Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

Questions About 2007 Emo Songs:

1. If I hate Cute Is What We Aim For as much as I claim - why do I keep listening to "Curse of Curves"?

2. If I didn't like "Swing, Swing" the first time around, why do I like it when Boys Like Girls rewrites the lyrics and sings the song as "The Great Escape"?

3. If "Hey There, Delilah," came out 3 years ago, how come it's only become very popular this year? Can I count it on my list of favorite songs of the year?

1. Because they aimed for cuteness and got a train wreck? (Which might make it extra-irritating/interesting, because usually trainwrecks are the result of loftier aims. It'd be like watching Icarus indulge in a bunch of shitty wordplay and then just trip and drown because he sorta <i>looked</i> at the sun and couldn't see where he was going, because he's a MASSIVE UGLY TOOL...i.e. doesn't even earn its trainwreck.)

2. What, What? Who Like Who? The What What?

3. Yes.

1. Have you seen the video? It makes the song even more hatable.

2. What Dave said.

3. Yes.

If you're interested, I wrote about "Gimme More" in my column for the Las Vegas Weekly (and wrote also wrote about Britney a couple of months ago.

And I did columns about Ashlee here and here.

Tomorrow's the last installment of the Bluffer's Guide to post-2000 teenpop over at Stylus. All the mixes are up for a limited time at my blog as well if you wanted to hear some or all of the music.

Hey, I like my first Vanessa Hudgens song a little. Sort of. Maybe. I dunno. Let's Dance (not a cover).

<I>But, for the most part, teenpop only believes in the promise ring, believes in eternity, believes in heaven.</I>

I really liked that line!

"Don't Talk" is magic, Dave.

I'm eagerly watching this thread for its speculation on the Vanessa Hudgens' porn (well, naked photo) leak.

Well, now that it's been brought up, the naked photo leak is bad. Very bad. Is it "Drop her from High School Musical" bad? I dunno, 'specially since if they drop her there's a pretty good chance Zac Efron will drop out as well. And if there's no Vanessa and no Zac, that's HSM in name only. FWIW, I listened to Radio Diz for the first time in months this morning, and they played "Say OK" (which I still love).

I haven't seen the photos (photo?) and have no idea if they are real or whatnot, but apparently her reps aren't denying it.

I'm eagerly watching this thread for its speculation on the Vanessa Hudgens' porn (well, naked photo) leak.

What actually happened?

I've been waiting for the Disney stars to get sucked into the 'bloid circuit (while still popular with Disney audiences), but I wouldn't have guessed this would be the way. More likely partying/drugs on the part of some of the older stars. (I think they're all signed on for at least two more HSM's at this point, but (1) I can't imagine them getting through it without someone doing something bloidworthy and (2) I doubt HSM will still be a phenomenon by its 3rd and 4th time out, success of the sequel notwithstanding.)

Looking up "Don't Talk." Nia, for some Skye snarl, try "It Sucks" (my gf's favorite) and "Shot to Pieces." For charm try "Sharada" and maybe her "Heart of Glass" cover (or her "Wild World" cover).

(HOLY CRAP "Don't Talk" is awesome. Deserves a better singer/more distinctive personality, though. Well, I dunno. She's kind of like what a lot of people wrongly but kind of understandably claim Cassie is, which is just totally <i>nothing</i> vocally. Maybe it works for the song -- also a bonus track, I'm seeing a trend here.)

PS, I think Idolator has scooped the teenpop thread like thirty times in the last couple months. Pic is apparently real.

Yeah, rolling teenpop ain't the beacon of timeliness it once was (or beacon of much of anything else, as ilX goes from first stop to last stop to no stop on many people's Web journeys). Actually, was it ever a beacon of timeliness? Was basically me trying to catch up with 2004.

My interest is more that Idolator is skewing more teenpop than the teenpop thread these days!

And crap, I'm gonna probably buy the Baby V album for that bonus track. Or, uh, buy the bonus track. Or see if someone left it by the side of the road somewhere (ding ding ding ding).

Over the last seven days - basically its first week - Mediabase reported Britney's "Gimmme More" getting 1,575 spins on Top 40, including lots of play in major markets like New York, Dallas, and DC, putting her in 31st place; also 316 spins on rhythmic stations, massive play in Norfolk, also good results in my spiritual home of Las Vegas (I call it "spiritual" because I've never been there, except in spirit), 60th place; and 79 spins on adult contemporary, 185th place. Strong though not spectacular results; lots of play on the two satellite stations, which won't give her many listeners but will often foreshadow heavy action when the track becomes available for legal download. These numbers aren't spectacular (compare to Timbo's 15,461 in Top 40, rhythmic, and urban combined), but "Gimme More" had by far the strongest takeoff and strongest jump of the week on Top 40. We'll see if it builds.

I endorse the comments above about Vanessa Hudgens' "Don't Talk" (which has been around for a long while without my knowing about it, right?). Really fetching the way her blankly sweet voice does the melodic rise when she sings "oh boy"; the song is a nice bit of lite freestyle. I didn't think there could be lite freestyle - it being such a drenched and dramatic genre - until last year's great "About Us" from Brooke Hogan, which was Cynthia lite as opposed to "Don't Talk"'s Cover Girls lite.

Let me know when it falls off a truck.

(Oh yeah, as for her recent public exposure, I never remotely had a sense of Vanessa's personality, except that she very much doesn't want it to be Gabriella's. Waiting for her to attack an SUV with an umbrella before I start caring. But let's speculate that the photo leak is deliberate. Maybe she looked at her nonexistent crossover numbers and decided that she and Disney had no long-term future. (Not that I think she's behind the leak.))

Here's an OK YouTube stream of "Don't Talk."

Given the fact that she and her reps didn't even try to deny it, when they could have claimed it was a photoshop or whatever, I am a bit curious as to whether it was an intentional leak or not.

In the epic battle between Bruce Springsteen and Journey, Aly & AJ have chosen Journey.

What is this about?

(An interviewer asked them "Bruce Springsteen or Journey?" as a warm-up question and they both answered "Journey" without hesitation. I meant to link to the interview, wooooops.)

Bruce is to Journey as

Dylan is to... ?

Huh, apparently Emily Osment (Haley Joel's sister, Hannah's best friend in "Hannah Montana") has some sort of music video packaged with a one-off Disney movie she's doing.

OMG she's the attempted reincarnation of Leslie Carter!!! I Don't Think About It.

(Attempted. It's pretty lame.)

Bruce is to Journey as

Dylan is to... ?

Guns N' Roses, maybe.

Lifeless? (That may be understating the problem, but I've only seen this once and may not have time today to return for the discussion.)

Bruce is to Journey as

Dylan is to... ?

The Young Rascals? The Grass Roots?

Uh...Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" is now playing on Radio Disney. (Not clear whether or not it's a "Radio Disney edit"...doesn't say it is!) I can't hear it because I don't have Internet Explorer.

Had the Corbin Bleu album playing in the background while I did the dishes, and background is where it stayed, pretty much. "Push It To The Limit" is *NSync Lite and is always nice to hear when it shows up on Radio Disney. A couple other tracks seemed almost as good ("Deal With It" and "Mixed Up," the latter of which Corbin co-wrote), but most were a lot of blah. The basic style goes back to the Jackson 5 and New Edition - the vocal tradition of the black gospel and secular quartets, worked into somewhat funky settings. Can be good when the material is good, obviously, which not enough of this is. Disappointed me, even though I had fairly low expectations. "Push It To The Limit" is a Gerrard and Nevil song and is good enough that I can't totally dismiss those guys, even though I blame them more than anyone else for turning Disney pop to dullness.

I had a chance to download HSM 2 but forgot to. What am I missing?

turning Disney pop to dullness

I agree, though some of their best stuff is pretty good -- a few Hannah Montana songs and "Your New Girlfriend" by Hayden Planeteer. (I think we already had this convo, but have they written anything of any significance that wasn't for Disney?

Gerrard co-wrote JoJo's "The High Road" with the generally good J.R. Rotem; which is below average for that album, but rather good; co-wrote Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" with Avril Lavigne (again, below average for that album but good, though contains line about spreading one's wings and flying, which I usually take as an invitation to get out my skeet shooter).

Is it just me, or is J.R. Rotem the Trackmasters of the oughties?

My interview with Brie Larson is up now at Stylus.

Jessica P and the American public scooped me on Lucy Walsh, "So Uncool." Not great, but a few weird things happening in it, esp. at the end with an arbitrary spelling out of "UNCOOL" followed by "I've got him mad, mad as hell." "Always Something There to Remind Me" sample in "Crash." Huh. Meh.

Keke Palmer's new album (also So Uncool, but no title track)...actually sounds like it might be pretty good! Only heard the first track. Lite R&B unafraid of lots of music box & cheeze. Did "Keep It Workin'" end up anywhere on the charts? Because if not it's an unwisely timed summer jam.

OMG she has a song about a VIDEO GAME STEALING HER BOYFRIEND!

Chorus: "Put down that joystick / Messed around and took my boyfriend / Them games make me so sick / Because I can't compete / It's either me or that TV / That's why I...I hate Madden / that's why I...I hate Madden."

"How you gonna worry 'bout first and ten? / All I'm sayin' is you really shoulda put this 10 first" ...

Good song about growing up in the hood, Music Box, nice layered harmonies come in about halfway through.

Will probably post more about this.

"How you gonna worry 'bout first and ten? / All I'm sayin' is you really shoulda put this 10 first" ...

That's a hilarious line if I've ever seen one.

Bottoms Up pretty good, too, big blocky synths, references Kelis, Shakira, hyphy, probably a few other things I'm missing. ("Bottoms up" = literal.)

And I think that the chorus of the Lucy Walsh song above is kinda sorta modeled after "Sweet Child O' Mine." Something about it sticks out anyway.

Lucy Walsh seems to have a hard Avril glint in her voice, even though her song and look are the opposite of hard. I like the idea of a cute song about being uncute (which is what the uncoolness does to her) and the idea of sounding sweet as she describes her descent into neediness and anger, the hard glint mitigating the cuteness and the cuteness making a celebration out of her travails; except ultimately she doesn't mitigate the cuteness. The chorus is too much candy and the candy gets boring.

The '90s were something of a lost decade for me, and I had to go to Wikipedia to find the Trackmasters song list. One of 'em, "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," made my P&J, but looking at the list I'm not sure if I'm seeing a musical pattern. Or is that your point about Rotem? Versatility? Poppish r&b [or vice versa] in a number of different modes?

Aly & A.J. interview reveals that they weren't necessarily preferring Journey to Springsteen the human being (or even musician) but were preferring Journey T-shirts. Of course, superiority of T-shirt might well be a synecdoche for a general superiority, the shirt encompassing the song. Only album info other than blather ("we've been able to take risks which is really important when you're making new music cause you want to be able to reinvent a little bit without totally you know straying from your other records") was that they wrote "Potential Breakup Song" from a beat, not from a guitar or piano.

J.R. Rotem describing stars he's worked with:

Britney Spears: Amazing. She is such a veteran, and has one of the most unique personalities on the mic. Also, very humble, and open to direction.

Christina Milian: So much fun. Really goofy and funny. She is very down to earth.

Jennifer Lopez: An elegant yet real person. She is also funny, confident, and classy. A real star!

LeToya Luckett: Very soulful, real, sexy down south vibe. Great singer.

Lil Kim: One of the dopest female MCs of all time. Loved working with her.

Mya: Good musical connection together.

Rihanna: Very unique voice and style. Huge star, very cute.

(Has also worked with Lucy Walsh and Keke Palmer.)

Jennifer Lopez: An elegant yet real person.

No one's allowed to write anything about Jennifer Lopez ever again.

Lucy Walsh was Ashlee Simpson's keyboardist. I expected something different/better. Can't put my finger on what's wrong with her yet--somehow the voice and lyrics and instruments all feel like they're coming from different songs.

Keke Palmer album free streaming (not sure how long) here.

It's kind of growing on me, probably a 50-60% success ratio, but some really really interesting stuff happening in almost all of the songs. I'm interested in how Vanessa Hudgens' album works to convey a sorta middle schoolish romantic mindset that (at 20something) seems relatable but totally distant and bizarre ("you can meet me at the movies but pretend like we're not going out around my friends, OK?"), in part because it's totally sexless. A friend of mine claimed she knew tons of relationships between people in college (Vanessa's 18, old enough to be in college) who had "secret relationships," but her examples were all based on sex first, relationship later (and the relationship part usually = everyone finding out about the sex anyway). Whereas Vanessa really is talking about, like, going to a movie. I remember girls who did things like this to me in middle school. Was traumatic. Still bitter. (Still very good friends with some of them, too.)

Anyway, those kindsa moments are all over the Keke album, from novelty ("Game Song") to a dumb ballad much better than Rihanna's ultra-dumb ballad with Ne-Yo ("First Crush") to sappy social commentary that reads like it was written by a (precocious) 13-year-old (don't know if it was, haven't looked up writing credits but I'll be really surprised if she's not co-writer on many of these tracks) ("Music Box") and surprisingly not-sappy social commentary ("Hood Anthem"). And her reference points are kind of refreshingly in touch with the outside world, despite her most regular support coming from Disney (n.b. this isn't a Hollywood Recs album).

OK, Allmusic does have the writing credits (and a pretty good review of it, too)...interestingly, Palmer's credited on the exact opposite tracks I would have expected her to be credited on. Rotem's only credited (I think) on "Footwurkin'," which is just OK. (No flat-out bad tracks on the album as far as I can tell, definitely hits harder than anything in the Disney orbit except Aly & AJ this year, unless Hilary still counts, which I guess she does.)

re Rotem: Habit of building songs around big, obvious hooks from songs everyone knows.

So the Rabbi at the synagogue I went to on Yom Kippur referenced Hannah Montana's "Nobody's Perfect" (his daughter got all excited when a song came on the radio when they were driving somewhere) and then quoted the lyrics as part of his sermon. Oh how my 13-year-old son hates anything Disney though.

The Rabbi's pre-teen daughter got so excited when he he went into that spiel.

Frank Kogan must be away. He hasn't posted on this thread in awhile.