pitchfork

i guess -- it's only refreshing if you hang out w/ ppl who would get all self-conscious about pop songs, or only listen to singers that do that

the pfork end of year celebrity guest list was filled w/ indie artists talking about pop songs

"like a g6" is obv on the high end of the corny scale, but "single ladies" & "whip my hair" are pretty agreeable hits by and large idk

the pfork end of year celebrity guest list was filled w/ indie artists talking about pop songs

uhhhhh kinda? didn't andy k do a study where the-dream appeared like 6 times on pfork guest lists in 2010, but there was only one other mention of any R&B artist among all the lists??

Really of all p-approved acts only The Tough Alliance have genuinely "bad" taste in pop music.

there was an awful lot of Drake name dropping this year :-/

uhhhhh kinda? didn't andy k do a study where the-dream appeared like 6 times on pfork guest lists in 2010, but there was only one other mention of any R&B artist among all the lists??

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Tuesday, February 1, 2011 1:31 AM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah idk -- there's certainly a slant towards 'cooler' pop esp rap/r&b & not white people pop -- but i guess my point is that an indie artist covering beyonce or willow seems a bit more passé afte pfork itself started earnestly covering pop -- i think this is reflected in the taste of new indie bands that are the babies of pfork

yeah like, who is 2000's equivalent of best coast & would that person have listed their dream collaboration as jay-z

2000 being the year 2000 & not the decade

travis covering oops i did it again changed everything

i know a dude irl who has expressed the opinion that earnestly liking pop music is so passe

i guess i should clarify to mean that an indie band covering a pop song is not in itself passé, but any shock over that would be, yes

yeah like, who is 2000's equivalent of best coast & would that person have listed their dream collaboration as jay-z

chris martin/coldplay; yes; oh and btw, they did collaborate

with the plan in general it was just a major part of my attraction to them from the get-go how they found the canny sense of humor in their eclecticism and still applied it sincerely to music as fearless as standard verse-chorus-verse songform gets without being perverse. they work on an ironic level in a really non-bullying way and they're shockingly inclusive from an earnest angle.

i mean i call them my favorite band(TM) because of these traits and their general perfect band-as-band (to me) personalities even though i don't play them as often as other favorite bands. i guess i'm always shocked when people take the effort to wince at them because i just can't imagine more likable personalities in musicians from a scene as churlish as indie much less d.c. indie.

probably 75% of my like 20 total ILM posts are about the dismemberment plan

howd you like the travis morrison solo albums?

yeah like, who is 2000's equivalent of best coast & would that person have listed their dream collaboration as jay-z

chris martin/coldplay; yes; oh and btw, they did collaborate

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Tuesday, February 1, 2011 1:57 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

wtf are you talking about on various levels

my bad, it looks like best coast's album DID go double platinum domestically *shuffles off*

1. for a while it was like an indie band covering a pop tune = audience goes "how ironic!"
2. then for a second it was like an indie band covering a pop tune = audience goes "what a cool and fascinating choice!"
3. then there ceased to be anything inherently notable or interesting about the idea of an indie band covering a pop tune, unless it was genuinely an awesome cover
4. and at that point why would your indie band try covering a pop tune? it's not going to seem inherently interesting, and chances are slim that you've got a version of a beyonce song or whatever that does something worthwhile with the original
5. (combo pizza/taco etc. is not exactly a pop hit and thus doesn't really count in this, plus is also pretty straightforward as a "random thing to shout at a show" choice)
6. the end?

(note: I always felt like the dismemberment plan did this somewhere between period #1 and period #2 above, sort of baiting the audience by saying "you think this is ironic but I LIKE POP, OPEN YR DAMN MINDS ffs," which was possibly influential in the transition from #1 to #2)

okay so i'm speaking hypothetically, assuming best coast will suddenly take the f off and sell 2m records in 2011

xp j0rd

the year 2000 equivalent of best coast being all "omg i wish i could work with drake *quotes a drake line*" would've been like neko case being all "get me on a track w/ cam'ron and i can die happy" -- it's a different world

no whiney weingarteno but i would be interested in hearing how the crowds at the d-plan reunion shows reacted to "whip my hair" & "like a g6"

howd you like the travis morrison solo albums?

― the new mordant & zingy ilxor persona (ilxor), Tuesday, February 1, 2011 2:00 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i like both travis albums a lot, especially the second one (i think i pazzed it at #8 or so that year). they're a little more they might be giants-y perhaps but i'm totally amazed how many people feel the gap between those and plan albums is that huge and i really fail to see what they're missing. "angry angel" is a really bad song, sure. for me, "you make me feel like a freak," "change," "song for the orca," "born in 72," "people die," "the word cop," "churchgoer," "hawkins' rock" would all make a career best-of.

i shrugged at the maritime stuff and consider the statehood album to be the only grave misstep by any plan members so far. i think travis' web-only "snacktime" and "checkers and chess" are funny as shit.

umm, come to think of it, "whip my hair" also translates pretty exactly into a rock "yelling something over and over" context -- there's not even a stretch there. it has no genre.

like, it is also nu-metal and several different types of techno

yeah that is also true -- i still contend that if it was a rihanna song it would've been fully embraced by pitchfork & its ilk & that's not cuz rihanna could've done the song any better but there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross

uhhh just heard "whip my hair" for the first time no lie (& saw the video) and wtffffff. like, it's okay? i gueeeess??? but like, parents, get control of yr 10 year olds! wtf. i have an 8 yr old myself & no way i'd try to turn her into a budding pop star in two years. she can sing to miley & taylor in our living room.

aren't you like 23 years old?

if that was a rihanna song it've been the worst song of her career, sorry

25 xp

don't even feel like arguing this but i'll just say that rihanna has some shit singles

and, my point is less about the quality of "whip my hair" & more about gate keeping & stigma etc

"i still contend that if it was a rihanna song it would've been fully embraced by pitchfork & its ilk & that's not cuz rihanna could've done the song any better but there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross"

yeah, without wanting to generalize it to just "pitchfork," i definitely believe there's a line in the sand re: "approved" pop a lot of the time with indie/crit/people-who-consider-themselves-serious-about-music

kind of caused me to have a reverse-prejudice myself about robyn until very recently

"disturbia"'s the only rihanna song i consider very fun

never got the big deal about beyonce's "crazy in love" either beyond cool horn riff

ranked:

rude boy
umbrella
russian roulette
pon de replay
dont stop the muzak
only girl
disturbia
rehab
unfaithful
sos
hard
hate that i love u
stfu and drive
if it's lovin..
rockstar 101
take a bow

okay, so maybe it'd rank alongside "break it off" and "what's my name"......? cool

okay, it'd be better than "what's my name" -- you win

it's also better than "love the way you lie" ft. rihanna

lord "whip my hair" is like a million times better than "hard" & "rockstar 101"

ANYWAY funny that you mention "what's my name," which showed up in the pfork list even tho most ppl agree that it's a middling rihanna single -- if that's a willow single it doesn't even come close & again there would be an imperceptible change in quality (allowing for the fact that the dancehall undertones of the song are more fit to rihanna)

i've made this argument before about ciara & other stuff tho

oh i forgot about "s.o.s."

that was fun too but it's almost cheating when you have the soft cell laser noise

ciara's "like a boy" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any song mentioned in the last bunch of posts

lord "whip my hair" is like a million times better than "hard" & "rockstar 101"

okay okay yr right ;_;

idk what the hell this thread is about but "what's my name" w/o drake is not a middling rihanna song, it's absolutely one of her best. such joyous lyrics but the tinge of sadness and self-doubt in her delivery turns it into something incredibly compelling.

back to whatever

i still contend that if it was a rihanna song it would've been fully embraced by pitchfork & its ilk & that's not cuz rihanna could've done the song any better but there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross

I think this is less to do with pfork or whatever being anti will smith's daughter and more to do with the fact that pitchfork et. al. take some time to latch onto R&B / rap / pop / dance artists, very rarely will they start frothing about an artist in those genres on their very first single.

Pitchfork et. al. listen out for rihanna singles, there's an expectation that they'll be covered and staff will have an opinion and etc. whereas generally by the time momentum starts to gather behind the idea of a new non-indie-rock artist's first single being fanastic the moment for reviewing it has passed, and if it's not reviewed it's unlikely to then get sufficient momentum to place in end of year charts.

And this is how we end up with things like Pitchfork reviewing an artist's third single with the tossed off cooler-than-you context "remember when we all flipped out about her first single??" and if you didn't flip out about that single you have catching up to do and that's why pfork is still cooler than you.

Or something? It's such a weird set of dots to connect.

there's still a line of like "will smith's 9 year old daughter" that a lot of ppl aren't willing to cross

nah ime that novelty value made it a lot easier for...this type of listener to embrace "whip my hair", in a way they wouldn't have done had it been by any non-megastar r&b chick? when it comes to pop, the line that people aren't willing to cross comes with artists like nicole scherzinger (see tim f's thread comparing her to lady gaga) and ashlee simpson and p. diddy (people who, the indie consensus would have it, are just there to be mocked).

re: coverage of rihanna, it's hard to escape the feeling that her worth to pfork and its ilk is entirely bound up in her fame & success, given that similar artists in her genre who don't have as high a profile as her (won't bring in the page hits!) get roundly ignored (trey songz, fantasia, keri hilson...any of them get coverage this year?)

Would agree with first paragraph, absolutely.

Would mostly agree with the second except that I think it's less fame and success per se than just celebrity and well-known backstory (and, not unimportantly, back-catalogue) conferring personality pretty readily. I think it's true to say that Rihanna can "carry" a tune like "What's My Name" by virtue of that sedimentary accumulation of associations, it's not merely more likely to be heard in the first place, but also a bit more memorable for that (pretty arbitrary in some ways) reason as compared to if it was released by a more journey(wo)man -ish R&B performer.

That same benefit of the doubt won't get extended to Kim Kardashian obv. And I don't think it's extended to Mariah (for reasons even more arbitrary).

In 2011 I want to be more on the ball w/r/t sourcing R&B albums as they leak and then pitching reviews.

yeah, without wanting to generalize it to just "pitchfork," i definitely believe there's a line in the sand re: "approved" pop a lot of the time with indie/crit/people-who-consider-themselves-serious-about-music

I don't think this applies to Willow but yes, it's always just a handful of names. From a UK perspective it was Kylie in the 90s, then Britney and Beyonce, then Girls Aloud and Sugababes, now Rihanna and Gaga. You could say this is just because they're the best examples, and there's only so much "approved" pop allowed through the doors, but they also represent a certain idea of indie/crit-friendly pop which I would try and unpack if I weren't on deadline - for one thing, it can't be coincidence that all these egs are female.

Justin Timberlake got the indie-critic seal of approval in the UK though, didn't he?

There's a case for saying that even ultra-commercial male stars are shifted into different genres by critics (R&B, grime, electro, etc) while female singers tend to get lumped together as 'pop', in the UK. The weighting towards female stars in critical circles does seem to be inversely proportionate to the gender balance of the writers though.

Their critical acclaim probably shouldn't be overstated, however. Robyn and Janelle Monae seem to be genuine breakthroughs this year but more obviously mainstream-aligned acts like GA, Britney and Beyonce - while picking up fawning articles all over the place - rarely seem to figure in end-of-year polls.

srsly though, am i the only one who considers travis' total earnestness about his taste to be a really freeing positive?

No. Reading the D-Plan website ca. 2002 probably played a part in preparing me to fully embrace pop music and stop feeling guilty about guilty pleasures. (The transition was complete after I discovered ILM in 2003.)

(note: I always felt like the dismemberment plan did this somewhere between period #1 and period #2 above, sort of baiting the audience by saying "you think this is ironic but I LIKE POP, OPEN YR DAMN MINDS ffs," which was possibly influential in the transition from #1 to #2)

Ben Gibbard's cover of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" is sort of like this, too. Midway through, he half-shushes the tittering crowd, saying "This is serious" and afterwards emphasizes the point: "I really fucking love that song."