Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

"I'm Over It" by Everlife. This video is set to Hannah Montana clips oddly enough. Anyways, like I've found with most Everlife it's an OK pop song but nothing to intentionally listen to.

"Get Over It" by Avril. Though, the "I'm Over It" implication of all the previous and "Get Over It" meaning of this one are kinda opposite. Anyways, not one of the better Avril singles.

I've always liked her a lot on That's So Raven even though I hate the show.

No, I hate Zack and Cody too, though I do like Ashley Tisdale and Brenda song. I watch Hannah Montana and reruns of Phil of the Future, Lizzie McGuire, and Even Stevens.

OTM! OTM!

Does it effect the discourse here the idea that it's very likely that nobody actually making the Paris CD were thinking about anything being read into her CD and its suggested intent, what with the high liklihood that the main thing on everyone's agenda was to record a zillion takes of everything, and try to find ones usable enough to then run through ProTools and a mess of other gear so as to approxiamte a listenable vocal track (and then, to be on the safe side, multitrack that four or more times whenever possible)?

My other point with this is that this is the reason I find it 'souless'. I hear the machinery of a studio processed a weak voice. Lindsay, Avril, even Mandy Moore, the fact that they can sing isn't a rockist sort of elitism. The fact that they can, unassisted, make coherent vocal sounds makes their intention unmediated, something you can read by its own merits.

(There's a funny bit in the Bonus Materials for the Buffy musical. Joss Whedon wanted everyone to really sing. Allyson Hannigan was terrified, as she can't sing at all, and begged Whedon not to write any songs for her. We see her in the studio, she gestures at the gear, notes its ability to make a sow sound like caruso or the like, and laughs, "What was I WORRIED about??")

The singer, now quite famous, couldn't yet sing--especially in the studio.

So he in some cases the producer literally crafted a lead vocal track from 20-odd other take,, sometimes literally building the vocal word by word, and then running that through the computer for pitch correction.

The result is terrific. But really, the singer is nothing more than a tone producer--the artist, the creator of sound and intent, was the producer.

Saying this record was 'by' the singer seem like saying an Eno track is by Robert Moog. Is what I'm thinking.

If I hear a complete vocal track made up of a thousand individually recorded syllables and it moves me, why shouldn't I credit the producer of the voice, with whom I'm primarily identifying (as opposed to, say, the producer of the beat, which I might not care about nearly as much)? But then I don't hear the machinery in Paris's voice, or if I am, it's not hitting me as "machinery."

I mean, if it's assumed that we're talking about an imagined persona/product or whatever, sort of like the most visible part of a large co-production effort, then those arguments work, I guess.

I'm not being this asthetic scold--absolute artificiality is, I think, often the apogee of pop wonder, and the reason I visit this thread.

But I feel like there's all this (wonderfully crafted) discourse about 'Paris' and her manipulation of image, and ironic iconic play, and so on, while I strongly suspect there actually is no Paris there--either in intent or in actual reality (who/what created her CD).

Which doesn't meanone couldn't write reams about absence and the manufactured pop identity and the real person sandwiched between.

And, further, I can be moved by "artificiality," too -- Margaret Berger in "Robot Song" moves me as both Margaret and her robo-lover ("another time, another place, another world"....wait, isn't that Van Morrison?) and in fact I'm moved because she's playing the robot, enacting the other side of her love story. I wouldn't make that argument for Paris, but I would say that whatever vocal effects are being made through computer multi-tracking whatever are the same vocal effects that are engaging me as a listener, and it's within those effects that I do hear sadness, humor, irony, along with the words on the page. The sadness/humor/irony's in what she says and how she says it. Unless that's really Scott Storch's processed multi-tracked voice, in which case it's how he says it.

Like--you're recording line after line of takes into your hard drive. Eventually, you composite the best versions, whether word by word, or whatever. At a certain point, the vocal becomes, like, nobody's vocal, or to look at it another way, as an archetypical vocal, a finessed version of an emotion--very distanced from direct expression.

Which i guess begs the question of what 'direct' means, and why it might be better than something else. It also applies to sampling--which is, I think, the most accurate way to think of her vocals. When does a james brown sample, after being cut and effected and EQed and so on, stop being a signifier of something else--James Brown--and an integral part of a new text? It varies.

I totally agree that one can be moved by 'artificicialty'. I'm not arguing against that. I especially like it when artificiality becomes part of the text, like with The Knife or "O Superman" (obvious instances.)

But I think there's diminishing returns. Or at least, what you end up with is very, well, mediated. (This is *really* hard for me to explain.) Really, if only to be contrarian, I wanted to find the Paris CD brilliant--instead, I just sort of get the wiggins listening to it. And of course, that's just me.

But if by indirect you mean it sounds like a sample...I guess I have two arguments, one being that there are ways to create new meaning in vocal samples even when the effect seems to be "disembodying" or "objectifying" a voice, or divorcing it from signifying the original person -- like in a French house song, which, depending on the song, might turn a gorgeous vocal into wallpaper or draw attention to a very specific vocal phrase, giving it new meaning through repetition (some are ambiguous, like Hi Tack's "Say Say Say," which kind of has it both ways -- you get Michael Jackson as wallpaper). And sometimes the song is so extended that over time you have both reactions alternately. So sampling someone's voice might make his or her voice just as human, or "more human," as it was in its original context (like improving an old song and making an old performance even stronger by giving the vocals a new context, though I agree with you that this all of this varies).

The other argument specific to Paris is that I don't think that her voice comes across as a "sample," though I wouldn't necessarily disagree with this sort impression in another context -- like Iggy's vocals in "Punkrocker," where I do kind of get that feeling. Actually, Eppy makes a similar argument convincingly re: "Fighting Over Me," which I've previously described (Paris's performance) as "wallpaper." Paris also doesn't come across (to me) as "android," which is a description I might use for Hilary Duff or Cassie, and here I mean a kind of impersonal effect of a voice in the spotlight (not necessarily a mechanically processed effect), not the same as an impersonal effect of a voice denied the spotlight (Basement Jaxx does this sometimes). I actually get a very (directly) personal effect from Paris's vocals -- precisely because they're so stacked-up and meticulous. (And I'm definitely not arguing that the album is brilliant, in the American sense of the word, but that there's genuine feeling in it.)

Ian, I'm really not grasping your point. I don't think how the vocals were recorded and how many takes there were and how it was pieced together has anything to do one way or another with whether someone's being ironic. The question of how it was made and the question of whether it's ironic are completely separate. Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is one of the most wonderfully ironic characters in all of literature, and he's fictional. And Jane Austen started the book when she was twenty or twenty-one or something and and finished a draft a year later and then put it aside and came back to it, and it wasn't published until she was thirty-seven, and we have no idea how many times she reworked and reworded the scenes featuring Mr. Bennet, and nonetheless he's being ironic all through the book.

I sometimes revise my pieces several times, and editors can be involved in the process and make suggestions and provide wording, but nonetheless that doesn't have any bearing one way or another as to whether my tone is being ironic. It might have some bearing on whether we should call it "my" tone or "our" tone, but it's still the writer's tone, despite the writer being something of a collectivity; and there's no reason that the collectivity that helps create "Frank Kogan" can't be ironic, and if there's a collectivity that helps create "Paris Hilton," there's no reason that that collectivity can't be ironic and can't play with her image. For what it's worth, even when I'm writing all by my little lonesome I'm busy filching ironic devices from Chris Cook and Phil Dellio and Luc Sante. And nonetheless, when reading me, you need to be attuned to when I'm being ironic, no matter how many hands went into constructing that "I." So I'm not seeing an issue here.

But I hope that you wouldn't argue this, because all you would accomplish would be to make the word "mediated" altogether vacuous and unable to be used to distinguish anything from anything else. I mean, you could argue that all sounds are loud and all temperatures are hot, if you want to make silence and absolute zero your criteria for softness and coolness, respectively. [Don't mind me. This is just a pet peeve of mine. For "mediated" to be an issue it has to make a difference. If "recording" technology makes me better able to achieve what I want to achieve, then it's not mediating my voice, it's helping to create it. Ditto for editing. And maybe Frank Plus Editor is a better voice and better entity than Frank alone. (But I wouldn't bet on it. And Frank Plus Word Limit is rarely an improvement.)]

One thing that impresses me about the sound is that it's simultaneously a good four-on-the-floor dance stomp and a rock bawler; as the latter, it makes its rolling sea of guitars vastly more effective and voluptuously rocking than are the similar roiling guitar choruses of more officially "rock as such" songs by, for instance, Daughtry and My Chemical Romance (which aren't so bad themselves). And yet it also has the same hazy feel as the more-dance-than-hard-rock "Not Leaving Without You." So you have rock pressure and dance sway going together. (Which is good, 'cause it helps the rock stop being so damned depressed.)

I'm not being confrontational, I'm wondering how so much can be read into this--trying to import engineering cpncepts into everyday use here--how such a 'degraded signal' can be parsed for depth-y meaning. How Paris herself can import much into the finished product considering how complicating the process is.

(None of this is really about doting on the idea of authroship although, just for my own organizational purposes, it's helpful to keep trackof producers in some cases to understand, say, asthetic continuity/developement.)

I shouldn't have said "the machinery of te studio", as that's an analog usage, as is the idea of Spears' being interesting in a 'robo-chick' way. Perhaps that's what's new and for me, really unsettling about Paris' vocals--that it's a new sort of detachment, a hyper-digitalized thing.

As we talk, I'm realizing the main thing here is how her vocals really do unsettle me. The sound, the out-of-phase-y high end, the inhumanly smoothed out vocal wash backgrounds.

I was listening to a remix of Roxette's "Dangerous" and there's AMS reverb on, like, everything. But there's a very live, 'warm' studio sound effect on the vocals (which you can, of course, recreate digitally.)

Whatever--the effect is that of two very live-sounding human voices almost sparring with the digital environs. With Paris, it's like she's been consumed.

Maybe that's what wiggining me.

Questions that I just sent to Xhuxk and that I'm now sharing with the masses: (1) Is there ever going to be a Paris Hilton album? and (2) are Kara DioGuardi and Scott Storch still involved? This may surprise you, but I've been negligent on keeping track of this story.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), April 5th, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

The phrase "this may surprise you" is a direct rip from Chris Cook (about his cartoon band Yo Soy): "The drummer was Squiddo Octopie, and this may surprise you but he was an octopus." The interesting thing about my irony, which I assumed most people would get, was that on April 5th 2006 (and I'd said something very similar to Chuck a year earlier when I was first hearing about the Platinum Weird and the Hilton LPs) I was basically indifferent to there being a possible Paris Hilton album, since I didn't expect it to be all that good, though Kara's and Scott's association with it gave it the chance of having (in Simon Reynolds' words) merit. So, not only was I being ironic, but it's ironic that I'd said what I'd said and had the attitude I had.

Isn't your main point that there's a limit to how much the electronic tinkering can create something that wasn't there in the first place (in this case, a fully realized, characterful voice)? Whereas I'd say that there's no principle or limit that says that the tinkering can't create it, but also I don't know how much tinkering there really was, and anyway I do hear a fully realized characterful voice, and how they achieved it isn't a big issue.

It's more of an issue for me how Ashlee was achieved, since I need to determine whether I should fall in love with Ashlee, with Kara, or with whom? Falling in love with a multiplicity may be too confusing to me.

(I realize I'm giving John short shrift here, esp. since he's one of the most talented producers/instrumentalists/melodists of the '00s.)

But Frank is OTM about irony. In fact, Paris's irony (or lack thereof) and her coldness (or warmth) has nothing to do with her means of production. THAT SAID. Benjamin would definitely encourage a reading of aura that requires knowledge of her means of production. And I think he'd call her inauthentic because of her means of production - though I'd need to dig out my copy of Illuminations to prove that. And I'm on the road, so that isn't going to happen tonight.

Here's an interesting question: Following Paris Hilton until last year, the most important aspect of her name was Hilton. At least, that was the consensus - because she hadn't created anything that would distinguish her first name from her last (though she distinguished herself in other ways - but artistically, I don't think anyone thought about her as something other than a Hilton). But following the release of the album, with it's one word title, we now refer to her as merely Paris. Did she in fact transform in the terms of her art? If we talked about her cursing out Lohan, would we return to Hilton? Etc.

Newest single Heavy Starry Chain (there IS an apple in her hands!), harder rock + Teletubbie-lookin' baby dolls in "I'm Gonna Scream," Elfman Halloween theatrics in "Lollipop Candy Bad Girl." Good Matrix-balladish Xmas track "I Love Xmas." They remind me a little of Betty Curse.

Didn't read the piece, but Us Weekly's cover (and cover story) showed photos of various celebrities who'd recently gone through breakups and dropped a size or two in their dress sizes as a consequence and - said the subhead - were looking far sexier for it.

Disagree. We haven't gone into it deeply, but the rock star issue is where it genuinely comes up. E.g., this from Nia:

I think Paris and, to a lesser extent, Lindsay are iconic for sure--but I don't think that alone qualifies them as rock stars. The thing about rock icons, Mick Jagger or Debbie Harry or whoever, is that they either present an image of not wanting to present an image ("They're genuine!"), or if they do want to present an image, it's as negative an image as possible.

Paris and Lindsay are too apologetic. Rock stars don't play dumb and then insist they're smart, or confess to eating disorders and then take it all back. Britney comes closest to the kind of iconic, defiant rock stardom you're talking about, Dave, in that she seems to really not give a shit.

These days, to the extent that "authenticity" is an issue in popular culture and isn't just a buzz word floating in the breeze, it's about class relations and Relationship To Authority, with the premise being that Authority is irremediably illegitimate. Any other issue brought up in relation to "authenticity" is a stand-in for this one. (Not that what is meant by "Authority" and what is meant by "class relations" are at all clear. The advantage of discussing stand-in issues is that one doesn't get clear about one's actual issues.)

There is a mystery of Kara. For me to say "Oh, she wants someone else to work through" seems too... I don't know... clichéd?

Wants? Needs? Is afraid to be without? Her words: "I've loved [being in] the shadows. The shadows are great because you can hide there and do what you do, and if you're failing, no one knows." I can't tell whether she loves her place in pop ("I want to write the quintessential pop song...one of those moments in pop time that defines an era.") or loathes it ("Sometimes, when I enter a room [to write] with a girl who has had no pain, no sorrow, and no experience, I almost want to put a gun to my head."). Not that the things she says are mutually exclusive, really, but they have a way of undercutting themselves. (Now is this a discussion for this thread, or a tangent for elsewhere?)

By the way, I think she's learning how to live in the herd in "Avalanche."

Hilary Duff news, album is due in April, all songs co-written with Kara DioGuardi and dancey as previously reported.

Co-written with DioGuardi and whom else?

Looks like "Dignity," "Never Stop," and "Between You and Me" are Hilary, Kara, Richard Vission, and Chico Bennett; "Play with Fire" is Hilary, Kara, will.i.am, and James Everette Lawrence (is this Rhett Lawrence?); "Danger" is Hilary, Kara, Mateo Carmago, Julius Diaz, and Vada Nobles; and "Dreamer" is Hilary, Kara, and Frederick Nassar.