Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

And Britney's from neighboring Louisiana.

(Lindsay's from Long Island! I mention that because my general name for the "attractive demanding needy vocal style" is "Long Island bar-bitch vocals," by which I'm imagining a '70s Long Island bar band that comes to CBGB to display its original material, the lead singer always being a rock chick putting on tough sassy vocals. Chantal Claret of Morningwood sounds like this, the Slunt singer sounds like this, and Debora Iyall of Romeo Void singing "I might like you better if we slept together" is what they all wish they sounded like. Probably none of these people are from Long Island [and in the little contact I had in real life with Debora she seemed to be real sweetheart]. But anyway, Lindsay doesn't sound like this at all. She's more like the four-year-old with her little plastic shovel and bucket at the beach, romping around and splattering all over.)(And I wouldn't say that Lacey really sounds like the Long Island bar bitch - Jess and Lisa of the Veronicas sometimes do, however. Lacey's got more of the neediness and less of the demand in her voice.)

Legends can be true; what makes them legends is that they fit a story that cultures like to tell themselves. The Legend of Cassie is that she descended into drugs and despair and pulled herself out through Christianity, and when her life was on the line she stood by her belief. (The song has it, "The question asked in order/To save her life or take it/The answer no to avoid death/The answer yes would make it," but I don't believe that during the massacre it was clear what would save you and what wouldn't. I'm not going to research that issue, either.)

(And no I don't worked for her label, or anyone else's.)

Aren't the Veronicas from Australia (which isn't to say they aren't trying to sound like they're from Long Island, except the speak/sing track where the accent slips out)? How about New Jersey brats...Daphne and Celeste, more recently the Jonas Brothers...

"Come Closer" - Now this for sure has a banjo, but it isn't country, or if it is, a little bit, the voice is a noncountry sprite, it hops aboard the harmonica keys and jumps about. If you slowed this track to half-speed and gave it a violin section instead of a banjo, it'd be 1950s "sophisticated" lounge music, but here it's another tour of the monkey bars. In the lyrics she's inviting a guy to come closer, but what he wants is not coming in clear.

(xpost - Yes, Veronicas are from Brisbane, which is why Finney had a line on them before the rest of us upthread)

Every time I think I've had enough of you
I take you back again
Not just because I need a friend
Just because I can't pretend
Like the others do

You think you're really serious
Clever and mysterious
Talking like you're dangerous
Talking like a fool

It's possible that Avril and the various Matrices never heard that song (it was an album track, not a single), but not only does it foreshadow "Complicated," it's a hell of a lot more complicated besides, and completely assured in both its flow and its sanity.

Every time I think I've had enough of you
I take you back again
Not because I need a friend
Just because I can't pretend
Like the others do

You think you're really serious
Clever and mysterious
Talking like you're dangerous
Talking like a fool

Oh I'm with you. I am completely bowled over by her, especially the song "LDN", which is just the best thing I've heard in a good long while. Lily is the sound of the year. I mean this Marit person is cutsey and winsome and everything, but not really IT.

Tim, I'll write a bit about "I Am Me" vs The Lohan when I get home in a few hours.

>>For Immediate Release
March 15, 2006

MATISYAHU DEBUTS AT #4 ON BILLBOARD 200
WITH NEW ALBUM ‘YOUTH'

With Sales Of 119,000, ‘Youth,' Finds Matisyahu The Only Artist With Two Albums Currently In The Billboard Top 40

‘Youth' Captures #1 Spots On Top Internet Albums Chart, Digital Albums Chart And Reggae Chart As ‘Live At Stubb's' Lands at #3 On Reggae Chart<

Kind of a hope springing eternal type thing.

Oh yes, and the Lily Allen raving is by and large a bit bang on. That link's for her Myspace, where there are four songs, the three of which I've heard could definitely be classified as 'dead good'. Kind of like 'Why Do I Do?' by Tyler James from a couple years ago, except Lily appears to have been blessed with more than one good song, a slightly less irritating voice, and the chorus to 'LDN', which is rather immense.

One worrying sign - she appears to be on Regal, the label which did roughly nothing for Cathy Davey's career a couple of years ago.

Skye

Ha, she'll probably draft it herself...

"I Am Me" has been discussed a lot on here, but part of the reason I like it so much is that it sounds like the kind of "rock" record I would love to have written if I were a songwriter. Lots of the chords and riffs in it sound like songs I love that are maybe a bit obscure (as I said on the country thread, "In Another Life" is a dead sound-alike for Artificial Joy Club's lost-classic single "Skywriting"). "Beautifully Broken" sounds like a Belgian trance act's ballad done as a rock song (might be Sylver's "Shallow Water" but I'd have to find the song I'm thinking about), and for all the blather that people say about "HAHA THE ALBUM IS CALLED I AM ME AND SHE IS DOING LOTS OF DIFFERENT STYLES", well, I don't necessarily agree with it. It sounds like a mostly rock record to me, and I'll wager if you look into the archives of a lot of reviewers who have been lukewarm on "I Am Me", you'll find them praising OTHER artists for being eclectic and such. The "too many different styles" thing is often used as a criticism where no genuine one is available - reviewers seem to praise eclecticism and similarity between tracks on an album as it suits them, and partially it must be the "Oh, rock music is serious business for guys who LOVE music and trainspot obscure punk influences, we can't have teenage girls singing or enjoying it and generally taking it back to what it was in the 50s, can we" mentality, but there are lots of straw-men and there's not enough time to tackle them. FWIW, the first 8 songs on "I Am Me" are so ridiculously strong that whenever the next single is announced, I'm going to go "Oh, no, I was really hoping for xxxx". ("Dancing Alone", please, Ashlee's people, please, which is the alternative-dimension "Cool" where it goes horribly wrong). I'm guessing 30-something or beyond critics don't know the magic of a tiny bit of dress-up, slightly different outfits that are only surface changes, and that's really all that Ashlee does - the stylistic differences are pretty minor, in much the same way that Shania Twain puts in Timbaland-esque string stabs, cascading synths, fake Oriental sounds but still sings pop-country songs, Ashlee basically does Shanks' songs in the same way, and if that occasionally takes her into Courtney territory, well and good, if it makes her into a disco-dancing fag hag ("L.O.V.E.") then that's grand too, and those who criticise, well, they should consider whether they wear the same clothes at work or at a club or on a date and then realise that they're stupid.

I guess i go on about it a lot, but it's in the strengths of "I Am Me" that the weaknesses in the Lindsay Lohan album become clear. The Lohan album, has a more consistent, superficially FITTING sheen, of the kind that Stephen Thomas Erlewine (whose taste is dubious) can probably approve for a popette - a little piano and some plonked heavy guitars, but it doesn't hit at any point, and even when the tempo changes it's got this horrible awful saminess about it. The problem is, even though it's a superficially more dramatic pallette, the songs themselves don't have anywhere near as much entertaining self-loathing or self-aggrandizement as Ashlee's. I keep expecting "My Innocence" to turn into Radiohead's "You And Whose Army", honestly. The title track's a keeper, even if only for its cheeky spoken word intro. "Who Loves You" is a deliciously sleazy kind of thing - maybe halfway between "Red Dress" and Kelly Osbourne's last album, but there's no tune. The two covers don't work at all, either. Lindsay sounds blanker, the songwriting's not as good, it's just not as strong an album.

Will say more in a bit, going to listen to the Lohan album again. I didn't end up doing the Marit, Todd Burns wrote it up and gave it an A-. I agree.

(We should keep a running list of best-written teenpop (or whatever) CDBaby and Myspace pages. Skye's the winner so far, but I haven't really looked around.)

"Any reason I give for liking something can and will be given as a reason of mine for disliking something else."

In other words, I love Liz Mitchell's clear and empty singing; I hate Joan Baez's clear and empty singing.

Of course I can elaborate, say that Joan's singing is soggy, whereas Liz's is as clear as a running brook. Oops, that doesn't work, as brooks are kind of wet themselves. And anyway, I'm sure to find someone I love whose vocals are absolutely drenched. Amy Lee, perhaps, but not until she learns better when to turn her faucet on full and when to moderate the flow. You see, my problem is that the drenchings lose impact through overrepetition.

I really like the consistency of Liz Mitchell's vocals.

(Liz Mitchell sang lead on most Boney M tracks.)

Anyhow, I love the eclecticism of the early Beatles albums, whereas I hate the eclecticism of The White Album.

So here's my Veronicas conundrum: for all the power of their singing, they don't really establish an identity for their music. Given that I've loved thousands upon thousands of anonymous freestyle and Europop songs - including the hit that the Veronicas co-wrote for t.A.T.u., and including the Veronicas' own "Leave Me Alone," which is basically t.A.T.u.-style Europop with a rock beat - I can't say that a lack of identity in itself is a problem at all (and the Veronicas aren't particularly eclectic, either). I guess my trouble with the Veronicas is that when they go to their sensitive "I am moved by love" or "I am moved by sadness" vocals, I don't give a shit - whereas when they go to their piercingly high harmonic "I am moved by love" or "I am moved by sadness" vocals, I am delighted. (None of this explains the times when I get moved by wooden phonetic rendering of English on some Dutch or Italian dance record. Probably has to do with the beautiful sixth-generation imitation Miami riff that was filched for the accompaniment.)

http://s45.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0UNDRV2CB5U651GOP3JOVMRCX2

The fourth track, "Knock "Em Out" is a bit cliched but otherwise the other stuff is great. Abby Poptext has taken over Fluxblog today and posted Skye and something else of this general ilk -- I guess I'll check them out, given the raves.

xpost

Xhuxk's raising a question that I was about to ask: I said a couple of days ago that Lacey Mosley's a live wire on the order of Avril Lavigne and that a lot of harmonies could come right off of pop/teenpop tracks such as "Behind these Hazel Eyes," and Evanescence is an obvious source. But I'm wondering where else this music draws from. That is, I don't really listen to much nu-metal. I know there are a whole bunch of bratrock bands, male mostly, whose harmonies are pretty much the only redeeming elements in their music, and the harmonies tend to get undercut by the wanky dorkboy singing. But those harmonies may well be a source for Flyleaf, and those nu-metal dorkboys (and there could be a lot of nondork boys, I just haven't heard them) may well be a source for Evanescence too. Are there other women singers who set the stage for Amy and Lacey (I mean, more recent than Grace Slick and Stevie Nicks and Siouxsie Sioux; you know, nowadays singers)? I'm agreeing mostly with what Xhuxk and Ian said above about the difference between Anneke and Cristina on the one hand and Kelly on the other (and I'd add Amy and Lacey to "the other"); the former have a deliberate aloofness, the latter have very much the opposite of aloofness. I can see how a Christian rocker might go "goth" (or whatever) for goth's critique of normality and its ambivalent embrace of the not normal - and such a person's Christianity wouldn't be "let's live a happy wholesome life and never go to a city" but rather "Christ, take me beyond the bullshit, including or especially my own" - but the singing style that would go with it wouldn't be aloof, I don't think. Rather, it'd try more to sound like an unresolved problem.

Ben Moody and Amy Lee met each other as teenagers in a Christian youth camp (or that's what I read, anyway), and Fallen was high on the Christian charts as well as the Top 200 until they emphatically told Entertainment Weekly that they were a secular band (Moody: "We're actually high on the Christian charts, and I'm like, What the fuck are we even doing there?" Lee: "I guarantee that if the Christian bookstore owners listened to some of those songs, they wouldn't sell the CD.")

"With an explosive passion for music, and a humble maturity that surpasses her years, this 19- year -old is a dose of fresh fire discovered as she advanced through over four rounds of auditions for the second season of Fox's hit series "American Idol." At the age of 16, Joanna was one of the youngest competing, yet continually making the cut for judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson in Los Angeles. "I was mixed in with people who had actually gone to school to study music, and there I was, just receiving my driver's license!" With thousands auditioning, Joanna made it to the final 80 contestants. With the confidence of industry veterans under her belt, her career in music was imminent.

Coming from a long line of pastors, Joanna grew up on a farm in Michigan as one of five children in a close-knit Italian family. "My family has always encouraged me to pursue my dreams; they have supported me and prayed for me through this entire journey." Graduating fifth in her class, Joanna knows first hand the pressures that teens face today in a culture of empty promises. "Your peers are changing so much at that age, you have to start making your own decisions to determine who you really want to be, what you want to stand for," says Joanna. "I came to a point where I said 'Here's my life Lord, I don't know what you're going to do with it, but here I am.' " With a reverent surrender and a love for music, Joanna moved to Music City after high school and headed straight into the studio."

Kittie (who definitely had occasional Lacuna Coilish moments).

I recently started an ongoing project with this...Skye beats most of them hands down, but Brie Larson's page is pretty great (semi-underrated album, too).

I have the same problem with the Veronicas album...I was using the phrase "confessional bubblegum" but it's more like "anonymous confessional," a total killer in this case when at least half the songs are ballads.

Whereas on Autobiography there are number of tracks (I think "Undiscovered" is one of them maybe?) where Ashlee sings very sweetly, quite a distance from "Autobiography" or "Lala". In the context of the album I like that, it works by virtue of being on the same album as those harder tracks and thus showing up a different side of her (although I might not find Ashlee interesting if she did a whole album like that).

Still getting to used to Autobiography so I'm not sure yet how much I like it in relation to I Am Me, but I know that I love every single song on the latter, which is quite an achievement!

>Do Perspehone's Bees count as teenpop? I know I saw their name in Billboard, but can't remember whether it was on one of the European charts or on the dance chart. Music is Eurodancepop from, uh, somewhere; I don't have the press release handy. Album out on Columbia next month. Girl singer, though she sounds like new wave era Geddy Lee or maybe the guy from Sparks on the first song, and the second one has her saying you're on the bottom and she's on the top climbing, and "Nice Day" is totally pretty and summery, and "Muzika Dlya Fil'ma" has a title in some world language or other, and closer "Home" brings it back home with an extended Link Wray twang rumble. Cool, but what the heck?

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=24911247

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=16743376

But yeah, they both seriously need to take lessons from Skye Sweetnam.

Incidentally, both Joanna and Hope are apparently over 100 years old (at least if you google their myspace pages they are).

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

NO more FREE donuts when the light is on!!!!!!!
We drove to South Carolina tonight.
On our way to stop to eat dinner, we see a Krispy Kreme across the street.
The Light was on!
So I told the guys that you get free donuts when the light is on, because we always used to do that!
They didn't believe me.
So I told them to pull over and I will prove it to them.
We all walk in.
They lady looks at me like I'm crazy when I ask her to tell them that we get FREE donuts because the light is on.
GEEEEZZ!
They definitely think I'm a loser.
AND I'm sad to say that this Krispy Kreme is no longer giving away free donuts when they are fresh and hot! Hopefully other Krispy Kremes have not conformed to this absurd craziness.