Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

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Dave, was the Meg & Dia reviewer the one who tried to imply that you were a perv for posting questions for Brie Larson - at Brie's invitation - on her MySpace? That guy was really foul, wasn't he? I wouldn't necessarily assume that the person doing the Ashlee-Smith news item reads us. He does have his head up his butt (or is it a she, in which case it's her butt that her head is up), not just 'cause he has an opinion I disagree with but because of the fake breezy know-it-all tone he adopts while having zilch in the way of worthwhile knowledge or insight. But I don't take it personally, though if he is reading this thread it's disheartening that one can do so and remain so thoughtless.

Anyway, there's lots of insecurity out there: don't know what it's all about, but I assume there's (1) the fear of not being hip (hence the breezy know-it-all tone); (2) the fear that one's hard-won critical stance in young adulthood is bollocks ('cause here are these teenpoppers making smarter music, or so some people seem to think); (3) fear of teengirl* sexuality; (4) fear of mainstream girls who are flaunting their sexuality while being insufficiently butch; (5) fear of the teen audience; (6) fear of the mainstream audience; (7) fear of being boring (hence the hardy-har smirking adolescent tone of some of these people, e.g. the ones who try to troll this thread).</paperback psychologizing>

*Interesting that it does seem to be all around teen girls. I never noticed anyone suggesting I was a perv for liking the teen Arctic Monkey guys who did "I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor" or for that matter back in the day liking the teen Spoonie Gee who recorded "Spoonin' Rap" or the teen Cure guy who recorded "Killing An Arab." (But I don't remember people giving me shit for liking Poly Styrene or Roxanne Shanté either, so maybe it's not that much a gender thing or a sex thing. The sexual insecurity is a cover for class insecurity, and the real issue is that Ashlee et al. belong to the wrong class, whereas Robert, Poly, Roxanne et al. don't. And Ashlee's violation is to cross that class barrier, as is ours. I'm just guessing; it's not as if the people who write these sneering tidbits include much in the way of psychosocial self-analysis.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:16 (nineteen years ago)

You've mentioned Jessica Sierra, for whom I've got no name recognition. Any favorite performances (then or since)?

I've liked several Fantasia tracks ("Hood Boy" and "When I See You"), and the previous Daughtry single ("It's Not Over"), but not the new one. I doubt that either of those singers will ever make a difference to me, but you can never tell. And as I've said I don't think if I'd been paying attention I'd necessarily have pegged Kelly Clarkson coming out of American Idol as being anything special other than a singer with a big voice and lots of spunk. She's really been a surprise.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:41 (nineteen years ago)

(That question was for Greg.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 17:42 (nineteen years ago)

Jessica Sierra: Season 4 contestant, BFF with Carrie Underwood. Eliminated during the top 10 week, unfortunately. Key performance is "Total Eclipse of the Heart" during the week of 11, "American #1's" (same week as Carrie's "Alone"). Come to think of it, it doesn't improve on the original either, but she's got chops and she brings the drama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5FtmhfDqmU.

I guess you seem to disagree Frank but Kelly's "Stuff Like That There" is probably still my favorite idol performance.

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 18:22 (nineteen years ago)

i was wonderin what u all thought of falloutboy

I like "Arm's Race" and like the newest one even more ("Thanks For The Memories") though Fall Out Boy don't yet mean much to me, but they surely belong on this thread. Lia, my ex's 14-year-old daughter, recently posted a MySpace bulletin of the songs she was going to listen to all summer. They were all the stuff from when she was 7 - not least of whom was *NSync - except the one current performer was Fall Out Boy.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 18:23 (nineteen years ago)

Greg, I like "Stuff Like That There," very impressive and hard to do, to update a style so well and seem at ease, but it's still just an excellent, assured version of stuff that's barely ever going to matter to me (not because it's from the show-tune era but because that's kind of all it is: a good spunky update from the show-tune era that isn't... well, it doesn't have the personality of either that era or this one, and it isn't "Murder, He Says"); it doesn't hint at what we're gonna get from Breakaway.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 18:40 (nineteen years ago)

Edd Hurt on the rolling country thread:

since I'm here, I thought I'd mention that the Mary Weiss record is a dog, retro, and the songs and the singing just lie there inert. terrible production values. she looks good, though, I mean she's nearly 60 and she don't look a day over 42, and she sounds exactly like Joey Ramone in drag.

(Unfortunately I agree, though I think with work or Auto-Tune or the right producer (Luke? Scott?) Mary Weiss could turn her current voice into something interesting, since I don't dislike the timbre.)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 18:52 (nineteen years ago)

According to Mediabase, over the last seven days Gym Class Heroes' "Cupid's Chokehold" is the most played song on Top 40 radio; Pink's "U + Ur Hand" is up to 10 and its spins are still rising strong; Avril's "Girlfriend" is the second-biggest gainer and is up to 14, though it's still getting fewer than half the spins of "Cupid's Chokehold." Biggest riser is Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" which jumped from nowhere to 34th.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 19:21 (nineteen years ago)

One of the local top 40 stations here in Atlanta plays "Cupid's Chokehold" constantly. I overheard a group of returning Spring Break high school kids talking about it on my plane flight back from Chicago last night. They were big fans. I am not a big fan.

― Greg Fanoe, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

*Interesting that it does seem to be all around teen girls. I never noticed anyone suggesting I was a perv for liking the teen Arctic Monkey guys

As much as I'd like to jump on this, I don't know if it's that they are girls so much as you are a boy, which matters in two ways: (1) nobody thinks I'm a perv when I say I like Ashlee Simpson, but plenty of people think I'm a perv when I say I like "MMMBop,"
and (2) when it comes to liking teenpop, my male friends are accused of pervery far more often than I am, even though my conversations are blatantly more perverted than theirs.

― Nia, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 20:58 (nineteen years ago)

greg u live in atlanta too? i have been listening to a shitload of radio for the past week since the hard drive with my mp3s broke, so i've heard a lot of that track (i think on it's the one with the hook from "breakfast in america", right? i basically hate it, except for the chorus. it's funny because when i first herd it i thought it was some kind of n'sync-ish black eyed peas/quasi-r&b thing like maybe jc chasez was trying 2 make a comeback, so i wz surprised to find out the singer was the fallout boy dude. he doesnt sound at all like the dude from "sugar we're goin down." i like that a lot btw, i would prob be into pop rock a lot moar if it got away from that singing style imo

― cankles, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 22:36 (nineteen years ago)

oops i meant 2 say '(i think on Q100)'

― cankles, Tuesday, 3 April 2007 22:36 (nineteen years ago)

This is a "paraphrase" of a Kelly Clarkson journal entry, according to the KC fanboard I occasionally visit:

"I know you've been waiting a while for this, so I'm thrilled to announce my new single from "My December" will be released to airwaves April 11th! It's called 'Never Again' and I'm so excited and I can't wait for you to hear it! I know this has been torture for you, waiting, and I hope you like the album. The album is the story of my life (intense, up and down). This is my favorite album I've done so far. It has some killer rock songs ,and some fun soul tracks, and a few slower, intimate songs, and it's all me! The album will be dropping this Summer (finally), and I'll be touring this summer too. I'm having a great day and as you can tell, I'm so excited today! THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT!!! WOOHOO!!!"

― Greg Fanoe, Wednesday, 4 April 2007 16:14 (nineteen years ago)

people think I'm a perv when I say I like "MMMBop," <

Really???

― dabug, Thursday, 5 April 2007 00:58 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know about anybody else, but the "perv" factor is still a big concern for me in my love of teenpop. At the airport on Sunday, I wanted to buy TEEN magazine to read on the plane, as it featured an interesting article about teen music/emo/whatever. Anyways, it was the perv factor that prevented me from buying it. Though when it comes to buying and listening to acutal music I'm pretty much inured to the perv factor (i.e. a year ago I was nervous to buy the Kelly Clarkson CD, now I purchase Hilary Duff, Jordan Pruitt, whatever CD's with no worries)

― Greg Fanoe, Thursday, 5 April 2007 01:27 (nineteen years ago)

Well, one thing that's interesting about this is that most of the artists we're talking about here are about my age. Like, it's OK if I actually wanted to date Ashlee Simpson.

I don't think "mainstream" anything is really that much of an issue, actually. Kids and young teens are often used as the catch-all demographic to project the fears of adults -- basically legislating for an agentless audience, an easy way to assert power when all else fails. Interesting to dig deeper in some of these issues, say, film censorship in the US, and figure out that, e.g., the censoring system is pretty much a front for Hollywood's lobbying groups and overseas negotiations about non-sensastionalistic BORING but actually much more important things like lightening quotas on Hollywood films abroad and encouraging copyright restrictions/enforcement.

Most criticism of teenpop and/or GROWN MEN (AND WOMEN!) who listen to it is doing something similar, using shrill non-issues so as not to have to confront the actual issues. Whatever they are. There's a bunch of em I'm sure, paperback psychology included. Except most people aren't consciously doing it like the MPAA, so they end up saying just about anything with no real consequence since no one holds them to what they're saying. Paris syndrome.

The Ashlee thing is waaaaay more insidious, though, because it presents an impossible position that no one could actually hold: you cannot think that Ashlee is both knocked unfairly and that it's "disheartening" that she's working with "somebody like" Robert Smith. It's shameless base-covering despite the impossibility of covering both bases (without saying something totally idiotic), which makes me wonder which "base" is being covered with the "more talented than given credit for" bit. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes from Ashlee mentions in places like the Voice and Paste (both by Frank), a sort of creeping suggestion -- coming largely from people who, if they don't post on the thread already, should be -- filtering its way into the let's-please-everyone-and-shit-on-em-too style that's so annoying and frustrating and pervasive, esp. when it comes to "coverage." (Maybe it is about hipness...so Ashlee's not hip, but thinking Ashlee's hip is kinda hip.)

― dabug, Thursday, 5 April 2007 02:10 (nineteen years ago)

Nia, aren't Hanson older than you?

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 5 April 2007 06:54 (nineteen years ago)

I think for Pitchfork "mainstream" is probably a big issue. My guess is that the guy who wrote the piece would have been plenty disturbed if Robert Smith were working with Mariah Carey or Phil Collins.

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 5 April 2007 07:02 (nineteen years ago)

You know, we're either going to talk about the piece or we're not, and I guess we are talking about it, so here it is. It's by a fellow, Paul Thompson, who's previously unknown to me. On the evidence of this piece he's someone who shouldn't be getting printed, but maybe he's young and will grow out of this sort of writing. And there's really scads of stuff equally bad or worse out there.

Ashlee Simpson Working With Robert Smith?!?!

I've been looking so long at these pieces of me that I almost believe that they're real

Plasticine-faced pop auteur and slept-on sibling Ashlee Simpson deserves a little credit; most prefab sprouts would've given up the ghost-vocals after an ill-timed late-night hoedown like hers. But Ash (or, more likely, Papa Joe) don't take no mess, and she's soldiered on, issuing the tough-as-nails I Am Me, taking a role in a London stage-production of Chicago, and, now, as EW.com reports, announcing a truly-bizarre but potentially cred-boosting list of contributors for her upcoming third album.

John Legend, Timbaland, the unfamous guy from the Neptunes, the dude from Keane that didn't go to rehab, perpetual should've been Kenna: the only eyebrow Ashlee's amassed agenda of collaborators raises is the absence of total whore Scott Storch (maybe Timmy shooed him off).

But when you add Robert Smith--yes, that Robert Smith, the one from the Cure/that poster in your bedroom from when you were 15--into the fray, you've tipped the scales of incredulousness. Is this an April Fool's joke, Entertainment Weekly?!

Maybe it's not so surprising after all; you may recall that Blink-182's self-titled 2003 effort featured a guest vocal from Mr. Smith (supposedly a longtime fan), or that the gents from South Park managed to coerce the seemingly-humorless Smith into slaying Mecha-Streisand in an early episode. But Ashlee Simpson-- more talented than she's often portrayed for sure, but still the co-author of "you make me wanna la-la"-- pairing with scene hero Robert Smith is perplexing at best, disheartening at worst. What results from the link-up remains to be seen, but something tells us we're still better off placing our wagers on Mike Watt and Kelly Clarkson.

In more pedestrian Smith news, the Cure will headline Japan's Fuji Rock Festival, going down July 27-29. And a note on their website hints at a few tentatively-scheduled spots: Hong Kong July 30, Singapore August 1, and a stop in Australia without a date attached.

Posted by Paul Thompson in album, collaboration, wtf on Mon: 04-02-07: 11:50 AM CDT | Permalink

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 5 April 2007 07:11 (nineteen years ago)

its the fucking devils work. There is not a teenpop musician in this day and age who hasn't been prefabricated.

― wesley useche, Thursday, 5 April 2007 07:24 (nineteen years ago)

At the airport on Sunday, I wanted to buy TEEN magazine to read on the plane, as it featured an interesting article about teen music/emo/whatever. Anyways, it was the perv factor that prevented me from buying it.

It's a few years ago now, but when I was really into uk teenpop I used to buy Smash Hits, CD:UK, magazines pretty regularly, and I never really felt like a perv. Don't remember getting odd looks. Maybe now I'm a bit older it would stand out more, or maybe I'd just be more aware of it? But it's not really an issue since I haven't seen a magazine of that type I'd want to buy recently, UK pop being in a hole still, or rather the UK media relationship to pop maybe being in a hole. Interesting to see that this came up on this thread, since you guys regularly get lazy and stupid slurs along these lines elsewhere on the board. Which means you must be doing something right! Anyway if I get a chance to listen to some of this stuff properly I'll come back and post.

― byebyepride, Thursday, 5 April 2007 07:25 (nineteen years ago)

I won't go over everything wrong with this, since you can see it for yourself. Several things jump out at me: (1) It's apparently disheartening to this guy that Ashlee's working with Smith but not disheartening to him that she's working with Timbaland, who's merely the most important man in English-language popular music over the last decade. (2) He doesn't say why it's disheartening. We're supposed to assume it is without his having to tell us why. (3) He doesn't think Shanks and DioGuardi are worth any cred. (I wonder if he knows who they are.) (3) He calls Storch a whore, presumably because he thinks that no one could have any legitimate reasons for working with Paris, Brooke, JoJo, Kelis, Jessica, etc. (Personally, I think Storch's 2006 was even better than Timbaland's, and that maybe one of the reasons Storch's music sounds so good is that he picks collaborators who he thinks can make it sound good.) (4) He doesn't give any reason why "You make me wanna la la" is a bad line; he just presents it as self-evidently bad (don't myself see how it's so different on its face from "She loves you yeah yeah yeah," which is a crucial line in what I think is John Lennon's best lyric). (5) He suggests that it's Papa Joe who is the real decisionmaker.

Points one through four just show that this guy is another conventional-minded mediocrity who got himself a journalism gig. Dog bites man; stop the presses. But point five is kind of interesting, because it shows him trying to maneuver through a couple of attitudes towards the mainstream pop world that ought to be incompatible: First, that it's music made by and for stupid people; and second, that smart, shrewd, people are pulling the strings. (At least that's what I read into this piece. Don't see that there's another way to read it.) And somehow Paul Thompson doesn't feel any dissonance in putting one Simpson in the role of shrewdie and the other in the role of tool.

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 5 April 2007 07:50 (nineteen years ago)

(That was a x-post; was referring to Paul Thompson's piece, not Alex's post.)

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 5 April 2007 07:51 (nineteen years ago)

I am a fan of this thread and the whole teen pop thread crew but buying Teen magazine etc is really a bit far gone

― A B C, Thursday, 5 April 2007 08:01 (nineteen years ago)

being gay is handy for sidestepping the whole perv thing, though it always amazes me when the accusations come from people who don't stint on the creepiness when it comes to indie-friendly girls or women, from smoosh to cat power and meg white

that poster in your bedroom from when you were 15

haha dude is old and hasn't got over it. i have only heard one original cure song btw (and that was on the diplo fabric mix of all things)

― lex pretend, Thursday, 5 April 2007 08:31 (nineteen years ago)

i don't know if people found it creepy when i was all like "mmm twink r'n'b" about chris brown, or when i talk about mcfly (whose appeal is entirely because two of them are hott, not beause of their music), though. i tend not to like too much teenpop by boys. well, there's not a great deal OF it, and what there is, is very...teenage boyish, ie either dumb toilet humour or emo whinings, both of which kind of repulse me.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 5 April 2007 08:33 (nineteen years ago)

I'll freely admit that loads of what I like about music is ALSO (i.e. not ALWAYS, and never ALL) about sex, or desire, or what Freudians call 'transference' (when you project a particular desire onto your analyst, and this becomes part of the therapeutic process, and yes that makes music my analyst, rather than the other way round). And I think people thought it was odd that I had a picture of Billy Piper c. 'Because We Want To' up on my wall for ages when I was working on my phd, but they probably thought I was weird anyway. But I don't know if that helps. Kelly Clarkson I definitely think is hot but JoJo not -- maybe something is policing all this in my head.

― byebyepride, Thursday, 5 April 2007 09:14 (nineteen years ago)

i think the thing policing that is jojo's unattractive blocky lego head!

― lex pretend, Thursday, 5 April 2007 09:24 (nineteen years ago)

My understanding of the Pitchfork news section is that it was a kind of 'pay yer dues' area for people who wanted to graduate to proper Pfork reviews. I don't know if it still works that way. My impression of the Ashlee/Robert Smith piece is of someone working very hard to get a particular style right and not even thinking about thinking through the content.

I really hate everything I've heard by the Cure since the 80s ended so I did indeed think AS working with RS was a WTF deal, but only because I expected her to have more sense.

― Groke, Thursday, 5 April 2007 09:30 (nineteen years ago)

The Pfork piece also neatly illustrates the need fans have (not just indie or non-mainstream fans) to believe or assume that the musicians they admire think in the same compartments they do.

― Groke, Thursday, 5 April 2007 09:35 (nineteen years ago)

The last album by the Cure is THE SINGLE WORST CD I HAVE EVER HEARD, now I think about it. Except inevitably typing that has made me want to hear it. I nearly broke up with C after she insisted on playing it in the house, like 3 times or something. Fair enough she had paid money for it, but still.

― byebyepride, Thursday, 5 April 2007 11:24 (nineteen years ago)

I am a fan of this thread and the whole teen pop thread crew but buying Teen magazine etc is really a bit far gone

I thought so too, which is why I didn't buy it. But I'm not sure why I thought it was more far gone than anything else I do.

― Greg Fanoe, Thursday, 5 April 2007 13:25 (nineteen years ago)

Nia, aren't Hanson older than you?

Isaac is, and Taylor technically (by one month), but Zac is two years younger. I don't get the same reaction if I talk about their "grown-up" albums.

― Nia, Thursday, 5 April 2007 14:39 (nineteen years ago)

i find the idea of timbaland working with ashlee far more disheartening, but interestingly so. disheartening because 1) i have finally 'got' ashlee's genius, and in my mind it goes in a completely different and possibly mutually exclusive direction to timbaland's (i find even the original of 'l.o.v.e' horribly clumsy and gauche, let alone the missy remix), and 2) timba himself is rather slappable currently. interesting because, despite all of that, ashlee and timba are still great people.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 5 April 2007 15:39 (nineteen years ago)

[url=[Removed Illegal Link] Sugar Shock column at Stylus[/url

― William Bloody Swygart, Thursday, 5 April 2007 17:36 (nineteen years ago)

Fuck's sakes: http://stylusmagazine.com/articles/pop_playground/sugar-shock-009-its-a-hair-thing.htm is Dave Moore's latest edition of Sugar Shock at Stylus, quite good piece about the role of hair in modern teenpop. Misses out on its usage in the video for 'Girlfriend', though, which is a bit of a surprise.

― William Bloody Swygart, Thursday, 5 April 2007 17:37 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, final version needed a haircut (yuk) as it was, but otherwise I woulda used Avril as an example of brunette to blonde implications, which seems to be rarer than the other way around in teenpop (though maybe Britney did this? But as I say, it is, or maybe was, different with Britney, the hair color didn't carry so much symbolic baggage for her). Funny that Avril does the opposite of Hilary, she's out to prove she's fun. Which isn't all that fun, kind of annoying really (just heard from Jimmy Draper that there's a LOT of "Girlfriend"ish material on the new one, so this is probably about as much of an overarching album/personality statement as Hilary).

― dabug, Thursday, 5 April 2007 21:54 (nineteen years ago)

and how about the redheaded title character in that video!?

lindsay's red-to-blonde, of course - not sure what to make of that (xcept i like her way more as red) - who else is redhead teenpop that i'm not thinking of?

― rossoflove, Friday, 6 April 2007 02:07 (nineteen years ago)

okay, so i came home from work the other day, intending to write a long-in-the-works blog post about recent indie (which should finally be posted later tonight - it includes a podcast that might serve as a useful roundup of some recent stuff in that vein for those who were expressing curiosity upthread) and got sidetracked in an extended and wide-ranging (mostly teen-)pop conversation with my roommate. he'd just returned from orlando, where he was hanging out with his nephews, aged 8 and 10, who knew all the words to all the current chart hits (he also turned them on to "neon bible" and soon they were annoying their parents with that too.)

this inspired him to look up the current billboard hits and itunes most downloaded lists - it was interesting for me to approach this stuff from the perspective of what's actually hitting the charts (which i'm usually oblivious to unless you guys mention it here), instead of just checking out and consuming the music as i encounter it on my own - and we spent a good while watching videos on mtv.com (so much better than youtube - quality-wise!)

for a long time we were debating the merits of "girlfriend" - he didn't like it, and complained about avril's new style (he might have even said something about her "selling out," which i just think is funny although it almost makes sense) and not liking the style of the track (the vocal processing in particular) - though i played him some skye (esp. "hypocrite"), which he liked a lot. (he said it made him like the avril less to know it was ripping off her style.) but i think after a while we realized that what really turned him off from the song was the fact that he'd first been exposed to it through the video.

which i have to say is understandable - the vid is appropriately day-glo trashy, but it sort of just makes avril seem really mean. whereas the song itself doesn't really have that much to say about the girlfriend (it writes her off with a couple lines - she's like, so whatever - and goes on to talk about avril herself almost exclusively - we don't even learn much of anything about the boyfriend.) the video, on the other hand, makes it seem like the song is all about vindictively degrading av's competitor. (and yes, her bitchiness is clearly part of the point. but we're sensitive guys in this apartment, and we like our pop stars to behave like decent, respectful individuals. or something.)

― rossoflove, Friday, 6 April 2007 02:19 (nineteen years ago)

Just read Freakonomics, which was disappointing in a whole lot of ways, main one being that it didn't actually detail the methods of statistical analysis that were used, so there was nothing about the process of discovery, just the results. But at the end it did have a whole section on trends in children's first names. Said that it made no difference one way or another to a person's success or failure in life whether he was given an apparently appropriate or apparently inappropriate name. But names were something of a social marker, so you could predict some things on the basis of a person's name (not because the name had an effect, but because the parents' socioeconomic position had an effect, and child names and parent socioeconomic position were correlated). Anyway, the authors also said that fashions in names were not celebrity driven - that Shirley Temple and Britney Spears were examples of trends, not causes of them. There was a name that made one of their lists (The Twenty "Whitest" Boy Names, the information being gathered in California a couple of years ago) that contradicts this, however, though they drew no attention to it: Dylan. There's simply no way that that name is not celebrity driven at the start.

But anyway, here's a list that I enjoyed:

THE TWENTY "BLACKEST" GIRL NAMES:

1. Imani
2. Ebony
3. Shanice
4. Aaliyah
5. Precious
6. Nia
7. Deja
8. Diamond
9. Asia
10. Aliyah
11. Jada
12. Tierra
13. Tiara
14. Kiara
15. Jazmine
16. Jasmin
17. Jazmin
18. Jasmine
19. Alexus
20. Raven

― Frank Kogan, Friday, 6 April 2007 04:32 (nineteen years ago)

"Spelled like Dylan Thomas?" "No, like Bob Dylan."

― da croupier, Friday, 6 April 2007 04:45 (nineteen years ago)

Lex, I love "L.O.V.E." - the chorus anyway - but I think it's generally beside the point in relation to what I love about Ashlee. And I agree that the Missy remix is a botch. And I too have trepidation about Ashlee working with Timbo since I'd hate her to try and be either an r&b bitch or an r&b vixen. The one and only Ashlee song that I'd actually say I dislike is a Japan-only track called "Get Nasty" which is just grating: "Get nasty, ah ah, get nasty aww." But another Japan-only track, "Fall In Love With Me," is wonderfully warm and sweet, and it's a gentle reggae track whose only flaw is that the rhythm accompaniment doesn't have enough of a dance to it. And I love Ashlee's singing on "Burnin' Up," which is a dub-r&b sendup, humorous but also having a subtly ambitious vocal line that's like a poppified variant of "Habañera" from Carmen. Again, the main drawback is clumsiness in the accompaniment. So this is something Timbaland could do, add some motion, if only he'd have the good sense to turn off his trademark weirdness and keep his mouth away from the microphone. (In Timbaland's "Give It To Me" Nelly Furtado delivers her most fetching vocals ever, and the atmosphere is both inventive and melancholy. But Timbo's own vocals are an ugly pain, and I wish someone would create a mix that erases them.)

― Frank Kogan, Friday, 6 April 2007 05:10 (nineteen years ago)

In the late '80s and early '90s the Australian Smash Hits used to pay me $100 a month to buy and send them teen magazines - Bop and Tiger Beat and Hit Parader etc. No one gave me a second glance when I bought them. I can imagine that reading those magazines on a plane might confuse the passenger next to me, however.

― Frank Kogan, Friday, 6 April 2007 05:23 (nineteen years ago)

Also, are the lyrics actually saying she's as serious as gravy? Is gravy really serious?

gravy is not serious. appropriate adjectives to use in similes with "gravy": heavy, thick, tasty, and good. however, "crazy" is not very serious either. "cancer" is serious, as we learned from rakim (who compared it to "a question" - and then didn't even rhyme it with answer, that's how good a rapper he was!) however, "cancer" doesn't rhyme with "babies." you know what disease does though? "rabies." now that's serious!

― rossoflove, Friday, 6 April 2007 05:29 (nineteen years ago)

Got the Jordan Pruitt CD from the library and I'm loving every second of it. I was saying upthread that the songs might not be up to her voice; that's even less of a concern to me now than it was then, since the songs are there to serve the voice rather than vice versa, and the arrangements give her voice the space it needs. The r&b songs seemed a bit wrong when I heard them on her MySpace. Now they sound fine. "We Are Family" sounds fine. She sounds good doing aches, she sounds good doing glides, she sounds good rooting her phrasing in the words, she sounds good scatting, she sounds good singing plain, she sounds good doing melisma. She doesn't overdo anything; it all sounds coherent, never forced. I'm not really conveying what it's like. Don't know how. She's 15 and is one of the most skilled singers in the world. That's ridiculous.

― Frank Kogan, Friday, 6 April 2007 06:03 (nineteen years ago)

Frank, I'm still loving the Jordan Pruitt CD too. In fact, now I can say that it almost definitely will make my top 10 of the year. But I still have the same problem, which is that I love the singing and the lyrics but find myself wishing the songs had stronger hooks.

OK, here's my attempt to convey what it's like: The joyful songs make me wanna jump up and down and the sad songs make me wanna cry. It runs an entire range of emotions in the lyrics and her singing is absolutely perfect, both in terms of sounding beautiful and in terms of interpretation and performance. She can sell drama and sell sadness and sell joy. Her voice sounds amazing and it still sounds convincingly "teen". She can inject a heartbreaking twang ("OLI"), or a forceful smash ("No Ordinary Girl") or a joyful lilt ("Jump to the Rhythm"). She makes it look easy. Her vocal performance on "Outside Looking In" was my favorite vocal performance of 2006. And it doesn't even stand out as particularly great on the album, which is crazy.

The lyrics are overdramatic and messy and not at all deep and literary and intellectual like Ashlee's are. They are conversational and teenage and just spot on. They could have just been ripped straight from a teenager's diary. It manages to be confessional, but there's only 2 breakup songs! There's a pervasive feeling of "me against the world". It's fairly thematically consistent, but mostly a big ball of contradictions and messes. (I guess I'm the only person who loves the lyrics though. Me against the world!)

If this album had better hooks to the songs it would be my favorite album since Breakway, at least. As it stands now it will be in my top 10 but most likely not number one.

Well that's my attempt.

― Greg Fanoe, Friday, 6 April 2007 12:16 (nineteen years ago)

And I just wanna say that I still really expect a stone cold confessional classic in Pruitt's future, the album that this almost is.

― Greg Fanoe, Friday, 6 April 2007 12:19 (nineteen years ago)

A scan of an amusing survey filled out by Carrie Underwood for Cosmo:

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l58/Mauraks310/cosmopage3.png

― Greg Fanoe, Friday, 6 April 2007 13:28 (nineteen years ago)

I need to listen to Jordan's CD (haven't heard it yet), but anyone who hasn't heard Kristy Frank should check out her CD from last year. Forget the name of the CD, but it's excellent and she has a great voice. Seems more bubblerock than Jordan's stuff I've heard, but she's got big R&B chops.

― dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 19:26 (nineteen years ago)

(CD's called Freedom, Myspace is [url=[Removed Illegal Link], little bit of twang to her voice, too)

― dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 19:28 (nineteen years ago)

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