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

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i.e. they weren't googlers - they started as googlers but by the time we moved off Greenspun (which killed the threads) there was a community: leaders, followers, regulars knowing one anothers names and foibles, etc. I suppose the DMB thread could have done that too, I stopped reading after a bit.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:03 (sixteen years ago) link

Make an Aly and AJ thread googlable enough and see what happens! (Teenpop is kind of impenetrable to googlers, I imagine.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link

*teenpop THREAD I mean

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link

yeah it was definitely impressive how much it took on a life of its own and kept going and going, i'll give you that. i was never clear on whether any of those guys knew each other from some other board that the ILM thread was linked to on, or if they did become a community on that thread. (xpost)

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link

"aly and aj" is in itself kind of googleproof anyway

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:05 (sixteen years ago) link

Some good stuff in the last 18 hours.

1. I also find Tim F's posts about gay critical approaches to be interesting. I'd be curious to know why other posters think that teenpop appeals to them personally.

2. With respect to Frank's teenage MySpace friends, I appreciate the kind of anthropology that Frank sometimes does, since music criticism is often filled with half-baked assumptions about target audiences and subcultures, but I almost always find it lacking in rigor or comprehensiveness. In Real Punks, for example, he leans so hard on the letter from the girls in the Australian Smash Hits: it crops up in several different reviews or essays, all proving some point about the relationship between fans and the bands they follow. This sort of examination is great, but it's one of the only examples he uses, and I find myself wishing that he'd undertaken a larger survey. (I'm hoping that Michaelangelo Matos eventually puts up the paper he gave at the EMP Conference on college students who own Bob Marley posters.)

3. I share some of acrobat's jealousy about the teenpop thread. I do think it's one of the only places on ILM where intelligent conversation is happening in 2007, I just wish that conversation was about music I was familiar with and felt passionate about. (One solution would be to delve into teenpop more to see if I do like more than the few token songs that have captured my interest so far.)

― jaymc, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:41 (sixteen years ago) link

Yeah some of my discontent is admittedly some form of jealousy; I wish the rolling R&B thread was as consistently active as the teenpop thread!

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:51 (sixteen years ago) link

or rolling snap 2007, which hasnt even been mentioned here

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:51 (sixteen years ago) link

it's been mentioned.

― da croupier, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:53 (sixteen years ago) link

well, i don't really feel like complaining about the relative dearth of rap threads activity, since i feel like that's a direct product of guys like us becoming bored and malevolent about discussing rap in earnest on ILM or going off and focusing on blogs.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:55 (sixteen years ago) link

i'm kind of disillusioned with the vast majority of rap discussion anyway. reading xxl comments will do that to you

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:58 (sixteen years ago) link

rap discussion on the internets, i mean

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:58 (sixteen years ago) link

xpost Ha, Matos said in his paper that he couldn't actually get too many people to respond, so his sample size wasn't really sufficient. I do hope he posts it though, it was great.

I like teenpop in large part because of the reasons people were bashing it for upthread--because it's insistently mainstream, because it has a specific target demographic, because it's primarily commercial. It eliminates a lot of the bullshit you have to deal with when you talk about music, and I think that surrounding context makes the music itself much richer and more interesting. I also like that it's working the kind of pop-rock sound I love, which doesn't really seem to exist much anymore outside of teenpop and (increasingly, weirdly) emo.

I also think it's not accidental that the subject provokes such good discussions. It's the music itself, not just something about the people involved or the format or anything. I think it's genuinely one of the richest, most meaningful kinds of music being made right now. Not necessarily the best, but certainly one of the most unpackable. Ditto hip-hop and R&B, fwiw.

I have no idea how this relates to my background, but there you go.

― Eppy, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:58 (sixteen years ago) link

who in 2007 is neglecting rap discussion on ilm to focus on blogs?

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:59 (sixteen years ago) link

(One solution would be to delve into teenpop more to see if I do like more than the few token songs that have captured my interest so far.)

you know you want to

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:00 (sixteen years ago) link

Start with Aly and AJ's new one, "Potential Break Up Song." It's fun!

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:01 (sixteen years ago) link

yeah abby commanded me to check that one out (i have never heard aly & aj ever!)

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:03 (sixteen years ago) link

OK I realize this means admitting that i look at the 'eye candy' section of xxl but this comment both epitomizes my apprehension about the majority of internet rap discussion + was amusing:

#
G'dep Says:

February 26th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

girl has beauty brains and a good taste in music stillmatic! , my kind of girl coz after some wild sex we can talk about rewind. nah mean

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:03 (sixteen years ago) link

who in 2007 is neglecting rap discussion on ilm to focus on blogs?

-- and what, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:59 AM

I meant more the current state of rap discussion on ILM is kind of a result of that 04-05 period when dudes like you and me and deej and dk started blogs and kinda stopped starting threads or writing at length on ILM, which kinda continued even after some of us stopped blogging.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:04 (sixteen years ago) link

or actually, the straight answer to that question is that I personally write about rap way more on blogs than on ILM these days.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:05 (sixteen years ago) link

I'd be curious to know why other posters think that teenpop appeals to them personally.

During Maura Johnston's freestyle panel at EMP Matos asked me how we in South Florida regarded the genre. "It was OUR MUSIC," I said, ineptly, which is to say: I don't think in terms of genres. I like artists and songs. Regarding teenpop, I'll turn on the radio, hear Ashee Simpson or Kelly Clarkson, and say, "Hey, this sounds pretty good" and either download it or forget about it – as I'd do with any other artist.

I also told Maura and Matos that the sometimes hysterical nature of adolescent experience dovetailed with the scenarios drawn by Stevie B, Company B, and "Diamond Girl." As I age and life gets duller, the memorable experiences are actually MORE melodramatic in context, so "Girlfriend," "Wake Up," and "Since U Been Gone" really do become the soundtrack to my life. Call it hyperrealism. Jody Rosen was right when he posited in his Slate essay last week that the "defining feature of post-Lavigne teenpop is its adult pretensions," but I'd also remark that "the defining feature of adulthood is pretension." Thirtysomethings are pretty smug, generally, and so are the artists we tend to admire; thus, there's something to be said about teens striving for adulthood using the language and manners of eighteen-year-olds.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:05 (sixteen years ago) link

A reason I like teenpop - which seems to be quite opposed to the way it's discussed on the thread, and may be part of why I don't post there much - is that the manufacture of it is like high-stakes music criticism. It seems to be so much about combining and reviving elements of the past - ideas, images, whole sounds - which is pretty similar to what critics do, except the people producing teenpop have a lot of money at stake and it's fascinating to see what works and what doesn't. So Girls Aloud suddenly doing a Stray-Cat style rockabilly-skiffle track, and it becoming one of their best loved songs, is really interesting! There's a "what's next? what's the next thing to draw on?" element to it.

This way of enjoying it has next to nothing to do with real teenagers or even the performers whose name goes on the tracks - it's quite a cold approach. But my own reaction to the tracks themselves doesn't often go much beyond "Yeah! Catchy!" or "Wow, beautiful", or whatever. It is a surface pleasure for me in a way it's not for Frank or dabug or Poptext.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:06 (sixteen years ago) link

That should be "whole songs" not "whole sounds".

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:07 (sixteen years ago) link

well al maybe you should be starting threads here instead of posting 800 word comments on breihans weekly diplo interview or whatever

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:11 (sixteen years ago) link

& obviously teenpop isn't the only genre where this happens! But it's the one where I like the resulting sounds most.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:11 (sixteen years ago) link

As I age and life gets duller

It does?

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:13 (sixteen years ago) link

i tried to start a big mike thread a week or two ago and it got like three posts :-(

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:13 (sixteen years ago) link

― da croupier, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:15 (sixteen years ago) link

x-post to and what: oh great, we're going to turn this thread into another forum for your repetitive 'zings'.

to review, I said I wished the R&B thread was more active, you said "what about the rap thread", I said I'm not gonna complain about it because I'm personally guilty of not saying much of substance on that thread because I have other outlets right now, and then you tried to son me with a hollertronix reference. omg stfu etc.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:17 (sixteen years ago) link

you know you want to

-- lex pretend, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:00 AM (15 minutes ago)

You say this all coy, but I actually do want to.

Start with Aly and AJ's new one, "Potential Break Up Song." It's fun!

-- dabug, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:01 AM (14 minutes ago)

Yeah, I've been meaning to.

The real way to get me to listen to more teenpop, though, would be for Swygart to start putting it up on the Stylus Singles Jukebox more often. That's how I heard "First" and "Rush," which I've never actually encountered anywhere else (i.e., not on the radio), except I once sang the former in a karaoke bar in Minneapolis last year.

― jaymc, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:19 (sixteen years ago) link

Like Eppy, I'm into teenpop for the music. Right now it seems that the major pop songwriters are working in the genre, in fact, it seems like the only genre where you're getting a really focussed team-produced 'sound' that happens to be the one I love: the pop-rock with hooks and tight structures and cheerleader hand-claps etc. Maybe it was always that way genre-wise with songwriting squads, but I was too young to pay attention. I listen to way more material that isn't teenpop (right now I'm repeat-playing Peter Bjorn & John, the Blow, Miranda Lambert and Camera Obscura) but the teenpop stuff is where I get my concentrated pop fix and can find producers doing new and innovative stuff every cycle. Like, hearing 'potential break-up song' was interesting in a way that 'young folks' wasn't because it engaged me in a 'what are the influences/direction/consequences of this branding shift?' way as well as surface appreciation.

― Poptext, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:20 (sixteen years ago) link

I doubt the snap thread will ever be "a place where we can try out ideas (about a wide range of music) without an accusatory or arms-crossed skeptical or uncomfortable tone mucking up the flow of conversation or personally offending anyone."

Can't tell if I'm being mocked here (don't read the snap thread either). Should I assume yes? If so, why?

Anyway here's some of Frank's thougtful negative commentary on Hilary Duff's new album on the teenpop thread; this is pretty typical of his (and others') posts there (since the only thing posted from the thread itself so far has been that MySpace list):

Lex, I'd love it if you'd say more about the Hilary, since I'm just having a lot of trouble feeling it. ("Danger," my second favorite song on it, is a Paris sound-alike that isn't as good as Paris would do it, and even so it would only be the 10th best thing on the Paris album.) There's certainly stuff I'm liking, and maybe if you told me the process of how it grew on you it would grow on me two. Hilary doesn't have a high-impact voice, and John Shanks back on "Come Clean" and "Fly" knew how to use her slightness for enormous feeling (as if the feeling were in the melody and the voice just let it come through in a beautiful sketch - I still can't figure out how he made it work), while Kara DioGuardi on Dignity seems to be working a middle ground that doesn't always work. (Strangely, I prefer DioGuardi's Tisdale tune; strange, given that Tisdale's voice gives even less to a song than Duff's does.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:25 (sixteen years ago) link

(or if the joke's on the ability for anyone to have such a conversation, why? I guess I just don't get what you're getting at.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:26 (sixteen years ago) link

Can't tell if I'm being mocked here (don't read the snap thread either). Should I assume yes? If so, why?

I'm not mocking you, don't worry.

― da croupier, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:27 (sixteen years ago) link

al i wasnt tryna zing you with a hollertronix ref i just saw longer posts on toms diplo interview than youve made on a rap thread in years

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:27 (sixteen years ago) link

a zing would be to complain about your 4 paragraph reviews of dane cook cds

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:28 (sixteen years ago) link

Poptext, have you heard Lucky Soul yet? Just heard them over the weekend and I like their 60ish girl groupish pop throwbacks without it seeming too forced/fetishistic. No idea how big they are in the UK, never heard of them in the US.

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:30 (sixteen years ago) link

(Maybe I'm being paranoid, da croupier, wouldn't be the first time. Just wondering what you're getting at by quoting that bit twice.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:30 (sixteen years ago) link

he's talking about ppl who contribute to the snap thread

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:37 (sixteen years ago) link

(Oh, thanks.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:39 (sixteen years ago) link

Thanks dabug, but honestly, this whole retro girl group thing bemuses me a little. I can enjoy it, sure, but none of them seem to do for me what 'Leader of the Pack' or the original stuff ever did, and I'm trying to figure out why - is it the songwriting, the new-indieish hues or the thinner sound, etc?

Anyway, while we're tipping, The Blow esp 'Hey Boy' are rather great. I'm seeing them support Electrelane tonight in Cambridge MA (oh yeah, I'm over here for the summer).

― Poptext, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:39 (sixteen years ago) link

Correcting myself (not that anyone was replying to me): "performers whose name goes on the tracks" is a wretched phrase. What I'm meaning is that I'm not hugely bothered as to who produces or writes songs in teenpop, or even who performs them, more in each new song as a gambit in a wider conversation with the market.

(So the airplay and sales figures should be the most interesting part of Teenpop 2007 for me, I suppose)

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:42 (sixteen years ago) link

I dislike the sound a lot too (probably for similar reasons -- also because I believe there are modern girl groups, making music in similar models but with a bit more co-authorship, e.g. the Veronicas, who aren't getting their due). I was surprised to like this group. (I think I called the last thing like this I heard "fetishistic and sterile." Something for Singles Jukebox, don't remember who it was, Marit Bergman I think?)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:42 (sixteen years ago) link

Tom, one thing I like about the teenpop thread is how it explores authorship...Frank trying to figure out "who I'm falling in love with" re: Ashlee, what I just said above about the girl group thing, etc.

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:43 (sixteen years ago) link

(Haha, this is starting to sound like an infomercial.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:43 (sixteen years ago) link

yeah that Frank quote is pretty good, no Ashlee-Dylan crazy juice in that post and I give him credit for dealing with the fact that "Hilary doesn't have a high-impact voice" and that some songs use it better than others, which is the kind of fairly obvious truth that sometimes folks like The Lex seem very stubborn not to acknowledge.

ethan, referring to a 200-word comment as 800 words comment made me kind of assume that you were exaggerating things for zing effect.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:44 (sixteen years ago) link

The Blow's great, although I bailed on them last night because I was exhausted. Are you seeing them in a small place? She's a great performer.

― Eppy, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:46 (sixteen years ago) link

I think it's great that it explores authorship - just the kind of thing an evangelical teenpop thread ought to be doing, and a way into some fascinating analysis. But it doesn't interest *me* that much as something to do - fundamentally I am VERY LAZY and tend not to research authorship. And I have a bad memory for names.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:48 (sixteen years ago) link

Paradise in Boston? Not been to that venue yet, only got into town a couple fo weeks ago.

― Poptext, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:49 (sixteen years ago) link

so basically youre saying the rap threads arent good anymore because you dont post as much

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:55 (sixteen years ago) link

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