Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (2325 of them)

Hilary Duff's new album is pretty great in my opinion. Lots of cool tracks, "Outside Of You" is getting thrown on repeat a lot.

― r.h., Thursday, 29 March 2007 04:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Ross falls in love with Marit Larsen

Kevin Elliott interviews her in Stylus

I think the most important thing I learned is that when you’re standing on that stage and you’re so alone and so naked, it doesn’t matter that the producer was so stubborn or the record company wanted it to be this way or that way, because all the audience sees is you. They’re going think that it’s your opinion, your choices in melodies, and if it sucks it sucks. People won’t buy it.

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 29 March 2007 05:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Not sure what to make off the Duff one's new album after first listen. It may end up being in my mind a record with a large number of great "moments within songs" (e.g. the 'Pick it up, pick it up' chant in "Dignity" and the (slightly wtf) 'Were you born in 74?' line in "Danger", the skipped beats in ... whichever song that was) but no outstanding songs as such.

― Jeff W, Thursday, 29 March 2007 13:19 (seventeen years ago) link

P!nk appears to have co-written "Outside Of You" by the way.

― Jeff W, Thursday, 29 March 2007 13:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Avril Lavigne, The Manga

― Groke, Thursday, 29 March 2007 16:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Liking H-Duff more with more listens..."Dignity" should be irking me with its message (I think) but it's a really good song and I don't care so much. And the lyrics aren't as in-yr-face as "Stupid Girls." (Hilary's kind of pissin' in the wind here, trying to position herself in opposition to Lindsay et al -- er, basically just Britney at this point, right? -- like she's got something to prove to somebody...but who's she appealing to, Disney censors? They're barely pushin' "With Love" as it is).

"Gypsy Woman" is great! Would be my favorite if I liked the song as much as the idea of the song...very WTF. Melodic turn-the-can-and-it-moos (or maybe the electronic Baby Jesus on that old SNL commercial) and some snatch of dialogue bookending it and...um, "gypsy" as dark mysterious femme fatale. In 2007. On an American teenpop album. This is like Ch!pz territory. "She can swallow knives/She can swallow lives/Golden black stare/But the night of your demise"...She's "bringing down the family name"(!)

Nice hiccuping track after that, "Never Stop," rollicking, bounds along and threatens to go over the top into a total cartoon but unfortunately doesn't. Hilary's not cool, which is one thing that makes (can make) her music so great (nerdy android trying really hard and sometimes succeeding to move you).

"Outside of You" is kind of Rachel Stevens hard strut til the chorus when it gets about as close as she comes to a confessionalish chorus, nice balance of old with new. Liking the album a lot more. "With Love" is actually kinda weak compared to a few of these. Hard to take the whole album all at once, though...which is actually kinda how I felt about Come and Get It when I first heard it, I guess. Like eating a whole cake (except this cake's not as good). Generally I wish Hilary was as goofy as some of the scenery, though, or did something interesting with surrounding goofiness, like Margaret Berger in "Robot Song."

― dabug, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:00 (seventeen years ago) link

Ok on third thought this is probably album of the year so far.

― dabug, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Most of the Tada tracks seem likable but in-one-ear-and-out-the-other

Totally disagree with this. If it counts as teen-pop (and Lily Allen and Taylor Swift don't, and/or if they count as 2006) it's my teen-pop album of the year so far*, with way more indelible and easily digestible hooks than on any Ciara or Cassie or Jojo or (closest comparison of these) Rhianna album I've heard. The lover's rock track "Footprints In the Sand" has a sweetness that I haven't heard in any r&b hit in a long time. Also really like "Who You Leanin On," "Superman," "When I Found You," and especially "Tada" and "OK."

* -- Which I guess just means I'd take it over Jordan Pruitt's CD, but whatev.

― xhuxk, Friday, 30 March 2007 00:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Ok on third thought this is probably album of the year so far.

I was hesitant to say this but man, I liked it a lot when I first heard it and I keep going back to it, so..

― r.h., Friday, 30 March 2007 01:00 (seventeen years ago) link

According to V.I.P. the next Ashley Tisdale single will be "Not Like That," which I think is her best song. (I can't vouch for V.I.P.'s knowledge; Wikipedia is reporting "Headstrong" getting chart action; different countries may get different singles.) I don't know yet what I think of Tisdale over all: she puts emotion and energy and psychology into her singing, but I'd describe her underlying vocal character as nonexistent, characterless. But if a singer records a slew of good songs, it's got to have something to do with her. She's not up to a slew yet, but her singles have been consistently good ("Kiss The Girl" my least favorite, but it's still likable).

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 31 March 2007 04:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Xhuxk, the day Tada samples Toto is the day I'll take her seriously. (That's not necessarily true. I only listened to Tada once, so I'm not dismissing her. I simply wanted to put "Tada" and "Toto" in the same sentence.)

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 31 March 2007 04:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Only have listened to the Duff once; consistently good and the two singles are definitely not the best things on it, but nothing has clicked in to totally knock me out yet. Her voice is still small but huskier than before, which I think is a good thing. She's adaptible and probably doesn't have any particular artistic vision or anything really to say (neither of which are prerequisites for great music), but she does always sound like Hilary. This as opposed to Tisdale sounding like so-what. Yet I might end up preferring my two favorite Tisdales to anything on Dignity. Too soon to tell, and three tracks on Dignity jumped out on first listen as strong contenders: "Stranger," "Danger," and "Happy," the first two of which having something of an Asian tinge, and "Happy" (despite its title and lyrics) having a mournful eeriness (which reminds me of freestyle which always seemed to have a hint of the Middle East by way of Spain, which means maybe this one too can be said to have an Asian thing going on). Hilary's singing on "Danger" is quite clearly an attempt to sound like Paris Hilton (which I mean as high praise) - strong resemblance to "Not Leaving Without You." (Both "Danger" and "Leaving" are co-written by Kara DioGuardi, as are all but two tracks on Dignity. As is Tisdale's "Be Good To Me.")

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 31 March 2007 05:22 (seventeen years ago) link

I think Tisdale's record is pretty fantastic from start to finish. I enjoy "Not Like That" as well, but it's probably only my 6th or 7th favorite song on the album.

― Matt Armstrong, Saturday, 31 March 2007 05:27 (seventeen years ago) link

P!nk appears to have co-written "Outside Of You" by the way.

According to a Hilary fan site it's credited to "A. Moore/C. Kreviazuk/R. Maida," and "Pink Inside Management" is listed in the album credits, so you're probably right (Pink's real name being Alecia Moore). Kreviazuk and Maida are the Our Lady Peace people who co-wrote some of the lesser stuff on Clarkson's Breakaway (as well as writing stuff for a bunch of other people too).

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 31 March 2007 05:32 (seventeen years ago) link

Kelefa Sanneh may be the best music critic writing regularly in the commercial press, but I think his calling Good Charlotte's "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl" a "foolhardy foray into rap" is pretty foolish itself, since Madden's vocal cadences are hard rock all the way on that song, even if he's mostly talking/snarling the words rather than singing them. Josh Bell in the Las Vegas Weekly says the song is "awkwardly rapping about bling," whereas I think Joel is very effectively bearing down on the words like a rocker. Still haven't made my way to making sense of the words, which may indeed be awkward or foolish but the vocals are fine. Not that rock cadences can't be used in hip-hop, for instance LL Cool J's "Go Cut Creator Go" and Run DMC's "Sucker MCs," good shouting over beats. But the Offspring's "Come Out And Play" seems a more accurate analog to "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl."

(To be fair to Kelefa, he was griping mainly about the words. Still, he seems to be misinterpreting what the music's doing.)

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 31 March 2007 05:59 (seventeen years ago) link

"Not Like That" also has an Asian tinge (though DioGuardi didn't help write it).

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 31 March 2007 06:10 (seventeen years ago) link

I only liked "Not Like That" OK until I understood what it was really about, or who it was about, which is basically the only Ashley Tisdale that I can identify as unique on the whole album. And it corresponds to how I imagine a Disney star might feel, generally wholesome but not THAT wholesome, making you dance because it's what she's there to do, but still having some second thoughts.

Also, I remember it having a mambo-ish feel, not an Asian feel, but I haven't heard it in a while so I could be wrong.

― dabug, Saturday, 31 March 2007 06:30 (seventeen years ago) link

I quite like "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl"! That surprises me, more due to the song than the band who I'm neutral about.

Oddly I just picked up Hillary Duff, ultra-belatedly. Much more rock than I was really expecting - "Mr James Dean" is harder than any other 2000s teenpop I've heard, perhaps. And there are times when it feels like Duff is aching to go all Mandy Moore singer-songwriterish, esp. the last two tracks. Weird combination of awful lyrics with strange moments of poetic insight. Good on the whole!

What a strange career development though: "Wake Up" and "Beat of my Heart" sound so much more juvenile than anything on that record (though I don't meant that as a criticism) and now she's going Rachel Stevens-ish? And Avril's done "Girlfriend" and Ashlee's working for The Neptunes/Timbaland... is it the end of the teenpop-as-confessional-rock era?

― Tim F, Saturday, 31 March 2007 06:58 (seventeen years ago) link

As in, i'm surprised I like "Keep Your Hands off my Girl" given the kind of song it is.

― Tim F, Saturday, 31 March 2007 06:59 (seventeen years ago) link

Aly and AJ will carry the confessional torch because I'm pretty sure they can't possibly do anything else. And by the same token, I think Ashlee will bring her confessional baggage (her personality) with her, as she did on a lot of I Am Me. Although I am worried what superstar production team means about her songwriting process (i.e. how much Kara needs to be in it for it to still be "Ashlee," but maybe Ashlee will bring Kara with her, too, even if only in spirit). And I think Kelly C. is going more rock, more emotional, not less. And if her next album is as good or as popular as Breakaway, she could help along a resurgence of rock-confessional.

Even if confessional-rock does subside even more than it has already, this is a potentially exciting period, too, because the transitional types like Hilary are bringing little glimmers of confessional to unexpected places -- the ideal being Marit Larsen, whose themes and issues etc. carried over intact from M2M but whose sound is diverse and exciting. Ditto glimpses of confessional in Paris Hilton, Taylor Swift, the Wreckers. Probably others I'm not thinking of.

― dabug, Saturday, 31 March 2007 14:57 (seventeen years ago) link

hallo. was gonna stop by here and tell you guys about falling in love with (and seeing/meeting) marit larsen at sxsw, but frank beat me to it. but i can alert you to the photos i took of her, which i just got back from my friend, and the best of which i have added to that original post on mincetapes, except for one which is in this new post. in which i also talk about marit some more, specifically regarding her album (of which i finally got a hard copy.)

not sure how much she really qualifies for this thread anymore, except for her obvious historical ties. on the other hand, there are parts on under the surface when her teenpop past comes through - i'm thinking of the exuberant speak-singing on the bridge of "don't save me" ("don't you dare! leave me here!") and the chorus of "the sinking game" ("we dive!") - which for me are some of the most beautiful moments on the record because they stand as reminders of her youthfulness on an album which could be seen as an attempt "grow up" (by going country/folk, not that it's not pop any more) and distance herself from her teenybopper m2m days. those two tunes are also some of the most confessional on the album - which is to say they seem to be most revealing of marit herself. so it's absolutely appropriately that they feel pitched somewhere between youth and adulthood. (as i mention in the blog, some of the more deliberately "mature" tunes don't come off as well.)

anyway, marit was probably as close to teen-pop as sxsw got, unless we're counting lily allen (who impressed me more with her voice in a short acoustic in-store set than she did in a full concert in philly a month back) and amy winehouse (i wouldn't, but seems to be getting discussed here...she was fine to see live but nothing amazing. except maybe her tattoos.)

listening to the h-duff now - pretty sweet.

― rossoflove, Saturday, 31 March 2007 15:09 (seventeen years ago) link

I am now listening to the retracted Fefe Dobson album Sunday Love and it is obliterating everything ever. It's so pop-metal-disco, no wonder the government wouldn't let it come out. ALBERTO GONZALES RESIGN NOW

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 1 April 2007 20:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Windows media file link for the vid to Tim Armstrong's "Into Action." (This is an experiment to see if links in ilX 2.1 will take quotation marks. If not, this ought to work: "Into Action."

If you don't have windows media player, here's the YouTube.

Sounds like a ska version of "You Can't Sit Down," catchy, reminds me that I like Rancid. I'm posting here because the vocals are shared by Tim Armstrong and Skye Sweetnam.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 1 April 2007 20:33 (seventeen years ago) link

obliterating everything ever

Yeah, the second half was pretty much unlistenable in all previous versions I'd found, but the album kicks ass throughout. In particular from second half, loving Cars synth plus metal crunch in "Initiator," Liz Phair vibes on "Yeah Yeah Yeah," and whoa-oa harmonies over rawkin chugalug on "Miss Vicious." Good non-single ballads, too.

― dabug, Sunday, 1 April 2007 20:45 (seventeen years ago) link

More doings in Canada, this from the Lillix site:

Lillix is still going.
We're in a rebuilding stage. Two members left, but we are working with new members and will announce them soon.

Much Love
Lacey & Tasha{/i}

I'd guess that a U.S. release of [i]Inside the Hollow is ever more unlikely.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 1 April 2007 21:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Oops, screwed up the italics. I'm the one who's saying that the U.S. release is ever more unlikely.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 1 April 2007 21:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Even though Dabug linked the live version in January of Fefe's "Get You Off," we managed to have loads of commentary on Avril's "hey (hey) you (you) I want to be your girlfriend" and the Stones-Ramones-Rubinoos similarities, without mentioning Fefe's "Hey (hey) you (you) get off of my back."

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 1 April 2007 22:19 (seventeen years ago) link

favorite stephanie mcintosh lyric of the moment: "you told me you loved me/i thought that meant you loved me"

from "god only knows," which, in flashes, reminds me musically of the pumpkins' "today," skye's "i don't really like you," "behind these hazel eyes" and "love me for me" (in mostly superficial ways.)

agreed, frank, that "do i say sorry first" is fantastic. (nice call on the "tales of brave ulysses" similarity.) what were her first two singles?
__

one listen through sunday love so far - add me to the choir. this seems not only great, but also eminently more marketeable than, for instance, skye (her debut anyway.) surely there's a market niche for angryish female pop(-punk)/rock (no need to qualify it as teen-) these days - particularly when it has as many 80s nods as this.

"initiator" definitely stands out, as does "man meets boy" (which is, kinda, whoa.)

― rossoflove, Sunday, 1 April 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago) link

First two Stephanie McIntosh singles were "Mistake" and "Tightrope." Don't think anything of hers has been released outside of Australia and SE Asia yet, though "Mistake" is slated for U.K. release.

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 2 April 2007 00:21 (seventeen years ago) link

was going to mention fefe's hey-hey-you-you meme as well - obviously(?) her version is hewing closest to the stones'.

― rossoflove, Monday, 2 April 2007 00:21 (seventeen years ago) link

I couldn't really take Stephanie McIntosh seriously, there's something about Australian pop or at least my relationship to it where 99% of the time it just seems so much more forced and calculated. "Mistake" is so obviously an amalgam of "Since You've Been Gone" and "Everything I'm Not", but with less power or grace than either. Although I wouldn't go so far as to say it's bad.

Certainly she was better than some of the other Aussie pop-pretenders, such as the truly excerable Kate Alexa.

― Tim F, Monday, 2 April 2007 08:10 (seventeen years ago) link

glad that everyone's enjoying the hilary album - i was actually initially disappointed that she'd abandoned that...very wide-eyed, ecstatic, on-verge-of-unknown quality which i love about 'come clean' and 'beat of my heart' (still my favourite songs by her); the knowingness of the New Dark Electronic Direction seemed at odds with that. but it's a classy effort, her most consistent album yet for whatever that's worth - just requires a bit of mental readjustment to Nu-Hilarity. love the depeche mode jack on 'dreamer' (i didn't know she actually had a stalker! the song seemed far too breezy and sympathetic to be about a real experience), 'happy' is rachel stevens plus emotion, 'never stop' completely irresistible, 'dignity' v funny and also v catchy - hilary can get away with pitching fits at hollywood shallowness in a way madonna cannot, esp as it's all about lindsay really.

i was going to do my favourite 10 singles of the year so far but could not narrow it down. so here are my 10 most played according to last.fm -

1. Natasha ft Clipse - So Sick
2. Rihanna ft Jay-Z - Umbrella
3. MIA - Bird Flu
4. Estroe - Driven
5. Ciara - Like A Boy
6. Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
7. Amerie - Take Control
8. Lloyd ft Yung Joc & Missy Elliott - Get It Shawty
9. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend
10. DJ Khaled ft Akon, TI, Rick Ross, Lil' Wayne, Fat Joe & Birdman - We Taking Over

'umbrella' already in second place despite me only hearing it for the first time on thursday! this is because i have basically played it 9484739333 times in a row since.

― lex pretend, Monday, 2 April 2007 08:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Woah, just heard "Umbrella". Awesome.

― r.h., Monday, 2 April 2007 12:00 (seventeen years ago) link

My daughter, yesterday: "OMG Dad did you hear what the title of the new Hilary Duff album is? DIGNITY! LOL!"

― Dimension 5ive, Monday, 2 April 2007 13:11 (seventeen years ago) link

What odds the follow-up will be called 'God's Favorite'?

― William Bloody Swygart, Monday, 2 April 2007 13:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Still only halfway into the Fefe and haven't yet decided if the combination of vocal agony and pretty tunery is a mismatch that works brilliantly or one that crashes badly. Damn interesting, though.

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 2 April 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm going to repeat something I said earlier, but this time in caps:

HILARY'S SINGING ON "DANGER" IS QUITE CLEARLY AN ATTEMPT TO SOUND LIKE PARIS HILTON.

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 2 April 2007 17:18 (seventeen years ago) link

man... it is really obvious, huh? Wow.

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, 2 April 2007 17:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Just posted this on the rolling country, though it belongs here just as much, since Mary's was probably the greatest voice in the history of teenpop (lead singer of the Shangri-Las):

Only've heard the MySpace tracks and 30-second clips of the rest of the Mary Weiss. Her voice has adult richness, but it also seems a lot more rigid than that of the wailing teen we formerly knew her as. Maybe this is a defensive reaction on my part when rehearing a former flame, to immediately think "Oh, it's not that good" - to get a jump on my own potential disappointment and therefore not really feel the disappointment. So I may take a while before reaching a balance in my appraisal, but I am disappointed. "Break It One More Time" does seem a strong song but weighed down by the singing.

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 2 April 2007 19:35 (seventeen years ago) link

Idolator, Pitchfork, NME, EW, etc. get the "scoop" on Ashlee possibly working with Robert Smith (which we've been talking about since January 21st), proceed to say idiotic things.

Pfork: "But Ashlee Simpson-- more talented than she's often portrayed for sure, but still the co-author of "you make me wanna la-la"-- pairing with scene hero Robert Smith is perplexing at best, disheartening at worst. What results from the link-up remains to be seen, but something tells us we're still better off placing our wagers on Mike Watt and Kelly Clarkson."

Y'know, I don't want to badmouth people by name or anything, but I get the sense that some of these writers are reading this thread or at least the writing of people who contribute here and then using it to insult those same people (and the artists we talk about)...this is about ten times worse than your standard "Ashlee sucks" line. Like, what kind of a person would qualify a swipe of "La La" with the opinion that Ashlee's misunderstood? What songs are they talking about that display more of Ashlee's "talent" than "La La"? It just seems like those are incompatible positions. (This isn't the first time this has happened either...I was targeted specifically in their review of Meg & Dia's album -- funny that the guy also called Skye Sweetnam by her first name alone, like so many people outside of this thread and her message board are on a first-name basis with her! His phrase was "I've begun to envy the 16-year-olds who get to live with and cry on the shoulders of Ashlee or Skye and not feel the least bit sleazy or bad about it," which also suggests he's never actually listened to either of them.)

Just venting.

― dabug, Monday, 2 April 2007 23:17 (seventeen years ago) link

hay guyz i was wonderin what u all thought of falloutboy, esp their new (newish i guess) single, the arms race one. i couldnt find a thread so this seems like the best place 2 talk abt it (unless there is a rolling modern rock radio thread). anyway i think it is pretty awesome, i have herd 3 falloutboy songs and they are all cool imo. the new one sounds sorta teenpop-ish and reminds me of god i dunno, n'sync or something. kanye west did a remix and it is horrible but it is also funny because he starts his verse off with the line "i dunno what the hell this song talkin about" (lmbo!), imo he should've just looped that line for the rest of the song. i think mostly what i like about them is that the singer does less of the over-annunciating nasal stuff than a lot of popular rock acts these days. at least in dis song~

here is the video which is not good imho~~~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FcBnaLjxY4

― cankles, Monday, 2 April 2007 23:54 (seventeen years ago) link

not close to being up there with Carrie covering Tiffany and sounding totally Carrie in doing so

Frank, this goes back a bit but what were you referring to with this comment?

Unrelated, "Irreplaceable" wins favorite song at the kids choice awards

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 00:17 (seventeen years ago) link

OK "Umbrella" might be my favourite song so far this year.

― r.h., Tuesday, 3 April 2007 02:11 (seventeen years ago) link

"I Who Have Nothing" is nice - not close to being up there with Carrie covering Tiffany and sounding totally Carrie in doing so; but it was a good version of the song

Greg, I meant that Jordin's "I Who Have Nothing" was a good performance of a good song but not nearly the great American Idol moment that (at least on retrospective evidence from YouTube) Carrie Underwood's cover of Tiffany's "Could've Been" was. Carrie really nailed and wailed the song and made it warm and mature without losing its spark and sounded herself even while venturing off her usual country terrain. I've now listened to a whole hunk of Carrie's idol performances, and "Could've Been" and "Sin Wagon" are my two favorites; I like "Alone" too, which you linked above; she did a reasonable job on "Independence Day" but didn't deliver either the terror or self-righteousness; hard to run up against Martina McBride at her absolute best.

(Also, her song choice wasn't so docile. "Sin Wagon" was one that the Dixies hadn't dared release as a single; and I don't think that in early '05 it was clear that singing the Dixies wouldn't have potentially alienated people in Carrie's future fan base. I wonder if this was on her mind at all, and what the fact that she likes songs like "Sin Wagon" and "Independence Day" says about her, whether there's any kind of statement there. She sang "Goodbye Earl" on pre-Idol demos.)

Speaking of which, last week Melinda Doolittle did smart singing of Donna Summer's "Heaven Knows" but totally failed to dominate in the chorus, which you just have to do to deliver the song. Amid everyone else's gushing Simon said it wasn't one of her best, and he was right. I guess Melinda deserves to win, since she does a good job of anything she tries and can wend her way through difficult passages without strain, but I'd be surprised if I ever gave a damn about a record she made. The two kids with emotional inspiration (Jordin and Gina) don't have anything like her chops or savvy, and if they were genuine originals this wouldn't matter, but so far they're just young singers who sing like they mean it. They do have potential. Thought "Paint It Black" was godawful, but I liked what Gina did last week, though I don't remember what it was. (I'm by no means hearing all the performances; just checking out what people on this thread and the ILE AI thread seem to like.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, I'm wrong, the Dixies' "Sin Wagon" was a single, but it flopped, stalled at 52 on the country charts, I'd guess because of radio station squeamishness.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Frank, you seem to be indicating that you are underwhelmed by the Idol talent. I've been watching Idol regularly since season 3 (so this is my 4th) and I watched parts of seasons 1 and 2 here and there (I have since seen all of Kelly Clarkson's performances). But I agree with you Frank. As TV entertainment, I find it great, but as far as musical talent goes there isn't much there. This season has probably been even weaker than most.

Carrie Underwood combined chops with emotion. She is probably the best contestant there's been in my time watching. Most people on the internet hated her, saying she lacked emotion in her singing. I think they just didn't like country music. [and "Independence Day" is one of the best vocal performances in country history. No fair comparing her there. Of course that means that cover versions like those on Idol are superfluous.] Other than her, there hasn't been any great talent since I've been watching. JPL was extremely entertaining and a very gifted karaoke interpreter, but nothing special. Melinda is talented but boring boring boring. Metal Mike liked Kellie Pickler (season 5's country singer) even more than Carrie Underwood, and she was even more hated on the internet. Her "Bohemian Rhapsody" was good. Metal Mike liked her "Unchained Melody" but I thought it was bad.

The one contestant who IS trying to make songs his own is Blake Lewis. When the theme doesn't allow him to do a song in his style, he's "reinterpreted" previous songs to fit it. (See "You Keep Me Hanging On" and "Time of the Season"). Problem is that he's not that talented, and the style he's going for is boring to me, but at least he's trying. Chris Sligh did a really awful re-arrangement of "Endless Love".

But to try to give consistently interesting performances of cover songs, with one week to prepare, every week for, what 15 straight weeks is a near impossible task. Kelly C and Carrie could handle it and they've had the success to back it up. I highly doubt anybody else from seasons 3 through 6 will ever make any music I care about.

Gina did "I'll Stand By You" last week.

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Heh, "on the internet" is unnecessarily combative and vague, but I just mean that was my general impression from message boards, blog posts, etc.

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:50 (seventeen years ago) link

And of course, making music I care about is highly dependent on songwriters, etc. I sure care about Katharine McPhee's "Over It" and a couple of her other songs, and maybe some others will get a great pop song in there like that. But it's not her vocal performance that makes me like the song, and that's the general point I was trying to make.

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:54 (seventeen years ago) link

And this will be my last consecutive American Idol post, but I just wanted to say that I love Jordin Sparks but it has as much to do with her personality as her singing. I agree with Frank that Jordan's emotional resonance outpaces her raw ability.

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 16:55 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost

Dave, was the Meg & Dia reviewer the one who tried to imply that you were a perv for posting questions for Brie Larson - at Brie's invitation - on her MySpace? That guy was really foul, wasn't he? I wouldn't necessarily assume that the person doing the Ashlee-Smith news item reads us. He does have his head up his butt (or is it a she, in which case it's her butt that her head is up), not just 'cause he has an opinion I disagree with but because of the fake breezy know-it-all tone he adopts while having zilch in the way of worthwhile knowledge or insight. But I don't take it personally, though if he is reading this thread it's disheartening that one can do so and remain so thoughtless.

Anyway, there's lots of insecurity out there: don't know what it's all about, but I assume there's (1) the fear of not being hip (hence the breezy know-it-all tone); (2) the fear that one's hard-won critical stance in young adulthood is bollocks ('cause here are these teenpoppers making smarter music, or so some people seem to think); (3) fear of teengirl* sexuality; (4) fear of mainstream girls who are flaunting their sexuality while being insufficiently butch; (5) fear of the teen audience; (6) fear of the mainstream audience; (7) fear of being boring (hence the hardy-har smirking adolescent tone of some of these people, e.g. the ones who try to troll this thread).</paperback psychologizing>

*Interesting that it does seem to be all around teen girls. I never noticed anyone suggesting I was a perv for liking the teen Arctic Monkey guys who did "I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor" or for that matter back in the day liking the teen Spoonie Gee who recorded "Spoonin' Rap" or the teen Cure guy who recorded "Killing An Arab." (But I don't remember people giving me shit for liking Poly Styrene or Roxanne Shanté either, so maybe it's not that much a gender thing or a sex thing. The sexual insecurity is a cover for class insecurity, and the real issue is that Ashlee et al. belong to the wrong class, whereas Robert, Poly, Roxanne et al. don't. And Ashlee's violation is to cross that class barrier, as is ours. I'm just guessing; it's not as if the people who write these sneering tidbits include much in the way of psychosocial self-analysis.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 2225 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.