Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

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 ...

i'm not saying there aren't remote, isolated instances here and there (which is why i said "tend not to," and "most" rather than "all") -- i mean, yeah, "not ready to make nice" takes on a different meaning if you hear it in the context of what's happened to the dixie chicks in the past couple years. but even in an extreme case like that, i have to make a point of thinking of the song that way; it doesn't come naturally. there's something willful about it. and honestly, i can't think of a case offhand, even when i do know the biography of the artist in question, where knowing said biography makes me like a record more or less than i would otherwise. maybe i'm just weird that way, i dunno. and no, obviously that doesn't mean i think "an artist's work exists in a vacuum" -- it exists in the world, which includes my life, among others.

no, of course. I meant "... work is created in a vacuum..."

And then there are songs that obviously refer to real events - possibly "Easy Silence" on the same album - that don't force the listener to contextualize the song. So I feel like the natural listening of "Not Ready to Make Nice" is a contextual listening, and the natural listening of "Easy Silence" is not.

As per the contention: "i can't think of a case offhand, even when i do know the biography of the artist in question, where knowing said biography makes me like a record more or less than i would otherwise."

For me, Cloud Room's "Hey Now Now" was like that. When I understood the biographical context of the song, I had more appreciation of it. Though that doesn't tend to be my experience - I didn't like Wilco more because of their story, or the new M. Night movie because he ditched his studio to make it. Though both those stories might be compelling reasons to reevaluate the source materials -- spend more time with it -- it didn't actually retroactively change my appreciation. (Vis-a-vis, I might relisten to an album after hearing the context to listen for the subtlties I missed the first time, but I wouldn't go: "Oh yeah! I didn't understand. In that case, it's awesome.")

They aren't ambiguous if you notice them, true. But I still find I have to listen for these lines; they don't naturally jump out of the song and tackle me. So yeah, for me, the context is still willful; then again, maybe if I heard the song every day, on the radio or on the record, or maybe if I used headphones instead of a stereo across the room, the lines would jump out. (I suppose contextualizing Eminem's songs about Kim and Haile is less willful, though. I'm sure there are other examples. But I don't think knowing who Kim and Haile are makes me like those songs more, or less.) (I still think "Easy Silence" is the dullest track on the Dixie Chicks album, for what it's worth, but this is the wrong thread for that.)

Looks up at the thread heading.

Wait a sec. How did we get from the Country thread over to the Teenpop thread?

But anyway - about the accent thing - does that mean that if as an American I completely miss the subtext of Lily Allen's participation in class warfare I'm misunderstanding Alright Still?

But if I really want to let go with *reading* Monster, I need to go to Isaac Bashavis Singer - who is the best example of someone writing about Monsters and meaning people. He writes about Dybbiks (demons) as though they were people and then turns around in the next story and writes about people as though they were demons. He was challenging the way we've come to accept humanity and the supernatural unknown - he's engaging with Jung's Shadow indirectly.

M&D are doing something similiar with Monster. Because if you can take a song about wanting love and twist it so that it comes out dark instead of poppy-happy, then you've done something with the genre. When kids on M&D's myspace page are saying that Monster is really pretty, even if they don't understand what it's about - they are challenging the notion of pretty, or of which themes translate to the listeners. If the Monster can really be a human being, than in the next song you're listening for something new - maybe the human being is a monster (maybe he isn't, but at least the listening is now there).

Then the album (at least on my first few listens) devolves into pretty standard fare. It doesn't take advantage on that reversed expectation - which I find disappointing.

The one thing I can't come to grips with in the song is how dark it actually is. "I'm a glass child. I am Hannah's Regrets." "Bathe in Kerosene. Their words tattooed in his veins" Am I just not familiar with other examples of this in teen-pop? It doesn't seem like standard fare to me.

(The story that Dia wrote as a child that inspired the single is here: http://www.meganddia.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=72, though the same questions apply to the story as to the single.)

*I've not paid enough attention to M&D's lyrics to really decide what is standard and what is not. But Meg's lyrics tend to depict scenes and situations (taken from novels), which isn't that prevalent in teenpop. (Not that it's absent. "Sk8er Boi" has phone calls and concert scenes, after all.)

Christopher just wrote me "They are archived now. Sometime (today?!), the last TWO WEEKS of stuff is supposed to run down the page. Streams never go away now, btw!" So you'll always be able to hear what we've reviewed, even after time has expired. Dumb me, I hadn't noticed the little "more" link under the linked reviews (just now expanded to "more single file reviews") to get all the reviews. So you can see Chuck's Answering Service review and listen to the track. And I also highly recommend Poni Hoax's "Budapest" and Tom Mallon's great review of it. Hilarious nightmare kill-fuck disco.

Meg's lyrics tend to depict scenes and situations (taken from novels), which isn't that prevalent in teenpop.

"I don't need to read Billy Shakespeare/ Meet Juliet or Malvolio"...maybe a stretch.

Why "instead of"? Why not "as well as"? E.g., any number of Michael Jackson songs. "Billie Jean," "Smooth Criminal," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

How about Pink's "Is It Love"? "Is it love or just a curse/Do you feel good when I hurt?" Not happy-poppy in its darkness, certainly, but sung in a pleasing sing-song that could suit some kid's nursery rhyme, except held-in-check in a way that a kid wouldn't hold back. An amazing song, I'm coming to realize more and more. Last song on her first album, has that album's r&b craft and discipline and the next album's confessional emotionalism. Almost as spare as Cassie's "Me & U," but with way more character in the words and vocals. It suggests a whole story in a few lines, her wanting some love she's not sure she's getting from the guy; but the song isn't addressed to the guy but to her parents, lamenting that they hadn't prepared her for this, asking them for advice, or more really just asking for them to understand what it feels like to be her, and resigned to the fact that they're not likely to. "Daddy, listen, I gave it up/I'm not your little girl, my cherry popped/And all the trust is missing/But please listen/What do I do?/I know you want to hurt him/But I like what he do/He's only doin' what you used to." Meanwhile, the accompaniment continues on with a few plinky, mournful strums, some subued thumps, clicks, dream-like background singing, and Pink telling the guy, her parents, anyone: "I need your heart to open up."

But darkness is surely an acknowledged theme in teenpop.

Speaking of "Sweet Dreams," Ashlee does an intense version of it in concert.

And - still speaking of "Sweet Dreams" - I'm trying to figure out what to say in my Platinum Weird review, with only 200 words to say it.

michael's sound has a lot of violence and terror in it. (i talk about this in my second book somewhere, i think. he often sounds goth.) but right, somehow, it doesn't bill itself as being violent terror otherwise. (though i guess "thriller" does, in a way. but even there, it pretends the terror is a fun thing.

JUNE 15
the Lizzie/Hilary campaign was meticulously worked out between all parties involved.

I Can't Wait video (played on Disney Channel only) / and the Lizzie TV soundtrack
in fall (?) 2002
full Xmas album (which i really like) Xmas 2002
the Why Not video , March 2003 which broke into MTV within 30 days i'm pretty sure
the So Yesterday single/video early summer 2003
and the album, back-to-school purchase for every grade schooler in american late august 2003, went straight to #1 (its SECOND week...it bumped Mary J. Blidge which had higher 1st week sales, but not the 2nd week).
"Sweet 16 in Hawaii" special on the WB channel on her Sept (23?) birthday
then the sequence of club gigs (about 6 or 7 max) in late fall 2003 -- i saw santa cruz at a 1,000 head venue and it was great, loved the band
following by a full on arena tour early 2004 that did just great

from zero to 100 miles an hour in just 15 months or so

JULY 2

Subject: did skye finish recording in LA?

in case anyone's noticed anything on the regular website that i never see anymore.

if she was still in LA, i'd invite her down to the SAT July 8th samoans yearly gig in hollywood, all ages at the Knitting Factory, to get up on stage and stomp around during the "Tequilla" onstage pee wee dance contest, and air guitar with the unused 2nd guitar (during my 5 song shift back at the drum kit) to vancouver punk classic "Slave To My Dick." hell i could teach her Slave to My Dick for real in 5 minutes at the merch table.

JULY 2 (LATER)

"hey skye..all this cool shit i sent you on your birthdays...i was just using you to get to met Max Martin!" ha ha.

cool, i'll post a comment right into her comments column. (maybe dupe it as a message too). we're in her Top 8 for like forever so if she ever sees our band name on a coment/message it's probably like, "aw man, what crazy thing do the Samoans have for me this year?"

ha ha if she had thenight off, she was a regular goofball trying to work the "sales table" in that highschool Switched episode when they sent her to Kentucky for a week. we'd put her to work signing fake autographs at the merch table where i spend half my time every gig.

i guees now that skykdebrat is up to speed on max martin's genius, now i can send her one of my dupes of BACKSTREET BOYS GREATEST HITS which is just amazing...one of myfaovirte hits collections of all time.

AUG 7

Subject: Re: new idea for miley month? punk/mylie x 4 playlist

ahh someone i know, emily, did a "playlist" thing the ohter day onto her page. where does that link up?

i want the NEWEST mylie song "I've Got Nerve, " that's my favorite..

i'm out of town for five entire days Aug 17th / 18 / 19 / 20 /21 back dinnertime the 21st
and that would be an ideal time to have Mylie playing nonstop

and i'll put a picture up (i hve 16 pictures on the page now)
and it's header/caption will be "it's MYLIE CyRuS month!" mylie roooolz all you suckas u know you love it

and when i get back aug 21st i'll see if it's annoyed enough "punk rockers" to stay up all month.

it would be rad if you could mix one or two great 1977-82 punk songs into it

on my Favorites (towards the end) i 've been pulling up

WEIRDOS Destroy All Music
**Mylie** I'VE GOT NERVE
CH3 I've Got A Gun
**Mylie** BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
X Los Angeles
** Mylie** whatever 3rd best song
THE EYES TAQN
**Mylie** whatever 3rd best song
REDD KROSS Bubblegum Factory

that gtreat Redd Kross song w/Susan Cowsill on vocals drives punk rockers crazzzy

i don't know if all those sogns will download though

AUG 9

Subject: hahahaha i'm laughing hysterically / playlist fior angry samoans page http://www.myspace.com/192503angrysamoans
1. Miley/Hannah - I've Got Nerve
2. Weirdos - Destroy All Music
3. Miley/Hannah - Best of Both Worlds
4. X - Los Angeles
5. Miley/Hannah - Who Said
6. CH3 - I Got a Gun
7. Nikki Cleary - Summertime Guys
8. The Eyes - TAQN
9. Rose Falcon - Up Up Up
10. Dickies - Gigantor
11. Germs - Lexicon Devil
12. X - We're Desperate

this is the funniest album i've ever seen hah ahahaha ahahaha just scanning it is hysterical.

i want to go to the record store and buy a copy!!!

3 of the 7 LA punk tunes have legitmate bubblepoppy traits to them -- weirdos, and of course the dickies and the great Eyes song (charlotte caffey played bass in that band, before the Go Go's formed in1978).

i will of course put a good blonde-wig singing picture of Mylie up periodically now that our page have 16 photos...so many that evenone is left wide open (for perpetual change) for emily (or me) to fuck with unasked. E. spent five hrs (she said) putting together a long "playlist" for her page the ohter day annnd that is what put the idea into my head.

i got Paypal money sitting around if i can reimburse you for the tunes, or split or hahaha we'll bill Robert Hilburn's ass and attach a lameness surcharge.

once it's up w/miley photo, you should post the track listing and short explanatoin into I Love Music.

"The Most Insane Myspace 12 Song Playlist Of All Time"

chuck eddy called the secondangry samoans album a pop album (14 songs, 17 minutes) in his Stairway To Hell book,so whhat the fuck!

my choce of LA songs differs wildly from a conventional one by havning the Eyes and CH3 so far up. i don't know if the CH3 track is the first version (average) or the next year's re-rereocrding that was on the UK Punk And Disorderly (and a UK 45) which was AMAZING, one of the verybset 45s of all of 1982 easily

I figured out what Indiana reminds me of - The Starting Line's album, Based On A True Story. Particularly, it reminds me of the songs "Making Love to the Camera" and "Bedroom Talk." The way the singers use their voices - the high pitch to accentuate their points:

"I've got *big, big* plans. And *they've got* to mean something more *than just once.*" - "Bedroom Talk"

"*She* began to die, *Indiana,* it's not right." - "Indiana"

Obviously the girls (Meg & Dia) sustain the emphasis longer, and play with it more (the second "I can do whatever I want like you," the "you" is sang with much more implied expression that The Starting Line manage.) And both The Starting Line and M&D tend to speak their verses in contrast to the chorus (Like "so pale and white/determined and lost and ruined" in "Indiana")

I don't want to use the "emo" word, but partially what's going on is that bands like The Starting Line (emo) and Meg & Dia (teen-pop) are doing very similar things.

The other reason I like this comparison so much is that "Bedroom Talk" is a potentially very messy song. When it was released, I remember there was some discussion about its implications of rape. Unlike "Monster", which I contend is a dark song about dark topics, "Bedroom Talk" has the subversive up-beatVdarklyrics.