Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

i think it's more the production than brit's lack of enunciation, but in break the ice i hear something like

"put your wall hooks/walnuts/wallets in me"

rather than

"but you warm up to me"

doesn't really bug me though.

Oh, another nice surprise, Cassie's second album is shaping up to be as good as (possibly better than) her first. The three songs I've heard so far are gorgeous.

See Cassie: The new Ciara?

I second (third?) being shocked by Britney. I never loved her much, and "Piece of Me" blew me away. Also, I was shocked by how amazing Insomniatic was. I was prepared for something good, but I wasn't prepared for that. I was always shocked by Fall Out Boy. I absolutely hatedhatedhated their last album, and I really liked Infinity on High.

I listened to about twenty albums and was disappointed with all of them

Thought you liked A-Trak's Dirty South Dance.

The power of radio:

Perez Hilton discovers Miley Cyrus's "See You Again" about six months after everyone else does.

Yeah, I'm being too dramatic. A-Trak was great, I liked the Low album OK, Vanessa Carlton's has good qualities. A few others. But the ratio was pretty low. (Also I get Scroogey around the holidays.)

The A-Trak album kept hitting me as more disjointed than I wanted it to; not seamless enough. Or something. Still real good, and when I submitted a top 150 albums of the year list to Idolator with my ballot, it should have been on there, possibly even in the top 50, but somehow I accidentally left it off, oh well.

I listed some country stuff that surprised me this year on the country thread. A few non-country things that surprised me: (1) I wound up liking a song by Avril Lavigne more than I ever thought I would (even though people here mostly seem to hate it now); (2) I wound up liking a song by James Blunt (namely, "1973") more than I ever thought I would (which is to say, I never expected to like one at all); (3) I wound up liking a Christina Aguilera song more than I ever thought I would again (even though, again, the consensus here seems to be against it); (4) I wound up liking black metal (which can be quite gorgeous, surprisingly enough) more than I ever thought I would (though actually, come to think of it, I initially came to that realizion more in '06 -- so let's say my big '07 surprise is that I now probably "black metal" more than merely "dark metal"); and (5) Just in general, I guess I'm surprised by hip-hop increasingly turning back into a music of catchy goofy novelty hits, which is a development I very much welcome.

The thing that most caught me by surprise, though (which I already mentioned on the country thread) was Kid Rock's album -- just way, way better than anything I ever imagined he would come up with again.

I played "See You Again" for a few friends and all they had to say about it was that it was ripping off "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night." Which means they ignored the chorus and the fact that "See You Again" is much better.

I like "Candyman," just don't really like Xtina's makeover in a general sense.

xpost - yeah, that Kid Rock album is really good! I forgot I listened to that.

xp I regret not listing Fergie (or anyone) on my Idolator ballot as "artist of the year,"

For whatever it's worth, I abstained on that category as well, though I'm not as sure I regret it. Last year I voted for all websites (pandora.com, cdbaby.com, etc.), since I couldn't figure out what else to do, and that seemed like a clever-enough solution. I suppose that some years I could see listing a producer, if one seemed ubiquitous enough. (This year, maybe Lil Wayne would have made a lot of sense, if I'd made any attempt to keep up with him.) But generally, to be honest, I kinda hate the category -- just think it's really vague. So I listed my top 10 '07 EPs in the comments section instead!

C'mon, T. Pain was the obvious answer!

Yeah, that occurred to me -- T-Pain or Akon. May have voted for them if I'd actually cared about any songs either of them did this year. But I didn't.

xp John Waite, Blue Cheer, and Alvin Lee all put out better albums than I ever expected them to again as well, so I suppose those count as additional small surprises. (I'd list Ted Nugent, whose album also turned out way better than I'd thought it would be when it was sitting there on my shelf untouched for months after I heard he'd said something typically asinine on stage and I didn't feel like dealing with him, but his last few have been pretty good, too, so I don't know why I'm still surprised by the guy.)

I split the difference and listed Anteres Autotune as my artist of the year.

xp

And oh yeah, I was also surprised that I liked Tiger Army's album -- they'd never done anything for me before, so I didn't expect it to wind up the 85th best album of the year (more or less), but it did!

My biggest surprise was, on 9/11, liking Animal Collective more than 50 Cent and both of them more than Kanye. I would've assumed the opposite order. Or maybe 50 at the bottom. Of course, I haven't heard any of them since so I can't really explain why, except that AC was catchy and weird, 50 was bangin', and Kanye gets progressively more annoying and less weird or bangin'.

Also, second being pleasantly surprised by Fall Out Boy.

I have all kinds of problems with that "Best Artist" category. I ended up voting for Fania Records because they were probably responsible for the most good music issued this year, even if none of it was actually created this year. Then The-Dream, because he wrote "Bed" and "Umbrella." Then T-Pain, Akon, and Wayne, because I typically liked whatever they did and they maybe affected the sound of the year more than anyone else? But it seems like a chump's game. I feel like a chump. But I'd feel more like a chump just voting for the top 5 from my album list.

xhuxk, Tiger Army placed 40 spots higher on my albums list :-P

Possibly under best artists we should have voted for painters (except I have a really poor eye - or anyway, poor attention span - when confronted by "the visual arts," so I wouldn't have known what to vote for).

My five were:

1. Britney Spears
2. Brie Larson
3. Antonina Armato and Tim James
4. Kelefa Sanneh
5. Danja

I voted for Britney partly based on her Website writing, and for Brie pretty much entirely based on her Website writing and the one short story of hers I read in her lit mag. (I just got the Hoot DVD from the library, but I haven't watched it yet. I've never seen her act.)

I voted for Kelefa Sanneh on the basis of his writing. And my votes for Armato & James and for Danja were based partly on their songwriting.

Actually, I was thinking of voting for Poptimists and for The Rolling Country Thread, but I decided against voting for anything I was involved in, or anyone I was friends with.

One of my artist slots went to OiNK. R.I.P., buddy.

This was Akon's year, for sure.

I tried to shy away from people who were involved in my albums/singles, although I did vote for Elias de Leon exec. produced about four of my favorite reggaeton albums of the year, and for the Clutch, but I added them to my ballot before I added "The Way I Are", and Autotune, which makes a few appearances here and there. So guess only Swizz Beatz and Danny Fornaris got away scott-free.

...de Leon who...

By the way, do we want to have a rolling teenpop thread next year? My basic feeling is that the spark is long gone and that the good pop convos are happening elsewhere, not on ilX. An argument in favor of keeping the thread going would be that some people post here whom I might not get to see otherwise, or info gets posted I don't know about, etc.

So, if someone else wants to start one I'll probably contribute, but I'm not going to be the one to start it.

I know a bunch of jerks joke about the seriousness of this thread, but it's been thought-provoking and fun to read all year. Thanks, dudes. You'll be missed if you go, Frank.

Of course there should be one.

I'd miss it if it weren't here. I see some of the stuff I think Frank's referring to elsewhere, Poptimists and whatnot, but I like to think of the yearly rolling threads--and the teenpop one interests me most of all despite my still not being that cozy with the term--as places to kind of round up some of what's being said elsewhere and just to find out about new tunes, etc. I guess this does happen on the livejournal pages and whatnot, but those don't feel like the sorts of places you just pop your head in to make a stray comment--the way it feels fine to do here--but that's probably just me. (Also, having an entire years worth of stuff to search on one screen is kinda swell.)

I've actually preferred this thread the past couple months, when it has seemed less insular; for most of this year, I couldn't follow the discussion at all. And Poptimists (and whatnot?) has never drawn me in, though if somehow can offer me a clue about how it might do so, I'm open to trying it in the '08...(I.e., does Potimists even have a teenpop thread? If not, what is the equivalent, exactly?)

(Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with Scott. If there's something better out there, I'm happy to move on. But if so, I've never seen it.)

How about carrying on in a broader "rolling pop" or "rolling U.S. charts" thread in 2008? The best discussions on this thread as far as I could see were the ones that weren't confined to just Radio Disney or stuff specifically aimed at teens/tweens but pop in general (also obviously I have always hated the "teenpop"-as-one-word thing).

I like the idea of a more broad "rolling pop" thread myself, but I'm game for whatever people decide. As long as there's something. (I do kind of like the genre-specificy of some of the rolling threads, too, so I can see both arguments.)

"Rolling pop", yes.

I wonder if RT2k7 just needs a slight makeover. Instead of being genre heavy (and let's be honest, though we mainly touch on young teenager pop, we also touch on a whole lot of over kinds of music here) maybe we need some title that gives us the freedom to talk about all kinds of music. And maybe something that holds the promise of what RT2H* holds: Intelligent, thoughtful, and considered discussion about a wide swath of music.

So: Rolling Debutante's Ball 2008, anyone?

"I regret not listing Fergie (or anyone) on my Idolator ballot as "artist of the year," which I didn't have time to think about."

Scott, I had a similar epiphany w/r/t Fergie this year as well. She pretty much dominated radio in Australia ("Big Girls Don't Cry" probably the biggest radio hit of the year, give or take "Beautiful Girls" - the version of the former with Sean Kingston on guest vocals kinda triangulates the choice). That and "Glamorous" and in the last few months "Clumsy" really warmed up the radio - "Clumsy" in particular is the kind of song that is so interesting as a radio hit. I had to vote for three artists of the year in my local rag, and chose her for precisely that reason.

xpost

Excuse me Al Shipley, but I don't particularly give a fuck what you want or don't want, because if you're on a thread I'm likely to stay off it for that reason alone.

Whoa.

I like both Al and Frank, and I'm in favor of a "rolling pop" thread.

Alright, then.

Who is 'Al Shipley'?

I like teenpop. I mean, there's a minimal thread, why not a teenpop one?

This is seriously the best thread on ilm, the one I'm way too intimidated to post on ever really.

Who is 'Al Shipley'?

-- Mordechai Shinefield, Monday, December 31, 2007 1:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

That'd be me. I always thought it was somehow less rude or antagonistic to criticize this thread from the outside, perhaps other people felt the opposite. Either way, I probably did cross a line somewhere and don't fault Frank for feeling a certain way about it, so I'll try and stop posting on this thread right now.

i'd be v. much in favor of "rolling pop 2008" which i guess is basically what we did on the rolling 2007 charts thread and that was pretty cool when it was revived.

i'd imagine that rolling pop 2008 would just evolve into rolling us charts thread 2008 anyway, and that would be a good thread.

Yeah the "teen" disctinction isn't really needed, I'd rather it was just "Rolling Pop" - it's more inclusive.

Yeah, I guess that would be the only question: whether to separate out the charts thread for those who didn't care about the charts. But if you're interested in pop, you're probably interested in the charts at least a little, I'm guessing.

tbh there should be a rolling teenpop thread 2008 bcuz there is a pretty big distinction between talking about aly & aj and radio disney spins and playaz circle, finger eleven or shop boyz.

THAN playaz circle etc.*

anyway you dudes do what you want

My basic feeling is that the spark is long gone and that the good pop convos are happening elsewhere, not on ilX.

Where? And I really, really hate posting on Livejournal.

yeah, where? certainly not that awful poptimist LJ community..