Ashlee Simpson: Emo or Oh no?

Weirdest (probably misheard) album on the album so far: "Do you know how it feels to be a rape, lyng there frozen, with my eyes wide open?"

Not sure what else that word could be: "Erased"?? That's weird, too!

Why is Jon saying "bird" and "paedophile"? I thought he lived in BUSHWICK.

But to say that Ashlee's ripping Gwen off is ridiculous, since Ashlee doesn't sound like Gwen, and the reason for the comparison is Gwen = pop rock girl who goes funky reggae, Ashlee = pop rock girl who (occasionally) goes funky reggae, so they must be the point of comparison. Whereas actually it's John Shanks' guitar and production that's providing the reggae, albeit in consultation with the singer. Whereas if "Boyfriend" and "Burnin Up" had been the same except done by a guy, the obvious would have stuck out: It's the Clash, who were a rock band that played reggae, who are the most obvious comparison here, with the echoed laugh right off of "London Calling" and the clipped-short guitar crunch style from that very same song, and when it's not the Clash it's the Specials and Gang of Four (and Franz Ferdinand, for that matter) for Shanks' snapping-twig guitar riff that runs throughout the verse. And I think Shanks plays it more effectively than G of 4 or Franz Ferdinand, both of whose guitar work I like a lot.

(Now I disappear for several hours.)

is g-rated punk ever assumed to be authentic (eg. not a marketing move)?

Not when I remember her own father making comments on trying to market her as the total opposite of her sister (who was a famously beautiful virgin). The anarchy symbol at the Orange Bowl also comes to mind as something a bit contrived. Her music wouldn't be better if she was had a "rich punk heritage" or really believed in anarchy but the poster asked for her image, which I said was a bit forced. If he asked what her music sounded liked I might not even touch it.

Anyone else seen the TV show, or the videos (which my dial-up connection allows me to "see," but on postage-stamp size, stop-action "video" at Launch Yahoo)?

On Seventh Heaven she was not playing a fictionalized version of her music self (it wasn't a Suzi-Quatro-on-Happy Days situation). She was just another teen actress. There has been no attempt that I know of to tie the two jobs together - she seems to have simply decided making an album was a quicker route to stardom than being third-tier on a WB drama with no cred outside the Christian community. And she was right.

The videos are jammed full of standard "I'm rockin' out and wild" quick-cut iconography that's been the same since the early 80s. Young people partying in a house with no one older than them anywhere to be seen, jumping in the pool and dancing on furniture, some making out in the corners, etc., etc. Ashlee dresses "punk" (tight black jeans and Converse hightops like Billie Joe Armstrong wears, lots of bracelets, dark hair to start with but now blonde, retro rock band T-shirts)...you know the drill. Nothing surprising about them at all. The "La La" video features her and the extras cavorting in a laundromat like some kind of commercial for new and improved rebellious detergent.

As for image, what would you people (if you've seen it) say about the album photos? She entitles the record I Am Me and then gives us a whole bunch of very different looks, the Nico Ashlee, the Marlene Ashlee, the Debutante Ashlee, the Forlorn Runner-Up Prom Queen Ashlee, the Burlesque Ashlee, and - I don't know, the one in the brown two-piece, and her hair a dishmop - Frazzled Riverboat Harlot Ashlee. Pieces of her. Or pieces of her playing dressup.

(But I'm no whiz at identifying or describing fashions, so any insights you have would be a help.)

Stephen Thomas Erlewine at allmusic.com described Seventh Heaven as "square," and considered Autobiography an appealing makeover; and he was touched by its earnestness. (I don't know; "La La" seems lighthearted to me, though I suppose one can be earnest with a light heart.)

Xpost.

And not favorably enough on her desire for world peace?

(Do you consider her breasts rather ordinary?)

No, I consider her breasts pretty great. But I don't think her dad should be basically leering and pointing at them in public, y'know?

I knew what you meant about Daddy Simpson. I was just goofing around.

a toy for over 20 something pedophiles in the waiting

Well, here's another question. I'd originally assumed that her core audience was about 70% female, mostly teen or younger, but I don't really know this, and the knowledge available on the Web doesn't support this assumption, either. On Radio Disney you're hearing Jesse McCartney's cushy "Beautiful Soul" 10 times a day, just as you were 10 months ago, while "Boyfriend" is already fading, and is actually doing worse on Radio Disney than on regular Top 40, where it stalled early. I Am Me opened at number one on Billboard, but by the next week it fell out of the top 5. The first album also opened at number one but eventually moved fewer than 400,000 units. Now, if I do one twentieth as well with my book, I'd be ecstatic, but in the pop world Ashlee is not a superstar. And unless "L.O.V.E." gets "Hollaback Girl" attention on the CHR Rhythmic format (which I don't see happening, though it sure deserves the airplay), this album won't do as well as her last, since I don't hear anything as accessible on it as "Pieces of Me." I'd like to be proven wrong, since there's stuff on here that's as good as "Pieces of Me," but this is a fundamentally loud album - there are ballads, but they're all power ballads - and Ashlee's bruised, burnt voice is even more bruised and burnt than P!nk's was back on Missundaztood. By the way, P!nk not Gwen is the obvious source here, and her and Ashlee's loud confessional rock is what I assume propelled "emo" onto this thread title. If you want to call Ashlee "emo" I wouldn't necessarily argue, but I think Ashlee, Avril, and P!nk (and Liz Phair?) are a different loud confessional rock, though I haven't thought through what the differences are. I'd love to hear Ashlee sing "In My Eyes." "You tell me, that I'm better/You just hate yourself/You tell me that you like him/You just wish you did." Which is maybe what the best line in "Boyfriend" is about: "Hey how long 'til you look into your own life instead of looking into mine." Of course her income depends to some extent on our continuing to look into hers. And the reason she's falling between two stools commercially might be because she's trying to do two things at once: She's trying to model self-esteem and self-affirmation for the teen girls and tell them that can triumph through adversity and can survive without a man and that breaking up may be best thing that happens to them (you hear this message all the time in teen pop-rock, not to mention the adult pop-rock); AND she's trying to work punk rock into all this self-affirmation - which is not necessarily a contradiction; I would say that Lou and Iggy and Johnny and Courtney were/are all ultimately trying to affirm themselves, or affirm something, embrace life including one's own disastrous self. But certainly that quest takes them through a whole heap of self-loathing (at least self-loathing as expressed in song) so that "breaking up is the best thing that can happen to you" means "breaking down into pieces and destroying yourself might be the only way to save you from yourself." Punk rock gets off on this self-affirmation/self-destruction tension. I assume that the more thoughtful of you Ashlee haters (if there are any thoughtful Ashlee haters) aren't just being true to your school and therefore mad at her for belonging to the wrong social group and playing punk rock for the preps. (Why shouldn't preps respond to the self-affirmation/self-destruction dialectic?) Rather, you want someone who flies a punk flag to have some punk content as well. I don't get what anyone thinks is inherently wrong with her sound; she and Shanks rock harder than the Gang of Four and Franz Ferdinand, both of which sound like toy bands in comparison. (Sounding like toys isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course.) She goes tuneful and anthemic on her choruses, which may be too nonpunk for you, but doesn't seem so for me (one of the potent contradictions of "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" is that they're nice wrap-your-arms-around-each-other sing-along anthems about destroying everything). I surely can find stuff in her music that ought to be better; I think the anthemic choruses would be more powerful if they relied on her bare voice rather than souping everything up with double-tracked singing and 101 guitars. It's not a powerhouse voice but it is a tough little one, the bruised feel of it maybe too consistent, too solid, so I want to hear it crack up a bit. And I miss the excitement of music potentially veering out of control, which I do get but only a little from Franz Ferdinand (and Gang of Four) and a lot from long-ago bands like the Electric Eels and the James Williamson-era Stooges, the feel of somehow keeping your wheels under you while skidding close to the cliff. And right, we're not getting that from Ashlee. But we're rarely getting it from much of anybody - bits of the first Gore Gore Girls LP might be the exception - except in pale form. (And you're not serioulsy hearing this potential in Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt, are you?)

I don't see anything wrong with making demands on a performer, but what's the point of making demands on Ashlee if you don't think she's any good to begin with, if you don't hear anything with promise to live up to?

I also think her lyrics vague out too much - more than P!nk's, and vagueness was one of my problems with her, but I want to get back to this question I've been heading towards:

What do you think her constituency is? I know a few kids in their early teens, and when they want rock it tends to be stuff like System of a Down or Marilyn Manson, and their pop-rock leanings are towards Yellowcard and Hawthorn. On Radio Disney, you'll still get some teen confessional pop rock (esp. the ones that hit a few years ago, which get played to death), but neither P!nk nor Avril did a good job of following up on Missundaztood and Let Go, and though you'll hear some Ashlee and Lindsay, they're hardly dominant. And the "real" rock and alternative stations won't touch Ashlee because of who she is (rock stations don't like girls anyway); actually, I don't listen to rock stations much; from what I hear of rock and metal on record there are some fascinating things going on with form, but nonetheless these guys seem to want rock that slogs rather than rock that rocks. ("Rock that rocks" is hardly my be all and end all criterion fo rock, but everything else being equal, I sure prefer the rock that rocks.) And alternative is... [peters out]. Adult contemporary is no longer averse to rock, though it goes for the more classic in arrangement - Sheryl and Alanis - than for the teen wall of wail. Kelly Clarkson's very wailing "Since U Been Gone" was too undeniable not to rush the adult charts along with all the other charts it rushed, but her recurrent adult comtempo plays are her several million ballads. (And the fact that Marion Raven's similar - and almost as good - "Break You" hasn't even got a U.S. release is significant of something, though maybe just of the fact that it needs something better going on in the video than Marion having a screaming tantrum in her kitchen.) There's an amorphous "mainstream pop" audience for Ashlee, I guess, though I'm not sure who's in it. Her bruised voice is probably too bruising for a lot of listeners but not xy-chromosomed enough for the real bruisers.

Maybe she doesn't have a core fanbase but is just pulling people in due to her fame and to the quality of her music. (I was never as ecstatic about this album as Chuck was initially - I was hoping for a lot of "La La" and disappointed when I didn't get it - but I do respond to hooks and choruses and craftsmanship, and I like bruised voices and Courtney imitations (Chuck wasn't kidding about the title song.)

I tend to believe this. I don't much care about Ashlee - haven't heard either album all the way through - but man when the next Pink album drops next year I'm gonna be first in line. I don't understand how "Humble Neighborhoods" wasn't a single.

It's g-rated, but IT. IS. NOT. PUNK., goddammit.

She bores me, as do several other artists, because it doesn't seem to have occurred to her that art can be about anything but expressing one's inner soul (and please don't come at me with strawman "What do you want her to do - sing fist-pumping U2 pomp-"political" ballads?" There's a middle ground and you know it).

And yeah, I bristle at the hypocrisy: shortly after Autobiography came out I knew knew knew her next album was going to have a "Stop prying into my life" song. Which is trying to have it both ways. Which isn't a problem with a lot of other artists - sure, there's a difference between public and private, and I can just appreciate them on the basis of the songcraft. But when so much of what you are is tied into putting across the idea that "what you're seeing and hearing is real - this is the real me," you better go all the way with it. Which is why people (including me) came down much harder on her for the lip-synching thing than they would someone else.

And I hate her voice. Can't hit a note to save her life (I saw her before Autobiography came out, on a small stage that didn't allow for lip-synching technology), and the bruise in her voice sounds like run-of-the-mill Method acting to me.

I dunno if this qualifies as the thoughts of a "thoughtful Ashlee hater," but it's what I got.

This describes a lot of punk rock too, of course. (Not that I agree that it applies to Ashlee. Which is not to say that I necessarily *disagree* with it, either; more like, "hitting notes" has not much to do with why I like music. Whether she's hitting the notes or not, her voice has some power to it. And it did when I saw her live, too.)

I don't think there are any other blatant Franz Ferdinand rips per se besides "Boyfriend," Alfred, but there are for sure other excursions into '80s-style dance-oriented new wave rock (see my posts above.)

Idol was a member of both the Bromley Contingent and Chelsea. Tony James was a member of the London SS with Simonon and Mick Jones and Keith Levene. These men knew what actual Punk Rock was.

Cheeze-whiz often tastes real good, Monsieur Alex.

If you've got low standards, then suit yourself.

joan jett was prepackaged at the start and then she busted out! (as did the runaways)

Fair point on this one. The Runaways were indeed a svengali-steered project, but it's not like they were really about to trouble the pop charts with any severity. And Joan bailed out to follow her own muse swiftly enough. I wouldn't call her a fake.

And the best music often happens even when encased in prepackaged forms (Motown to thread).

Fuck Motown.

Okay, I was wrong.

(And somebody should mail Ashlee a Bromley Contingent T-shirt.)

They weren't a band.

>Please explain, in some detail, what the big schism is between whatever "punk" means in your greying head and what it means when Frank uses it to describe Ashlee Simpson's songs.

Because if all you've got is this:

>These men knew what actual Punk Rock was.

Then I feel bad for you. Punk wasn't real, Alex; it never existed. I know you think it did, but here's a hint for you: real revolutionaries don't make albums, they make bombs. It's all just showbiz.

So aren't lots of other T-shirts!

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.