Ashlee Simpson 'Bittersweet World'

She hits a D on the "yeah, yeah".</lolmusicnerd>

It's too bad that so many of the smart people decamped from ilX in late 2005, apparently deciding in their unconscious that this board was no longer worth saving, and by their departure helping to make that decision into a fact.

That was me four days ago. Reading it now it seems really obnoxious. Let's just say that when I wrote it I was feeling isolated and under attack, and sour towards some people who really did not deserve it. Which doesn't mean that some things haven't spun badly wrong on ilX over the years, but that I should remember not to underestimate people.

are you guys serious.

Serious about what? Not purposely provoking, just honestly curious.

Because if you mean 'serious about thinking this is worthy of discussion' than yeah. It's an interesting album and a decent listen, both on its own and in contrast to Ashlee's old sound. It hasn't clicked with me personally the same way Autobiography did, but that's just me.

Besides that, there doesn't seem to be a uniform claim being made with regards to the value of Bittersweet World, just an attempt to engage with it, which seems unobjectionable. I mean...it's music, right? And thus, fair game.

I like "Outta My Head" a lot, haven't heard the rest of teh album ("Little Miss Obsessive" is kind of awful), but yeah.. such a wordy thread on an Ashlee Simpson album seems kind of like.. I dunno.

Some things aren't meant to be analyzed to this extent

Welcome to ILM circa 2002.

(I kind of agree with you, esp. re: Ashlee Simpson, but I will take practically any opportunity I see to give an opinion on someone's voice.)

I like "Outta My Head" a lot, haven't heard the rest of teh album ("Little Miss Obsessive" is kind of awful), but yeah.. such a wordy thread on an Ashlee Simpson album seems kind of like.. I dunno.

-- The Brainwasher, Thursday, May 29, 2008

I'm curious, The Brainwasher, why do you think that Ashlee Simpson doesn't deserve to be discussed at length?

IN DEPTH.

Change one mind, CHANGE THE WORLD

I dont really know how to answer that without this turning into a whole longwinded argument about rockism or some shit like that. I just think if Ashlee Simpson read this thread she'd be like "wtf"

No one would bat an eyelid about this level of discussion or a Britney or Gwen thread. I'm not sure what the difference is really.

I would kind of bat an eye. I don't feel like subtext was a huge concern for any of them until recently.

ctrl-f: "kenna" = nothing. wtf?

wait waht

xpost

This is a miniscule number of words on Ashlee compared to some other convos I've been in. Miniscule. But also this is a meta discussion that feels like old territory. One reason to talk about the album is none of us here seems quite sure what's going on with it.

Anyway, as per voice, I think that Ashlee scores high on "plays well with others," or more accurately, "gets others to play well with her." Does that make her a good singer? I don't know if she could be viable without the modern recording studio (which doesn't mean some of her live clips on YouTube aren't a blast), but then I don't know how Sinatra or Jagger would have done without a microphone. (And I'm not saying she has either of those singers' originality.)

“Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)”

Single by Ashlee Simpson
from the album Bittersweet World
Released February 11, 2008
April 20, 2008 (iTunes)
May 19, 2008 (CD)
Format Digital Download, cd single
Recorded 2007
Genre Pop rock, electropop
Length 3:38
Label Geffen Records
Writer(s) Ashlee Simpson, King Logan, Jerome Harmon, Santi White, Kenna
Producer Timbaland, King Logan, Jerome Harmon

that explains a lot

lol Kenna AND Santogold! I need to hear this (again; I think I heard it once but wasn't paying attention).

my problem with her is that i've seen her in interviews

i know it "shouldn't" matter but her whole steez when she talks just makes my skin crawl

haha at brainwasher lurching in and proving frank's point just as he rescinded it! wow i expected better though i've no idea why.

i don't know why anyone thinks ashlee would go wtf at a thread about her music any more than, i dunno, mia or radiohead or the hold steady or whatever indie losers are currently ilm favourites, i have no idea.

when will you lamers learn that it ain't about 'rockism'/'popism' blah bullshit zzz, it's about wanting to talk about a great album that people like. oh wvs, bye again, wasn't worth coming back for this at all.

One thing I can't seem to get past...why did she name the album after a cliche from the worst song on the album? (Precedents for this?) Pretty sure every other song title would have been better. (Actually, I'm thinking she shoulda gone with the original insane cover and title, Color Outside the Lines.)

http://tommy2.net/2008/ashleesimpsonbw.jpg

("Autobiography" and "I Am Me" are at least provocative, and more appropriate to the respective albums.)

shut up lex

my problem with her is that i've seen her in interviews

This can definitely be a problem. Also a problem for Santogold, if for completely different reasons. But I don't think "boring and kind of vapid in interviews" is enough of a reason to think she's not in control of any of the music.

"Outta My Head"

Vocal production by Jim Beanz, who did a lot on Blackout and Welcome To The Dollhouse, and I'll have to figure out to what effect.

I think Logan's and Harmon's beats are terrific, the tone deliberately cracked and thin.

She can be a deer in headlight in interviews, and goes to giggle as a default mode. But Tracer, you need to get ahold of the first season of the reality show.

Second season is worth watching too, in contrast. It feels a lot less spontaneous (and there are a lot more obvious "PR clean up" moments, esp. re: SNL and the Orange Bowl performances).

I had forgotten that Lex was so annoying. I really didn't miss him and his lack of substantive contribution to discussions at all.

I'm not coming back to this thread until I've actually heard stuff from this album since right now all I'm doing is pontificating in the abstract.

(xpost: She does come across amazingly well in the first season of that reality show; that was the number one reason why I was rooting for her when her first album was released although the SNL debacle kind of put the kibosh on that.)

I don't know if she could be viable without the modern recording studio..., but then I don't know how Sinatra or Jagger would have done without a microphone.

Which doesn't mean she's a "studio creation" any more than Sinatra is a microphone creation. (Think of all the singers the studios have failed to create.)

yeha pontificating sarcastically and insubstantially in the abstract isn't annoying ~at all~~

i thought you were leaving.

Dan, I think Lex is the greatest writer on current r&b. But I can see why that particular sentence of his was missing a certain amount of elaboration.

Er, xpost.

o don't worry, i'm leaving now, i just wasn't going to let someone who as far as i can tell has posted nothing but unfunny dick jokes/lame music theory oneupmanship over people who aren't even trying to compete/"pontificating in the abstract" for like half a decade or whatever call me insubstantive

i didn't see dom post in this thread

anyway lol @ lex getting all mad at someone saying that they think it's a little silly for people to spend so much time thinking/pontificating about an ashlee simpson album

a lot of us think this and it has nothing to do with oneupsmanship

"a lot of you" are fucking dumb, jordan sargent. "lol" @ you.

This argument is very boring.

Rather.

exactly what im saying

yes it wasn't boring before at all, people kneejerking "b-b-but it's ASHLEE SIMPSON" and acting all shocked that people want to talk about her music A-FUCKING-GAIN

at least we can all agree this doesnt need to happen again

hey lex did u miss the part where i posted the songwriters of 'outta my head' and dan got excited about that and said he would talk more about the album after he'd listened to it?

(I tend to assume the Lex has been drinking heavily whenever he appears on ILX these days as he never does so when sober and his posts are more foaming-at-the-mouth in rage than usual. But he's right in that the "why do you want to talk about this at length?" thing is really tired and dull at this stage and no one needs to go through it all yet again).

agreed brainwasher shouldn't have come in here and said that but lex should have also ignored him

Lex feel free to come back when it occurs to you that one poster (to whom it might not have occurred that one can take pop seriously) does not constitute THE RETURN OF OLD PEOPLE'S HEGEMONY. You're sharp and I enjoy your contributions to pop threads.

xp Yes and yes, respectively.

(I shouldn't really be here either as I haven't actually heard this album or to my knowledge any Ashlee Simpson song so bye)

fwiw i've got nothing against you lex. i think you're very shrewd wrt your self-constructed genre box but as matt says if you're gonna come back and post here don't do it in rambo mode plz

xpost xpost xpost

Lex, take a breath, the people you're mad at aren't here.

Brainwasher, here are some serious though rudimentary answers to your question (which I summarize as wtf people?): I'd describe Ashlee's first two albums as absolutely towering achievements except that (or maybe because) nothing about them comes across as "towering achievement." They're just workaday pop rock albums, albeit with a distinctive singer. And they, especially Autobiography, have some of the most emotionally moving and complex lyrics I've ever encountered. The only other album to come close this decade in that regard - for me, based on necessarily limited listening, and the fact that I actually often don't pay attention to lyrics - is The Marshall Mathers LP. But it's not obvious to me why the words are so good, since the situations are basic straightup girl and boy stuff (w/ one girl and sister thing and one personals ad and one about being pinned down in terror) with no attempt to get beyond everyday words and often no clear story being told. So I can go back to them and keep wanting to talk about them, to figure them out. And then lots of talk on this thread is, ok, how come the person who was once doing that is now doing this? But also, the fact that you asked the question is just further evidence that Ashlee has been a cultural flashpoint around here almost on the order of someone like M.I.A. That is, it isn't standard to assume on ILM that you don't go on about music at ridiculous length, in fact that's what ILM is here for. So when that assumption is suddenly supposed to shut off, and when people are puzzled enough to ridicule and even attack the discussion and the discussers, some of the attacks being astonishingly vicious (without Ashlee, there'd have been no rolling teenpop), the question arises as to why.

Also, as Matt DC so eloquently put it on another thread (I'm thinking of getting a t-shirt with this emblazoned on it), we are Self-Important People With Wonky Tastes. Also, John Shanks, the producer and main musician on the first two albums and a co-writer of a lot of songs, is astonishingly inventive but again I can't figure out the why or the what. I'd say he's someone who plays mushy chords but in a jagged and sometimes even lacerating way. I also don't think the previous sentence is all that intelligible. And Shanks is consistently good with Ashlee whereas he's sporadic with almost anyone else, and that's also puzzling.

And I haven't even mentioned Nurse Kara. Kara DioGuardi wrote (with her band Platinumn Weird) the words "And then you'll see my greatest gift/Is falling down and taking it" (Nia points out that the word "gift" can have two meanings, that Kara's gifted and that the gift she gives you is that she'll fall down and take it, which has a lot of disturbing destructive overtones) and then in the exuberant Ashlee song "La La," which Kara helped write, Ashlee sings "I like it better when it hurts," so you think that must be Kara, so you go to the next song on that Ashlee album and Ashlee's singing "I'm the one who's crawlin' on the ground/When you say love makes the world go 'round," and you think "That must be Kara too," but it's not, read the credits and it's Ashlee on her own (I'm guessing that co-writer Shanks had no hand in those lyrics, though I could be wrong), and the falling down and breaking and taking it/not taking it theme seems so much more developed on the first two Ashlee albums than on Platinum Weird, especially on "Love Me For Me," which Ashlee wrote with Shelly Peiken not with Kara - it's not that it particularly matters on some philosophical level who wrote which words, but if you're interested in the creative process at all, or the cultural process, there's this question: how is it that these themes and these people came together at this time, all of whom seem ordinary enough?

And then of course the "meta" question, which is why are so many intellectuals and music fanatics proud of the fact that they don't notice such lyrics, or even bother to think that such lyrics might be there to be noticed, when in any other genre people would want to notice or care and would want the songs to reveal riches? And some people who celebrate pop are just as disturbed by our kind of conversation as are the people who disparage the teenyboppers. It's not meant for such analysis! (But why should we limit ourselves by what something's meant for? Imagine, for instance, if hip-hop producers cared about what sounds were meant for.)

Ashlee's now beyond the original situation that fueled her (which is a whole nother discussion) and she's abandoned the original collective that created "her" achievement, so there's been real wonder (by the ten of us who care) what she'd do next.

I've barely scratched the surface. But believe me, there are some performers I love (Midi, Maxi & Efti and Boney M come to mind) whom I've never been able to find the words for. So, that I don't talk as much about something else doesn't mean that the other thing is less worthy (or less worthy of discussion, and I'd be eager to hear someone who could discuss Boney M well, and I'm really glad for someone like Dan who can discuss things differently from how I do, even if he finds most of what I say boring and might suspect that people like me are mentally ill).

Btw, I love Lex, but if there is a position that a lot of people take, and I get mad at the position, my getting mad at the position isn't going to help me understand why people take it. One thing I got disparaged for on the Hilary Humbert thread was that I went around asking teenagers what music they listened to, but a reason for my asking was the understanding that often the teenpop I was loving might be felt to have an oppressive effect by some people who were growing up surrounded by people who liked it, and it's not like there's no good reason for that feeling, or that it might not carry on into adulthood. So I wanted to get the sense of how the music I was loving worked in that cultural landscape as well as my own. Not to say that that cultural landscape is any more valid than mine, but being able to compare landscapes helps one see what's happening in one's own.