Ashlee Simpson 'Bittersweet World'

Yes, and?

I can copy and paste old messages as well.

And avoid the question, fantastic!

Hey, Brainwasher, I'm assuming that you're an interesting person who may have interesting reasons for your stances, and I wish people weren't trying to put you on the defensive here and you weren't trying to put us on the defensive here. And let's not gang up on Brainwasher, please?

Thanks Frank. I shouldn't have singled this thread out - really, this is a problem that I have with majority of what passes for music criticism.

It's bizarre how in literature the question "why are you discussing this album like this when the artist didn't intend it" is basically totally dead (Barthes put the nail in the coffin decades ago), but on ILX, there's no concept of "death of the author." If it limits the discussion, who cares what Simpson intended? We're critics. The texts are there for us to read; we have no obligation to honor the creator. (Derrida really emphasized this: The critic is no less than the text he's reading.) So if it produces interesting conversations, fab. If it doesn't - that should be the only criteria for dropping the analysis.

So Brainwasher, if you're like - a new historicist or whatever, and the artist's opinion is really important to you, then cool. But obviously a lot of critics in a lot of fields don't necessarily have those hang-ups anymore.

i guess despite tim's explanation i just dont get the appeal of music with virtually no social function for me. to talk about this music id have to either a) be on this thread or b) hang out with teenagers all the time. neither am i particularly interested in; the music im into generally serves some sort of function. i guess if for tim its an expression of the real frontier of music crit or something and thats enough for him cool, but i can entirely understand why someone wouldn't take it seriously; its very very much a niche thing. even within the age group buying it.

i started to write a bunch more and realized i was rehashing the old pro/anti teenpop thread arguments

xp to myself

(Just wanna say - not trying to gang up, or "put Brainwasher on the offensive." Just assuming there's an essential disagreement about the role of the critic V the work. It doesn't necessarily make sense to rehash it here.)

i dont think brainwasher's point was that ashlee's opinion of what the music is about matters as far as authorial intent, it was an attempt (right or wrongheaded) to give some perspective, to say that sometimes the point of a song is to be fun and brainless. i dont like analyzing shit sometimes - i dont spend hours writing up essays on why 'say yeah' by wiz khalifa is fun, or what his audience thinks about it, its just FUN. Like, in my writing i want to be balancing the emotional, overall impact w/ some intricate nerdery but here it seems like its just all this weird left brained mega-male analysis without any perspective on PURPOSE. Not neccessarily authorial purpose, but purpose as perceived by the listener

If it limits the discussion, who cares what Simpson intended?

What if it enriches the conversation? Which is to say, I don't see how saying we can't talk about intention is any better than saying we must be limited by what we imagine is the intention, or who the intended audience is. (But for what it's worth, I can't imagine why Ashlee wouldn't want adults - she's been one since she started recording - to listen to her music, since it's not at odds with the adult rock which is her source material. Since when are Courtney, Alanis, Gwen for teens only?)

And I'm being prejudiced here, since I don't read much lit criticism, but I'll take rock criticism over lit criticism in a snap. Not that they're mutually exclusive, mind you.

ultimately i think a long ashlee simpson thread is annoying kind of like the way a ghostface thread is, who cares, overrated dawgs, on to the next, except also there is no one irl i can talk to about ashley simpson w/out seeming like a weirdo. so why bother? theres enough great music out there that i love that fills functional purposes for me as a human being on earth

Then that's totally fair. I personally don't like Ashlee Simpson, but I've definitely been guilty of intellectually analyzing pop music that really was appealing to me on a non-intellectual level. (Stuff that was emotional resonant, or just awesome to dance to, or just crazy/hilarious/imparted good memories of listening to in bars with friends.) And I think if you came to one of these threads and said, "You guys aren't hearing what I'm hearing - which is this time we were in a bar, and some guy turned on an Ashlee song, and we thought that was hysterical and really ironic - because none of us like teenpop music - but just mocking the album and telling nasty jokes about Ashlee's nosejob was really an awesome time." And you said that like it was just another way of listening to the music, and that you didn't have the exclusive interpretation or experience - then no one would call you a troll or throw a fit. They might disagree (just like you disagreed with their over-intellectual analysis), but how could they contest your experience?

What if it enriches the conversation?

Totally. That's why I said only if it limits the conversation. If talking about authorial intent opens up a dialogue, then go for it. (And hell, if you want to limit the conversation cause you're shooting for some kind of Foucauldian power dynamic, then more power to you.)

my only problem with the teenpop critics (frank, da bug, mordy, lex whoever) is that, even tho i usually enjoy reading your guys' crit, i get the feeling that in the midst of good discourse you guys get to the point where you're truly grasping for shit that isn't there. true, some of this comes from my own prejudices re: music i deem ultimately devoid on an emotional level (for instance, ashlee and a lot of teen pop), but i would roll my eyes at a thread like this that dissected a 'concept' album like 'american gangster' just as much as i roll my eyes at a thread that goes this in-depth into an ashlee simpson album

Jordan, that's what I was trying to say before about critics V authorial intent. At least acc. to numerous lit theorists, it doesn't really matter whether it's "there" or not. Or rather, you can put it there itself. It's about who has ownership over the text. If Frank wants to say it's there, who gets to tell him it isn't?

if i heard an ashley song i liked tho i wouldnt be 'ironic' about it! id just say "yo im kinda feeling this ashlee simpson song." but i dont really come across that stuff at all - its not like with 2step where no one i know irl knows it, but if i play it at a club they'll be like "hey danceable R&B!" If Ashlee drops some nelly furtado style trax i'll be the first one lining up to talk about how hot the single is. (and maybe it is that good, i just havent heard it). i just see a LOT of thought going into one artist and it weirds me out in a way that rockism does in general. i dont think its so revolutionary to treat ashlee like bob dylan, i think its weird

yeah i AGREE with you that authorial intent should have no bearing on what becomes a 1000 post thread on ilm and what becomes a 10 post thread, which is why i brought up 'american gangster' a recent album that was thrust out to us as an album that the author intended to be 'dissected'

and i don't think any of you guys should be told not to do anything, which is why i don't come in these threads, as brainwasher did, and go "guys this isn't worth the effort youre putting into it"

xp 2 mordy

See, the way I figure it is - I like to read music writing. I don't really care what it's about, as long as it's interesting. Frank writes some interesting music writing. So I'll read it about Ashlee.

What happened with me was - I started reading all the music writing, and so I started trying the music too. And then I started finding teenpop music I liked (Aly + AJ, Britney, Meg & Dia, etc). It wasn't music I was naturally drawn to, but because I was reading this stuff, I was more exposed to it.

Maybe it's weird to spend so much time on one artist. But seriously, who cares? If the writing stands up, and Ashlee is used as an interesting springboard to get at more general topics, then why does it matter where the conversation started? If the thing stagnates and Ashlee gets boring, then I'll stop reading the thread. I didn't participate in every teenpop conversation on Rolling. Just the ones that piqued my interest.

I just dislike modern criticism a lot - when people extrapolate and project and come up with cockamamey, longwinded theories and analyses that have nothing at all to do with the intention of the author/artist.. it just irk's me. I'm kind of a formalist in that regard. And also, like deej said, sometimes music is just music - a fun song is just a fun song and not something else. Teen-pop critics in particular seem to overcompensate for their genre-of-choice's perceived vapidness by totally overanalyzing and over-intellectualizing music that is just supposed to be fun. Kids listening to Hannah Montana aren't doing post-feminist analyses of her music.

here it seems like its just all this weird left brained mega-male analysis without any perspective on PURPOSE

I think, in part, this is because the "weird left brained...analysis" is perhaps easier to articulate than the fun/brainless aspects of the music. Which isn't to say that Frank or Tim or Dave or I don't use the music in that fashion, but simply that's one of a multiplicity of ways in which the music can and does get used at any given moment. I'm not sure if we're expressing our responses to the album so much as analysing and prodding at our responses.

Also, a lot of the sheer joy at the fun of Bittersweet World hit on first listen, and having already expressed that fairly early on, and listened to the album a fair bit, delving further into it is the next stage of my response. FWIW, this tends to be how I interact with most albums, whether it's Ashlee, or the new Wolf Parade, which I'm still listening to on a surface level, or pretty much any hip-hop album, where the sheer weight of the lyrical stuff often prevents me from absorbing them on anything but a "how does it sound" level on the first few listens, rather than concentrating on meaning. But that's just me.

And to be completely honest, if it weren't for the previous two albums, I wouldn't think the album was worth the effort we're putting into it either. Ashlee's having fun with the album, and so am I, but that's about it.

Teen-pop critics in particular seem to overcompensate for their genre-of-choice's perceived vapidness by totally overanalyzing and over-intellectualizing music that is just supposed to be fun.

i second this

Brainwasher, I've got no problem with you feeling that way. But obv. a lot of people disagree, not just here, but in other places as well. There are like a million books written about Ulysses, or Hamlet. And many of them are the exact kind of modern criticism you don't like. But this has been the trend for the last 50 years or whatever. It's not like poptimism V rockism. It's some sort of New Critics V Stanley Fish feud. Like I said above, you can feel the way you do, but it seems silly to argue about it here. But Fish does have a NY Times column with comments enabled on it...

And yeah. Maybe there's some attempt to legitimize teenpop music by over-intellectualizing. But since that's only one thing that's happening (and in the meantime, some cool writing is being produced), aren't the motives not that important?

Teen-pop critics in particular seem to overcompensate for their genre-of-choice's perceived vapidness by totally overanalyzing and over-intellectualizing music that is just supposed to be fun.

I mean, the only thing I'd say about that is that just like in any other genre of music, there are songs/artists that seem worthy of intellectualization/analysis and those that seem to not be.

And Frank (from what I've read of his work), who probably reads more into "Ashlee" than anyone talking about her music, appears to analyse and intellectualise her music no more or less than he does that of the Rolling Stones or the New York Dolls or Teena Marie or Eminem. So I'm not sure if this kind of critical impulse can be linked to a perceived sensitivity about a particular genre so much as the writing style of particular individuals.

This is going around in circles. A long discussion on Ghostface would interest me depending on what people said in the discussion, not depending on how I rate Ghostface. But I'm just not sure where to go with this discussion about why we're discussing Ashlee, since I think Ashlee (and Kara and John and Shelly and Kenny and Beanz etc. etc.) have provided plenty of reasons for talking about Ashlee. And if anyone can find my reasons in the thousands upon thousands of words I've written about her, then I throw up my hands. As you are with Ashlee (whom I identify with pretty strongly), you're either interested in what I say or not.

And Mordy, of course it makes a difference whether what I see is there. But there doesn't necessarily mean "the singer or the producer or the music industry intended to put it there."

But there's no question that "I'm the one who's crawlin' on the ground/When you say love makes the world go 'round" is there, as is "And then you'll see my greatest gift/Is falling down and taking it."

And frankly, I'm fed up with today's particular meta conversation (I also have to leave it, but I would even if I weren't fed up) since I don't think most of you guys are interested in what I have to say about Ashlee.

And if anyone can find my reasons in the thousands upon thousands of words I've written about her, then I throw up my hands.

Hah! Typo! Anyone who can't find my reasons.

A long discussion on Ghostface would interest me depending on what people said in the discussion, not depending on how I rate Ghostface.

Frank, that's all I was trying to say. I'm only interested here in what people are saying. As far as whether something is "there" or not - I guess I don't have a stake in that question. I don't really care. Klosterman sometimes writes long, really interesting arguments about stuff, and I don't always buy that what he says is "there" is really "there." But I find the argument interesting anyway. That's all I'm saying.

(And I'm definitely guilty for making a meta-discussion. Maybe it should be moved to another thread. But conversations about conversations about music interest me too. Why do we talk about music? Why do we talk about talking about music? Etc.)

But Alex in Montreal OTM.

And speaking of Alexes, seeing Alex in NYC here gave me a pang of nostalgia.

I love meta-discussion. It just seems this one's hit a rut.

so i guess i can't extricate the quality of the discussion from whether or not the discussion is about something that is "there" then, and the frequency of there-ness re: teenpop determines when i bail on the conversation and when frank does

I mean, it seems to come down to:
A) It is there and it's worth discussing.
B) It's not there, and not worth discussing.
C) It doesn't matter whether it's there - the conversation should be judged on other merits.

With some dipping of one opinion into the other. Unless this really is possibly about something else?

(By which I mean, Jordan - where else did you think there was to go?)

nowhere i think you got it

assuming you mean "worth" in a personal sense not a universal one

OK, I keep getting suckered in. A kid might see a vacant lot as a chance for a pickup soccer game. A real estate man might see it as an investment opportunity. A builder might see it as a chance for a particular type of construction. All these are "there." Personally, among other things, I've seen Ashlee's words as a potential model for my own writing. Anyway, now I'm tired and cranky and had better stop now, but I put some blood and sweat into my rudimentary answer to Brainwasher above, and I don't see how anyone's putting what I said in "perspective" by ignoring it completely and telling me instead what my motives actually are.

Nighty night.

xp
Yeah. So -- that's the impasse. I mean, it's such a sophomoric cliche to say "you're entitled to your opinion," or "it's a subjective/objective argument!" but sometimes that's where you end up. I don't think anyone here (but me) is interested in weighing the merits of various literary theorists.

And Frank, I wasn't trying to tell you your motives. I was just saying - even if you want to believe that there are ulterior motives for this kind of conversation, that shouldn't make any difference. Cause I don't care what the motives are. I wasn't conceding the point so much as saying that it shouldn't make a difference if true.

btw since there is no rolling teenpop anymore ill post this in here:

One Bare Shoulder: The Effect of Dream Street on the Sexual Identity of the Teenipopper

the writing is only okay but i'm sure there is some stuff that would interest you guys

I think my problem with Ashlee--or lack of reaction--is the lack of trauma in her stuff.

A neat trick 'teenpop' performs is that it can be overwrought without its main audience complaining--I mean, its core audience *is* overwrought.

The melodrama opens up all kinds of neat, often very, very weird musical avenues. The trauma/melodrama aspect--I find it in some taTu, some Lindsay, and all over the new Veronicas--somehow elevates it from 'teen' to universal, sorta like Buffy wasn't about high school or vampires at all.

I don't 'get' the narrative floating around Ashlee, which doesn't mean there isn't a viable one.

This is hard to explain this late.

"i guess despite tim's explanation i just dont get the appeal of music with virtually no social function for me. to talk about this music id have to either a) be on this thread or b) hang out with teenagers all the time."

Deej this seems like a demand that you're making of teenpop that would seem ridiculous to make of heaps of other music. Do acoustic singer-songwriters have a "social function" for you? If they don't, are you baffled that people want to talk about them?

Man, I didn't want to get sucked into this thread either, but what the heck...

First off, to state what to me seems obvious, "talking about music" is a social function. By definition. I don't believe for a second that Ashlee doesn't serve a social function in Deej's life (even if he's actually never heard her music); if she didn't, he wouldn't be on this thread, socializing about her. To pretend talking here somehow counts less as "real life" than, say, talking in a bar seems completely bizarre to me.

That said, I have talked about Ashlee Simpson's music in a bar. At least once. With grownups, no less. Maybe a year and a half ago, a bunch of Billboard folks went out to lunch on a Friday, and somehow she came up (I think people were talking about tabloid stuff, which I never really pay attention to me much), and I mentioned that I Am Me had been one of my favorite rock albums of the previous year. One guy, who later went on to do entertainment business reporting at the NY Post, gave me a weird look and asked "rock??" And I said, uh, yeah. Not sure how much more in depth it got from there, but maybe it's not weird that Billboard people would classify music by "the audience to whom it's marketed" rather than "how it sounds."

Then again, I'm not even sure who Ashlee is marketed to anymore. Like Frank said, that detractors here keep dismissing her as "teenpop" here is kind of goofy (almost as goofy as people pretending that she's liked for her "innocennce and naivete," or that she does songs about "being rich and white"), though maybe a function of her having once figured prominently in a thread with "teenpop" in the title has something to do with it. But her music reminds me of Marianne Faithful or Stevie Nicks or Franz Ferdinand (or, as Frank said, Courtney or Alanis or Glen) more than it reminds of, say, Hilary Duff.

"Boys" reminds me of Chic. Totally. So I'm a little stumped about why Frank keeps calling it "showbiz blues" (which would mean, what, Amy Winehouse type crap, right?) The Jessica Simpson comparison Dabug makes way upthread makes a little more sense ('cause it's sort of light on its feet, I guess?), but I sure don't think "Jessica" when it comes on. (Though maybe I would if I listened to Jessica more often.)

I also don't hear nearly as much genius in Ashlee's lyrics as Frank, etc., do, by the way. Which isn't to say it isn't "there," but I've listened to her albums plenty, and maybe the fact that one would seemingly need to intensely examine them under a microscope to get all their minute nuances might be part of what bugs some people about Frank going off at length about her words so much. I find what Frank says in that regard consistently interesting myself, but that doesn't mean I hear what he hears. I hear some of it. But is it enough to justify an ENTIRE THREAD? Maybe not; there are so many albums out there now that devoting so much time to just one album always strikes me as a little odd. (In the last week, I had to write, or was assigned to write, reviews of, let's see: John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis, Los Lonely Boys, Trina, the Lady Tigra, Birthday Massacre, Scooter, Foxboro Hot Tubs, Jamey Johnson, Little Jackie, K'Naan, Restless Kelly, plus two Joan Jett reissues and a bunch of other stuff...) I know most people aren't as anywhere near as obsessive as I am, and it's not they're job to keep up with so much stuff, but still -- there are a lot of records out there, always! Which is why I always preferred the rolling threads, in general, to individual album threads, which I've always tended to avoid. Which is what made the teenpop thread worthwhile, no matter what certain assholes and idiots here thought about it. Though then again, the discussion on this thread sure goes much farther toward justifying devoting a whole thread to Ashlee than, say, the threads on fucking Battles or Destroyer or whoever I've seen in the past. (Maybe I missed something interesting on those; who knows.) And if I went to those threads, would I see trolls coming on and saying they can't imagine why anybody would devote an entire thread to Battles or Destroyer (or Ghostface, or Jay-Z)? I don't know, maybe I would. But somehow, I doubt it.

On the other hand, if on the rolling teenpop thread, people had just come on and said things like ""yo im kinda feeling this ashlee simpson song" and left it at that, it would have bored me stiff. Go figure.

I keep looking for someplace upthread where I thought Frank complained about people complaining about him spending too much time analyzing Ashlee's lyrics (and lyrics in teenpop in general) (even if Ashlee isn't really teenpop per se'), when nobody ever has any problem with anybody spending time analyzing lyrics in other genres, but damned if I can find it. Maybe I dreamt it. I hope so. Because if Frank really said that, he's way wrong. Lots of people have always had problems with rock critics spending inordinate time on the lyrics (in all genres), and I've often been one of them. A record review is not a book review (or a lyric sheet review), and turning it into one, 99 percent of the time, is booooooring. But I'm probably completely Rorschashing (old Why Music Sucks word!), and Frank never actually said anything of the sort.

Also, Frank -- Did you really mean to single out Autobiography, not I Am Me, as having the whatever-you-said-about-its-lyrics-since Eminem? Or was that a typo? Because if it wasn't, I probably need to go back and listen to the debut album more.

my only problem with the teenpop critics (frank, da bug, mordy, lex whoever) is that, even tho i usually enjoy reading your guys' crit, i get the feeling that in the midst of good discourse you guys get to the point where you're truly grasping for shit that isn't ther

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

ok, i will. lots of times all those guys talk about shit that isnt there too

thankfully there isnt a 'rolling atlas sound' thread

tim f, if i was looking for an explanation of why any grown adults are listening to teen pop and nerding out about it, yours is the only one so far that has made much sense to me - as a music critic u like the idea of it basically being an open frontier, right?? the fact is, there are amazingly talented singers and songwriters performing music that i ignore all the time, and not just doing teenpop. i can come up with kinda arbitrary reasons to ignore anything. its not like im dismissing this genre out of hand like a classic rock dude talking about rap. i just dont see the advantage of taking up brain power with stuff that doesnt serve a function for me.

and you can say its a ridiculous demand of music and you're right ... assuming im talking about intentionally avoiding this stuff altogether, but im not. Im just choosing not to engage w/ this stuff in the way you guys do!! if i hear an ashlee song on the charts and it resonates ill say so. its less about the music not serving a social function and more about the way you guys address it not really having any sort of appeal to me

as a music critic u like the idea of it basically being an open frontier, right??

Not to mention that it's ignored by cognoscenti yet is listened to by a large swathe of the population. A lot of the stuff I end up loving initially began as part of an anthropological experiment.

People like a type of music, thus like talking about it on a board devoted to talking about music. It's not hard.