Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

The Paris Hilton song is a good example of extreme let's-just-show-up-and-hang-around-in-the-mix pop.

Who produced and who wrote it, by the way? I know that Storch has been linked to the album, as has DioGuardi, but I wouldn't necessarily say that this sounds like either of them.

in this respect it reminds me most of J-Lo, whose (brilliant) 'Get Right' rivals 'Stars Are Blind' for vocal disengagement.

I'd be shocked if it was Storch. I'd also be shocked if it was Three 6 Mafia who have also been linked to the album. I never worked out whether the rumours about Missy Elliott and Le Tigre were internet jokes or not. To be honest the production is quite crap? But quite enjoyable? By which I mean, I think it works despite itself.

I glanced briefly over the earlier parts of this thread eralier and have questions and stuff.

1) I have the first Lindsay Lohan album. Is the second as good/better/does it include the video for 'Confessions'?
2) I have neither Ashlee Simpson album. Which should I go for first?
3) What do Lillix sound like? ie, if I like Lindsay and Ashlee and Hilarity, but not Marit or Lily Allen, will I like them?

I'm really pleased and delighted with the Paris single actually! I said in another place that my dream for her album was a sort of Francoise Hardy / Britney DFA track mirrormaze, with her as a sort of Mistress of Ceremonies, cooing and whispering and spurring on? And this'd be a great leader single, for that.

If you're referring to the first single off her first album, I have no idea what it is or what it sounds like; if you're referring to "Papa Don't Preach," I heard a 30-second clip that seemed dreary; if you're referring to "One Word," it's a volcanic, overwhelming dance track that topped the (admittedly puny) U.S. dance chart last year. How Kelly manages to be volcanic while singing in a monotone I don't know (or maybe I do; it's producer/writer Linda Perry who powers the eruption by adding background singing and pretty bells and a good change in the chorus).

Well, they're certainly more like the former three than the latter two (Shanks angst-rock production with weaker songwriting, somewhere between Michelle Branch and Hilar(it)y), and you can stream their whole first album on their site under the "media" tab.

No idea if RAW includes "Confessions" but fwiw I'm starting to like it as much as her first one. xpost

I've listened to Autobiography almost every day for about two weeks, great walking around summer album.

To expand on what I wrote earlier, I think it's just a repeat of the "power pop" fallacy. Both "power pop" and "extreme pop" are actually retro guitar-bass-drums music that are respectively wimpy and MOR compared to current popular genres, and fans feel the need to seperate the music they find good by pretending that compared to "pop," these songs are actually not wimpy or MOR. I actually think most of the music you guys are describing is more similar to "Shemo," a name Todd Burns and some Stylus folks used for emotional girl-pop. It's a term that's less of a blatant pat-on-the-back for the fan and more evocative.

As for which Ashlee alb, the majority on this thread would vote the second while I would vote the first; the second is produced stronger and clearer and so the songs have more immediate impact, but the first has warmer songs, once you let them sink in. I'm just quibbling; I love them both pretty much all through. Note: she's just now rereleasing the second with a new song, "Invisible" (which I haven't heard yet since the Teenpeople stream uses more kbps than my dialup can handle), so you might want to check whether the version of the album you buy has that. Also, to confuse matters more, I love "Fall in Love with Me" which is only on the Japanese version of I Am Me (yet another of the wonderfully dreamy summer songs that's inundating the world). Warning: although she laughs more than she cries and she prefers tunes to toughness and she won't forgo her sugar, she's still a fundamentally earnest confessional rocker, which I think is great, I just don't you to claim that we misrepresent her.

On their first album Lillix were going for a girl rock sound (the female Hansen?), and they made me shrug, but I haven't listened in a long time and might have a totally different opinion now. The new single "Sweet Temptation" is one of the greats of the year, totally catchy and totally rock.

Most "shemo" (yuck! Dunno about the gender emphasis, anyway. It seems to me that women just happen to make the best confessional rock music. Ashley Parker Angel's one good song could be considered "shemo," too) doesn't fall under this category, and the artists that do tend to have the best sense of humor or (in the case of Hilary) aren't really going for "emotional" so much as some weird index of what "emotional music" is supposed to sound like (Veronicas, too). xpost

But there can be extreme self-justificatory pop, like "We Are the World."

it's annoying that the import-to-uk stage of this music isn't happening for any of these girls: i think they're entirely wrong for where the uk market is at right now (a good thing, probably) but i also get the impression that - like many hip-hop acts - none of them are particularly interested. global popstardom does not seem to be on any of their agendas like it was for madonna, the model followed by britney, xtina and beyoncé.

talking of whom - have you heard the new kelly rowland single 'gotsta go'? it's the first song by her where she sounds like a viable solo artist - slow-burning crunk'n'b along the lines of ciara's 'oh', with some fine vocal hollering over the top.

(Btw, I wouldn't call Ashlee extreme, except maybe extremely thoughtful and extremely good, but the thoughtfulness isn't portrayed as such [and maybe it's John's and Kara's thoughtfulness, but I still can't find such thoughtfulness anywhere else in their résumés].)

I don't have a copy of my second book handy, but I think I call Haysi Fantayzee's "Shiny Shiny" an example of "pure unadulterated what-the-hell-were-they-thinking pop" (or something like that) somewhere in there. And yeah, if that's what "extreme" means, I can buy accepting it as a genre. Even the way Frank is describing it, it's certainly no *less* meaningful (and probably a bit more useful) than a genre called "extreme metal." I'm not sure why Anthony thinks anybody is suggesting "extreme pop" means "pop I actually like" or "pop that's worth talking about"; neither Frank nor anybody else here has suggested that all the pop they like or all the pop they feel is worth talking about qualifies as "extreme." (In fact, by Frank's definition, there's no reason one would have to LIKE a particular piece of extreme pop in order to acknowledge or take note of its extremities. And there are definitely some people {or at least some strawmen, ha beat you to it} out there who think some pop songs, say, are *too catchy,* and since they equate catchiness with cheesiness, they'd prefer their pop to be catchy in a much less extreme way. {Actually, I'd put plenty of powerpop fans in that category, but what do I know?}) All that said, I'm not sure I totally disagree with Anthony, either; I'm not sure that "extreme pop" IS a very useful category (at least not the way Frank defines it) (at least not as useful as what-the-hell-were-they-thinking pop), which is one reason out of many that I haven't joined in the discussion til now and may not join much after now. And I also absolutely agree with Anthony that there's way too much falling-for-shemo on this thread. But nobody has called said shemo extreme, as far as I can tell. So Anthony would appear to be somewhat mixed up.

Like I would defend the phrase "extreme metal."

The way I "conceive" of extreme pop, it's anything that you feel like calling "extreme" and "pop" and that has something in it that you're willing to claim is extreme (so of course extreme pop can be extremely wimpy or extremely MOR).

This version of "extreme" is worthless as a genre because its qualitative in relation to personal context rather than a specific sonic, subcultural or lyrical aspect. ANYTHING can be considered "extremely" something - I dare you to find a song that isn't "extremely" something. Name one.

Bryan Adams, "One Night Love Affair" (#13 on pop chart, 1985)

(The thing about extremeness is that the burden of proof is always going to be on the person claiming it exists, too! So I don't even have to explain *why* it's not extreme. It just isn't, that's all. I guarantee that whatever adjective you want to apply to the song above, there are thousands of songs that have that adjective more.)

It's pretty interesting which acts call themselves "powerpop" on cdbaby. Plenty of them sound nothing like the Raspberries or Matthew Sweet or anybody "experts" would define as powerpop -- they probably have no idea how the word has been used before; they just like how it *sounds.* And actually, as dorky as it's become, it sounds good! (Now I'll start watching out for this, and linking to their pages.)

http://cdbaby.com/style/136/all

http://cdbaby.com/style/pop

Extremely #13. The most #13 song on that pop chart.

(If you look at my original list of "extreme pop," you'd be hard put to come up with a genre that encompassed the performers/songs mentioned.)

metal mike teenpop update # 2 (june 3)

Subject: QUICK JOEY SMALL ? as samoans encore song Mike could sing

and would be the FIRST song in our whole set with a "rock beat" i can move my butt to (and also sing well). it has a 70's punk rock connection --

Slaughter & the Dogs did a 45 of it in 1978 , in fact but i don't remember their arrangement. did they play it in the same key? (below, G on the original)

our set proper (through the 45 minute mark and my old man's a fatso) is completely nil on the "Elvis hip grinding" quota so we need to be more respectful of the single moms in our audience and what they expect out of a male, testostorone driven performance.

i could put my "special Britney shirt" back on for the song too

i mean, strip down from the basketball jersey again ha ha.

the song would come (as encore) right after MyOldMan'sAFatso, and before any guest singers / gong show / talent match.

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metal mike teenpop update # 4 (june 4)

ahhh jonathan hall told me (over the phone) that the Slaughter & The Dogs single (1978 UK Decca) was "exactly like the 60's hit," but that they made the guitars sound kind of like the Sweet

so at the 70 second mark I tore the song apart -- besides giving it a "stop / eddie cochran/sweet talking line (in soto voice by the bass player) at the end of EVERY VERSE (and each one with a different way back into the next part --ie , 2nd verse, 1st chorus, and final chorus) --

and dropped the 3rd verse
and dropped the 2nd bridge cause our "stage version" has other things it has to accomplish (like get the dance contest winner or Gong Show "guest singer" winner up on stage like any good "end of show" number) in its long version (otherwise IDENTICAL to the official rearranged, now only 2 minute 5 second version (tempo identical and unchanged), just by extending the "spoken middle part" which in a recorded MP3 versoin would just have a "fake voice" be the dance contest winner and briefly demand their rightful Hello Kitty Pink Steering Wheel Cover) (truth! i have ten for the next ten "big gigs"!)

so norb your the musicale expert here --
with all those dylan songs and all

what you think?
it scans pretty good, you think?

AND CHECK OUT how i tightened up the lyrics, just by dint of how i personally would sing them (automatically tiliting to maximum punchiness, lyrical meaning be damned).

once i was done, i felt so inspired i got out my best Buddah 45s --

Indian Giver
Chewy Chewy
Yummy Yummy Yummy
Goody Goody Gumdrops
Sweeter Than Sugar

and i'm like "holy crap Batman, insufficient record collection" because both Down At Lulu's and Quick Joey Small were missing! (Shake was not in the "buddah 45s section" but somewhere else with the "shadows of knight rock classics" and therefore ineligible by virtue of standard cinema "auteur theory."

but then i realized = this is where the Ramones began! not being able to play Indian Giver for crap, so they had to create their own mutant bubblegum music

lyrics for comparison furnished (ours vs the much wordier, clumsier original) -- we smoked it, man.

call up the Jan 1974 time machine and let's give the next Chinn/Chap MUD chart single a run for its money! ("Tiger Feet"'s coming on the 19th).


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metal mike teenpop update #4 (june 13)

Subject: britney's blues influences

yep i'm still sayin' that her older brother must have had ONE Otis Redding album/cd...History Of Otis Redding or something...when brit-brat was growing up. and she thinks of that as "the blues." to a 9 year old it probably would be. and the first line of Baby One More Time...ie, of Mrs Mom's whole career at radio...was a dead on Otis phrasing, it just nailed it. whether on the famous Stockholm/Cheiron demo (that TLC passed on) or not.

and good lord, after K-Fed the girl's got the blues for real, livin' with K-Fraud in legal union is about as real-life exerience as a white person can get.

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to us old reactionary fucks = MP3s are not music

actual discs or plastic or whatever, on loud 100 db amps/speakers = that is music!
the walls have to shake if it's your favorite song/band dude!

and that is just how we hear it.
LAMF or Lesley Gore's Golden Hits, all the same theory.

no, these ILM thread people are even more passionate/zealot about modern pop/rock music than anyone ever even was about 60's pop! truth. and the fanbase do indded dicate the eventual critical outcome...esp when a good handful (or more) of these "think tank" types (on ILM) are well known writers in the first place.

Max Martin = the eventual music bio will have him as the posited No. 1 of all era, all decades, all everything. swedish pop = has ruled the pop world ever since Waterloo by ABBA won at the dreaded Eurovision contest. and Roxette, then the teenpop Stockholm domination -- it's an unbroken chain. 30 years of amazing pop/rock out of Sweden, with major names like those three (ABBA, Roxette whose huge catalog is almost an equal to ABBA, and then the Max/Cheiron/etc (10 names in all at cherion, the past decades MOTOWN, truth) as important as any in the history of pop music1
remember that ABBA were almost entirely disrepsected or, at best, plain ignored by all but a very few writers (greg shaw one of them, a huge fan from day one) at the time! in the UK trade mags of the 70's (NME and MM, Sounds) they were regarded as Satan. truth.

and so will the critical "revision" on the Stockholm-dominated 1997-2001 teenpop era go likewise. (it's already well down the road, far past midpoint).

mandatory reading = Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth! (although the book has some large gaps). Peter Bagge's chapter on teenpop 1996-current is just hysterical, i meanit's really funny. and yes Tim, i have danced (practiced moves, i should say) to A-Rod Carterns' "Not Too Young, Not Too Old" on top of a parked car right in front of Gilman at a huge dopey GravyTrain! gig where 500 kids were there and 100's were outside between every band, with my pop-loving buddy drummer Clay of portland's Clorox Girls in full support of my er, artistic statement. why...we were run out of the Gilman front room (combination staff room and band room) for playing modern pop (Finnish no less) on my boombox at a reasonable volume while he dug through the free samoans t-shirts to choose from. musically-politically INCORRECT! and you do not get more cutting edge that than, although annoying the PC-dope types at Gilman is admittedly not hard to do. truth = we were playing Noise From The Basement off and on on my same boombox all night (at the Clorox Girls merch table inparticular), and at least 5 people asked, "what IS that?" ie they wanted to own a copy of their own.
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, you obviously weren't the bug on the wall in a downtown Little Rock Woolworth's when i was looking through the 45s, summer 1968, age 16 and their house radio system piped out Yummy Yummy Yummy by the Ohio Express as a brand new chart tune. that was my personal ground zero for being a bubblegum music zealot/fan. ( months later, in the 12th grade carpool, when i was the front rider, i cranked the AM radio as far as the law allowed for all time greats "Indian Giver" and "Goody Goody Gumdrops"). funny thing you know -- those were all by the SAME studio band that did the later 1968-69 Tommy James/Shondells 45s! yep, the "Mony Mony" throbbing rhythm section/organ sound. (kenny laguna on organ of course).

my 1964-65 buyer's background on girlpop, when i was age 12 and then 13, was the obvious names -- Lesley Gore and the Shangri-Las who were both in the middle of major runs of classic girl group hit 45s. i fuckin LOVED lesley gore's voice the first minute i ever heard her. first 45 i ever wanted to buy? (but didn't, no purchases until months later) "Wishin' And Hopin'" by Dusty Springfield the minute i heard it in a downtown department store, walking by the large record department/room.

ahhh and, shortly before Ken Barnes and/or Chris Peake, i was the first person in all of record-collector america to put togther a near-complete run of all girl group lps (issued early 60's with a few into the mid 60's), all from thrift stores or record store used bins (and the earlier swap meets during 1973-74)...this would be during 1970 through summer 1975 before i moved back to arkansas. i eventually (before the move) just booted all the ones that were crappy, over 100 albums i believe (it wasn't an album genre) and traded them in to dealer/collector Chris Peake's space/workroom in hollywood. funny thing, a year or two later Exene did work for him, filing or something.

soo i have inarguable credentials anytime anything in a female voice comes on the radio or MTV. i liked it all, the minute i first heard it. (this would include lots of 80's Eurodance, Europop -- which evolve out of early 80's Italo-Disco much of which is very cool, ie -- and even american dance-pop like Stacey Q). actually this just makes me a match for the late Greg Shaw. but due to his diversions like piling up hoards of "blues 45s," i was way way ahead at the point of the early 70's (before he became really well known, or rather before he became the PRM co-editor in early 1973) when it came to collecting girl group 45s and lps. ahh mainly just half because they (like everything else) were dirt cheap when you could find them, very undervalued musically.

you should pull a full credit list of all of Max Martni's productions/songs 1997-2006, cause he easily far outstrips Phil Spector as a writer obviously, and at this ponit as a producer ditto (in sheer volume and radio plays it's not even close). not that Spector probably isn't Top 5 or for sure Top 10 for his 1961-1963 work. (the overproductions during 1964 for ALL his acts leave me stone cold..and good god, tunes written by Vinnie Poncia etc, what the fuck, that's Phil for you...he wasprobably getting a better publishing/writing cut on the 2nd rate Poncia-Anders songs) but Max has 10 years in the chute now as the post-ABBA international svengali domo of Swedish export-pop. ah and Dr Luke, his co-god of writing/production. you knew of course that Max/Luke played every single instrument themselves (except for a LIVE real drummer) on kelly clarkson's monstrous hits Since U Been Gone and Behind These Hazel Eyes (two of the 5 most played/popular hit tunes of all 2005).

dude, i had five years of 45s/lps in my young collection when the Stooges racked their first record....i've got maybe 3,000 albums (vinyl i mean) and in the long run, every record is "just another record i like" until i put it on and it jumps out and claims some esthetic space. and for ten years now -- no one even CLOSE to max martin...the man is a god of writing/engineering/production, and for toppers he and Dr Luke are a one-man band in the studio.

if you don't own the Kelly album you haven't even vaguely heard her hits! the max/luke productions just BLOW WALLS OVER. they are almost unprecedented in their guitar/pop ooomph power. i mean seriously banging, on any good loud stereo.
us pop-oriented people you know, consider 99.999% of all guitar-rock of the last 20 to 25 years to be just unlistenable..from metal to punk to mope rock...don't even get me going on "indie rock" or "college rock," (both of which i hated and hate to the point of breaking all 3,000,000,000 pointless recordings/albums over my kneecap, starting oh uh, with the first R.E.M. 45, o rwould that be the first Bangs 45?), i'm just talking about major label guitar rock.

ah the current one at his Cure For Bedbugs site is interesting..."EXTREME POP" as a musical genre. and yes, halfway down that's bolton canada's Skye in a sailor moon/samoans reject (we couldn't give away Sailor Moon girls t's in california, so bratbrain wound up with several of them). she did some writing (for the 2nd Capitol album) w/Tim of (eh) Rancid this year, but she'll eventually figure out to route her writing-team work in that genre to Joe King or Metal Mike soon enough. in case you haven't been paying attention since 2002's surprise Top 40 hit "Billy S" (on canadian capitol, from the How To Deal mandy moore movie that tanked in about 5 days, or 5 minutes), skye is this decade's lou reed. where else but a young girl in a outer-outer-Toronto exurb (so far out they didn't have cable tv or the internet until the very late 90's)?
"EXTREME POP" column in Cure For Bedbugs --
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:eabQrTwL74QJ:www.cureforbedbugs.blogspot.com/+%22buzzsaw+haircut%22+%2B+%22dave+moore%22+%2B+%22radio+disney%22+%2B+%22metal+mike%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

my next favorite pop singer/star -- MYLIE CYRUS. her voice sounds great so far, every song i've heard. since i neither under 14 or over 6,the TV show makes me want to kill myself very very quickly, after throwing the set out the front window at passing cars. ..


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the monkees were one of the 60's great recordings acts, which is to say that Micky D absolutely is one of the 5 greatest ROCK SINGERS of that decade. you would have to fight both Rev Norb and me on this , so don't even try. mandatory thrift store album: HEADQUARTERS in MONO. very cool album! anyway, their catalog tapers off pretty quick (after the best say 20 tracks) but their 10 best cuts = anyone's 10 best cuts of the 60's. beatles, kinks, beach boys....anybody. there absolutley is not a better rock/pop song written than "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" -- we're talking classic NEIL fuckin DIAMOND! (the 20 or so Bang tracks mostly rule the entire universe; produced by Ellie Greenwich ya know...jeff's name on there is just a divorce-settlement phantom). and yes, You Got To Me is one of the Top 20 45 rpm rock hits of all time, all decades all universes.
ahh you shojld just trade in some of those 1st Fear 45 and Sex Pistols A&M 45s you've been hoarding, for a good loud stereo system (mid-fi works fine as long as the amp and cartridge have name-brand power...i personallhy love 70's/earlyu 80's silver face intergrated solid state power amps, they last for fucking EVER) -- buy the Kelly cd, and play it full blast for about i dunno, 7 to 10 days straight. then and only then will you see things a little differently.

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you really are underestimating the huge impact Hanna Montana is gonig to have on the music world though. her songs just sound AWESOME on the radio so far, the ones i've heard. (nothing let go to retail yet). huge hillbilly accent, singing good rock/pop music. like Kim Wilde (and Marty Wilde), probably all written by her dad -- Mylie Cyrus's dad that is (in real life, not the lame HM cable show) -- yep, Billy Ray. goddamn, yall.

"Pieces Of Me With a Butcher Knife"

Best all-time teenpop butcher-knife song (if you're willing to count the Supremes as teenpop) might be:

"You Can't Hurry Love With a Butcher Knife"

(though there are hundreds of good possibilities here: "The Best Part of Breaking Up Is When You're Making Up With a Butcher Knife").

(That said, I've been exploring her on youtube - for a few days I'm staying in a house with broadband - and found her incorporating strong versions of "Sweet Dreams" and some old swing-era number into her current live show, and a slowed-down almost menacing version of "La La." So if all goes well "Invisible" won't be any dominating tendency. Does anyone know the writing/producing credits on that song?)

could work equally well aimed at either a boyfriend or a dad

Other examples? Stephen Thomas Erlewine claims this is true of "I Want You to Want Me" on RAW, and I'm hearing it in "Black Hole" and a little in "I Live for the Day." (The latter doesn't need the butcher knife, which would be kind of redundant -- we know she's living for that day with a butcher knife; it's kind of in the song already.) "Oops! ...I Did It Again with a Butcher Knife"