Hilary Duff: Joy for pre-teens, not just Humbert Humbert

No way, you should listen to her performance on "I Live for the Day," which is pretty much hands-down her best song. I can imagine Kara singing that song and sounding...uh, "sharp," but not getting that sort of desperate (desperite) tone that Lindsay gets. (And Lindsay's more playful on her first album than Kara usually is, too, but I still wouldn't use the word sharp.)

Also, Kelly Clarkson and Pink are both more "skilled" than Ashlee if you mean divas/powerhouse voice, but the powerhouse failed Pink with, e.g., Dr. Luke where Paris (whose voice is the antithesis of powerhouse) succeeded, and Kelly and Ashlee are about on the same level of emotional resonance (not hyperbole/baiting-talk) but I prefer Ashlee, partly because she doesn't have a diva voice to fall back on. Although I do think that a lot of critics greatly underestimate how good her voice is because of the various fiascos and the underlying assumption that she was autotuned (or something), which isn't really a problem with Kelly.

(I was drinking deep from the well of teenpop Kool-Aid before it came to ILM. But that's interesting...is there a perception that "ILM teenpop" is a pass-the-Kool-Aid deal? I always assumed it was generally seen as Frank Kogan's blog + spillover genre thread shenanigans + lone loonies chiming in about the Radio Disney playlist + a million "cryptic" tangents about Issues in Pop)

I will say this, Lohan's phrasing is sharper when she's singing than when she's reading dialogue, but that's faint praise. I haven't heard any deep cuts, though, so I'll reserve judgement on all her music and the song you singled out. As I said before, "it's not like I expect every pop singer to be a powerhouse vocalist," and I love a lot of music by people who are not great singers in the traditional sense, some of it even vocal-centered pop. But this almost strikes me as a matter of how able (or willing) someone is to like a song without feeling the need to love or defend every single thing about it. I can love a song unreservedly while still acknowledging that it's mainly the bassline or the bridge or a vocal tic that does it for me, whereas I don't see someone like The Lex as capable of anything in between despising a song or loving it to bits and praising every little part of it as genius. "Nothing In This World" is a fine song, and Paris's vocal suits it well, any vocal limitations she has don't hinder it and she does exactly what the song needs, no more, no less. But I can say that without deciding she's absolutely brilliant, or giving all the credit to the songwriter/producer to cop out on liking a Paris Hilton song.

And again, it's all relative, but I wouldn't call "U + Ur Hand" a failure at all, even aside from its current chart triumph.

Also, you or Kogan or whoever may be a leader rather than a follower in the whole overanalyzing-teenpop-craze, or you might be lone iconoclasts who just happen to be writing/posting in the same places as likeminded individuals, but from the perspective of a fairly sympathetic outsider (despite my name, I am not going to go all Alex in NYC and denounce all of it as flaming pablum), yeah, it does look like a bunch of Kool-Aid drinking to me, a possibly worthwhile school of thought taken to completely hysterical extremes.

how able (or willing) someone is to like a song without feeling the need to love or defend every single thing about it

But a lot of these songs (and one thing that's great about them) is how you deal with warts-and-all baggage, or, maybe more importantly, start wondering why the "warts" should be warts in the first place (e.g., "copping out on liking a Paris Hilton song" -- but I won't go into that). With Lindsay, there's literal/figurative baggage in a song like "Confessions" (not one of her best songs, but not a bad song) like her tabloid history, her presumed audience, manipulative over-the-top video, etc. etc. that makes it more interesting to try to get a handle on as a whole (in terms of an instinctual like/dislike/is-it-any-good reaction) than, say, "Sweet Escape" (using a totally random example). Or compare what it means to like a Fergie song to liking a Gwen or P!nk song (both of whom Fergie out-did in her own way on her last album).

So one thing I like about the teenpop thread is that it's somewhere to go to challenge who/what's relevant/important and why -- not that there aren't biases and assumptions there, too, but that they tend to be unusual ones, and usually nothing's set in stone and could be uprooted or invalidated in the course of an argument (or not -- I still hate Avril pretty much instinctively, but I also know I'm right so that makes a difference).

Well...is this really a "craze"? You've mentioned me and Frank individually (and the Lex upthread)...but that only leaves a handful of people who even post there occasionally. A few of them are part of the poptimists community, which is probably what led them there in the first place, and most of the rest are already established posters on ILM. So who/what is hysterical, if it's not the people you've already mentioned (and if it is, how are we hysterical)? (And just to be clear, I don't mean to sound antagonistic and I'm not asking you to name names or anything, I'm just curious as to what constitutes "hysteria" or "Kool-Aid drinking.")

But a lot of these songs (and one thing that's great about them) is how you deal with warts-and-all baggage, or, maybe more importantly, start wondering why the "warts" should be warts in the first place (e.g., "copping out on liking a Paris Hilton song" -- but I won't go into that).

But see, this is where I get a condescending attitude about this stuff, not necessarily from you right here but in general -- a combination of "oh, you're just getting hung up on your superficial opinion of Paris/Lindsay/Ashlee's personal life, you're not really listening to the music," but with the added and possibly contradictory twist of "but the tabloid controversies actually add context and emotional resonance to their songs!" I get it, I do, with pop music the performer's whole life and persona are part of the package. Maybe it's just that I've never been a big fan of superstars whining about fame in song. With someone like Lohan, it's kind of worse, because she was famous well before she even released a single, so "Rumors" was the kind of whiny, self-serving meta that Britney didn't start doing until maybe her 3rd or 4th album. It's like her career started with all the self-consciousness and paranoia that Michael Jackson needed a couple decades in the spotlight to develop. It's all very interesting I guess, but I don't think it makes that kind of music inherently worthwhile.

(xpost - I think any thread that reaches posts in the quadruple digits qualifies as a craze/phenomenon, at least in ILM's little fishbowl, whether it's a thousand people posting once or five people posting 200 times)

I mean, the fact there is a "poptimists community" to speak of suggests that there is a craze, or at least a trend of some sort, going on.

The Poptimists community doesn't talk about teen pop as much Alex - I started it mostly as a way to consolidate a load of LJ talk about music into one place, and called it Poptimists so as to cross-sell the Poptimism club night.

whereas I don't see someone like The Lex as capable of anything in between despising a song or loving it to bits and praising every little part of it as genius

this kind of thing just makes me think you only read a tiny handful of the things i ever post on ilm, let alone write properly about

it does look like a bunch of Kool-Aid drinking to me, a possibly worthwhile school of thought taken to completely hysterical extremes

and this kind of thing makes me think you don't actually read the teenpop thread, where i've seen a good proportion of umm-ing, ahh-ing and flat-out dissing of various sub-par teenpop efforts (or even irrational hates like dave and avril). it doesn't seem any more hysterical than any other rolling genre thread, though obv there's a fair amount of boosterism when teenpop advocates post outside it, but for some reason it seems that more people have issues with the fact that it exists at all, in particular you.

With someone like Lohan, it's kind of worse, because she was famous well before she even released a single, so "Rumors" was the kind of whiny, self-serving meta that Britney didn't start doing until maybe her 3rd or 4th album

i love 'rumors' and yeah, maybe it is whiny, but the adjective i'd choose well before that is "immature": she doesn't sound justified, she does sound petulant, but i don't hold that against the song. liking 'rumors' doesn't mean that i think people should leave poor ickle lindsay alone - just that i think her petulance sells the song. the fact that it's more than a little tinged with paranoia is really effective (esp the lil' jon rmx!), it's like a really strung-out version of britney's 'overprotected'.

as for going overboard on paris, i think she made the second best album of last year! i think there's barely anything wrong with it, is it so hard for you to accept that i love it wholeheartedly? i mean it's what i have to accept every time i see hot chip or gnarls barkley in year-end lists, acts i like just fine but can't understand how people would love.

yeah, it's possible I'm misreading the origins or intentions of "poptimism," mainly because usually when I see that word I feel nauseous and read no further. (xpost)

It's not hard for me to accept you loving the Paris Hilton record -- I'd rather listen to it (or at least the one single I liked) than fucking Hot Chip too. I think it's harder for you to accept that I or other people can not flat-out love the Paris Hilton record for any reason other than 'rockism' or disliking her as a public figure.

when you say things like "when I see that word [poptimism] I feel nauseous and read no further" it really is quite hard for me not to assume there's a massive element of kneejerk prejudice against pop, though.

and maybe this doesn't apply to you but you can't really deny that there are loads of people who would never, ever admit to liking the paris hilton album because of who she is!

cmon the word poptimism is terrible

When I say poptimists community, I mean it literally, and I don't know if I'd draw a direct link btw Poptimists and 2007 Teenpop (there are lots of indirect links).

I understand your skepticism, but I think you're also to some extent misrepresenting what we've been saying about these artists (at least in your last post).

oh, you're just getting hung up on your superficial opinion of Paris/Lindsay/Ashlee's personal life, you're not really listening to the music

Often the opinions about the personal life etc. are superficial, but I'm not just saying that "you're not really listening to the music" (which is true sometimes). Usually the critics in question have technically listened to and then basically ignored critical judgment of the music (be it like or dislike, and with Paris it was about 50/50) in favor of arguing a larger point about the celeb -- and this is totally valid if it's what they want to argue. But they wind up arguing stupid points in a stupid way, saying things that reveal more about themselves and their social prejudices/hang-ups than they do about Paris or Ashlee or Lindsay -- as analysis of the celebs OR their music, it's completely unhelpful.

but the tabloid controversies actually add context and emotional resonance to their songs

I'm also not (necessarily) arguing this at all; sometimes tabloid context informs a song in how people hear it, but this doesn't always add emotional resonance. Ashlee's "Shadow" is more emotionally resonant when you know who she is (via tabloids) vs. who she wants to be...the line "don't feel sorry for me" is frustrating and kind of sad, because no one really does feel sorry for her, so you could say "don't worry, I won't feel sorry for you" or "what a pathetic thing to say" but probably not "wow, I guess I really shouldn't feel sorry for her, she's doing fine now." (And the rest of her songs are for the most part about how she's not fine, and sometimes I do feel sorry for her.) Here there's a real-life (as seen in tabloids) component that enriches it. But tabloid-baggage in and of itself isn't an enriching factor; "Rumors" is a good example of it essentially offering nothing (and it's a Lindsay song I don't particularly like). In Paris's "Jealousy" tabloid context is sort of moot -- knowing it's about Nicole Ritchie doesn't really add much to the song one way or another. Ditto knowing Kelly's "Never Again" is about the Evanescence guy.

Anyway, for the most part, teenpop is rarely celebrity-conscious (how could it be when so many of the artists are all but completely unknown) -- celebrity has usually been a fairly incidental aspect of the thread, actually, though it comes up occasionally. I think that celebrity-consciousness-pop was (1) never really that pervasisve, and limited to a very select handful of artists, almost all of whom are amazing btw (Britney, Ashlee, Lindsay, Paris tho rarely), (2) never itself that interesting, and always working in tandem with whatever was working within the song itself, and (3) never really that "whiny." And when it was a little whiny (like "Confessions," maybe), it was also pretty controversial and anomalous. (But anyone who thinks "Rumors" or Ashlee's "Boyfriend," for instance, took themselves that seriously is projecting something onto the songs -- they're fun!)

woops xposts

i mean, i dont really get the whole poptimist aesthetic either, and it might well be a kneejerk thing (for me), but i dont think its against pop music!

anyone who thinks "Rumors" or Ashlee's "Boyfriend," for instance, took themselves that seriously is projecting something onto the songs -- they're fun!

http://www.patheticgeekstories.com/images/beverage-Kool-Aid.jpg

i'll give you "Boyfriend," but you're reaching with "Rumors". Using the word "fun" in a lyric does not in and of itself make it a fun song.

B-b-but you're supposed to dance to it! In a club, even! Or at least in front of your mirror using a hairbrush as a microph--er, in front of your computer at work.

And if you could clarify what you mean by "Kool-Aid-drinking" before it becomes a mini-meme, that'd be good.

696 is right -- that's like calling pizza "pizzity-poo" and then saying I hate pizza when I point out that it's a stupid name.

(xpost -- just because something is categorically a "club song" doesn't make it fun. otherwise pop and rap radio in general would be great all the time, which it isn't. i was more scared off from the Paris Hilton album by the presence of Scott Storch, master of the deathly dull club song, than by Paris herself)

(and Kool-Aid was a meme well before this thread or even ILM)

Well, yeah, I meant in respect to the teenpop thread specifically. I'm just trying to get at what you mean by this, because I think it's interesting. (I'm aware of the X-Files episode this idea originated from, one of the weakest of the series.)

(oh COME ON)

(I ain't assuming a damn thing on these threads)

Yeah, it's just a euphemism for cultlike behavior (I think there are some connotations with Merry Pranksters/Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test there, too). The teenpop thing always seemed like a hivemind to me, not too different from a lot of other ILM hivemind behavior, with plenty of smart, free-thinking individuals involved but also toeing the line and promoting a certain ideology to some extent.

(</(FAILED)JOKE>, then)

Don't mean to keep prodding this along (oh wait, yes I do), but again, you've already mentioned by name about 40% of the people that even post there at all. There's no hive! If there are enough smart, free-thinking individuals to = "plenty," then it doesn't leave a lot of bees to choose from. (I don't know how the thread could even be coherent enough from day to day to even suggest an ideology, let alone actively promote one to anyone else.)

Yeah, maybe my choice of words is just poor here and I'm implying a larger number of people and smaller range of opinions than there really is on the Teenpop thread. But I'm seeing at least a couple dozen different screennames posting multiple times on there, so maybe you're only talking about the core handful of people that post every day and I'm not. But I was never making a big to-do about counting exactly how many people post there (what I said before: "I think any thread that reaches posts in the quadruple digits qualifies as a craze/phenomenon, at least in ILM's little fishbowl, whether it's a thousand people posting once or five people posting 200 times"). I'm not saying it's a calculated movement taking over the world. But I think it might represent the new school of bad pop writing, where instead of ironic "guilty pleasure" hand-wringing, I see a lot of pious, worshipful enthusiasm like, I don't know, calling Lindsay Lohan's music "amazing" like you just did.

Stuff that makes the Rolling Teenpop Thread different from other threads, aside from the music it covers (from the POV of a sympathetic non-poster):

- Focus on the nitty-gritty of sales, airplay, performance, how popular stuff is. This is a good thing, because i. the popularity of pop music is part of what makes it pop music, ii. since very few people keep teenpop acts under contract because of prestige, so the popularity materially affects whether the acts get to make more of it.

- Frank Kogan sets the stylistic tone for the thread - chatty, lots of questioning, interrogation, qualifiers. Quite a few posters follow this tone (it's not quite as simple as 'wanting to write like Frank' though).

- It's a very NICE thread: no image bombing, no snarking, not many one-liner dismissals - quite a lot of one-liner praise though. This is unusual on ILM these days. Even the complaints about unsuccessful teenpop tend not to be put-downs.

Also in common with the other Rolling threads it's positive and upbeat and doesn't waste time explaining who people are to the non-initiate.

All of this gives it the Hivemind/cultish aura to outsiders, though I agree there's nothing in it so strong as an 'ideology' (unless "thinking Teenpop is worth talking about" counts).

I mean, look at the rolling snap/rap thread - I'd say there's a pretty broad range of opinions and thought processes between me, ethan, deej, m@tt, etc., but I wouldn't be appalled if someone pointed out that there are certain pervasive biases and accepted wisdom that get reinforced there. that's how this shit works! (xpost)

But I call Lindsay Lohan's music amazing because I listen to her albums constantly and think they're amazing! (And have gone into more detail elsewhere about it, and don't feel like repeating myself every time I make a statement like "Lindsay Lohan's music is amazing," since this doesn't seem to be required for any other threads in the fishbowl.)

And I wouldn't call my calling her "amazing" "good or bad" pop writing. I think my analysis of "I Live for the Day" on the 2006 thread was good pop writing; that Platinum Weird review you cited was mediocre-not-terrible pop writing; but my good-to-mediocre ratio has improved since I started writing about Lindsay, and the music writing on the teenpop thread is better than the majority of what I read outside of the thread. And I wouldn't say that "pious" or "worshipful" enthusiasm even remotely describes the overall tone of the teenpop thread.

And I'm only appalled (not actually appalled) because I don't think you're really getting at what the biases and accepted wisdom really are. Here are a few: relatively little discussion about R&B, hip-hop, black artists in general, too much benefit of the doubt given to artists closest to the "core intended audience base" (i.e. Disneypop), not enough exploration of why Avril is so terrible and shouldn't be trusted (but that's MY personal bias). Oh, and not enough males being discussed, though the ratio has to be something like 10:1 as it is (the boys ain't bringin' it teenpopwise...Jonas Brothers get some consideration, I guess).

yeawh, sorry, i didn't mean to turn this into "you're a bad writer" stone-throwing, lord knows i'm in a glass house over here.

You can call me a bad writer all ya want (I'll give you a head start if you like), I'm more interested in where the bad pop writing from the teenpop thread is. What I'm arguing here is that the writing on the teenpop thread is BETTER than the majority of music writing I read anywhere else.

(Er, again, this is coming out very "name names"-ish, and I don't intend it to be. But the last sentence in that post^ is the important one.)

Saying that taking teenpop very seriously vs. ironic shits and giggled "might represent the new school of bad pop writing" was me worrying about a growing trend of critics adopting the authorial tone of a squealing 12-year-old girl, but that was a broader swipe; I don't blame the Teenpop thread for all Juli@nne Sh3ph3rd-type "omg omg!" raves. Besides, criticizing message board posts for being poorly written would be kind of harsh and unfair.

(I love JS's writing, turned me on to "Lip Gloss," too, so maybe we're just at odds on this point. I don't think there are enough squealing 12-year-old girls in music writing; there are too many 19 year old boys.)

(And 24 year old boys. And 32 year old boys. 18-45 M)

I see a lot of pious, worshipful enthusiasm like, I don't know, calling Lindsay Lohan's music "amazing"

Yeah, this is a really bizarre complaint -- As opposed to all the threads (rolling and otherwise) on ILM where nobody ever worships any music enthusiastically or calls it amazing? Where exactly are these threads?

I barely ever post on the rolling teenpop thread myself; as I've said there and elsewhere, I tend to lose the plot of the discussion going on there way too quickly, and there's a sense in which the discussion often strikes me as fairly insular. Though that might just mean that I don't have the energy to invest in thinking about that kind of music anymore, or even to listen to all that much of it these days. And unlike most other threads on ILM (and probably even more than the two rolling threads I do tend to post way more frequently on -- the country one and the metal one), the teen-pop thread is packed with thinking and discussion, dissecting really minute details of the music, in fact. So maybe that's what bugs people about it? That people actually stretch out and discuss the music? Maybe that's valid, maybe it isn't (personally I'd think discussion would be a good[/] thing, though yeah, maybe the teenpop balance can tip a little too heavily toward lyric interpretation for my own tastes, and I don't personally care about the personal lives of celebrities and probably never will), but as often as not complaints about the thread seem to take the form of questioning teenpop thread posters' integrity (e.g., they can't [i]really believe what they're saying about Lindsay or Paris or Ashlee or Avril, because I don't personally like that music, so they must be lying or brainwashed) or, worse, idiotic pedophilia accusations never grounded in anything anybody ever actually writes on the thread. Which is just pathetic. And somehow, ILM threads that are nowhere near as thoughtful (which is to say almost all of them) don't inspire nearly as much whining from outside. Weird.

I guess what it comes down to for me is that there seem to be some very fundamental differences between the kind of pop-happy crit-analysis that was omnipresent on ILM 5 years year ago, and the variation thereof that's taken on a life of its own in the Teenpop threads. And I have to admit I haven't tried very hard to hash out exactly what all of those differences are, other than that they leave a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, I love dissecting sales figures and hit songs in the Rolling US Charts threads, but endless Radio Disney stats? Yikes. Things weren't perfect back in ILM's early days, either, and I'm glad that there's less of a witch hunt for fun-hating rockists now, but those battles having been fought so many times seems to have crystallized people into camps like the Teenpop thread and its "lol paedophiles" detractors. It's just a weird state of affairs.

endless Radio Disney stats

I really am missing how this stuff actually connects to the teenpop thread though! This is closer to describing the sandbox parody thread (whose main premise was that the teenpop posters were at best misguided dorks and at worst pedophiles). If you're talking about teenpop, you have to talk (a lot) about Radio Disney, because Disney BOUGHT ALL THE TEENPOP. In fact, finding the stuff where it isn't Disney-branded (or at least Disney tie-in'd) is nearly impossible, and usually this music makes for the most interesting discussions on the thread. Lillix, Fefe Dobson, Hope Partlow -- people steamrolled by the conglomerate monster that is "approved teenpop for kiddie masses."

And this only describes a small part of what we're actually talking about on there. It's not just inside-baseball stat-talk -- it's about what these stats (and what this music) might mean, personally, media institutionally, anthropologically, whatever the hell else-ally.

Well ok I guess the 2006 thread was more heavy on playlist stats than the 2007 one but c'mon.

I actually preferred the 2006 thread (which was a lot easier to follow, I thought.) (It was also, as a whole, possibly the best music criticism I read anywhere last year.) Though maybe this year I am just more lazy.

i just don't like this music. the people producing this music need to stop mastering. this stuff is like a nightmare for people who care about quality sound recording

...which is why shellac = my fav teen pop lol

people steamrolled by the conglomerate monster that is "approved teenpop for kiddie masses." (<--an example of bad pop writing. Unless the conglomerate-monster is also a steamroller-monster, that's a painful mixed metaphor.)

The compression/mastering argument is hardly limited to teenpop, nor are teenpop artists even the most egregious offenders (so I've read, I can't really tell the difference myself, having basically fallen asleep to Scott Walker the two and half times I tried to listen to it). So "this music" still requires a non-audio-quality categorization in this case. I bet plenty of the MySpacers and CDBaby artists discussed on the threads don't use the same mastering techniques of the artists on majors; I also bet that there are teenpop artists on majors whose albums are better mastered than plenty of non-teenpop artists.

Unrelated, but since I don't have major issues with mastering as it relates to sound quality (I'll fall in love with a single if I hear it exclusively on YouTube all year, f'rinstance), I don't really understand what it is exactly about poorly mastered/overly compressed music that makes it so unlistenable to the audiophiles. I (think I) understand it, but I really can't hear it. But that's for a different thread, I guess.

*"it" in the last sentence being "compression," not "what makes it so unlistenable."

guitars sound distorted and compressed. it is a huge problem in lots of genres - the opening song to casino royale sounds like shit, and dr. dre's '2001' is one of the worst mastering jobs ever. But I've never heard a genre so consistently crappy-sounding. The guitars never hit like they're supposed to. i never feel it. it all feels very removed and clinical as a result.

yeah i'd say with teenpop, especially after The Matrix and Dr. Luke brought in all the jangly guitars, the extreme compression and flat dynamics are pretty much part and parcel of the whole aesthetic now. I know what you mean, but I kind of accept it as what it is. I've spent so much of my life listening to music on tape, terrestrial radio, youtube, poor quality MP3s and television that my ears just kind of adjust to the format.