Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

Another interesting topic might be the way that country utilizes the child-abuse trope. Child abuse has been the subject of songs (T. Graham Brown "Which Way to Pray": "A little girl down on her knees/Saying 'Now I lay me down to sleep/Lord bless us with a happy home/And please make daddy leave me alone'"). Hank Snow had been an abused child, and he spoke out about child abuse, but as far as I know (which isn't very) he didn't make it an integral part of his image. Whereas in modern teenpop - Pink, Ashlee, Lindsay - singing about their suffering (don't know if there was abuse or just the usual divorce and/or abandonment) is an integrity move, something that's supposed to give songs and singers depth. (Which doesn't mean that it isn't gutsy, especially Pink's Missundaztood!.
Ashlee's "Shadow" is a powerful song, but there are things in it that feel wrong to me.)

(This year on P&J's abandoned child front, M.I.A.'s said that she entitled her album "Arular" (which is her dad's political alias, just as "Lenin" was Vladimer Ilyich Ulyanov's poltical alias) in the hope that he'd see it and get in touch with her. That was one reason, anyway.)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 19th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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Listening to Linsay Lohan now. Kinda thinking that way too much of it sounds like the single! The Cheap Trick cover is okay. I like the new wave synthesizers in "A Little More Personal." Beyond that, I dunno. I definitely I think I prefer Linsay more when she's LESS personal. (Oh wait, "If You Were Me" is on now. What a bouncy little bassline:) But she may have no more business doing ballads than Gretchen Wilson.

I really liked a disco song Hilary Duff did last year that Metal Mike sent me the video of, but I forget its name. Thought both of her actual albums were okay, but not okay enough to keep them. Never heard the greatest hits CD. May still have a soundtrack that's half songs by her and half songs by other people in the storage garage.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 19th, 2005.

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There could also be a goth influence on country via Stevie Nicks (he says as Lindsy Lohan's seemingly quite good "Edge of 17" cover plays) or via Metallica (as in, say, harmonies on the first Big&Rich album). (What as Kim Carnes's and Bonnie Tyler's connection to goth, anyway?)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 19th, 2005.

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but which teenager doesnt over share, the adults around her should say something about it no?
we keep forgetting with the tits, and the voice, that lohan is still basically a child.

-- anthony easton (anthonyeasto...), December 19th, 2005. (anthony)

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"Who Loves You" on Linsay's album bounces too! I just may need to take more time with all those big bloated confessional slow ones.
(I really know nothing about her life, so I'm staying out of that discussion. She was really entertaining in *Mean Girls,* however.)

(By the way, speaking of lives, Frank, you know Ashlee supposedly collapsed after a show in Asia late last week, right? Last I heard, on Saturday I think, she was still being hospitalized. Hope she's OK.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 19th, 2005.

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Lindsay is old enough to join the Marines! Old enough to fight, old enough to direct your own video, I say. (I really don't know enough about the biz to know how such decisions are made.)
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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(Ashlee's back in the U.S. with her family. Official reason for the collapse is exhaustion.)
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 20th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

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>I really liked a disco song Hilary Duff did last year that Metal Mike sent me the video of, but I forget its name.<

'Twas "Wake Up."

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 21st, 2005.

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(By the way, if anybody's interested, Lindsay Lohan does "I Want You To Want Me" better than Cheap Trick ever did. It was never even close to one of their best songs, I've always thought, but then again, not until now did I ever notice what a great line "I'll get home early from work if you'll say that you want me" is. Getting home early from work is such an important thing in everyday life! Lindsay singing that line hit me the second time through. I've heard the Cheap Trick version thousands of times, probably, and the line never grabbed me.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

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Also, the bassline in "Fastlane" comes from "Roxanne" by the Police!
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

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Now I'm up to Hilary Duff. Never in the course of human events have so many melodies been lavished on such a tiny voice.

Well, for the Churchillian effect I wanted I should have said, "Never in the field of human artistry was so much melody lavished by so many on such a tiny voice."
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 24th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

In terms of Max Martin rock action, let us not forget The Veronicas' awesome "4 Eva".

Anyway. *Come Get It: The Very Best of Aaron Carter.* More fun than the Backstreet Boys's best of album? Maybe, I'm not sure. Best tracks: "Bounce," "A.C.'s Alien Nation," "To All the Girls," "Another Earthquake" (which was his pop-punk move, apparently; never knew he had one). Fun: "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" (a "Parents Just Don't Understand" rip which I reviewed in a singles column in the voice several years ago), "My Internet Girl," "I Want Candy," "Oh Aaron."
Still pretty bad, though justifiable for its ridiculousness: "That's How I Beat Shaq." Missing: "Iko Iko"; he covered that right? Maybe people thought including it would be offensive in the wake of Katrina?

I heard the Veronicas album a couple months ago (listened to it to write a show preview of their New York show), and thought it was ok, not all that distinctive, and wound up trading it in. Should I not have? (I think I probably thought it wasn't teen-pop *enough.* Though I vaguely remember the singer vaguely reminding me of Joan Jett once.)

holy shit, stop the presses, on the stereo right now: 1982 john cougar song of the year: "crazy summer nights" by hope paltrow. sorry, silvertide, you just got beat!! (has metal mike heard this yet? he will spit out his diet pepsi for sure!!)
(okay, that had nothing to do with country, i guess. but i had to say it.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), July 25th, 2005.
Oh, you were asking about Anna Nalick: she's 21, did "Breathe(2 A.M.)"
-- don (dmxz...), September 28th, 2005.

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Is she considered country, pop, r&b, or what?
Also, who is Emma Roberts? Just got the CD in the mail; she appears Nickelodeon connected. (Also appears to have nothing to do with country music, but who cares.) It wouldn't play in my computer; gotta take it home I guess. But I really like these song titles: "Punch Rocker," "Say Goodbye to Jr. High," "94 Weeks (Metal Mouth Freak)," "Dummy," "Mexican Wrestler," "New Shoes"! I wonder if Shania has heard that last song. I already want her to be the next Skye Sweetnam or at least Hope Partlow, but she probably isn't, I dunno.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), September 28th, 2005.

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Anna's in September 26, 2205 issue of People.Yeah, I read it; gotta keep up, yknow. "Nalick has toured almost nonstop since her debut CD, Wreck of the Day, came out in April." College student. But also "kicks off a headlining tour Oct. 6 and opens for Rob Thomas starting on Nov. 6," so headlining tour's more a tourette. I've seen the "Breathe" vid on VH-1 and on CMT's aforementioned "Wide Open Country"(with Mellanin, Crow, Truckers, Hootie, etc.) "On Meeting Rob Thomas: I rewrote matchbox twenty's "Push" when I was younger. I told him about it. He was like, 'That's awesome. Wait. When you were 12, you thought you could write my songs better than I could?'" Somebody had to tell him.
-- don (dmxz...), September 28th, 2005.

On the other hand, I would definitely take the totally morally conflicted Hope Partlow song where she makes out with her friend's boyfriend ("Sick Inside") over the Big&Rich song where John Rich makes out with his friend's girfriend ("Never Mind Me") any day. (That'd be the second or third best song on the Partlow album, behind the great "Crazy Summer Nights", tied with "Everywhere But Here," slightly above "Cold" and the Disney hit "Who We Are", which has a cool blues riff by the way. Also, "Let Me Try" sounds like a cross between David Johansen's "Flamingo Road" and Lionel Richie's "Three Times a Lady," sort of. She has a really ace band, whoever they are. I forgot her album when listing top 10 candidates above; right now, I'd put it somewhere below Lambert/Carter but above MIA/Fannypack, I think, though logically I can see why others might totally disagree. Bottom line is, I'd rather *listen* to it than MIA or Fannypack.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 3rd, 2005.

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(Actually there's a good chance "Sick Inside" > "Cold" > "Who We Are" > "Everywhere But Here" , now that I think of it. But why nitpick?)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 3rd, 2005.

And speaking of noncountry singers whom we can talk about on this thread because Chuck talked here about someone whom she reminds me of, "Life After You" on the Brie Larson album is better than anything on the Hope Partlow - it starts with great sexy electro-disco oohs and ahs, similar to Pauline Rubio, then shifts effortlessly into a just-as-danceable Ashlee-Avril-Kelly-Marion I'm-over-you/I-will-flourish/I-will-survive brat-voiced bubblerock monster. The track is produced by the great Ric Wake, the man who helped invent Taylor Dayne and is usually the fellow working the dials on Celine Dion's best moments. The disco on the Brie Larson tends to fade after the second track, unfortunately, and the melodies plummet from "great" to "not bad, though there's another pretty good Ric Wake production (and a couple not so good) and a funny smart song about Brie's not getting along with her gym teacher (guess she doesn't want the gym teacher's perfume on her pillowcase, though she would like a C so she doesn't have to take the damn class anymore). Generally smart lyrics, mostly Brie-written. Promising. Exec. producer Tommy Mottola.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), October 18th, 2005.

Actually, "Life After You" eventually sounds kind of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"! But I like Hope's "Crazy Summer Nights," which sounds kind of like "Jack and Diane," about a hundred times as much. Brie sounds good, though.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 19th, 2005.

I like the "Finally Out of P.E." song on Brie Larsen's album more than the "Life After You" song; the former's just way more distinctive. There's something really generic about the former that I can't put my finger on (just like there's something really generic about Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone", which I like a lot but don't love, that I can't put my finger on; nothing generic to me about Ashlee's "La La" or Hope's "Crazy Summer Nights" at all). I mean, in "Life After You," I *guess* I hear the Rubio ooh-ahh beats Frank's talking about, *when I listen really really really close for them,* but even then they seem incidental; they're not nearly as in bubbliciously in-your-face and effervescent as they'd be in a great Rubio track. Honestly, I don't really even buy the comparison. Sounds more like pretty run-of-the-mill Hillary Duff gurgling to me. Which, again, is fine; I *like* Hillary Duff. And I like this song, but I think I like any number of other Brie songs just as much. (Right now it sounds to me like the album really picks up in the middle -- "Done With Like" which I keep hearing as "Done With Life," "She Shall Remain Nameless" which seems to have some really good high school cultural map specifics in it, "She Said," etc. That could change, though. Either way, a really good album. Better than any album Hillary or the Bratz have made. But not Partlow, I don't think. Yet.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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I meant "something really generic about the LATTER (i.e, "Life After You") that I can't put my finger on." "Finally Got Out of P.E.," in its own way, is unprecedented, just like "Crazy Summer Nights" in its own way is unprecendented. "Life After You," as the laundry list of teen I-will-survivers Frank likened it to suggests, is anything but. (But of course the thing about generic music is that it's great if you love the genre. I get the idea Frank has more use for that genre than I do. I also think John Cougar was better than Taylor Dayne!)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

Btw, Hope Partlow is a tremendously gifted singer who makes everything sound easy and natural rather than capital-S "Spectacular," while actually what she does with her voice is rather spectacular, if only she'd make a spectacle of herself - which maybe she should, this being art and not life. I'm sure she'd be a good country singer if that's what she were to choose. In fact, she'd probably be a good anything singer, even death metal. As a stylist she's got a lot more sense and smarts than either Faith Hill or Celine Dion has (Celine's somewhat rooted in countrypolitan when she isn't being rooted in disco). Definitely in the pop-country range if she wants to be (where the Faith and the LeAnn play, and Cougar-style rockers worm their way midstream these days, and the skies are not cloudy all day except whenever LeAnn cries rivers).
I haven't played the Partlow enough for it to really sink in. The things is, what Partlow would choose if she could, it seems, is to be Lisa Stansfield: stylized mastery and control and all that, with maybe an extra freshness in her smooth glides, and certainly more boom from the kick drums and more kick from the snare drums (I prefer Mellancamp riffs to Norman Cook beats, when it comes to backing one's stylishness); but veering Adult Contemporary nonetheless, which will be her destination unless the bucks lead her elsewhere. That could be a drawback, though not necessarily (AC is hardly devoid of passion and rock these days); but so far my other problem with the Partlow album is my failure to love any of the songs. This could change with more listenings; a stylist who makes things easy often sneaks her passion in on you. I certainly appreciate the girl, but I'm not aching for her yet.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), October 20th, 2005.

>kelly clarkson on mtv, the video that looked like some lost melodrama, all blonde on black, with heart break and a sort of undersung sadness/meloncholy...i dont remember the song, but how it was sung was more country and less girl singer, more lambert and less lohan...[anthony easton]
Could be either "Breakaway" or "Because of You" (the blonder of the two) either or which could be country with (or without) a few tweaks, as could Hope Partlow's "Crazy Summer Nights," if you want to vote for any of them.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 28th, 2005.

Hope Partlow's "Girlfriend" - fast ZZ fizzies on the guitars. Another reason to consider the album country, though my favorite track is "Everywhere But Here," which is the least country/most teenpop feisty wail of a sad-happy I'm gone 'n' you'll miss me lament-triumph Ashlee-Lindsay-Lohan thing.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 29th, 2005.

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I meant Ashlee-Kelly-Lohan thing. Otherwise, I'm being redundant.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 29th, 2005.

P.S.S.) I also liked the Hope 7 album last year. Which means, if nothing else, that 2005 was a *hopeful* year for U.S. teen-pop.

P.S.S.S.) So hey, whatever happened to Skye Sweetnam??

more fun hope'n'ashlee facts!
1. hope does a song where she makes out with your boyfriend and pretends to feel sorry about it; ashlee does one where you accuse her of making out with your boyfriend, and she pretends she didn't and gets pissed off. (except i don't really know if either is pretending.)

2. ashlee opens her CD with a song that sounds like franz ferdinand; hope opens hers with a cool blues riff, just like frank says franz f. open theirs with, though i didn't personally notice it yet. (i think he compared it to a '60s garage punk doing "smokestack lightning.")

3. hope's "don't go" is a red light green light song (see also: ashlee kix reference), though not for the reason its title suggests.

4. ashlee does a song called "boyfriend"; hope does a song called "girlfriend." "girlfriend" is probably 2005's best abba song.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

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Yikes, the Abba song "Girlfriend" sounds like is "Does Your Mother Know," which could have been written by Vladimir Nabokov. Creepy! But it was also Abba's hardest rock song. Maybe this is an answer record?
Dullest track on Hope's album: Probably "Through It All."

-- xhuxk (xedd...), October 20th, 2005.

"12. Skye Sweetnam, untitled (June 20): This is not necessarily an endorsement – just fair warning regarding which bubble-gum rocker the preteen at your house will likely be obsessed with this summer – you know, the shorty you already took to see Ashlee Simpson, Avril Lavigne and Hilary Duff."

It would not have been possible for me to forget it, in that this is the first I'd ever heard of it.

Ha, this just came in the email:

>

DAMONE RE-EMERGES FROM BOSTON ’BURBS WITH ISLAND RECORDS DEBUT
6-WEEK TOUR WITH LESS THAN JAKE BEGINS JANUARY 18th IN ATLANTA
5-song EP, “Out Here All Night,” making waves in advance of 2006 summer release
(January 3, 2006 – New York, NY) Damone is coming! After a recent local Boston show, The Boston Globe hailed Damone as the band that was “born for arenas and is simply biding it's time until it gets to headline in them.,” In advance of their long-awaited second album and first for Island Records, with a 2006 summer release, Damone hits the road for six weeks of shows with Less Than Jake, opening January 18th at the Masquerade in Atlanta.

Damone – charismatic lead singer and guitarist Noelle, Dustin Hengst (drums, vocals), Vazquez (bass, vocals), and Mike Woods (lead guitars, vocals) – took their sweet time putting the pieces back together over the past couple years and the early results are catching the ears of savvy programmers and rock cognoscenti via the Out Here All Night EP. The 5-song sampler – “Out Here All Night,” “What We Came Here For,” “Get Up And Go,” “Never Getting Mine (demo),” and “Time and Time Again” – serves notice that Damone has not lost its flair for “unbelievably hook-laden rock songs,” as CMJ raved back in the day.

Instilled with a strong love of ’80s glam-metal, some Runaways/Joan Jett-size girl-rock (to see Noelle in action is to believe), big Marshall stack guitar solos and badass attitude, Damone is all about the joy and excess of rock.

With the help of legendary mixing engineers Tom Lord-Alge (U2, Weezer, Marilyn Manson) and Mike Shipley (Def Leppard, Green Day, Andrew WK) putting the finishing touches on their upcoming self produced album, Damone has created a timeless piece of rock’n’roll, ready to be sandwiched in a “rock block” of Guns ’N Roses, Queen and AC/DC. “For me,” says newest member Mike Woods, “the story should go this way: it looked like it was going to end, quite literally for some of us, but it didn’t, so we made a kick-ass record and took over the world.”

For further information on Damone go to www.DAMONE.net<

Who are "Pantra"? Does she mean "Pantera"? "Tantra"?? Also, I hope she covers "Back in the Mud" on her new album!

>>Instilled with a strong love of ’80s glam-metal, some Runaways/Joan >>Jett-size girl-rock (to see Damone's Noelle in action is to >>believe), big >>Marshall stack guitar solos and badass attitude, >>Damone is all >>about the joy and excess of rock.

Damone was so not Marshall stack and guitar solo on their debut. And if it had been more like Joan Jett, I would have actually liked it. And she was as badass as my housecats. Nothing wrong with that, but geeez.

>>With the help of legendary mixing engineers Tom Lord-Alge (U2, >>Weezer, Marilyn Manson) and Mike Shipley (Def Leppard, Green Day, >>Andrew WK) putting the finishing touches on their upcoming self >>produced album, Damone has created a timeless piece of rock’n’roll, >>ready to be sandwiched in a “rock block” of Guns ’N Roses, Queen >>and AC/DC.

Ha-ha. I don't get the reverse in adsmanship. Damone's never going to pass as a bunch of heavy rockers. What's wrong with being what they were and just improving it with, like, some passion in those songs?

This blurb reminds me of the blurb that was being peddled with Hanson's live album. "Guitar brutality!" it was said, excerpted from a review from USA Today or Entertainment Weekly. So I asked for a review copy. Big mistake.

I don't know. Nothing else on Most Wanted comes close. You should try Lindsay Lohan's "I Live for the Day," which is doing something very different (a vengeance rocker, basically, and joyous on its vengeful terms), and oddly enough is one of the few Lohan songs that Kara DioGuardi has no hand in, but it nonetheless has the same reverbed-mystery-lament feel. And then you should try Ashlee's "I Am Me," which is even more of a ferocious Dance Of The Woman Scorned and so is even farther in intent from "Fly"'s tremulous beauty ache - but buried in the song's melody (especially during the dancing-on-your-grave ending) the beauty is there, aching. Which isn't altogether surprising, given that Kara DioGuardi and John Shanks are among the song's writers, and John Shanks is its producer.

So, Tim F., if you're worried that by going for Lindsay and Ashlee you'll be diluting your love for Hilary, you should instead conceive this as expanding your love outward via Shanks and DioGuardi.

Some will say that I'm counterfeit
But I will be who I want to
Some will look at me and vomit
But I will do what I want to

Which is extra funny because to make "vomit" fit the meter and rhyme you have to mispronounce it, which she does but without hamming up the mispronunciation. I think she lifted this comic device from that Billy S. guy she likes so much.

Also, in a behind-the-scenes making-of-the-video short for "Tangled Up in Me" she demonstrated to us how they prepared the instruments for the shoot, so she's showing us the muffles they put on the drums; then she turns to the camera and silently mouths "We're not really playing our instruments" to the camera, as if imparting a great but confidential secret.

I'm listening to clips of some of these on itunes. Sounds like a bigger production and she's got a good singing voice, but is it as ... believable or something? Does it not just kind of sound like some covers band doing a kind of average/blah assortment of songs, but dressed up in the studio?

xp - I always thought of Cheap Trick's version as a kind of believable '50s nostalgia. believable because it was about '50s rock and roll as a very rocking music! I think it's quite dynamite.

Speaking of Cougar rocks - though this is off-topic - last week I listened to Jessica Simpson's "I Think I'm In Love With You" for the first time in four years. It's the one that samples the brief bass-guitar fillip from "Jack and Diane" and otherwise is a basic dance-r&b number where she shows off Mariah melismas. It's likable, since she's willing to make the notes fluffy (which isn't to say that she fluffs any of the notes). But what's amazing is the Peter Rauhofer Club Mix that's included on the single. No Cougar notes, just driving, ominous techno and Jessica's "I think I'm in love"s sounding icy but heartbreaking, darting up and down above the jagged synths. Might as well be a totally different song.

(In general, I'm not one of these guys who says, "No, you gotta hear the remix.")

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 28th, 2005. (Frank Kogan)

And yeah, she's 17 (and I think the songwriting is often really good).

Mikael Wood's appraisal of her, Brie Larsen, etc, can be found here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0552,wood,71326,22.html

And the fact that she picked peas on her family farm in Tennesse is pretty country, I guess! Perhaps country fans will eventually agree.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 28th, 2005.

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Hope Paltrow is far too pretty to remain in the peapatch, for sure.
-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), December 28th, 2005. (ddduncan)