Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

But first my own private confessional. I liked Screaming Infidelities. Admittedly, I liked it more when it was placed into its cultural context (thanks to the Greenwald Emo book). It improved a notch after I went through a break-up (and reconciliation) and listened to The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. I figured that the best way to listen to Dashboard was to listen to him like the "kids" do. In heartbreak. It improved, slightly. (But still hasn't replaced Blue as most painful album of all-time). Finally, the Legion of Doom mashup "The Quiet Screaming" was the final nail in the coffin.

This said, what seemed to be the link between all these things was the stripped down naked feeling of the music. The cracks in the voice weren't a bug, they were a feature. And the only reason the song worked in the mashup was because it played the soft half to Brand New's "Quiet Things No One Ever Heard" harder sound.

So with Hands Down, then moreso on Vindicated, and finally all over this new album, the sound is too clean. Too refined, too melodic, too -- everything. Now when he can't hit a note, it sounds like an honest to god fuckup.

That said: Joanna cover of Screaming Infidelities completely replicates the breaking voice, heavy breathing to articulate, finally soaring chorus - except with better production values. To that extent, it reminds me more of Legion of Doom's "Quiet Screaming" than the actually original. Except at about 1:20, she just starts whining, and my ears start hurting. Bombastic and soaring aren’t the same thing... what I’m trying to say is: There is something very sincere about the breaking voice. And something very insincere about faking it. And it sounds like the second-half of Joanna’s cover is faking it, and the first half is sincere. And the beginning of Dashboard Confessional’s career was authentic, and now it’s insincere. Which is to say (exhale): The sound of trying to sound sincere is essentially an insincere sound. [Which, Frank, is why I don’t like LDN half as much as I like Smile]

Her latest work is stupefyingly mediocre, including "Whatever It Takes" and "Healing Side" on the stupefyingly mediocre SHeDAISY album. Seems to me I was pretty clear upthread about my interest in the SHeDAISY alb having a lot to do with my liking various previous tracks by the people involved.

I lean towards the Everlys on this but need to listen to a lot more Ricky - and I do not understand the claim that Ricky does not rock as hard as the Everlys. His band was the best in the business, pure fire when it wanted to be. Please please please listen to his version of "Milk Cow Blues." Listen to the snap that James Burton puts into the riff. Dave Davies lifted it whole on the Kinks' version. Burton and Sumlin (w/ Howlin' Wolf) were the models for many hard and frantic guitar riffs since, from "The Last Time" through "Boyfriend."
Ricky's singing is very canny, walking with aplomb atop the music's hysteria. I hear some Ricky in Gary Allen (cf. the title track on See If I Care).

[Ricky was the best of the '50s-early '60s teenybopper boys.][Unless of course you count Elvis as a teenybopper boy, which he was but his social reach also went elsewhere.]

At one point, Disney realized they were able to promote all these non-Disney musicians very effectively. So they decided to use that promotion power to push forward their own actors.

Also; two favorite quotes in the article:

"I'm not into the club scene. You won't see mo go over the edgy edge. I will always be wholesome." -Ashley Tisdale (Sharpay)

"I don't want to be seen buying cigarettes and liquor. It wouldn't be a smart move to be out doing promiscuous things." -Zac Efron (Troy)

Actually, Ashley's upcoming debut is on Warner Bros, not a Disney label, so maybe she's closer to the old school Disney model. Zac Efron can't sing (and didn't sing in High School Musical) but Drew Seeley, who did, has been appearing on Disney comps and is trying to launch a solo career. Zac has the potential to be a Disney-groomed star anyway...maybe he could rap or something.

Britney Spears' sister already works with (GASP) Nickelodeon! They need to start building their own roster. Amanda Bynes (can she even sing?), Jamie Spears, Spongebob...what label was the Emma Roberts album on? (checks...on Columbia, includes rootkit)

IN YR FACE FURTADOO

In other news, 'Samantha' by Margaret Berger is making waves in the Norwegian chart at the moment, and is a bit good in what I am tempted to describe as the Eurodisco manner, except it isn't quite like that. Not quite, anyway.

I cannot find a video online for it, though. Which is a bit of a pisser.

On some of the other songs there is a dominately featured piano, but the playing has a very modern feel to it - the piano's purpose being to introduce the condition of empty modernity that Ell is singing about, as opposed to jaunty tunes. (Glass instead of Mozart - to be slightly facetious).

What do people think?

Looking right back at the top of the thread, at Mr Kogan's KDIS playlist, it strikes me that all the artists there have at the very least been nodded at on this thread, with one exception:

8. CHEETAH GIRLS - Shake Your Tailfeather

Given that I presume the song was a cover, I can kind of see why they never popped up again, but what were they to start with?

(WBS, sorry I never replied to your email; I'll be back at my home digs in early Aug., will try to catch up then.)

I still think it's interesting that Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Gabreel display the least character development...duality (bogus or not) is the main theme, but in Ryan/Sharpay's case the duality is externalized to actually limit the possibility of us being moved by any transformation resulting from them acknowledging inner conflict. Apparently there's a subplot in the works for HSM 2 to explore Ryan/Sharpay by making brother stab sister in the back, not sure how exactly. I don't think that Ashley Tisdale's desire to be her opposite is especially apparent; she only goes after baking basketball guy after the credits have rolled, as a sort of, um, credit cookie. And anyway, I think that it's probably in line with her character's one-note behavior, manipulative, dominant, etc. (How hard would it be for the Wicked Witch to get someone to cook for her? Did she cook for herself? Not being able to touch water would be a severe culinary handicap.) Using the film's binaries, it follows that Sharpay should secretly be an excellent field hockey player or something.

He also seems to be forgetting the golden rule of capitalism: The corporation's goal is to make money. Disney would have nothing to gain by attempting some sort of bizzare brainwashing, they just put out what they think will sell, it's that simple.

They can do both, you know. Wink

*sigh* Also, they're singing about the horrors of life. Many many MANY artists do that, but you don't see other people anylizing THEM. Rolling Eyes

Eek, violent? Who gets that out of Aly & AJ?

Their fans, apparently! I get all kinds of violent hate mail from these people.

More female fronted emo over at clap clap, the band is Paramore. Maybe this should be called shemo, since emo has been tainted by a culture war and the girl groups do it better anyway.

In 1998, Britney Spears released “Baby One More Time,” and created the template for teen pop for the next four years. In 2002, Avril Lavigne released “Complicated,” and her bratty pop rock became the new standard for girls on the radio. Another four years later, having been through Avril, Kelly Clarkson, the Veronicas, Ashlee Simpson, Hilary Duff, and a whole bunch of non-starters like Skye Sweetnam, Cheyenne Kimball wheezes the genre’s last breaths. We’re due for a brand new take on teen pop right about now and “Hanging On” suggests the reinvention cannot come soon enough.

I disagree (even though I do think that Cheyenne Kimball's album and new single are pretty awful), but I'm wondering if or when teenpop has ever been proclaimed "dead." This example could just be referring to the Kelly/Ashlee style (in which case I still disagree), but all of teenpop is implicated.

Quick Google search shows that teenpop has been kinda sorta pronounced dead in Time magazine (obliquely, as a question to Xtina), and a few sarcastic results. But here the premise is "teenpop is dying but it was once very much alive!" as opposed to "teenpop is dead, finally."

but right now there is none of that. sure, xtina and justin are still massively successful icons, but they appeal as much to an adult audience as a teenage one. i find i have to do crate-digging to get to the teenpop which still clings on, which is disappointing - i don't like having to crate-dig for pop! crate-digging is indie! pop should be IN MY FACE ALL THE TIME.

yet we have ashlee simpson always missing the top 10 in the uk, lindsay lohan's music barely has a profile here at all, no one ever ever talks about either duff sister apart from ilx people...this stuff is not selling. and no one involved is going to go stratospheric like britney.

(thx to mindtaker_cro for pointing out the vid on poptimists)

http://www.myspace.com/youngbscrillahill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyOAYxHQFL4

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chicken+noodle+soup&search=Search

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_sort=relevance&search_query=toe+wop&search=Search

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_sort=relevance&search_query=tone+wop&search=Search

Except for People, what the tabs print is basically made up. You read them not for info on the celebs themselves but for the stories they project onto the celebs. So what are they saying about Ashlee? In Touch proclaims on the cover that Ashlee's friends are worried that she's obsessed with plastic surgery. The article irself doesn't back this up. The mag talks to a plastic surgeon and show him before and after pictures of Ashlee and ask if she's gotten anything done on her chin, her eyebrows, and so forth. He looks at the pictures and says no. They talk to a psychiatrist who says that getting plastic surgery often fails to build one's esteem. If people suddenly like you, you wonder why they didn't like you before. You don't believe in it. But the article is counterposing two attitudes. (1) Ashlee is insecure, in trouble. (2) Ashlee's now a knockout, a dazzler.

I haven't read the Life and Style piece, but the theme on the cover was dangerous diets, and she was shot in a revealing dress, all open on the side.

Seems to me that what the tabloids want are for the girls to be in distress, to suffer by their own hands, to be torn up inside; and the girls need to have excruciatingly normal concerns about their looks and their appeal and whether they can get dates and whether their boyfriends/hubbies are cheating and so on; and but still there has to be something special, some celeb dazzle or something.

Not sure why the tabs are seizing on Ashlee now. She'd provided damsel-in-distress material from the get-go. Something about the nose job brings her into the tabs' comprehension but also makes her one of the glamour people.

One thing I'm liking about Ashlee, beyond the music, is that she's embracing the glamour puss role, that she won't put her beauty-shaping, beauty-testing self in opposition to her moral-intellectual questing; just as when she announced the quest back in song one, she coupled it with the information that she's got stains on her T-shirt and that she's the biggest flirt.

(They sound like bored teenagers because they are - Be Your Own Pet just graduated high school, and the core of the band grew up together in Nashville and have known one another since sixth grade. RS 8/10/06)

So are BYOP a teen version of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's, or is their age coincidental to the music (which appeals to older listeners more)? I was struck by their posturing about emo music, where they basically mocked all emo bands. They aren't that different from those emo bands, and so instead of elitism, it sounded more catty. Like they wanted to start a fight - rather than actually believing in what they're saying. Which I'd say is a hallmark of teen-pop.

p.s: I can't believe everbody is ignoring my chicken noodle soup and toe-wop links.

Lily Allen "Smile": I like the light Caribbean lilt (reminds me of "Uptown Top Ranking," at least at the beginning), like the vocal (do the British people who complain about her "mockney" thing think she'd better if she didn't use pronunciations like that? I totally don't get that, but I'm not British so what do I know), love the totally mean-spirited revenge video even more. Yet there doesn't seem to be anywhere near as much to grab ahold of in the song itself as "LDN" (it's not half as funny, for one thing), but maybe I just need to hear it more. Still haven't heard her album; I can wait, though if a copy does come my way, I'll put it on first chance I get.

Chuck I could have told you this, her vocals are totally anti-Chuck!

it's that she's monied & middle-class but using working-class phrasing & accent, ostensibly as a gimmick to appear more street/urban/whatever - which may be artistic choice but the fakery sticks in the craw of many

(I'm trying to think of any Americans from the North who've used Southern accents that sounded hokey to me; it must have happened, in some hee-hawing cowpunk parody novelty act sometime. So maybe that's an equivalent. Or maybe the minstrel crap that the asswipe in the Red Hot Chili Peppers has always done? If Lily hits people how Anthony Keidis hits me, I suppose I can relate. Though with her, it seems you'd really have to bend over backwards to let it bug you.)

Anyway, yes, for me the the accent sounds affected, in the same way that a white "comedian's" rap pastiche might - it's not only appropriating the accent: it appears to be mocking it (like the girl in Common People). And that's where it bugs ...