Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

A favorite moment on the Fefe alb from "Get You Off": "I've been living lately like I'm dying all the time / might do something crazy like jumping off the Hollywood sign / 'cause boy you make me feel like I can fly."

C'mon, dabug. Give the interpretation for why division COULD have meaning as a sum, despite the mathematical jargon. :)

"Blush" wasn't available on the iTunes version or Insomniatic, though was on at least some of the store versions.

I reviewed it for the Las Vegas Weekly.

Frank, your analysis of Blush is amazing. I got chills reading it. And you're totally right about the 'please.' There's a conversation waiting to happen about the use of 'pleases' in Aly + AJ, and how that relates to their begging of the listener. The album isn't just the best album of the year, it's also the most inviting. Rihanna is fun, but held at a distance. Britney is edgy, but also singing from somewhere else. Taylor and Jordan are playing soft vulnerability. But Aly + AJ are vulnerable despite being bombastic and fun and full of life and even edgy in places. And part of why the album works is because they are inviting; they say please (not in the polite way, but in the desperate way and the sexual way and the needy way). It's an album that drags you in, you get invited by the fun sounds and the witty lyrics, but you stay for the heart break that is always simmering below the surface. You are there for the 'please.'

There's a conversation waiting to happen

Or... already started. :-P

"Blush" wasn't available on the iTunes version or Insomniatic

"Blush" wasn't available on the iTunes version OF Insomniatic, that is.

brak55 responds:

Tampon music (Martina's term) is basically Lilith Fair music (Jewel, Indigo Girls, etc.).

and

Dragonette is basically a Canadian group that moved to London knowing that the type of music they play wouldn't be appreciated by a North American audience.

According to Lillix myspace they have subtracted out two of their members, adding in two male new male bandmates in their place. They will be producing new music sometime in 2008.

Interesting twist on "Not Like That" from Ashley Tisdale:

“I want my fans to know the truth. I’m not someone who is going to act like I had nothing done. I just want to be honest because my fans are everything to me.”

Ashley Tisdale - Confirms she had nose job, read more at People.com.

(Ashlee Tisdale?)

An email circulated while ILX was down got me thinking about this, but as the year is coming to an end, here's my question: Which teenpop (or straight pop) singles and albums are going to chart on mainstream lists? And a related question; How long will it take (if ever) for Teenpop to be examined with the intensity as indie music (and other PFM genres)?

Here are my guesses:
Fall Out Boy
Rihanna
Avril Lavigne
Britney Spears

Btw; Check out Amy Adams singing That's How You Know from Enchanted. I'll YSI it later today if you guys are interested.

Nevermind. You can watch it here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=xRYU4cqUAUs

:)

Off the top of my head (other than the ones you already mentioned):

Amy Winehouse
Soulja Boy Tell'em
Sean Kingston
Alicia Keys
Timbaland/Keri Hilson
Mims (possibly)
Robyn/Kleerup (possibly)

And of course Celine Dion will go Top 10 in the critics polls owing to all the excitement generated by Carl Wilson's book.

(I was assuming that by "mainstream lists" you mean "critics polls." Most of those people we mention are already on mainstream lists ('cept Robyn/Kleerup in Europe only.)

Do you think "Lipstick" has a chance of placing?

By which you mean "Lip Gloss." Yeah, I'd say a chance, though I'd guess top 60 rather than top 40. I'd say the same about "Potential Breakup Song," which got Girls Aloud/Britney size support on poptimists, but I don't see that carrying over to a lot of American critics. Aly & A.J. are getting far more attention for that than they ever got for "Rush" or "Chemicals React," so maybe I'll be presently surprised. It, like "Umbrella," is in my top 20 but not my top 10; and "Lip Gloss" is in my top 30, and "With Every Heartbeat" in my top 40; so, though I'll be rooting for those tracks, I won't actually be helping them.

Not counting the country critics poll, the only votes of mine that will do any act any good will be my votes for Britney and Miranda Lambert. I'm guessing that Kelly Clarkson will lay an egg in the polls, though I hope not; I do think "Never Again" has a chance of squeaking into the top 40, but I'd guess not. It's my top 20 and the album is in my top 10.

On the basis of what it sounds like, I'd have predicted T2's "Heartbroken" would place, but its showing on the poptimists weekly poll was so tepid that I'm guessing that if even the Brits weren't noticing it, it doesn't have a chance. It'll probably end up in my top 30 or 40.

I'll be presently surprised

Or pleasantly surprised, though most likely neither.

I'm surprised you think Britney has a better chance of landing than, say, Kelly Clarkson. Miranda I don't know about... I guess she could have picked up steam and I wouldn't have noticed (I really couldn't get into her album).

I'd actually drop Rihanna and add Potential Breakup Song (where my vote would be important), but I like Umbrella way too much, and PBS is my second to least favorite song on the album (any other would've gotten my vote). Or I'd drop Fall Out Boy, but I suspect they can use my vote (maybe a shot of breaking the top10, either them or MCR's Teenagers).

Lipgloss is huge! I hear that Avril remix all the time on the radio, too, and Lipgloss was all over it this summer. Also, all the Brooklyn girls were singing it. So maybe the critics heard it enough too. Fingers crossed!

Yeah, if "Lip Gloss" isn't in the top 20 I'll be kind of surprised, actually. I don't know if I read more than, like, one definitely positive review of "My December" (and it was Jimmy Draper's), whereas I don't know if I've read one negative review of Britney's. I imagine she'll place OK. But Miranda Lambert is probably the closest to a teenpop victory we're gonna get this year, and I think the country thread has first dibs.

Lipgloss is huge! I hear that Avril remix all the time on the radio, too, and Lipgloss was all over it this summer. Also, all the Brooklyn girls were singing it. So maybe the critics heard it enough too. Fingers crossed!

Lip Gloss' didn't do that well on the charts: 95 to 12 to 10 to 15 to 25 to 38 to out of the top 50, I think (maybe my memory is bad, though)...For such a recitable track, I find that strange...Compare it to something like Soulja Boy, which also rides a pretty minimal beat and similarly infectious hook (YOU!!! = Watcha know 'bout me? whatcha, whatcha know 'bout me? & watch me crank it, watch me (OHH!!!!) = my lip gloss is poppin, my lip gloss is, etc.)...Teenagers star in both. But "Crank Dat" stayed at number one for weeks, and it's still doing well after how many months?

Part of me blames sexism. I think there was a similar situation with J. Holiday's "Bed" and Ciara's "Promise" (though maybe the latter did well on the charts; locally, I've heard "Bed" much more often)

TS they play "bed" all the fucking time here. youtube really helped soulja boy out. a better comparison is probably why "hollaback girl" was a chart smash but not "lip gloss". to be fair there was a pretty high rate of songs that like went up in the top 10 only to plummet pretty quickly: "pop lock and drop it", "lip gloss", "rehab", "1 2 3 4" and i may be forgetting some.

"lip gloss" might have just fell through the cracks. i heard her remix of "girlfriend" on the radio way more than i did "lip gloss".

"Promise" got much more play than "Bed" here, and rightfully so.

Radio never picked up the "Girlfriend" rmx here. "Pop Lock & Drop It" felt like it was around forever, at least on the r&b station, maybe the top 40 didn't stick with it so long.

pop lock and drop it actually peaked at 6. bad example. but there seemed to be a lot of songs this year that made it to like 9/10 for a week and then dropped out. maybe it's in my head since idk where you can track a song's placement by week.

"Never Again" would be a good example.

As for past charts, go to ukmix.org and search for posts by "AutomaticBR". He posts the charts every week. Rather useful.

"Bed" was/is played constantly on Atlanta radio. My guess is that it has no chance on the year end polls.

Miranda Lambert's album was the #2 album of the year on Stylus' premature year end album poll. My guess is it polls really well on Pazz&Jop/Jackin Pop, possibly top 20.

For what it's worth, Mordy, if I had a vote in year end lists, I'd be voting "Teenagers" in top 10 singles and Fall Out Boy in top 10 albums.

I think you guys are putting a lot of stock in critics following radio trends. AFAIK, a lot of people compiling year end lists haven't been listening to a ton of radio this year. Otherwise how you do explain Okkervil River, or Radiohead, or Feist, competing for top slots? (Or last year: I don't think Return to Cooke Mountain or Newsom got a ton of spins.)

Well there's a pretty huge disparity, especially recently, between what people vote for in terms of singles and albums. Like, "Videotape" or "Arpeggi"(sic?) probably won't make the Top 50 in the bigger critics' polls (by which I guess I'm just talking about Idolator and P&J). There's occasional overlap ("1,2,3,4" should do pretty well in singles, but it was also featured in commercials and on SNL and otherwise "in the wider culture" to be noticed), but I imagine there'll be "Umbrella" and "Girlfriend" and a few other ones without much trouble in the singles section. (And I don't think Rihanna or Avril deserves a high album spot anyway -- Rihanna deserves it a lot more than Avril, anyway -- so I won't care if I don't see them there.)

I ended up voting for "Crank That" as my #10 single because my pre-New Year's resolution is to learn the Soulja Boy dance. Slow going.

I forget what people were saying last year, but I imagine you'll actually get MORE indie choices in "singles" at Idolator, because they've made it clear that you can vote for tracks, whereas P&J is still mostly considered an "official singles" type of poll, with a few exceptions (which can be one-off internet or unreleased singles, like Legendary KO or something, that are still considered as an individual song and not a piece of an album).

(that is, more indie tracks in Idolator, but not that many because it scatters the ability to form a consensus.)

nd ask yourself not what the guy who wrote those words means by them, but what you mean by them. And write that down. And if you risk those words - your words - here, you'll get a friendlier response.

First you listen to a song a dozen or so times. It's the relistening that first begins to signal to you. Maybe you aren't thinking during those first dozen or so times that you were compelled. It's only after, when your iTunes counter reads 15, or 23, or 37, that the compulsion is revealed.

It came to me after listening to Britney's 'Piece of Me' 18 times. I realized that it wasn't just the ferocious beat, the sarcastic moaning, the defiant fist pump in her voice, the sex in her vocals, that compelled me to listen to her. Or rather, it was all those things, but there was something more, too.

"You want a piece of me," is the central phrase in the song. It is Britney giving everyone a 'fuck you.' A 'piece of me' is a challenge, a lip-curled beckoning. You're going to talk trash about me? she's asking, Well come get some.

But it doesn't just mean that. It's also a declarative, an announcement. She's telling you something. She's telling you that you want a piece of her. And the two meanings are linked. You want a piece of her, and that's why you keep tearing her down, so you want a piece of me? I'll beat the shit out of you.

At first I thought this was an Eminem'esque song, where you take the ammo out of your enemies' quivers before they can shoot them. It makes beating them easier. But the truth is, her self-degredation is so much more. She's showing you that anything you can bring, she can bring harder. You've come to expect that she's the crying girl you see on television, or the bad mother, or the wife who makes dumb choices of mates. But she knows what you think, and as hard as you can hurt her, she hurts herself so much harder, and thus, she can hurt you so much more.

I tend to have a few modes when listening to female pop stars. I either love them (Rihanna, Joni Mitchell), or I want to protect them like my little sister (Aly + AJ), or they seem like this motherly figure (Carole King, Madonna). And some of that relates, I'm sure, to the Madonna-Whore Complex.

But Britney, with this song and this album, becomes so much more. This is what I think of myself as. I feel like this song. I feel like I need to put myself in people's faces. Like I need to carve out a place before anyone can carve it for me. And when people complain (I'm too loud, too outspoken, too mean, just too strange), I need to tell them "You want a piece of me?" in both ways. That they better get lost, and that they better know that they want a piece of me.

(And btw, Lex, this is exactly the kind of song I was talking about on the earlier thread: The kind of song that risks itself, and the artist risks herself, and the song risks the listener.)

Oh, also, I wanted to attribute that quote, but it was Frank talking about a kid asking about Subterranean Homesick Blues.

I never, ever listen to songs over and over on repeat, I never have and suspect I never will. In fact, I don't think I've ever listened to a song more than 2 times in succession, maybe 3.

For those of y'all with any inclination of voting some Keke Palmer onto your year-end lists, "Game Song" has a video and should probably count as a single in 2007.

Re: my earlier comments about Lip Gloss' odd lack of success...

I don't think it's fair to compare its quick drop to something like "Never Again" or "Rehab." They belong to completely different genres. Also, neither is infectious as "Lip Gloss."

If a girl released "Crank Dat," I really doubt it would take off.

Adding to "See You Again" (probably will be my #1 single of the year) discussion, it is the #1 Miley song on last.fm by a huge margin. 470 listeners, compared to 177 for the second place song ("Let's Dance"). And that with apparently no push by the record label? Pretty amazing, but this may just be a case where the best song pushes its way to the top regardless of what Diz wants to do with it.

Lip Gloss Math Notes

;_;

Greg, it wasn't that I listened to it over and over in a row. It's that in the space of a week I heard it around 18-20 times.

Which is how these things work with me... I just keep returning to them.

Just my two cents: I'd be really surprised if Mims does not place on, say, the Pazz & Jop and Idolator singles lists (Frank, do you think people already forgot about it, or something?), and not totally shocked if "Lip Gloss" (which I'm voting for -- voting for the Lil Mama "Girlfriend" remix too fwiw) does. Does anybody think Shop Boyz have a shot?

As for Robyn/Kleerup, on the basis that I have no idea what it is, and didn't even hear of it until just now (well, I guess I know who she is, I think, but not them, and not the record), I predict it will place nowhere. Except possibly in England.

Miranda Lambert (# 18 in the adult-alternative/NPR-oriented Paste magazine list, as I pointed out on the country thread last night) will do great.

I'm also surprised that the Armstrong/Skye song has fallen out of favor (Into Action).

Shop Boyz is in my personal top 10, but I doubt it will get too much traction overall. Armstrong/Skye is my 30-ish th favorite single of the year, I love it but not enough to vote for it.

I wonder if Maroon 5 or Soulja boy will generate any placements on year end lists.

"Last Christmas":

Ashley Tisdale and Taylor Swift and Whigfield and Rap Allstars f. Leroy Daniels and Cascada.

Xhuxk, I just assume that a lot of critics hate Mims. The Kleerup/Robyn single went Top 5 in Britain, which is the most attention Robyn's gotten in an English-speaking country since the '90s, so I think it will be fairly high-profile amongst U.S. critics, many of whom were seeking her out two years ago.

Hmmm. We haven't talked about the new Ashlee single here, I don't think, though we've discussed it everywhere else. "Outta My Head." Tremendously catchy, I love it, Gwennishly silly and ridiculous, would only be a nonhit because of prejudice (which is quite likely, unfortunately, since SNL/Orange Bowl still dominate the general public's idea of her), also has a theme that's dear to Ashlee's heart, someone's words and opinions invading her head and Ashlee struggling desperately to reassert her identity even within her own mind. And a great moment when she says "I'll bite your head off."

And I'm disappointed by it anyway, mainly 'cause the lyrics are lazily imprecise, and I don't see how someone who three years ago could tell a full story in one line ("I'm the one who's crawling on the ground/When you say love makes the world go 'round") can't manage much better than "I got a problem with the way that you behave" and "All your opinions, keep them to yourself." And the rap (or toast or english muffin or whatever it's called in reggae) is kinda weak.

None of which would keep it out of my top ten except that it is beaten by even better catchiness from Tisdale and Cyrus and better beauty by assorted others. Will be in my top twenty or thirty, and is far better than I'd feared from a collaboration with Timbaland, which'd seemed like a mismatch when I'd first heard about it. And I'm glad that she's managed to incorporate her personal self-struggle into dance music.

(But Aly Michalka is winning The Enmeshment In Personal Self-Struggle Award for 2007, I'd say.)

By the way, any thoughts about the 50 Cent/Justin "Ayo Technology," which is the first 50 Cent single I've loved in eons?

xpxpxp

I honestly figured critics kind of liked that Mims song! Never got the idea it was especially despised. But maybe that shows what I know. (Incidentally,the Rob Harvilla piece on it in the Voice is the funniest thing I've read by him.)

Taylor Swift does a good "Last Christmas" on her new available-only-at-Target EP, by the way.

As for Robyn, do that many U.S. critics really pay that close attention to the U.K. pop charts? Have to say I'm skeptical -- It's not like, say, Girls Aloud have ever scored in U.S. critic polls. (Though I guess...is your point that Robyn placed among U.S. critics a couple years ago? I'm totally blanking out on how well she may have done...I'm still under the impression, though, that to most U.S. critics, she's nonexistent.) (On the other hand, the Pazz & Jop and Idolator polls do contain some non-U.S. crits these days, so maybe they'll help.)