Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

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so, stop the presses, this album from australia is what avril and kelly (and uh, maybe even ashlee and skye and hope) *should* sound like. which is to say, like the first-album divinyls except less arty and more consistently catchy and funny and sexy, often (in "you stink" and the great and hilarious and furious cheated-on-revenge single "holding your gun" for instance) doing a fast mott the hoople (or angel city?) boogie-woogie hard rock under thick guitar buzz. the *gun* EP threw me at first because it opens with leanne kingwell (that's her name, remember it) doing two power ballads (one of them apparently a cover, since it's credited to john watts and the lyrics aren't in the lyric booklet of the album) with prim and proper aussie pronunciation like for instance pronouncing "france" "frontz", but in the course of the album (now called *show ya what,* which seems to be mostly a reissue of the 2005 album that's up on cdbaby, with "holding your gun" replacing "back to me" and the track order shuffled) the ballads make way more sense, partially by being less plentiful...and okay, i also just noticed that the track "be with you" is credited to brewster/brewster/neeson, which means i was RIGHT about the angel city comparison. "blind" is credited to one james stewart; the rest are kingwell herself. "drop your pants" starts out like "hey little girl" by the syndicate of sound (which the divinyls covered), then gets tougher and thicker, like the sonics, but the effect isn't '60s garage rock nostalgia at all, probably because leann's vocals (basically, she sings a lot like christina amphlett at her most rocking) are the most powerful element in the mix. and also maybe as a tribute to christina, in "my hero" she touches herself. with her vibrator. which is better than you. predicton (probably premature, but who cares, what else is new with me): *show ya what* could wind up being one of the best albums of 2006; "holding your gun" might be one of the best singles.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/kingwell

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 19:03 (eighteen years ago) link

"holding your gun" (now on the album) was first on this EP:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/kingwell2

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link

okay, didn't notice these; she's even cooler than i thought:

>"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

Lindsay Lohan gives you something that singers with stronger voices often don't.

(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

I think you can know fuck-all about Lindsay Lohan and Ashlee Simpson and still hear a strong personality in their singing. In fact, their singing was pretty much the first exposure I had to them, same as my first exposure to Mick Jagger, David Johansen, Mary Weiss, Grace Slick, et al. Which of course isn't to say that I heard them in a cultural vacuum, or that someone from Mars would have gotten what I got out of them. But my cultural references weren't "This is what I know about Lindsay Lohan and Ashlee Simpson in particular" - though obviously I knew they were young women, but I didn't know much more, other than that Ashlee was Jessica's kid sister - but more like "This is what their words and singing feel like given my experience as a human being." Meaning my experience having heard scads of people talk and sing in my life. E.g., comparing Lindsay to a kid in the wading pool obviously draws on my experience of having seen kids in wading pools, and of the use of the kid-in-wading-pool metaphors in literature and criticism, etc.

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 (eighteen years ago) link

So far I'm liking but not loving Leanne Kingwell. For some reason the name that pops into my head when listening to her isn't any of the teenpoppers or the Divinyls or Suzi Quatro etc. (though I'm not saying the latter too aren't relevant) but Shooter Jennings; the same almost-nothing of a vocal-cord digging into itself and managing to scoop out a voice for itself.

Not that a cross between Shooter and Lindsay wouldn't be worth something...

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:12 (eighteen years ago) link

M.I.A. has posted as one of the friends on Skye Sweetnam's myspace page.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:41 (eighteen years ago) link

From Brie Larson's myspace blog:

"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 (eighteen years ago) link

Of course, if you know something about the ongoing Lindsay or Ashlee narratives, that can help, though it depends what you "know." You have to pick and choose from all the noise surrounding them.

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 (eighteen years ago) link

Brie reads Henry Miller and Bukowski (in one week!). Miller quoted at length in a recent post. She listens to: Daft Punk, the Cramps, the Walkmen, Cat Power, David Bowie, Big Star, Pulp, Elvis Costello...and she had the new YYY's album two weeks before it came out (and made sure to flaunt the actual release date). Just noticed M.I.A. the other day. Skye is also a big DFA79 fan.

― nameom (nameom), Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:57 (eighteen years ago) link

I always read the photo shoot as a simple undermining of "I Am Me" as a unified statement.

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 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, although I wouldn't necessarily say "undermining" - or perhaps the issue is that we assume "I Am Me" should be a straightforwardly unified statement.

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 (eighteen years ago) link

tongue-in-cheek elucidation of the album title rather

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 (eighteen years ago) link

Well, Frank I am reserving my own liking-not-loving for Marrit Larsen, the Veronicas, and Flyleaf this week. (It occurs to me, though not necessarily about these records, that the problem with teen-pop these days is that, unlike say "Barbie Girl" by Aqua, it is usually just not BUBBLEGUM enough. The singer-songwriter thing too much enables teens or at least heroines-of-teens to act like little grownups or something. Though then again, I thought the same thing about the Backstreet Boys and *NSync when they first came out, in comparison to say "Mmmmbop," and wrote words to that effect in *Request* way back then. Somehow I think today's teenpoppers -- not Skye or Hope, maybe, but most of them -- are afraid to be *too* catchy. Which makes them often sound timid to me, and a little amorphous, no matter what their vocal prowess might be, if it indeed implies in their particular case. Plus also I am remembering lately that I also like Joan Jett more than Courtney Love, oh well.) Anyway, Marit Larsen. Frank burned me the CD, and it's real good, though not nearly as much fun as all the poptimist world-cup-of-pop hits that take up the second half of the CD-R. (Which hits I'll get to later if not sooner, I'm sure.) As Frank says, Marit's album is very consistent, give or take the truly unbearable male-wuss vocal dueting with Marit in "To The End." What Frank doesn't say, possibly because he's never heard Nellie McKay, is that frequently what the CD sounds like is "Nellie McKay but less annoying." And I don't hate Nellie, and Marit isn't quite as precious as her, but she's still pretty precious. Her voice is basically a little girl voice not a woman voice, which puts her in the neighborhood of much '90s female-sung indie rock, but also, yeah, in the neighborhood of some country; I guess (predictably enough with me) it's the '90s indie thing that leaves me a little uneasy -- I hear it in Annie and Robyn too, and it makes me skeptical. Yet much of Marit's record sounds likeably spare and sweet, something like Skeeter Davis doing "The End of the World" (a seminal Frank fanhood song), and the carnivalesque cabaret swirl of a lot of it (connections to the parts of Jessi Colter's new album that remind me of Dusty Springfield's "Windmills of Your Mind" maybe?) isn't bad. The Middle Eastern pyschedelic lilt or whatever that "This Time Tomorrow" goes into is really cool, and I also definitely approve of "In Came The Light," "Only a Fool" (yeah, maybe the best song, as Frank says), and "The Sinking Game." Seems much of the album is Marit mulling over her current boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who he's made the decision not to talk to, fine. But even then, I can't say she's really grabbing me on an emotional level. I'd call the album *crafty.* In a good way. But also, and especially compared to say Leanne Kingwell, a bit humorless. Which is another problem with much current teen-pop (Veronicas and Flyleaf included, probably -- well, more Flyleaf than the Veronicas, maybe, I'm not sure. And I'm not saying that all music has to be funny. But it sure can help. And as for Leanne Kingwell, it also helps that she rocks hard enough to stomp the Veronicas and Flyleaf and Kelly et. al. to smithereens.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 13:09 (eighteen years ago) link

And so, to at least partially contradict a lot of what i just wrote, here's how i'd rank the recent teenpop/worldpop hits that frank burned for me (at least today; these rankings could easily change tomorrow):

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 (eighteen years ago) link

More Veronicas thoughts: (1) At their most Abba (a/k/a "Shut Up," which I have decided I like) they are definitely more Agnetha than Frida. (2) The fast parts of the song about the boy who tries to hold their hand after they thought he was gay are more fun than the slow parts, but the whole song is actually kinda fun, especially when they take their clothes off in front of him. (3) "Revolution" is more fun than that, and I have no idea what the words are about. (4) "When It All Falls Apart" is good, since you can't go wrong with "I'm having a day from hell" as your first line and "I should have kicked your ass instead" a few lines later, and lines about drinking too much and forgetting where you parked your car are real life, man. (5) Frank is right about the album turning into generic mush toward the end, but "Heavily Broken" always jumps out of the proceedings at me to an extent regardless. (6) If I cared as much as Frank about high swooping harmonies, I might love their Donnas imitation as much as he does. (7) "Could Get Used to This" could be a breakfast breakup song (and hence good by definition) but unfortunately nobody breaks up in it. B+

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 14:48 (eighteen years ago) link

Oops I mean "Mouth Shut," not "Shut Up." And it's "*I* Could Get Used to This." Also the one on the right wears pretty cool plaid purple pants.

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 14:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Another driveby kvetch I wanna make is that these teen-poppers sure do make a point (in general) of avoiding concrete nouns and place names, don't they? What the hell's with that? (If you're not sure what I mean, play pretty much any of them back to back, with, I dunno, the Carrie Underwood album or something, and my point should be abundantly clear.) (I mean, I'm not saying that country is always better than teenpop these days, I wouldn't go that far. But it does have something teenpop lacks.) (And I swear country's often more bubblegum now than teenpop is, too.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:05 (eighteen years ago) link

(that does not apply to the lily allan song, though, I suppose, not to mention whatever other exceptions I or you think of later on today.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:10 (eighteen years ago) link

>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"<

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 (eighteen years ago) link

and okay, here's a former nelly furtado backup singer who gets compared to an "edgier" ashlee and to skye and evanescence (among others) on her cdbaby page. not sure i'm buying any of that, but maybe somebody else will -- listening to the cd now, which seems okay but not nearly great:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mckee

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 15:43 (eighteen years ago) link

these Pennsylvanians ("crosses No Doubt with Evanescence and little Disturbed...sometimes referred to as Dance Rock") sound more promising to me, though the girl singing has a pretty rough voice (which could wind up waking in their favor more than against them):

http://cdbaby.com/cd/hollistunes

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:15 (eighteen years ago) link

(Anyway, I'm still undecided about how much I like them. Their lyrics quote "Shake Your Booty" and "Into the Groove," I'm just not sure yet how clumsily. So far I prefer the synth parts to the funk basslines. And so far my favorite tracks are probably "Waiting" and "Better Day," two of their poppiest and least disco-metal and least rough-voiced.)

― xhuxk, Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:27 (eighteen years ago) link

Somehow I think today's teenpoppers -- not Skye or Hope, maybe, but most of them -- are afraid to be *too* catchy. Which makes them often sound timid to me, and a little amorphous, no matter what their vocal prowess might be, if it indeed implies in their particular case.

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 (eighteen years ago) link

Hannah Montana is shaping up to be an interesting phenomenon. This may be a Monkees set-up, with a new song every week. The show's premise: regular student doubles as a teen pop star by night, keeps it from her friends. Very bubblegum oriented, definite pop country influence.

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 (eighteen years ago) link

xp:

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 (eighteen years ago) link

Oh, OK. Yeah, that's fair. But it's been that way for a while, no? Maybe it's just the American Idol influence?

― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 30 March 2006 16:58 (eighteen years ago) link

Re Hillary's "Wake Up", it's def. very disco (so is "Beat Of My Heart") but in more of a "Manic Monday" or Belinda Carlisle kind of way than a freestyle kind of way. Alongside stuff like "Cool" or Ashlee's "Dancing Alone" it suggests that today's teenpop can only engage with disco by using New Wave as a mediation point. You can imagine each and every one of the teen-pop starlets saying "Oh, I just love 'The Love Cats'". Also which pop-punk band covered "The Boys of Summer" a few years back?

I think that using new wave as the mediation point can make even the sillier material (like "Wake Up") seem oddly serious or earnest, in the sense of "this could be on one of the The O.C. soundtracks." It's that implied "soundtrack to adolescent life" vibe that comes off this stuff in waves. Something about "Wake Up", for example, announces, "Yes, I am a silly, fluffy, inconsequential song, but in the right time and place I could change your life."

Whereas with freestyle-pop, for example, it certainly can change your life, but it does so without necessarily announcing that possibility in advance.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:56 (eighteen years ago) link

Also which pop-punk band covered "The Boys of Summer" a few years back?

The Ataris.

― Zwan (miccio), Friday, 31 March 2006 01:47 (eighteen years ago) link

Humorless: Marion Raven, Kelly Clarkson, Flyleaf, Evanescence (the one joke on Breakaway is "There's no light at the end of the tunnel tonight/Just a bridge that I gotta burn," which was penned by either Shanks or DioGuardi)

Humorful: Lindsay Lohan, Ashlee Simpson, Skye Sweetnam, Brie Larson, Marit Larsen, Robyn

I can't tell if she's being funny or not: Hilary Duff, Hope Partlow

Funny in her remake of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin": Jessica Simpson

I forget if they're funny: Aly & AJ

They probably think they're funnier than I do: Veronicas, Bon Jovi, Morningwood, Crazy Frog, Pink

Person who would do an amazingly great version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me": Ashlee Simpson (remember Xhuxk, I'm the one who says that there is a lot of Mutt Lange in John Shanks); "La La" seems very Joan Jett (but better); Ashlee's Deborah Allan disco-slut imitation during the "You make me feel like fire/Is this love, or just desire" break in "Burnin Up" is (1) an approach to disco by way of disco, (2) an extravagant bit of scenery chewing, (3) brilliant, (4) hilarious. It's exhibit 1 in my case for Ashlee playing dressup on I Am Me (of course every dance* song that contains a line such as "You make me feel like fire" is scenery chewing).

Although "Burnin Up" has a dub reggae arrangement, its main vocal melody is a sexy itchy vocal descent that sounds not at all like reggae but rather like "Habañera" from Carmen. It too is fun(ny).

*Not to mention nondance songs like Courtney Love's Robert Plant imitation on her (great) "Life Despite God": "Run away, your head's on fire/Can't tell the difference between hate and desire"; this too is a great bit of scenery chewing, even if it isn't disco.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Friday, 31 March 2006 04:59 (eighteen years ago) link

Brie Larson posted the lyrics to Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock" on her myspace page. She's 16 years old.

I once gave a teacher the lyrics to "I Am a Rock" as an example of great song lyrics. But I was only 14 or 15. Since girls mature faster than boys, you'd think Brie's "I Am a Rock" phase would have ended a couple of years ago.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Friday, 31 March 2006 05:05 (eighteen years ago) link

I forget if they're funny: Aly & AJ

NOT FUNNY. "I Am One of Them" to thread!

Brie's "I Am a Rock" phase would have ended a couple of years ago.

True, but I still haven't read any Henry Miller. Something to be said for a girl who claims to spend $60 on books in one go (w/ no mention of CDs, DVDs, etc). Also, is any of the new Lindsay humorous at all? Dahv has been mentioned before...

― nameom (nameom), Friday, 31 March 2006 05:40 (eighteen years ago) link

Oddly, I agree with pretty much everything that Frank said in that post (in fact I think I'm the first person to have compared Ashlee with Deborah Allan, and I'll agree that, while I'm not sure I'd call Marit "funny" seeing how she never actually makes me laugh, calling her "humorless" seems a bit of a stretch as well) (For that matter, calling Nellie McKay humorless would just be a lie.) Frank left out, however, that "La La" is actually quite bubblegum-sounding, too, though I easily could come up with a bunch of Joan Jett songs I prefer to it. (I also think Crazy Frog is funnier than Frank does.)

However....

>there is a lot of Mutt Lange in John Shanks<

...reminds me that Mutt produced Def Lep's power ballads, as well. So I still stand by my claim that too much teenpop is just way too slow (and also too "emotional," which is often not better than being fun.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 31 March 2006 15:02 (eighteen years ago) link

marit has lots of funny songs. only a fool is totally silly.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:39 (eighteen years ago) link

Evidence that Hope Partlow has a sense of humor:

What a DORK! That guy in the church band -- the drummer to be exact. He is way into me. I know it!! But all he does is look. Well I got sick of waiting for him to say something.

So right before the Youth Group tonight, I just walked up to him. I said -- Hey. We should hang out. You're in a band -- I need a band. (Plus I heard that some guys like girls that can approach them...guess he didn't.) He said, "I have to go pray now." ...all I could say was Amen!

I'll just take that one as a compliment. TOO BAD!!! Nobody can figure that guy out!

― nameom (nameom), Friday, 31 March 2006 20:34 (eighteen years ago) link

Kelly Clarkson totally has a sense of humor, she was in "From Justin to Kelly" for godsakes. (And she's been very funny bagging on herself for being in it too.) "Miss Independent" is slyly ironic, but yeah it's not rofflicious.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 31 March 2006 20:45 (eighteen years ago) link

Oh and the funniest teenpopper in the world is Fefe Dobson and you all just totally ignore her. "You're on the road / to Harvard Law / I'm on a bus / to ARKANSAS"

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 31 March 2006 20:46 (eighteen years ago) link

I think I'm gonna put some Cathy Davey up as YSI's later on tonight. She's from 2004-2005 or thereabouts, but it's not like anyone paid any attention to her then. She's not exactly teenpop either, but she is very good.

'LDN' is getting its official release as a 7"-only single on April 24th. Also, for excitable New Yorkers, Lily will be DJ'ing on
http://www.eastvillageradio.com between 8-10 tonight, your time.

Popjustice has been getting in a lather this week about the respective returns of Siobhan Wot Used To Be In Sugababes and Alesha Wot Used To Be In Mis-Teeq. In both cases, they have a point.

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Friday, 31 March 2006 21:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Cathy Davey - Clean & Neat

From Ireland, was on Regal, may still be. Myspace heeee-yah.

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Friday, 31 March 2006 22:31 (eighteen years ago) link

from the metal thread:

Liking those Pennsy cdbaby new wave-synthed teen-rock disco-metallers Hollis more than I expected, especially ("Chemical," "Waiting," "Better Day," "Fade," "Automatic") when they can the gnu-metal shtick and let their girl Holly get her Patty Smythe and maybe Benatar on. "Fade" has '80s Bryan Adams riffs, and I can actually imagine people moving their thing to "Move That Thing," the song that quotes "Into the Groove". "Torn & Broken" and "Keep Me Down", where they try to act tougher, aren't quite so fun. But thumbs up regardless.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 1 April 2006 19:36 (eighteen years ago) link

Kelly's one of those people who have a sense of humor in real life but it doesn't really translate to their music much. John Meyer is also like this. I can relate.

― Eppy (Eppy), Saturday, 1 April 2006 20:02 (eighteen years ago) link

Has there been any discussion of High School Musical yet? Tracks from the soundtrack are number one and number two on the Radio Disney Top 30 right now.

Also curious if Devo 2.0 are being played on Radio Disney given that the album was released by Disney. They're not in the Top 30.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Sunday, 2 April 2006 06:09 (eighteen years ago) link

There's one Devo 2.0 song eligible in RD Top 30 voting ("And That's Good"), but I've never actually heard it played. HSM has a lock on the top 5...Hannah Montana's moving up in the daily voting, though.

I suspect Disney labels get special treatment in being added to the general playlist (ex. "Hannah" was never actually voted into rotation), but Devo 2.0 seems to live or die by the two-step voting process like everyone else. The kidz still get their new wave from Hilary Duff.

― nameom (nameom), Sunday, 2 April 2006 06:48 (eighteen years ago) link

I actually like the seriousness of much of I Am Me. My two favourite songs are probably "Dancing Alone" and "Eyes Wide Open", which are probably the two most, er, i dunno, polished emotive songs on there? They're melodramatic but not Courtney-esque.

But I love every song on the album. If I'd heard it last year it probably would have been my third favourite of the year (I like it much more than Autobiography actually, though maybe that's because I heard it first so it hit me harder). I even love the powerballad "Say Goodbye", which has some awesome lyrics:

"Maybe/you don't/love me/like I/love you/baby/'cos the broken in you doesn't make me run"

Something about that line is so ace, maybe it's that it drags out the simple first part so much, then all the meaning is actually so tightly compressed in the second half.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 3 April 2006 06:08 (eighteen years ago) link

>Has there been any discussion of High School Musical yet? <

Yep, there's been some, Tim; search above!

― xhuxk, Monday, 3 April 2006 12:03 (eighteen years ago) link

'Don't Save Me' isn't Norwegian #1 any more. This is.

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Monday, 3 April 2006 12:12 (eighteen years ago) link

He said, "I have to go pray now." ...all I could say was Amen!

that's so awesome.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 3 April 2006 14:23 (eighteen years ago) link

So I figured out that the most Bjork moment on the Flyleaf album (which I really wound up liking a lot, by the way) is Lacey's spiel in "I'm Sorry" (I think it is) about "I'm only nine years old" -- sounds like it comes directly from the first Sugarcubes single, "Birthday." (Then again, since "Birthday" is the best and catchiest Bjork song I've ever heard, and I stopped paying close attention to her not long after, there may well be references to later Bjorkisms by Flyleaf I'm just not getting.) (Bjork's second best and catchiest song, as far as I'm concerned: the Sugarcubes' *second* single, "Motorcrash." That was back when they sounded like a cross between Altered Images and Savage Rose, and their polka rhythms were dancier than the alleged "dance music" rhythms Bjork would attempt later in her life. But I am a crank, what the hell do I know?) Anyway, in general I totally love the staccato way that that Lacey pronounces several of her vowels. She is fly-yi-yi-yi-yi till she dye-yi-yi-yi-yis, as far as I'm concerned.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 5 April 2006 16:09 (eighteen years ago) link

Questions that I just sent to Xhuxk and that I'm now sharing with the masses: (1) Is there ever going to be a Paris Hilton album? and (2) are Kara DioGuardi and Scott Storch still involved? This may surprise you, but I've been negligent on keeping track of this story.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 16:43 (eighteen years ago) link

There's this project that Kara DioGuardi and Dave Stewart are doing called Platinum Weird, an album supposedly due out sometime this spring on Interscope, produced by John Shanks. I don't know if it's intended to be a viable act or a Rutles-type spoof (the Platinum Weird Website portrays Platinum Weird as a band that existed in 1974 f. Stewart and his mysterious and flighty soulmate Erin Grace, who disappeared for good mid 1974, having had an astonishing impact on anyone who met her...). The Interscope Website links you to the Platinum Weird site, which just propagates the spoof.

They're streaming a couple of Platinum Weird songs on their myspace page; I've been patient enough to get beyond the rebuffering (sometimes this works, sometimes not). "Avalanche" sounds great. Stewart's putting a bit more Keith Richards in the guitar than Shanks would have, but basically this could have come right off the first Lohan album. But I dont think Kara holds the stage as well as Lohan (nor close to as well as Ashlee). Tell me what you think.

The words here support my belief that there's no way this woman is writing Ashlee's lyrics for her. Not that the lyrics are bad. They're good, just as "First" and "Come Clean" are good. "And I breathe, and I sleep, and I wait for a _____/And I lie, and I learn how to live in the hurt/And I'm on the run/Look what I've become/So many nights I've heard you talking to light (?) about the promise land(?)/Oh your promises/So many times you never walked towards the light into your promises/Oh your promise land (?) doesn't stand, can't hold back the avalanche/So I laugh 'cause I dream, and to dream is for fools/When I'm up high it all looks up because I can't see the clouds above me and I can't hear the cries below me/We go around, I'm fading out/And I'm on the run, look what I've become/There's no turning back, I'm giving up everything I've had/So many nights I've heard you talking to light..." Sorry, this is no match for "I was stuck inside someone else's life and always second best" - doesn't speak to the broken in me nearly as well.

(Of course, maybe Stewart wrote these lyrics. And maybe Shanks plays guitar.)

Anyway, it's not remotely trying to sound like 1974, that I can tell.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:01 (eighteen years ago) link

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