Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

Skye Sweetnam's album will be mastered by the end of the month with a goal to release it in Canada in the next few months. No word on a date or an American release yet.

Er, US release.

Jimmy Draper makes my day twice with two choice magazine quotes, first re: Mandy Moore, second re: Avril:

From Blender:
Moore makes a big deal of trying to keep the album's villain a mystery — after all, she dated tennis hottie Andy Roddick, too — but it's clear that she doesn't harbor a lot of fondness for the Scrubs star. When asked if Braff's famously indie taste in music had influenced her, she scrunches up her face and simulates barfing.

From Performing Songwriter Mag:

PS mag: We just did an article with Avril Lavigne, with whom you wrote with ...

Chantal: I find it funny that it's in Performing Songwriter. A mean, Avril, songwriter? Avril doesn't really sit down and write songs by herself or anything. Avril will cross the ethical line and no one says anything. That's why I'll never work with her again. I sent her a song two years ago called "Contagious," and I just saw the tracklisting to this album and there's a song called "Contagious" on it-- and my name's not on it. What do you do with that?

PS mag: Call the lawyers?

Chantal: See, I won't do that. I'll just tell you. Art should not be subject to that kind of controversy. Art should be pure. In my head it is, anyway.

OK, OK, Insomniatic available for free (legally!) via MTV's "The Leak"...you can listen in full here: http://www.mtv.com/music/the_leak/aly_and_aj/insomniatic/#

Though I haven't had the chance to listen to it myself.

link to an illegal d/l option, you ain't seen me, right?

I suspect that neither Aly nor A.J. would make as tumultuous an ex-girlfriend as Kelly Clarkson would.

Initial reaction to the MTV stream: bright pop-rock w/ dance touches, not a bad tune on the album, some full-fledged breakup songs and at least one (other) potential makeup song, but sorrow is no impediment to happy tunesmith and joyous wordplay. Epitome of this may be "Division," where the fellow graduates from their relationship by using division - lots of analogy material there, both mathematical and relationship-diploma-after-party-ish. On first listen nothing hits with the gut punch of "Rush" or "Protecting Me" or "Not This Year," though high quality all through might make it hard for anything to stand out. I was expecting and wanting more anguish - yet the two tracks that reach me right away with their passion do so by going quiet not dark: "Silence" and "I'm Here." Excellent on its own terms even if they're not quite the terms I was hoping for. Gobs of good songs.

So far in 2007:

1. Lloyd f. Lil Wayne "You"
2. Ashley Tisdale "Not Like That"
3. JoJo "Anything"
4. Yung Berg "Sexy Lady"
5. Linda Sundblad "Lose You"
6. Keak Da Sneak "That Go"
7. Natasha "Hey Hey Hey"
8. Rihanna f. Jay-Z "Umbrella" (also the remix w/ Lil Mama)
9. Dragonette "I Get Around"
10. Kelly Clarkson "Never Again"

1. Aly & A.J. Insomniatic
2. Miranda Lambert Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
3. A-Trak Dirty South Dance
4. Jordan Pruitt No Ordinary Girl
5. Kelly Clarkson My December

"You didn't ask me for my number?/Wait! You didn't ask me for my number. Humph/I like the fact that you didn't ask that/'Cause you've already got my number/Huh!"

Teena Marie to thread.

"I used to wear your shirt to bed/Now it's in the trash instead."

(Ashlee Simpson to thread.)

Ha, I wrote about this extensively over at my blog as a track by track. The only one (in the sober light of morning) that I was flat-out wrong about was "Silence," which is great.

"You didn't ask me for my number etc." is one of my favorite musical moments in 2007. "Bullseye" is brilliant. But this album is a B+/A- coasting effort from students who can either get a C- (for being totally overbearing and inconsistent but making like one or two brilliant, emotionally resonant points) or an A. "Rush" and "Not This Year" and "Sticks and Stones" and "I Am One of Them" are what I want from them -- I mean, they're probably brilliant, they can write killer hooks, but for chrissakes they've singlehandedly caused me more agitation in my stomach than any other artist I can even think of, including Kelly. And now they're flirting with me (very well) and I'm PISSED OFF AT THEM.

Still a good album, tho.

Also, Frank, you forgot the total HOWLER in "Division": "the sum will be different/ by using division." When of course, if they'd gone to a public school like me they'd know that the QUOTIENT will be different. (NB, I just googled it and they say it's "song," not "sum." But I think it's "sum." And if it's "song" it's just a useless line, as opposed to a uniquely howl-worthy one.)

"they" being the first lyrics site I stumbled across.

I'm ranking this far higher than Dave, obviously, but my disappointment does run close to his. Maybe Aly & A.J. are all out of terror and unhappiness. Maybe they can't pull off the fear, not this year, so they direct their efforts elsewhere.

"Not this year" is admittedly very important...it's a very <i>strategic</i> album, a very smart album (a very "I dare you not to think these songs are catchy regardless of how many snide jokes you wanna make about homeschooling (sorry) and evolution denial" album). It's probably the album they need to make this year if they want to, er, expose themselves a bit. I'll be looking forward to one-offs, where they can afford to be a little weirder/counter-intuitive without putting their Next Step on the line.

Also very telling, and I guess xhuxk might want to elaborate, but they seem to have removed "Blush" from the CD at the last-minute, not in time to take it off the promos. I only heard a 30 second snippet, but it seemed to be explicitly about not wanting to have sex with their boyfriend (but for real this time). Could be wrong, xhuxk should chime in about that one at some point.

haha "their boyfriend," twin-pop is AWESOME.

Words of "Blush" seemed, to me, to be along the lines of, yeah, "I will only go so far" but also "Go ahead, say [not quite audible word -- No? Yes? Something else?]/Even though you know it makes me feel uncomfortable." "Eerie, ethereal, confessional folkie dream-pop" I wrote in my notes, with some melodic part (the beginning?) that was reminding me of Neil Young. I liked it more than "Silence," though I may well be underrating "Silence," as some people seemed to be suggesting I was also doing with "Easy Silence" or "Silent House" or both on the Dixie Chicks album last year. (Maybe silence makes me feel uncomfortable, which is why I have music on all the time when I'm alone.) Anyway, sure, not-wanting-to-have-sex (how far is too far though?) seemed to be one easy interpretation of "Blush", though for all I know maybe it's about having an s&m safeword instead (I swear, it can be read that way); I wouldn't say it's explicitly anything. If and when I listen and deduce more, I will say so.

Oh yeah, my notes also say "really introverted" with regard to "Blush," by which I was referring to the sound. I'm generally not an introversion-in-music fan (see also: "Silence"), but after a few listens, I'd say it was one of my favorite tracks on (or not on) the album, by mere virtue of its intensity or mystery or whatever. ("Blush" is slated to be released on a deluxe Aly & AJ packag later this year, say folks from Disney.)

But has anybody mentioned "Like Whoa", the delirious early '80s L.A. new wave style track about riding the love rollercoaster and running out of oxygen, and it turns into that cool acid-house-like break in the middle, more rush than blush? Okay, I just did.

Oh yeah, another interpretation that occured to me was "Go ahead, say IT/Even though you know it makes me feel uncomfortable"; first guess was that "it" might be, you know, "I love you," but I'm probably just as wrong there as with my other interpretations.

I prefer Aly & A.J.'s "Silence" to Dixie Chicks' "Easy Silence" since the latter has too much of an appropriately elegiac hush to it, while Aly & A.J. being more matter-of-fact in their reserve are more touching as well.

"Like Whoa" - "Life is good, I can't complain/I mean I could be no one's listening." But she means that she's not even listening to her own complaint; she's taken over by the rush, even while trying to say, like, whoa. (The lyrics if not the sound to this track have some of the contradictory tension that Dave and I were diggin' in previous Aly & A.J. product.)

I could be no one's listening = I could BUT no one's listening

And I think by "Easy Silence" I meant "Silent House."

Anyway, the Aly & A.J. alb could slip lower in my rankings despite its catchiness if I'm deciding that it's not connecting hard enough to the emotions, but I'm not sure that I will decide this.

Liking the Gretchen Wilson album - Xhuxk disagrees, but I think by subduing her energy and bullshit Gretchen raised her emotional intensity. Problem is that in hot weather my CD player starts glitching on cheap promo quality CDs and CD-Rs, so I'm not really getting to hear more than two or three tracks at a time of the Wilson, so don't have a fully formed feel for the thing.

Go ahead, say IT/Even though you know it makes me feel uncomfortable

Yeah, I misread a song on their first album more reasonably being about this. Forget which one (it was before "Protecting Me" I think or after "Sticks and Stones" maybe?). Ditto "Chems React"...I'm probably just a creepy creep who wants all these girls to REALLY be talking about S&M etc., which is why I dig it when Ashlee actually does. That one's pretty explicit, if largely metaphorical (dunno if I'd like it more if she LITERALLY wanted to be thrown like a boomerang) (but then I've heard that whole song).

("Slow Down" was the song from their first alb.)

But has anybody mentioned "Like Whoa", the delirious early '80s L.A. new wave style track about riding the love rollercoaster and running out of oxygen, and it turns into that cool acid-house-like break in the middle, more rush than blush?

And I'd call the chorus soul-based funk. And I am getting lots of feeling (not just in this song but all of them) from the melodies and from the aching neon glints in their vocals. Whatever I mean by "aching neon glints": that evocative throat constriction that makes the voice appear to have faint feedback in it. Flecks of feedback. I don't think "flecks of feedback" is any more explanatory than "aching neon glints," actually.

What I say I said upon first listening to "Like Whoa":

"Like Whoa" -- "Life is good I can't complain/ I mean I could but no one's listening"...OK, gettin' somewhere..."your image overwhelms my brain and it feels good good-good..." (I like-like this because it's good-good?) Hm, "you're like a tattoo I can't remove," then it goes into more bombastic Spicey type chorus. There's some conflict but they keep winking at me. Again, Aly, AJ, I understand that you are funny. You've ably demonstrated this. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE PUT ME THROUGH FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS OF MY LIFE? And now you're just gonna FLIRT with me all night when I've already decided to actually accept your terms -- which SCARE THE SHIT OUTTA ME -- and struggle with whatever angst you're trying to struggle with? It's like I finally decide to settle down despite all the problems and now they wanna go out for GELATO. I like gelato, but like, we have some issues to discuss here. Shit, it is good gelato. BUT STILL!

What a blog sez I said upon first listening to "Like Whoa":

Amazing pop-punk tune with great… bombastic spicy choruses.

(Apologies if this is a double post, having troubles with ILX right now.)

People were talking about Rubinoos and Avril earlier upthread, here's a relevant story: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/search/google/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003607413

Plagiarism cases are a bit tricky, but I'd say they have a pretty decent case here, and will probably at least settle out of court. The songs sound at least as similar to me as "Ghostbusters" and "I Want a New Drug" or "My Sweet Lord" and "He's So Fine".

Man I cannot stop listening to "See You Again". The "st-st-stuttered" part is brilliant and "my best friend Leslie says 'Oh, she's just being Miley!'" is equally brilliant. I wonder who Leslie is.

Damn, when's Skye Sweetnam gonna sue this plagiarizin' phony?? Nah, that would be beneath her, it's about ART.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

I rest my case!

Anyway, came here to post this superspecial Rolling Teenpop 2006 Flashback via a great Youtube clip for Fefe Dobson's "Unforgiven." ROCK.

If Aly and AJ refuse to upset my stomach even slightly on their new album (except the bonus tracks, all highly recommended: Blush, Tears, and Careful With Words), I can always just watch Fox News. (Actually pretty bland and agreeable. Though the host's daughter looks pretty miserable).

Tried to activate the rubinoos.com file and it's gone dead.

LA Times ran a piece by a free-lancer on the claim which has been posted to the net as a court filing. Couldn't find it immediately. Jon Rubin commented for the Times that although he didn't write the song, he sang it and it was likely, he thought, that if Avril and Co. didn't copy it from the Rubinoos version, they copied it from a copy of the original by Lush from a few years ago where the title was changed to "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend." Said they didn't get paid for that, either.

Acoustic version comparison vid

Comparison by wiseacre on YouTube

Vids aren't the best way to argue this but the defensive and weird remarks from Lavigne and her songwriting partner in the newspaper give you the impression they're going down for the count on it. They threatened to sue another itty-bitty songwriter who worked with them when he said bad things, forcing him to retract. But that's not happening here.

"I never heard of the Rubinoos before the lawsuit. I never head of the song and neither has Avril. I would take a polygraph on that ... " -- "Dr. Luke" Gottwald.

You won't have to buddy. It doesn't work that way.

"[it has] the standard changes you'd find in a Sum 41 song. It's the Sex Pistols, not the Rubinoos." -- "Dr. Luke" Gottwald

Chantal Kraviazuk: "I mean, Avril, songwriter? Avril doesn't really sit and write songs by herself or anything." This in part of a discussion that Lavigne had stolen a Kraviazuk song called Contagious which was rejected and then coincidentally turned up on "The Best Damn Thing" credited to Lavigne and another.

Kraviazuk was then threatened with possible legal retaliation: "...I am considering taking legal action" for "a clear defamation of my character..."

Kraviazuk issues a retraction: Please don't sue me because "Avril has in now way stolen my song."

"I've never been sued before for plagiarims" -- "Dr Luke" Gottwalk.

Most haven't.

"I'm disappointed in humanity but open to discussion. I would love to talk to [Tommy Dunbar and James Gangwer] to sit down with them and to steer them in a direction to be positive." -- "Dr Luke"

Heh.

Yeah, Jessica Poptastic made the link to Lush as well, she might want to comment more here (but she already did on her blog I think). FWIW, the Chantal whatserface quote above has since been rescinded (apparently they share a management company or something, according to Idolator). Skye Sweetnam has congenially let more glaring, if arguable, plagiarism transgressions pass without incident. xpost

Jeez, they could at least TRY not to sound like such assholes about it, though. Not that hard to make this threat look pretty frivolous, but none of it reflects very well on Avril anyway (good!).

And maybe all of this will get Dr. Luke going in a new direction, since his approach is getting way more overbearing, when he already found a better (to me, anyway) way to "evolve" the hard-guitar-crunch sound by playing it down with Paris Hilton in "Nothing in This World." Very very interested to hear what he did with Skye.

While Kraviazuk recanted, it hasn't stopped anyone else from publishing it in fresh news stories. I saw it in the Times piece today. I'd think Lavigne corporate suing a nobody, this particular case, would just bring them more mockery and bad publicity. In comparison with the standing case, she hasn't been maliciously defamed.

In fact, I'd imagine one could say anything one wanted to now about Lavigne and Dr Luke -- true, defamatory or completely made up -- and there wouldn't be a blessed thing they could do about it except make empty threats.

And yet here I've been publicly disparaging Avril on scant evidence or justification forever to no effect. The world's weird -- I'm starting to think that the artists we discuss here don't even READ this thread.

Well, one of the limitations of ILX is that the majority of the messages in the thread don't load. So you miss a lot unless you remember to always page up and hit the display-all cue.

Now, if you want more people to come out to this thread, then the simplest way is to raise it high in Google. The way to do that is to link to it from other places than ILX. But it may be a matter of it simply being to diffuse in nature.

For instance, I get a steady stream of readers -- and sometimes hate mail -- from Googlers coming in off keyword searches that turn up my page in the first page of results. For example, variations on miranda lambert tattoo has worked wonders. Wolfmother Led Zeppelin and Wolfmother Black Sabbath have been absolutely priceless.

Since you don't know what Google's criteria are, there's a bit of an art to it. The foolproof way is to have a dozen or more different sites link to the page.

However, hoping individual artists are spending time doing vanity searches on themselves and burrowing down beneath the top page of results seems unlikely, perhaps directly proportional to how famous they are. The more famous, the more likely some little nerd has been assigned the job, loathe to bring bad news to the great pope.

Even the Dixie Chicks weren't Googling the hate in their documentary. Some flunky in the studio was editing it for them.

I've found the best way to get googlers for Aly and AJ is to talk about them in relationship to their Christianity, so that the following terms come up in a Google search:

ALY, AJ, GOD, CHRISTIANITY, CHRISTIAN, JESUS, CHRIST, ETC.

There are other seamier (but popular) combinations that I'm too much of a gentleman to share with the dignified readers of the thread.

Hey, if you want people to come to your site, put the word dick in every page. Ha-ha.

(Actually, biggest spike, aside from google image searches, was from NIP SLIP)

(Oh wait, I just got your joke!)

I wonder who Leslie is.

Wikipedia to the rescue: "Also, the "Leslie" mentioned in the song is Leslie Patterson, Miley Cyrus' real best friend from Tennessee."...which makes it even better, in my opinion. Been searching for the songwriters on this ("See You Again") for a couple minutes, to no avail. Anybody have any idea?

If by the end of the year I decide this is a single, it will have a chance to make my top 10 of the year, since I think I like it about as much as "I Got Nerve" and that was in my top 10 last year. We'll see I guess.

One quick way to find quick n dirty songwriting credits for songs on the CD -- at least it always works for me on major label product -- is to stick it in the PC and mount it using Windows Media Player. Generally, if you're on-line it will phone home and put the CD cover into display. Mouse over the song title in question -- don't click -- and you'll get the songwriting credits.

Tommy2 linked to an interview in which she said she produced the tracks with a "friend of hers" (might have just been "Meet Miley Cyrus").

Allmusic sez that Kara DioGuardi, Greg Wells, Armato/James (on "Bigger Than Us," my fave from the OST half), Toby Gad (Veronicas, a few others), Matthew Gerard, Robbie Nevil, most Disney/teenpop standard producers, all had a hand in the OST.

"See You Again" was Armato/James (with Miley Cyrus getting a writing credit -- she gets co-writer credit on several "Meet Miley" tracks), so was "East Northumberland High," "Right Here"...Shelly Peiken shows up. Don't know who this "friend" is, but it does sound like they're kind of screwing around in the studio more on "Meet Miley."

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that all these name were responsible for some of the mediocre crap filling up the album(s)! Quality varies wildly.

For some reason, a bunch of pop albums I'm listening to this year (Dragonettes, Kelly Clarkson, Aly + AJ, Jordan Pruitt) just don't seem as solid as albums from last year (Aly + AJ, Meg and Dia, The Veronicas). I don't know if it's me, or the music, but the albums seem far more uneven. I love "Never Again," but can't really quote too many songs from the album off the top of my head. Or "Potential Breakup Song," but nothing else. Meanwhile, I knew most of the Meg & Dia album by heart. What's going on?