Kelis to work with La Roux

As she notes:

I am going across the great atlantic to work with le roux tomorrow, so all is well.

Lex has already despaired.

I was done with her circa "Bossy" but this is still kind of sad

she's like your crackhead cousin who you just want to grab and shake into making better life choices

cool. itll be like la roux but with less capable vocals.

shes only as good as her producers really. great muse, and really youd think someone would be trying to make her their new pet project, but there isnt anyone doing it. somewhere there must be some 2nd div andre3000 who could produce her.

though any 2nd div dre3000 will prob be trying to produce la roux lol.

I like both La Roux and Kelis so I don't see the problem...

I would've liked Kelis + Bangladesh as a new team, his songs were the best on Kelis Was Here... also her and Raph Saadiq make an excellent team, they're actually working on an album together which I'm very excited for (moreso than this dance one honestly)

xpost me neither. just seems a bit desperate on her part, though in the US i dont think la roux are big like they are here.

not holding my breath for the saadiq/kelis album.

As long as all Kelis does is go up to La Roux and shout "I HATE! YOU! SO MUCH! RIGHT NOW!!! AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!" then I'll be happy.

hahaa YES

la roux (the band) is two people though isn't it?

one of whom is not that red-headed horror

so this might not be as bad as you expect

maybe

i love la rouxs songs (well quite a lot of them), i just dont like her voice. theres something annoying about it. but i dont hate it like lex does (quite irrationally).

this is the thing ^^^^^^^^ it wouldn't be anywhere quite so irritating with someone else's vocals and someone else's lyrics and someone else's foot-in-the-mouth lack of self awareness

id prob rather have jackson write the lyrics than kelis. i mean its not like kelis doesnt know how to pen an irritating, stupid lyric herself.

I am liking the "it wouldn't be so bad if it was a different song by someone else" argument.

will this be better or worse than the dangermouse/dude from shins album?

better.

Looking forward to Elly Jackson attempting to explain away all those "rnb is shit" comments.

Easy, she'll just say that some of her best friends are r'n'b artists.

'bossy' was great fuiud

I am liking the "it wouldn't be so bad if it was a different song by someone else" argument.

hang on the first half of this thread is talking about how singer/songwriter kelis' output varies according to what producer/composer/instrumentalist she's working with

so the inverse couldn't be true?

that a producer/composer/instrumentalist's output might vary depending on what singer/songwriter they're working with?

you know like heroes and low sound ever so slightly different from vida la vida or whatever that awful coldplay record that eno worked on was? and yazoo sounds kinda different from early depeche mode?

so i don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine that the instrumentalist/synth player/producer bloke that is the other half of la roux might sound better working with say kelis, than say the screeching redheaded abomination?

oh noes she's redheaded.

"a person can make different types of music with different people" is not really the same argument as "La Roux's songs wouldn't be so bad with a different singer and different lyrics, which by the way would make them completely different songs" no matter how hard you want to try twisting it

did you miss the bit where la roux is a band containing two people. my opinion is that it would be a much better band if one of those people were not elly jackson

La Roux + Kelis = ass. this is not so hard to understand.

'songs' contain a great deal more than just lyrics and singing

the same piece of music or backing track with a different singer singing different lyrics would be a far more pleasant experience to my ears

The lyrics and the melody are the defining characteristics of a song; everything else is scoring/arrangement.

OH GOD YOU MEAN AS AN INSTRUMENTAL PRODUCER I'VE BEEN DOING IT ALL WRONG AND I'VE NOT BEEN MAKING MUSIC AT ALL WHAT ON EARTH HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE SINCE 1985 THEN?!?!?!?!?

let me guess mr dere are you by any chance a singer?

Let me guess, you don't actually have an education in music or any working knowledge of copyright law with regards to songs versus other types of musical compositions.

I mean, feel free to be all blowhardy and nonsensical but maybe look up some facts when you rant rather than making up bullshit.

The lyrics and the melody are the defining characteristics of a song; everything else is scoring/arrangement.

HI GEIR

(j/k, somewhat)

i know what copyright law is, based on a 19th century version of songwriting which only ever conceived of songs as sheet music but that's a fairly outdated model to be using when discussing the production of electronic music especially when ben langmaid is credited as co-writer in the band la roux's songs oops i mean musical material

i know what copyright law is

Then act like it.

but you know your completely right i am kind of an idiot i had to get a solicitor in to explain my own publishing contract to me so what do i know about copyright law especially in cases where two songwriters are credited with writing a song

we can sit here and argue all night if your really bored but my only point was

elly jackson + kelis = utter and complete cack

ben langmaid + kelis = might be kind of interesting to hear

There's pretty much no way Ben + Kelis could be worse than Elly + Kelis, even if listening the B+K song caused gremlins to manifest in your brain and explode out through your eyeballs.

personally find langmaid's production (for la roux at least) and jackson's voice equally problematic

personally find langmaid's production (for la roux at least) and jackson's voice equally problematic

Same here - pretty much every aspect of LaRoux's material is lacking as far as I can tell.

but its still close to something i could like, which bothers me more than anything else about them/her

Why is Karen turning every thread into a referendum on his life.

Though I agree that a "La Roux" track with another vocalist would at least be an improvement - my impression is that Kelis's involvement in "songwriting" (however expansively you define it) is usually much less extensive than her sheer force-of-personality slash vibe-of-individualism would suggest, but probably even Jackson's lyrics/vocal lines would seem less offensive as sung by Kelis (who is like Ms Anti-Shrill, "Caught Out There" notwithstanding).

Certainly if she was just working with the music dude I don't think she would have said it that way - most people assume that La Roux refers to the singer. It would be like saying "I'm going to work with Goldfrapp" but meaning "Goldfrapp minus Alison".

At any rate it seems most likely that this will end up being a Beyonce meets Lady Gaga affair - both of them singing. It's kind of a popular move at the moment.

Kelis Was Here is a bit underrated. There's some great stuff on that album Dan, if you haven't heard it.

Yeah, I haven't because I really couldn't get into "Bossy". I understand "Blindfold Me" is better, though...?

you might like the Sebastian and Braxe/Falke 'Earth Out' remixes of 'Bossy' - both great imo

Bossy was one of the weaker tracks on the album, definitely.

i don't dislike "bossy" but yeah it's not amazing (the remix to go for is the switch one though)

"blindfold me" was really great until nicole scherzinger trumped it with "whatever u like"

this, weirdly, ended up being the keeper off kelis was here for me -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQMvIwJB7gQ

it is PERTINENT to this thread i feel

oh yeah "like you" and "handful" were pretty nice too, and "lil star" wasn't bad, if rather corny

as for the rest, i'm sitting here gazing at the tracklisting and none of the other titles even ring a bell :/

hahaha yes, that is VERY pertinent (and pretty great, too; I wonder if Kelis is gonna play it for Elly when they meet)

best track off Kelis Was Here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cE9Zm8AUrk

best track from the era:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAA3u1tSaXk

(this is probably my fave Kelis song ever)

"Living Proof" is also a keeper

i first heard the (excellent) "running mate" around the time KWH was released but IIRC it's an outtake from the tasty era?

yeah that's from the tasty era... that beat is retarded tho, Kelis has some great b-sides unreleased tracks. this is a good one too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWmkbT2WZ_o

I know people gotta get whatever work they can in this current economic climate but...

My favourites from Kelis Was Here are "Living Proof", "Trilogy" (this is the Ursula Rucker-ish one, yeah?), "Appreciate Me" and "F*** Them Bitches".

Trilogy was the Scott Storch one. we might be able to get every track on the album favourited at this rate tho (i'll throw in What's That Right There and Til The Wheels Fall Off)

I must mean "Circus" then. It's that kind of album - nothing is knock you down amazing, everything has the potential to seem great in the right mood.

fuck them bitches is too try hard and like bossy, just not 'her'. like kelis doing a bad trina or something. i liked little star at the time but its too schmaltzy. living proof is a good one though.

the spot is great - never heard that before.

Karen I know you're new around here but this sort of uber-passive-aggressive way of posting is pretty much guaranteed to rub people round here up the wrong way.

Think Kelis would sound pretty dreadful over La Roux Dude's tinny bass-free casio keyboard plinking, TBH.

i am genuinely sorry if i've ruffled any feathers or bruised any feelings with my way of posting. i was trying to participate in the same conversational and slightly sarky tone that seems to be the general style of this board

but yeah as you point out i'm kind of new around here. i don't have a 5 or 10 year history of posting complete with visible personal history of taste and experience and style and and preferences and expectations of music

i believe that all of these things ^^^^^^^^^^^^ affect your opinion of music. how you come at it. how you listen to it. and affect what your reactions to music are going to be whether you like it or not what 'genre' you're going to assign it to whether you think it's 'important' or not and whether you think a putative collaboration would work

thru lurking and browsing this board you start to build up an impression of other posters (for example tim f has a thread detailing his personal consumption of the music of the past year & hi dere has a whole board for talking about his personal life) being new i don't have this kind of history displayed on this board. if your a newbie on this board people assume your either an idiot or a sockpuppet. if there are things in my history that i think are relevant to my understanding or digesting of music then i'll include them in my posts. i didn't realise this would be so contentious

for example talking about what makes a group of people working together a 'band' or a piece of music a 'song' i believe that a professional singer vs. an electronic producer are going to have difference conceptions of those concepts

to an electronic music producer it might seem completely reasonable that you could take a bit of music and swap out the singer/songwriter for another and it could still be considered generally the same piece-of-music because i pay little attention to singers and don't listen to lyrics at all

to a professional singer the vocal performance the lyrics the singing (all the bits i don't really notice) ARE the song. in fact you could switch out the backing track entirely do a remix in which nothing remains but a few snatches of the singing and the lyrics and yes legally according to copyright it's still the same 'song' no matter how much work the producer/remixer has done on it

and yes current copyright law agrees with the second view that a 'song' is just lyrics and a melody. and yet! through mechanisms i don't entirely understand every now and then bmi sends me a cheque for royalties on pieces-of-music that arguably have no lyrics and no melody at all! so my experience of music is that using this narrow legal copyright definition of 'song' in a discussion like this thread is a bit like using the code of hammurabi to discuss the ins and outs of genetic modification

now that is all very long and complicated and it's given me a bit of a headache typing all that out

i think mr. blueski was onto something in saying that what irked most about la roux was that it was so close to something that could have been really appealing and yet somehow missed the point in a way that was more unsatisfying than if it was something we wouldn't have cared about at all

i think what's interesting about la roux is the combination of tinny 80s casio with really-going-for-it singing when most tinny 80s casiotone music features really unemotional and bored sounding females (human league so much to answer for). problem is, elly jackson for all her going-for-it cannot actually sing her way out of a paper bag. she's got to be bad if someone like me who never pays attention to singers or lyrics is so put off by her shrillness that i can't actually listen to the synths in the background

take the original concept - icy 80s production with a gutsy going-for-it singer who CAN sing - as i know that kelis can - and CAN emote in a convincing way and it might meet the brief better and maybe even be closer to something i want to hear

whether that handle-and-blade-swapping results in a new 'song' according to hi dere, bmi and copyright law is up to theseus and the sugababes i think

this is the longest thing i have ever written on ilx and it worries me that i've become this engaged is there a known cure?

fwiw i think karen is an a+ new poster and i've enjoyed reading her contributions on other threads a lot, the whole i'm-a-producer thing notwithstanding

fuck them bitches is too try hard

nah it's so playful though! she's not going for any sort of hard-ass fierceface on it - as if you could with a cod-reggae beat - she's half-giggling as she flips the bird

tl;dr

(welcome to ilx btw)

and yes current copyright law agrees with the second view that a 'song' is just lyrics and a melody. and yet! through mechanisms i don't entirely understand every now and then bmi sends me a cheque for royalties on pieces-of-music that arguably have no lyrics and no melody at all! so my experience of music is that using this narrow legal copyright definition of 'song' in a discussion like this thread is a bit like using the code of hammurabi to discuss the ins and outs of genetic modification

This is mostly an academic point, but the issue here is that the definition of the word "song" explicitly references the fact that it is performed by a voice and you can copyright music that are not songs.

you learn something new every day! i never knew the entomology of the word 'song'

to avoid future misunderstandings i shall subtly edit other posters' posts before agreeing with them

can we change the thread to be as follows and avoid all this?

titchy: i love la rouxs music (well quite a lot of it), i just dont like her voice. theres something annoying about it. but i dont hate it like lex does (quite irrationally).

mr karen: this is the thing ^^^^^^^^ it wouldn't be anywhere quite so irritating with someone else's vocals and someone else's lyrics and someone else's foot-in-the-mouth lack of self awareness

I'm not convinced that merely changing the voice makes it any less irritating.

:o

http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/assets_c/2010/01/data_awards_20_wenn2727517-thumb-420x631.jpg

statue of liberty unicorn-tail fancy waiter fishbody lobsterclaws

still ws tbh

Kelis is gross. I mean yeah WS but her whole "pro-fur activist" thing disqualifies her for me. SO TOUGH LUCK KELIS.

i'm not aware of any activism, thought that was just exaggerated teasing of anti-fur pieties, which let's face it you can't really front on if you're a meat eater

But I'm not, so I am free to front on and ineffectually judge her as much as I want!

i'm not either, but point is meat eaters do this all the time, and meat eaters make up a significant sector of the smashable community

so point is it's not gross, it's dull or mildly annoying

or they're disgusting savages possibly

good thing animals r dying so she can look like that

looks like she hasn't been eating much though so it all balances out

looks like she killed a camel for its toe

RIP

I hate, you so much right now!

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/30/article-0-0813AD95000005DC-47_468x677.jpg

like im sure she still looks pretty good if you clean all the shit off of her

it's that damn Gaga effect.

kelis + techno (well, more like groovy breakbeat, but whatever)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uq0xLYRBdw

i know it's timo maas so i'm probably not supposed to like this, but i do anyway. quite a bit actually. and la roux would sound great if kelis was singing, and redhaired chick wasn't.

Sounds like her upcoming music may be worth paying attention to then.

i know it's timo maas so i'm probably not supposed to like this

what's the reasoning behind this statement?

i just sorta imagine most people on here would turn their collective noses up at a mainstream trance/techno guy like timo - heck, I kinda do even though i liked that first single of his. let's just say i was surprised what this song sounded like given my previous timoexperiences

ah ok. i know v little about him but i didn't think ilx had an overriding attitude toward different genres, far from it!

i do like acapella tho

boy i fucked up by waiting so long to actually listen to this jam

just got my $1.29

xxp Just heard "Acapella", sounds a bit dated to me, really early 90's and a kind of anonymous sounding vocal.

sound q is a little sketchy but this sounds reeeeeally good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bxiItP_1TY

yeah i really dig this http://www.suite903.com/2010/04/19/kelis-22nd-century-mp3/

kelis on some deep house shit??

soundin dope~

yeah these are awesome!

i love both of those! heartened about this project now.

22nd Century better than 4th of July by, like, a mile. But still, this should prove interesting.

i woulda said the opposite, mainly bc it has a bit more room. would love to hear like a theo parrish rmx of either of these tho

not heard anything good from this album so far.
and every pic i see of her her outfit is even worse, never mind her hair.
heard she went down well at GAY at the weekend though.

but still, hopefully shell carve out some sort of decent career from this. even if the music is complete shit.

Her cover of In For The Kill is really great, but it just makes me want the Duran Duran version that much more.

it's ok, the original is a bazillion times better.