NSYNC - Celebrity - is it any good?

economics, my friend -- one 13-minute tortoise wankfest is the equivalent of three, sometimes even four if you get the right mixes, bits of candy-coated pop heaven! you're trading in, you're trading up, and you're avoiding all those annoying pasty types who spend too much time trying to be cool!

anyway -- there are a few duds on 'celebrity,' all of them ballads, but there are a lot of moments of sheer bliss; the opening pac-man sample of 'the game is over' and the max martin-patented bombast of 'tell me, tell me ... baby' are my two favorites at the moment. i am currently enjoying thinking of celebrity as the record made by those guys who were influenced by their cooler younger friends the sugababes -- 'one touch' and 'celebrity' are totally compatible records, from the skittery appropriations of two-step to the breakuppy sadness permeating a lot of the songs. 'celebrity' is a very fun record if you program out the bits of sap justin wrote about britney.

Look, generally the way it works is this: you hear a song by a band. If you like that song, you might want to buy more songs by that band, which have been helpfully combined into an album by those nice record company people. But the album is a bit more expensive - maybe somebody can tell you whether it's good or not. So you ask. What genre the band are in *does not matter*.

I am interested in hearing from people who have heard the N'Sync album? How might they have heard it? Maybe they went to a shop and bought it, I don't know. Maybe they work in the music industry. Maybe they stole it.

OK, an answer to what I think you're asking: a percentage of the people on this board - quite a small percentage - are into current pop. Being into current pop means, I think it's safe to assume, a belief in the idea of the pop single as a music format. Radio and MP3s are the best way to hear new singles, and I think there's probably a lot of behind-the-scenes MP3 trading, driven by this enthusiasm. I dont think "staying current" plays a bigger part than with most other pop subcultures, but it does play a role for certain.

The notions of "pop" and "underground" are fading - we all know this - and I think the pont where we throw our arms up approaches lightning fast. The tagline I shot Maura some time ago is that "Pop" (the single) is more sonically enthralling and technically astute than the whole of Autechre's catalog.

I mean you have to sound like Lightning Bolt to *not* end up with a shot on MTV or at least M2 at this point. Discordance Axis Unplugged - that's what I'm waiting for.

Although I've contributed a comment here or there to many threads on ILM in the past, this is the first real dialog I've had, and I appreciate it. My next mission is to hear the new Nysnc single. Damn, I hope it's good, I'm actually a little excited.

I'm not sure I like the "I've got more indie cred than you'll ever muster, and yet I embrace chart pop: how indie is *that*? " approach. We've talked about this before, and I suppose I can see the relevance of making "controversial" claims like this in order to disrupt conventional indie-thinking but if we're really going to accept this, I think the glitch-meister, Mark Richardson, should have some say. Among others.

Fennesz ain't sh*t. Come on, you seriously think there's something to be found in albums made by *less* experienced producers? I mean, Farmer's Manual really twisted my knobs for about ten minutes, but they're just novelty acts. Once the boundary is pushed, everyone can see what's been uncovered - you can thank the originators, but the kids capitalizing on new-school curiosity (Kid 606, DAT Politics) offer the same level of controversy and compositional novelty as Winger.

(does this fall under the definition in that meta-thread of just saying "such and such sucks and you suck too?" ;)

Seriously though. NSync just....argh. I can't even articulate proper thoughts on how awful NSync are. They're just something that symbolises to me just what is wrong with our culture these days, more so than, say, O-Town because at least O-Town aren't particularly popular. NSync are huge though and for what? Their songs aren't that good, their voices are crap, and they aren't even good looking. I mean, bloody hell, I can do that.

The Backstreet Boys album was -- a couple fine singles aside -- ultimately disappointing, so everyone is looking for a new boyband. 98 Degrees and Westlife don't look promising anytime soon: hence the spirit of reconciliation towards 'NSync.

For the record I think 'NSync mostly aren't any good, but "Bye Bye Bye" is *great*. Actually I thought I made this argument to you at one point or another, and you eventually conceded it was decent. Of course, you're going to deny you remember any of this. :)

I listened to "Celebrity" last night, and, well, didn't like it at all. There was minimal songwriting evident. The singing was very weak, albeit heavily processed. And kids, if you're getting off on all that gee-whiz production and not looking beyond that for a little substance, you're eating all frosting and no cake. I know, I know, some people *like* eating just the frosting. Guess I don't.

I haven't heard anything from _Celebrity_ besides "Pop", and after that song, I don't really want to. (To be honest, it's more the video I object to than the song. I just want to reach into the screen and PUNCH THEM ALL.)

Teen pop ain't my bag, but some statements here have me curious. As discussed in earlier threads, people once again focus on the intricate production of the upbeat hits, and it seems like most agree that this is what makes this stuff so great. On Tim's blog he recently stated that only a hair's breadth separated Destiny's Child from Mouse on Mars sonically, and this caught my eye big time. Is there really something profound happening sonically in chart-topping pop music? I'm asking you. When I hear boy band stuff it's on my crappy factory deck in my loud-ass car, and it sounds slick & dynamic (those surges in "Bye Bye Bye" are jarring in a cool way) but not all that daring. But I'm not paying nearly as much attention to the sound as I would listening to, uh, Fennesz (He's making beautiful music! I don't hear novelty at all, Chris) at home on my headphones, straining to dissect every nuance. So comparison is difficult.

It does seem like music meant for the radio can only go so far in the direction of dissonance - there is a wall there that gets moved a little, year by year, but can never be smashed completely. Were that to happen, most people wouldn't like it, and radio stations wouldn't play it. So there are limitations to what can happen w/ sound in chart pop that Max Martin has to be creative within. Autechre has no limitations, other than self-imposed ones. This doesn't mean that they will make better or more interesting records (I'm not really that into those guys, anyway.) I just don't think you can compare the two.

I'm not too sure about using words like "technique" to compare Autechre and Max Martin either. What is "good technique" when you're talking about making sounds from scratch on a computer? Comparing the technique of Duane Allman vs. Eric Clapton seems so much easier, there being much agreement about what constitutes good and poor ability on guitar. Raw sound construction in software, I don't know. I don't think most people know enough about it yet. We're a ways away from Powerbook cutting contests.

I don't see much integrity or bravery in willful obscurity. Mark Robinson's sine-wave experiments are a great example of how fruitless the pursuit of novelty for novelty's sake can be. I regard most of hardcore click/cut music in this light. So few artists have stunned me with musical amusic. Oval, for one, and some of the Microstoria stuff. Fennesz is great, I was being facetious, but you wouldn't know that, sorry. But the fetishism with "IDM" and click/cuts is out of bounds. This craven worship is to me only different from NSYNC worship in that it's private. Ignorance is bliss, and in my experience, most of the "indie rock" fans out there spend half their time in denial of the fact that thousands of other people have the same records they do; some even convince themselves only they "Get The Message".

So yeah, I was lobbing anti-anti shots with some dallience, no offense. My base line is that there's no more attention paid to crafting an Authechre record than an NSYNC one, so the idea of Electronic music as some beautiful abstract art, slaved over for years by the creator, is a real Wizard Of Oz analogy. Many of the folks in this genre I've met (no names named) teeter on the verge of being willful, complicit hacks, and in closed company freely admit both the ease with which their tracks are cut and pasted together, and their disconcern for the "artsy" hopes and dreams their fans are constructing to this soundtrack.

Sorry, Tom - back to N'Sync.

If Endless Summer is just a collection of happy accidents, then I'm just glad they happened to one guy over the course of a album. Many others are not so lucky ;-). No, seriously, I think what you speak of here is just a way of saying that something like Microstoria has less authorship than a pop tune, and I'll buy that. Do you enjoy music more if you know it was difficult to make?

Fennesz and music like it is certainly private music for me. I'd feel like an idiot listening to it with other people. I don't think that makes it better. I just feel more "in tune" with Fennesz than I do 'N'Sync. I was just curious about what people regard as bleeding edge sonics & where they think they're coming from these days.

Chris, I'm sorry, but this reads like a straight-up advertisement for the album; especially your last sentence. You make it sound like putting together an album is like building a spacecraft or something. What do you even mean by "the biggest and brightest in production..."? I agree with Mark; it's really hard to discuss technique in these matters.

No. My wife did download some of it, though. I still prefer Fennesz ;-)

There's an earlier example in Tom's review of "Up Jumps Da Boogie" in his Best Singles of the 90s list.

I don't think Destiny's Child do sound like Mouse on Mars on the whole - "Perfect Man" is the exception, and it's a curiously distinct track that even its own producers never really returned to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqdmQkU8bOk

fukkin nostalgia yall

THE ICE AROUND MA NECK

wtf those pants jt was wearing

when was that shit ever cool

JT was so awful looking then. Lance Bass looked like Ellen's girlfriend.

y'all are late

worst outfit worn by an nsync member in this trl performance

y'all are late

― J0rdan S., Sunday, September 12, 2010 9:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

posts v much in character

oh wait i thought i said that

didn't you, deej

..............................................................................................didn't you

Vampire Weekend's touring guitarist Brian Robert Jones made an album covering the entirety of NSYNC's No Strings Attached, which sounds like it could be the worst thing in the world but it's actually pretty enjoyable:

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/brianrobertjones/no-strings-attached

solid reminder that NSYNC had some amazing deep cuts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iEkG_rAKgY