'twas "funk boutique," 1991. AMG sez angel [sabater] was there for the second album in '89 but not for the third one in '92, and my CD single is storage; not positive whether angel's still on there on not.
i guess part of what gets me excited about these two cdbaby CDs is that i can't think of many acts, teen-pop or r&b otherwise, who picked up where either teena *or* lisa lisa *or* the cover girls left off. am i forgetting somebody? probably i am. but to what extent is '60s girl-group sound an element in late '90s/early '00s teen-pop at all? not nearly as much as it was in '80s pop r&b and latin freestyle, i'm sure. i didn't even hear it in the spice girls much (though of course i've yet to define what i mean by "'60s girl group sound," and i'm not sure i can. unschooled voices might be part of it, though. which obviously means lisa lisa more than it does teena. though maybe i should throw stacy lattisaw in there. {or shanice maybe?} i do know that i seem to be having a much harder time getting excited about kelly/lindsay/avril/etc than lots of people on this thread, and i'm not sure i know why. i like all of them fine, and hilary and robyn too, but they're missing SOMETHING. a sense of adventure or weirdness or surprise, maybe? though quite likely that stuff is there, and i'm just not hearing it.) (i also wish "konichiwa bitches" WAS as surprising or funky as "attack of the name game.")
(disclaimner: i'll decide a lot of that rant is utter bullshit mere minutes after i press "submit," but i'm gonna go ahead and press.)
― xhuxk, Friday, 24 March 2006 13:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Friday, 24 March 2006 14:24 (eighteen years ago) link
then how come i don't like pink or gwen (or even lindsay) more? so maybe that's not it, either. (i do like all of them fine. but still.)
― xhuxk, Friday, 24 March 2006 14:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Friday, 24 March 2006 14:32 (eighteen years ago) link
'Twas the Dance Club Play chart, where their single "Nice Day" is now at #3. Not sure who their album (again, coming out this month on an actual major label) would be marketed to -- I guess their audience now would be clubgoers (and specificially gay adults? Or maybe Eurotrash adults? I'm not sure), though they're songful enough that they easily *could* be marketed to teens. They'd fit in on Radio Disney. Anyway, I like this verse from "Home": "She takes her daddy's money/She spends it all on junk/She goes out with different girls."
― xhuxk, Saturday, 25 March 2006 15:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Saturday, 25 March 2006 15:05 (eighteen years ago) link
http://thecaglefamily.com/
finally got the veronica's CD yesterday, and "4 ever" is indeed pretty awesome, but what it mainly sounds like to me, except for the chorus parts where the high harmonies kick in, is just a really good donnas song. (it must have been the song i compared to joan jett above, when recalling perfunctorily having listened to parts of an advance of their CD a few months before, when i didn't know who they were.) other tracks? i'm not hearing much yet. not bad, just shoulder-shrugworthy. unlike many of the non-single cuts on the e-40 CD ("muscle cars"! "yay area"! "white gurl"! "they might be taping"!), which i actually think i might like more than its single. (and e-40 belongs on the teen-pop thread, since he mentions lindsay lohan in "white gurl," which isn't about lindsay lohan but about cocaine.)
finally bought the akon CD today at princeton record exchange, after procrastinating for like 2 1/2 years. (he belongs on the teen-pop thread because frank said he does, in the first post.) "locked up" and "ghetto" are even better than i remembered. who i'm realizing he sometimes reminds me of is shinehead. (he also belongs on the world music thread! and if there was an industrial thread, the percussion of "locked up" would belong there!)
"paper plane" by persephone's bees may well take its melody from "green tambourine."
― xhuxk, Saturday, 25 March 2006 22:36 (eighteen years ago) link
anyway, more akon thoughts: (1) i think i like the version of "locked up" without styles p better than the version with him since i prefer the jail-guitar-door slamming effects to his rapping; (2) when "lonley" was played on radio disney, did they just bleep the "bullshit," or what?; (3) "ghetto" is the song that reminds me of shinehead -- when akon's not as good, he reminds me more of shaggy, which is still okay; (4) best non-hit maybe: "journey."
so far my favorite non-hit on the veronicas' CD is "revolution." lalena says their version of "mother mother" sounds exactly like tracy bonham's (though didn't tracy just have one mother?). lalena also says the flyleaf singer sounds way more like the cranberries' singer or even sinead than bjork (who she's listened to way more than i have), but that the flyleaf vocals seem more multitracked than any of those. also, as a precedent for high female harmonies in a goth/metal context, she says Drain STH did that all the time in the late '90s.
― xhuxk, Sunday, 26 March 2006 16:35 (eighteen years ago) link
(Drain STH apparently Swedish, all female, Ozzfesters, and often rumored to be a producer concoction not a "real band" during the high Swedish teen-pop era. Which might be relevant.)
― xhuxk, Sunday, 26 March 2006 16:44 (eighteen years ago) link
For some reason I think of "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" when I hear their version. One of the pitfalls of having no discernible personality, maybe.
― nameom (nameom), Sunday, 26 March 2006 18:54 (eighteen years ago) link
>. kaci brown *instigator* 2005 $1.99 (who is she? she looks young. and i'm assuming she's country because that's where three copies of her CD were filed, and i think i heard of her before, possibly either in billboard or on one of these rolling country threads.)<
well, album definitely seems more like "r&b-leaning teenpop" (pretty ignorable so far, though that may change) than c&w. AMG's explanation:
>Kaci Brown grew up in Sulphur Springs, TX, and was singing at a very early age. Throughout her youth, she performed across her home state, appearing just about anyplace that would have her. To further her career, her family moved to Nashville in 2001 — remarkably, before attaining a record contract, she had a publishing deal and was writing for country artists. Though she intended to be a country artist, she was repeatedly told that she'd fare better with pop. By the end of 2005, she had summer touring dates with the Backstreet Boys, in addition to her Interscope-released debut album, under her belt. All of this happened before she passed her teenage years. A few of the things she adores, as noted on her website, include "love," "purple anything," "boys with guitars," and "boys in general."<
― xhuxk, Monday, 27 March 2006 21:35 (eighteen years ago) link
Incubated over at Radio Disney a while ago and kept a strange blog.
― nameom (nameom), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 01:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― nameom (nameom), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 02:24 (eighteen years ago) link
Infrastructural inspiration, as -remarkable- as hearing 20,000 people applied for Nashville Star or the thousands that line up for various casting calls reported on by Entertainment Tonight from 7 to 7:30, everyday. Giver a Nobel or a Pulitzer or a Booker or a Mcarthur, but how many people are so blown away by the talent, that as session hacks, they'll work for free for a chance to be on the recording?
Entertainment and talent as spectroscopically combed during observation of populations of ideal gas cloud volumes of molecules. Statistically, there's always one to fit every requirement of wonder in every cloud.
― George 'the Animal' Steele, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 06:41 (eighteen years ago) link
Yet somehow, nothing like as bad as Karmah's version of 'Just Be Good To Me'. I'm not describing that, though... quiversome. Brrr.
― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 07:01 (eighteen years ago) link
My response: "Combining Rage Against the Machine with stupid girl vocals is way better than combining Rage Against the Machine with Rage Against the Machine vocal. Sexless, juiceless dork, the guy was.
"Are there any sexy male rock singers under the age of forty?
"Flyleaf sound like Rage Against the Machine with Evanescence-type girl vocals except that Lacey the girl is a live wire on the order of Avril Lavigne rather than poor Amy Lee being stretched on the rack. (But I like Evanescence when they've got hooks; Amy's agony can be quite fetching when it's melodic.)
"I just listened to a band called Stutterfly who are like Flyleaf but even more harmonized and poppified, which would be fine with me if the guy singing hadn't removed all the sex and liquid from his vocals, sounding like another sun-deprived indie boy, basically."
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 17:30 (eighteen years ago) link
So, anyway, back to Flyleaf: you get sexy female vocals, lotso high female harmonies. Now, where else in Officially Gets Played On "Rock" Stations rock do you get those sexy live wire high female harmonies? I've barely listened to the "rock" stations in the last five years, though I'm now wishing I had. You do get boy harmonies, usually sexless and dorky (in my unlearned opinion).
Xhuxk: Maybe what you're trying to say is that you wish some of the Lindsays, Avrils, Ashlees (and Shankses and Martins) hadn't thrown over the DISCO during the transition to "confessional rock" (or whatever you want to call it). And by "DISCO" of course you can really mean "freestyle w/ girlgroup leanings." Although freestyle is pretty much a dead genre, some of its DNA has wormed into Europop. Ive been telling Edward O. that some of the pretty Swedish pop needs the sort of personality-oomph that a Lindsay would give it; but I can turn this around and wish that the Ameriteens would incorporate some Eurofizz.
(By the way, "r&b" is strong on the Radio Disney palette, B5 and Jo Jo not to mention Black-Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, Pussycat Dolls, Usher, Ne-Yo, and Rihanna. Akon's finally fallen out of the Top 30, but I'll bet that "Lonely" will be a Disney perennial, like "Blue Da Bee" and "The Rockefeller Skank" and "Get Ready for This.")
Wouldn't "L.O.V.E." count as r&b, albeit more Gwen than Teena?
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 17:53 (eighteen years ago) link
come back, shifty shellshock, all is forgiven.
Come my ladyCome come my ladyyou're my stutterflySugar.baby
Such a sexy,sexy pretty little thingFierce nipple pierce you got me sprung with your tongue ringand I ain't gonna lie cause your loving gets me highSo to keep you by my side there's nothing that I won't tryStutterflies in her eyes and looks to killTime is passing I'm asking could this be realCause I can't sleep I can't hold stillThe only thing I really know is she got sex appeal
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 17:53 (eighteen years ago) link
Lindsay Lohan gives you something that singers with stronger voices often don't. I want to say "personality," even though that's a cliché and even though many of the world's songs are fine or even better with anonymous singers: those thousands upon thousands of freestyle and Europop songs I've loved. But even in those, the virtue may not be the anonymity of the singer so much as that the wrong singer isn't getting in the way of the song. Whereas when the singer is right, the personality can add something. (This is all abstract. Which personality, added to which song?)
One thing I noticed this time around when watching the video for "Confessions of a Broken Heart" is that, halfway through, the camera pulls back and you see that the house is all picture windows, as if it were storefront on all sides, the family dysfunction on display and onlookers crowding outside, to gawk.
Herbie: Fully Loaded: How come I was so moved by this film? The Herbie concept (a car with a personality, can intuit moods and intentions, takes rudimentary action on its own but still needs symbiosis with the right driver) is dutifully brought up every now and then, since it's the official reason for the picture, but basically the movie sidesteps it. The story is about the driver, not the car. Any (nonpsychic) stock car would do. The Herbie concept's only usefulness is that it gives Matt Dillon the opportunity to be hilarious as the conceited, handsome creep of a driver who's continually blowing his gasket whenever the VW bug beats him. Dillon and the bug relate on one level, the rest of the movie is on another. This strategy - one set of characters operating in different zones from other sets - can work in a story. Dickens did it all the time. I would just say that in watching Herbie: Fully Loaded you just bracket the boring "Herbie" ideas and forget them when they're not needed.
Lohan was 17 or 18, playing a woman in her early twenties. She plays her as someone forthright, energetic, but watchful. I could imagine Lindsay doing the Jodie Foster role in Silence of the Lambs, a fundamental directness but with the need to keep a formal reserve in the bureaucratic FBI environment and, when dealing with mindfucking madman Hannibal, a care in weighing just how much of her vulnerability to dole out to him in exchange for the information she needs.
Screenwriters provide words and a lot of social subtext, which is also provided by costumes and sets. The actors provide bodies, postures, movement, tones of voice, expressions that make lines plausible, ways of standing in this particular kitchen or that particular porch or in a particular garage, next to a particular guy. Herbie: Fully Loaded has a between-the-lines subtext about the dad's class anxiety and his wanting his daughter to surpass him and enter a world he would never feel right in. Michael Keaton playing the dad moves as if he's no longer comfortable in himself, whereas Lohan walks in a direct line, except then she'll waver, not quite allowing herself to claim her true calling, which is actually back among the stock cars with her dad.
When Lindsay's "First" plays under the closing credits, the effect is totally jarring, since the posturing, demanding, voluptuous adolescent voice of the song has nothing to do with the clear sleek line of the character I'd been seeing for the last two hours.
("First" sounds better and better every time I hear it.)
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 18:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 18:10 (eighteen years ago) link
Some of Have a Nice Day's lyrics convey what would be an interesting dissatisfaction if they weren't so evasively abstract, though here's one that's kind of engaging (and intrigued rather than dissatisfied): "She wakes up when I sleep to talk to ghosts like in the movies/If you don't follow what I mean, I sure don't mean to be confusing/They say when she laughs she wants to cry/She'll draw a crowd then try to hide."
For what it's worth, one of the tracks, "Who Says You Can't Go Home," is Top Twenty on the country charts: a Cougar-wannabe number that's neither terrible nor good.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 18:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 18:24 (eighteen years ago) link
(I wonder why that happened.)
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 18:34 (eighteen years ago) link
http://cdbaby.com/cd/kingwell
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 19:03 (eighteen years ago) link
http://cdbaby.com/cd/kingwell2
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link
>"I saw The Angels gig at the Palace in 2000 and it absolutely knocked me out. I was one of a dozen girls in a room of about 1500 guys who just went off and knew the words to every song. That gig got me thinking about how to create some kick arse rock n' roll that girls would dig as much as guys."<
>A four track EP featuring a cover of Fischer Z's 1980 smash "So Long" plus 2 originals.<
and yeah (as reviews on those pages say) i definitely hear the easybeats and suzi quatro in there, too.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 19:19 (eighteen years ago) link
(paraphrased from a long rant:) I think the "personality" is related more to the teen pop star system, connected to film/TV cross-platforming. There's nothing actually "new" about it except for the genre of music it's being applied to. Stephen Thomas Erlewine discussed this in his AMG review of I Am Me (but as a weakness of the album). Confessional rock creates a kind of personal narrative that a lot of other pop formats don't, and in this sense the star -- Lindsay, Ashlee, occasionally Hilary maybe -- lets audiences into a seemingly personal story in a way an anonymous (Veronicas) or unknown (maybe Avril or Michelle Branch when they first became popular?) can't necessarily. Maybe whatever qualities make Lindsay compelling as a movie star also make her compelling as a singer, even if its not the singing that stands out.
I guess my problem with Erlewine's criticism is that it relates to celebrity gossip culture, which I Am Me is certainly in conversation with, but not dependent on for resonance. It's Ashlee that sells the songs, not just the idea or celebrity of Ashlee (one reason why Lindsay's confessional album doesn't hit as hard...despite a few good songs, I just don't get the feeling that she's in control of the material she's singing, particularly the covers, maybe because so much of the material itself is weak).
― nameom (nameom), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 20:04 (eighteen years ago) link
Anyway, Lindsay's musical personality in "First" was strong enough to jar me in its difference from the character she played in Herbie: Fully Loaded. Not that personality is everything. I don't think Kelly Clarkson's musical personality is anywhere near as strong as Lindsay's, but I think she made an (even) better album. (Didn't think so at first, by the way.)
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 01:49 (seventeen years ago) link
Not that a cross between Shooter and Lindsay wouldn't be worth something...
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:12 (seventeen years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:41 (seventeen years ago) link
"1.) superstition is not a religion.
"2.) one time I saw a guy getting a BJ in the car next to me on the freeway. and I was with my parents.
"3.) my electric blanket is on.
"4.) In This Hole by Cat Power makes me cry everytime.
"5.) I took 7 tylenols once. it was a really bad headache.
"6.) a boy needs to come home"
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:45 (seventeen years ago) link
Btw, I wish that someone here with better fashion sense than I (and that would be almost anyone who posts here) would say something about Ashlee's various magazine-cover appearances over the last few months: Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Elle, and Jane. She's endeavored not to look remotely similar on any of them.
Also would like to know what you make of the various photos in the I Am Me CD booklet.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:52 (seventeen years ago) link
― nameom (nameom), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:57 (seventeen years ago) link
Ashlee seems to have a pretty sharp sense of humor about her music (the "LIKE YOU" bit in "I Am Me" is gold!), I imagine she gets a kick out of those ultra-posed pics. Skye is maybe more transparent about which songs she's "in" on.
Can't comment on fashion, as I have none.
― nameom (nameom), Thursday, 30 March 2006 03:12 (seventeen years ago) link
Whereas I think it's a bit of a truism about adolescence that we don't necessarily feel like there is some stable concept of ourselves that we can point to and say "that is what I am". "I am me" in this sense doesn't necessarily mean "I am this singular thing". Rather, it can mean "I am not prepared to a conform to a singular thing outside of myself; I refuse to play by other people's rules". The "me" in "I Am Me" stands in for the inadequacy of any other word to "cover the field" in describing what "i am..."
The incongruent (as in, compared to one another) setpiece shots in the CD booklet might in this sense be a tongue-in-cheek elucidation of the album title rather than an attempt to undermine it; their incommensurability bearing witness to Ashlee's sense of internal fracturedness.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 30 March 2006 04:20 (seventeen years ago) link
That seems more reasonable. I wonder how the cover (and maybe album) might be received simply as I Am... "I am me" is definitely a statement worthy of further analysis...the "to be or not to be" of teen pop?
― nameom (nameom), Thursday, 30 March 2006 04:53 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 13:09 (seventeen years ago) link
1. lily allan (u.k. i guess?) "LDN"2. wir sind helden (germany) "von hier an blind"3. aly & aj (u.s.a. i guess?) "rush" (this reminds of joshua clover i think it was calling beth orton's song with the chemical brothers i think it was a cross between fairport convention and silver convention, except this blows anything by beth orton out of the water)4. mahsar (iran) "vase chi"5. tinchy stryder f. wiley (u.k.?) "uptown girl"6. cansei de ser sexy (brazil) "let's make love and listen death from above" (a reference to how skye likes death from above 1979 these days?)7. light beat (tunisia) "nhary liel"8. amy diamond (sweden) "what's in it for me"9. saian supa crew (france) "la patte"10. dx7 (spain) "el plan semanal"
(and even that #10 one is pretty good, i admit)
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 14:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 14:48 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 14:51 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:05 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:10 (seventeen years ago) link
Yeah, this is part of it. Though what was that Hilary Duff song I mentioned way upthread? "Wake Up"? Is that more disco in my memory (or my memory of its video, anyway) than in its actual sound? I forget.
>wouldn't "L.O.V.E." count as r&b, albeit more Gwen than Teena?<
Yeah, I'll buy that. And also more Led Zeppelin than Teena, right?
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:24 (seventeen years ago) link
http://cdbaby.com/cd/mckee
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:43 (seventeen years ago) link
http://cdbaby.com/cd/hollistunes
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:15 (seventeen years ago) link
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link
Well, if the story's true, Kelly C. told Max Martin to redo "Since U Been Gone" with more drums and more guitars, which in the abstract could easily equate to "afraid to be too catchy," even if it actually amounted to an insanely catchy song, and that could very well have been why Kelly did it. But it's more likely that catchy didn't enter into it. I see what chuck's saying, but my suspicion is that the textures they're going with are just more appealing to their ears--they're not as dense, not as showy. Certainly in the case of Robyn the road to indie leads not away from pop but through Neptunes-y / Prince-y (hip-hop-y?) minimalism. But someone should probably interview Ashlee or someone and ask, if they haven't already (I don't keep up enough).
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:39 (seventeen years ago) link
The songs are solid, and more significantly there are three of them even though the show's only aired once. The show's theme is already climbing up the RD Top 30.
Soon she'll probably be credited under her real name. I'm pretty sure that Miley Cyrus has a deal with Hollywood Records in addition to "Hannah's" soundtrack on Disney.
From YouTube: Best of Both Worlds, Who Said, and This Is the Life
― nameom (nameom), Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:51 (seventeen years ago) link
I guess part of what I'm saying is that I wish teen-pop now had a little more "Pour Some Sugar on Me" or "Talk Dirty to Me," a little less "Love Bites" and "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." Does that make sense to anybody? Is it my imagination, or are most teen-pop hits *power ballads*?
― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:58 (seventeen years ago) link