Carly Rae Jepsen • Kiss

"bright" unforgivable for the "you/moon/neptune" rhyme.

the song sorta sounds like og taylor but the chorus is overstuffed, like it's trying to communicate an understated feeling in fifteen different ways.

of course taylor's choruses are also crowded but the velocity of words tends to match the feelings she's trying to communicate, so they never feel as interminable or like an exercise

"cool kids" is hideous ofc, it sounds so empty

was listening to 'making the most of the night' today and realised i'd never once considered it could be read as neutral friendship jam, like every time before i'd just thought it was some sort of revoltingly calculated sad boy fantasy (ie as the song before 'your type' rather than the one after 'boy problems' iykwim)

Cool For The Summer is better than anything on the CRJ album imo

I just died. I am dead now.

for the record, also not a "cool for the summer" fan

Cool For The Summer is better than anything on the CRJ album imo

i love "cool for the summer" and no. "cool for the summer" is like nearly as overcooked as "i really like you"

I just listened to Cool For The Summer for the first time. It sucks. Really quite obnoxious

CRJ well on her way to winning that robyn fanbase of ppl who find actual pop obnoxious then!

http://res.cloudinary.com/thefader/image/upload/s--TdJktfx---/w_720,c_limit/re8nqblwabkex8adxbl0.gif

i do like cool for the summer but I can also easily see the obnoxious knock, its not far from the return of Justice † (Cross)

I just listened to Cool For The Summer for the first time. It sucks. Really quite obnoxious

― Number None, Tuesday, August 4, 2015 4:57 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd buy that if the people saying they didn't care for it weren't also fans of other "actual pop", but it's more likely that they just don't like the song and/or just disagreed with your somewhat trolling statement.

I don't even think Cool for the Summer is obnoxious. I just think it's completely ordinary, and when people started calling it the song of the summer or one of the best singles of the year I COULD NOT FIGURE OUT WHY! As Max Martin jams go, it's completely unremarkable and the amount that people claim to love it is entirely disproportionate to what it deserves.

CRJ well on her way to winning that robyn fanbase of ppl who find actual pop obnoxious then!

"actual pop" seems to be an awfully mobile goalpost here

"cool for the summer" is near-perfect and how you respond to 0:44 may well be a good litmus test of how you feel about pop in general

is it normal for people to have the exact same arguments about chart pop that my friends used to have in high school about what was real goth and what wasn't, or is this that newfangled poptimism stuff i'm always hearing the kids talk about

Second time I heard Cool for the Summer is was def. more obnoxious. Still cool song though, once I divorce it from any context.

It's a little late to be song of the summer, though, just as Uptown Funk was too early. Maybe because last summer had two songs of the summer we're due for an off year.

I've been listening to it on a loop for the last 30 minutes and I'm liking it more than before, but I also agree with johnny crunch's assertion that "its not far from the return of Justice † (Cross)". If it had been released by someone on Ed Banger four years ago instead of by a Demi Lovato type in 2015, nobody would've given a care.

the instrumental of "summer" is nicely propulsive, and the vocal has some nice detail work, it's the try-hard lyrics that grate for me

and yes it def has some Justice qualities but I also hear that in "Boy Problems" (I think?), that hypercompressed bass sound

Cool For The Summer is the sort of thing I would like if it weren't for the gay baiting same-sex hookups as fun temporary summer diversion theme it has going on, which is pretty much the exact reason I didn't like I Kissed A Girl back in '08. Though Cool For The Summer is a better song than that one, I'll admit.

"cool for the summer" is legit

if it weren't for the gay baiting same-sex hookups as fun temporary summer diversion theme it has going on

Songwriters are obvs still grasping at straws about how to properly write about post-hetero/homo/bisexual themes in pop music (probably the same way a lot of listeners are). imo fuck who you want every day of the week.

simon h otm, especially the way that hyper-compressed bass is chopped up as a fill.

the †ey aspects of "cool for the summer" sound more like post-† "bloghouse" 07-09 imo, at best mstrkfrt or electro-era boys noize...mixed with early katy perry or maybe a little jessie j

imo the little woodwind-y synth trill before she starts singing the chorus takes it beyond a mere justice-style bludgeoning

how you respond to 0:44 may well be a good litmus test of how you feel about pop in general

This is interesting to me. Maybe you're right, but it's interesting that a heavy blues guitar lick would be a current litmus test. I guess licks like this suggest an electronic music lineage too now.

maybe there should be a demi thread huh

meant more the burst leading into the chorus

re: "cool for the summer" - the hard, snaking vocal glissando when she sings "body tyyyyyyyyype" blew my mind the first time I heard it. I can't recall this particular melodic trick being used in another pop song, so it sounds super-fresh to me. also just a brilliant hook.

Demi Lovato

yeah that little synth bloom before the chorus is the best part of the song

Also: it's not "I Kissed a Girl."

"cool for the summer" is near-perfect and how you respond to 0:44 may well be a good litmus test of how you feel about pop in general
― for sale: baby shoes, never worn your ass (katherine)

Fuck who you want and fuck who you like
That's our life there's no end in sight

Bicuriosity is a v problematic pop topic but nothing will ever be as bad as I Kissed A Girl for it

P sure no one comparing it to justice was in that sort of club in 2006

brb, telling my teenage self to go hang out in whatever "that sort of club" is so she can compare a demi lovato single to justice a decade later

I wouldn't recommend it tbh

Bring Back Uffie

No, please don't.

yeah nah. pre-cocaine casualty sebastian would be nice, though

I'm obv not srs

srs xmu

Warm Blood will be a huge hit with the famed Robyn crowd.

are there good remixes of 'run away with me'? i want to feel that sax line boring into my skull for 8 - 12 mins

are there good remixes of 'run away with me'? i want to feel that sax line boring into my skull for 8 - 12 mins

― goole, Saturday, August 8, 2015 2:50 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Remix EP out now. Only heard the Cyril Hahn which has NO saxophone.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/run-away-with-me-remixes-ep/id1028169451?app=itunes

i'm honestly speechless

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20898-emotion/

well that's frustrating

A couple of things. One is that the absence of personality is preferable to a distasteful personality. But I think the conclusion drawn in that review about Jepsen's personality as manifest in these songs is illusory anyway. And I would imagine that that's due to the fact that the personality in her songs is understated. Someone would have to do a lot more than that reviewer does to convince me that it's not actually there.

i don't understand at all how an artist like carly rae, who has such an acute understanding of emotional nuance, can make people burst with feeling and also lack personality

"The best pop stars distill attitudes and emotions into gestures so perfect they can take on a life of their own. This is why pop icons inspire endless memes: Rihanna for when we give no fucks, Beyoncé for when we're feeling imperial. We have Drake for performative vulnerability, Taylor for performative generosity. Jepsen, on the other hand, hasn't captured the Internet's imagination in the same way."

I think this is turning a very specific aspect of contemporary internet culture into the level of an eternal a priori rule for pop music, and it's very typical of the somewhat distorted way in which 2015 criticism actually engages with pop music, which I have been critiquing elsewhere (though pitchfork only conforms with this trend some of the time). Basically, the reduction of pop to:

1. meme culture; and, as an extension

2. a somewhat hamfisted social relatability.

This ignores the fact that in each case the artist who has "captured the internet's imagination" did so other than just through their music, and indeed the internet's imagination of the artist tends to reduce and distort what the music might relate on its own - does Rihanna really convey "zero fucks given" on more than a handful of songs? Or is this really just about her social persona?

The writer is implying here that it's the music that generates the memes but I think that's probably the minority of cases (albeit not exceptional).

In which case Carly is being punished for, what, not having an outrageous instagram feed? Not getting into beefs? etc.

Moreover, I would actually agree that Carly's music doesn't tend to highlight any particular notion of Carly as an individual who exists beyond the songs, but I don't think this is a problem: by getting out of the way, she lets the listener identify (or not identify) with the character of the songs without requiring that they first participate in a referendum on Carly herself.

Like, Carly has the relative advantage from one perspective which is that - unlike a Taylor - it's difficult to imagine her persona stopping the listener from engaging with the material.

I don't think one approach is better than the other - for example, part of Taylor's appeal in 2015 is the way that the sense of connection with her as an individual increases (owing to sheer accumulation, like a build up of connective tissue) from album to album.

But the idea that this is the yardstick by which pop music should be measured seems very limiting to me.

it's not just critics, though; critics are just mirroring fans and stan culture in that regard