Rolling Debutante Bubblegum Teenpop Thread 2008

Metal Mike, post-movie (and maybe during movie, even? Hell if I know; I didn't even read it yet, so don't blame me if some of this makese no sense):

1.
the hell with all you old e-mail-chained old folks,
i'm just gonna cut/paste the bulletin on the BradPaisleySpace that went out, and hell with it

and they say there's no intelligent discussion of music on those innernet sites! i have over 15 (and counting) messages in the In Box from yesterday's (several) posts and re-posts of the "when are you going to go see the Hannah Montana Concert Movie??" bulletin (2nd file, further below).

thanks to me and BradPaisleySpace, a 60's-loving-bubblegum/Tommy James/Beach Boys fan (female, age 17, don't even have any idea what their "real name" is; if 10,000 people have "angry samoans" in their Music list(s), that is all that is required to be our "band friend," any and all of them)
got so psyched up she talked her mom in driving her 35 miles to Dublin to see the movie RIGHT NOW any minute this afternoon!

before i go back to bed till Super Bowl kickoff, i'll find/cut/paste a good Hannah/Mylie sticker (photo) into the pictures (the Bubblegum Music Kicks Your Ass picture folder, definitely) so unnamed-kid in bekreley can post their review of the movie into a "permanent archive" forever.

yep i read/skim through lots of the I Love Music board. but HERE is where me (and the peeps in BradPaisleyWorld) do the heavy lifting.

more:

Date: Feb 3, 2008 10:31 AM
Subject: the Hannah Montana Concert Movie was AWESOME saw the 11:50pm
Body: and i mean like a WHOA pleasant surprise good. it is not just a REALLY good "concert movie," but the "arena show segments" (75 percent of the 75 minute movie i'd say, in maybe 4 or 5 or 6 chunks) are almost a flat out rock-concert experience (from the 2nd row on the floor, centered and looking up from what usually is 4 or 5 rows back at most screens/rooms).

the box office was insane. they SOLD OUT all but < less than 100 seats of the 8 straight run times on 1-screen only =

300/seats x 8 = 2,400, round it down to 2K for easier multilication-in-head
2,000 seats sold x 15/ticket = 30,000 bucks a day, ONE SCREEN
90,000 / PER SCREEN weekend gross in this theatre

anyone who knows hollywood is gonna shit saying "holy fuckingmotherfucking WHOA!!"

it has to have > 500 screens nationwide (of a possible 3,000 to 4,000 that hit movies fill up)

should = over $50million gross, opening (and only) weekend
and a runaway no.1 movie in America for this week

jeez man!

here's the IM i hacked out (quickly, lots of dodgy sentence construction) at 2am back home, to someone in Texas who needed to be alerted immediately
==================================
IM FILE cut/pasted --

mike_in_oakland (2am sat night/sunday morning): WHOA pleasant surprise -- the hannah Convert Movie (i caught the 11:50pm. didnt' check Fandango online, and when i got there at 8pm, the 9:50 run time had been sold out for over an hour prior)

was WHOA good.

not just a REALLY good "concert movie, " (3-D i don't care about, it was a little distracting i thought since i use mild-correction 1.50 reading glasses) but in lots of ways even worked as a straight "live concert". terrific editing too, perfect amount of intercut "candid sequences" from "4 weeks before opening night" rehearsals to "we dropped mylie on the 8-hands up/down toss last night, let's fix it before tonight's show!" (a solid 2 minute rehearsal sequence starting with mylie all, "no! i HATE it!") (they don't drop her again). bonus: the dancer (of 4) who is in green dress the 1/2 half ("hannah montana" wig/clothes the first 1/2 of her live show), then back to some other green by the end of the second 1/2 (the "myl

mike_in_oakland: "mylie cyrus w/o the hannah wig" half) ahhh, she's exactly my idea of a cute/hot dark-haired hispanic adult woman. (and w/o any boobs in particular, their oomphage is on the bottom). double bonus: billy ray cyrus and his kid have a genuinely goofy/fun sense of humor. mylie must laugh approx 1,000 times a day. yeah, she's a Sag. triple bonus: TONS of screen time for the backing band (esp the drummer, who has an old style small kit like a 60's setup). minus points: no "drum riser" for people to climb up on, it's a like "elevated cage" thing with steps on the side booooo. but, quadruple bonus: one of the 3 Jonas Bros songs (counting the one they sing with Mylie when they first come out) is the great "Year 3000" which is totally the shit. FINAL BONUS: the audiences (9:30pm which

mike_in_oakland: was the last of the 7 straight sold out (1 screen only, and disappears indeed at thursday midnight) screennigs starting 8:40am this morning (and every 2hr10min following / the movie itself is 75 min plus trailers), anyway at 9pm right before the 7:20pm let out at 9:05, over 200 of the (290 total seat by my math inside) ticketholders were cued up on the floor/waiting line, down and around and back around both walls. (i was FIRST IN LINE for 9:50pm the minute they went in, with my 1 book and 5 magazines and parents-with-8th-grade-BOY (a saxophone player and music-fan fanatic crossing almsot all genres 90's/00's, had his Ipod of course) kept me plenty entertained until 11:20pm to go in.

mike_in_oakland: = rating = MANDATORY. mandatory! the closest thing to a "rock and roll experience" you'll find in this sorry modern age. (the 250 heads that didn't quite sell out the 11:50pm sat night trailer time, and i'm talking 2/3rds or more of that GRADE SCHOOLERS wide awake and shrieking/screaming just like at a real rock concert at most of the appropriate monments)...ahhh the audience was a TRIP. 1/2 of the front row of the elevated section (behnid me on the 2nd of only 2 floor=rows; yep i got my exact favorite seat, with feet over the next chair too) were on the floor standing up (singing/dancing) the whole time.

mike_in_oakland: heard one of the moms-with-1/2-her-neighborhood(kids) in tow joke out in the lobby heading out, "so where's the Hannah Montana "after party?" (it's 1:20am right then). someone supplied an obvious straight line. ("sound asleep in their dreams in 20 minutes" i think they said).

mike_in_oakland: the usher on the left side, pre-show (the 30 min before trailer time), was a trip. i bullshited like-kind-6-degrees (hannah, hilary, britney, spice girls) movies with her (and ditto the once-in-a-lifetime Hilary 2nd-gig-ever 1000 seater club gig in Santa Cruz..ie, with the SALT N PEPA longtime black girl drummer) with them...apparently they had also seen The Perfect Guy stinkibomb with heather locklear (and movie-daughter hilary) becuase their face went white. (me referencing, "hilary duff has been in SOO many bad movies!!" hahahahaah maybe they had to usher Cheaper By The Dozen 2 as well hahahah.

mike_in_oakland: mandatory even if you have to drive to Houston or San Antonio on your day off (or halfway whatever). you would LOVVVE this "live concert." Mylie is a born performer onstage; from all accounts she really sings (they obvously had to record a fake live-album for the movie soudntrack before the tour started, with new vocals "rawer than the recordings" on it) and she is all over the performing side of things. she's a little fucking spitfire as a stage performer. INTERESTING KNEE-HIGH BLACK BOOTS TOO. (that she uses onstage). square heels, not high at all, they're regular stomping-on-bugs-boots.

mike_in_oakland: hahahaha i wonder if the dancer no. 4 (above) has a myspace page hahahahahaha. she made Eva Longoria types look like complete stick insect wannabes.

i'll pay $10 for info where that (the dancer, duh) womman's "online page" is so i can post comment.

mylie's mom is super cute too, but she's like, sort of married you know

3.

<< editor: CUT AND PASTE an entire IM file? that is...beyond retarded >> pt 1 of 2, here you go oh brave new Net 2.0 world where Hannah is obviously the ELVIS PRESLEY of a couple million grade schoolers, right now. yeah i know i said britney/2000 was her audience's Rolling Stones....ehhhh. Mylie/thefemaleElvis of her time, that's more of an apt teen-idol comparison. the recordings are awfully stiff/ProTools, but she can REALLY fuckin' sing! dang that hillbilly country singer DNA, man. and a born natural great stage performer. check out the "Stompin' Some Bugs" black knee-high boots! man! can't be 1 inch on the hells, chunky and square and...well, in Arkansas we called those things "hillbilly senior prom bug-stompers."

Hannah Montana movie ended up grossing around $30 million dollars on only 683 screens! Each of the rest of the top 9 movies were on at least 2,300 screens. So not only did it more than double up the next highest grossing movie of the weekend, it was right at around quadruple the next highest per-screen average. Pretty incredible stuff.

I'm wondering what kind of box office records this thing is going to set for fewest screens/biggest box office gross. (Waits for deluge of half-assed think pieces.)

Oh, everybody's using gorillas as drummers these days. Sort of a fad, like the chick bass-player thing of yore. (This is in regard to the Tying Tiffany video that Dave posted.)

Kat cautions against doing a Tying Tiffany image search at work.

Anyway, can't tell yet if Tying Tiffany ends up in the Another Dumb Bitch bin, but so far that "mp3" song is good for several buzzes.

Someone needs to do an update of Beavis and Butthead with a YouTube surfer who watches bad videos and mutters sarcastic comments to himself. After each comment he looks over, as if someone is going to acknowledge him, and then sighs and types it to someone on teh internet instead.

Also, Disney extended the Hannah Montana run in theaters for approximately "as long as it keeps making money." That's the spirit!

Mordy, I've never read Attali but Mark Sinker has, and Mark's also read me and Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer and he's listened to Xenakis and watched Xena: Warrior Princess and seen Daphne & Celeste on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. You can and should see what Mark says about all of us and all of these here:

The Rise And Sprawl Of Horrible Noise Part One

The Rise And Sprawl Of Horrible Noise Part Two

In any event, does Attali have any particular ideas that you think we can use here?

I now officially declare Ashlee Simpson a fucking trip and a half.

"Um, excuse me" (slurred) "but, uh, is this thing on?"

Now clocking in at #28 on the Radio Disney Top 30 countdown -- a little-known track from the Hannah Montana soundtrack called "See You Again."

How Ashlee says "ruuuule breaker" sounds a lot like McCartney saying "aaaaaah mater" in "Jet" by Wings. (For whatever its worth, I heard maybe six songs from the new Ashlee in the Billboard offices back in December, and this was probably one of my favorites.)

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g222/mink333/whitefania4.jpg

White boys, too.

So far my teenpop album of the year is probably Dolly Parton - Backwoods Barbie. She does a cover of "Drives Me Crazy" that I can imagine Taylor Swift doing live.

RIP KEVIPOD :(

The background music to Skye Sweetnam's Valentine's Day message seems to be the JAPAN ONLY BONUS TRACK (wtf) of her Max/Luke collab "Girl Like Me." Sounds much closer to a Kelly Clarkson ballad (or...Veronicas doing KC maybe) than "Girlfriend." So it's good that we have other anecdotal proof of Avril's thievery.

Don't you guys have enough of your own threads to amuse yourselves in? [ADMIN: referring to deleted asshole post]

RTT mainstay Amy Diamond is in the running to be this year's Swedish Eurovision entry. It's not exactly classic, but it's alright. She really seems to run out of breath very, very quickly, though.

Still, so far, this is her only confirmed competition. I am not sure if it has more or less of a chance.

Whoops, forgot there was a heat last night too - she's also up against this and this.

The only safe prediction thus far is that Sweden will not be winning Eurovision anytime soon at this rate.

What's the deal with using already-released songs? "The Worrying Kind" was a single from Prayer for the Weekend, wasn't it? So why no "Stay My Baby"?

A couple of these last bits of trolling (both deleted)have been totally over the line. Step off, please.

Has anyone actually seen the Naked Brothers Band TV show?

I'd pretty much dismissed them last year as just OK, some kids form a rock band and get a show and Nick backing, and so what? But now I'm liking the Naked Brothers Band album way way way more than I'd expected: they've got kid voices and are kid friendly but I wouldn't connect their music to much of what's been sold as teenpop recently (though I suppose they are "teenpop" just by virtue of being teen/preteen and playing pop and having a TV show). I'd describe them as '70s pop-rock formalists, except I'm not quite sure who or what I mean by that: Cheap Trick? Raspberries? I don't really know those bands. Anyway, very good melodies: pretty and sweet male voices, which I suspect will continue to be their style even after their voiceboxes deepen. And though of course they've got corporate backing, it's also a mom 'n' pop operation, in that Mom, an actress who used to be in <i>Thirtysomething</i>, is in charge of the mockumentary, and Dad is the music director. But as far as I can tell, the two actual brothers write all their own songs, which doesn't in itself make the music good, but given the fact that it <i>is</i> good, this is impressive. They probably would have been 9 and 12 when they recorded it, and the two tracks written by the 9-year-old are as good as his brother's.

Grr, forgot we weren't html.

Thirtysomething

is

This feels oddly relevant.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_bYd4A58Ki0

This is in response to Lex's saying over in Poptimists - in regard to Mariah's "Touch My Body" - "THIS IS AMAZING. I love the crazy bitch to much."

But the singing is far from crazy; in fact the only melisma you get is carefully and tastefully relegated to the background at the end; I think that Mariah was beaten down in the mid '90s - or she made a decision to veer more towards the r&b mainstream, which for her was a bad choice because it toned down her exuberance - and went much more for atmospherics at the expense of her former skyrockets, and the single syllables of the '00s subdued her even more.

That said, "Touch My Body" is really pretty, but it doesn't touch "Make It Happen" (which got only three ticks in the Poptimists canon poll! I was horrified!) or "Can't Let Go" or "Emotions."

Mordy, I think the English "Can You See The Love Tonight" is more emotionally expansive than the Hebrew is. The Thai isn't bad:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9d9I9wqnFhg

Will, I'm listening to Christer Sjögren's "I Love Europe": there's conscious irony in his singing "I Love Europe" in an American accent, right? Right? Right?

Frank: I, of course, have seen the Naked Brothers Band TV show. Actually I've only seen a couple episodes. They were decent, I didn't see much to compel me to keep watching. I'll check out the album.

Sara Paxton - Can You Feel the Love Tonight (f. Zanessa)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5C3-NRTWkIo&feature=related

http://i32.tinypic.com/2rpqw08.png

i didnt know that miley's real name was "destiny hope"

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20174585,00.html

i kind of like "destiny hope" more

Here's what I wrote about the Naked Bros' CD last year, before I sent my copy to Frank. Not gonna swear I didn't underrate the thing (I do like "I Could Be," which Frank burnt me on a mix CD he sent me last week) (apparently written by the nine-year-old Bro: "I could be a rapper, like for example Jay Z" I think he says once), but I really didn't hear much Cheap Trick or Raspberries; not enough power chords, for one thing. So: maybe closer to the Rubinoos? Or Bay City Rollers? (Blue Ash? Badfinger? The Shoes? I dunno.) But not nearly as good, I don't think, though I guess Jonas Brothers are basically a powerpop band too, when you get down to it. (Not sure if Hanson were or not, though I suppose they're the obvious template as real life brothers who write their own songs and play their own instruments, assuming these kids all actually do that.) Anyway:

Tried listening to the Naked Brothers album, too. Didn't get all the way through it, though I like the British invasion tuneage of "Taxi Cab", and some of the other melodies (in the fake reggae "Crazy Car" for instance) vaguely remind me of Abba/Boney M Europop (though nowhere near that good.) Sometimes I'm convinced a grown woman is singing instead of an adolescent boy, but closer "Alien Clones" is clearly a seven-year-old-ish kid saying he's going to feed snakes and spiders to his annoying older brother--kind of cute the first time through though I'm not sure what alien clones have to do with his brother. And the Coldplay or whatever attempt in "L.A." is pretty wretched, and lots of the rest is just dull.

-- xhuxk, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 12:39

The newest singer out of the Disney factory is Selena Gomez, who stars in a show called Wizards of Waverly Place (OMG the main character's name is not in the title of the show!) and sings the theme song (which is really good: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MIO-m6imd7o ).

Here's her somewhat rocked out version of "Cruella De Vil": http://youtube.com/watch?v=7H8LA0A1q_4 . I like her singing voice.

Interesting, the long-time (I think from the start?) programmer at Radio Disney (lackey of whose responded to an interview request of mine from about 2005-6 with a sarcastic rhetorical question, "why would we want to talk to an alternative magazine geared toward liberal college students?" to which I responded BECAUSE IT'S THE FUTURE) stepped down this year and apparently they're now courting older audiences with..."The Right Stuff" by New Kids on the Block.

After they waited four months to notice that "See You Again" was getting national airplay and finally sticking it in the countdown, I now suspect that Disney is actually preventing it from moving up their charts fast enough. Something's even fishier than usual with their Top 30 these days...maybe Hampton the Hampster was like a canary in the mineshaft. I think he's been gone as long as the new program director's been there (about six months, apparently). RD never really needed to totally control what was on the radio station since for three years they've been shopping Disney-produced tracks almost exclusively anyway (who cares if one song from the same place is more popular than another?), but I haven't listened to RD at all probably since the new guy came in and I haven't missed anything.

Well, Radio Disney has just started playing Taylor Swift's "I'm Only Me When I'm With You," which was a bonus track added to the Deluxe Edition of Taylor Swift (which I guess came out about three months ago). So far that's a track that's getting airplay on exactly one country station (KSOP in Salt Lake City); I don't know if the record company intends to push that as a single to country and Top 40 or if they're aiming it at Radio Disney alone. "Picture To Burn" is still rising on country, so I can't imagine that they'd be pushing another Taylor Swift track to country yet. Also, "I'm Only Me" is OK, but almost everything else by Taylor is better.

Current Idol controversy is that one of the male contestants (Robbie Carrico) was formerly in a teen pop group in the late 90's called Boyz N' Girlz United. They weren't on a major label but they toured with Britney Spears and had a somewhat well known song "Messed Around"?: http://youtube.com/watch?v=POhPdqsy5KA

The song kinda sucks. Anyways, I had never heard of them before.

Maybe New Guy sees Taylor as a potential crossover between the kids and their parents? I'm not sure how Taylor is received in country world. He's clearly going for an older demo, and maybe Hampton the Hamster was kind of a last gasp of the 2-6 age group that used to be catered to more directly? I imagine they just plain took the song out of rotation, but I find it hard to believe that it was just stuck in the top ten for ten years without any audience support, since as far as I can tell Disney never really made any money from that or Crazy Frog (except maybe as part of a bigger compilation).

I mean, maybe this will be a <i>good</i> thing, in that what, e.g., Aly and AJ and Miley-not-Hannah are capable of when they go slightly older than "kid-friendly" tends to be a lot better than....y'know, the High School Musical soundtracks.

There haven't been any essential, blow you away performances on Idol yet this year. The first week had the theme of 60's songs, and most people played it pretty safe, though the talent level was pretty strong overall. My personal favorite performance of the week was Ramiele Mulabay's performance of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (which should be up on youtube within the next couple of days). Judges seemed to prefer "Light My Fire" by Michael Johns and Carly Smithson's version of "Shadow of My Smile" (a song which I personally have never heard).

This clip of Kady Malloy features her impersonation of Britney Spears, which is pretty damn spot on: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4_jMqrjRw

Im surprised Christina said real big cock on new years eve. And it was censored live meaning someone new she was going to sing it and was all set to censor. which means someone probably asked her to take it out before hand and she didnt. which pretty much makes her the jim morrison of the american idol generation.

In whatever parallel universe will still play Ashlee Simpson on the radio I hope they keep her line in Boys, "Use your head but not that one, one track mind, your one track mind"...

Hat tip to Tape Store from the AI Thread, all AI performances from the week can be heard on rickey.org. Here's a link to Ramiele: http://www.rickey.org/?p=7121

Saw the Hannah Montana movie last night -- basically just two friends and me in the audience, except for two college girls and a couple that left halfway through. So for an "anthropological experiment" I guess I failed.

Movie was really good, though! Wasn't nearly the shrill ADD spectacle I was expecting. Basically just Miley and the band plus two back-up singers and a rotating crew of random dancers who didn't actually do all that much. For the most part it was Hannah/Miley up front really playing the crowd, actually baiting them in a way that surprised me. "I want to know which one of you motherfuckers is the biggest Hannah Montana fan out there tonight!" ('Course they edited it so there weren't any swear words but you could tell this is what she meant.) 3D was well done and only used a few times as novelty, confetti etc., but for the most part really did give a nice dimension to the stage space. Best part was when Hannah offers the mic to the "audience," which is to say she shoves it in your face. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying themselves a LITTLE a this thing, and if you like any of the music you should check it out while you can still see it in 3-D.

Never saw this vid, so didn't realize that a not-yet-known Zac Efron is in it. Not to make invidious distinctions, but the singer here is way better than the chick he usually sings with.

Oscars just reminded me that Betty Hutton died this year...so honorary teenpop thread in memoriam Youtube link is in order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGNm89GZBE

*last year I mean.

Frank over on the country thread:

A duo called the Love Willows, unsigned, describe themselves as "pop/country/southern rock," though in the tracks on their MySpace I hear show and girl group and old black pop more than country or southern rock. Oh yeah, I really like the lead singer, have for a while: Hope Partlow.

Huh, I think I'm gonna have to put this one in the post-teenpop category with Melissa Lefton et al. But I dunno, it's not as winky about itself and the tunes are too diverse to pigeonhole like that. And maybe that's not right, "Falling Faster" is pretty much straight-up singer/songwriter/country-leaning/reggae-lilt. (I guess that doesn't describe anything "straight-up.") Hope Partlow's great as always and way more stylistically diverse -- check the Casablancas distortion on powerpoppy "Keep Yr Head Up"!

Frank, how did you find this?

Speaking of post-people, Shut Up Stella's got a track called "Oprah for President," some kinda synth rap-metal novelty thing. "Diamonds on yer neck, diamonds on yer grill, why don't you take those diamonds up to Capitol Hill?" Damn, they try really really hard, don't they.

The key performance from Idol last night was David Archuleta doing "Imagine": http://www.rickey.org/?p=7176#more-7176 . I hate that song, but he does give a great vocal. Judge's praise maybe a little over the top, but this performance probably does establish him as the favorite at this early point.

I know that this is clearly three years late on the Ashlee front, but it finally occurred to me, two months after recognizing its utter brilliance, that Boyfriend is Modest Mouse's The View played by Franz Ferdinand. Except better, because it has more snarl and swagger and a Shanks chorus.

Frank, how did you find this?

site:myspace.com "hope partlow"