Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

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"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)

grrrr http://myspace.com/kristyfranks

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

(and when I say big R&B chops, I don't mean she sounds R&B at all. Uh, big ballad chops? What's the non-r&b equivalent chopwise?)

dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 19:29 (nineteen years ago)

Why is the myspace Kristy Franks when her name is Kristy Frank?

Greg Fanoe, Friday, 6 April 2007 19:37 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, that's really weird.

dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

Skye w/ Rancid, "Who Would've Thought" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC70bAPl4Bg...seems like it's a little low for her, fun song tho.

dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 20:12 (nineteen years ago)

I xeroxed the interview Cosmo did with Ashlee in late '05; quiz was shorter than the Carrie but more revealing ("I've been in love: a. Once. Ryan!" [This was after they'd broken up.] "The three most important things in my purse are: American Express Card, Lip Gloss, Sunglasses" [though I will never again be able to think about Lip Gloss without remembering Hazel's saying over in Jukebox "its only purpose being to make your face sticky and give you the appearance of having had some terrible glass-blowing accident"]) Cosmo interviews remind me of what Lester Bangs once said about Eric Burdon; they're irrefutably short. But she got some good lines in: "Q: What's a red flag for you with guys? A: When he has Us Weekly at his house. Q: What body part are you happiest with? A: My boobs. I have amazing boobs. I do. I know it."

Frank Kogan, Friday, 6 April 2007 21:02 (nineteen years ago)

I wish someone would create a mix that erases them

rossoflove did this very thing on his '06 mixtape (sort of...he basically just cuts it off after Nelly).

The part w/ Nelly: http://www.snapdrive.net/files/169338/OhSixFirstHalf.mp3

The part w/o Nelly: http://www.snapdrive.net/files/169338/OhSixSecondHalf.mp3

dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

(woop, Timbo's still on it a little. But he fades out into Spank Rock.)

dabug, Friday, 6 April 2007 21:23 (nineteen years ago)

Ignore this post (I'm just checking to see if Stevie Nicks is like a cat in the dark or if she is the darkness< > ' " ` ! { }) (actually, testing to see what will cause an Illegal Link).

Frank Kogan, Friday, 6 April 2007 23:39 (nineteen years ago)

I'm listening to Jordan Pruitt's "We Are Family." I assume she knows nothing of the song's gay subtext, so the subtext and the sadness of AIDS isn't the reason there's a hint of melancholy in the way her voice sometimes descends and breaks. That's just how she sings. And the deep pounds from the drums are there because Keith Thomas felt that deep pounds made sense in relation to the overall sound, I assume. But the pounds and breaks are there, so I go to the track more for something deep and haunting than for the celebration. Or for the celebration of something deep and haunting.

(*I'm surmising based on her association with Robin Scoffield and the manner of her tribute to God in the album credits that Jordan is an evangelical Christian, though I'm making a lot of not-necessarily correct assumptions, not just about her but about what her being evangelical would mean in regard to her attitude towards gayness [actually, my guess is that rank-and-file evangelicals are more conflicted about gays and gay rights than their antigay spokesmen are, and another guess is that the evangelical movement will be less unified on this issue in the next few years than it's been in the past].)

Frank Kogan, Saturday, 7 April 2007 00:44 (nineteen years ago)

Excellent article about the pre-production through post-production stages (and more generally a tween-media think piece) in this weekend's NYT Magazine. It's not online yet, but I'll link it when it is...it really sidesteps almost all of the condescending/cynical approaches that ruined a lot of HSM coverage (probably because Nick is like the "benevolent conglomerate" to Disney's Death Star).

dabug, Saturday, 7 April 2007 15:55 (nineteen years ago)

*pre through post-production of a new Nick sitcom.

dabug, Saturday, 7 April 2007 16:02 (nineteen years ago)

Biggest teenpop news of the weekend: Tarantino namedrops Lindsay Lohan in his section of new exploitation double-feature Grindhouse. This is big big big big. If she's not in talks to do one of his movies within the year, I'll eat somebody's hat (I don't own any hats).

dabug, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

So anybody have any thoughts on "Nobody's Perfect" or "Make Some Noise"? I like them both OK but find them both comparatively mediocre to the best songs from Hannah's album.

Greg Fanoe, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:53 (nineteen years ago)

via email:

Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 22:14:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Mike Saunders"
Subject: anyone else been using the BUBBLEGUM DANCE site (eurodance a la AQUA etc) that went up this winter? 60+ acts already on there


http://www.bubblegumdancer.com/index.htm

i didn't see a single mention of this site on ILM (a couple weeks ago when i checked)
it's new, and went up maybe 3, 4 months ago (late 2006) put up by a NEW ZEALAND poppy-eurodance (ie, Aqua, Toy-box) fan.

who at long last and finally gave the far-left-wing-of-Eurodance (which always begrudgingly let Aqua/etc into the far fringe end of their dumb same-4-damn-chords-forever genre, included the style on their web sites/reviews/links etc) a proper name --

BUBBLEGUM DANCE

the site is like whoa

i stumbled across it when i was trudging through the ILM "europop" laundry list (several years old now) thread (looking up/auditing it song by song with YouTube...which takes 10 mintues/song to load on my fucking dial-up! soon to be replaced by DSL/AT&T when i finally buy a new hard drive with proper memory space required to drive a DSL)

and hit one great song with
Kim Lian's #1 2003 Dutch hit
TEENAGE SUPERSTAR
checked the bio on Wikipedia
then wandered into the full page by the guy who'd put up the song's video
(since 86'd by the major label(s), who seem to do their "Youtube purges" even
in Europe! jeez)
and that led me to the wonderfully daft/catchy

DJUMBO "Undercover"
ok, i checked THEIR Wikipedia bio and
but did it through Google, which is a good habit to have because then you notice the 2 or 3 links/lookups below the top Wikipedia google page you're going to

annnd there was the BUBBLEGUM DANCER site
just days later it disappeared, and its "cached" pages started to get mulched when Google was proceding into updating the same
no explanation given on the sites "message board"

but a few days ago it came back up!

the new world musical order has now officially begun

xhuxk, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

whoa that 'Rhiannon' video is incredible

also I looked up that beauteous little woman who was in the tim armstrong video someone posted. i'd bang her till her freckles fell off. she's legal, right?

cankles, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:55 (nineteen years ago)

The Pruitt record is more cohesive, driven by a greater singer/talent, and has more expressive lyrics, but it's just not the powerhouse of hooks that the Tisdale record is. Both are great, but Tisdale's is still the 2007 frontrunner for me.

Matt Armstrong, Saturday, 7 April 2007 22:15 (nineteen years ago)

Kim Lian's excellent "In Vain" got unfairly dismissed in the Jukebox back in the olden pre-blog days. http://youtube.com/watch?v=DoZZoLli8Ec

dabug, Sunday, 8 April 2007 01:47 (nineteen years ago)

Matt, I may feel the way you do - at least that the best of the Tisdale is thrilling me in a way that the Pruitt isn't, though the worst of the Tisdale pales out in a way that the Pruitt doesn't, either.

Btw, though I worry that today's kiddie dance/r&b is generally more boring than the teen confessional stuff it seems to be displacing, the Pruitt album demonstrates that r&b and teen confessional are hardly incompatible.

Frank Kogan, Sunday, 8 April 2007 05:22 (nineteen years ago)

whoa that 'Rhiannon' video is incredible

Like Grace Slick fronting the Yardbirds or the Velvets, but better.

Frank Kogan, Monday, 9 April 2007 03:51 (nineteen years ago)

I'm disappointed by the new Hilary. The move to dance doesn't bother me conceptually, but the whole thing feels very lifeless, and the songwriting just isn't there. It's not bad by any means, and I enjoy it, but it's clearly my least favorite of her albums. After listening to it today, I listened to Metamorphosis, and was reminded of how strong that record is from start to finish: vital, loud, invigorating.

Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 17:50 (nineteen years ago)

Three new songs up on Hope Partlow's MySpace page; accompanying herself on acoustic, overdubbing harmonies. Her singing is as strong and effortless as ever; I'd call the style singer-songwriter pop (whatever I mean by that). "Try" is about trying to break through to some guy she likes (an ex? a partner in a relationship that isn't working?); one can also read it as a metaphor for trying to break through in her singing career. [For newcomers to the teenpop and country threads, Partlow is a teenager with a wide vocal range and with breeze in her singing; had an album out on Virgin that didn't sell big, and shortly after it came out the fellow who'd signed her (I don't remember: was he the president of the company?) lost his job, and she was dropped by the label.] "Here To Stay" could be heard as a kissoff to an ex - "You don't know about, you don't care about, anything about me/So get out of my life, out of my way, I don't care what you say/I been losing this fight day after day, I'm now back in town, 'cause baby I'm here to stay" - but actually this one sounds as if it really is directed at the record biz. "When I signed up to play your little game/I never had expected it would turn out quite this way/You dresssed me up pretty, I was hangin' by the strings/Waiting waiting waiting for the next big thing/You don't know about, you don't care about..." My favorite of the three, "A Day In My Life," has a cabaret-style melody in the verse (that is, harkens back to '40s jazz pop) but sounds looser and less mannered than that implies; then the chorus is a rock 'n' roll type wailer, and the instrumental break goes into minor-key strumming while she puts forth with a bunch of Cossack "heys." Words are about how varied and interesting her life is, though they're not strong on specifics. I'd rank her melodies and words a bit above serviceable, except this ranking doesn't convey her ease and appeal, the knack she has for covering a lot of ground while appearing just to glide along. Whether she ever scores big hits or not, I still don't see how she can miss as a singer. She just does it too well.

Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 10 April 2007 22:43 (nineteen years ago)

hung out with some cousins, aged 8 and 5, in d.c. this weekend. lily (the 8-year old) and i listened to her copies of the ashley tisdale album and jojo's newest on the little pink boombox in her room. (actually, her mom took her copy of the tisdale album and burned her a copy with "he said she said" removed.) her cd collection also includes hilary's metamorphosis, the earlier jojo, and the soundtracks to cheetah girls 2, jump in, and (of course) high school musical soundtrack - both regular and deluxe editions (the deluxe basically has bigger packaging and a disc of instrumental/karaoke versions.) she wants to get the vanessa hudgens and corbin bleu albums (do we know anything about the latter?)

i ordered a copy of the family a copy of the second amy diamond album - which, by the way, is now available for &#8356;4.99 from cdwow.com, with free international shipping (!) (for those who haven't heard it, well, it was my #7 album of 2006, if that's any recommendation.)

rossoflove, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 02:47 (nineteen years ago)

that's cdwow

rossoflove, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 02:48 (nineteen years ago)

oh, whoops, no, that's a pound sign

rossoflove, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 02:48 (nineteen years ago)

Some finesse on chorus turnaround chords, some standard teenpop rock production applied to "Here To Stay" and it would be massive.

i, grey, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 06:47 (nineteen years ago)

Surprised to be the first to post here about Kelly C's new single "Never Again", a remix of which was leaked to the internet yesterday: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ICzvijj-Uak. On first listen it seems to have lyrics that are as dark as ever, and has a nice melody. Supposedly, the actual version is sent to radio on Friday and is very rocking, and I'm looking forward to hearing the real version. I like the remix enough, anyways.

Greg Fanoe, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 19:24 (nineteen years ago)

OMG listening more closely to the Fefe album I am realizing why it was never released: lyrically, it is very sensual/sexual and she pretty much comes out of the closet on "If I Was a Guy" and "Miss Vicious," no?

Dimension 5ive, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 19:32 (nineteen years ago)

Eppy sent me a link to the Hollywood Pop Academy, asking if there are any precedents. I don't know much about Skye Sweetnam's Pop Star Camp (she wanted to go to snowboarding camp, her mom signed her up for PSC, she covered Britney and cut a demo and the rest is history) but I imagine it was a Canadian equivalent of sorts.

Also interesting is that LAX Gurls (formerly LAX (I think), who are like the good Cheetah Girls but haven't been pushed on Radio Disney yet despite their incubator feature) are one of the most prominent Hollywood Pop Academy graduates. They were just mentioned over on Poptimists, possibly a track in the fascinating but hard to follow League of Pop.

dabug, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:07 (nineteen years ago)

I want Kelly to scream 'Does it hurt?' even louder(I'm fond of the angry Kelly(SUBG Live)). Good song and I can't wait to hear the real version. Much better than the one she sang at the nascar event.

MRZBW, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:15 (nineteen years ago)

Big night over at Radosh.net, where Clique -- "the youngest group in the history of popular music" -- was featured as neo-Huckapoo (Radosh.net is unquestionably the greatest Huckapoo fansite on the net). I like "The Girl Who Rules the World" OK and they're approaching No Secrets uncomfortableness (cf. "Hot") on "Worth the Wait." Stage(?) Names: Destinee, Paris, and Ariel Moore). Producer: Sal Dupree. Musical influences:

Backstreet Boys
Mariah Carey
Christina Aguilera
Green Day
Destiny's Child
Kelly Clarkson
The Click 5
Jessica & Ashlee Simpson
Hilary Duff
Miley Cyrus
Jo Jo
Fergie
Ciara
R Kelly
The Go-Go's
Boys 2 Men
NSYNC
Usher
Chris Brown


(i.e. BEST EVER)

Anyway, this also led to:

STAR GIRLS FROM PLANET GROOVE, an Australian girl group of varying quality and body type.

Tiffany Evans, featured with Ciara on the Kids' Choice Awards and kinda sounds like mini-Ciara android-diva. Has a prude-pop track a la "Dignity" and "Not Like That" called "Girls Gone Wild."

I'd like to hear this Kelly C song in its original version. Melody/mood-wise it bodes well for the album, I think, but the dance remix doesn't do for this song what "Come Clean" remix did for the original. Seems kind of at odds with her vocals, which deserve a little more agony surrounding them.

dabug, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:44 (nineteen years ago)

Er, Radosh.net.

dabug, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:45 (nineteen years ago)

Trying to find that No Secrets song and I accidentally stumbled upon the new companion video to the last Sugar Shock column.

dabug, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:48 (nineteen years ago)

Order I rank the five American Idol Latin Night performances I looked at on YouTube (I skipped Phil and Haley and bailed on Chris):

Sanjaya, Melinda, Jordin, Blake, Lakisha.

Seriously, Sanjaya was the only one who connected to what he was singing - which is astonishing. Melinda and Jordin got the notes and the rhythm but couldn't find a feeling, Blake seemed like a walk-through, Lakisha like an alien - which is what I'd normally say about Sanjaya, but I just YouTubed his audition segment and saw him comfortable and compelling doing Stevie Wonder. Simon generally OTM except he was inexplicably kind to Blake. Greg said over on the AI thread: "From a performance standpoint that was possibly the worst AI episode I've ever seen (up there with 00's night from season 5). Fairly entertaining though."

J-Lo was very appealing; yet as a coach she obviously couldn't motivate the performers.

Overall I'd say that it's between Melinda and Jordin, who's got a shot at an upset, but Sanjaya being the wildcard, he could take enough votes from her to keep her out of the final. Maybe I'm underestimating people's love for the big voice, but I don't think Lakisha has a shot at winning. Could sneak into second, though. I think Melinda wins but in the long run Jordin sells more records.

Frank Kogan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

I think Melinda wins but in the long run Jordin sells more records.

I'm not sure about Melinda winning - as she seems to be doing Lakisha, but less so. So maybe people will find her more physically appealing, but I don't know why she'd win and Lakisha wouldn't. I'm hoping for a Jordin upset, but the people I've been watching AI with me agree with you about Jordin's post-AI career. She clearly has enough fans that she'll sell records. Actually, I think Blake will have a sustainable post-AI career too. His voice hasn't proven to be tremendous, but he's suave and sexy - and he reminds me of a beatboxing Justin Timberlake. I don't understand why Chris, Phil, or Sanjaya are still in. I guess I understand Sanjaya's physical appeal - but his voice is gross.

Mordechai Shinefield, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:05 (nineteen years ago)

xpost

Frank, I entirely agree with that ranking of the 5 performances.

1) Sanjaya, 2) Melinda, 3) Jordin, 4) Blake, 5) Phil, 6) LaKisha, 7) Haley, 8) Chris. Chris and Haley were godawful, though Chris was inexplicably praised. Even Sanjaya was just OK. Agreed with Simon a lot more than usual last week, other than his love of Blake and Chris. I suspect LaKisha is in for a "shocking" early elimination, a la Jennifer Hudson.

Next week is Country Music week, which is always interesting, as Simon hates country music, and there are no country singers this year. Martina McBride the celebrity vocal coach. Jordin seems likely to adapt well and Chris's nasaliness shouldn't hurt him here, as he can find plenty of touchpoints for nasaliness in country. I suspect Melinda will do a technically flawless but boring rendition of some old country tune, Jordin will do Faith Hill or Shania, Chris will do Rascal Flatts, Blake will do some alt tune or Gary Allan.

Greg Fanoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:11 (nineteen years ago)

The reason I think Jordin has a shot to upset here is that she seems to have the most adaptable voice. She seems like she could do a credible job at almost any genre and at music from almost any time period, whereas Melinda and LaKisha (and everybody else to some extent) seem much more beholden to one particular singing style.

The reason I think Melinda will go farther than LaKisha is that, IMO, she is a better singer and more skilled interpreter.

Greg Fanoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:13 (nineteen years ago)

Simon doesn't necessarily hate or love any kind of music, he notoriously predicted Carrie Underwood's success. He just loves $$$$$ and country music is a good way to get that cash baby.

Dimension 5ive, Thursday, 12 April 2007 20:33 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think Melinda is always boring; she takes risks with tempo and sometimes she'll put her phrasing against the expected rhythm. So she could do something with country, which has material that veers towards soul.

If Blake has sense he'll do "King Of The Road."

Frank Kogan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 21:08 (nineteen years ago)


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