Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

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Discussion over on Poptimist about whom the Kelly Clarkson single reminds people of. The day before, during the League Of Pop's playing of PJ Harvey's "Down By The Water" I said that the release of "Never Again" would make "Down By The Water" moot. Tom heard a PJ similarity too. Others mentioned were Alanis, Throwing Muses, Wedding Present, Good Charlotte, Sleater-Kinney, Fleetwood Mac, Evanescence, Lindsey Buckingham, My Vitriol. I was the one who said Evanescence, which is maybe a kinda standard comparison to make, but it's true. Don't think "Never Again" is quite up to the two Moody-Hodges-Clarkson songs - "Because Of You" and "Addicted" - on Breakaway. (Moody and Hodges had both been in Evanescence.) But it'll take a while to decide what I think of "Never Again."

― Frank Kogan, Saturday, 14 April 2007 23:39 (seventeen years ago) link

new punk-pop band on Victory called 1997 has a great record with a title from a famous haiku, plus adorable harmonies and occasional banjos

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 15 April 2007 00:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Checked the 1997 MySpace page but couldn't find a track called "Haikunym."

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 00:48 (seventeen years ago) link

not a famous haiku MAN ya silly.

actually it's kind of awesome, I had the same thing written on an index card on my wall all through high school (actual album title in italics):

sincy my house burned down
I now own a better view
of the rising moon

― Dimension 5ive, Sunday, 15 April 2007 01:00 (seventeen years ago) link

"Never Again" is about Hodges, Frank. There are apparently a lot of references that I'm not enough of a fan to understand--she burned one of his letters onstage, he said it sucks to see her face everywhere, etc.

I totally hear Lindsey Buckingham on that guitar now that someone's said something. But mostly "Never Again" reminds me of Shakira's "Don't Bother." "I would never wish bad things, but I don't wish you well" always gets "She went to private school, she speaks perfect French" stuck in my head, and it bugs me every time that they turn out to be different melodies.

― Nia, Sunday, 15 April 2007 04:14 (seventeen years ago) link

First Impression: Wow. "Never Again" is amazing. Angry Kelly Clarkson rock. Who knew?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 15 April 2007 07:06 (seventeen years ago) link

I knew.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 18:59 (seventeen years ago) link

From the rolling country thread:

A Taylor Swift outtake (or demo), "Come In With The Rain," is downloadable from this site (scroll down the page). The rip is low quality, but the singing and song are good, gentle sadness, which she does oh so well. "I leave my window open/'Cause I'm too tired tonight to call your name/Just know I'm right here hopin'/That you'll come in with the rain." (I like the phrase "in with the rain" for not quite being a metaphor, just accompanying the sorrow that's there, whether the guy shows or not.)

Here it is on YouTube.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:00 (seventeen years ago) link

I can't imagine whomever Hodges married being more of a trophy wife than Kelly would be.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:06 (seventeen years ago) link

My wife finds the Clarkson lyrics completely ridiculous. Something along the lines of: "Never again will I love you! Never!" Thou Dost Protest Too Much. But I think it adds another dimension to the song. She's really angry, but most of that anger is because she did love him and was betrayed. It's not just a kiss-off song. It's a heart-broken kiss-off song. (Comparable to "Go Your Own Way" maybe? "Loving you / Isn't the right thing to do / How can I ever change things / That I feel.")

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 15 April 2007 19:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Charlotte's right that such an intensity of anger indicates an ongoing emotional involvement; the lyrics demonstrate a complicity that they don't acknowledge, and I think they'd be smarter and more interesting if they did acknowledge the complicity. But I agree that the involvement adds dimensions not ridiculousness to the song (or the ridiculous overinvolvement adds dimensions to the song).

Of course, the phrase "Never Again" is a loaded term for people like me and you, and Kelly knows nothing about it. (Think of what the Ramones would have made out of a song by that title.)

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago) link

The loaded meaning of "Never Again" actually occurred to me before listening to the song, and the only reason I didn't bring it up was because the lyrics seemed to have nothing to do with the title. Obv. The Ramones would've taken that title and played against type (like with Blitzkrieg Bop - turn an ugly title into a bouncy song). The fact that Clarkson takes it completely seriously without acknowledging the context of the expression almost violates the original context - you can listen to the song and forget what the title means. (Obviously not forget, but in the moment it seems less significant.) But doesn't she have producers/agents/people who could tell her that calling a kiss-off song "Never Again" is probably an iffy move?

(It immediately reminded me of the Remedy song "Never Again" that he did for Wu-Tang, actually.)

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Or here's a question: "Never Again" is an expression that we identify with certain cultural/social ideas (never again will there be a holocaust, etc). The expression "Never Again" doesn't literally mean that idea, but it's come to be shorthand for it on fliers and in speeches and writing. Is Clarkson actually doing an overt injustice to those themes by reappropriating that expression to mean something far less loaded? Or does it not matter, because the theme is, ultimately, disconnected from the idea that it represents?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:14 (seventeen years ago) link

But doesn't she have producers/agents/people who could tell her that calling a kiss-off song "Never Again" is probably an iffy move?

Nope. And no one told Hilary that gypsies are people now.

― dabug, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Think the new Björk song, "Earth Intruders," is a lot more fun and less irritating than she usually is. Or it's just as irritating but "irritating ha-ha" rather than "irritating-irritating." Good rhythm, which helps get anything over. (Timbaland the producer.)

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Kelly's not doing an injustice to the themes, since she has nothing to do with them. But since I know the themes, for a couple of seconds they served to (unfairly) make Kelly seem overwrought and ridiculous in her little problems. And it's not right to use the Holocaust to make our actual none world-important problems trivial in comparison, but it's an automatic reaction I had at first. Didn't get in the way of the song for me, just caused a moment's hesitation. I didn't think the Ramones wasn't were playing against type so much as they were conflating normal human impulses (e.g. to dominate in love relationships, "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World") with murderous impulses, for comic effect but also to suggest that the difference was in degree (and the opportunity to act on the impulses) not in kind. They were finding a comic-hyperbolic-expressionist way to talk about boy-girl stuff and social maladjustment.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:39 (seventeen years ago) link

"I didn't think the Ramones wasn't were playing against type" = "I didn't think the Ramones were playing against type"

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 15 April 2007 20:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Kelly is so not a trophy wife.

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, 15 April 2007 21:30 (seventeen years ago) link

More people need to post on Rolling Emo Thread 2007, or I'm gonna have to start talking about emo music here again.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 15 April 2007 21:33 (seventeen years ago) link

Never Again is good. But it pales in comparison to the best of Breakaway. The chorus is forgettable, and the hooks mediocre.

I think I actually may learn to love the lyrics, in time.

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Matt, "pales in comparison" is a bit stronger language than I would use, but I'm starting to come around to this opinion as well. It's still a great single, and I'm still looking forward to the album as some of the other new stuff we've heard from Kelly ("Maybe", "Anymore") has been much better.

Was listening to my sister-in-law's 9 year old sister's best friend's (tongue twister alert!) iPod this weekend which contained:
1) "Fergalicious" and "Glamorous"
2) "This Is Why I'm Hot"
3) "Snap Yo Fingaz"
4) Several other current rap hits that I can't quite recall now
5) "Girlfriend"
6) The entire Carrie Underwood album.
Clean versions of all the rap hits, of course

We discussed the music for a little bit and she revealed that she only likes "Girlfriend" OK and that she doesn't even like the Carrie Underwood album. She gave me a look of profound pity when I said I liked the Carrie Underwood album, which was very unsettling.

― Greg Fanoe, Sunday, 15 April 2007 22:12 (seventeen years ago) link

Awesome interview week continues w/ Abby McDonald and Robyn. We (Robyn and I) feel the same way about Gwen!

A: One comparison to your record might be the first Gwen Stefani album, in terms of the experimental approach to pop.

R: To me, she doesn't go far enough. I like her style, and I think she's really cool and everything, but I want songs! You know, I liked the one where she's talking to her boyfriend...

A: "Cool"?

R: Right, I thought that was a good song. But I want the melodies, I want the bittersweet.

Favorite line is about Cheiron and her experience with Max Martin/Denniz Pop:

A: If anything, it seems harder because they're so precise. Writing great pop songs is one of the hardest things to do.

R: Yes! If you were to compare songwriting to science, then writing pop songs would be rocket science. Because everything has to work, and when you're up there, you don't have anything to fall back on. Everything has to be perfect. So it's been a great school. And overall, I think that Sweden has a unique way of looking at melodies.

― dabug, Monday, 16 April 2007 01:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Woops forgot the link, here's the Robyn interview.

― dabug, Monday, 16 April 2007 01:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Speaking of interviews, I don't think we've yet quoted on this thread the Blender interview with USDA (in regard to their single "White Girl," in which Christina Aguilera becomes a metaphor for coke):

Blender: You guys could've named any white girl on the single, why Christina Aguilera?

Jeezy: We're in the hood, everybody want to holler at Christina.

Blood Raw: Everybody.

Jeezy: She's fine as a motherfucker.

Blender: Why not Paris Hilton?

Jeezy: I can't fuck with Paris, she be higher than me. She do shit I don't do.

Blender: Lindsay Lohan?

Jeezy: I don't even know who the fuck that is.

Blender: You use a lot of different metaphors to describe certain things...

Jeezy: Describe what? Be clear, baby.

Blender: Basically, are you worried about running out of white things to compare drugs to?

Jeezy: No man, I don't think we'll run out of anything. You don't ever run out of being yourself. Yeah!

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 16 April 2007 02:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Daddy Yankee remix of "Impacto" f. Fergie; the basic track is solid but unremarkable reggaeton (produced by noted reggaeton mogul Scott Storch), but whenever the vocodors and synths are going - which is more than half the song - the thing is very catchy. Fergie is good for adding vocal variety, but the vocodor-synth stuff is what's pleasing about this.

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 16 April 2007 05:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Yung Berg's "Sexy Lady" isn't what we've been calling "teenpop" on this thread (though our man Yung only became a nonteen in the last year or two), but it's gorgeous in much the same way that Lloyd's "You" is, and there's no reason yung 'uns won't themselves warm to its beauty.

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 16 April 2007 06:49 (seventeen years ago) link

so can we talk about the Fergie track Glamorous here? i think its teenpop even though Fergie is probably 35 cuz teens listen to it.

I was totally wowed by this when I heard it on the radio the other night on the way to get some graham crackers and Borat. I didn't even realize it was Fergie which may have helped (i don't have cable and can only usually pull in country stations). Up until the Luda verse it sounds like it could easily be one of those great, but kinda non descript tracks that'll turn up on top 40 radio never get much play and then float away into the ether (if wil.i.am wasn't playing with Luda's voice though his cameo would have been almost completely worthless). I love turning on the radio and hearing something new with very little context to fully understand it. Its a rare thing these days what with the internet and whatnot.

here is Bill lamb's take from about.com:

Pros
* Smooth r&b style that goes down easy
* Light touch
Cons
* Enough with the spelling!
* Once again treads almost too close to Gwen Stefani
Description
* Silky smooth r&b
* Standard issue Ludacris rap
* Lyrics of living in luxury

I have to say I totally disagree with his cons. First, pop music can never have enough spelling or counting (it took me a few times before I could figure out what she is spelling). And second, treading close to Gwen Stefani isn't a criticism considering Fergie is outdoing Gwen Stefani (glamorous manages to cohere as a song while that gwen song that borrowrs from Welcome back Kotter is a little too ADD for me even).

― artdamages, Monday, 16 April 2007 13:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Sure, if Mary Weiss belongs on this thread (and it's my thread and I say she does) former kid star Stacy Ferguson sure does.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 04:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Avril alb being streamed on AOL Listening Party. Six songs in, I like her, I like the tunefulness, but I'm fed up with the overkill, all this grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me with joy. So far, "Hot" is my favorite after "Girlfriend." I way way way prefer Let Go.

(I'm having similar overkill problems with the Fefe, not to mention the Kelly Clarkson single.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 04:19 (seventeen years ago) link

(Which isn't to say that I don't love the Kelly single.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 04:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Up to "I Don't Have To Try" on the Avril and this song actually works with all its heavy tunefulness and heavy thrash, nice Brontosaurus dance. OK, and onto "One Of These Girls," and I'm back to thinking here are good melodies and harmonies being stomped to death.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 04:25 (seventeen years ago) link

i love the avril album - i know what frank means about the overkill but it's not a major problem for me, though it s the difference between "very good avril, 4 stars for you" and "OMG EVERYONE U MUST HEAR THIS". my favourites are probably 'runaway' and the title track. she raps about periods!

frank what are all the musical influences she's biting? a lot of it, those massive piss-taking guitar riffs and that punky drumming, sounds really familiar, and they sound like deliberate references to things, but it's not a genre i know anything about...

i love love love 'glamorous' too - it's such a curveball. those harmonies! who knew fergie ferg was at all versed in the arts of subtlety? and yeah fergie 06/07 is what people expected/hoped gwen 06/07 to be, logical continuation from gwen 05.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 06:51 (seventeen years ago) link

R: To me, she doesn't go far enough. I like her style, and I think she's really cool and everything, but I want songs!

in a nutshell, robyn gives away that she really doesn't 'get' pop at all. grrr.

i really love the 'white girl' song jeezy talks about!

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 06:52 (seventeen years ago) link

"in a nutshell, robyn gives away that she really doesn't 'get' pop at all. grrr. "

I think you're wrong here Lex, you're importing onto Robyn ideas about what she's trying to do which i don't think she shares (not that i want to accord her authorial priority w/r/t her music - but if we're gonna talk about what robyn does or does not 'get'...).

To prefer "Cool" to "Hollaback Girl" (and hell, I do, although I like the latter well enough) is not the same as not 'getting' pop. I suspect that her notion of pop is very similar to Xenomania's, although she's not as good at making it. But this is a difference in degree rather than kind.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 07:13 (seventeen years ago) link

And anyway I thought it was when Robyn departed from 'songs' that you disliked her?

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 07:13 (seventeen years ago) link

it's the "she doesn't go far enough" i object to - i may be misinterpreting robyn but i've heard this criticism of popstars quite a lot, that despite a tendency towards one or two traditionally non-pop values (usually 'innovation') which can be approved of, they conform to traditional pop values in other ways (eg sexualised image, lyrics which are clichéd or obnoxiously dumb or non-feminist). it's the assumption that going "far" ("beyond industry proscriptions") is what gwen stefani should be about.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 08:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Lex you're precisely misreading it I think - my interpretation was that Gwen doesn't go far enough into pop! Possibly Robyn is implying that she is a pop-rock star who has only recently jumped onto chart-pop and "hasn't gone far enough"; more specifically Gwen is afraid to write "classic" pop songs with big emotions and melodrama.

(if so, she's wrong - No Doubt had a history of big pop ballads - but this interpretation makes more sense in context than the one you're giving it)

You could say that this classicism is itself a form of rockism, except that the song she singles out as being great is "Cool", i.e. perhaps the least rockist song ever!

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 09:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Ha ha as well of all the big female pop stars currently Gwen is perhaps the least sexualised/cliched/non-feminist (compare/contrast with current Nelly Furtado!), although I could imagine people might find her obnoxiously dumb at times.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 09:18 (seventeen years ago) link

well then that makes no sense coming from robyn, purveyor of mimsy imbruglia-lite ballads and cutesy kitsch facsimiles of gwen's own most out-there moments! and sure she has 'be mine' and 'with every heartbeat' but gwen has 'cool', 'the real thing', 'early winter' plus everything from her no doubt days. so it's not that robyn doesn't understand pop, it's that she doesn't bother to listen to it before sounding off.

am not sure that "classic" pop songs are the big melodramatic ones either, which is a function of my generation's big popstars being the spice girls, britney et al, who have done emotional dramatic ballads (very well) but it wasn't what they were about.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 09:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Why is "Cool" the least rockist song ever? It strikes me as very, as you said, classicist.

― The Reverend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 09:37 (seventeen years ago) link

my interpretation was that Gwen doesn't go far enough into pop!

Yeah, that's why I quoted that part in the first place. And I sort of agree with this, you tend to get lots of ideas of great pop songs but only a select handful of great pop songs. Interesting that I like way more No Doubt pop songs than Gwen pop songs.

Still processing the new Avril (may try the listening party because my copy is awful), not sure where I said this, but it frustrates me that Avril has to try so hard to prove she's fun. (Actually, it was uptrhead: "Funny that Avril does the opposite of Hilary, she's out to prove she's fun. Which isn't all that fun, kind of annoying really.")

― dabug, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 12:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Funny how both Hillary and Mandy Moore are out to prove they're serious but they've taken inverse sonic routes.

Avril should do more power-ballads. My favourite songs from her are "I'm With You", "My Happy Ending" and "Make It Through".

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 12:55 (seventeen years ago) link

BTW "Cool" isn't really the least rockist pop song ever, but it's an oddly unrockist form of classicism - if there's a pop sub-genre more impervious to retrospective legitimation than "Hungry Eyes"-style 80s pop I'm not sure what it is.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 12:57 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah my favourite avril song is 'i'm with you' - there are a couple of really good powerballads on the new album but it's mostly punky, punchy stuff like 'girlfriend'.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 13:17 (seventeen years ago) link

From Wikipedia, about the "Never Again" subject:

During a 2003 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ben Moody stated, "We're actually high on the Christian charts, and I'm like, What the f--k are we even doing there?"[31] This seemed to go against earlier sentiments by Moody that "We hope to express in our music that Christianity is not a rigid list of rules to follow..." and also "The message we as a band want to convey more than anything is simple—God is Love."[32] This has led to criticism of the band within the Christian community, even more so given that the band themselves approved of the plan to distribute Fallen to the Christian market.[33] Terry Hemmings, CEO of Christian music distributor Provident, expressed puzzlement at the band's about-face, saying "They clearly understood the album would be sold in these [Christian music] channels."[34] Ex-vocalist and keyboardist David Hodges eventually left the band over the controversy, with other members stating that he had been pulling them in more of a Christian direction than Lee and Moody were comfortable with.

― Eppy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 14:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Reason Number 6,500 that I wish people would stop using the word "rockist": the idea of being daring and different and going too far saturates popular culture of the last 100 years and preceded rock onto the planet. Also, I don't get the linkage between classicist and rockist (or is "classicist" shorthand for "going too far" and "being daring and different and innovative" etc.?).

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 19:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Lex, the references in "Girlfriend" have been cited on this thread (Toni Basil's "Hey Mickey," Rubinoos' "Boyfriend," Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud"), but I think you're asking more about the sound: I wouldn't say it's referential but I do think it's similar to and owes a lot to the toonful-oonful wing of early '70s glam rock: Sweet, Slade, Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro, the Runaways, maybe some neo-glam from several years after that by Joan Jett and Girlschool. Maybe some Bay City Rollers, though I never paid them much attention so don't remember what they sounded like. And I think most of that was too cloddy and clompy as well (exception being Slade, who came on cloddy and clompy but actually had their rhythm down), though I like the best of glam way more than I like "Girlfriend." And the melodic source of toonful-oonful glam was the real poppy rock 'n' roll of the early '60s, such as Little Eva's "Locomotion" and the Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back" and Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him" and Lesley Gore's "Maybe I Know" and the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" and the Shangri-Las' "Give Him A Great Big Kiss" and the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" and thousands more. I'm listing all those because that era of bubblegum rock 'n' roll absolutely crushes any subsequent bubblegum that rock has ever given us, including the late '60s Archies and Ohio Express era that got called bubblegum (a lot of which was pretty good but made itself worse by reducing itself to being "fun" rather than just being fun in the context of being passionately committed pop songs). There is some disco and postdisco and Europop bubblegum that can occasionally compete with the early '60s, but this souped-up pop rock can't. (Unless you want to count "Since U Been Gone," which I think is something else, and even there I'm feeling something forced in comparison to easy and free-sounding stuff like Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans' "Not Too Young to Get Married" (which was heavily produced and I'm sure highly calculated but which lived and breathed more naturally in its world).)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Gwen only dreams of writing something as good as Konichiwa Bitches.

― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:36 (seventeen years ago) link

OK Tim I see your linking "rockism" more to "legitimation" than to "classicism." Still, I don't see what anyone gains by calling the impulse towards legitimation "rockism." "Impulse towards legitimation" is a perfectly good phrase in itself, and the impulse is hardly limited to rock fans, nor is it avoided by pop fans. Also, it seems to me that rock and other forms of popular culture are remarkably good at not achieving consensus at what counts as legitimate, not to mention distrusting legitimacy and making the word "legitimate" something of an insult.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 21:21 (seventeen years ago) link

"Also, it seems to me that rock and other forms of popular culture are remarkably good at not achieving consensus at what counts as legitimate, not to mention distrusting legitimacy and making the word "legitimate" something of an insult."

Ha ha that's almost why I would normally use the word rockism instead - the legitimacy which is being grasped most likely vanishes as soon as it is perceived as such.

Although in this particular instance I believe I could as easily (perhaps more easily) use "PBSification" and hopefully not do too much violence to the concept.

I guess it may not be obvious that for me and at this stage, the notion of "rockism" having anything to do with rock music per se, except in a historically contingent sense, is pretty much null and void. Although I think Lex might disagree.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 21:30 (seventeen years ago) link

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