Village Voice's F2K

got no beef with ashlee but if that's the best defense...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raq8maAutAE

i've never been in the Ashlee fanclub cru but "La La" is the one song of hers I really like. it came out around the same time "Since U Been Gone" and for a while I kind of mentally grouped those songs together and considered them more or less equal.

― defend the indefensible: JUSTIN BIEBER, MAN (some dude), Wednesday, December 16, 2009 12:00 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is true for me too -- i think its a pretty good song tbh

really weird choice for this honestly -- im in no way an ashlee fanclub dude but this track is a pretty banging pop song

& ok this is lol but it sounds like "bohemian like you"

thats neither here nor there wrt quality by the way

I mean, the bridge, for God’s sake.

Ashlee's pointing to the power give-and-take in these costumes in a way that Berlin isn't (Berlin is just kind of stating them, and most of them are merely labels and not specific characters) -- I'd compare her more to Electrik Red, who also have an interesting way of dealing with submissive/dominant roles in a fairly empowering way. Cue Tim Finney who, shock, said it much better than I could:

"Electrik Red see no contradiction between slave-driving dominance ("W.F.Y.") and slavish submission ("Bed Rest"), modern female independence ("Friend Lover") and its easy loss ("So Good"), mercantile sexual consumerism ("P Is for Power") and incommensurate sexual generosity ("Devotion").

If that sounds like a criticism, it's not meant to be: Electrik Red understand that we don't know what we want even when we sound like we do; if they seem to conflate love and sex a little too freely, well, life's like that when the going's good."

That passage immediately made me think of this song.

(x-post)

I bought a Toby Keith album based on xhuxk's recommendation, back before I knew better. Then I used search on all the albums I had bought from ILM recommendations in the previous year that I felt duped about. It was like 80% xhuxk.

(many xposts)

i dont really get whats objectionable about it -- & whiney's piece isnt clearing it up for me? its objectionable bcuz wanting to do it in the back of a bus is tmi?? so why dont u feel that way about the luda song? otherwise your only criticism is that someone told her to sound like melissa etheridge which, ok, ive never listened to her so whatever

it seems like theres a lot of baggage being brought into discussions abt this based on a woman acting sexxxy that seems way over-thought both pro & con -- i dont really think ashlee is on some spinal tap style 'whats wrong wit bein sexy' type ish here. its a chick who knows what she wants & is singing about it which is a pretty standard line for a pop song to take

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daurx_aCFEI

Maybe you'd like to ask Maura instead of Whiney, since she wrote the blurb.

oh well apologies to whiney then

doesnt really change my stance on the song, tho

i assumed it was whiney since he was just talking about writing his next entry in this thread

With a backing track of compressed-to-next-week "rock" and a chorus consisting of a lot of rasp-filled "la"-ing, Simpson ticks off the ways she'll dress up in her lover's love, from diamonds to dirt. It's the sort of rock song that would have been as unlistenable had it been sung by Buckcherry's Josh Todd (whose "Crazy Bitch" it sorta anticipates, in a PG-13 way) or Nickelback's Chad Kroeger or even Luciano Pavarotti.

Here Maura seems to be saying "I cannot stand the backing music or the chorus, which I think is lazy and purile".

"It's very tongue in cheek; it can be interpreted in all different ways. It's about sexual fantasies. There's a lot of sarcasm in that song," Simpson said of "La La" shortly after Autobiography came out. (One shudders to think what sort of "sarcasm" Simpson was employing when she thought up the line about being taken in the back of a bus.)

Here Maura implies that Ashlee recorded the song without really thinking about what it was saying.

But when it comes to songs, shouldn't at least half the fun of getting to the real message be derived from the process of getting there? While I'm all for true female sexual empowerment in song, particularly during this ever-worse-for-women decade, "La La" lands in the category of sexy moments that should be saved for what I like to call "private time." (You want empowerment? It would have been kind of awesome to see her rush-cover "Suck My Left One" in the wake of the SNL incident and her less-than-charitable reception at the Orange Bowl.)

Here Maura criticizes the song's "empowerment" stance for being about the only allowable venue of female empowerment in modern pop music, namely being really slutty.

I get disagreeing with the conclusion but I don't think it's at all ambiguous as to why Maura picked the song.

8!

wait a minute

what the hell is this

wtf why did it briefly start over

http://www.nealo.com/blog/wp-content/dn043008-small.jpg

i agree about the over-compressed guitars, thats super annoying & has always bothered me about the song. saying 'this song is unlistenable because its unlistenable' isnt really an insight to me.

neither is 'she didnt think about her lyrics when writing this' -- so? does that mean they're bad? theres nothing about the song that is particularly glaring imo

& her criticism of 'empowerment' requires someone to be making an 'empowerment' argument about it which im not doing -- in fact, if anything pro- 'female empowerment' arguments feel more like a pre-emptive defense of the song based on ppl's expectation that other folks are gonna give it shit since its by a woman.

lol ok kudos for picking a genuinely negligible, boring moment in durst's bizkography rather than some bugfuck highlight I can defend.

not that i don't love that durst got away with this on EVERY TV NETWORK

Zach says:

Pretty sure F2K officially hates America
Posted On: Wednesday, Dec. 16 2009 @ 2:14PM

f2k certainly starting to make me hate america.

aaaaaahh the way fred looks at the camera at 2:29!!!!

wait a minute

what the hell is this

― Restless Genital Syndrome (HI DERE), Wednesday, December 16, 2009 2:39 PM (5 minutes ago)

haha i really wish i had the time to go through this thread and make into a spectrum all the variations of this post dan's made following the f2k postings

What the hell did he do to the melody? He managed to compress the whole thing into what, 4 notes?

we don't need
need anymore pain
we just need to remain
on the very same page
so much to gain
no more losin' a friend
or losin' ourselves
we just need your help
..so glad you're here

^^food for thought...wait...what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEXYJzbGw8s

durst and the puddle of mudd dude do zep's "thank you" with jimmy page. not sure if this happened before or after (both were in 2001), but it feels like a sequel all the same.

I don't remember Limp Bizkit's "Behind Blue Eyes" being notably bad, and this one seems even less notable. Odd pick for the top ten...

female empowerment' arguments feel more like a pre-emptive defense of the song based on ppl's expectation that other folks are gonna give it shit since its by a woman.

OTM. I usually only discuss this song in relation to someone else telling me it sucks and/or is actively disempowering (this includes Kara DioGuardi, who has basically disowned the song for being...I dunno, bad for women or something...which I believe was the last time I talked about it). Otherwise on its own it's not one that I have that much to say about, only in defending it when called out specifically.

fred durst / staind duet on 'i'm on the outside' is (challops alert) a classic

nothing fred durst ever did is a classic

Listen to the original "Wish You Were Here" and then listen to this cover again.

i agree about the over-compressed guitars, thats super annoying & has always bothered me about the song. saying 'this song is unlistenable because its unlistenable' isnt really an insight to me.

neither is 'she didnt think about her lyrics when writing this' -- so? does that mean they're bad? theres nothing about the song that is particularly glaring imo

The first point really doesn't need clarification or justification if you agree with Maura saying that the song sounds bad; you're just disappointed that she wasn't more explicit in saying why.

your second point misses entirely what Maura explicitly says, which is that Ashlee didn't write the song and spent time defending/explaining the lyrics on grounds that don't make sense when you listen to them (unless you believe that Ashlee doesn't actually know what sarcasm is).

& her criticism of 'empowerment' requires someone to be making an 'empowerment' argument about it which im not doing -- in fact, if anything pro- 'female empowerment' arguments feel more like a pre-emptive defense of the song based on ppl's expectation that other folks are gonna give it shit since its by a woman.

"That conclusion doesn't make any sense because I'm ignoring the paragraph immediately before it that lays out the argument it is refuting."

(also I do like that Staind/Durst song but "It's Been Awhile" is better)

wtf did Burger King do?

Destroy America, I guess.

Ashlee has a co-writing credit on "La La."

(And I find it more likely that she slightly misused the word "sarcasm" in one interview, since the song does make sense.)

just to make sure i'm getting it, that sense is "i like to get all freaky with it and I like that you keep it our little secret"

T/F?

When you say "I like that I keep our little secret" you make it sound like this is part of the come-on to the audience. "I feel safe with you / I can be myself tonight / It's alright with you / 'Cuz you hold my secrets tight" is NOT the same thing as "tee-hee you can keep my secret can't you *wink*"

It's hard to write a good pop song about private desires without it sounding like you're sort of flaunting them instead of keeping them private, but I think that "La La" at least keeps the desires strange (and blunt) enough that there's no mistaking it for some kind of tease ("you'll keep my secret won't you" as "you'll be sure to tell everyone, won't you").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6gtcy9qN5s

I've never known where to put this video.

(well not really a video...)

Belated xpost. Thanks for the links xhukx. I don't get Keith's appeal myself - I wonder how many non-Americans do - but I see where you're coming from.

Go-Go covers of popular songs are one of my favorite things ever.

glad you like. this was all over DC radio in '05. a good year.

7!

the dull rumbling you hear in the distance is me repeatedly smashing my head against my desk

haha oh phew i knew scherzinger was coming and am relieved it's one of her songs that i don't give a shit about - will defend "whatever u like" and "supervillain" to the hilt, as well as most PCDs singles

Like, this girl is talented out the wazoo, so exactly whose idea was it to give her the absolute worst possible material for her solo work? Also who told her that scooping vocal inflection was sexy? I would like to find that person and introduce their face to a slapping.