Hilary Duff: Joy for pre-teens, not just Humbert Humbert

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (876 of them)

Yeah, it's just a euphemism for cultlike behavior (I think there are some connotations with Merry Pranksters/Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test there, too). The teenpop thing always seemed like a hivemind to me, not too different from a lot of other ILM hivemind behavior, with plenty of smart, free-thinking individuals involved but also toeing the line and promoting a certain ideology to some extent.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:09 (nineteen years ago)

(</(FAILED)JOKE>, then)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:09 (nineteen years ago)

Don't mean to keep prodding this along (oh wait, yes I do), but again, you've already mentioned by name about 40% of the people that even post there at all. There's no hive! If there are enough smart, free-thinking individuals to = "plenty," then it doesn't leave a lot of bees to choose from. (I don't know how the thread could even be coherent enough from day to day to even suggest an ideology, let alone actively promote one to anyone else.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:12 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, maybe my choice of words is just poor here and I'm implying a larger number of people and smaller range of opinions than there really is on the Teenpop thread. But I'm seeing at least a couple dozen different screennames posting multiple times on there, so maybe you're only talking about the core handful of people that post every day and I'm not. But I was never making a big to-do about counting exactly how many people post there (what I said before: "I think any thread that reaches posts in the quadruple digits qualifies as a craze/phenomenon, at least in ILM's little fishbowl, whether it's a thousand people posting once or five people posting 200 times"). I'm not saying it's a calculated movement taking over the world. But I think it might represent the new school of bad pop writing, where instead of ironic "guilty pleasure" hand-wringing, I see a lot of pious, worshipful enthusiasm like, I don't know, calling Lindsay Lohan's music "amazing" like you just did.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:22 (nineteen years ago)

Stuff that makes the Rolling Teenpop Thread different from other threads, aside from the music it covers (from the POV of a sympathetic non-poster):

- Focus on the nitty-gritty of sales, airplay, performance, how popular stuff is. This is a good thing, because i. the popularity of pop music is part of what makes it pop music, ii. since very few people keep teenpop acts under contract because of prestige, so the popularity materially affects whether the acts get to make more of it.

- Frank Kogan sets the stylistic tone for the thread - chatty, lots of questioning, interrogation, qualifiers. Quite a few posters follow this tone (it's not quite as simple as 'wanting to write like Frank' though).

- It's a very NICE thread: no image bombing, no snarking, not many one-liner dismissals - quite a lot of one-liner praise though. This is unusual on ILM these days. Even the complaints about unsuccessful teenpop tend not to be put-downs.

Also in common with the other Rolling threads it's positive and upbeat and doesn't waste time explaining who people are to the non-initiate.

All of this gives it the Hivemind/cultish aura to outsiders, though I agree there's nothing in it so strong as an 'ideology' (unless "thinking Teenpop is worth talking about" counts).

― Groke, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:26 (nineteen years ago)

I mean, look at the rolling snap/rap thread - I'd say there's a pretty broad range of opinions and thought processes between me, ethan, deej, m@tt, etc., but I wouldn't be appalled if someone pointed out that there are certain pervasive biases and accepted wisdom that get reinforced there. that's how this shit works! (xpost)

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

But I call Lindsay Lohan's music amazing because I listen to her albums constantly and think they're amazing! (And have gone into more detail elsewhere about it, and don't feel like repeating myself every time I make a statement like "Lindsay Lohan's music is amazing," since this doesn't seem to be required for any other threads in the fishbowl.)

And I wouldn't call my calling her "amazing" "good or bad" pop writing. I think my analysis of "I Live for the Day" on the 2006 thread was good pop writing; that Platinum Weird review you cited was mediocre-not-terrible pop writing; but my good-to-mediocre ratio has improved since I started writing about Lindsay, and the music writing on the teenpop thread is better than the majority of what I read outside of the thread. And I wouldn't say that "pious" or "worshipful" enthusiasm even remotely describes the overall tone of the teenpop thread.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:30 (nineteen years ago)

And I'm only appalled (not actually appalled) because I don't think you're really getting at what the biases and accepted wisdom really are. Here are a few: relatively little discussion about R&B, hip-hop, black artists in general, too much benefit of the doubt given to artists closest to the "core intended audience base" (i.e. Disneypop), not enough exploration of why Avril is so terrible and shouldn't be trusted (but that's MY personal bias). Oh, and not enough males being discussed, though the ratio has to be something like 10:1 as it is (the boys ain't bringin' it teenpopwise...Jonas Brothers get some consideration, I guess).

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:37 (nineteen years ago)

yeawh, sorry, i didn't mean to turn this into "you're a bad writer" stone-throwing, lord knows i'm in a glass house over here.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:39 (nineteen years ago)

You can call me a bad writer all ya want (I'll give you a head start if you like), I'm more interested in where the bad pop writing from the teenpop thread is. What I'm arguing here is that the writing on the teenpop thread is BETTER than the majority of music writing I read anywhere else.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:41 (nineteen years ago)

(Er, again, this is coming out very "name names"-ish, and I don't intend it to be. But the last sentence in that post^ is the important one.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:44 (nineteen years ago)

Saying that taking teenpop very seriously vs. ironic shits and giggled "might represent the new school of bad pop writing" was me worrying about a growing trend of critics adopting the authorial tone of a squealing 12-year-old girl, but that was a broader swipe; I don't blame the Teenpop thread for all Juli@nne Sh3ph3rd-type "omg omg!" raves. Besides, criticizing message board posts for being poorly written would be kind of harsh and unfair.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 17:49 (nineteen years ago)

(I love JS's writing, turned me on to "Lip Gloss," too, so maybe we're just at odds on this point. I don't think there are enough squealing 12-year-old girls in music writing; there are too many 19 year old boys.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:06 (nineteen years ago)

(And 24 year old boys. And 32 year old boys. 18-45 M)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:07 (nineteen years ago)

I see a lot of pious, worshipful enthusiasm like, I don't know, calling Lindsay Lohan's music "amazing"

Yeah, this is a really bizarre complaint -- As opposed to all the threads (rolling and otherwise) on ILM where nobody ever worships any music enthusiastically or calls it amazing? Where exactly are these threads?

I barely ever post on the rolling teenpop thread myself; as I've said there and elsewhere, I tend to lose the plot of the discussion going on there way too quickly, and there's a sense in which the discussion often strikes me as fairly insular. Though that might just mean that I don't have the energy to invest in thinking about that kind of music anymore, or even to listen to all that much of it these days. And unlike most other threads on ILM (and probably even more than the two rolling threads I do tend to post way more frequently on -- the country one and the metal one), the teen-pop thread is packed with thinking and discussion, dissecting really minute details of the music, in fact. So maybe that's what bugs people about it? That people actually stretch out and discuss the music? Maybe that's valid, maybe it isn't (personally I'd think discussion would be a good[/] thing, though yeah, maybe the teenpop balance can tip a little too heavily toward lyric interpretation for my own tastes, and I don't personally care about the personal lives of celebrities and probably never will), but as often as not complaints about the thread seem to take the form of questioning teenpop thread posters' integrity (e.g., they can't [i]really believe what they're saying about Lindsay or Paris or Ashlee or Avril, because I don't personally like that music, so they must be lying or brainwashed) or, worse, idiotic pedophilia accusations never grounded in anything anybody ever actually writes on the thread. Which is just pathetic. And somehow, ILM threads that are nowhere near as thoughtful (which is to say almost all of them) don't inspire nearly as much whining from outside. Weird.

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

I guess what it comes down to for me is that there seem to be some very fundamental differences between the kind of pop-happy crit-analysis that was omnipresent on ILM 5 years year ago, and the variation thereof that's taken on a life of its own in the Teenpop threads. And I have to admit I haven't tried very hard to hash out exactly what all of those differences are, other than that they leave a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, I love dissecting sales figures and hit songs in the Rolling US Charts threads, but endless Radio Disney stats? Yikes. Things weren't perfect back in ILM's early days, either, and I'm glad that there's less of a witch hunt for fun-hating rockists now, but those battles having been fought so many times seems to have crystallized people into camps like the Teenpop thread and its "lol paedophiles" detractors. It's just a weird state of affairs.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:14 (nineteen years ago)

endless Radio Disney stats

I really am missing how this stuff actually connects to the teenpop thread though! This is closer to describing the sandbox parody thread (whose main premise was that the teenpop posters were at best misguided dorks and at worst pedophiles). If you're talking about teenpop, you have to talk (a lot) about Radio Disney, because Disney BOUGHT ALL THE TEENPOP. In fact, finding the stuff where it isn't Disney-branded (or at least Disney tie-in'd) is nearly impossible, and usually this music makes for the most interesting discussions on the thread. Lillix, Fefe Dobson, Hope Partlow -- people steamrolled by the conglomerate monster that is "approved teenpop for kiddie masses."

And this only describes a small part of what we're actually talking about on there. It's not just inside-baseball stat-talk -- it's about what these stats (and what this music) might mean, personally, media institutionally, anthropologically, whatever the hell else-ally.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:19 (nineteen years ago)

Well ok I guess the 2006 thread was more heavy on playlist stats than the 2007 one but c'mon.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:27 (nineteen years ago)

I actually preferred the 2006 thread (which was a lot easier to follow, I thought.) (It was also, as a whole, possibly the best music criticism I read anywhere last year.) Though maybe this year I am just more lazy.

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:36 (nineteen years ago)

i just don't like this music. the people producing this music need to stop mastering. this stuff is like a nightmare for people who care about quality sound recording

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:45 (nineteen years ago)

...which is why shellac = my fav teen pop lol

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:45 (nineteen years ago)

people steamrolled by the conglomerate monster that is "approved teenpop for kiddie masses." (<--an example of bad pop writing. Unless the conglomerate-monster is also a steamroller-monster, that's a painful mixed metaphor.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:47 (nineteen years ago)

The compression/mastering argument is hardly limited to teenpop, nor are teenpop artists even the most egregious offenders (so I've read, I can't really tell the difference myself, having basically fallen asleep to Scott Walker the two and half times I tried to listen to it). So "this music" still requires a non-audio-quality categorization in this case. I bet plenty of the MySpacers and CDBaby artists discussed on the threads don't use the same mastering techniques of the artists on majors; I also bet that there are teenpop artists on majors whose albums are better mastered than plenty of non-teenpop artists.

Unrelated, but since I don't have major issues with mastering as it relates to sound quality (I'll fall in love with a single if I hear it exclusively on YouTube all year, f'rinstance), I don't really understand what it is exactly about poorly mastered/overly compressed music that makes it so unlistenable to the audiophiles. I (think I) understand it, but I really can't hear it. But that's for a different thread, I guess.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:57 (nineteen years ago)

*"it" in the last sentence being "compression," not "what makes it so unlistenable."

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 18:59 (nineteen years ago)

guitars sound distorted and compressed. it is a huge problem in lots of genres - the opening song to casino royale sounds like shit, and dr. dre's '2001' is one of the worst mastering jobs ever. But I've never heard a genre so consistently crappy-sounding. The guitars never hit like they're supposed to. i never feel it. it all feels very removed and clinical as a result.

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:04 (nineteen years ago)

yeah i'd say with teenpop, especially after The Matrix and Dr. Luke brought in all the jangly guitars, the extreme compression and flat dynamics are pretty much part and parcel of the whole aesthetic now. I know what you mean, but I kind of accept it as what it is. I've spent so much of my life listening to music on tape, terrestrial radio, youtube, poor quality MP3s and television that my ears just kind of adjust to the format.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:11 (nineteen years ago)

But for the most part, this is all older teenpop; there isn't a lot of guitar-based teenpop to speak of these days, and what is there I like (Ashlee, Kelly, maybe Aly and AJ). More of it's in a vaguely R&B/pop vein, where I don't think compression could matter as much, especially if the vocals are really processed (like in the new Aly and AJ song, actually, which has zero guitars and has plenty of vocodor).

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:14 (nineteen years ago)

unlike most other threads on ILM (and probably even more than the two rolling threads I do tend to post way more frequently on -- the country one and the metal one), the teen-pop thread is packed with thinking and discussion, dissecting really minute details of the music, in fact.

Oh, come on. There have always been a ton of crap threads on ilm, but the implication that the teenpop thread is some significant transcendent is ridiculous. There are plenty of good discussions.

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

I never said there weren't, Tim. But it's certainly one of the best I've seen lately.

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 19:59 (nineteen years ago)

I'm delighted a thread I started with a toss-off rewrite joke from the LA Times is getting so much mileage. Was there even a Rolling Teenpop thread in January 2004? Heck, I don't remember. I e-mailed Humbert Humbert and he can't recall, either.

― Gorge, Monday, 14 May 2007 20:09 (nineteen years ago)

i told the gaffer and he agreed, it was a travesty

― 696, Monday, 14 May 2007 20:10 (nineteen years ago)

Here's my rant - Alex, I don't know if this will resonate with your opinion or not.

For me, the song itself - the composition - is really the bottom line. And whether you like the guitar tone, the production job, the voice, whatever, that bottom line is ultimately going to matter.

So, what's striking for me about the teenpop thread is that I'm puzzled by what I can't help but feel is a refusal to acknowledge the mediocrity of the songwriting in a lot of that music. Perhaps even all of it. (Even that Lillix record that I kind of liked from last year - the best song on it is really kind of average. That song is not an all time classic.)

Personally, I think the real hot action in pop-rock is where it's always been - in the underground. And I don't understand the idea that "4Ever" is the best song of the year when a group like of Montreal does whatever "4Ever" does plus so much more in every fucking song.

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 20:44 (nineteen years ago)

And it's just not possible that someone else might hear Of Montreal's music as mediocre, right, Tim? Or that they might hear something in "4Ever" that you don't? (And maybe even that they might think the real hot action in pop-rock hasn't been in the underground for a long, long time, assuming it ever was?)

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:00 (nineteen years ago)

More to the point...what Of Montreal songs sound like "4ever"? (I really like a lot of Of Montreal, too, but "4ever" isn't really comparable to anything I've ever heard by them. For one thing, there are no sassy twin girls.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:02 (nineteen years ago)

(I mean, isn't it possible that, in that example, the big difference is the voice? I DARE Kevin Barnes to hit that high Eb, which I believe I once referred to as having been "demolished" by one Origliasso twin, and you agreed with me IIRC.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:03 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think "4ever" was the best song of last year by any means, but I listened to the one Of Montreal track I have (the one that starts off about Norway and death metal bands), and it had lots of good noises (horrible voice but I tried to listen through that!) but the Veronicas beat it into the ground in terms of immediacy of hooks and emotional directness. So maybe it's the "so much more" they pack in that makes them worse!

Obviously you may not want immediacy of hooks and emotional directness - I'm just throwing them out as grounds for not preferring Of Montreal!

― Groke, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:05 (nineteen years ago)

Well, I'd want to know why, Chuck - thinking of it in quantitative and qualitative terms. The minor pop transcendence that occurs in "4Ever" is, I think, very cliched. Of Montreal has far more pop transcendent moments in many, many songs and they are less cliched. So, I cannot help but wonder why people who I think are valuing the exact same things I'm valuing - these same senses of musical transcendence - are (it seems to me, anyway) settling for cliches and settling for music that ultimately doesn't really hit real moments of transcendence very much.

I think there's also an element in your response, though, that is telling me that I'm not supposed to question whether anyone's opinions are ever reactionary or not. I'm supposed to always accept that someone "hears it differently."

the Veronicas beat it into the ground in terms of immediacy of hooks and emotional directness. So maybe it's the "so much more" they pack in that makes them worse!

They have plenty of hooks that are just as immediate and their songs are not all that cluttered.

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:13 (nineteen years ago)

Of Montreal are actually one of my own teenage daughter's current favorite bands, for whatever that's worth. (Right up there with Xiu Xiu, lately. Though she's also been on a Donovan kick.) When I've listened to them, I thought they were tolerable, I guess. Nothing I'd ever listen to on my own, and nothing that stuck with me like "4Ever" (which I basically think is a pretty decent Donnas rip, nothing world-shattering, but I do like it.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:13 (nineteen years ago)

Of Montreal seem to have become fairly popular with TEENS.

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:16 (nineteen years ago)

Tim I think you may be getting the mistaken impression that people who like teenpop don't like other kinds of music. Of Montreal is better than 90% of the teenpop I've heard this year but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop talking about teenpop. I think it's also a more interesting field of inquiry than something like OM, which is great but strikes me as fairly closed-off. But when people have interesting things to say about them I'm always happy to read it, just like with H.Duff.

― Eppy, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:18 (nineteen years ago)

That's just cuz of the Outback Steakhouse commercial. The V's aren't big sellouts like Of Montreal is all -- they hardly even SELL in America!

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:18 (nineteen years ago)

More to the point...what Of Montreal songs sound like "4ever"?

Oh, I don't know. But it's all a part of the same big postmodern pop-rock stew.

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:19 (nineteen years ago)

Personally, I've yet to ever hear Of Montreal transcend anything. But if they transcend something for you (or my daughter!), Tim, that's wonderful. I'm not going to claim that you "refuse to acknowledge" that "4Ever" is somehow, objectively, better music. Because it's not.

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:19 (nineteen years ago)

(And for what it's worth, I've only heard ONE good teenpop album this year -- Hilary's -- but several good albums closer to Of Montreal, at least audiencewise and maybe soundwise...including Of Montreal's new album. Haven't listened to Jordan Pruitt yet, tho. My album of the year so far might be Pantha du Prince = SLOW YEAR; that should be hovering somewhere around 30 by now!)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:21 (nineteen years ago)

I apologize for my intemperate use of language. I'm just stating that the idea that teenpop championing might involve some sort of reactionary relationship with other musics has crossed my mind more than once.

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:22 (nineteen years ago)

Our intentions with your music are honorable, Tim.

― Eppy, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:24 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, but your flaw in the extrapolation here is that "reactionary relationship to ____" --> "teenpop championing." Like the former must precede the latter: "I hate indie/alternative/underground ethos/audience/whatever, therefore instead I choose to love this cliched crap instead." Whereas the two things in quotes are really just a general part of <insert teenpop thread poster>'s make-up as a critic. (And as far as warts-and-all goes, you get it with the people posting there as much as you often do with the artists they're posting about. There's something very honest about the discussion, which is why I get frustrated with insinuations that there's something inherently dishonest about our relationship to the music itself.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

I kinda thought Of Montreal *were* teenpop (I'm pretty sure that's how they'd have been classified in the 60's anyway). Not sure I get the distinction. It just seems very odd that of all the things in the world to pit against each other, it's OM vs. all of teenpop.

Speaking for myself, I'd totally dispute the idea that production and guitar tone are secondary to songwriting. I'm personally sitting on the edge of my seat right now waiting for the promised 18th Dye reunion almost entirely on the basis of guitar tone and drum production.

― dlp9001, Monday, 14 May 2007 21:30 (nineteen years ago)

It just occurred to me that I'd never really given "4Ever" a good close listen after it occurred to me that I liked "When It All Falls Apart" but had never really heard "4Ever" much and could only remember the chorus vaguely, and man, I honestly think it kind of sucks. I mean it's more or less identical to a couple songs I love, but even a side by side comparison of the sections (the best part of "U + Ur Hand" at the end of the chorus vs. "with you yeah yeah with you yeah yeah") is pretty unflattering.

I definitely wouldn't get into the whole teenpop vs. indie pop thing personally, but I do agree that it's all part of the same "postmodern pop-rock stew." I'd probably use a band with less fussy eccentricity than Of Montreal for basis of comparison, though -- a lot of indie-ish rock I listen to is pretty much straight-ahead power pop, and I get a much better anthemic pop-rock rush from Sloan or The Posies than most of this post-Avril guitar-driven teenpop. And even if I didn't want to hear old white dudes make the stuff, there's plenty of indie bands that do the girly pop-rock thing too (my personal favorite of the moment being a local band called Karmella's Game).

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:11 (nineteen years ago)

haha obviously a sloppy rewrite of that first sentence made it a redundant mess but you get the point.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:12 (nineteen years ago)

Skipping 776 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.