Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

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.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=23896606&blogID=57756512&MyToken=378e44d1-a8d4-464e-979f-9ca0f8f204ba

And they also have the best taste in music ever:

Influences Jump5, Reo speed wagon, Pussycat Dolls,gwen stefani, green day, click 5, Mcfly, Ludacris, DHT, The all American Rejects, Martina Mcbride, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Carrie Underwood, Meredith Edwards, Brittany Hargest, Deanna Carter,Christina Aguilera, Gretchen Wilson, Big and Rich, Kenny Chesney, Leann Rimes, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears,gunz n roses, Hanson, Charlotte Church, Josh Groban, Zoegirl, Kimberly Perry, Skillet, Pillar, casting crowns,TheNcrowd, OUT OF KILTER, Korn, Manson,Kenny Chesney, Tim Mcgraw, Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Garth brooks, Emma Bunton, spice girls, ashlee simpson, aly and aj, Jesse McCartney, Evanescense, Skye Sweetnam, Usher, Raven, Metillica, NIN, The Donna's, Aaliyah, fat joe, Ciara, OZZY, Janet Jackson, Cher, Hilary Duff, Rascal Flatts, Jodee Messina, Billy Gilman, lil Kim, Victoria Beckham, 80's music, Cinderella, Tesla, Twizted sister, whitesnake, JOURNEY, Steve Perry, ICP, Kelly Clarkson, Jackson5, Mariah Carey, Pillar, Lita Ford, Leann Rimes,BEN FOLDS (Thanks Cali), Todd Agnew, THE RIDE HOME, FATTY HAZE, Punk music, Goth, Rave,techno, BLUEGRASS, The Starting line, My chemical Romance, Ac/dc, Good Charlotte, Cold Play, Dashboard Confessionals, Yellowcard, Death Cab, MegaDeath, Rob Zombie, Whitesnake, Posion, ALICE COOPER, Charlie Daniels Band, Daniel and Jonna's band (name tba), Michael Gungor, Kirk Franklin, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Cheetah Girls, Josh Gracin, Tiffany, Kelly Osbourne, Haylie Duff, Leann Womack, Dolly Parton, Allison Krauss, and the Union station, Prime Suspect, Elysium, Jim Parrinello (my adopted Dad), Toby Keith, Keith Anderson, Loretta Lynn, Switch foot, Mandy Moore, Rachael Lampa, Meredith Edwards, Sister Hazel, hoobastank,Katy Rose,Hanson,brooks and dunn, Cowboy Troy,Howie Day, Max a million C, Red hot Chili peppers, Looking glass, Reba,Gavin Degraw, Hope Partlow, Kaci Brown, John Mayer, (Plenty more)
Go

She has music on her site, too:

http://www.myspace.com/bnicole

(And I suck because I forgot to say thanks, but thank Chuck--before I'd just sorta liked The Gathering from afar but now am turning downright fannish.)

I remembered liking the second, emo-ier song from the first Lohan album more but now I can't remember anything about it at all. I think it had a cute guy in the video clip, hence my approval. Maybe he looked like Ian Somerholder? He was having a fight with his dad or something?

The song is called "Over." The chorus gets so wonderful as it's winding down. I had difficulty understanding the storyline of the music video as well though. I guess the next door neighbor love interest for Lohan was being abused by his father, in effect adding an extra layer of narrative to the song which by itself is just a straght forward break up angst number.

My favorite Lohan track right now is "Black Hole" from A Little More Personal. Really nice rolling piano line. The verse melody is strong in a Max Martin going for Abba grandness. Unfortunately, the chorus then shifts to a kind of lite nu-metal sludgey whine but the verse parts are worth putting up with this.

also the first lohan album is awful. the "drama queen" single from that movie is a good song trapped in lohan's voice.

the success of anything off the second album is totally contingent on how well the producers can hide her voice or scare up something decent for her to cover, especially drowned by backup singers.

still, "who loves you" is fantastic punked up moroder until it turns terribly cloying at the end.

i don't even see the dolls as emo particularly.

they're terribly teen however, or actually more for 20 somethings who are still living out their teens, in terms of the fanbase -- but also they're a good band, so don't take that as an insult.

and yeah, i did see them do a very good cover of war pigs i guess. which is old metal but not new metal at all (and by that token more nu goth)

(Notice that none of us has the same take on Lohan. This in itself makes her valuable.)

"Symptoms of You" - The music is so-what (Shanks & DioGuardi producers but not writers), but the lyrics qualify it for the multi-volumed Rough Guide to Codependent Relationships: "Baby all I do is suffer from symptoms of you." This is supposed to show how much she's in love, the old love-is-a-fever-or-flu routine, but the song unintentionally makes the condition seem really pathological.

[We could make The Rough Guide to Codependent Relationships an ongoing series, one or two a year, like the Now compilations.]

"First": Not her very best, but a good test case. If you're drawn in by this blaring self-centeredness, as I am, then you'll like Lohan. If you can't stomach it, then you should stay away. (From her music, that is. As an actress she's far more versatile.)

By the way, the music at the end of each verse, the part that leads into the chorus, seems a pure example of why Shanks & DioGuardi are great (and Kara DioGuardi gives herself the answering vocal part, making her voice affectless so as to highlight Lohan, but sounding beautiful nonetheless, filling in the sound). I don't have the music theory to explain what makes it typical Shanks & DioGuardi, but something about it deepens the song, gives it what I've been calling "the ache of beauty," the unexplainable feeling that love and pain are genuinely at issue here, even if the words are claiming self-confidence: "'Cause you're mine/And tonight/You don't revolve around her/You're mine and this time/I'm gonna scream a little louder."

And the Shanks guitar riff that starts this track is as exuberant as Lohan is. It's one of Miccio's favorites.

So, Daj. *I Know You Want Me*, 2006, Purple Buddha Records, Albanian-American, from Florida. One of the first things you'll notice when you look at her cdbaby link above is "imagine the Veronicas on acid." Unfortunately, I have still barely heard the Veronicas at all (hope to soon), so I have no idea if that's true or not. What I do know: (1) The first song on the album is somewhere in the '80s Prince/Teena Marie/Sheila E neighborhood, and where her voice gets loud is also when the powerchords get loud, and it *isn't* Teena, I know, but it still makes me *think* of Teena, which counts for something since almost nobody ever does anymore. (2) The second song, a totally kicking cover of "I've Done Everything for You" with totally chirpy high-pitched backup vocals, supposedly written by Sammy Hagar but I know it as a Rick Springfield hit, is even better. (3) The third song might be even better: "Pretty in Punk," over-the-top silly-at-least-partly-by-accident-I-think new wave bubble-punk pop about a dad being concerned because his daughter is dating guys with piercings and she's wearing fishnets and getting kicked out of Catholic school for flashing the priest and listening to the Sex Pistols on her iPod because her favorite word is anarchy. (4) Fourth song "When You Put Your #@!! on My !#@" to quite sexy effect leaves the blanks for naughty bits blank a la George Jones's "Her Name Is..." or the Beastie Boys's "Cookie Puss" or Boney M's "Bang Bang Lulu" or something though I forget why those last two belong on the list. (5) Fifth song "Just Rock N Roll" to me is BLATANTLY Billy Joel's "Still Rock and Roll to Me" as redone by a more hard-rocking C&C Music Factory, with Daj stretching out words with extra vowels James Brown style near the end. (6) Sixth song "Forbidden Fruit" starts with a hushed fluffy spoken-word part that reminds me of Seduction or Bardeux or one of those groups, and from there on lets the music drop out into open space in a sort of dub or psychedelic pop way. (8) Ninth song "Photogenic Memory" is also apparently a cover (originally written by Jerry Knight and Davitt Sigerson!) though I don't think I ever heard the original before but this version is super catchy with freakazoid '80s robot-funk backup vocals. (Just checked AMG; turns out it was the first song on the Philip Bailey album with "Easy Lover"!) Anyway, minus the acid, is this what Veronicas sound like?

I like Rick's better but it's not very different from Hagar's, which was also very good. "Rock 'n' Roll Weekend," "Plane Jane," Sam did a lot of hard teen pop on his Capitol LPs.

lindsey & kathy, 4-song teen-pop country bubblegum rock EP by two teen florida sisters said on their cdbaby page to also be former child actors on a PBS kids' show called "the huggabug club" not to mention daughters of a pro baseball player i never heard of: first song is yet another "walmart parking lot" song, different than chris cagle's and probably closer spiritually to shannon brown's "cornfed"; in this one, you get things-frank-would-(probably accurately)-call-lies like "no one's complaining about nothing changing here" and stuff about how the local paper only has a page or two which is enough for the news in such a small town and there's only one button on the radio dial which of course plays country so it's "kinda like livin' in the past," okay, the usual myth, but who the hell said songs were supposed to be honest anyway? sound is like a fast early tom petty tune or something, though maybe somebody can figure out a more accurate '80s pop-rock referent for the guitar parts. second song is about a breakup the singer wishes didn't happen, very nice, and helped out what i believe to be a bassline from the doobie brothers' "listen to the music." third song is more bluegrass/folk trad, and the place the sisters' sibling harmonies most shine. and the last song is maybe the most interesting -- not country at all, way more like lisa lisa losing herself in emotion or deniece williams hearing it for the boy in the mid '80s. updated '60s girl group, in other words; in fact, the updating might be accidental. and it works; people who've listened to that *one kiss leads to another* box more than me should figure out what REAL girl group singer it sounds like.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/lindseykristy

And it's a picture disc!