Ashlee Simpson 'Bittersweet World'

Also maybe people are thrown because people on this thread are talking in long paragraphs and sentences and things but it's not like anyone's analysing it like it's Schoenberg or something.

xp yeah but the "why are we persecuted??" stuff from grown men listening to music that is listened to pretty much exclusively by pre teens strikes me as disingenuous. (not defending libel here btw)

One Bare Shoulder

Talked about this over on Poptimists and at Bedbugs, where the author herself responded. One thing that might pertain to some stuff being said upthread that I said after learning more about how the article was written (she did 500 interviews with Dream Street fans and has talked to several of the members personally):

"it's good to get the cold water in the face of 'what 500 people told me' in opposition to the personalized (and occasionally agenda-leaning) canon-making that can happen from a more rock-critical context."

Of course the problem here is that I don't like Dream Street, or any of the other bands she's singling out here, and I'm also not as interested in stuff like fansite networks and teenybopper magazines where some of the interaction is happening.

This is a non-issue for Ashlee Simpson, who as xhuxk says simply doesn't have as clear of an audience, particularly for this album (which is another way of saying she doesn't seem to have much of any audience). One of the interesting things about the teenpop threads was that for a lot of the artists discussed most regularly and passionately, it was nearly impossible to actually do a "500 people told me" style observational "know the real audience" survey that would be required to figure out "what teenagers actually think" or whatever. And it was obvious that that was only part of what interested most of us anyway, and usually wasn't was primarily interested us, though I've always thought there should be MORE stuff out there like "One Bare Shoulder," occasionally dull as these sorts of surveys can look (I think this article hits a nice balance of fact and humor until a few of the final points about sexualization that I took issue with).

I've never quite understood, though, why so much audience research has always been expected of a lot of the teenpop thread regulars, especially since usually prolonged discussion of it meant that we were basically talking and arguing about it as, for all intents and purposes, music that was "supposed to be" for us. And I'm not going to pretend that there aren't a lot of reasons that people might think that's weird, but I'm also not going to think they're right about it.

To use Hannah Montana as an example here, the vast majority of her music doesn't register with most of the pro-Ashlee posters here, and yet she has a handful of songs that really are worth checking out for anyone who likes any kind of pop music (and "See You Again" is continuing to do pretty well in pop airplay, which is to say it's no more or less "for teenagers" or younger than "No Air," in fact subject matter's not too far off).

Ashlee, on the other hand, has always seemed trapped by the expectation that she's any more youth-oriented (or just-fun-oriented) than the influences that xhuxk is rightfully citing here. That was something that took me a bit to really understand, especially re: her first album, but once I did it no longer made any sense to have the anthropological-leaning arguments OR it's-just-fun-pop arguments with people about it (especially with people who have absolutely no intention of holding this standard to anything else). Bittersweet World, on the other hand, is basically just-fun-pop, and as the discussion is suggesting, we are kind of grasping for something, because we're looking for some of the richness and not finding it, or just finding a different, and maybe not as easy to talk about, richness.

And just as a final note, it's easy to project onto a lot of Ashlee lyrics -- they're all personal, and they're a lot more sophisticated than almost all other confessional rock (from Alanis to Avril). When I play "Better Off," I can instantly see situations and feelings that I recognize from my own life (as opposed to, say, "Complicated," which feels like a jumble of cliches). And I also imagine that "situations and feelings that I recognize from my own life" isn't the kind of analysis that moves all people to obsess about a pop song. (That said, I don't think that we spend that much time on lyric analysis, aside from a few good ones that get thrown out a lot, and that when we do it's to try to evoke the whole context that those lyrics contribute to and not make it just some kind of literary analysis. I personally have a hard time with this, but then most people probably do because it's really hard to describe music! The best I came up with for John Shanks is that he somehow found a way of "lilting violently.")

xposts

And the fact that a preteen and I might find value, if not necessarily the same kind (how could any two people?), in a line like "You think you know me? Word on the street is that you do. You want my history? What others tell you won't be true..." doesn't seem strange to me at all. Anymore than "School's Out! For! Summer!" might hold value for someone who's not actually in (elementary) school.

Or YAHHHHHHH TRICK YAHHHHHHHH for that matter.

i think part of this for me to is that even when i was a preteen i was never into this stuff and always had this sorta 'music training wheels' attitude towards it so maybe for some of you dudes its like, remember when i was innocent like this? i have no idea im just trying to fathom the appeal

Maybe the appeal is that it's pop music and is kind of designed to be fun and catchy and appealing? It's not rocket science.

You were never in love or trying to figure shit out?

Maybe there's something I'm missing here because Ashlee Simpson doesn't actually have an 'audience' per se in the UK but if and when she does I can't see it being much different to Gwen's or Kylie's.

Ashlee's not singing about innocence at all, but "See You Again" definitely taps into something like that. But "See You Again" is also cute and nostalgia-friendly where Ashlee usually isn't.

maybe for some of you dudes its like, remember when i was innocent like this?

Yeah, again, who is saying Ashlee has anything to do with being "innocent"? I have no idea where that comes from; has anybody writing about her anywhere on ILM ever said they like her for her "innocence"?

innocent is a misleading word, im talking about buying what shes selling

btw i liked 'lala' lol but i have no problem with a token interest in teenpop, its this analyzing of the persona that is bizarre to me, like wtf guys - why does this have so much meaning for you???? i really dont get it!

Ay-ya-ya-ya-ya you're talking way too much, you boys are messin' with my head.

buying what shes selling

What IS this? I don't mean to seem like I'm badgering, but there's nothing even approaching "innocence" being "sold" by Ashlee. It's not just misleading, to me it has nothing to do with her -- what is it that we're supposed to be "falling for" here?

that's because YOU don't find Ashlee Simpson interesting. Substitute "Bob Dylan critics" or "Public Image Ltd critics or "Atlas Sound critics."

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, May 30, 2008 7:47 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

nah it's the same reason why the vampire weekend and no age threads are just as insufferable at times as this one is at times

i just think it happens more frequently with teenpop, for one because there is a higher rate of fertile discourse among the genre's critics, but also because, as i mentioned upthread, sometimes i get the feeling of "overanalyzing for the sake of legitimacy"

for one because there is a higher rate of fertile discourse among the genre's critics

lemme say real quick that i mean in relation to something like ilm, before you guys go pasting metal livejournal urls or something

I'll agree to "overanalyzing" if it appears (to someone not interested) to be "too many words spent on _____," which is something I feel, too. But not "overanalyzing" as "looking too much into" or "seeing things that just aren't there." In which case (again) I think it probably is just a matter of some people really not finding it -- the music or the discussion, not necessarily both -- that interesting.

Something I feel not in relation to teenpop, but probably other bands.

>what is it that we're supposed to be "falling for" here?

My question as well. And what is her drama? Musically, personally, or even meta? Where's the friction or arc?

(I still haven't had a chance to relisten to this yet but I wanted to give a hearty "THANK YOU" to both sides of this debate for talking to each other rather than yelling at/making fun of each other.)

"btw i liked 'lala' lol but i have no problem with a token interest in teenpop, its this analyzing of the persona that is bizarre to me, like wtf guys - why does this have so much meaning for you???? i really dont get it!"

I think this is perhaps the core of the debate here. Deej I'm also thinking I've probably given the impression I like Ashlee etc. purely for obscure rock crit reasons which really isn't true. My point in raising that angle was more to say that it'd be disingenuous for me to complain about arguments like these because on some level they do heighten my enjoyment.

But in that case why/how do I like Ashlee?

I remember when I first read Frank on Ashlee (comparing to Bob Dylan etc.) and I thought "okay, but why would I want to think of pop in terms of Bob Dylan? I've had long arguments defending my right not to have to think of music in terms of Bob Dylan!" (At this stage I hadn't heard anything bar "Pieces of Me" (which I disliked and still don't love) many times, "La la" once (no opinion) and "Girlfriend" which I thought was an ace pop tune)

On the other hand, thinking in terms of persona was something I was already doing heaps for pop music. I had, without really thinking about it, constructed quite elaborate ideas about Teedra Moses, for example, and my conception of her was influenced by her melodies, her lyrics, her voice, the whole package coming together. This is an interesting sidepoint: many people who say "how can you take teenpop so seriously?" have no problem with taking R&B seriously, even though often the lyrics in R&B are, generally speaking, more rudimentary, infantile etc. This is not true for Teedra obv! But anyway, if at any formal level I had decided that pop should be embraced for its ephemerality, this wasn't the only way I was relating to it in practice.

For me not all or even most teenpop would merit this. The Veronicas' "Untouched" is some days my favourite single of 2008 (I really wish anything else on their second album hit me nearly so hard) but I have zero interest in, um, the psychic life of The Veronicas. There the enjoyment is purely functional: the 1987 string riffs, the warpdrive surge, the harmonies, the sheer perfection of the chorus which strike me as having the same rising-tension-inevitability as ABBA's "Mamma Mia", but better...

Whereas when I listened to Ashlee's I Am Me, I found that the lyrics that kept catching my ear as much as the hooks, and the way that Ashlee sung them seemed U&K to my enjoyment. But this wasn't reminding me of enjoying teenpop as a teenager so much as enjoying Hole's Celebrity Skin or Ani DiFranco's Not A Pretty Girl as a teenager - records that were immensely important to me in terms of the image of the persona they evoked, records that seemed to warrant endless over-analysis. Even still, if I listen to those records what comes through very strongly for me is a sense of who the performer is, I recognize them as comrades in my past struggle for adolescent autonomy.

So yeah, Ashlee did remind me of a period of my own adolescence (only about 9-11 years ago though), but not in the sense of being innocent; rather, she hooked in to that sense of disenchantment which is so stereotypically adolescent - that desire for musical artists who will be honest with you and "tell it like it is" because you sense the world has offered you candy-coated lies (of course such things always seem a bit silly in retrospect). So yeah, much of it has to do with nostalgia, and remembering the dark thoughts of my 14-16 year old self (okay so this is relative - I probably remained a boringly pleasant teenager even throughout this period), and liking how neatly Ashlee can articulate these same dark thoughts within the framework of what are in many ways quite generic pop-rock songs. Where the "teenpop" bit becomes relevant is that Ashlee not only speaks to my adolescent-self (as DiFranco and Love did) but does so from the apparent perspective of adolescence.

The drawback of Bittersweet World for me is its inability to serve this role for most of its songs.

I still can't cosign Frank's specific statements about Ashlee - I don't hear the connection with Bob that he heard, although perhaps this is more because Bob is a fairly peripheral figure in my music taste. More relevantly, Frank might pick out lyrics of Ashlee's for discussion that strike me as less interesting or notable than others. But this should hardly be surprising - he's coming to this music from a different perspective (most fundamentally, and I stressed this on the Hillary Duff thread too, I cannot talk about my enjoyment of any of this stuff without some acknowledgment of the way it's shaped by my experience of being gay -but then, this applies for Hole and Ani DiFranco as well).

Even when I think a particular line is really ace in context, I can see how it would appear unworthy of much discussion when quoted in isolation on an internet music board. What's behind this though is the difference in impact of a particular lyric when you've already been won over by the singer's persona - and this difference is applicable to any other music but especially any kind of confessional pop-rock, of which Ashlee formed a teenpop variant. So I could quote an Ani DiFranco lyric that was really importantly - say, this one from "Light of Some Kind":

in the end the world comes down to just a few people
but for you it comes down to one
but no one ever asked me if i thought i could be
everything to someone
there's a crowd of people harboured in every person
there are so many roles that we play
and you've decided to love me for eternity
i'm still deciding who i want to be today

... and tell you how at the time this seemed to sum up something really integral to me about the relationship between fidelity, promiscuity and self-identity. And your most likely response is to go "WTF?" because a) you're not in a position to know or care why the relationship between these things might have been important to me, and b) the lyrics can only carry that weight of revelation in the context of the persona constructed over the course of an entire album if not several albums.

Perhaps intense over-analysis of Ashlee is attractive to me because I didn't have anyone to do this with w/r/t the music I was listening to at 14-16 so it was all in my head. There was an awful army cadets camp I had to go on at 14 that I think I only survived by reciting the songs from Joni Mitchell's Hejira in my head and trying to puzzle out their meaning, and wishing I knew someone who cared about this stuff*... Needless to say a very different kind of rock crit to the kind of thing I mostly do now.

*Ironically, several of my friends, gay and otherwise, would happily have over-analysed Celine Dion or Spice Girls ballads with me. It was the confessional stuff that I had no-one had to talk about with.

The main reason I was unable to keep up with the teenpop threads was that for me Ashlee (and specifically I Am Me) was the only time that I had this kind of relationship to that kind of music. Although I can still love, say, "Untouched" in a rather different way.

In certain ways it's hard not to engage in some kind of "over"-analysis of Ashlee's persona (in particular) just because she had a whole TV show about her in addition to her intensely confessional lyrics... the way she is presented and read (which is to say as a whole package, personality, music and lyrics combined) means that if you want to be serious about "reading" Ashlee's music you sort of have to read "Ashlee" too.

Personal doesn't necessarily sync up with musical or meta: personally (according to her reality show) she wanted to sound like Courtney Love without actually being very fucked up (tho who knows how fucked up she might be in her brain), fears that she's going to be turned into a "pop starlet" in sound ("I do NOT want to sound like Hilary Duff!").

Musically it's precocious twentysomething blues -- she'll tell you everything about herself if you ask her, playing on the archetype of someone who seems to keep getting screwed and realizing at some point that maybe the problem is her (not unlike Liz Phair). Except she keeps answering the "who are you" question a little differently and frankly she's (rightfully) terrified no one's going to want her no matter what she says or does (parents -- says she's over it now, but I don't believe her -- boyfriends, basically anyone and everyone) (last line on "Autobiography" is "don't walk away," which she howls as her voice all but gives out).

Meta: she was RIGHT, no one really "wants" her. Comparing her albums is interesting because her first two were reasonably popular while being more direct and more honest(-seeming), but her audience was always ambiguous and a lot of people, many outside her audience, were ready to turn on her as soon as she publicly fucked up (I'm not convinced there's any great reason for it either, and I honestly wonder what her career would have been like without the SNL/Orange Bowl mistakes). Which she did, bigtime (and they politely gloss over both incidents on her show -- the latter of which is like the ending in that Monty Python "Bicycle Tour" episode, where they just insert a "scene missing" and the crisis has been miraculously solved).

So on this album, she's clearly trying something else, because being "herself" (in her music, which again, may not sync up with her personal life) isn't getting her anywhere anymore. Can't read too much into the personal stuff, but as I said, there's a difference in tone between the first and second season of her show, and since then she's been extra extra extra careful about how she's being perceived in public.

I relate to her ambivalence a lot, and I think about it a lot. She nails details -- she uses coffee and toothpaste and her hair not doing what she wants it to without seeming like she's bound for Starbucks and without being even remotely smug or blind-to-privilege (in fact she's got anxieties about that too: "I've got more than anyone should") about it. She reminds me of me more than people who are probably a lot more like me.

xpost, I agree with Tim's points about the Veronicas. I don't think the range of artists that garnered this many words really delving into the music was that big, and almost all of it was in the confessional field.

xp to myself--In other words it's unfair to your own critical project to separate out the music and restrict your analysis to that when its so clearly and obviously predicated on a persona or a set of personas (this is one place where the Dylan comparison almost makes sense to me).

(this is in response to deej's question about the analysis of the persona btw)

*There's a lot more to the show than just what she wanted to sound like, but it's hard to read into the more personal stuff with the cameras on, and frankly I judge it more for context, in the same way that I might want to know about a writer or a filmmaker personally -- which doesn't always translate back to the work. I can't stand a lot of writers/filmmakers whose work I like, though, and I've rarely found anyone who syncs up personally with what I want them to sync up with in their art.

nah i agree w/ that max, i use that approach in R&B; i just wasnt getting what was particularly interesting about her persona. or the personas of other teenpop stars; there are a few reasons i dont hang out with teenagers irl as a general rule, so why would i want to hang out with this one?

cause shes married to pete wentz?

anyway good post tim, i can see where you're coming from with that and it does explain to me where people are connecting to this music at some level.

cause shes married to pete wentz?

-- max, Friday, May 30, 2008 11:15 AM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

haha. i just spent an hour and a half commute looking at his face on an advertisement on the el :-/

Ashlee was 19 when her first album came out. Which is to say, she's exactly my age, and by 19 I definitely wasn't thinking of myself as a "teenager." Why shouldn't I be relating to her expression of her problems? To me it's not a world apart from "Now I'm gonna be 22, oh my and boo hoo."

er, "I say oh my and boo hoo."

now who's bringing in the author into it

?

her age reflects on her persona only in as much as we can see it, right?

xp Strangely, I know almost nothing about Ashlee's non-recorded persona beyond what I've overseen in the line at the grocery store when she's on tabloids behind the counter (have never watched her TV show, for instance) or when I see a headline on the lead yahoo page about her marriage to some pop-punk dork I otherwise ignore, and that hasn't made me enjoy her albums any less. Not saying my listening might not be enriched somehow if I did watch the TV show, but I don't see why that would be a necessity -- just as likely, it would cloud my judgement about the music. (Pretty sure I don't base what I think about Dylan's music on his persona either. Or R. Kelly's, or whoever. So Max and I disagree here.)

Also don't generally base my opinions about people's music about whether I'd want to hang out with them. (Soulja Boy, who actually is a teenager last time I checked, would be kind of annoying in person, I bet. Though possibly fun to watch from a distance.)

"the psychic life oF The Veronicas" Great phrase; shoulda been the CD's title.

But I disagree that there's none of that present. What I'm loving about the CD--aside from the delirious musical invention and sheer near-psychotic drive/tempo-- is how it is almost entirely about the way vulnerability leads to rage and humiliation when in contact with dubious humans. Even the seemingly sex-positive, bisexual boasts of "Take Me on the Floor" sound sad because they're so desperate. The effect is aggregate, as opposed to one signifying song. (If there's a *creepier* sound on a record this year than the Cranes-like "da-da-das" on "Take Me", I might not want to hear it.

But mainly, it's about anger, female anger in obvious particular, which is usually presented possibly unrealistic, maybe even anti-realistic modes of defiance--I'm thinking everything P!nk does (and I love her) or Angela Gossow does in Arch Enemy (and I love them too.)

But The Veronicas, no pun intended, are just fucked. By guys, by their desires, by realizing how little they can actually implement on their own (ironic in a Max Martin-free CD so self-created.)

Anyway, that's a whole lotta psychic life by my lights.

In comparison, Ashlee almost feels like a distanced commentator.

Yeah Deej I really didn't get the appeal of Ashlee's persona from the singles either (in fact I remember despising the video clip for "Pieces of Me" and thinking she seemed quite contrived. In relation to this remind me to reprise at some stage my theory about how being won over by chartpop is like a magic trick in reverse). And I don't even really get it from the first album. Although that's Frank's favourite.

Basically for me it all comes down to "Dancing Alone", "Coming Back For Me", "Eyes Wide Open", "I Am Me" and "Say Goodbye".

Although I like "Girlfriend" and "Burning Up" and "L.O.V.E." heaps, and in fact more than some of those songs, it's those songs which establish Ashlee's persona for me. It's not a very teenage persona from my perspective - or rather, when I was a teenager it was that aspect of adolescence that felt most removed from "hanging out with teenagers".

Arguably the album is expressive of the adolescent experience in the same way that Buffy was at its most serious - that is, these are adult experiences we're dealing with, but they gain their specific force from being presented as being experienced for the first time by people perhaps not ready to deal with them. Thus the importance of adolescence as a setting is more as a plot contrivance - it allows the experience of (say) being rejected by the guy you're totally obsessed with to be presented legitimately as life'n'death stuff.

xxp I don't think we necessarily disagree--deej was asking why there's so much analysis of her persona; I was just saying that with a confessional artist like Ashlee, you sort of have to deal with persona, and then there's the further point with Ashlee in particular that if you watched MTV (or really any TV) in 2004 her persona was crammed down your throat. So that in the end it's maybe more difficult to not analyze her persona at all rather than to over-analyze it. I'm agnostic on the question of whether or not it enriches someone's listening of the music (though I'd argue that it probably enriches someone's reading or interpretation of the music).

her age reflects on her persona only in as much as we can see it, right?

Well I'm mostly arguing that that's what's in her music. (And all of this is relative to who's doing it anyway -- Be Your Own Pet sound like they're trying to sound younger than they are on their new album, and it annoys the shit out of me in that case.) The "she was 19" comment was in response to "why should I care about this teenager" -- she's not a teenager, and she doesn't really sound like one. But I guess this isn't the point to be arguing with.

xpost

Thus the importance of adolescence as a setting is more as a plot contrivance - it allows the experience of (say) being rejected by the guy you're totally obsessed with to be presented legitimately as life'n'death stuff

"tell me how i'm supposed to breathe with no air" to thread

I'm thinking everything P!nk does (and I love her)

Interesting to bring Pink in again, because what I love about Ashlee is that she does this stuff without it being What She Does. Pink by contrast seems really shticky to me, and the Veronicas (even on their second album) are practically cartoons.

"Family Portrait" versus "Shadow," "Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)" versus "Love Me for Me," "Who Knew" versus "Say Goodbye."

To Lex: Yeah totally - R&B is doing the same things as teenpop does a lot of the time! And I half-wonder why it is that "we" (as a culture) seem to feel this compulsion to distinguish ourselves from the perceived self-obsessed materialistic immaturity of teenpop singers but don't feel the same compulsion w/r/t, say, Rihanna. I mean, yr Alex in NYCs will still dismiss Rihanna as trash, but they won't feel the same need to take her down on a personal level. Yes there's a narcissism of small differences thing at work (Ashlee encroaches on Alex's musical territory more than Rihanna does) but it's interesting how the adolescence of teenpop sticks in people's throats whereas the adolescence of R&B does not.

Hmm Mr Grey you've convinced me to pull out the 2nd Veronicas album again and have another listen. However I should note that I wouldn't deny that there is psychic life there, but rather note that my enjoyment hasn't been routed through it. The whole twins singing in tandem thing doesn't help here - I don't think there's been a successful pop act since perhaps DREAM who have played up the "manufactured" in "manufactured pop" so much while simultaneously writing serious pop songs. NB 1. I love the whole twins singing in tandem thing. NB 2. I still have to investigate Danity Kane.

(Don't mean cartoon purely in the pejorative, of course, but something about them being twins makes them...I dunno, more abstract than Ashlee seems on her first two albums. And Ashlee seems more abstract to me on "I Am Me" than on "Autobiography." And she's trying to be a cartoon on her new one.)

xpost Tim, you definitely need to hear Danity Kane's new album, but you won't find much personality. Possibly a function of having so many people singing the same thing/"being the same person"!

t.A.T.u. has the exact same problem, actually, but I generally like 'em more than the Veronicas.

I think P!nk is *using* schtick for her own purposes, which I think is smart, but then again, P!nk *is* really, really smart.

It's interesting to think about how, when females express anger, it seems to come off as cartoonish. I can totally see this with Angela Gossow, whose cookie monster IS schtick (does that make it less valid?) If I use the argument that it's incredibly calculated--as all things super-pop must be--then I can apply it to The Veronicas (which won't effect the way it effects me.)

It's a weird, under-explored, the femme rage-expression continuum. And not to labor the stupidly obvious, but few mull over punk rock male rage.

Then again, you have The Birthday Massacre, where the anger is *totally* cartoonish and therefore not effective unless you're a 16 year old goth girl. But I think that might have to do more with the narrowcasting of niche genres.

part of the R&B/teenpop split might be related to teenpop not being a genre (any more than 'pop' is a genre i mean), no real stylistic requirements, since an age group can have as broad a base of genres as is possible - i mean there is 'teen pop' that is R&B, hip hop, etc. I think ppl probably feel pretty weird about grouping their music in such extra-musical terms as target audience

im comfortable/conversant in R&B as discourse since i grew up w/ people who had established a pretty diverse, contradictory and nuanced view of it, from 'classics' to 'old school' to 'grown folks' to radio hits to whatever else, the groundwork for discourse is already there. Teenpop threads are trying to expand discourse that doesnt really exist outside of a certain age group and a few disney board rooms (as far as im aware)

btw this post was just thinking aloud, i havent really thought this through but it seems mostly true

No, it's not cartoonish in the anger they're expressing. Ashlee is great at expressing anger without being a cartoon (and being a cartoon, like in "Love Me for Me.") It's cartoonish because the conceit is fundamentally silly to me -- I LIKE it, but I can't parse a distinctive personality in it. Although it worked for M2M, so again these aren't "rules" or anything.

t.A.T.u.'s drama is writ huge both in over-text and musical terms.

With "All About Us", it's the drama of the story of the girls (supposedly) reclaiming their agency from slimy Russian svengalis, of declaring their radical allegiance to one another in a non-hawt-lesbian way.

Musically, it's these teensy girl voices up against the monolithic power chords and orchestral samples--it's like, epic, heroic even.

The Veronicas are more, er, subtle?