Carly Rae Jepsen • Kiss

american top 40 radio is an impenetrable fortress that generally only opens for artists with gigantic budgets and a deep rolodex

she got on there with i really like you and it didn't work

between that and the massive release week press campaign, people definitely got a chance to make up their minds

Gotta say the praise culled by metacritic was relatively measured, of the b+ variety. Not saying people aren't waxing painfully rhapsodic - lord knows plenty of those reviews refer to massive hype - but I'd still love a link to someone begging for a corrective

what was the 'strawman' of the early oughts is 'the people i follow on twitter' today

Dude it was verrry easy to find overzealous reviews of albums in the aughts, trust me

she got on there with i really like you and it didn't work

I must have missed it. Radio hits are stylistically all over the place enough that I could quite easily see how it could work, I think.

good for you

Yeah, I guess. I don't know why you're insulted by my disagreeing with you, but I apologize if I could have phrased it more nicely.

Actually I won't qualify that with an "if" - I do apologize.

as much as it sucks to admit it, another point against CRJ is that she probably doesn't qualify for on the verge

hard to market someone as 'on the verge' when they've already had one of the biggest hits basically ever a few years ago

that promo doesn't always turn the pop format selections into hits anyway -- i actually kinda like when it doesn't

yes, that was in fact what I was getting at

sorry

nah it's cool

so is "Black Heart" the song of the year or

Y Kant Max Read (Stevie D(eux)) wrote this at 2015-08-23 15:53:36.000

Yeah this song makes me feel like I'm in a tj maxx commercial on very good acid.

so many songs that didn't initially stick out are complete earworms

like this week it's I Didn't Just Come Here To Dance

the numbers on emotion are pretty interesting. it debuted at #16, but songs from it were streamed 1m more times than the disturbed record, which was this week's #1 (it was mid30s in streams overall, near fall out boy and a couple of other pop megastar types).

hijack you hijack you i love you i'm

so, who managed to get tickets to her NYC show?

i did

oh damn i figured the bump would be for this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJa0qPRtPiI

And I thought it was going to be about the new Marianas Trench single.

Or the fsct that she's been cast in Grease

Despite the fact that Frenchie doesn't have any songs in it.

bleachers track is a little weird, would've preferred to hear her sing over the original instrumentation rather than a remix

the charli and tinashe covers on that record are AWESOME though

For as much time as I've spent listening to CRJ this year, I'm just now listening to Call Me Maybe again for the first time a very long while. It sounds so simple compared to much of what's on the new album. Not bad simple. Just not fussed over in any capacity.

I think KISS is a way better album

I don't know if I agree with that, considering there are songs on Kiss that I absolutely hate and none of Emotion that I don't like. Emotion is maybe just more "worked on" if that makes sense.

I went back and bought Kiss for the first time in between hearing the EMOTION leak and waiting for my pre-order to show up. The newer songs are significantly more thought-out.

it's not even a question to me that kiss is better. seems more present, so much more popthrill. a couple of duds don't really bother me

i don't really listen to anything on it beyond CMM and I Know You Have A Girlfriend but those two are probably better from a popthrill perspective than anything on the new one (as much as I love the new one)

I think Emotion makes more sense as an album and says more about who CRJ wants to be understood as, but I prefer Kiss as a flawless compilation of potential singles.

There are no duds on Emotion for me (maybe "LA Hallucinations" if I was feeling grumpy) and several on Kiss - the highs are high on both. Newer album a clear winner.

A lot of Kiss seems dated to me now, just very 2012. Still good, but Emotion is such a clear step forward to me.

i don't blame a 2012 album for sounding like 2012! i'm sure in three years emotion will sound ~very 2015 (even more so, maybe), but that's not what it stands or falls on for me

i didn't think kiss sounded like 2012 at the time and i don't now

"dated" always a weird description to apply to any record released within human history

"Dated" is generally the most useless criticism to apply to any artwork.

Also, I guess I'm alone here, but I don't feel far enough from 2012 to know what 2012 sounded like yet (at least as wholly distinct from 2013, 2014, 2015...)

right, that too

kiss is so much better than emotion that this conversation is actually insulting to our collective intelligence

lol i prefer emotion but only slightly

Did I miss the meeting when "popthrill" was introduced as a word/feeling?

Anyway, if that means what I think it means, there are possibly more popthrill moments on Kiss than on Emotion, but when I think of music being thrilling I also think of that feeling being temporary.

there's a few tracks on Kiss that are probably more immediately thrilling than anything on Emotion but it doesn't really sustain that, while Emotion is great the whole way through (except maybe LA Hallucinations)

Did I miss the meeting when "popthrill" was introduced as a word/feeling?

it's like music's "mouthfeel"

Eew.

j0 otm. I don't know of any duds on KISS either. even the kinda corny bieber/owl city tracks are alright by me.

popthrill used perfectly by lex

I think Emotion makes more sense as an album and says more about who CRJ wants to be understood as,

― boxedjoy, Wednesday, October 7, 2015 5:24 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk, emotion just sounds more serious/mature in its production choices but i don't feel more clued into who she is or w/e. The themes are the same, lyrics more or less on a similar level.

"dated" = this sounds very of its particular musical moment and I'm not thrilled by that sound anymore.

Also records inherently being ways of understanding Who The Artist Is? and then judging the quality of the record on whether it succeeds at telling you about them is way more useless a piece of criticism imo than saying saying something's sound is dated. Like that's just you talking about yourself while pretending to talk about the artist.

Yeah, your explanation of that use of "dated" is articulate. I think the thing for me is that the word maybe implies that there used to be a way of doing things and now we've found a better way. I like to think of sounds as being neutral, though. If I'm producing a record, I might think, "Well, I'm not going to opt for Choice X because there's a new bit of gear and I think it sounds better." That judgment is relative to what I happen to be going for, though. The sound itself is neutral and someone else might choose the old bit of gear for different reasons.

can we maybe stratify ilm so there's like an ilm 101