Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

Marit Larsen does "Don't Say You Love Me" solo over on Youtube.

Not that anyone has noticed, but my SHeDAISY posts are chock full of errors: "Lucky 4 Me" instead of "Lucky 4 You," "Comin' Clean" instead of "Come Clean," and - here's the topper - "she is her boyfriend's husband." Now that would have been interesting. But "she" is merely her boyfriend's wife.

vaguely country-leaning (i.e., her cdbaby page lists miranda lambert as one reference point, though hardly the only one) teenpop singer-songwriter music from an asian-american girl (album title: *american girl*) who apparently grew up in oklahoma and the phillipines and is now based in l.a. (i thought hawaii figured in there somewhere too, though i'm not sure how i got the idea -- oh wait, i guess it's the hawaii t-shirt she wears in the CD booklet); frankly, most of the CD isn't hitting me (her voice is smaller than i wish, for one thing), though i'd be curious to hear what the more shemo-tolerant (/vanessa carlton tolerant/michelle branch tolerant) of y'all think. closest thing to a great song seems to be "i'm in the way," about being drawn to bad boys (and it's got a really familiar pop melody i can't place); "2nd street" has the most r&b in it; "405" seems okay too:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mylin

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=70795638

Actually, her cdbaby page says "Sheryl Crow and The Wreckers meets Miranda Lambert and Keith Urban," which makes her at least 75 percent pop-country supposedly, but she only sounds maybe 20 percent pop-country if that. I don't think I hear much Miranda, Sheryl, or Keith in her sound. She sounds how I would IMAGINE the Wreckers (who I haven't heard) might, though. Her look is maybe a much softer Pink.

I posted this over on Live Journal, so might as well post it here too: my Top Ten for first half of 2006, not too much thought given to either the order or whom to include/exclude. My guess is that numbers 1 and 2 fend off all comers for the rest of the year but that anyone else could be superseded come Pazz & Jop day. I go an extra two deep 'cause one's eligibility is questionable because of my not knowing what year it was released, and another because I don't know if it was a single. Those two are in brackets, and I would appreciate any info that you could supply. (Surely for foreign and alien U.S. nonhits, a release in 2005 would be sufficient to qualify for my P&J ballot).

1. Veronicas "4ever"
2. Aly & AJ "Rush"
[3. Mahshar "Vase Chi"]
4. Lillix "Sweet Temptation"
5. Lily Allen "LDN"
6. Cansei de Ser Sexy "Let's Make Love and Listen Death from Above"
[7. Girl Authority "Hollaback Girl"]
8. Wir Sind Helden "Von Heir an Blind"
9. Snook "Snook Svett Och Tarar"
10. Beyoncé f. Slim Thug "Check On It"
11. Young Jeezy "Trap Star"
12. Marion Raven "End of Me"

also could have made the list if my mood had been different:
Jena Kraus "Both Dads R Dead Dogs"
[DJ BC f. Phillip Glass and Dizzee Rascal "Stand Up and Dance"]
Marit Larsen "Don't Change Me" ("Only a Fool" would have made the top ten if it had been a single)
t.A.T.u. "Friend or Foe" ("Cosmos (Outer Space)" would have made the top 10 if it had been a single)
Dixie Chicks "Not Ready to Make Nice"
[Light Beat "Nhary Liel"]
Bebe "Malo"
Flyleaf "I'm So Sick"
Flyleaf "Breathe Today"
Jessica Simpson "A Public Affair"
Marie Serneholt "That's the Way My Heart Goes"
Amy Diamond "What's In It For Me?"
Paris Hilton "Stars Are Blind"
Morningwood "Nth Degree"

Obviously I've been neglecting hip-hop and country more than usual, and metal and rock and indie and adult contemporary just about as much as usual.

Best thing I have ever seen: Amy Diamond, when VERY young, lip-synching to "Heaven Is A Place On Earth", possibly on some Swedish show where kids pretend to be celebrities. She makes a great Belinda!

(Frank, "4ever" and "What's In It For Me" are probably 2005. "End Of Me" was a single in some Asian countries in 05, but was released in Norway in 06 and as far as I'm concerned, is the BEST Max Martin-girl-rock single of them all. "Since U Been Gone" pales beside it)

Dude, no Oh No Ono?

x-post

Oh No Ono! Their myspace kills! They are impossible to search for on emule!

"4ever" was 2006 in the U.S., and anyway we can use "made its impact in 2006" as a criterion. (I think "Since U Been Gone" was actually late 2004, but lived most of its pop-dominating life in 2005. "Rush" was 2005 but its video and its - too small - impact outside Radio Disney was in 2006. And see my criteria for including alien U.S. nonhits. But "What's In It For Me" won't make my P&J ballot anyway.) I'm still processing On No Ono. Is "Am I Right?" this year? Its organ reminds me of '60s garage by the likes of the Knickerbockers, and it's a rock band all right, but it feels techno for reasons that I haven't figured out.

I should have included a couple more Pop World Cup tracks on the long list (though I have no clue if they're within the last couple of years): Lida's "Bito Nemikhandam" and Ovo's "Dormir."

I seem to be one of the few here who's not feeling Nelly F. or Xtina. Their singles this year feel cold. I'm listening a lot to the Pack's "Vans" and Chow Nasty's "Ungawa," both of which are the sort of catchy numbers that might make my P&J or might fade to total insignificance.

Ack, I can't type, or do grammar. Change a "was" to a "were" and an "On" to an "Oh."

"Emo," defined for me last week by a teenager: "Punk for pussies."

Neither "Vans" nor "Ungawa" are particularly eligible for this thread, but the Pack are teens themselves, Too $hort protégés, ages 16-18. "Vans" is streamed here and "Ungawa" (don't know the age of the Chow Nasties, but assume in their twenties) is streamed and downloadable on their MySpace page. "Vans" is minimalist hyphy-snap-bubblecrunk footware ridiculousness. I don't know much about the sociology of shoes, but from the comments over on that link, and the lyrics, I gather that they're associated with whiteboy sk8ers and punk rock, which makes it socially significant that Bay Area ghetto blacks are talking them up. "Ungawa" is snotty, sleazy minstrel punk; the guy's voice is as bad as Jon Spencer's or Tim Vulgar's, but he matches or beats their sense of humor. If the song catches on it could become an Animal House klassic.

I think I like "Promiscuous Girl" better than "4 Ever" (which I still categorize as "a decent Donnas song with better harmonies") and "Rush" (which climbs up my singles list every time I go back and listen to it again, then climbs back down a day or two later when I once again completely forget what the heck it sounds like -- and nah, I still hear no Fairport Convention in it, to be honest.) I do like them both way more than "Maneater" though; still can't fathom why that one's even a single, though I guess being the second-best cut on a consistently okay but never more than just okay album might have something to do with it. The CSS song, which I will believe is actually called "Let's Make Love and Listen TO Death from Above" until the day I die, sort of annoys me now that I heard their album (which I reviewed for Spin), which reminded way more of Peaches than of, I dunno, Stereo Total or whoever (and it's not really like I need yet another Stereo Total album anyway, I don't think.) Still haven't heard the current Christina hit, at least not consciously; suppose I should do a youtube search one of these days (not AVOIDING it; just haven't gotten around to it), but after all the wolf-crying over her who-cares "Beautiful" a couple years ago, I can't say I'm expecting much, not when I haven't liked any of her hits very much since "Genie in a Bottle." But who knows; maybe I'll be surprised.

Xtina song is a good track, in the way that Amerie's "1 Thing" is a good track, this one with horns tumbling around on top and JB-type guitar scrapes squirreling in underneath. But even more than on "1 Thing," the singing on "Ain't No Other Man" has no feeling, is down to zero, just loud soul belting that's supposed to be passionate and forceful but is merely loud. People - including me, at times - have complained about Celine Dion going for technical bravura rather than actual expression, but I'll tell you, anything Celine does has way more character than the singing on this one. Which doesn't mean this is bad mind you. I can imagine being thrilled on the dance floor with those horns bursting in the air above me.

I found a Stacey Q song - "Never Stop" - that I don't remember hearing before streamed over on CDBaby. It's the tenth track, mislabeled as Stacey Q's cover of Sam Phillips' "Holding on to the Earth" (I'd love to hear Stacey Q's cover of "Holding on to the Earth"; in fact I'd love to hear Sam Phillips' version, which I've only listened to in the snippet streamed on allmusic). "Never Stop" is great, the way sweet, breathy-voiced Stacey manages to get a zing in her tone; she breaks "wild fire" into four jagged syllables.

(Not that she's ever been teenpop. This just is the thread where I felt like linking her.)

Lillix video for "Sweet Temptation" dresses them in Sixties style - that is, something that was the fashion for about 10 minutes in the Sixties at about the time of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", a cool look that subsequently evaporated when the freaks got all shaggy. But the look actually isn't inappropriate, since at its greatest moment, in 1966, the Sixties kids looked cool and sounded hot. Of course looking Sixties actually means looking early Eighties new wave, like the Go-Gos or Bangles. And "Sweet Temptation" sounds very '00s passionate.

Got an advance of the Lillix album; it will take a while for me to to know what I think of it, since most of it's a lot more girl-poetry sounding (not the words, but the music) than "Sweet Temptation" - but played loud, like Meg & Dia.

Did any of you take a listen to "Vans" or "Ungawa"? I'd like to know what you think. I'd like to know what I think. I could end up anywhere with those songs. "Vans" is almost as minimal as "Wait" and "Play," but it manages to be way more fun than those two, probably because it's not pretending to be seductive.

According to Wikipedia, emo kids wear Converse or Vans.

Got my Vans on but they look like mopers.

I just checked those out -- on a first listen 'Vans' sounds better to me than 'Ungawa', in fact 'Vans' sounds pretty damn great period. But then I just like music with beeps in. I'm impressed how committed to singing about sneakers they seem to be. But I really like 'Maneater' so what would I know (it's the pun on 'make you spend hard' in the chorus that does it for me!)... although I haven't found a way into 'Ain't No Other Man' at all.

And slow on the uptake maybe, but I'm enjoying the Damone myspace tracks! Lots of sonic steals from two of my favourite bands (ACDC, Maiden) but a more teenpop sensibility. Shame the only band that has managed to chart in the UK in this area was The Darkness -- the cool police ((c) Marcello) at the BBC only like hard rock with inverted commas round it.

Proof that The Times takes its cues from the rolling teenpop thread.

(By the way, there's now emo grass, which saves you the bother of having to mow it, since it cuts itself.)

Jojo has a new single. It's called Too Little Too Late and sounds a lot like Leave (Get Out) but I like it. Download here.

Also, the new Justin Timberlake (presumably he counts as teen-pop although no longer a teenager) is here. Not so sure about this one but will probably buy the album anyway since I was a big *NSync fan (when the BSBs didn't have an album out anyway).

My feeling about JoJo's "Too Little Too Late" is that it follows the "Leave (Get Out)" musical plot in some way that I can't put my finger on (maybe it's the humming at the intro, and the similar melody at the start, and the way the chorus lifts in exactly the same way as "Leave"), but that what it puts into the plot is different enough that the two songs aren't directly comparable, fortunately. My first reaction was to be disappointed in "Too Little Too Late" for lacking the intensity and release of "Leave"'s great chorus; there's just no way to repeat/compete the first achievement. But then on second and third and fourth listen to it's the prettiness of "Too Little Too Late"'s chorus. So this is similar to the case of "Oops" in comparison to "...Baby One More Time"; after a few plays the later song takes on its own identity. I still emphatically prefer "Leave," but that's because in a straight-up battle between intensity and beauty, I'll take intensity.

I like the Jojo song...seems fuller and prettier than "Leave," which doesn't make it better, but different enough not to feel like a copy (despite that guitar line, which is close). It sounds too heavily processed in the chorus, though, she's got a great voice and it sounds filtered and artificial. Justin song is weak. For some reason I could imagine Black Eyed Peas doing something with it, but Justin's voice is pretty much wasted. Not very sexy, either, he sounds like a dork!

This identical twin thing is blowing up as big as emo. Sammy & Sasha are a pair of 14-year-old blonde bombshells from Chi-town who like the music of Britney Spears and Norah Jones and who hooked up with local producers Vince Lawrence and Josie Aiello for their demo (at least two of the four streamed MySpace songs - "Free" and "The Call" - are by Aiello and Ashley Ingram, and "Free" was on Aiello's own album back in 2000). "Let me introduce myself, I hope you relate to what I feel/I cannot dilute myself, I cannot be anything but real." Unfortunately, this claim to freedom ("I'm free to be anything, to be anything I feel, yeah") is delivered without irony. But fortunately it has laughter, and sauciness and arrogance in the laughter, and even more fortunately it's message of emotional freedom is contradicted by their best song, "Fine," which is a hard-guitar slasher with an Alanis snarl and woman-scorned savagery: "How could you leave me hangin' like some old forgotten sweater/And still be fine/You'll always be fine/About everything." In fact, it was so much like Alanis - Alanis at her angry best - I thought it might be an Alanis cover, but a quick Web search didn't turn up anyone's having done this song previously. "Strange Butterflies" has Hope Partlow's freshness and some M2M earnestness, though it's not as good as that implies. There are also YouTube home videos only one of which I had the patience to load; given their choice they might go too much for jazz slush, but one hopes that the market will push them to sing anger and frustration. Hardship becomes them.

(They've also got another MySpace page from when they were marketing themselves as the Nelson Twins, and a Website where you can download among other things a clip of their strangely bright cover of the Everly Bros. "All I Gotta Do Is Dream.")

Haven't had a chance to listen to the Justin. Someone at Poptimists remarked a couple of weeks ago that on *NSync's "It's Gonna Be Me" Justin sounds like a goat. I like that song and the way he sings it, but I have to admit that there's truth in the characterization.

The new song is baaaaaad. Sorry. Actually, I just wanted to post one of these talking Aly and AJ smileys, appropriate as a belated response to that Blender article! Do they count as twin-pop? Because I'm writing about it now and would like to include them. (I think the idea of Aly and AJ is fitting for recurring themes of twin-pop: indistinguishable personalities, and to some extent appearances, efficient harmonizing that can be easily replicated in live performance...I'd love to see some quad-pop doing some barbershop quartet harmonies over Flyleaf emo, the most I've found are triplets, and they do boring country music.)

"vans": not hyphy, not snap. well, maybe snap i guess. it sure is minimalist, anyway. mainly, whisper rap, and i hate whisper rap. and i hate how slow this is. BUT everybody amazed by these kids are so obsessive about shoes is right. better than "air force ones" or whatever that nelly song was; not as good as "my adidas." also, when was the last time a rap song included the phrase "punk rock"? in my second book i mention a few instances of it, like, a quarter century ago, but i can't think of any recent examples. so that's a good thing, though i wonder what they think counts as punk rock nowadays.

"umgawa": i like this more, mainly for the chorus chant, which is superb; the verses are somewhat more negligible, though i like when the guy's voice turns into james chance toward the end. anyway: the ubangi stomp in the ubangi style. and right, it beats jon spencer.

(by the way, is this the thread where we'd talk about the new teena marie album? she's even less teenpop than stacey q, but what the heck. well...even though there's a photo of teena holding a guitar inside for the first time since forever probably AND a 100-line-or-so poem eulogy to rick james inside the CD booklet, and even though as always i was totally obsessed with it for a day so, i'm pretty convinced by now that, as usual, a la' the last who knows how many albums, this one's way too buried in mushola. best track seems to be "love is a gangsta," though i could be wrong. also one song has her reversing two lines from james taylor's "you've got a friend.")

"everybody amazed by HOW these kids are so obsessive about shoes"

(I just read Frank's Dylan/Ashlee conflation in Paste, before checking this thread, and turned to my GF and said "It's official--he's one of the three best music writers on this continent.")

RE: Ashlee's nose: There's the possibilty of some--I'm being an awful voyeur of human dstruction here--some serious DEAD RINGERS drama in this sad act.

It made me think of that movie where she plays the shelpy best pal to someone--eternally upbeat, very inside herself and yet giving to her (forgotten, for me) star. TRhe last image of that I recall is her looking at her retreating friend with an expression that seems to say, 'I'm second best--and that's how it should be.'

oops, just realized in my hacked-out (but not hardly thought-out at all) "vans" comment i called the music "minimalist," and if i remember right, frank said once that it makes no sense to call hip-hop minimalist. i forget why (and i doubt i agree with him on this particular point), but let's change the adjective to "spare" then. and thing is, usually i LIKE spare hip-hop. or i used to: "white lines," "it's like that," like that. (those are horrible examples, probably; this may not be one of my best exampling days.) but i'm not so sure anymore. i've decided i like the IDEA of D4L and dem franchize boyz (whose albums i still have around here, though i've still yet to make it through the latter) more than i like their actual music, which i want to amuse me but which never really grabs me enough. and as i suggested above, i really didn't like the ying yang twins' and david banner's whispered seduction moves last year, which rank among the least intense (and least seductive) tracks each of those artists have ever made. "vans" is obviously way more fun, as frank says, since it's about sneakers (or, uh, vans that look like sneakers? wait, but vans ARE sneakers, right?) but it would be a lot more fun than it is, i think, if it were way less whispery. or its spareness would work better if it was faster (which isn't to say the vans fans making it lack energy; they've got plenty. i guess.)

I don't remember why I would have said that hip-hop can't be minimalist, except maybe I just didn't want to associate hip-hop with Minimalism the art movement, which kind of tests the audience to see if it can get how small things can be made enormous, whereas spare hip-hop uses small things to make money.

Actually, I'd probably have argued that no hip-hop is minimalist since even the sparest hip-hop is feeding off a large ENVIRONMENT. Whereas Minimalism as an art movement is trying to pull you into the minimal rather than into the environment.

In fact, I know virtually nothing about Minimalism the art movement, so if all goes well I'm all wrong.

There's not much whispering in "Vans," only some whispered punctuation gasps. There's a lot of vocodoring, however, all up and over and around the scenery.

By the way, thank you Ian.

Lily Allen's "Smile" is the no. 1 single on the Brit charts this week.

And the fan's-only video of Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" is now up on Launch Yahoo. My favorite is the girl who's putting on lipstick. I also like the one who catches her own hat.

Anyone who mass adds friends on Myspace is kinda automatically teenpop, right? Future In Plastics added me along with around 3,000 other people this morning, and they're pretty much great in a kind of gypsy Cramps way. Like Morningwood without finishing school or something.

http://www.myspace.com/futureinplastics

I put "Ungawa" on my 2005 year-end mix -- thought it was great, esp. the production that made it sound like it was recorded in a busy schoolyard. Or maybe it actually was? Frank, I agree with you on the Nelly F and Xtina singles. I think though they're above-average, they don't have that [*make a sound like a crack of a bullwhip here*] that stings ya azz like they should.

Speaking of Vans, I'm not all that surprised that the Warped Tour 06 sampler leaves me cold. Most of these guys all sound the same even when they don't sound the same.

I'm in love with a supermodel recounts The History of Emo, which apparently begins with TLC:

the history of emo
Current mood: tired
Category: Life

Hip hop is the basis of my dance class, and my school career (anybody remember "no Scrub" by TLC ? ya that was my first hip hop experiance-5th grade). It is also all you hear at my school "MT. McGhetto" so of coarse I'm into it.Ya I went through my 'pop phase'. It consisted of phrases like "I don't like BSB, but I'll stand Nsync" & "I don't like Britney Spears, but I like SOME of her songs. Besides I'm only going to the concert because my mom wants me too". LOL-Sixth grade was so naive and simple. Ever since I had ears to hear tho, I was listening to whatever my sister (aka role model) played. She was born in 1981 (6 years before me) so I heard the first of the Beastie Boys, Hoobastank, No Doubt and Smashing Pumpkins...when they were still 100% good...and the 80s and 90s were burned into my subconscious and heart along with u2, the cure...and all that jazz that I won't even list. So that led me to my Seventh grade phase (with my punk/goth-antiprep-don't label us friends- yes Marilyn manson actually screamed into my ears through headphones) and created the "emo" musik freak I am today. I prolly donT define emo the way the rest of you do cuz itZ not a label or a look or w/e to me. You don't define Emo, & it doesn't define you, & you don't define yourself as it...your loves, likes, and life do all that for you. I guess you can say it is a "symbionic reltionship" between EMOness and your personality that EFFECT (not define) each other. NEway, For me itZ a lifestyle, how i think, love and act. i do use it to describe a look or a band...etc, but only for lack of a better term. in the case of music, it's more of an indescribable sound that only the depth of my heart understands. It is basically something about a song, any song that hits me hard enough to make me want to leap & cry at the same out of love and beauty for that "something" and makes me say,"THAT is why music is my life!" ya I know, I'm wierd (that's how my BF puts it). But hey, emo IS short for emotional. I know Mary (who'll prolly never see this) will agree with me on this one. Music is life and expression for many..."to each his own" cuz 'he' will be the only person to ever understand his way and his personality...and that is what musik is for anyway.

More bad news for post-nosejob Ashlee: her next two PA shows have been cancelled due to poor ticket sales. (I'll bet it doesn't help that the Veronicas cancelled all their dates.) She's been selling less than 50% overall, and I saw her and the other Ashley last night at a venue that was barely half full. Fwiw, she put on a great show. No lip-syncing, even! She looked an awful lot like Jessica, though...

I'm not surprised the tour is doing poorly. She's falling between audiences, and I don't know where she goes from here. She'll either have to dumb it down to keep the kids or dumb it down to get the adults, who've been treating her like box-office poison ever since SNL. Maybe she'll stick to her somewhat square guns and struggle through to the point where the high quality of her music pays dividends. I hope.

Well, an interesting conspiracy theory developed in the comments section of this post, that Platinum Weird is designed to "trick" adults into liking teenpop, "an attempt to sell teen pop to people who think they're too old/cool for teen pop." Maybe the audience for Ashlee-rock will expand to VH1 Classic demographic? Lower ticket prices might help...apparently there was a promotional deal (or possibly a mistake) that advertised $4.20 special deal for four tickets to a recent Ashlee/Ashley show.

probably old hat to most on here, but for those always catching up, like me, Smoosh seem worth checking out. I saw 'em on The Jimmy Kimmel Show this week: they both sing, one plays drums, the other plays two keyboards, and when they started, sounded totally out of sync, like they should be named osync, or The Shaggs. But then, without changing that much at all, they were totally together, in their way. Drummer's 12, keybist 14, I think he said (Usually forget about this show, unless I get an email from a publicist: "Tonight! The Goofballs in Jimmy Kimmel!", but they do have some interesting stuff sometimes). Speaking of emo, despite of the group whelp-yelp/whines (call-and-response), I basically liked the tune of the new Dashboard Confessional song on Tonight Show (Chris looking like Montgomery Clift in A Place In The Sun, very very pale in his outdoorsy shirt)

A friend of mine, 13, reports the following incident (further proof that in today's world, the issue is emo):

k.. sooooo
i was walking down the street
all innocently and stuffff
and i pass by an EMO
yes, thats terrible, i know!
&& thats not even the end of it!
he's with his friend
((yes, ANOTHER emo))
&& he said
"yuu think the exorcism of Emily Rose is hawt right?"
and his emo friend says
"well... let's just say

id excersize emily rose"

&& then he started
humping the air
im scarred for life
=]]
but ill admit
it was PRETTY DAMN HILARIOUS
or as i [told] sam taylor pais && danielley
it was both swadacious and lidacious
;]]]]]]]]
goooood times

Lex's teamtalk for Smoosh is upthread. "Rad" shows promise as a homemade cross between Aaron Carter and Hanson, but not nearly as good as that sounds, and I'm not all that high on Carter or Hanson anyway.

Better, at least for now, are Blog 27, Polish kiddie r&b/rap. (Faux twinpop: they were born on the same day, November 27, 1992, but to different parents.)

(P.S. Lia isn't the "punk for pussies" teenager I quoted upthread. I know some pro-emo teens, as well.)

Maybe Ashlee and Lindsay and Hilary and Kelly are attempts to sell '80s AOR rock to teens. But they had to improve it to do so! Whereas the non-teenpoppers who've worked with Shanks & DioGuardi - SHeDAISY, Bo Bice, Anastacia, latter-day Bon Jovi, and latter-day Sheryl - are all far worse than Ashlee-Lindsay-Hilary-Kelly.

Lily Allen seems to be streaming her entire album on her MySpace page!

I loved Blog 27's first 2 singles (including a Teddybears Sthlm cover!!) but the newer one is disappointing.

You know what confuses me about Lily Allen? That everyone is in love with LDN - which does nothing for me. I'm much more into Smile. It's a tone thing, definitely, because my impressions from either of those songs have absolutely nothing to do with the lyrics.

LDN sounds very flip, snarky... like Allen is just tossing off lines. This is slightly reflected in the lines "Pimp and his crack whore... Sunny in the sky, oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else." But it also feels tired and old, already. And while I think one of the best things about Allen is her exhaustion, I don't think it sounds best cynical.

Smile on the other hand has that smokey jazz sound. It's a kiss-off song, which is hardly innovative, but the tone makes all the difference. I think of scotch and Lucky Strikes - maybe Dorothy Parker in a speakeasy kissing off Robert Benchley. Or a continuation of some of the themes on Joni's "Court and Spark."

Everything is personal (and you'd probably have to share my obsession with Parker/Mitchell to feel the same way) but I feel like Smile has a depth that LDN lacks. Smile sounds like a natural expression of world-weary exhaustion, while LDN sounds like Allen is justifying the attitude with examples. And I always think jaded sounds better without justification. Otherwise it has the taint of an affectation.

What Je4nn3 ƒur¥ says: "Speaking of Vans, I'm not all that surprised that the Warped Tour 06 sampler leaves me cold. Most of these guys all sound the same even when they don't sound the same."

That even the ways that they don't sound the same are similar. They choose the same places to distinguish themselves from everyone else.