Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

right, listening to my december now. three tracks in i was all ready to judge that the backlash was WRONG and a symptom of clarkson having made a really dark, intense, cathartic album in the vein of all those angsty female singer-songwriters (alanis, pj and so on) she'd previously only vaguely nodded at - 'hole' is absolutely brilliant, dave is right. hole should reform to do a song called 'kelly clarkson'.

i'm on 'maybe' now, though and it's all been derailed a bit, it's seemed a bit...aimless. and there's really no variation to her voice here.

I'm glad to see that Kelefa has come to his (non)senses.

But: not turn Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” into a thinly veiled pot-smoking anthem called “Mary Jane Shoes.”

Uh, isn't the song just about the shoes? (I didn't realize what Mary Janes even were until my gf told me -- I thought they must be some sorta designer shoe, what with me knowing nothing about clothing. But I was wrong.)

(PS - WTF KINDERWHORE!)

Lex is right, the album does get kind of tedious around the late middle half -- esp. "Haunted," which is a nice song but it's the first one where you kind of think...she's really not letting up, is she?

But it's funny, "Yeah" and "How I Feel" are incongruous with the rest of it, which makes them stand out, not nec. in a good way. I kind of like that the album is so torturous and unrelenting, would almost have liked it to have been completely intense. But Irvine/Chivas is amazing, perfect last track/bonus track, so she lands the thing pretty well.

Jeez, Hannah Montana OST #2 is a total disaster, has MAYBE three OK songs on it out of two albums (one by Hannah, one by Miley Cyrus). Miley and Hannah are indistinguishable.

I see The Lex's Aly & AJ piece did eventually run in the Gruaniad:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2108154,00.html

If you're signed into Launch Yahoo, here's a link for Bubblin' video by Blue, a Brit boyband from four years ago whom I learned about today on Poptimists. The song's an excellent BSB/*NSync knockoff, basic pretty pretty pretty sweetboy voices with the subterranean push of r&b. This is what the current crop of Disney boys (Corbin Bleu, B5) wishes they sounded like.

Kelly C. is way better than either Griffin or Benatar.

right, listening to my december now. three tracks in i was all ready to judge that the backlash was WRONG and a symptom of clarkson having made a really dark, intense, cathartic album in the vein of all those angsty female singer-songwriters (alanis, pj and so on) she'd previously only vaguely nodded at - 'hole' is absolutely brilliant, dave is right. hole should reform to do a song called 'kelly clarkson'.

OTM. The hop-skip-jump guitars of "One Minute" are my favorite moment. Overall she's committed to the material, but a lot of the sentiments remind me of criticism Jody Rosen aimed at Avril a few months ago: her idea of maturity is therapy-speak, and therapy-streak is monochromatic.

<b>POP'S ORIGINAL NAUGHTY GIRL</b>

AOL: You have to find it funny that the bad-girl image is so the norm now. People forget that you were pop's original naughty girl - at least compared to that goodie two shoes, Debbie Gibson.

TIFFANY: Hahaha. I think Deborah and I were just different people. She was very close to her mother and family and I think that affected us differently. But I loved being the naughty tomboy. I had a lot more fun!

Haven't participated in the Paula DeAnda convos yet as I've kept not remembering what she sounds like other than "r&bish kinda sub-something stuff"; anyway, listening to "Easy," which Lex was loving way upthread and reaffirming his love for more recently and it's reaching me, maybe not quite drawing as much of the emotional aaah from me as JoJo does, but very similar and very good. And like JoJo, Paula doesn't seem to have any particular persona and personality, just another excellent aaah-drawing bit of flesh and voice.

Lil Wayne does a guest verse, which is a pleasant surprise. One hears from him so little these days.

Miley Cyrus has started playing shows double billing herself as Miley and Hannah (wonder if she gets paid twice). Which is, um, interesting, because I don't remember her successfully lip-syncin' her way through two SONGS let alone two SETS. Meanwhile she's got almost a full CD's worth of good material across three albums under two names. So maybe I'll finally buy "The Best of Miley Montana" or something in...what, 2009? How long did it take for "Most Wanted"? ...This new generation is weird.

Kogan A-Twitter For Britters

Also good follow-up here. (Pardon me next week for using an identical framing device.)

And heck, since I posted it there, here's a sneak peek:

[Miranda Lambert] delivers the hilarious preemptive antidote to Paris Hilton’s forthcoming PSA with “Dry Town,” in which she stops at a quickie mart to buy a sixth of Miller and a cupholder so it won’t spill while she’s driving.

What if Paris did her PSA as an after-the-fact Paris B-side!

Don't know if this is ironic or just sad, but why are people putting so MUCH responsibility on Kelly for her songwriting (all co-written with the band and a few others) when they're trying to knock the new album? As if I haven't heard enough idjuts talking about the Svengalis behind "Since U Been Gone" and "Hazel Eyes"? Recent Fluxblog thread isn't long enough, but there are already two (three?) people who are making the bizarro-world standard gripe-claims against Kelly: why didn't she let other people write her songs for her? Why did she bend to the demands of her label? I.e., "I wish she had LESS creative input" and "I wish the mainstream record industry behemoth had MORE control over this." It's a very unusual dismissive position, I think!

Fluxblog thread <a href="http://www.fluxblog.org/2007/06/slowly-sinking-into-something-black.html";>here</a>.

"I feel like being in the spotlight, I have a platform where I can raise awareness for so many great causes and just do so much with this instead of superficial things like going out," Paris said. "I want to help raise money for kids and for breast cancer and multiple sclerosis."

I've nothing against raising money for kids and cancer and MS (well, for kids but against cancer and MS), but... argh!

Something's been beaten down, something's been squelched, something's been defeated.

Nia, upthread:

Paris and Lindsay are too apologetic. Rock stars don't play dumb and then insist they're smart, or confess to eating disorders and then take it all back. Britney comes closest to the kind of iconic, defiant rock stardom you're talking about, Dave, in that she seems to really not give a shit.

The question in regard to the Clive-Kelly thing is which songs would Clive have had her replace? If Clive'd wanted her to replace the five I like least - which surprisingly are the ones that are the most conventionally pop on the album - then he's on the money; whereas if he wanted her to replace the ones I like most, then I'm glad Kelly stood firm.

it's not as if breakaway was such a tour de force of consistency either! i'm down w/ about the same proportion of songs from each.

Why did she bend

Why didn't she bend to the demands, I mean.

I want to know which Lindsay song they shopped to Kelly for the album! Something from RAW. Which is kind of an analogue to December for consistency and heaviness, though there's much more humor in it.

(in)consistency...

There is nothing on the new Clarkson that approaches the greatness of SUBG, Walk Away, Hazel Eyes, or Breakaway. The album suffers from a lack of good hooks and choruses on damn near every song.

Clive was right. It's not a good album.

re: Paris-- The national schadenfreude regarding her has been so repugnant, and her psychological persecution so complete, that it's natural for her to be panicking a little. This is a woman who did not eat or drink because she was concerned-- rightly concerned-- that people would photograph her on the toilet and sell it to tabloids who had made offers for just such disgusting material.

Give her a little time, and I think she'll be telling the world to fuck off once again. I dream that she does it with another album.

"Dry Town" is my favorite on the Miranda Lambert album, which basically dies for me right after "Famous In a Small Town" -- the lyrics of which give me a rash offset by the melody. It revives for a few breaths during the two minutes of "Guilty In Here."

What about the Patty Griffin cover? I think it's great second-to-last (iirc) as a final thrust before it sorta peters out, but I don't know the original "Getting Ready" to compare it to. The one with Jesus in it is kinda hokey in the lyrics but it's a lovely bittersweet tune.

Sneak peek #2, from the same sentence as before: (she) doesn’t make me wanna retch when she goes into brief small-town sentimentality -- what an endorsement!

Clive was waaaaaay off. Whoever said dude's got BLAND TASTE is OTM. Kelly scorches at least 60% of the time! But Miranda does it closer to 70% (plus she has a couple good ballads). And I can get just about every song stuck in my head, though admittedly it took a couple listens to understand how to...y'know, withstand the vocal blows on most of the hooks. It's like diva-core. "Hole" and "Judas" easily demolish "Walk Away" and "Breakaway," and in their own lower-key way might hold their own with her big singles. Like the guerilla warfare to their atomic bomb. (Pardon the metaphor, time for me to go home...)

I'll be a little more emphatic than Frank, maybe. Lanbert's small town shtick does make me wanna retch. However, the beat and melody offset it just enough. And you're probably right about the second last tune. I'll have to give it a few more listens.

Welcome to Doltsville. Skip to the bottom if you don't want the from-the-country discussion.

Ha...those lines are from my column running next week in Stylus, and I linked to another DD post, about the press reception and yeehaw etc. crap w/ Crazy Ex. And how ridiculous it is that reviewers (generally) take Miranda so damn SERIOUSLY but (generally) don't take Kelly SERIOUSLY enough. Like, swap the arguments or something, start talking about Kelly's parents and personal baggage and enjoy Miranda as a collection of well-written pop tunes. Or something.

So I'm doing some playing around with an online keyboard and I realize something interesting: last year we talked a lot about the high E-flat, which was sort of the money note -- usually a bit higher than the crucial note in a given song -- that the performers hit when it's time to crank up a notch. (I forget whether or not Lindsay goes a little higher during the imperceptible key change in "Live for the Day.") The Veronicas hit it twice in "4ever," including demolishing it once toward the end, Ashlee hits it for the first "la" in "La La," Lillix just barely gets to it (or maybe the D or D-flat?) on "Sweet Temptation."

Well, I started checking out some of Kelly Clarkson's new tunes and guess what. First of all, the "money note" is also usually the note hanging on the hook a-hyuk (and there are plenty of hooks on this record, no idea what y'all are talking about). Example: in former Max/Luke tracks, the performer will hit the money note on their WAY to the hook note ("Since U Been Gone" has four money notes above the hook note on "goooooooone") -- this is where the highest note usually happens, on its way to a lower, more comfortable note.

Second, the money note/hook notes on My December are REALLY high. "Hole" is D ("There's a hole!"), "Judas" is D-flat ("I didn't know! I didn't know!"), and on "Haunted" she goes all the way up to the E-flat ("WHERE are you"). This would be like writing an entire song consisting of that one climactic part of "4ever" and sticking it right in the middle of your album (after having "warmed up" to that part on several other tracks!) which might be one reason why it stands out to me as the point where I really start to lose it a little. Doesn't help that it's followed by what might be the worst song on the album, "Be Still."

So I stand by my assertion that the hooks are there, but they're also very draining. They aren't as skillfully constructed as a Max/Luke hook, which has the tension/release pleasure center-pushers down to a science. Or a math. They're a little clumsy, and they just blow the roof off of every single goddamn song. Whcih, again, is part of what I LIKE about this album, I wish she'd followed it through, but as is there's stuff like "Be Still" and "Yeah" and "How I Feel" trying to weirdly take things down a notch, which doesn't suit the momentum at all. You start to realize that the whole thing's a little exhausting.

*woops, didn't finish my money note/hook note example. "Hole" has a chorus with essentially a one-note hook: "There's a hole! Inside of me!" Ditto "Judas," does the same thing with a two-note melody that lets the money note do the heavy lifting: "I didn't KNOW! I didn't KNOW! I couldn't SEE! I couldn't SEE!" and on "Haunted" she does three notes but lands hard on the high E-flat, esp. when it comes time to draw it out: "Wheeeeere aaaaaare yoooou?" The lowest note is still a high C, the "hook note" in "Since U Been Gone" (D-flat is the money note in that one).

*blah, edit 2, I was off a half step, so take "Haunted" down to a D. Drat. Same principle, though.

you guys are really selling our most fabulous lady pop icons short if you think paris was ever one of them

A bad hook isn't a hook at all.

Sure it is! "I have this stupid fucking song stuck in my head and now I want to kill myself" = bad hook, still a hook. But these aren't bad hooks, they're just not Max/Luke hooks. (Everything looks a little rough around the edges compared to a friggin' Max Martin hook, but these songs are a little rough around the edges by any standard.)

I understand that not everyone necessarily likes it, and it very well might bug the hell outta Popjustice, but what I'm sensing is that a lot of the reviews of the album so far aren't trying to see it for what it is...the "no hooks" charge doesn't really stick for me, not so much because I think there are hooks (and I do; in fact, plenty of them aren't THAT far removed from Breakaway, "Addicted" and "Hear Me" especially..."Haunted" is basically a direct descendant and it's the least interesting of the three or four most intense rock tracks) but because I feel like there's something about the charge that's to some extent ignoring what the album is trying (really really hard) to be. How successful it is as what (I think) it is, a Big Huge Serious Rock Album, is arguable. The most "pop" tracks are actually what end up mucking things up a little.

" "I have this stupid fucking song stuck in my head and now I want to kill myself" = bad hook, still a hook."

I disagree; those are good hooks. Good hooks stick with you, bad hooks (like those on My December), fall out of your head in minute.

I was fortunate enough to enjoy a series of long meetings with Clive back when he was at Arista.

He loves playing songs and...well, reacting to them, and then seeing what his audience thinks of his reaction. If only to explain in fascinating detail why his audience is wrong.

No matter--he is indeed a genius at spotting hits, but I think there's a limitation in his variety of genius.

He knew I favored this power pop band and played me their newest song. I loved it--but it was a departure from their hit. Not a huge one, but still, a slight left turn.

Clive was genuinely upset about this. Sad. He liked it, understood it, but truly thought it wasn't a hit--or rather, thought it wasn't a hit when considered through the filter in his head he'd created to sift through this group's work. There were other instances of this when he played me other songs...a combination of a desire to see his artists succeed tempered with a certain anxiety about how they did it--if they strayed too far from his vision of them.

I think "Hole" is brilliant. But shit--there's what, two guitars, a mono-voice synth, bass, drums, two Kellys and no harmonies? Plus the guitar sounds like it was played through a ripped-speaker Fender Bassman?

That's a long, long way from the Kelly of uber-processed past. Clive would have a cow. Well, I guess he did.

I think authenticity actually matters with Clarkson--the young woman who sang SUBG and so on, that was the Clarkson of then. And "Hole" is her now. Asking her to do another "Behind These Hazel Eyes" would be like asking Freddie Mercury to do another "Killer Queen" after the stuff on "Hot Space". That's what I mean by authentic--she'd have to ape past editions of herself, which just doesn't seem her deal and now she's crossed this Rubicon, I don't think she will, can, or considering her financials, needs to go back.

But, filter or not, Never Again wasn't a hit. And it was seemingly the most radio-friendly song on the album. It had a slick video too, and Kelly surely has a spectacular Q rating. Clive didn't hear hits on the album for a good reason; the songs aren't catchy.

the criticism i've seen of 'never again' is that it's too "dark" and too "bitter" rather than lacking in hooks (which it assuredly is not)

popjustice also hates the kelly rowland album! wrong wrong wrong

"Never Again" was a brave gamble. It counted on a vocal disonanace chorus that you can't hum along with as a sort of abstract hook.

Maybe Clakson's doing a P!nk, going from her own version of P!nk's arc from a confection like Mizaundastood to the challange of Try This to I'm Not Dead's brilliant summation.

But I kinda doubt it. Clarkson's smart, but P!nk is the most ridiculously savvy popster in the US, like an American Jarvis Crocker.

*applauds*

oh, and while I'm logged in, here's some more Insomniatic anticipation fodder:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-aly23jun23,1,4624656.story?coll=la-entnews-music&ctrack=2&cset=true

Yeah, Kelly's in the unique position where she doesn't need to be that savvy -- she can make serious demands. P!nk is in that position, too, but it took her longer to get there. I think Kelly very well might be savvy (and P!nk can be abrasive and bull-headed and flat-out embarrassing some of the time, though I probably would put her and Kelly in the same league), but she's accelerated the P!nk "maturation" process considerably so that she doesn't have to ingratiate herself with what might seem to be calculated "moves"(maybe largely thanks to Pink and co., really. Also thanks to the fact that American Idol simultaneously made her a "pop tart" and a populist favorite -- she's of the people, etc., so you don't get as much ridiculous Britney-style corporate baggage hung on her, even though she's working in the same system).

"As much baggage" being relative to, e.g., Britney or maybe Ashlee. Certainly there are plenty of Kelly haters out there.

Also, duh, I totally skipped "Never Again"! Which is also a three-note hook that lands hard on the highest note -- a D, which ties it for highest note along with "Hole" and "Haunted." Except in "Never Again" Kelly does a few fake-outs and goes to the lower D, jumps down an octave semi-ominously, whereas in the other two it's all high D all the time.

And HOLY CRAP she hits a G-flat in both "Sober" and "Haunted."

Someone better tell Britney quick so she can whip up another poll!

Is it true you requested [Hilary Duff for War, Inc.]?

John Cusack: Yep. Well, the part was ... she played a pop idol from central Asia. So, she was like a Hilary — but not Hilary, because Hilary is so classy — but like a real, and I won't name names, but a real slutty pop star. ... Hilary is the opposite of that, of course. I think for her to play that, or to parody that, was really great.

What's the biggest misconception [of her]?

John: I think probably people wouldn't know how talented she is. I mean, she's a great actress. I just spent the entire fall with her and she was a revelation every day. I don't think people know that yet, but they're gonna.

Damn, Tata Young is Southeast Asia :(

From the rolling metal thread (I have more to say about this album, some of which I said in a review of it I wrote for work this week, and I have more to say about the lyric of "Blush" in particular, which I didn't say in the review and which I'll get around to someday, perhaps even here, but not right now):

the most metal (but not necessarily the best, though they're up there) songs on the GREAT new Aly & AJ album are "Bullseye" (which gets compared to the Runaways in their press release and doesn't really sound like the Runaways per se' but is hooky and punchy enough that I don't mind), "Like It Or Leave It" (which gets its riff from Stone Temple Pilots), and "Insomniatic" (which gets its riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and other parts of its melody from "Come As You Are"), I think. Take it or leave it. (Didn't hear the Kelly Clarkson yet.)
-- xhuxk, Sunday, July 1, 2007 1:16 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

...Oops, Aly & AJ's STP tribute is "If I Could Have You Back," NOT the far more Europop-burbling "Like It Or Leave It" (track # 9 not #5 on my advance, though my advance also has "Blush" on it which is not on the actual album apparently, so I'm not sure what that does for track order otherwise.)

-- xhuxk, Sunday, July 1, 2007 1:37 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Oooookay, time to spend all day finding this on the internet. I mean, uh, getting a promo of it. Yeah.

Believe me, I've been trying all week. So far, only come across an 8MB sampler.