Yo P&J, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but ILX had the greatest 2009 poll of all time! All time! (2009 ILX Trax Poll Results: TOP TEN TODAY)

not sure you're taking account of the fact that some people have 'other stuff to do', lex

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Still, even if a lot of the stuff in this list isn't my usual taste, I'm glad to be checking it out. My TV aerial's been broken for most of the year and there's no radio in my office so a lot of mainstream stuff goes right over my head. I realise this can be quite amusing to a lot of people I know who see me as a music nerd.

Ismael OTM - I don't stop listening to music, but there's a lot of stuff out there i know i AM going to like, that I don't have time to check out stuff I probably won't. As such, I've gone and downloaded Taylor Swift's album out of intrigue more than anything else, because otherwise I'd have written her off as the next Jewel (or what have you). It's very handy having these polls.

And for once I'm going to applaud Lex for being open minded enough to give things like AC a go, even if he knows he's going to hate it.

Another thing to take into account is that I listen to a lot of old music. Along with dubstep, I was rediscovering the Beatles back catalogue for instance - something I know Lex definitely didn't. Anyway, enough defensiveness... On with 2010.

the sad thing is, when i first checked out an AC-related thing - the panda bear album from the other year - i really expected to like it, given how people were talking about it, and then THE HORROR :(

I don't like Panda Bear's album much tbh. The only thing I think you might perhaps have an infinitesimally small chance of enjoying is the Prospect Hummer EP they did with Vashti Bunyan. AC, I feel are a band who take a while to click, and never will for a lot of people.

Another conclusion I've made from this poll is that a lot of people invest way too much in artists' singing abilities - their ability to sing "well" - almost to a Simon Cowell degree of fussiness. Like the Girls track or Joanna Newsom - sure they're not Mariah Carey, but whatever happened to allowing for idiosyncratic vocals that suit a particular kind of music? It's like moaning about Nirvana because Kurt Cobain doesn't sing like an angel. The Girls track wasn't a great song - it was flimsy, fairly formulaic, like a Lemonheads b-side or something. But complaining about the singing seems a bit redundant to me.

Listening to Since U Been Gone - I've heard this before I think. It's absolutely the opposite of what I'd ever want to listen to for fun. Sounds like Pink or Alanis-style commercial pop/rock dressed up in punk clothes. Sorry, not my thing at all.

It's not really dressed up much.. just Max Martin doing his thing. (He did it even better with The Veronicas' "4 Ever")

even better?

oh my!

fuck an 05-09 because Since U Been Gone would probably win it (if not YBWM)

not a fan but those do shed some light. (Kogan and Bradley excluded for overreaching and making me want to vomit.)

whatever happened to allowing for idiosyncratic vocals that suit a particular kind of music?

idk, there are plenty of "idiosyncratic" vocals which seem widely accepted on ilm: fever ray is the most obvious example here, shakira sounds like a hiccuping goat (in a good way!), taylor swift is far from a virtuoso; and more generally, the likes of björk/tom waits/pj harvey rarely get the sort of mockery that girls and joanna newsom did here. maybe dan can pinpoint a more technical reason, but to me joanna newsom (and devendra banhart, lykke li et al) seem really affected and mannered while karin dreijer and björk seem less forced and more natural; while someone like swift makes up for her technical limitations with a conversational tone and great phrasing. i guess it's a case-by-case basis.

also, the "idiosyncratic" voices i don't have time for seem mostly to tend towards "sounding like a child" - adults who affect childlike poses are the worst savages to me

but i think chords are at least as important as lyrics

lol ie, not that important

chords are what you make of them and are totally uninteresting until they've been coloured over with melody. reducing a song to its lyrics is unfair, but at least lyrics are their own individual and separate sub-compartment of a song that can be looked at as such. saying "oh that's just a 1-4-5" is meaningless, because chords alone don't say anything about anything. it's like saying "nice white shirt with letters on it" or something.

taken individually, that's obviously true. but if you look at a songwriter's songs collectively you can see patterns that can be interesting. (dylan's great for this -- a lot of his albums have very distinct chord patterns and keys that give them musical coherence.) in taylor's case, it's just that she obviously has kind of songwriting crutches she relies on, which you'd maybe expect of someone as young as her. but it'll be interesting to see if and how she expands her musical palette along with her lyrical concerns.

xp:

and yeah it's the sum that matters, not the parts. but the parts can help make sense of the sum.

sorry to keep digging this up, but i honestly think this:
"who the fuck is this snotty, conventionally pretty, boring as hell blonde chick to pretend she's an outsider LIKE I ACTUALLY WAS AT THAT AGE??!"
goes straight to the heart of why taylor gets sniffy attitude from a number of otherwise all-accepting music nerds. And I ain't even fronting, I notice that attitude in myself as well; it's just not productive.

and the thing is (and not that her biography should matter that much) she pretty much was an outsider -- she spent her whole early adolescence trying to get a record deal. that's a sort of voluntarily outsiderhood, but if it hadn't panned out she would've just been a weird girl who kept taking trips to nashville trying to sell songs.

^^ yeah i was pretty tempted earlier to say that, though she's blonde and cute and likes pretty dresses and all, having that consuming an outside hobby during HS basically prevents you from being one of The Popular Girls, which is a pretty time-consuming job in and of itself.

She's also said in interviews that before her music star makeover she was the ugly outcast nerd she sings about in her songs.

I don't doubt her actual sincerity but the marketing doesn't really match the material.

also, i think having an obvious talent or commitment to a creative pursuit probably marks you out as a bit of a weirdo in most high schools.

also, the "idiosyncratic" voices i don't have time for seem mostly to tend towards "sounding like a child" - adults who affect childlike poses are the worst savages to me

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 2:00 PM (1 hour ago)

I agree, but I also think it's completely wrong to put Joanna Newsom in some sort of opposition to the likes of Fever Ray or Bjork. 'Natural' is the least fitting adjective for Karin Dreijer's vocal ticks I could think of. She uses it as a tool to great effect. The mostly female songwriters who grasp for some childlike innocence are posing, trying to come off a certain way that's besides their music. Newsom just has an odd, marmite voice.

That's a good point. My rather good-looking former dance teacher was heavily into ballet when she was younger (to the point where she got to briefly perform with the Pennsylvania Ballet) and she talked about being a social outcast (at least until late high school) partly as a result of that. (By the end of high school people were more like: oh, cool, you get out of taking the classes we have to take because of your dance rehearsals.)

But anyway, in other songs on Fearless (most of them even) she talks about perfectly normal high school experiences (which are alien to me).

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yeah people seriously trying to have it both ways with "ratface" AND "she's too pretty to sing about unrequited love"

i think the thing is that EVERYONE feels like an outcast in high school; a thousand little cuts, puberty, initial heartbreak, lack of control of your own destiny, shared awkward moments... the girl who ate her own boogers in third grade still had to deal with that as a hs senior. It's a hellish backwater.

does it really matter how popular taylor swift was in high school? the song is one big cliche, whether or not she 'lived it'

yeah tbh that's mainly why i feel at an arm's length from her songs -- feels more like she's patterning her narratives off of romantic comedies than anything in her life

plus as pretty as she tends to look, she still has the slightly hunched posture of a tall, gawky girl in most of her pictures!

she strikes me as the equivalent of the blue-stocking, poetry-writing girl most of us probably knew at school; maybe not a total bullied outcast, maybe on the fringes of the Popular Crowd (close enough to be able to speak to the hot sporty boys, at any rate), enough on the fringes to fret about acceptance into it.

I like "You Belong" a lot (it was in my top 20 singles of the year but I ended up bumping it to make room for some album tracks), but really for me it's all about the hook -- musically's right, the character she plays in that song is a total passive-aggressive bitch.

bumping it from my ballot, I mean

not invested enough in the argument to google for old interviews to confirm my recollection but I feel like I read that she was flat-out ostracized and socially tortured in school

I just like to rhyme.

pies and fries, you belong with me because I'm hungry

tempted to create a Tyra-inspired login named "SMIZE! SMIZE! SMIZE! SMIZE! SMIZE!"

i mean for the debate in question i'd say that the ybwm video is more problematic than whatever happened to taylor irl (because honestly who cares?) because the video's idea of making her awkward is giving her big fake glasses to wear along w/her perfect hair and makeup.

every time you close your eyes, PIES! FRIES! SMIZE! PLIES!

"You Belong with Me" definitely reminds me of some other pop songs along similar lines that I disliked, so I can definitely see the cliche thing, but then it's somehow remarkable to me that she is able to work with that cliche material and somehow make it into something I want to hear. So: it's good because it's a cliche; I have imbibed the Taylor Swift kool-aid.

i mean for the debate in question i'd say that the ybwm video is more problematic than whatever happened to taylor irl (because honestly who cares?) because the video's idea of making her awkward is giving her big fake glasses to wear along w/her perfect hair and makeup.

I agree 100%, hence my "marketing doesn't match the music" post upthread.

the song is one big cliche, whether or not she 'lived it

well yeah - the thing about Swift is she takes absolutely conventional images, archetypes, clichés, and gives them just enough detail that they become vivid and personable and just really likeable. And then there's a whole lot of "she puts the names of REAL PEOPLE in her songs"-type promo, so we get the sense that she in fact IS the archetype.

like forks says, everyone feels ostracised in high school - and I think everyone has moments where they experience being the archetype, even if it's second hand. I say this a lot, but i understand taylor swift songs because i have some empathy and i've watched HS dramas on TV more than because 'she's talking about me'.

personable and also likeable! well done there, me.

but so it's not quite "marketing doesn't match the music", it's that she's got two different strands of marketing going on that don't quite match?

i'm very interested in where she goes next--like, ppl are already uneasy about "today was a fairytale" and i'll kind of lol if she releases another album and this is the entirety of her range

lol ie, not that important

For me, chords are way more important than lyrics. Which is not to say that I reduce songs to their chords and judge them on that alone (unless it's like a Chicago-style blues, and I'm like "argh, enough with the tired-ass 12-bar pattern"). But the song's overall harmonic contour (including the relationship of the chords to the melody) is a big part of what I immediately, viscerally respond to when I listen to music.

Taylor Swift in middle school:
http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/youngtaylorswift-500x333.jpg

it's been said already but never enough; when the drums come in on 'fancy' it's like a goddamn space shuttle taking off.

also: this thread finally got me to come around on 'so good'. uncensored version IS u&k.

"When you think Clint Black..."

http://oceanup.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/zoom/legacy/2009/02/21/taylor-baby-10.jpg

wait are we really posting photos of preteen taylor swift now?

so i'm the only person who likes the drums coming in on Fancy but finds it pretty stupid that they come in with only about 10 seconds left? k

so i'm the only person who thinks "Fancy" is the weak link on the album and that "Right Side" does tender better and the title track(s) do epic better?

^ I actually agree with that, but I wanted to vote for at least one Dream track and Fancy seemed like consensus pick on the voting thread.