"Sneakernight" vs "Potential Breakup Song"

Do we really have to choose? They both make me want to off myself.

it happened so fast, dan.

Although I suppose the word Sneakernight is so epically hilarious that it deserves some sort of special credit.

spawned from disparate threads of thought sparked by the "overhyped musical failures" thread (Hudgens) and the TV pilot thread (Aly & AJ)

"sneakernight" is the worst song ever

I knew exactly what you were thinking Dan, we are both spending too much time on ilx today.

there are whole days when i get this loop of

basically
what we're going to do is
dance!

stuck in my head.

They are not the good days.

it's bad that I keep hearing KRISTALLNACHT in my head on the chorus of that song, right

honorable mention to Corbin Bleu btw

it's bad that I keep hearing KRISTALLNACHT in my head on the chorus of that song, right

THANKS FOR THIS DAN I REALLY APPRECIATE IT

Corbin Bleu reminds me of the name of some downmarket wine trying to sound fancy and pretentious, like Korbel or Corbett Canyon.

Corbin Bleu would probably make white zinfandels that taste like kool aid.

oh man I wish I had encountered this cover of "Double Dutch Bus" by Raven Symone before I made this poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZlehGXpW6I&feature=related

She always reminds me of Ursula from the Little Mermaid.

Hm never heard "Sneakernight," but I quite like "Potential Break-Up Song." Aly and AJ's "Into the Rush" is pretty good, too.

Corbin Bleu
Everybody knows one.

http://ihcapetown.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/neil-diamond-2.jpg

"potential breakup song" is amazing, love it 4eva.

"sneakernight" is...not, but it's fine. but the real vanessa hudgens masterpiece is "don't talk", which sounds like it could be a cassie song but, as with cassie, unfortunately did not herald a freestyle revival in pop ;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fp794lMR4c

---just keep your mouth closed---

i don't know how one can hate "potential breakup song", it's so effervescent without being obnoxiously so, and it has actually good, funny lyrics. and the kind of surf guitar riff that everyone went nuts over when girls aloud did it.

the TV pilot thread (Aly & AJ)
Link?

btw like Winehouse vis a vis Ronson, you are dead to me now, DJP

I don't remember how I felt at the time, but I am pretty sure it was how I feel now, which is Girls Aloud are at best tolerable

TV link: 2010 Fall TV Premieres: What's good and what's not so good?

I will admit that "Like Woah" is a much worse Aly and AJ song but I hadn't heard it when I made the poll

I will also admit that "Sneakernight" is way way way way way way way way WAY worse, like from top to bottom it's a misfire in every way you can imagine outside of the basics of Hudgen's vocal technique

to be honest i am kind of impressed by sneakernight's aggressive perkiness (and the fact that i get it stuck in my head despite having heard it but once).

i find 'potential breakup song' super likeable, i don't really get what's to hate about it.

Btw, Aly and AJ are now known as 78violet. Which always reminds me of Krist Novoselic's Sweet 75.

i don't know how one can hate "potential breakup song", it's so effervescent without being obnoxiously so, and it has actually good, funny lyrics. and the kind of surf guitar riff that everyone went nuts over when girls aloud did it.

It's not anywhere near as good as peak Girls Aloud, is why. Dunno, the whole song sounded kind of flat to me, like it was meant to have this boundless energy to it but didn't quite get there.

Could have done with a better chorus as well.

"Potential Breakup Song" is mostly anonymous to me; a particular type of bland non-entity that I find enraging, partially because I get the very strong feeling that everyone involved could do much, much better

I mean, take Raven's "Double Dutch Bus"; it's wholly unnecessary but she digs into the song and kind of saves it from being disgusting, and it's something she does on a lot of her material (I also played "Backflip", which is at its heart a terrible, terrible song, yet the way she sings it is super convincing and makes it tolerable). Aly and AJ come across as vacant robots describing someone else's emotions over a backing track chock full of hip signifiers that manages to mash them together into a completely nondescript pudding of sound.

aly & aj were generally a great pop act, they have a fair few good-to-brilliant songs under their belt. i always loled at their having a track called "÷" on their last album though. (pre-78violet, haven't heard any of their stuff under that moniker.)

Aly and AJ come across as vacant robots describing someone else's emotions over a backing track chock full of hip signifiers that manages to mash them together into a completely nondescript pudding of sound.

Who are you and what have you done with Alex In NYC?

78violet - "The Next Worst Thing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egn2iHNhQ98

this at least has a personality

xp: lol has it really been THAT long since I've talked about music

(btw I am not particularly enamored of "The Next Worst Thing" but it comes across as a more successful song than "Potential Breakup Song" to me, because they sound like they care and, even though the music is more formulaic, it's less boring)

i think "potential breakup song" is way better than most pop songs in terms of writing and construction - all the details that pull you into the scenario rather than just clichés, a pretty novel perspective with a splash of meta that's still psychologically convincing, a really nicely paced narrative. and on top of all that, super-catchy. it had that irresistible replay value for me that year, and it definitely got to the 38th-play-in-a-row point at which you throw your hands up and admit that the song is 10/10 classic.

None of those things really count for anything if it sounds like shit though. And yeah, Aly & AJ really don't sound like they care at all.

(I never thought it was particularly catchy actually, it felt over-written to me)

It's not even like flat-affect automatically makes for a bad song, but it doesn't work here. The aloofness doesn't throw anything into relief or draw me into the story; it makes me wonder why they're singing a song they don't give a shit about.

I am going to need to go back to playing "Always Loved A Film" on repeat to make this up to myself

care about what? the entire tone of the song is meant to be an airy (potential) kiss-off.

xp they don't sound like they don't give a shit about the song to me - it's the perfect delivery to frame the (great) lyrics.

i also love these two aly & aj singles -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3cQUeGWcf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW2rJore_Ew

The problem I think both Matt and I are having is that, instead of sounding like they don't care about the guys they're dumping, we are hearing it as if they don't care about the song they're singing, and that is a pretty massive barrier of entry to get to the rest of the components of the song that you are championing.

yeah, different ears i guess but i've never once heard it like that.

My favorite tidbit of info about Aly & AJ is that they are mentally fucking retarded:

You’re home-schooled girls in a gated suburb — why are you so afraid of kidnapping?

“It’s not a fear of ours,” Aly says. “We just want people to be aware. You could live in a nice neighborhood and there could be some perv there. You never know.”

Over after-dinner pie, Mark and Carrie excuse themselves, and talk turns to home-schooling. The girls say it gave them an opportunity to structure their own educations and to graduate earlier than they would have at a normal school. Given the pronounced Christian overtones in the home-schooling movement, we can’t help but ask the girls for their thoughts on that cultural hot potato, intelligent design.

Do you believe in evolution?

“No,” AJ says, shaking her head and frowning.

“Wait,” Aly says, bolting forward. “Are they teaching that in schools now?”

They’ve been teaching it for the better part of a century.

“I think that’s kind of disrespectful,” Aly says. “Anything that has to do with anybody’s beliefs on religion, that should stay out of the classroom. I mean, I think people should be able to pray in school, if people were into that. Everybody should just do their own gig.”

“Evolution is silly,” AJ adds. “Monkeys? Um, no.”

uh

I mean on the one hand, they were 15? 16? but on the other hand, uh

“Are they teaching that in schools now?”

incredible.

15/16 and home-schooled. when i interviewed them they seemed pretty smart.

not that that's defensible though.

wonder how they feel about evolution now

aly & Aj all the way-jay

i would hope they've evolved themselves

This does sort of explain Aly's character on HELLCATS and why it's this weird mix of down street girl who's seen it all and golden halo virtuosity

Also interesting is that Ashley Tisdale plays an overly perky Christian girl who transferred away from a Christian university to the state school for the opportunity to be captain of their cheerleading squad and how her entire family now shuns her for abandoning her faith, even though she hasn't.

like all the layers on the onion of "why is this show so weird sometimes" are just peeling off now

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ha

lmao!

I really like this new Aly & AJ track - kind of Hatchie-esque:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLWn6eCsgQ

and surprised no one posted about this last month, but they also rerecorded "Potential Breakup Song", now with expletives lol - "my fucking birthday" is obvs the correct lyric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJY-Gv0Ag9E

Been spending a lot of time with their recent e.p.s. There's one track in particular - Take Me - that is like, if you like Emotion-era Carly Rae Jepsen, you are missing out if you haven't heard this. But then a lot of the other stuff sounds more like M83 or Ladytron to my ears.

Anyway, they have a new album coming out next month with the unwieldy title A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun. But yeah, the single that Roz shared above is on it and a few other new songs that sound equally as great.

By "they" I mean Aly & Aj. Just looked for the latest discussion rather than the thread with their name in the title.

So this is out today and it's pretty damn great.

Am I the only one listening to it?