses coffee and toothpaste and her hair not doing what she wants it to without seeming like she's bound for Starbucks and without being even remotely smug or blind-to-privilege (in fact she's got anxieties about that too: "I've got more than anyone should") about it. She reminds me of me more than people who are probably a lot more like me.

xpost, I agree with Tim's points about the Veronicas. I don't think the range of artists that garnered this many words really delving into the music was that big, and almost all of it was in the confessional field.

xp to myself--In other words it's unfair to your own critical project to separate out the music and restrict your analysis to that when its so clearly and obviously predicated on a persona or a set of personas (this is one place where the Dylan comparison almost makes sense to me).

(this is in response to deej's question about the analysis of the persona btw)

*There's a lot more to the show than just what she wanted to sound like, but it's hard to read into the more personal stuff with the cameras on, and frankly I judge it more for context, in the same way that I might want to know about a writer or a filmmaker personally -- which doesn't always translate back to the work. I can't stand a lot of writers/filmmakers whose work I like, though, and I've rarely found anyone who syncs up personally with what I want them to sync up with in their art.

nah i agree w/ that max, i use that approach in R&B; i just wasnt getting what was particularly interesting about her persona. or the personas of other teenpop stars; there are a few reasons i dont hang out with teenagers irl as a general rule, so why would i want to hang out with this one?

cause shes married to pete wentz?

anyway good post tim, i can see where you're coming from with that and it does explain to me where people are connecting to this music at some level.

cause shes married to pete wentz?

-- max, Friday, May 30, 2008 11:15 AM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

haha. i just spent an hour and a half commute looking at his face on an advertisement on the el :-/

Ashlee was 19 when her first album came out. Which is to say, she's exactly my age, and by 19 I definitely wasn't thinking of myself as a "teenager." Why shouldn't I be relating to her expression of her problems? To me it's not a world apart from "Now I'm gonna be 22, oh my and boo hoo."

er, "I say oh my and boo hoo."

now who's bringing in the author into it

?

her age reflects on her persona only in as much as we can see it, right?

xp Strangely, I know almost nothing about Ashlee's non-recorded persona beyond what I've overseen in the line at the grocery store when she's on tabloids behind the counter (have never watched her TV show, for instance) or when I see a headline on the lead yahoo page about her marriage to some pop-punk dork I otherwise ignore, and that hasn't made me enjoy her albums any less. Not saying my listening might not be enriched somehow if I did watch the TV show, but I don't see why that would be a necessity -- just as likely, it would cloud my judgement about the music. (Pretty sure I don't base what I think about Dylan's music on his persona either. Or R. Kelly's, or whoever. So Max and I disagree here.)

Also don't generally base my opinions about people's music about whether I'd want to hang out with them. (Soulja Boy, who actually is a teenager last time I checked, would be kind of annoying in person, I bet. Though possibly fun to watch from a distance.)

"the psychic life oF The Veronicas" Great phrase; shoulda been the CD's title.

But I disagree that there's none of that present. What I'm loving about the CD--aside from the delirious musical invention and sheer near-psychotic drive/tempo-- is how it is almost entirely about the way vulnerability leads to rage and humiliation when in contact with dubious humans. Even the seemingly sex-positive, bisexual boasts of "Take Me on the Floor" sound sad because they're so desperate. The effect is aggregate, as opposed to one signifying song. (If there's a *creepier* sound on a record this year than the Cranes-like "da-da-das" on "Take Me", I might not want to hear it.

But mainly, it's about anger, female anger in obvious particular, which is usually presented possibly unrealistic, maybe even anti-realistic modes of defiance--I'm thinking everything P!nk does (and I love her) or Angela Gossow does in Arch Enemy (and I love them too.)

But The Veronicas, no pun intended, are just fucked. By guys, by their desires, by realizing how little they can actually implement on their own (ironic in a Max Martin-free CD so self-created.)

Anyway, that's a whole lotta psychic life by my lights.

In comparison, Ashlee almost feels like a distanced commentator.

Yeah Deej I really didn't get the appeal of Ashlee's persona from the singles either (in fact I remember despising the video clip for "Pieces of Me" and thinking she seemed quite contrived. In relation to this remind me to reprise at some stage my theory about how being won over by chartpop is like a magic trick in reverse). And I don't even really get it from the first album. Although that's Frank's favourite.

Basically for me it all comes down to "Dancing Alone", "Coming Back For Me", "Eyes Wide Open", "I Am Me" and "Say Goodbye".

Although I like "Girlfriend" and "Burning Up" and "L.O.V.E." heaps, and in fact more than some of those songs, it's those songs which establish Ashlee's persona for me. It's not a very teenage persona from my perspective - or rather, when I was a teenager it was that aspect of adolescence that felt most removed from "hanging out with teenagers".

Arguably the album is expressive of the adolescent experience in the same way that Buffy was at its most serious - that is, these are adult experiences we're dealing with, but they gain their specific force from being presented as being experienced for the first time by people perhaps not ready to deal with them. Thus the importance of adolescence as a setting is more as a plot contrivance - it allows the experience of (say) being rejected by the guy you're totally obsessed with to be presented legitimately as life'n'death stuff.

xxp I don't think we necessarily disagree--deej was asking why there's so much analysis of her persona; I was just saying that with a confessional artist like Ashlee, you sort of have to deal with persona, and then there's the further point with Ashlee in particular that if you watched MTV (or really any TV) in 2004 her persona was crammed down your throat. So that in the end it's maybe more difficult to not analyze her persona at all rather than to over-analyze it. I'm agnostic on the question of whether or not it enriches someone's listening of the music (though I'd argue that it probably enriches someone's reading or interpretation of the music).

her age reflects on her persona only in as much as we can see it, right?

Well I'm mostly arguing that that's what's in her music. (And all of this is relative to who's doing it anyway -- Be Your Own Pet sound like they're trying to sound younger than they are on their new album, and it annoys the shit out of me in that case.) The "she was 19" comment was in response to "why should I care about this teenager" -- she's not a teenager, and she doesn't really sound like one. But I guess this isn't the point to be arguing with.

xpost

Thus the importance of adolescence as a setting is more as a plot contrivance - it allows the experience of (say) being rejected by the guy you're totally obsessed with to be presented legitimately as life'n'death stuff

"tell me how i'm supposed to breathe with no air" to thread

I'm thinking everything P!nk does (and I love her)

Interesting to bring Pink in again, because what I love about Ashlee is that she does this stuff without it being What She Does. Pink by contrast seems really shticky to me, and the Veronicas (even on their second album) are practically cartoons.

"Family Portrait" versus "Shadow," "Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)" versus "Love Me for Me," "Who Knew" versus "Say Goodbye."

To Lex: Yeah totally - R&B is doing the same things as teenpop does a lot of the time! And I half-wonder why it is that "we" (as a culture) seem to feel this compulsion to distinguish ourselves from the perceived self-obsessed materialistic immaturity of teenpop singers but don't feel the same compulsion w/r/t, say, Rihanna. I mean, yr Alex in NYCs will still dismiss Rihanna as trash, but they won't feel the same need to take her down on a personal level. Yes there's a narcissism of small differences thing at work (Ashlee encroaches on Alex's musical territory more than Rihanna does) but it's interesting how the adolescence of teenpop sticks in people's throats whereas the adolescence of R&B does not.

Hmm Mr Grey you've convinced me to pull out the 2nd Veronicas album again and have another listen. However I should note that I wouldn't deny that there is psychic life there, but rather note that my enjoyment hasn't been routed through it. The whole twins singing in tandem thing doesn't help here - I don't think there's been a successful pop act since perhaps DREAM who have played up the "manufactured" in "manufactured pop" so much while simultaneously writing serious pop songs. NB 1. I love the whole twins singing in tandem thing. NB 2. I still have to investigate Danity Kane.

(Don't mean cartoon purely in the pejorative, of course, but something about them being twins makes them...I dunno, more abstract than Ashlee seems on her first two albums. And Ashlee seems more abstract to me on "I Am Me" than on "Autobiography." And she's trying to be a cartoon on her new one.)

xpost Tim, you definitely need to hear Danity Kane's new album, but you won't find much personality. Possibly a function of having so many people singing the same thing/"being the same person"!

t.A.T.u. has the exact same problem, actually, but I generally like 'em more than the Veronicas.

I think P!nk is *using* schtick for her own purposes, which I think is smart, but then again, P!nk *is* really, really smart.

It's interesting to think about how, when females express anger, it seems to come off as cartoonish. I can totally see this with Angela Gossow, whose cookie monster IS schtick (does that make it less valid?) If I use the argument that it's incredibly calculated--as all things super-pop must be--then I can apply it to The Veronicas (which won't effect the way it effects me.)

It's a weird, under-explored, the femme rage-expression continuum. And not to labor the stupidly obvious, but few mull over punk rock male rage.

Then again, you have The Birthday Massacre, where the anger is *totally* cartoonish and therefore not effective unless you're a 16 year old goth girl. But I think that might have to do more with the narrowcasting of niche genres.

part of the R&B/teenpop split might be related to teenpop not being a genre (any more than 'pop' is a genre i mean), no real stylistic requirements, since an age group can have as broad a base of genres as is possible - i mean there is 'teen pop' that is R&B, hip hop, etc. I think ppl probably feel pretty weird about grouping their music in such extra-musical terms as target audience

im comfortable/conversant in R&B as discourse since i grew up w/ people who had established a pretty diverse, contradictory and nuanced view of it, from 'classics' to 'old school' to 'grown folks' to radio hits to whatever else, the groundwork for discourse is already there. Teenpop threads are trying to expand discourse that doesnt really exist outside of a certain age group and a few disney board rooms (as far as im aware)

btw this post was just thinking aloud, i havent really thought this through but it seems mostly true

No, it's not cartoonish in the anger they're expressing. Ashlee is great at expressing anger without being a cartoon (and being a cartoon, like in "Love Me for Me.") It's cartoonish because the conceit is fundamentally silly to me -- I LIKE it, but I can't parse a distinctive personality in it. Although it worked for M2M, so again these aren't "rules" or anything.

t.A.T.u.'s drama is writ huge both in over-text and musical terms.

With "All About Us", it's the drama of the story of the girls (supposedly) reclaiming their agency from slimy Russian svengalis, of declaring their radical allegiance to one another in a non-hawt-lesbian way.

Musically, it's these teensy girl voices up against the monolithic power chords and orchestral samples--it's like, epic, heroic even.

The Veronicas are more, er, subtle?

Why are calling Jordin Sparks R&B?

did dream have any other songs apart from 'he loves u not'?? that was amazing. though it's probably the most high-school song out of anything being discussed.

the vocal production on the new danity kane album is quite something.

erm i think a big sticking point for teenpop detractors might be that they think ashlee et al are like 16 or something? so many of the points made are like, oh, how can you make this music sung by children for children? when it's really music sung by someone the same age as me and consumed by, er, pretty much no one. (anyone doesn't everyone like soulja boy? isn't that so much more "grown men listening to music that is listened to pretty much exclusively by pre teens"??)

i liked yr post about why you like ashlee tim but at this point this thread is basically reprising the hilary humbert thread, at the time i remember thinking "is anyone actually reading here", and what i mean to say is that i really can't take the ashlee detractors seriously until they've given an indication that they've bothered listening to her music beyond half-hearing 'outta my head' once in the shop. i really want to talk about bittersweet world cuz the poptimists discussion seems to have come to a close but i'm not interested in defending why i want to talk about it yet again. go re-read hilary humbert, people.

(nb: i think it's my favourite of her albums)

My first thought about Ashlee's anger portrayal and The Veronicas is based on, again, the way my ears hear their respective vulnerability.

I mean, even when Ashlee is pissed, I have no doubt she'll overcome whatever. And so, for me, not much drama.

The Veronicas, to my ears, sound on this record like they're perpetually on the verge of seriously losing their shit, which could be viewed as either cartoonish or, to me, very dramatic.

"Why are calling Jordin Sparks R&B?"

Well isn't it Chris Brown singing the line Lex quoted? Or is that Jordin gettin' low? I've only heard it on radio.

"did dream have any other songs apart from 'he loves u not'?? that was amazing. though it's probably the most high-school song out of anything being discussed."

"This Is Me". Or was is "That Was Her, This Is Me"? Either way Lex u must hear this. Also I loved their whole Sabrina the Teenage Witch - IN SPACE! visual aesthetic.

Lex - Dream had one other song I can think of...'This is Me', perhaps? And then Puff Daddy stopped having sex with one of them and they disappeared.

While the contrast being set up between engagement with R&B and teenpop is certainly interesting, I'm still trying to figure out why we're classifying Ashlee as teenpop. She's not really part of High School Musical, Aly & AJ, Jonas Brothers, etc. and that ilk. I guess you could link her to Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan, but they were both pitched initially at the Disney etc. audience and crossed over into the mainstream, if I'm not mistaken. Ashlee was always firmly pitched at Top 40 radio play.

"i liked yr post about why you like ashlee tim but at this point this thread is basically reprising the hilary humbert thread, at the time i remember thinking "is anyone actually reading here", and what i mean to say is that i really can't take the ashlee detractors seriously until they've given an indication that they've bothered listening to her music beyond half-hearing 'outta my head' once in the shop. i really want to talk about bittersweet world cuz the poptimists discussion seems to have come to a close but i'm not interested in defending why i want to talk about it yet again. go re-read hilary humbert, people."

Yeah I hear you on this Lex. I'm only going through this defence insofar as I was thinking about that stuff again today anyway. Happy to talk about Bittersweet World itself - but should go listen to it again first!

Okay it's 3am here what the fuck am I still doing up. Bedtime.

Anyway, Lex. There's no reason we can't simultaneously have the meta-why-Ashlee? conversation and the actual Bittersweet World conversation.

(nb: i think it's my favourite of her albums)

Why? Is it purely a sonic thing? Has the abandonment of the guitar aesthetic made the sound more palatable or is it something more specific? Because, while I think it's more consistent than I Am Me wrt number of good/great songs, it pales in comparison to Autobiography. While in part that's because I personally dig the Courtney-gone-pop sound, it's also there are too many moments on the album that don't click.

Ironically, those tend to be when Ashlee tries to approximate her old sound - What I've Become, Never Dream Alone, etc. Little Miss Obsessive is the only one that really seems to capture that aspect of her on this album.

I mean, even when Ashlee is pissed, I have no doubt she'll overcome whatever.

Ha, you have more faith in Ashlee than I do (and more than Ashlee seems to!). I think this is where Bittersweet World becomes interesting for me -- with the Veronicas, I can sort of "hear them" about to go backstage and scrub off the make-up. Whereas Ashlee didn't do make-up-scrubbing until recently and it's interesting to figure out where she succeeds and where she doesn't.

Heh. See, *I* hear The Veronicas going off stage a swallowing handfuls of Xanex!

er, "and" for "a"

I still don't really like Ashlee, but I think teenpop has at least become a pretty concrete genre, complete with stylistic changes. Around the turn of the century it was bright Swedish pop, then it became "Since U Been Gone" pop-punk stuff, and now it's morphing into darker electropop a la Aly & AJ and whatever that Hannah Montana hit is called. This is a distinct thread that broke off from mainstream pop and has its own stars and discourses, but there's also a clear thread uniting all those stylistic changes, and they make a certain amount of sense in context. That in and of itself is pretty interesting.

That was an xpost to deej's "part of the R&B/teenpop split might be related to teenpop not being a genre" btw. And teenpop is a really important genre to a certain age demographic.

(Which I know in part because many of the people in my program--all of them girls btw--are studying the media use of kids and adolescents. One girl is doing her thesis on how Hannah Montana is a bad influence, sigh.)

ppl probably feel pretty weird about grouping their music in such extra-musical terms as target audience

Er, isn't that how most people group music? (I'm not saying they should categorize music that way -- and I'm not agreeing that that's what teenpop fans on ILM do, either -- but it's hardly uncommon, and hardly specific to any one genre.)

Also, if anything, it seems like most of the Ashlee fans on this thread are saying she isn't teenpop (of if she is, she's other genres as well).

"xp yeah but the "why are we persecuted??" stuff from grown men listening to music that is listened to pretty much exclusively by pre teens"

This really isn't the case though. The vast majority of Ashlee listeners are not preteens (I doubt my nieces even know who she is). Preteen music listeners are a VERY refined and unusual niche. I imagine that the only Rolling Teenpop-discussed music that they listen to is Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers. And over the course of the past year, "See You Again" has attained mainstream radio play outside of Disney Radio. So grown men have heard plenty of Hannah Montana at this point.

The biggest thing that frustrated me about the response to the teenpop thread was that most of the time we were discussing music that either wasn't targeted to kids at all (Ashlee, Clarkson, Duff's last record), or was ignored by them (Tisdale, Pruitt). And most of the artists we discussed were in their 20s or older.

So when you realize that the material being discussed isn't really different from the pop music which has always appealed to teenagers and adults alike, from Elvis to the Beatles to Madonna, you start to wonder why the response to discussions of it is so vitriolic.

Oh hey, getting back on BW for a second, I might have missed it above...but Tim, when you listen again I'm interested in your thoughts on "Never Dream Alone," which to me is this weirdly calculated approximation of an "Ashlee-type closing ballad" (other two albs the closing ballads are "Undiscovered" and "Say Goodbye," two of my favorite songs by her) that doesn't really hit me. (But it also seems more indebted to a kind of theatricality -- musical theater-based sincerity, or something, which I tend to be hugely skeptical of for some reason -- that rarely speaks to me.) A few other people, Greg for instance, are really moved by it, but I'm still not hearing it.

Actually, I can imagine how Hannah might be a bad influence but prolly not as that girl did

That is, when you contrast Hannah's sheer peppiness and can-do against life on earth, I'd imagine the negative friction might really grate on actual teens.

Sure, you had a similar perky thing with The Beatles, but there was also a healthy cynicism.

My niece, who's 14 HATES Hannah for essentially these exact reasons. No surprise, she favors Marilyn Manson. MCR and the like.

Yeah, according to my cousin, 13-year-olds listen to a LOT OF EMO. Which is NOT POP (but for some reason you're also not allowed to call it "emo"). When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came on, I asked her if it was pop. She couldn't believe I'd asked, and then her brother, a few years younger, said "It's heavy metal! Gawd..."). By liking the teenpop stuff as discussed on ILM, I am quite out of touch with the vast majority of its assumed target audience.

My niece, who's 14 HATES Hannah for essentially these exact reasons. No surprise, she favors Marilyn Manson. MCR and the like.

One of the things I've learned from the other folks in my program is that kids generally like watching/listening to people 3-4 years older than them, because they identify with a slightly older age group than they themselves are in. If you're actually Hannah Montana's age, she seems immature. She's actually targeted at tweens and even pre-tweens, apparently.

I think what's interesting about the changing sound of teenpop is that it tracks larger stylistic changes in pop culture--so teenpop sounded like pop-punk when being a rockstar was a cool thing for tweens to want to be. I don't know quite where to put the dark electropop--maybe it has something to do with Rihanna? Or they caught on to the new romantic revival 7 years late? Maybe the ice princess thing is in now.

I'm waiting for a Disney-friendly version of The Knife.

I mean, yr Alex in NYCs will still dismiss Rihanna as trash,

Please don't speak for me. I like a bit of Rihanna's music.

Ashlee, meanwhile, is, was and e'er shall be: crap.

I don't know quite where to put the dark electropop

Make plenty of room for randomness, too, with lots of artists "experimenting" in this direction with very different co-writers: Vanessa Hudgens on a bonus cut on her first album, Veronicas on their album (which makes more sense -- I mean they co-wrote a t.a.t.u. song and obviously understand the similarities), even someone like Katy Rose releasing a one-off that she apparently recorded several years before.

Also with R&B tending more in this direction anyway, and obviously informing (and more often than not "counting as" itself) the teenpop stuff, too.

Also, my teenpop albums of the year so far (fwiw) are Ashlee's, Lil' Mama's, and Dolly Parton's. And Taylor Swift's Live from Soho EP if it counts. If that says anything about where it's at generally, I dunno. I have a hard time believing Cassie's new album won't be good, since her last one is probably my favorite overlooked-at-the-time album of...probably the decade, but definitely the last couple of years. I feel like September and Taio Cruz should both sort of count, too. (Most of these aren't in the running for top 5.)

</unsolicited opinion>

Yeah, sorry for being a dick, Brainwasher. I have my own thoughts to post, but i'm going to sift through these others first.

I haven't heard the whole album but I just watched the "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)" video. It's a cool video but I don't think that song works for her voice at all; I spent the entire time wishing Gwen Stefani was singing it instead. I can't buy into the song given the way she sings it. I think one reason why this whole false sense of innocence thing kept coming up with respect to Ashlee upthread is because to some people she sounds like she doesn't actually understand or feel the emotions behind some of her songs, like a relatively happy, well-adjusted person play-acting at being mad.

Conversely, this faux-naif musical style works really well on songs like "Pieces of Me" or "L.O.V.E.", or songs like the snippet of "Boys" on the Amazon.com site.

Do you feel the same way about I Am Me? I think she sounds pretty legitimately spiteful in that one. "Pieces of Me" is a little faux-naif, but it's "faux" in relation to the rest of the stuff on that album, I think. And even that song is more complicated than it seems at first...for one thing "pieces of me" is both shorthand for "I'm complicated" (very Avril, whatever) but also about what happens when you hit the bottom crash and break into a thousand pieces. Which means she's still broken. And he doesn't fix the pieces -- she's just happy she has more than nothing, which is also the premise of similarly lilty and blink-and-you-missed it profound track "Better Off." I think that's the sentiment that you'll never get in Avril or most of her derivatives -- a sense of resigned joy at the thought that things aren't worse. (That isn't something that screams "teenager" to me, in fact think a lot of adults have trouble really capturing that feeling, and I think it's a common thread through a lot of Ashlee's songs.)

I think "Outta My Head" worked like this for me: (1) kind of hate it, not understand it. "Faux-naif" is fairly accurate. (2) Try to sync it up with what I already understand about Ashlee's music, and finding no real precedents for it ("L.O.V.E." is supposed to be silly and doesn't have any cartoonish angry stuff in it, "Boyfriend" more rock) decide that she's doing something intentionally weird, not sure what, but whatever, it's catchy. (3) Realize, after liking the song's catchiness, that she's doing old and new style simultaneously, and still pulling it off (don't think any of the other songs on the album can claim this). I can imagine a point where you stop at (1) or (2), moreso than (3) which is, for lack of a better word, a generous way of listening to it. (I don't think it's reading too much into it, but I also admit I don't expect very many people to read that far "in.")

Simpson's ideal for "Outta My Head"! If she has influences on this track, it's Lene Lovich and Terry Bozzio; she wastes no time on the Gwen Stefani comparisons. For one, she's realer than Stefani: the husk and faint, grainy quality in her voice help immeasurably. She and her producers do an expert job of simulating frustration. The track is simultaneously clipped and expansive.

If she has influences on this track, it's Lene Lovich

Yeah, like Ashlee's EVER FUCKING HEARD of Lene Lovich. Be real please.

you've asked her?

Betcha a hundred dollars she hasn't.

Influence has little to do with whether an artist has heard or read about her forebears.

how can you be influenced by something you don't know exists

It's as vague as something in the air. Or the source material gets appropriated so often that you may not be able to locate it (since it's Bo Diddley day, I'd be really surprised if Anabella and the other members of Bow Wow Wow studied their old Bo 45's to record their "I Want Candy" cover). It's genes! In the same way that, somehow, you have your Great-Great Aunt Susan's nose even though she's been dead 20 years and you've never met her. I could cite Harold Bloom's theories on the anxiety of influence, but that'll take too long...

Anyway, those of us who write or record music know this -- how many times will someone say "This bit reminds me of Richard Yates" or "This first-person monologue sounds like Proust" even though you've never read the bloody writers.

*write fiction

"Intentionality" is mostly jive. Just cuz an artist SAYS she listened to so-and-so doesn't mean it's there either. But it can be! At any rate, I don't see how this discounts the possibility that Simpson conjures Lene Lovich.

I wouldn't use the word "influence" - that referes to a very particular relationship between the artist and his/her 'forebears'. Just because you read something and that "How Proustian!" doesn't mean that that person is "influenced" by Proust.

and think***

But the only way to determine "influence" is to see the forebear's referents in your work. If Simpson sounds like Lovich, then she must be influenced by her; any hesitation to acknowledge this reality sounds like condescension ("what can this dumb chick know about Lene Lovich?")

Nice floundering.

It's not like Lene Lovich is particularly well-known name. Hell, Avril didn't know who Bowie was. Ya think Ashlee's brighter than her? I don't.

Now if you want to make the argument about whether or not Ashlee's producer has heard of Lovich, that's a different matter entirely.

You must see her on the Upper East Side fairly often if you're that familiar with her iPod selections.

Now if you want to make the argument about whether or not Ashlee's producer has heard of Lovich, that's a different matter entirely

What difference does it make? She essays Lovich, and succeeds. Plus, she's credited as a songwriter.

(xp) Well no, I totally disagree. Just because you hear Lene Lovich doesn't mean that it's there in her work, you're coming at it from a totally different POV. And oftentimes an artist's influences don't manifest themselves in such obvious ways... It can be an approach toward making music/writing rather than stylistic or aesthetic similarities...

(I've never heard of Lene Lovich so I can't say whether or not Ashlee sounds like her or whatever, I'm just talking about this idea of "influence" in general)

Just because you hear Lene Lovich doesn't mean that it's there in her work,

Well, now we're entering into the realm of subjectivity, which is alright with me.

xp I have no idea whether Ashlee is "influenced" by Lovich, and yeah, I don't see why that would matter. She sounds like Lovich sometimes, regardless. Maybe she's influenced by music that was, in turn, directly influenced by Lovich. Or maybe she and Lovich share similar direct influences, and use them in similar ways. Who knows. But she's got Lovichy moments either way, so it's a moot point, right?

Maybe she's influenced by music that was, in turn, directly influenced by Lovich

This is probably the closest we've come to the mark here. Thanks, Chuck.

Incidentally, if Ashlee's music is even a tenth as compelling as Lovich's, I feel compelled to give it a listen. I have my doubts.

Well, it is at least a tenth as compelling as Nina Hagen's, if that counts.

(Actually, she's better than Nina Hagen.)

As for Lene, I don't think I like anything on the new Ashlee album as much as "Lucky Number," but I definitely like a couple songs as much as "New Toy."

"Incidentally, if Ashlee's music is even a tenth as compelling as Lovich's, I feel compelled to give it a listen. I have my doubts."

Wow. So this whole time you've been excoriating Ashlee, you hadn't even listened to her music?

I think Lovich sorta creted template for amorphously arty New Wave singing that influenced everyone from Aimee Mann with Til Tuesday to [insert electroclash femme here.]

So it might be influence by second hand osmosis.

er--"created". I've no idea what she 'creted'.

I've realised what prevents me from loving this album is almost solely the airbrushing on the vocals (simultaneously multitracked and fainter). Ashlee's voice on the first two albums is so strong that it lifts up even the weaker tracks; whereas here some tracks that would be emotional powerhouses using her old style now feel too controlled and manicured.

Still don't like "Hot Stuff" though!

Dabug, I really like "Never Dream Alone", though again it would be stronger if the vocals weren't so honeyed. It's just odd enough that it doesn't feel calculated except structurally (i.e. "we need a ballad to close out the album").

Wow. So this whole time you've been excoriating Ashlee, you hadn't even listened to her music?

I've heard her previous attempts, I've just not heard the new one.

And normally, I'd rather stick an angry fiddler crap in each ear than subject myself to the worthless poopy-pop product that gets stamped with her name. But invoke Lene Lovich and I feel obligated to hear it.

Your cunning plan is working, guys!

I hear that scat porn has a lot of Lene Lovich influence.

stick an angry fiddler crap in each ear

Alex, honestly, this sounds really painful.

>I've realised what prevents me from loving this album is almost solely the airbrushing on the vocals (simultaneously multitracked and fainter).

OTM. The other CD it was real audio spectacle the way her voice consumed the pop metal track meat, like serious confessional carnivore shit.

Now they've sort of gouged away the midrange where her personality lives in favor of pimping and compressing the really high end where dogs listen to things. If she couldn't sing, okay, but.

It's the total opposite with the Veronicas CD.

True - even when they're both singing today their particular inflections and tone-of-voice (singular) are really clear.

both singing together even.

"Resigned joy" isn't what I'm going for above. It's something more like "joy in the face of disaster." Manages to feel the disaster without losing the joy. In contrast, Marit Larsen is disaster in the face of joy -- some seriously intense self-loathing going on beneath the carnival. (Ashlee's new carnival is joyous in its own way, but there's not much disaster in it -- though there's a healthy dose of trainwreck.)

Her position seemed to be: "My life is fucked up, but this is to be expected and it's preferable to the kind of shallowness I would need to adopt in order not to be fucked up."

(part of the relative weakness of "Beautifully Broken" was that it was a bit too straightforward in this regard - show don't tell, Ashlee!)

Sorry if this has already been covered, but i don't have time to keep going through posts...

i dont think brainwasher's point was that ashlee's opinion of what the music is about matters as far as authorial intent, it was an attempt (right or wrongheaded) to give some perspective, to say that sometimes the point of a song is to be fun and brainless. i dont like analyzing shit sometimes - i dont spend hours writing up essays on why 'say yeah' by wiz khalifa is fun, or what his audience thinks about it, its just FUN. Like, in my writing i want to be balancing the emotional, overall impact w/ some intricate nerdery but here it seems like its just all this weird left brained mega-male analysis without any perspective on PURPOSE. Not neccessarily authorial purpose, but purpose as perceived by the listener

What do you mean by "I don't spend hours writing up essays on why [x song] is fun"? Are you saying that ilx pop critics spend too much time trying to discover what aspect of a song causes feel+ings of joy? Or that they become too invested in the lives of the artists, trying to connect fun/sad/x emotion songs to the fun/sad/x emotion events happening in the actual lives of the performer (often incorrectly using lyrics as a source when those words could very well fictional, not to mention written by another person)?

If you're referring to the first possibility, I agree, if that actually happens. I'm not a huge fan of in-depth music analysis, esp. when it comes to dissecting a song (that's kinda like lit class, when you spend twenty minutes talking about a couplet). But if you're talking about that second possibility, I completely disagree w/ yr hate. Example:

By comparison, Nu-Ashlee makes more sense as a teenpop star. Which is probably (hopefully) good for her market share, and neither necessarily good nor necessarily bad for her music, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of frission generated by her former Courtney-Love-gone-pop strategy. Which is kind of unfair for Ashlee, but there you go. Still, I have to listen to this album a lot more before any of these reactions are anything more than provisional.

The question that raises seems super interesting to me. Why is she suddenly creating the music she was supposed to be making all along? Has she grown up? Does she now like Timbaland's sound, or was she driven by money? I think that it's wrong to look at this sort of thinking as music criticism. It's more like music journalism...Perhaps people rely on music too much when trying to discover the answer (to their credit, though, you can figure out some answers through music...for instance, I think it seems quite obvious when you listen to Justin Timberlake that he actually likes crafting amazing pop music...I hear the passion).

Instead of using music we could just, y'know, set up an interview and ask her. And again, to the credit of these people you're bashing, many of them do interview the pop stars they write about...Ultimately, to me, it's more of an interest in people than it is in music (though I...they...do enjoy the music, too, obv.)...And why these people instead of Craig Finn, Sufjan Stevens, et al? First off, we enjoy there music more. Second, I guess I think there are probably more layers to a pop singer who is sorta forced to live a fucked up life filled with paparazzi, stalkers, etc. than there are to an indie rocker who plays a show, gets in a bus, smokes pot, plays cards, checks his myspace, plays another show and goes to boring desk job.

Jesus, seems like you could dissect a lot from Outta My Head's really fucked up music video. Kinda caught off guard with all those references!

when will you lamers learn that it ain't about 'rockism'/'popism' blah bullshit zzz, it's about wanting to talk about a great album that people like. oh wvs, bye again, wasn't worth coming back for this at all.

-- lex pretend, Thursday, May 29, 2008 10:14 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

haha fucking golden: it was never about an insanely reductive and fatuous version of popism for lex.

Good lord that's awful.

why has h.k.m. come back to stalk me

fuck the lot of you stupid, stupid people

(nb: this is directed more at the stupid, stupid people across this godforsaken board than the people valiantly trying, and sadly failing, to keep this thread interesting)

why has h.k.m. come back to stalk me

o yes i 4got, fauiled meeja career :D

Awesome.

This thread has nearly made me listen to some Ashlee. Not quite but v nearly.

you can fuck off too, stupid person

I'm trying to be supportive!

i would have so much more respect for the snarky dumb people who seem to have like a MAGNETIC attraction to ashlee simpson if they, like, had the slightest idea of what she sounded like

i'm trying to be nice

i think we're both failing

d/ling now.

but yeah, this goes for MOST OF YOU: fuck off until you've listened to ashlee! maybe you can try 'little miss obsessive' cuz it has the best chorus i have heard in like six years or something. not that i am holding a candle for you to produce thoughts of consequence afterwards but we may as well give this a try eh

ok i will take the lex challenge

ftr i haven't heard an ashlee simpson song since "boyfriend", which iirc i thought was a pretty good franz ferdinand song

i think 'little miss obsessive' sounds like paramore ballad fronted by a worse singer but i like them a lot so that's not exactly a slight-- chorus is good tho

sounds like a paramore ballad

less arch than franz ferdinand and therefore a million times better. also, aimed at lindsay lohan!

key to genius of 'little miss obsessive' = KARAOKE POTENTIAL

i think paramore are nearly good but i don't like the singer, she sounds like a smug(ger) avril

also she has annoying hair

"outta my head" is genuinely awesome tho. sounds like pylon trying to go disco or something. she definitely can play with her voice (i listened to "boyfriend" again before these two and i didn't pick up on how good her verses were) so i thought the background vocals coming in on the chorus of "little miss obsessive" were kinda muddy. the space they give her on "outta my head" works in her favor imo

sounds like pylon

Cripes, can we please keep the freakin' blasphemy to a minimum?

alex listen to the song

glad you're still reading this thread tho. otoh i didn't read you as a masochist.

Really?

well yea maybe you're right eppy

An Ashlee fan sez:

It's not so much joy at the thought that things aren't worse, but joy at the fact that things are exactly as bad as they are. How many songs on Autobiography contain lists of negatives? At least four -- "Pieces of Me," "Better Off," "Love Me for Me," "Autobiography" -- and they're all celebratory. The negatives are precisely what make her worth loving, or what make the situation so great. She's not joyful in spite of them, she's joyful because of them.

she sounds like a smug(ger) avril

"Misery Business" is "Sk8er Boi" with no sense of humor instead of a bad one. Never really clicked with Paramore, but I do think that "Little Miss Obsessive" sounds kind of...not imitative, but weak, like an approximation of what an older Ashlee song might sound like. But the chorus is appropriately beat-you-over-the-head catchy even though the verses are kind of lame.

"Misery Business" is "Sk8er Boi" with no sense of humor instead of a bad one.

i don't think emo is supposed to be humorous so this seems like a weak critique of that song-- if you don't like the chorus or w/e or you think the singer is smug that's cool but judging emo bands or songs on their humor is probably like judging tacos by their sweetness or something

Some emo doesn't have a sense of humor, but a lot of it clearly does, I think (all of the pop emo at least tries for a sense of humor, and I think Paramore comes more from this line of it than the more intentionally humorless stuff) and I think Paramore specifically kind of wants both at the same time...Avril (to the extent she's humorless) is just generally clueless.

Maybe Fall Out Boy is to emo as Choco Tacos are to tacos.

yeah maybe you're right, i just assume that girls like boys and cartel etc. are overly serious at least when it comes to music but i'm not exactly poring over lyric sheets

lol maybe

i like fall out boy a lot but they probably swing the humor pendulum a little too far the other way

she definitely can play with her voice

i think the sense of playfulness on bittersweet world is really key to why i love it so much - it could totally have been a botched self-conscious move away from her old sound (and full-on method of performing) (unlike frank i way prefer i am me to autobiography - at its best it's so towering and visceral) (like WHOA 'eyes wide open' and the title track! like, totally c-love)

anyway yeah it coulda been botched, and i did go through similar phases to dave when i first heard 'outta my head' - 1) catchy tune but not right for her voice at all, surely just a demo; 2) can't get it out of my head; 3) hey her goofy mannerisms actually really work; 4) damn fine pop song - but idk i think the way she sounds as if she's about to crack up laughing throughout half these songs is just really good to listen to. she sounds as though she had loads of fun making the album (and she's funny, too, which helps. "i got a BOYFRIEND, we like to FIGHT A LOT. we got a lot in common: he thinks i FUCKING ROCK.") (nb 'rule breaker' is hilarious but as suspected 'ragdoll', despite being less quotable, is the better song and the one i return to more.)

uh sorry for shouting drunkenly last nite, y'all deserved it upthread when i was actually sober, contra mdc's assumption, but i was just taking out annoyance at some other lame threads i saw and didn't want to dignify with my presence. miller is still laaaaame and boring though.

Nah, it's good to have the drunken Lex back.

I listened to some of this on the tube this morning but the bits that didn't remind me of Gwen reminded me of Hazel O'Connors more uptempo tracks from the Breaking Glass soundtrack and neither of those float my boat.

The version I have just has a big gap in the I fucking rock bit where the swear is which was a little disconcerting.

some people just ain't cut out for HARDMAN status

-- gershy, Sunday, 14 October 2007 19:11 (7 months ago) Bookmark Link

wtf at ilx: gershy gone, blount and lex back?

the parallels with the tory resurgence are to obvious to point out.

big gap in the I fucking rock bit where the swear is

When did they start doing this, having NO available version where you can actually hear someone say "fuck"? Ruins one of the best lines on the Britney album, too ("just save your foolishness and fuckery I'm handlin' my bidness"). In the liner notes, they don't even print the swear words, or acknowledge there's an edit -- it just says "we got a lot in common and he thinks I rock."

Fuck this bulshit from a hater.

resembles the sound of an abattoir for Tamagotchis

brilliant.

That's a good piece of writing, whether I agree with it or not.

I mean it makes me want to listen to it.

Then it went off the rails drastically. We started becoming obsessed with meta.

backsliding!

I really don't like this, there's a half decent pop record lurking in there somewhere but the whole stiffness of the sound really bugs me. There's a decent pop record lurking in there somewhere but it's like all personality has been systematically sanded away.

There's a richness in her voice in Boys that's just totally lacking elsewhere. If she sounds this bored how can she expect anyone else to be entertained?

Matt did you ever hear I Am Me? A much better record in my opinion.

I don't think I've gone back to Bittersweet World since I last posted to this thread.

this is easily the ashlee simpson album i've returned to least but "boys" is such a fantastic summer jame

*jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObXc526xPuI

never liked that 1

tracks i come back to on this:

little ms obsessive
bittersweet world
outta my head
nvr dream alone

love this album, albeit less than her previous two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiW824jkzXk

soooo huge. the verses are so moody and perfect

AM I THE REASON WHY YOU TOSSED
AND TURNED
LAST NIGHT

& she never fails with the closing ballad. "never dream alone" is jaw-dropping.

the backgrounded vocals <3

nights will come and go...
you'll never dream alone...

"murder" is a riot

would argue there's not an actively poor song on any of her albums

"little miss obsessive" is def the standout, it's just less summery and so less...today

autobiography / love makes the world go round / better off / LOVE ME FOR ME / boyfriend / coming back for more / dancing alone / catch me when i fall / i am me / eyes wide open / outta my head / boys / little miss obsessive

those are the 10/10 all-timers imo

shadow + la la is the best 1-2 punch in history

http://www.ashleesimpsonmusic.com/

am i really the first person to post about this? what has happened to our borad

(i like this btw)

omg this sounds amazing

is it already gone or? i dont see anything there

is back, im down

omgomg

this is very promising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T386nMfal0

i quite like this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Clandestinein689.gif

I think this song is abjectly horrible

I enjoyed it for about 40 seconds.

BUT IT'S A WENTZ SUBTWEET

man how could you not dig this song

lmao @ wentz subtweet