no adele thread yet?

to split the difference a little, it is a known (i won't say 'accepted') archetype for a singer tho, kind of an eternal return kind of a thing.

Well yes, but it's not an archetype that usually rushes up the pop charts unless it's as an anonymous singer in the background while a skinnier, prettier woman lip-syncs in the video.

speaking of album covers, i'm glad she remembers herself cuz i didn't even know she had a new album out:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/IRememberMe.jpg

J Hud's been all over the media the last few months (more for touting her weight loss on talk shows and Weight Watchers ads than for her album having any big hits)

i was just trying to think of non-skinny american pop people and i didn't even know about the new diet thing!

An unhealthy lifestyle cast as a virtue (also, note the cigarette)

Lex, that is one of the most bizarre criticisms of a pop star I have ever read.

lex is just being ornery/contrary

again

its not always about rockism, sometimes ppl just get tired of fun vacuity

Love how that implies Adele is like Tolstoy or something.

love how you inferred that

shit getting real in the adele thread.

Love how shit's getting real in the adele thread

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/adele.jpg

she looks like she's got a touch of the downs

looks like a gormless mike leigh character there

"I think it's shameful when you sell out," she told the magazine. "It depends what kind of artist you wanna be but I don't want my name anywhere near another brand. I don't wanna be tainted or haunted."

Perhaps only haunting is the ethereal, touching quality of her music; Adele recently sat down for a sessions performance with AOL Music, absolutely blowing away the room.

Pedantic

anyway i see nothing wrong with someone pointing out some of the crappier/most superficial/vacuous things dominating pop music in 2011. what lex likes and backs at all costs is ruling the roost, so adele IS something of an anomaly in mainstream pop terms and someone offering opposition to that is never a bad thing. obv she cant claim underdog status selling as much as she does, but she isnt not your typical pop star - and obv aware of it, perhaps too much, but hey, nothing wrong with some opposition in music, even if her stance is going to have a few holes in it, hello pedants, these are pop stars were talking about - which im cool with. be nice if the music was a bit less MOR tho.

Anyway, I really have to hand it to Adele. I can't think of many other artists who seem equally beloved by teenage pop fans and older AAA listeners. Early prediction: "Rolling in the Deep" will be #1 on Pazz and Jop's 2011 singles.

anyway i see nothing wrong with someone pointing out some of the crappier/most superficial/vacuous things dominating pop music in 2011. what lex likes and backs at all costs is ruling the roost, so adele IS something of an anomaly in mainstream pop terms and someone offering opposition to that is never a bad thing.

Except you're not really doing anything except saying "mainstream pop is vacuous" without actually offering any examples, which is basically what people have been doing for as long as I can remember. I don't think you really understand what the Lex is saying given that, by and large, he wouldn't describe much of the music he likes as vacuous (afaik his favourite record this year is Let England Shake, so he certainly not backing "vacuous pop" against everything else).

In any case I'm not really sure there's much point further dissecting something Lex has already admitted was an off-the-cuff response to a JPG that was doing the rounds.

Early prediction: "Rolling in the Deep" will be #1 on Pazz and Jop's 2011 singles.

― jaymc, Thursday, May 26, 2011 9:03 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

i have a vague gut feeling that it won't be, but only in the sense that there's 7 months ahead for something else to give it competition, it's definitely a lock for top 3

Yeah number 3 feels right.

yeah, she was talking about chart pop, not a new argument for sure, but one thats not un valid right now, even if adele isnt being specific

i mean, popstars are often not that articulate in this sort of thing, even rappers ('rockist' on all sorts of levels, without wanting 'real instruments' or anything like that) arent always pinpoint specific when they criticise other artists, doesnt mean theres no truth to what theyre saying

ive not read lexs full post, just saying that great, he likes pj harvey, but the stuff i often see him defending to the death is not like let england shake, but i dont want to make this all about lex, so yeah, lets not go down that route

i'm glad she remembers herself cuz i didn't even know she had a new album out

lol

Oh BTW...

@maura
maura johnston
facepalm. MT @ToureX: Gaga & Adele are a very interesting pop culture dichotomy. A full on character vs authenticity.

Wouldn't argue about the artifice of Gaga, surely that's the point. It's the authenticity of Adele that gets the eyeroll.

Makes me think - is the idea of authenticity now so degraded that applying it to anyone would get the eyeroll? I think it's always been problematic and it's got to the point where I never ever want to see it used without scare quotes. I think Adele's appeal could fairly be described as "authenticity" rather than authenticity.

Why "authenticity", though? Why not "simplicity", since the essence of her performance ethos is "girl with big voice sings at u"?

Are you asking me or Toure? I used "authenticity" because however unreal and misleading that concept is in mainstream pop, Adele is clearly satisfying a craving for the "genuine", "unadorned", "real", "organic", etc. I think a lot of that genuinely comes from her personality and music taste but there's an element of calculation in the presentation - the black-and-white sleeve, the choice of which influences to foreground. For example, she's a massive Mary J Blige and Lauryn Hill fan but you can't hear any hip hop in 21. Not that it's as shamelessly "authentic" as the first Joss Stone album.

you can hear R&B in there, its obv from her singing style, its just contained in more of a capital fm listenership-pleasing aesthetic. shes a much more... AUTHENTIC singer than joss stone in any case. much more natural/unoforced. even though i think shes still figuring out how to best control/use her voice.

her general pose re: authenticity/being ordinary etc tbh reminds me of plan b more than anyone else

lot of similarities

Really? Plan B plays on artifice - the whole Strickland Banks persona, the shifting genres. All they have in common is that they're white working-class Londoners - and both funny and candid - so maybe their personalities signify "authenticity".

yeah, the whole 'no bullshit, i tell it like it is, i dont care about sugarcoating my opinion' thing is def a big common thing. and the whole MOR sound in spite of that 'tude is also something they share. there were some other things too but my minds preoccupied.

Am I the only one who liked the first album better? At least judging from the songs that I've heard from the new one, they seem kind of over-arranged to me. I liked the more spare arrangements on _19_. Also "Chasing Pavements" > "Rolling in the Deep".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/29/adele-change-women-music-business

"XL's Richard Russell blames 'boring, crass and unoriginal' music on industry's over-sexualisation of female artists"

good thing we discussed all of this in advance of anyone saying it.

'A success, in pop, is never just a success – it's always ready to be spun into a triumph for some wider force.'
says Tom Ewing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/jun/02/tom-ewing-adele-success?CMP=twt_gu

i miss when novelty hits were novel

damn "Someone Like You" is depressing as shit.. I think I like this.

it has a new video.. this was my first time hearing this song

great cover of rolling: http://soundcloud.com/work-drugs/rolling-in-the-deep-adele

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/arts/music/paul-epworth-on-producing-adele.html?ref=arts

Tell us a little about how “Rolling in the Deep” came about.

A. I had all these chords I thought would be perfect for her. You know, little musical riffs or themes. I tried all these out on her for about two hours. She literally sat there with a pen in her hand staring blankly, and she just went, “I’m not feeling anything.” And then she went, “I’ve got this riff, this idea, that’s going round and round my head,” and I went, “Go on then, what is it?” And she went, [sings] “There’s a fire.”

I said wow, and I just grabbed a guitar and quickly tried to figure out what the key was. She had all the verses, that thematic melody that she uses all through the song. I put all the verses down as one long recording, and then we put spaces in the track to start work on a prechorus and a chorus. We wrote the core of the song — her verses and the chords — in under 15 minutes. And the rest of it was structured over two hours.

Q. Her vocal track that you recorded that day for a demo ended up on the album. Why didn’t you redo it?

A. Adele was going through something. She had had her heart broken, and she was in pieces, and you can really hear that, her anger and her sadness. Sometimes I just don’t think you can recreate that or fake it. My hunch is that we captured something in her vocal performance that was going to be very hard to recreate

The science of "Someone Like You":

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AF961A_ADELE_G_20120210234610.jpg

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213010291701378.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

spare us a tenner til Monday?

http://www.nme.com/news/adele/62071

the headline "Adele shows off her new £7 million, 10-bedroom mansion in new video" makes it sound like the Hype Williams-directed clip for the Swizz Beatz remix of her new single takes place in her mansion

ha

French paper publishing Adele sextape tomorrow. Skeezy.
http://www.jeanmarcmorandini.com/article-263995-une-sextape-de-la-chanteuse-adele-diffusee-sur-le-net-et-dans-le-magazine-public.html

does anyone really wanna see that lol

yes. yes i do.