Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

jaymc I'll crosspost to Rolling US Charts, but I posted it here cuz it's all relevant to teenpop too.

Didn't Hey There, Delilah come out a year or two ago as a single? Why is it hitting the charts now?

Wait. Yeah. Probably three years ago. Because I remember playing it on my wife and my radio show at College... and we were barely dating back then. (I thought it was romantic and would make her want to date me. She just had a thing for Chicago bands.)

Whew. I'm like, 2 weeks behind everyone else, but I finally finished my best of midyear list. (Not that anyone cares but...) Normal precautions apply: Not in any particular order, subject to change, and subject to me having forgotten something that belongs on the list. Also, I don't really care about listing round numbers. I just listed until I ran out of things I liked. (Also! The albums list is probably more unusual for this thread than the singles list AND no Dragonettes :( but that's because they haven't released any of the songs I really like as singles yet.)

Singles

1. Rihanna - Umbrella
2. R. Kelly - I'm a Flirt
3. Taylor Swift - Tears on My Guitar
4. Lil Mama - Lip Gloss
5. Mark Ronson - Stop Me
6. Aly + AJ - Potential Breakup Song
7. Kelly Clarkson - Never Again
8. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend
9. Fallout Boy - This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race
10. Tim Armstrong - Into Action
11. Cute is What We Aim For - The Curse of Curves
12. The National - Fake Empire
13. The Used - The Bird and the Worm

Albums

1. Taylor Swift - Self Titled
2. Fallout Boy - Infinity on High
3. The Noisettes - What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?
4. Neil Young - Live At Massey Hall
5. Against Me! - New Wave
6. Paula Cole - Courage
7. A-Trak - Dirty South Dance
8. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
9. The Stooges - The Weirdness

Oh! Singles, #14: Iron and Wine - Boy with a Coin

WARNING: Get those ear plugs ready cos the musical criminal is working on a second album….

Lock up your dogs, reinforce those windows and hide any valuable china because Paris Hilton has revealed she is recording a second album.

The starlet- who was recently released from prison- has revealed: "I'm already working on my new record I've been in meetings with Scott (Storch) and we've been working on it."

After her self-titled debut (and weak single Stars Are Blind bombed it was assumed the hotel heiress would give up her audio assault on the world.

But no! Paris is now set for a second try and is teaming up with Storch who’s behind hits for Beyonce, 50 Cent and Christina Aguilera. Maybe she'll find inpiration from her time behind bars.

"She takes voice lessons several times a week," an insider told E! Online "She's really serious about her music career."

Oh god, poor us!

YAY

You know what? Thank god. Because this week I got this incredible read on Paris Hilton doing music with Storch and I thought: "I hope she does another album so I can WRITE that bitch up." And now! Woo!

A lot of people ask me.. stupid fuckin questions
A lot of people think that.. what I say on record
or what I talk about on a record, that I actually do(n't do) in real life
Or if I say that, I wanna (sing), that..
I'm (not) actually gonna do it (cuz of Autotune)
or that I [don't] believe in (working)
Well, shit... if you believe that
then I'm (dancing with) you (anyway])
You know why?
Cuz I'm a (musical)

CRIMINAL
CRIMINAL
You god damn right
I'm a CRIMINAL
Yeah, I'm a CRIMINAL

My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge
That'll stab you in the head
whether you're a (mag) or (Perez)
Or (MTV), (the pap) or (Reynolds-in-a-)vest
Pants or dress - (like bags)? The answer's "yes"

I don't get it. :(

Imagine Paree over this. I can hear it!

Except her first LP sent her directly to jail.

Whatta day!

Jul 18, 2007
Skye's Back on the Attack

I'm so pleased to announce that my brand spankin' new CD "SOUND SOLDIER" will be released in Canada this year! It's been a long time coming but I'm sure you will agree it will be well worth the wait! So all you Skye Soldiers get ready to shift into high gear!
You may also notice the cool new look of this site! If your looking for current pictures, videos, blogs and more, make sure you visit myspace.com/skyesweetnam

Rock on!
oxox Skye

The Girls Aloud single is good!

of course it is, it's a girls aloud single.

PARIS IS BACK, BITCHES!!!!

New Skye track streamed at her MySpace, "Bring It Back" (right now it's buried underneat the other tracks). I heard this from her live Sea World performance about a year or so ago, sounds good but not quite as hard as I was expecting. Don't know if this is a final version (but I doubt it).

Filed cryptically as "Capitol Wreckage/05-Present EMI" no idea what that means. Suggests that it's probably not on the album, though.

Reminds me, though, that Skye is probably the best teenpop vocalist going not in the Kelly C. chops style. It's like she sings with a pink scalpel (as opposed to an opulent battering ram).

Meanwhile it seems that Paris' image is in popular demand, with Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee telling TV Guide magazine that he is planning to turn her into a cartoon superhero.

Paris is reportedly working with him on a new cartoon series for MTV.

Does the Skye/Armstrong single remind anyone else of Elvis Costello?

A couple million teens have probably bought this album by now, I'm sure, so I'm reposting this from the metal thread:

And yeah, I mentioned Nickelback. Somehow a copy of All The Right Reasons mysteriously fell into my lap this week -- an album which I believe has sold something like 5.9 million copies so far and is at something like #12 on Billboard's album chart after something like 93 weeks, and which an Internet search suggests has spawned something like seven hit singles (or "airplay tracks", or whatever -- "Photograph," "Animal," "Far Away," "Savin' Me," "If Everyone Cared," "Rockstar," "Side Of a Bullet" -- only a couple if which I remotely recognized, but then again I almost never listen to the radio these days, and even if I did I seriously doubt I'd ever brave putting on a commercial "active rock" station.) Anyway, out of curiosity and/or professional responsibilty, I decided to play the darn thing, having never consciously listened to Nickelback before in my life. And my verdict is: I don't totally hate it. Just most of it. Favorite cut is undoubtedly "Photograph," the power ballad, which is no Def Leppard but which is still about yearning for the small town arcade and high school the singer (whose old self would hate him now) says he never graduated from and wonders if they'd let him back in; really, a country-rock guy like Jack Ingram (who redid Hinder's "Lips Of An Angel" and made me like it) should cover this in a less plodding way, and it might sound really good. I also don't hate "Animals," which is probably the least plodding song on the album (actually kind of speedy), and also turns out to be about, uh, getting a blowjob while driving a car fast ("Got your head between your knees/Got both hands on the wheel," jeesh). And "Next Contestant," which I'm kind of surprised isn't a "hit" since it's pretty catchy in a Stabbing Westward bubblegum-Nine Inch Nails way, has the singer daring guys to hit on his girlfriend again so he can beat them up, what an asshole. "Rockstar," a very vaguely Southern rock midetempo, actually tries to have a sense of humor about wanting to be a rock star (with, you know, drug dealers on speed dail, getting washed up singers to write all the songs, staying skinny because you never eat) but of course Chad Kroeger moans it with no sense of humor at all -- maybe I'd like it okay if Joe Walsh sang it. (He could even get the Shop Boys to back him up, maybe). And "Someone That You're With" is clearly about being jealous of the guy she's with, duh. Honestly, in total, the topics of the songs are pretty easy to figure out most of the time, which does count for something. But most of the rest is the expected constipated bleh -- "loud mush," as Chris Cook once called Pearl Jam, but in a fifth or sixth generation version. (I was surprised to note on AMG that Nickelback have a bunch of albums, too -- Shows how much I've paid attention to them over the years; for all I knew, this could've been their debut record. As is, though, it almost counts as a Greatest Hits.)

Oh yeah, also listened to the album by the trio of 12-year-olds (and Rock Camp for Girls graduates, I believe) Care Bears On Fire. A couple songs ("Five Minute Boyfriend," "Met You On Myspace" -- he called himself unicorn and his head has a horn!) seemed kinda cute, and the singer gives energy to post-punk indie's trusty old little girl voice which she justifies by actually being a little girl, and the guitar buzz is okay, but I couldn't handle the rhythm section long, so I didn't get through the thing:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=107710852

Found that one on the free table at work; picked up a copy of the Jump In! soundtrack, too, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Also, the second Girl Authority album (which at 19 songs looks way too intimidating) has been sitting waiting patiently on my shelf to be listened to for four or five months now; hopefully some day, I'll try it.

xp Actually, her head is between Chad's knees, not her own.

Godawful HSM2 single jumps up to #6 in its first week. Aly and AJ crack the top 20, Plain White T's will not go away.

The Giggle Club??? I mean, are they even TRYING? (Also, parents need to start having talks with their children about the subtle differences between pop star names and porn names.)

Mandy Rain = PRNSTR name

Mandy Raynes = possible pop star name (someone should do a PSA about this)

Noticed "Bet On It" by Troy Bolton in the RD top 30 this week, apparently a new HSM2 single. Anybody heard it?

Marion Raven's giving away a free MP3 once every week for eight weeks as some sorta promotional thang for ArtistDirect, you can get 'em here, first track is "Here I Am."

(For those who have the album, this is a live version.)

Being the last person in the universe to listen to Lil' Wayne, I had no idea what was an official mixtape, what was an unofficial mixtape, what was a semi-official mixtape, what was a studio release (uh, none of them as far as I can tell so far). My favorite out of my thirteen choices for 2007 releases has definitely been the tracks from what I thought was an officially unofficial version of the album (official mixtape) for The Carter III (which, unofficially, is the official leak).

So I was confused and went to Wikipedia, which gave me some startling unofficial information about the official leak of the unofficial demo of "I'm Raw," which is officially one of my favorite tracks, even though there are glitches in my MP3 copy (making it the unofficial version of the official leak of the unofficial single).

Wikipedia told me this SHOCKING NEWS:

"I'm Raw" (featuring Ashlee Simpson) (Produced by The Neptunes)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also: Celebrity informants report that twenty-two year old singer Ashlee Simpson and her twenty-eight year old boyfriend, Fall Out Boy rocker Pete Wentz got engaged just before the band at last Saturday’s New York’s Live Earth concert and are currently expecting a baby!

With some dubious evidence: “Ashlee may have helped start the rumours herself.” “She was at a family wedding and was wandering around rubbing her belly. And she refused to drink anything.”

The Ashlee collab is obviously a buncha crap...for now. In fact, the leak that was subsequently dubbed "The Leak" does not have "I'm Raw" on it, but the leak of the Carter 3 that is called "Carter 3 Mixtape Bootleg" does have this track. Not to be confused with "The Carter Three Leak" (versions one and three only), or "The Carter Three Leak" (version two).

And none of these should be confused with "The Pre-Leak," which is completely different.

The Keren Ann album is really pretty. Like falling asleep on a slowly rocking boat. Less teenpop than Israeli chanteuse, but very pretty.

Also - just listened to Iceberg Slim's "Loney (Da Break Up Song)." This is the guy who wrote all those books about pimping, right? Off-the-wall. Also, Frank, this strikes me as the kind of thing you might dig.

Oh, apparently this is Iceberg Slimm - with two "m's." And he's a U.K. hip-hop artist apparently. Still.

Interesting variation on Kogan's Third Law of Aly and AJ (after "you do not stop talking about Aly and AJ" and "YOU DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT ALY AND AJ") from PopJustice:

“It’s tiresome to go out to parties, fake your way through them and pretend you’re having a good time,” Aly says. She sees Sidekick pagers as the ultimate signifier of that lifestyle: “To me, getting a Sidekick would be like trying drugs. Don’t do Sidekicks!”"

Here's a picture of Aly & AJ.

http://www.popjustice.com/images/stories/a/alyandajsidekick.jpg

Phil from the Future ftw.

Kelly Clarkson Gets the Message, Returns to Pop

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291060,00.html

her new manager is Narvel Blackstock. NARVEL BLACKSTOCK.

My friend ran into Aly at the airport. She said she seemed really nice.

Y'know, considering Fox News effectively launched the War on Lindsay, you'd think they wouldn't be so happy about this, since it means Kelly's gonna be doing Lindsay retreads by the end of the year! (It's even the same writer!) Besides which "Hole," "Judas," "Never Again," and "Maybe" >>>> "Black Hole," which isn't bad itself.

A&A fans suggest as much, though aren't that nice themselves occasionally:

honestly you're pathetic & a worm. fucking bloggers, just like perez hilton. you probably look up to bastards like him when aly & aj are actually respectable role models for young people. look at other stars their age & the destructive lifestyles they have.

so go ahead & rip apart every last thing that they do.i'd like to see the influence you had on anyone at their age.

New Tegan and Sara album is pretty good! Like a cross between Paramore (in shemo sentiment) and nu-Lillix (in, um, keyboards). Hardly a song over three minutes, neither, and not a bad one in the bunch that I can tell. Might write more about it when I've listened more.

Paramore caught my attention but turned me off by asking, "Why can't you be a man about it?/Fight with your bare hands about it!" Um...sorry, guess I'm a coward, but that question makes me uncomfortable. Please don't ask that in my presence again unless some radioactive accident grants me superpowers.

Hm...Anyway, they come on too strong and too humorless for my tastes, despite some great hooks and a great singer...much prefer Flyleaf. Both are oppressive and they don't seem know how to lighten up -- Flyleaf, as far as I can remember, don't even attempt to lighten up, but Paramore have this tendency to sort of toy with lightening up without actually doing it, which is a little irritating. (I like the refusal to lighten up on the new Kelly -- until she tries anyway and it goes off-balance for the second half.) Meg and DIa found a better balance with this stuff last year, but they also had a much lighter touch. Can't remember more than two songs from M&D's album at this point, anyway.

While the Jonas Bros. guest-DJ'ed on Radio Disney this week, the station got 1.4 million call-ins. In one day. In other news, I think I'm missing their free concert at Penn's Landing right now.

Finally heard Aly & A.J.'s "Blush," which was on the promo for Insomniatic but wasn't on the version streamed at MTV.com, so people have been assuming it was deleted from the official release, though there are versions floating around with it, so I can't say for sure. I already knew what the song was about from what Dave and Xhuxk were saying upthread, and the lyrics right off lay out all the issues, almost tortuous in their explanations ("Even though I like your honesty/It won't lead me to your bed/So go ahead and say it/Even though you know it makes me uncomfortable/Go ahead and say it/If you must make me blush"; "it" clearly being that he wants to have sex with her), yet when she gets to the last line of the song - an obvious one, summing up what she was getting at in the entire song, all she does is insert one extra word, but I won't tell you it because... well, poignancy, it whomped me, all of a sudden tears are in my eyes, I'm up on my feet in the other room and pacing back and forth. An explosion of feeling from I'm not sure where or why, and I won't give it away, on the off chance it'll whomp you too. What got me is that up 'til then the song is all explanatory: she's explaining that she finds his straightforward desire appealing, she's explaining that she wants to be the recipient, within boundaries, and she's explaining and reexplaining, setting rules - asserting control, I'd say, all this word work as opposed the rest of the album's wordplay - and then and only then, within the framework she's laboriously set, can she...

My thoughts on Insomniatic

Comment here or there, as you wish.

(Includes discussion of "Blush", written before I saw Frank's comments above. The song is on my 100% official CD copy. I believe it's only the online editions that omit the song.)

Lindsay Lohan, unknown orig. source: "I start recording one in August. My last albums were amazing but this time I am going to really promote it and tour". She also added "I want to do a Madonna-style show. I very much want it to be a dance record".

Also, great essay, Jeff. I think you found exactly what I did in "Careful with Words" -- I have to consider the album with all released tracks on it in order not to go crazy. (Also liked your defense of a song I'm not totally sold on, the title track. Been listening to this a lot lately, though.)

"Beautiful Girls Reply" by Jojo: Man what a brilliant idea! It softens up the Kingston song around the edges but retains most of the elements. Jojo's voice remains appealingly blank. Mostly I just really love the idea of it. Anybody have any thoughts?