PARIS HILTON - PARIS

The more I think about it, the more a lot of the kneejerk criticism (mostly from the mainstream press, not message board debate) is there's a sense that Paris for some reason isn't ALLOWED to be a pop star. In the UK market the Paris album is broadly aimed at (the Heat magazine demographic, to crassly put it), she's (ahem) screwed by two big things:

1. An established tradition of laughing at Paris (as Tom's pointed out elsewhere), from bad dresses to what happens when she tries to work on a farm on TV.

2. A general suspicion of presenters, actresses or other media personalities who turn their hand to releasing records. This goes right back to the 80s Aussie soap stars and only Kylie has really been allowed to transcend that (even J-Lo's still viewed with some suspicion). Mind you some Proper Pop Stars suffer from this as well, Rachel Stevens' album was fantastic and yet her Lads Mag persona was so offputting to its market that it scuppered sales. The exact same record given to Kylie would've been hailed as a classic.

Whereas the biggest pop stars (Britney, Madge, Xtina, Robbie) succeed because they ARE pop, it's not merely something to fill in the gaps between photo shoots. Likewise the moral disapproval side is maybe overplayed - R Kelly fucking underage girls didn't prevent Ignition from being a massive hit.

This is a totally rockist viewpoint to take but I reckon its pretty widespread outside the realm of interweb debates.

(I've now listened to Screwed and Nothing In This World - they're not outright awful and there's the basis of a good tune in both of them but the execution is poor. Melodically they lurch around uncomfortably and both the performance and the production are a bit limp and don't really take off).

If we'd been following the last couple of years of Skanky Ho Britney without her ever having released a record, she'd be considerably less favourably viewed even if the debut single was as amazing as Baby One More Time multiplied by Toxic.

Or, to magnify the point, imagine how it'd be perceived if Jade Goody released an album tomorrow?

dude, someone who proclaims she's in the same line as marilyn monroe and madonna has a few loose screws in her head. that's saying if she HAS any. she does take herself seriously and does really consider herself to be the shit (or hott). i think this is the main reason why i won't be able to enjoy the record, i have a pre-established notion of her being as self-absorbed. still i should give it a try...

In other words, the pop audience wants their popstars to at least come into their world with some mystique.

The more you know about a (pop) artist, the less you can be entertained. There's too much information, too much knowledge, so you can't build a dream, can't mirror yourself on the artist.

nathalie: i think " a few screws loose", "thinks she's hott" and "self-absorbed" as all v good qualities in a popstar.

The more you know about a (pop) artist, the less you can be entertained. There's too much information, too much knowledge, so you can't build a dream, can't mirror yourself on the artist.

i find this interesting - so for all the focus on people not taking paris seriously because she's fake...this makes more sense, not taking her seriously because her life is so public that we think we know what she's like already - and we think she's too dumb to get in character for a song, so essentially we are saying that paris hilton the popstar is too REAL!

this i understand. i find all the lyrics which double as both lovely dreamy romance words and comments on Paris The Celebrity cute, but we know how badly meta plays with many people, so...yeah, when she sings something like "since i'm already screwed" or "if you show me real love baby i'll show you mine" that could be TOO MUCH of what we perceive to be the 'real' paris impinging on the song.

in fact i did say on poptimists that i felt there was too much conflating of paris-the-persona and paris-the-person going on - and this interview reveals that curiously, paris herself has a good grip on the situation.

Hilton says the baby voice she uses on the reality TV show "The Simple Life" is an act.

"I'm always playing a character," she says. "I don't talk like this really -- like a baby. I don't act like myself in public, because I don't really want to show everyone the real me. Because I have no privacy whatsoever, the only thing I have is who I really am."

that's a really good quote actually.

*not v good or detailed as originally intended to be capsule review in the print mag until i missed the deadline, idiot me

Very true. :-)

I said in my Uncut review that reason people are fascinated by Paris isn't her hottness - which the record is obsessed with - but her wealth. The record could have been fantastic if the writers had the wit to completely up the bling ante - Madonna meets Marie Antoinette meets Grace Kelly - that's where Paris stands out. By trying to focus on her supposed sexxiness, the record was always bound to fail.

I'm disappointed the PSBs would sooner produce for him than her (esp. given their fine pedigree working with female vocalists...Kensit and even Minelli not being that much of a step up from Hilton really!)

http://www.outputrecordings.com/leanne-&-paris.jpg

I said in my Uncut review that reason people are fascinated by Paris isn't her hottness - which the record is obsessed with - but her wealth. The record could have been fantastic if the writers had the wit to completely up the bling ante - Madonna meets Marie Antoinette meets Grace Kelly - that's where Paris stands out. By trying to focus on her supposed sexxiness, the record was always bound to fail.

i agree that this would have been a really interesting avenue to pursue - i would have loved it - but i think the general public would have been v turned off by it. but the record doesn't really focus on her sexxiness - sure there are those three songs about turning people on, boys fighting over her &c but the bulk of the album is all about how much she wants to be loved and associated Real Love fantasies.

Unless it sounded like Confessions of a Pop Group, which it totally should.

Amazingly, that long-to-materialize album (it's hard to call it highly anticipated) turns out to be shockingly good — and not just according to a grading curve for actors-turned-singers. After all, Paris was never an actress to begin with; she was a media creation who peddled the same image to a number of different formats, and it just so happens that her sexy, spoiled, shallow act is perfectly suited for bubblegum pop. Of course, it helps that she has a crack team of professionals supporting her on Paris, chief among them songwriter Kara DioGuardi and producer/co-writer Scott Storch, who is name-dropped on the first song "Turn It Up," and leaves a heavy imprint on the rest of the record producing just over half of it and serving as one of the executive producers along with Tom Whalley and Paris herself. They come up with a sound that's casually modern and retro with enough heft in its rhythms to sound good at clubs, yet it's designed to be heard outdoors on the sunniest day of the summer. This is exceedingly light music, as sweet and bubbly as a wine spritzer, yet it isn't so frothy that it floats away. Like the best lightweight pop, Paris retains its sense of fun through repeated listens, long past the point that the novelty of Paris Hilton releasing a good album has worn off. Make no mistake, Paris is a very good pop album, at times deliberately reminiscent of Blondie, Madonna, and Gwen Stefani, yet having its own distinct character — namely, Paris' persona, which is shamelessly shallow and devoid of any depth. Where that might be irritating within a movie or within pop culture at large, when placed in a shiny, hooky dance-pop album it works splendidly, particularly because the songs are strong and Storch and company know how to keep things light — and everybody involved knows that it's fun to play around with Paris' image, no matter if it's her murmuring "that's hot" at the beginning of the record or covering Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," or writing about her feud with Nicole Ritchie on the delightful "Jealousy." But for as much as Paris is about Paris, she doesn't necessarily stand out here; her voice — which is almost certainly auto-tuned and tweaked by a computer, yet it's nevertheless appealing, more so than Britney Spears' often awkward squawk — may blend into the production, yet that actually helps the recordings since it emphasizes the melodies above everything else. And there are some irresistible melodies here: the breezy "Stars Are Blind," the gilded rush of "I Want You" driven by a "Grease" sample, the sweet "Time After Time" rewrite "Heartbeat," and the great power pop of "Screwed," for starters.

Yes, there is no denying that this is a pure piece of product, but it is indeed pure as product. Paris makes no apologies for being mass-market pop, but everybody involved made sure that this was well-constructed mass-market pop. It may not bear the mark of an auteur the way Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics does, but it never feels tossed-off, and track-for-track it's more fun than anything released by Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson, and a lot fresher, too. It's easy to hate Paris Hilton — lord knows that she and her friends like Brandon Davis are walking advertisements against the repeal of the estate tax — but any pop fan who listens to Paris with an open mind will find that it's nothing but fun.

Almost certainly!

YA DONT SAY!

why?

lex's rhetoric on this one has just been 'everything you think is bad, is actually good'. but the strongest assertions -- that the songwriting is top-hole, that paris's soul comes through blah-blah-rockist-blah, that she has a great popstar persona -- are just bollocks.

i don't see how the thematic breakdown ('her songs are about the search for Real Love!!' yeah and?) helps matters.

being taken up with prom queen/princess cliches deep in your twenties is also not especially endearing.

But it's way easier to be cynical and notice that everything about her vocal work is completely undistinguishable. She hired a hitmaker so she sounds like the rest of Storch's resume. B.F.D. I hear crap like this and kneel down at the altar of rockism with complete confidence.

but the point is that it IS paris hilton. it's a pop song so the person matters as much as the song itself!

-- Nathalie (stevi...), August 24th, 2006.

well yes. and it's paris hilton. so the hateful non-singing minor celebrity matters almost as much as the unobjectionable-but-hardly-outstanding lite-reggae track. fan-bloody-tastic.

well similar songs got airplay when the name No Doubt was attached to them!

so the hateful non-singing minor celebrity

why is she hateful? i don't understand why paris hilton provokes so much ire compared with, oh, any other given popstar/entertainment sleb who get, if not admired, then not reviled.

xpost

despising poor people - i refer you to paris's own quote upthread re "the real me"

There's also a private school/blowjob gag here but I can't be bothered to make it.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1572890,00.html