Ashlee Simpson: Emo or Oh no?

Well, one of those names was on the cover of the album, but certainly I wouldn't say that some of the others aren't also deserving to be there. But that goes against standard practice. Arrangers, producers, songwriters, stylists etc. tend not to get their name in lights. Nelson Riddle didn't make the cover of the Sinatra records, Sam Phillips didn't make the cover of the early Elvis records, Andrew Loog Oldham didn't make the cover of the Stones, Greenwich and Barry didn't make the cover of the Shangri-Las, Holland Dozier Holland didn't make the cover of the Four Tops, etc. etc. etc. But anyway, even if you want to say that "I Am Me" is primarily Shanks and DioGuardi rather than Ashlee Simpson, how does that make it not punk, or not good?

("Wild Thing," if you're interested, was written by Chip Taylor, who had previously affiliated with Chet Atkins, one of the architects of the Nashville countrypolitan sound (Taylor wrote a song for Bobby Bare, "Just A Little Bit Later On Down The Line"!); after "Wild Thing," Taylor went on to work with James Taylor and to write and produce the country-inflected hit "Angel of the Morning." So, does this make "Wild Thing" unpunk?)

I haven't read Lester Bangs' "James Taylor Marked for Death" in quite a while. Does he mention Chip Taylor? Did he know that there was a James Taylor/Troggs connection? A lot of the piece is about the Troggs, and one of the questions it's posing is why the MC5's version of "I Want You" isn't as good as the Troggs', implying that it was now hard for people in the MC5's position to pull off what the Troggs had pulled off a few years earlier.

Oh DO PLEASE give me a break.

I don't think my aesthetics blind me to the fact that punk can come from anywhere. It's certainly present in Wild Thing, though I suspect that there it derives less from the sheet music than from whoever had the idea to have the loud guitars and drums all emphasize every single beat all the time, and of course from the sneering, leering, over-the-top vocals. And from the sheet music too, though the Troggs inhabit the song in a way that Chip Taylor may never have imagined when he wrote it. It's kind of present in Steppin' Stone, though in a much more controlled way. (Think Eddie and the Hot Rods, vice the Troggs' Sex Pistols.) Mickey Dolenz pushes the "anger" button, and out comes "anger," fairly convincingly, but still in quotes. There's nothing about the Troggs song that's in quotes.

I'm not sure that I know where the Troggs or the Monkees are coming from socially. Too far away in time. And it probably doesn't matter. The point here is that while punk is an interesting lens through which to view Wild Thing, and perhaps Steppin' Stone, it doesn't help much in explaining Ashlee. She's the wrong test case for the "Is ****** A Punk?" meme. In Ashlee's case, the more-or-less clear consensus here seems to be, well, "no." It's not that she can't make music that could be called "punk," just that she doesn't. There indeed may be a line tracing through Stevie to Courtney to Ashlee, and that's a more interesting line to pursue than the thin one that might connect Wild Thing to her.

Meanwhile, I now work for MTV.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/arts/music/popcast-ashlee-simpson.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpopcast-pop-music-podcast&action=click&contentCollection=music®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&referer=https://www.nytimes.com/column/popcast-pop-music-podcast

first of two NYT podcasts on Ashlee

Boy, I was an angry young dad in 2005.