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

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

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

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

(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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

Of Montreal seem to have become fairly popular with TEENS.

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

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

(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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

Our intentions with your music are honorable, Tim.

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

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

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 (sixteen years ago) link

your flaw in the extrapolation here is that "reactionary relationship to ____" --> "teenpop championing." Like the former must precede the latter

Well no, I said that the idea that teenpop championing MIGHT involve reactionary relationships to other musics was something that had crossed my mind more than once. So it's certainly not to say that every message or every poster on the teenpop thread is rooted in this. (I've posted on there myself more than once.)

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:16 (sixteen years ago) link

Evidence of of Montreal as teenpop phenomenon here:

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

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:18 (sixteen years ago) link

But Tim, you're talking about a handful of people you could probably name off the top of your head. Most of the posters there are indie kids, former indie kids, or xhuxk or Frank Kogan, and most of them, I imagine, still keep up with, say, Of Montreal and any other band you want to go toe to toe w/ the Veronicas. I don't see anybody on there displaying what I'd call a "reactionary" relationship to any other kind of music; nobody's ignoring Of Montreal as a statement, it just doesn't seem pertinent/interesting to talk about them. Or maybe they have been the topic of a conversation -- plenty of indie pop type bands have been the subject of conversation.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:25 (sixteen years ago) link

Besides which, if you brought up Of Montreal yourself, I doubt anyone would strenuously object to it, though I don't know if anyone would really care, either.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:27 (sixteen years ago) link

My daughter and I actually got in a debate about whether "old Of Montreal" or "new Of Montreal" was better dance music. I was under the impression, from what little I've paid attention to them, that the band has become somewhat dancier over time, or at least seemed to try to. My daughter thought that was a ridiculous opinion to hold. (And since she's actually danced to them, and I haven't, and she's obviously spent way more time listening to them than I have, I should probably give her the benefit of the doubt.)

At any rate, I like WAY more rock albums on indie labels this year (Trigger Renegade, Gore Gore Girls, Sirens, George Brigman, Funny Money, Rich and Famous, Clorox Girls, Necrodemon, Les Hatepinks, etc.) than teenpop albums, for what it's worth. (Hilary Duff and Jordan Pruitt both seem pretty good.) Though probably not the indie rock albums that Tim likes. (And as I said, I hardly ever post on the teenpop thread anymore, anyway.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:42 (sixteen years ago) link

hilary's music doesn't really thrill me. it's okay. i liked her t.v. show. she's cute. i like the stuff that has more of a euro-pop/dancepop edge to it as opposed to the acoustic weepers and secondhand avril tunes. i kinda miss the goofiness of teenpop past. or childishness. i miss daphne & celeste.

― scott seward, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:47 (sixteen years ago) link

"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."

I suspect that a cursory look at, like, the best of the year lists that the posters submit to P&J and whatever would probably dispel this notion.

I love teenpop and my favourite albums of 2007 are: The Studio, Panda Bear, DJ Dixon, Kalabrese, Lil Wayne (mixtape), Tori Amos, Battles... (haven't heard Hillary Duff's album, I'd probably like it I think... I liked her last one but even had I heard it at the time it wouldn't have ended up on a best-of list for whatever year it was).

This list isn't interesting to me as a list, except insofar as that with one exception (the DJ Dixon Body Language mix) it pretty much ignores the chunk of music I spend more time listening to than any other, which is not teenpop!

I think though there is something structurally inherent in rock crit (which most people who talk about popular music are infected by) which makes it tempting to assume that people who listen to teenpop must not and could not listen to Of Montreal (who I've read a bit about but never heard... would I like them?). And this is that "the underground" always defines itself against pop in the first place by definition. So much of the indiefication that a lot of people go through in their teenage years involves a ritualised rejection of commercial radio etc. almost as a rite of passage.

This is not a problem as far as I'm concerned, but i wonder if that sense you're getting re teenpop's oppositional stance has to do with the actual attitude displayed by the posters, or the broader context w/r/t how pop and non-pop define themselves (including against eachother).

― Tim F, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:48 (sixteen years ago) link

Scott, you might (sorta) like Shut Up Stella feat. fan_3, who are probably about the closest I've come to Daphne and Celeste in the past year or so (not like this comes close, but it's something...try "Country Lemonade" maybe?). There's always the odd tune by Girl Authority or Kidz Bop, I guess. (Most silly/awesome "teenpop" songs of the past two years are hip-hop songs: "Vans," "Lip Gloss," "Chicken Noodle Soup," maybe "Stewy" by the DBz h/t xhuxk. But there's always DaHv, whose "Mean Girls" just missed my top twenty of last year.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:55 (sixteen years ago) link

(It says "Mean Girls" is from 2005, but it's her most recent song on her MySpace.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 22:56 (sixteen years ago) link

I don't know. All I'm saying is that the teenpop thread is ostensibly about POP, mostly of a pop-rock nature. And given what I feel about its mediocrity, I'm puzzled by the enthusiasm for the genre, have felt that there was hyperbole in praising it, and wondered what the relationship of the posters is to transcendent indie/underground that I feel accomplishes so much more in essentially the same musical ballpark.

x-posts to Tim F. (Tim, try "So Begins Our Alabee," "The Party's Crashing Us," "Wrath Pinned to the Mist and Other Games," "Suffer for Fashion," and "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger" for intro to recent OM.)

― Tim Ellison, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:04 (sixteen years ago) link

OK so i think maybe my ideological problem with 'the teen pop thread' is less about the music itself, or people enjoying it, ANY of it, than the way its grouped ... like half that stuff probably got talked about by the rap fans, and when the teenpop fans start arguing for this all-genre inclusiveness ('where's the teenpop R&B?' etc) it makes 'sense' but it also becomes a question of what unites this 'genre' in the first place. isn't just its audience? Do none of you guys find that the least bit creepy? I have no problem in talking about 'chicken noodle soup' in the context of rap music, and saying you know 'this is the younger spectrum of rap music, a fun song,' but when you start discussing all this stuff in a context where the unifying feature is that the audience is kids that gets weird to me.

What is gained by looking at this music that way? Doesn't it make more sense to talk about 'teenpop' that sounds like rock in the context of rock, and teenpop that sounds like r&b in the context of r&b? i haven't paid a whole bunch of attention to these discussions but it seems like if the unifying factor is that its all liked by kids that just seems like a bizarre reason to lump a diverse range of music together.

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:07 (sixteen years ago) link

I mean I know xhuxk's thing is 'why don't we talk about R&B like rock and rock like hip-hop and dance like country' etc. etc. and thats fine - but that still doesn't explain the arbitrary-ness of 'teenpop' as a central context for discussion.

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:08 (sixteen years ago) link

Deej I think it's pretty clear that in a lot of ways Hillary Duff and Avril Lavigne are more similar to each other than Hillary Duff is to "adult" synth pop or Avril to "adult" rock - and it's not just the audience. There's a certain similarity in the shape and structure of the songs, the lyrics, the perspective, the concerns, the stylistic decisions above and beyond the choice between synth-pop and rock.

― Tim F, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:11 (sixteen years ago) link

I mean by your logic couldn't I say "it makes more sense to talk about Truth Hurts' "Addictive" on a bhangra thread than an R&B thread"?

― Tim F, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:11 (sixteen years ago) link

ok but then the flip of that is that i don't see what "chicken noodle soup" has to do with "Complicated" except for, again, age group?

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:12 (sixteen years ago) link

i donno i'm just thinking aloud about reasons why i don't find the kind of music in the teenpop thread interesting to discuss as a whole project - which i guess is my chief objection, because i like some of the songs discussed and dislike others (usually towards the rock end of the spectrum, for the compression/sound qual issues i mentioned upthread) and its not the frank/xhuxk method of discussion; its the music too, and i'm trying to articulate why

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:16 (sixteen years ago) link

"Chicken Noodle Soup" and "Vans" and "Lip Gloss" sound like bubblegum music. (More than most actual "teenpop" does these days, as far as I'm concerned. They've got a bubbliness and effervescence that Avril can't touch even when she tries.) Why would it be "creepy" to acknowledge that?

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:17 (sixteen years ago) link

I don't know, is there that much talk about kiddie-rap on the teenpop threads? I never noticed. But above and beyond Chuck's point, I guess it's relevant insofar as this is a genre which is hyper-conscious to trends, so anything which has a big impact on kids has the potential to filter through to the stylistic decisions of teenpop artists next year. I doubt this is the case with "Chicken Noodle Soup", and it's not what I think of when I think of teenpop, but there are pretty clear reasons why, say, Good Charlotte are talked about on the teenpop thread when Of Montreal are not!

― Tim F, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:19 (sixteen years ago) link

xp: I mean, would you say "Jump" by Kris Kross wasn't bubblegum music? Or "Pass the Dutchie" or "ABC"? (But yeah, it's not like that stuff, or "Chicken Noodle Soup," figures that much on the teenpop thread anyway.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:21 (sixteen years ago) link

xxp to xhuxk
it isn't! Those songs are all very similar. i think there's probably connections between those songs and ones that aren't considered 'hip-hop' that you could discuss like, i don't know, 'hollaback girl' or something. But still you're talking about a much larger spectrum of music than that - isn't this 'genre' just a catchall for a wide range of genre & emotional & stylistic & perspective & concerns etc. that happen to appeal to younger people? Its the equivalent of having a genre called 'adultpop' that talks about rap, R&B, country and rock

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:22 (sixteen years ago) link

Well actually deej don't the terms "MOR" or "AOR" cover a similarly wide and eclectic area of music?

― Tim F, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link

No, Deej is right, we should really stop talking about Stockhausen and Merzbow on the teenpop thread, its totally creepy. That one ten-year-old Dave supposedly knows who listens to nothing but noize and avant-classical is probably made up anyway.

― Eppy, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:34 (sixteen years ago) link

what unites this 'genre' in the first place

This is a major part of why it's so interesting in the first place. Important to note that "teenpop" was a genre before it was an ILM thread, so it's not like the posters created it from thin air; one point of the thread is to try to figure out what makes something "teenpop" in the first place (sometimes it's an aesthetic, sometimes it's an audience, sometimes it's...harder to say). If it is about the audience, it's not creepy unless we were, like, creepy about it. I'm really interested in how children and young teens actually listen to, use, purchase the music they do -- largely because no one else is paying attention to it. But I'm also interested in more ambiguous audiences of artists like Ashlee and Lindsay and P!nk, who don't really have much of a clear-cut shared audience...and if they did, it wouldn't be all (or maybe even primarily) kids.

Doesn't it make more sense to talk about 'teenpop' that sounds like rock in the context of rock, and teenpop that sounds like r&b in the context of r&b?

Short answer is no. Long answer is no, but...there are lots of reasons to talk about contexts, to classify this as this etc. etc. etc., and one thing the teenpop thread exists for is to catch a lot of music that falls through the cracks -- the stuff "aimed at kids" that isn't really aimed at kids, hence there's not a huge audience for it, or stuff that is presumed to be aimed at kids but is potentially deeper and more meaningful than more widely held to be "sophisticated" or "mature" genres. Ashlee vs. mainstream rock, Ashlee vs. indie rock, Skye Sweetnam or Hilary vs. Good Charlotte or the Killers, Fefe Dobson vs. the rest of the world. Not to say one wins and one loses, but to say, nobody ever talks (intelligently) about this stuff, and it's where some of the most interesting conversations could be happening.

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:38 (sixteen years ago) link

xp Tim - they do, i suppose; not that i'm interested in starting anything like this, but i haven't seen many interesting critical discussions revolving around this concept, though, and probably for the same reason that teenpop as a central context for discussion seems kind of uninteresting to me.

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:38 (sixteen years ago) link

There's also the more practical issue that any non-rolling teenpop thread discussion of this stuff always goes back to "you can't really like this stuff as much as you say you do!" or some similar argument - see this thread! The actual teenpop thread is almost entirely free of this.

x-post Deej Tom wrote a great review once about Dexys Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen". If I recall he was discussing how the usual critical impulse of music writers is to try to rescue DMR from all the drunk office workers dancing on tables to "Come On Eileen" at Christmas parties, and Tom was saying "no, their relationship with this music is interesting and worth thinking about as well."

I'm not volunteering to write about MOR though because I don't tend to like James Blunt or "Bad Day" or etc. etc. but I'm not a priori opposed to the idea that interesting writing on this topic is possible!

― Tim F, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:44 (sixteen years ago) link

i'm not dismissing discussion of it out of hand though, just saying why as a long-running thread i have minimal interest in it as a platform for discussion

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:50 (sixteen years ago) link

deej, ignoring the central context (since we can call it arbitrary for the sake of discussion), does something about the thread fundamentally bother you, or do you just not understand all the fuss or what? (I'm guessing it bothers you, since you're singling it out when there are probably thousands of threads I could care less about -- no general swipe at ILM, I just don't pay attention to or post on many of the threads.)

What does it matter how the music is grouped if the conversation's a good one about artists the people in the conversation want to talk about, and it's a conversation worth having? Or, why isn't it a conversation worth having, esp. to someone not engaging in it? (These aren't rhetorical questions.)

― dabug, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:52 (sixteen years ago) link

i don't find it to be a conversation worth having and i was trying to ascertain why, and my conclusion was because of how the music was grouped it didn't lead me to be open minded about it; a large portion of the music discussed i dislike because it isn't what i enjoy, so any discussion i would have in that context would be coming from that place, even if i was discussing music i did like (I like some Fergie songs for example) in the context of 'teenpop' as a whole.

i wouldn't say i'm 'bothered' by the thread but i do see a lot of intellectual energy being expended in an area in which i like some tracks yet which is organized so as to minimize my interest.

― deej, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:55 (sixteen years ago) link

Deej I think it's pretty clear that in a lot of ways Hillary Duff and Avril Lavigne are more similar to each other than Hillary Duff is to "adult" synth pop or Avril to "adult" rock - and it's not just the audience.

That's a false dichotomy, Duff's latest album is synth pop-ish but I don't think anyone would categorize her so unless she did several more albums like it, and her first hit was a carbon copy of "Complicated."

Important to note that "teenpop" was a genre before it was an ILM thread, so it's not like the posters created it from thin air;

This is only kinda sorta true: Google "teenpop" (as one word) and the first 10 results include both ILM threads, and stuff you wrote about the stuff on Pitchfork and Stylus. In the larger sense, yes "teen pop" (two words) is a genre or at least a market that people are aware of, but I think mostly non-music people think of it in terms of the "teen pop era" of early Britney and boy bands, or maybe going back to 80's mall pop like Tiffany, all really bright synthetic stuff, not a broad continuum of teen-oriented rock and teen-oriented rap like it's being treated here. Maybe no one person here made the decision to use "teenpop" as one word and sort of reinvent its parameters, but it definitely has turned out that way.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:56 (sixteen years ago) link

I'll also admit that the whole teenpop-as-one-word thing has always irritated the hell out of me and probably figures heavily into my criticism of these threads.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 14 May 2007 23:58 (sixteen years ago) link

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