Hilary Duff: Joy for pre-teens, not just Humbert Humbert

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i mean, feel free to correct me with examples

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:41 (sixteen years ago) link

Yes, probably! I think in my case it's more likely to be a displacement of authenticity onto the 'mass', the marketplace (cf Popular as a project, the centrality of group opinion to Poptimists), rather than adolescence: a class-related yearning rather than an age-related one, rooted in my ambivalence over my private education. Since you asked.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:44 (sixteen years ago) link

Another point, why, not, since I took a breath and will not be a jerk again, is that I would love to see teenage MySpacers post on the teenpop thread (in particular I would REALLY love to see Aly and AJ fans -- all of whom HATE ME -- post on the thread, since they always post on my blog and say really interesting and often intelligent and provocative things!). Googlers and "outsiders" (and "target audience members," as vague as all these categories are) can bring some of the most interesting and unexpected arguments and perspectives to the table, especially when things get insular (simply because there are only six people posting with any regularity. And if you hadn't noticed yet I'm basically just doing a membership drive for the teenpop thread on this one).

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:47 (sixteen years ago) link

nrq likes loads of stuff! comedy stufff mainly. he loves nathan barley, the big mad man.

― acrobat, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:50 (sixteen years ago) link

I like the whole random googler thing in theory but in practise I've never seen them actually integrate into a thread or community.

For instance, it'd be interesting to do a comparison of the rolling hip-hop threads with the Nas/Jay-Z Throwdowns. Someone's point at the time - might even have been Frank's! - was that the hip-hop fans on ILM almost never used to post on those (they're still one of the strangest phenomena I've seen on a message board).

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:51 (sixteen years ago) link

i love poetry, and a glass of scotch, and, of course, my friend baxter here.

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:51 (sixteen years ago) link

"well yeah. this is certainly my narrative. still not caring what teenagers like though -- interesting that the poptimists here do. isn't this some kind of displaced authenticity kick, a la stelfox?"

Sort of, except that teenpop is a category shaped by social (mis)perceptions and marketing strategies - there's no unified/authentic/meaningful/social practice at its core (as distinct from the standard dissensus/stelfox argument) so there's no single higher authority to appeal to - I mean we've already established countless times that teenagers and teen-pop usually don't coincide! Posting random lists of old and new songs that teenagers play is just a demonstration of this point, nothing more.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:53 (sixteen years ago) link

ah, i hate comedy, so never the twain shall my enthusiasms and nrq's enthusiasms meet.

i also love poetry and scotch though

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:54 (sixteen years ago) link

The throwdowns -- they were a law unto themselves. Loved 'em.

When I'm in the queue at the supermarket I *always* peek into other people's baskets and try to work out what they're buying. Surely I can't be alone in that? (ulp).

I have no idea whether you're alone but I just realized why you do the work you do.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:54 (sixteen years ago) link

Let me revise what I'd like a bit: I would like to see BRIE LARSON post on the thread, and bring some of her MySpace friends with her.

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:57 (sixteen years ago) link

Yeah wasn't it Blount that kept trying to son Ethan and whoever for not trying to engage the Jay-Z/Nas googlers in a dialogue? I dunno, there's a billion message board threads about rap beef and they're all pretty worthless, the fact that we ended up with one here kind of by accident isn't really very surprising or interesting if you've seen any of the other ones out there. (xpost to groke)

"target audience members," as vague as all these categories are

I don't think it's vague at all to imply that there's a target demographic for teenpop, and that it's tweens and teenagers.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:57 (sixteen years ago) link

the fact that we ended up with one here kind of by accident isn't really very surprising or interesting if you've seen any of the other ones out there

Doubtless. But that therefore makes it the pop equivalent to the underground. Er.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 14:58 (sixteen years ago) link

Alex: It wasn't the content of the thread that I thought was bizarre but the way it turned up and kept going and was a law unto itself for ages. It's because there are loads of beef threads all over the web that one going on here for 2 years and building a completely separate community was so strange! Not seen that happen for anything else.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:00 (sixteen years ago) link

i.e. they weren't googlers - they started as googlers but by the time we moved off Greenspun (which killed the threads) there was a community: leaders, followers, regulars knowing one anothers names and foibles, etc. I suppose the DMB thread could have done that too, I stopped reading after a bit.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:03 (sixteen years ago) link

Make an Aly and AJ thread googlable enough and see what happens! (Teenpop is kind of impenetrable to googlers, I imagine.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link

*teenpop THREAD I mean

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link

yeah it was definitely impressive how much it took on a life of its own and kept going and going, i'll give you that. i was never clear on whether any of those guys knew each other from some other board that the ILM thread was linked to on, or if they did become a community on that thread. (xpost)

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:04 (sixteen years ago) link

"aly and aj" is in itself kind of googleproof anyway

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:05 (sixteen years ago) link

Some good stuff in the last 18 hours.

1. I also find Tim F's posts about gay critical approaches to be interesting. I'd be curious to know why other posters think that teenpop appeals to them personally.

2. With respect to Frank's teenage MySpace friends, I appreciate the kind of anthropology that Frank sometimes does, since music criticism is often filled with half-baked assumptions about target audiences and subcultures, but I almost always find it lacking in rigor or comprehensiveness. In Real Punks, for example, he leans so hard on the letter from the girls in the Australian Smash Hits: it crops up in several different reviews or essays, all proving some point about the relationship between fans and the bands they follow. This sort of examination is great, but it's one of the only examples he uses, and I find myself wishing that he'd undertaken a larger survey. (I'm hoping that Michaelangelo Matos eventually puts up the paper he gave at the EMP Conference on college students who own Bob Marley posters.)

3. I share some of acrobat's jealousy about the teenpop thread. I do think it's one of the only places on ILM where intelligent conversation is happening in 2007, I just wish that conversation was about music I was familiar with and felt passionate about. (One solution would be to delve into teenpop more to see if I do like more than the few token songs that have captured my interest so far.)

― jaymc, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:41 (sixteen years ago) link

Yeah some of my discontent is admittedly some form of jealousy; I wish the rolling R&B thread was as consistently active as the teenpop thread!

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:51 (sixteen years ago) link

or rolling snap 2007, which hasnt even been mentioned here

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:51 (sixteen years ago) link

it's been mentioned.

― da croupier, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:53 (sixteen years ago) link

well, i don't really feel like complaining about the relative dearth of rap threads activity, since i feel like that's a direct product of guys like us becoming bored and malevolent about discussing rap in earnest on ILM or going off and focusing on blogs.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:55 (sixteen years ago) link

i'm kind of disillusioned with the vast majority of rap discussion anyway. reading xxl comments will do that to you

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:58 (sixteen years ago) link

rap discussion on the internets, i mean

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:58 (sixteen years ago) link

xpost Ha, Matos said in his paper that he couldn't actually get too many people to respond, so his sample size wasn't really sufficient. I do hope he posts it though, it was great.

I like teenpop in large part because of the reasons people were bashing it for upthread--because it's insistently mainstream, because it has a specific target demographic, because it's primarily commercial. It eliminates a lot of the bullshit you have to deal with when you talk about music, and I think that surrounding context makes the music itself much richer and more interesting. I also like that it's working the kind of pop-rock sound I love, which doesn't really seem to exist much anymore outside of teenpop and (increasingly, weirdly) emo.

I also think it's not accidental that the subject provokes such good discussions. It's the music itself, not just something about the people involved or the format or anything. I think it's genuinely one of the richest, most meaningful kinds of music being made right now. Not necessarily the best, but certainly one of the most unpackable. Ditto hip-hop and R&B, fwiw.

I have no idea how this relates to my background, but there you go.

― Eppy, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:58 (sixteen years ago) link

who in 2007 is neglecting rap discussion on ilm to focus on blogs?

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 15:59 (sixteen years ago) link

(One solution would be to delve into teenpop more to see if I do like more than the few token songs that have captured my interest so far.)

you know you want to

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:00 (sixteen years ago) link

Start with Aly and AJ's new one, "Potential Break Up Song." It's fun!

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:01 (sixteen years ago) link

yeah abby commanded me to check that one out (i have never heard aly & aj ever!)

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:03 (sixteen years ago) link

OK I realize this means admitting that i look at the 'eye candy' section of xxl but this comment both epitomizes my apprehension about the majority of internet rap discussion + was amusing:

#
G'dep Says:

February 26th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

girl has beauty brains and a good taste in music stillmatic! , my kind of girl coz after some wild sex we can talk about rewind. nah mean

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:03 (sixteen years ago) link

who in 2007 is neglecting rap discussion on ilm to focus on blogs?

-- and what, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:59 AM

I meant more the current state of rap discussion on ILM is kind of a result of that 04-05 period when dudes like you and me and deej and dk started blogs and kinda stopped starting threads or writing at length on ILM, which kinda continued even after some of us stopped blogging.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:04 (sixteen years ago) link

or actually, the straight answer to that question is that I personally write about rap way more on blogs than on ILM these days.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:05 (sixteen years ago) link

I'd be curious to know why other posters think that teenpop appeals to them personally.

During Maura Johnston's freestyle panel at EMP Matos asked me how we in South Florida regarded the genre. "It was OUR MUSIC," I said, ineptly, which is to say: I don't think in terms of genres. I like artists and songs. Regarding teenpop, I'll turn on the radio, hear Ashee Simpson or Kelly Clarkson, and say, "Hey, this sounds pretty good" and either download it or forget about it – as I'd do with any other artist.

I also told Maura and Matos that the sometimes hysterical nature of adolescent experience dovetailed with the scenarios drawn by Stevie B, Company B, and "Diamond Girl." As I age and life gets duller, the memorable experiences are actually MORE melodramatic in context, so "Girlfriend," "Wake Up," and "Since U Been Gone" really do become the soundtrack to my life. Call it hyperrealism. Jody Rosen was right when he posited in his Slate essay last week that the "defining feature of post-Lavigne teenpop is its adult pretensions," but I'd also remark that "the defining feature of adulthood is pretension." Thirtysomethings are pretty smug, generally, and so are the artists we tend to admire; thus, there's something to be said about teens striving for adulthood using the language and manners of eighteen-year-olds.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:05 (sixteen years ago) link

A reason I like teenpop - which seems to be quite opposed to the way it's discussed on the thread, and may be part of why I don't post there much - is that the manufacture of it is like high-stakes music criticism. It seems to be so much about combining and reviving elements of the past - ideas, images, whole sounds - which is pretty similar to what critics do, except the people producing teenpop have a lot of money at stake and it's fascinating to see what works and what doesn't. So Girls Aloud suddenly doing a Stray-Cat style rockabilly-skiffle track, and it becoming one of their best loved songs, is really interesting! There's a "what's next? what's the next thing to draw on?" element to it.

This way of enjoying it has next to nothing to do with real teenagers or even the performers whose name goes on the tracks - it's quite a cold approach. But my own reaction to the tracks themselves doesn't often go much beyond "Yeah! Catchy!" or "Wow, beautiful", or whatever. It is a surface pleasure for me in a way it's not for Frank or dabug or Poptext.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:06 (sixteen years ago) link

That should be "whole songs" not "whole sounds".

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:07 (sixteen years ago) link

well al maybe you should be starting threads here instead of posting 800 word comments on breihans weekly diplo interview or whatever

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:11 (sixteen years ago) link

& obviously teenpop isn't the only genre where this happens! But it's the one where I like the resulting sounds most.

― Groke, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:11 (sixteen years ago) link

As I age and life gets duller

It does?

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:13 (sixteen years ago) link

i tried to start a big mike thread a week or two ago and it got like three posts :-(

― deej, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:13 (sixteen years ago) link

― da croupier, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:15 (sixteen years ago) link

x-post to and what: oh great, we're going to turn this thread into another forum for your repetitive 'zings'.

to review, I said I wished the R&B thread was more active, you said "what about the rap thread", I said I'm not gonna complain about it because I'm personally guilty of not saying much of substance on that thread because I have other outlets right now, and then you tried to son me with a hollertronix reference. omg stfu etc.

― Alex in Baltimore, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:17 (sixteen years ago) link

you know you want to

-- lex pretend, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:00 AM (15 minutes ago)

You say this all coy, but I actually do want to.

Start with Aly and AJ's new one, "Potential Break Up Song." It's fun!

-- dabug, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:01 AM (14 minutes ago)

Yeah, I've been meaning to.

The real way to get me to listen to more teenpop, though, would be for Swygart to start putting it up on the Stylus Singles Jukebox more often. That's how I heard "First" and "Rush," which I've never actually encountered anywhere else (i.e., not on the radio), except I once sang the former in a karaoke bar in Minneapolis last year.

― jaymc, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:19 (sixteen years ago) link

Like Eppy, I'm into teenpop for the music. Right now it seems that the major pop songwriters are working in the genre, in fact, it seems like the only genre where you're getting a really focussed team-produced 'sound' that happens to be the one I love: the pop-rock with hooks and tight structures and cheerleader hand-claps etc. Maybe it was always that way genre-wise with songwriting squads, but I was too young to pay attention. I listen to way more material that isn't teenpop (right now I'm repeat-playing Peter Bjorn & John, the Blow, Miranda Lambert and Camera Obscura) but the teenpop stuff is where I get my concentrated pop fix and can find producers doing new and innovative stuff every cycle. Like, hearing 'potential break-up song' was interesting in a way that 'young folks' wasn't because it engaged me in a 'what are the influences/direction/consequences of this branding shift?' way as well as surface appreciation.

― Poptext, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:20 (sixteen years ago) link

I doubt the snap thread will ever be "a place where we can try out ideas (about a wide range of music) without an accusatory or arms-crossed skeptical or uncomfortable tone mucking up the flow of conversation or personally offending anyone."

Can't tell if I'm being mocked here (don't read the snap thread either). Should I assume yes? If so, why?

Anyway here's some of Frank's thougtful negative commentary on Hilary Duff's new album on the teenpop thread; this is pretty typical of his (and others') posts there (since the only thing posted from the thread itself so far has been that MySpace list):

Lex, I'd love it if you'd say more about the Hilary, since I'm just having a lot of trouble feeling it. ("Danger," my second favorite song on it, is a Paris sound-alike that isn't as good as Paris would do it, and even so it would only be the 10th best thing on the Paris album.) There's certainly stuff I'm liking, and maybe if you told me the process of how it grew on you it would grow on me two. Hilary doesn't have a high-impact voice, and John Shanks back on "Come Clean" and "Fly" knew how to use her slightness for enormous feeling (as if the feeling were in the melody and the voice just let it come through in a beautiful sketch - I still can't figure out how he made it work), while Kara DioGuardi on Dignity seems to be working a middle ground that doesn't always work. (Strangely, I prefer DioGuardi's Tisdale tune; strange, given that Tisdale's voice gives even less to a song than Duff's does.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:25 (sixteen years ago) link

(or if the joke's on the ability for anyone to have such a conversation, why? I guess I just don't get what you're getting at.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:26 (sixteen years ago) link

Can't tell if I'm being mocked here (don't read the snap thread either). Should I assume yes? If so, why?

I'm not mocking you, don't worry.

― da croupier, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:27 (sixteen years ago) link

al i wasnt tryna zing you with a hollertronix ref i just saw longer posts on toms diplo interview than youve made on a rap thread in years

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:27 (sixteen years ago) link

a zing would be to complain about your 4 paragraph reviews of dane cook cds

― and what, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:28 (sixteen years ago) link

Poptext, have you heard Lucky Soul yet? Just heard them over the weekend and I like their 60ish girl groupish pop throwbacks without it seeming too forced/fetishistic. No idea how big they are in the UK, never heard of them in the US.

― dabug, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 16:30 (sixteen years ago) link

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