Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

On the other hand, some of you small-voice fans might like it more than I do.

Hey, "Stewy" is still gr8!

Kelly Clarkson on her new album: My cd is finished!! We’re now starting to schedule all the promo stuff and photo shoots and I’m so pumped! I can’t wait for y’all to hear the album! The album is called “My December” and a few words to describe it : intimate, raw, personal, rock (although some are very sweet and soft), and I can’t wait to perform every song on it! i really hope y’all dig it!

Radosh.net posted a video of a single by Krystal Meyers, whom he refers to as the Christian Avril Lavigne. I thought I'd heard something by her before, but I guess not...video for "Anti-Conformity" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BhAwFpNjNI

And what the heck: The Xtian Kelly Clarkson: http://youtube.com/watch?v=nh1Gh10-QjA and the Xtian Hilary Duff: http://www.myspace.com/tiffanygiardina.

I like the Krystal a lot, even if she can't get around to telling us what she's not conforming to; Jessie Daniels has the Clarkson look and the SUBG guitar but a voice that's washed-out Ashley Tisdale (which makes her pale pale pale); might be OK - if anonymous - if she had good material, which this isn't. Tiffany has promise for a little 'un (though at 13 she's a year older than when the young, alienated, outcast Taylor Swift wrote the far superior "A Place In This World"), and I'm glad she's not sounding like Jessie's little girl whine.

I was ignoring Holly and the Italians back then too, since I can't tell you what they sounded like - though I remember their being classified as "new wave." Always got them confused with Katrina and the Waves, a similar And The band.

Tanya Headon would approve of Holly Beth's record company.

Of course, "wrote 'A Place In This World'" probably means "wrote the original version before various Nashville song doctors reworked it."

Frank, you should have mixed up Holly and the Italians with Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, instead! (Katrina and the Waves were later, I think.)

Jimmy Draper on the new, reinvented (but not running for President) Hillary:

i got the 5-song sampler of duff's upcoming 'Digni ty'today. actually
just 3 new songs since i have the single, "with love" (#1 on TRL this
wk), and the genius "P:lay with Fire". this is gonna be her best CD by
FAR if the rest is Kylie-esque like this. these tracks are the new
ones, all listed as unmastered on the promo:

"stranger" is is def not the same song as the "stranger (instrumental)"
that leaked last wk. if they're the same, it went thru a major
revision. this one is very mid-eastern-tinged (in vein of mandy's "in
my pocket')and is gonna sound killer in club remixes. anyway, so now
i'm even more excited to hear what vocals she adds to the mystery
instrumental i have--it's a fab dance track.

"Danger" is kinda too '80s for my tastes, it woulda fit on the latter
1/2 of Gwen's L.A.M.B.; my least fave of the sampler(very repetitive)--
good but a tad forgettable. the chorus is "danger danger danger in your
eyes/in disguise" which is essentially the same message as :"stranger".

"burn" has a minimal beat that i could sing "My humps" over. it'sgot
the same kinda bump to it, but more '80s-y. (im prob the only one who
will ever make the connection tho..since it doesnt really SOUND like my
humps) it's a more low-key dance-pop song. again, mid-eastern kinda
vibe.

can't wait til the whole thing!

Oddly, I gave the five-song sampler a couple spins myself a couple weeks ago, and couldn't hear the Kylie connection (also made by somebody I work with), and the songs in general kinda made me shrug. Maybe I should have listened closer? Though then again, it's not like I'm a huge Kylie fan either.

You're right. I was confusing Holly and the Italians with Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, not with Katrina and the Waves - which means that yesterday I was confusing Pearl Harbor and the Explosions with Katrina and the Waves. (I also can't remember what Pearl Harbor and the Explosions sound like, 'cept once again I assume it's "new wave.")

The Hilary-Kylie connection would be to stuff like "I'm Spinnin' Around," which was Kylie's neodisco comeback record (co-written by Kara DioGuardi, though I don't think Kara had anything to do with producing it; but not only did that track revive Kylie's career, it was DioGuardi's first big hit; also co-written by Paula Abdul, originally intended for an Abdul comeback LP that never materialized), rather than to Kylie's earlier Stock-Aiken-Waterman music. Anyway, "Play With Fire" does go for both disco and Kylie-like lightness; don't know if it's a DioGuardi composition/production, though people have been saying that pretty much everything on the new Duff is. And it is (or was, if the album doesn't follow through) a different direction for Hilary, though interestingly enough Kara had a hand in Hilary's early music, most notably "Come Clean" and "Fly." But those were much more in the style that producer and co-writer John Shanks had created on Michelle Branch's "Everywhere." Also, while I like "Play With Fire," I don't love it the way I love "Come Clean" or (for that matter) Britney's "And Then We Kiss," which was her neodisco move.

Anyway, "Play With Fire" does go for both disco and Kylie-like lightness; don't know if it's a DioGuardi composition/production, though people have been saying that pretty much everything on the new Duff is.

I don't know about production, but it is a DioGuardi (co-)composition. She's credited on 9 of the album's 14 tracks so far; the final 5 haven't shown up on BMI or ASCAP yet.

Checked out [Removed Illegal Link] to see what her actual "Christian" stuff is like; sound is basically rock going from softness to loudness to quasi-Ramonesness, depending on the song, none of the three as good as "Anti-Conformity"; Krystal's not got the near-feedback that Avril can put into her voice; the lyrics to "Beauty of Grace" vague out as much as the lyrics to "Anti-Conformity" do - though if you're gonna say "The mistakes that you made: forgiven!/The memory's erased" then I guess you won't dwell too much on the mistakes; but detailing mistakes sure made Montgomery Gentry's "Some People Change" and Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel" far more touching than this song is. Choosing not to turn one's back on the past is far more interesting than undergoing a memory wipe.

"Collide" has more emotion: "Collide, crash into me/Collide, I want to be broken by you." "Bring your storm to me." The romantic sublime Christianized. But if you want divine collisions that really sound shattering, you're better off listening to Flyleaf.

(I put "Christian" in quotes not because I doubt Krystal's Christianity but because I don't like how evangelicals have tried to appropriate the term "Christian" for their sole use. Not that this is my issue.)

Oh, poo, I guess they're still not letting ilX link to MySpace. Go here for Krystal Meyers' MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/krystalmeyers.

(I wonder if the similarity between Krystal Meyers and Bristol Myers helps get Krystal name recognition.)

Experimenting with links, to see if I can get this to work:

http://www.myspace.com/krystalmeyers

http://www.myspace.com/krystalmeyers[/link]

OK, so is it that for some reason MySpace and YouTube links (unlike some others I've done) are "illegal" when you try to give them some link title other than the URL, but not when you make the URL itself the title?

Maybe some Teenpop thread-ers would like Swedish singer Maia Hirasawa. Here is the video for her new song "And I Found This Boy":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRIyb8Sqol8

(Though obviously it seems more like contemporary retro UK indie pop. Pipettes just signed to a major in U.S., by the way.)

I think there's a great audience for good indie pop with U.S. kids, but no one in radio or anywhere wants to take a chance.

Quick point about the Britney headshave and "pop." Thing is, if a high-school punk girl did a headshave, it would certainly be a meaningful act for her, and there's no way that a girl's going bald in a high school (even if she's in Berkeley or some place like that) doesn't put her at risk and doesn't make her a target. But nonetheless, its public meaning is already pretty much defined and encapsulated: "Punk Girl shaves head, punk girl acts punk, dog bites man, we know what this means." So in effect whatever might have gone into the individual act (her shaving her head) can't travel far without being "understood" hence not thought about.

Now, I'm not saying that the tabs are necessarily doing great thinking about Britney. (Frankly I've only looked at the 'bloids' covers so I don't know in detail what they're thinking.) They seem to be trying for a mental illness angle - "SNAPPED!" - and then are taking the thing to "What will happen to the children? Can Britney be a good mother?" And of course to the alcoholism and/or drug addiction. But there's some way that Britney's act is not computing, is still open to interpretation, its public meaning not finished. A friend of mine - a woman my age - says, "It's a big loud FUCK YOU" - which seems right to me, though maybe that over focuses it. According to a customer in the tattoo parlor, "She didn't want anybody to touch her. She said she was tired of people touching her and that sort of thing." A "No!," a denial, tired of being sexy. Something. The thing is, as a personal last-straw desperate act, it actually conveys whatever impulses punk girls might have had for shaving their heads in the first place. And my point then is that within punk "shave your head" is curtailed and limited as to what it can do, whereas within pop it's more potent.

This is somewhat in response to Matt A. above ("The problem is the indie people who are fans of indie music for superficial reasons, or for reasons pertaining solely to the personality traits of the performer"). My problem with indie - and this dates back to about 1980, with my first published rant on this subject being in 1985 - isn't that as individuals indie people aren't sufficiently curious and open in their listening (some are, some aren't), but that the postpunk environment that punk/postpunk/indie types like me had created has long since gotten to the point where it can shut down the effectiveness of any of the music it embraces, whether it's blues or movie soundtracks or country or anything else. I mean, shuts it down in the indie environment. Anyway, I don't want to get dogmatic about this, and maybe what I should just be saying is that the postpunk indie-alternative world has shut down the effectiveness of punk moves, whereas in pop similar moves can still have impact. (Pop may shut down moves of its own, just not the same ones, and not with indie's deadening effect on the music.)

This is also in response to Dave Bedbug's most recent blog post (March 03, 2007), my realizing I ought to write this down before Dave writes it for me.

Pop may shut down moves of its own, just not the same ones, and not with indie's deadening effect on the music.

This is so incredibly black and white. No moves that have been shut down in pop have had a deadening effect on the music? Isn't every mediocre or bad pop record actually an example of this?

I think you're right about the shutting down of the effectiveness of punk moves in the postpunk indie-alternative world, but not 100%. Some moves that might be considered "punk" in some sense have continued to be transcendent. I have no idea why you're arguing that the postpunk indie-alternative world by nature shuts down the effectiveness of other aesthetics it embraces.

Isn't every mediocre or bad pop record actually an example of this?

OK, I take that back, but surely there are examples of it and I don't really know why indie is a greater example of THE MUSIC DYING.

Well, notice I was doing the passive-aggressive maneuver of saying "shuts down every music it touches" and then half taking it back ("well, the punk music it touches").

Gotta go work on a piece now.

It seems to me that many times I have heard contemporary country, for example, and thought that the effectiveness of "country" moves in the country world have been shut down.

Given the thirty years of punk hair, I actually think that Britney Spears shaving her head seems like an act that's devoid of meaning regardless of whether it occurs in the pop context as opposed to a punk context. If there's a "fuck you" in there, maybe it is precisely in this. A sort of Self Portrait move.

The Post Show posted a music video parody about fallen teenpop stars here: http://www.superdeluxe.com/sd/contentDetail.do?id=D81F2344BF5AC7BB3007045D274B54B1E560A6E7BD8699A5

I'd say it's just a one-note joke, but the song is too good to ignore. I think it's the Dick in a Box factor - come for the mockery, stay for the catchiness?

not sure if Audio Club's 'Something Serious' really belongs on this thread but it should be a hit. similar to Kelly Clarkson's 'Walk Away' production wise but with the amusing male rapper (sounds like Petey Pablo meets Chilly Gonzales meets Borat - check the way he says "you smell nice")/female singer dynamic working very well tho it feels overtly 'retro' (late 80s, bordering on Paula Abdul/MC Skatcat at times - but not necess. a bad thing).

youtube oh so it's a few months old already of course. good fun tho, esp. love the rapper Brooks Buford.

Tim, I think there's a lot that country and postpunk have in common, and several years ago I called country "a fake moral, fake rowdy, bullshit lie." But one sharp difference is that country rarely prides itself either on its shock value or its novelty. I'd retreat somewhat from my statement about country (at least I'd change "bullshit" to "interesting"), since performers like Eric Church and Montgomery Gentry seem to gain aesthetically from their moral confusion. Country doesn't know what to make of its own rowdy impulses, doesn't know whether rowdiness and rebellion are signs of character or signs of moral weakness. So claims to rowdiness are interestingly uneasy. (Not that such tension doesn't exist in pop and metal and hip-hop and punk - the tension is one of the things that "Search and Destroy" and "Final Solution" are about, after all.)

that Audio Club song deserves to be the club banging single of the year.

Audio Club single reminds me of Los Umbrellos (Scandinavian, big barechested black guy in cowboy hat, two blonde beauties with him), though Audio Club seems to be playing it (even) more for laughs. Think the singing is fairly ordinary sub-Girls Aloud dance pop, but the rapping is fine, swift, funny.

This posting of the video has better sound, I think:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1559688692

I don't see that tension in "Search and Destroy" and "Final Solution" so much as I see burnout! Better to burn out than fade away bullshit, but at least "Final Solution" is funny (whereas "Search and Destroy" is bad Jim Morrison!).

OK, I see it in "Final Solution":

livin at night isn't helpin my complexion
The signs all say it's a social infection
A little bit of fun's never been an insurrection

Although the only thing he's admitting to there is the complexion thing. Otherwise, it could just be read as partying endorsement.

Ariana (here) calls herself a punk at heart and sounds like a very low-rent Paris Hilton. She lists the usual punk influences ("dance music, lil kim, madonna, trina, black buddafly, gwen stefani, shifty, electronica, hip hop, beyonce, pop, christina aguilera, britney spears, r&b, blues, ludacris, 50 cent, lil wayne, bubba sparxx, chris brown, sean paul..."). The songs don't really go anywhere, it's all pretty raw, haven't decided if I enjoy listening to it, but I'm curious what you guys might think.

Misspelled her name: it's Arainia.

Warning: AI content

I've been disagreeing with Simon so much this season. I think the show is fading into irrelavance for me (not overall though, ratings are actually up this year) and the reason is SONG CHOICES. It's not enough for the judges to stack the deck with four big divas (plus Jordin too if you wanna count her), now they criticize any song choice that's not a big slow power ballad. "Haley, you sang the song well, but it wasn't a power ballad and so is therefore an inferior performance." They should be encouraging people to step outside their box, not forcing them into it.

I like Haley. She just brings some kind of ridiculous, cabaret, over the top vibe that I kind of dig. I thought she's done OK all 3 weeks, but no great performances. She's going home, and it's not entirely undeserved, though I hope she stays. Gina brings the rocker chick vibe and she's just so likeable and I liked this performance a lot. Antonella was decidedly "not bad" though clearly deserves the boot.

DIVAS: Melinda is clearly the most talented but she basically has given the same performance 3 weeks in a row. Whoever said her lounge R&B act was gonna get old is OTM I think. Curious to see how she'll do in theme weeks. Stephanie is a really great performer, though her vocals aren't always up to par. LaKisha I like OK but she's been really blah for me 3 weeks in a row now. She's got power, but does she have anything else? (Actually, I thought "I Have Nothing" was her best performance yet). Sabrina is so boring and conveys no emotions with her singing. She just overpowers the melody with runs. Go home please. Jordin isn't even really a big-voiced power diva at all. I like her. But how was her performance of "Heartbreaker" NOT karaoke? A karaoke classic done in a basically karaoke style. Whatever.

Actually, I think the guys, while less talented than the girls, are more interesting than the girls, because there's way more variety in the singing styles.

("dance music, lil kim, madonna, trina, black buddafly, gwen stefani, shifty, electronica, hip hop, beyonce, pop, christina aguilera, britney spears, r&b, blues, ludacris, 50 cent, lil wayne, bubba sparxx, chris brown, sean paul...")

best list of influences ever, must check her out

"Girlfriend" by the way, debuts at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 today. It remains to be see whether it will pick up the radio airplay to sustain such a lofty position.

TashBed's latest effort is called "I Wanna Have Your Babies"(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6jDtv5O0r8) and is the first single from her upcoming album. More uptempto, dance-ish stuff along the lines of "These Words" or "If You're Gonna Jump" as opposed to her sweet sounding acoustic stuff. Haven't had a chance to listen to it much yet, will report back when I do. I like what I've heard so far and I like the video.

BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES

the woman is...i don't know. i just don't know. i can't tell whether the ways she's playing with the bridget jones archetype is clever or annoying or both.

i think i love the song though.

though it's def more of a "!!!!!!!!!!" love than a "♥ ♥ ♥" love

you know. HEARTS. however you get them to appear

Lex, please explain the difference between a "!!!!!!!!!!" love and a "♥ ♥ ♥" love. I'm genuinely curious.

!!!!!!!!!! = this is so wtf and mental that it has temporarily fused any quality control i might have - i am glad that pop stars are so mad but whether this song ends up supremely irritating me or whether i end up totally addicted to it, i cannot say

I must agree with Lex. Natasha song = !!!

She's actually singing about wanting random men's babies. It's cRAZY!

I actually can never forgive Bedingfield for a crime against music she perpetrated with a cover of "Wild Horses" and a music video featuring Reese Witherspoon getting fingered on a rolling coaster. But this song almost redeems her for me. Almost. (I'd love to hear Christopher Walkin do a commentary on this song - I don't know why, but I feel like it'd be hilarious.)

Also, are the lyrics actually saying she's as serious as gravy? Is gravy really serious?

I actually can never forgive Bedingfield for a crime against music she perpetrated with a cover of "Wild Horses" and a music video featuring Reese Witherspoon getting fingered on a rolling coaster.

Eek, don't remind me. This video nearly ruined Reese Witherspoon for me. Though I did like TashBed's Unwritten (apart from that song and a couple others) a lot. Agree with the general consensus that "I Wanna Have Your Babies" is completely mental.

Completely mental in a GOOD way. This is possibly the best 2007 single I've heard so far.

Well, I'm unconsenting to the consensus; find TashBed's vocal stylizations on "Babies" too stylized and irritating and lacking in feeling; which isn't to say I dislike the track or don't appreciate its ambition or "craziness" or whatever, though don't see what's so bonkers about jazz showoff vocals. It still ends up on the coffee table. And "Unwritten" is the Tashi song I look forward to hearing, so I guess I'm Greg in reverse.

I do like how on "Babies" the Tashic One is giving herself big bashing trashbin beats to wend her way around.

Also, if we're talking about the Tashbed, I guess we can talk about Tunstall a little (though unlike Tashacles, KT has never gotten Disney play); just discovered over on Poptimists that KT used to sing for a London Jewish gypsy klezmer band, prefer that to what she's doing now. Linked the band on rolling country, will do it here too. Recommend "Ladino Song":

http://www.myspace.com/oivavoi

oh god kt tunstall. so boring, klezmer band or no klezmer band.