Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

There are scary and dangerous things in my life and in this world and so music like that made by The Veronicas and Lindsay offers the abstracted balm of melody and a sort of cottony femininity that has nothing to do with my sexual interests but which I find reassuring.

And really, that's about it for me. Plus, Cheap Trick isn't making amazingly great/transcendant pop right bnow, so this'll do.

Anthony, the videos for a lot of these songs are streamed on launch.yahoo.com; the sound is high quality even for people like me who are on dialup. You'll have to register, but unless your being in Canada is a barrier (I doubt it), you can find "Rush" there, all five Ashlee singles (though not album tracks such as "Burnin Up," unfortunately), ten Clarkson singles, five Lohans, three Rihanna (incl. "SOS"), two Veronicas ("Everything I'm Not," and "4ever"), one Ashley Parker Angel ("Let U Go"), a whole bunch by Shakira. They don't have everything, however (don't yet have "So What" by Field Mob, for instance, or "Sweet Temptation" by Lillix).

Hint, there aren't nearly as many commercial interruptions if you click "Yahoo! Music in Spanish" at the bottom and then go searching from there.

(Hope this isn't a double post; I've been getting poxy fuled all over the place.)

But still - all those reading this thread not in possession of Stiff, Stiffer, Stiffest ought very much to check it out. 'Swords Of A Thousand Men' and 'Lucky Number' are worth the entrance fee on their own.

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Yes a Rachel Sweet video, "Sweet Dreams of My LA Ex," but they won't let me watch it, owing to my uncouthness. But right now I'm at de.launch.yahoo.com listening to (and occasionally glancing at stopframes of) Lafee's "Virus," which will be worth at least another listen. It's got enough candles to be Mexican. A kinda guitar-chorded dance-pop track, voice not as extravagant as a Spanish speaker would give it, but emotive in that emotive way anyhow. Before that I'd programmed "That's the Way My Heart Goes," the best by far of the two Marie Serneholt singles I've heard. OK, and I just tried to see if I could sneak into Rachel Sweet by the backdoor through the German site, but was still told, "This video is not available in your area. Please choose another video or visit your local Yahoo! Music US music service at http://music.yahoo.com to find all videos available within your region. Thank you."

Sob.

(Anthony, I guess that youtube is your next hope.)

Best track in the WTF category (not necessarily in the "actually rewards repeat listens" category, though one category isn't automatically more important than the other) is one called "Unfaithful" I think, which sounds like Deltra Goodrem in the backing music, but has these awesomely over the top lyrics that Deltra would blanch at. The extended metaphor is infidelity = murder, with Rihanna as assassin. At one point she suddenly blurts out something like "Why don't I just put a gun to his head and get it over with!"

Also, The Dollyrots are similar, Morningwood with less make-up and more sk8r tendencies, and the album closes with a fantastically tuneless run through of "Be My Baby".

Of course, 'twould probably be way better if Shanks & DioGuardi had written it, and way more evocative, emotional, ALIVE with Lindsay's pipes.

These are all good, 'cept Eminem is obviously capable of way better than "Cleanin."

"Janie's Got a Gun" was disqualified for being in the third person, and 2Pac's "Dear Mama" for being too much a mother's-day card. Sophie B. Hawkins' "Carry Me" and Naughty By Nature's "Ghetto Bastard" also don't meet my criteria (not that I've quite figured out what those criteria are). Not does "Luka." There's a famous Bikini Kill ("Suck My Left One") I never heard, and I don't know if Tracy Bonham's "Mother Mother" belongs (I've not heard her version, only the Veronicas'), and I haven't heard either the Lennon or the Lynne "Mother" in a long time (latter is a cover of the former, but with a whole lot of subtext), nor "House of Pain" (had the album on cassette but I can't find it anywhere), so rankings are just sort of how I feel at the moment. I probably overlooked several thousand more.

The Wreckers way under-impressed, sadly.

(x-post)

supposedly this dude landed a recording & publishing deal with virgin/EMI...?

John Shanks is producer on the whole thing and co-writes half, Shelly Peiken** also on as co-writer on four of those (she later was co-writer on Ashlee's great "Love Me For Me"): Shanks is going for full melody as he did with Michelle on "Everywhere" but also for strong rock, which Woodward augments with a P!nk burr, i.e., a basic soul-blues growl, w/ a slight tendency towards jazz scat in the melisma. Her voice is bigger than Michelle's, Ashlee's, or P!nk's, though bigger doesn't necessarily mean better, and in fact Woodward doesn't nearly convey as much personality as those three (and nothing in her lyrics come within miles of the thought or emotion you get in P!nk much less Ashlee). But there seems to be one lost classic - "Is This Hollywood" - and at least several more good ones.

(*There still is Lucy Woodward as you can find on her MySpace pages (two of 'em) but the direction seems more "legitimate")

(**Peiken a subject for further research; co-wrote a forgettable track on the first Lohan and the latest Backstreet Boys, but "Love Me For Me" and her four Woodward tracks leave me wanting to find out more.)

Also a good interview here, haven't read it all yet but interesting bit about "Done," which I compared (one line) to "Say Goodbye."

CW: Can you tell me more about the song “Done”? I read that you wrote that after 9/11.

LW: Yes, John and I wrote that again with Shelly Peiken. It was about three weeks after 9/11 and I lived in NY and I was home when it happened. And I went out to LA, where we were going to write and it was so much on everyone's mind because Shelly and John are both New Yorkers. It was kind of a time where no one really wanted to write or be creative it was so bizarre that whole month. Living in NY and no one knew what to do. Do we go back to work, do we go to the park? Explaining that to John and Shelly, we were all kind of angry about what happened. John had this drum track sample with some chords and we starting writing. I went over one night and we wrote the whole melody that night. Everything - verse, chorus, bridge, just came out in 25 min. and then the next day we started writing the lyrics together. Shelly and I started it and it just came out. We knew we were going to talk about hope and the warmth of the sun. We knew that on the first night that we wanted to make it hopeful and I don't know if we realized it was about 9/11 yet. Just that whole idea “I still feel the warmth of the sun” “no ones gonna knock me down” it could sound like a relationship song. Like someone broke up with me and I'll never let it happen again, but it was really about 9/11, the essence of it. While making it ambiguous so people can take it however they want.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/05/damone-rockers-who-like-nixon-went-to.html

Kim-Lian - new single Road To Heaven is more grown up but great.
Surferosa - cooler than your average teen-popper but amazing pop - recent single Royal Uniform is my fave.
K-otic - now defunct Dutch group who made 2 fantastic albums - some videos here are about all that's left of them on the Internet.
Chipz - Dutch Vengaboys-ish band, mostly novelty songs but 1001 Arabian Nights is good.

I have heaps more if you like these.

Jessica

One problem with the Ch!pz stuff I just saw is they don't completely trust being silly...in a Toy-Box video there wouldn't be any resolution or closure, things would just get sillier until all of a sudden everyone turned into a puff ball. These guys even explain that their Cap'n Hook fantasy was all a dream! Too much Steps, not enough Aqua (or, uh, Toy-Box)...but I like it, though.

Although Ch!pz are more like Steps than Toybox were, I'd say Ch!pz are really the true descendents of the Vengaboys while Toybox were just Aqua wannabes. There were a few other acts around the time doing the same, one I particularly remember being called Daze. They were Danish too and had a song called Superhero Lover. I'm downloading it now, as well as another of their songs called Tamagotchi! Some of their videos are here.

As for Sita, she is one of the acest pop stars ever and yet so unknown it's ridiculous. As K-otic were the Dutch equivalent of Hear'say, she became quite uncool despite her music being very good rock/pop (she also had songs written by Robyn, Alexis Strum and... Nik Kershaw!!) and is now doing music for much younger kids and it varies in quality.

I'm listening again to Jessica Simpson's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," which could be eligible for three of these rolling threads (teenpop, country, and reggaeton). I love the track, and interestingly for a dance number it has almost no bottom - for most of the song you only get one deep thump per measure. The rest of the rhythm is provided by handclaps and high-pitched elecroscrapes. Several people have criticized Jessica's breathy vocal, but I think if she'd sung in her normal warm, rich voice she'd have overpowered the track, which needs everything thin and high. And the rhythm itself is effective but perplexing (and unexpected for a country-leaning pop song). There are parts where at least part of the rhythm goes like this: Something close to the basic two-bar clave pattern, except that in the second bar, while the handclaps finish the clave, other percussion repeats the first bar (so you've got second bar and first bar going at once). The basic clave is "ONE and two AND three and FOUR and one and TWO and THREE and four and" (beats on the capitalized numbers; and note that this is a frequent Bo Diddley rhythm, too). "These Boots" basically does this clave but hits the ONE in the second bar: "ONE and two AND three and FOUR and ONE and TWO and THREE and four and" - but in that second bar, some of the percussion simply repeats the first bar, so we've got "ONE and TWO and THREE and four and" going simultaneously with "ONE and two AND three and FOUR and," which is unsettling. Oh, and this is only part of what's going on, and it's all played fast and light, so it's like mosquitos dancing.

I gotta take issue! If you can call what Aqua and Toy-Box were doing a genre (I'd call it a movement or a revolution or something but OK), then they both have merit. One thing that strikes me about Toy-Box in particular is the passion with which they follow silly ideas down rabbit holes. There are entire universes in (most of) their songs...like they say, they've created twelve adventures. And they were adventurous...and so were Aqua, and maybe so are Daze (haven't heard). But not Steps; they were just goofy (which isn't a bad thing, just safer). (xpost)

U.S. music has helped feed Europop - some Europop could be considered a simplified version of the Miami sound, and maybe the Bobby O sound is the U.S. version of Europop, 'cept he never hit big on the pop charts. A Europop song will come in and hit as a novelty ("Blue Da Bee" or "Mambo No. 5"), but it will never lead to a string of similar hits, and those songs will disappear everywhere but on Radio Disney. (At least they'll disappear in Denver, which doesn't have an official "dance" station. Radio Disney is the only place you hear Europop and techno.)

Frank, did you know that the Veronicas actually co-wrote All About Us? I'm not sure of the exact story but I guess it was probably meant for the Veronicas then they decided it would suit t.A.T.u better.

And Daze - I found the video for their Tamagotchi song, it's quite brilliant.