Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

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.)

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!

'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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

that's so awesome.

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.

I can imagine that in real life Kelly Clarkson has a sense of humor. In fact, she does a swell job in the "Since U Been Gone" video, putting a sly look on her face as she's disassembling her ex's love nest. And her voice certainly has a nice lift in "Since U Been Gone" and "Walk Away." Still, after listening several hours nonstop to Kelly and Avril's "Unwanted" and Evanescence's everything, as I was often doing several months ago (to check out the similarities and because I was obsessed), it was hard not to run screaming to my Lohan and Simpson records afterwards, saying to myself, "At last, someone whose told a joke in her life."

Marion Raven had some great lines in M2M that I'd describe as "intentionally funny" - esp. "Jennifer" about the guy's girlfriend (whom she's immensely jealous of) having skin like porcelain and shame on him if he should hurt her, but you know, wouldn't it be nice if someone would drop her (for all I know Marit wrote that, but Marion is ace the way she delivers the line); also, Marion's lines in "Give a Little Love" - I quoted some of Marit's above - include her hilarious part instructions to the guy to "get down on your knees/I'm the one you have to please." So as I listen more to Here I Am maybe some such lines will emerge as well. But the sound of Here I Am is so heavy; there are some great pop melodies but - I never thought I'd say this - the songs rock too hard a lot of the time, and there's so much orchestration and passion that they come drenched in the weight of several oceans. This isn't really a criticism, just an explanation of why, when the album's done playing, I'm not replaying it incessantly but rather diving for my Hampton the Hamster records (of which I have none, hence I usually bonk my head on the wall).

The three singles from the Marion Raven album are great (if over-orchestrated). Strangely, the only album track I really dislike is her duet with the generally likable Art Alexakis.

By the way, the band is letting you download the song ("Avalanche")from their myspace page. Free Mp3s!

So, aren't any of you curious? I mean, if Richard Rodgers had sung lead in a band, or Ellie Greenwich had, wouldn't you want to hear it? Come on, this is KARA DIOGUARDI, folks.

(Actually, Ellie Greenwich did put out records with her singing lead: the group was the Raindrops. "The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget" made it to #17 in 1963. I've never heard it, but I have heard a couple of other Raindrops tracks (one of 'em, "What a Guy," I've got on an old, beat-up cassette) which are nice but don't have the zing of the Ronettes, the Shangri-Las, the Crystals, the Jelly Beans, or Darlene Love. The Raindrops recorded the first version of "Hanky Panky." I'd love to hear that.)

Here I am at the family function
once again I tend to bite my nails and sit alone
While the folks are getting tipsy with their Absolut and mixed drinks.
Oh my god, this always happens every year
My aunt runs off with a waiter serving caviar
imported from Beluga
and I think that he was too.
There's only 1 thing left to do

Pass the Shirley Temple...

I agree. Ashlee's fundamentally earnest, which doesn't mean that there isn't a lot that's really witty.

Yes. See my previous 50 posts on the subject. She spends most of "Fastlane" winking at the sound man. On "I Want You to Want Me" she does the vocal equivalent of playing air guitar. On "Who Loves You?" she's plastering the room in so much ham that pigs are picketing outside the studio.

"Daddy daddy/ Why'd you break your promises to me?/ ...I’m not the little girl you left waiting at home/ All the hurt and pain you left with mom and me/ Why can’t I be angry?"

Going into a chorus that's less paranoid than "Because of You" and more poetic than most of Lindsay's angst stuff -- maybe a mid point between Kelly and Ashlee's earnest I Am Me ballads, or at least worthy of being compared to those two:

"And I want you to know that I didn’t need you anyway/ And this rope that we walk on is swaying/ And the ties that bind us/ They will never ever fray/ But I want for you to know/ You are/ You are/ Unforgiven" (x-post)

(OK, I need to listen to this one again...) Forgot to mention that the Dobson track is also very aggressive -- "UNFORGIVEN" is like a group chant.

She seems like the anti-Marit, right?

So what does "Clean and Neat" sound like? Like Marit, without the '50s carny cabaret. Like Marit but spikier.

Well, anyway, a high cheery playful voice, going into fake primitive power pop. The drums seem to be doing the drum equivalent of oompah. The guitar strum goes strum strum strum strum. Quite likable. Quite. I can hear how someone might think she's doing pop year zero, like the first two Modern Lovers albums. Prob'ly too old (25) to claim to be teenpop, but I'd like someone to try and sneak this onto Radio Disney. RD is playing the shit out of the Tashbed, after all, so they could like this, though I don't know if they'd find the primitiveness too primitive to fit their sound.

Oh yeah, the sound is bright and pushy, whereas the lyrics are [to tell you the truth, I didn't pay attention to the lyrics].

(Damn, I'm going to have to listen to some Bjork, so that I won't be a complete ignoramus.)

You might find the same thing true in comparing country lyrics to pretty much any noncountry genre (except maybe to calypso or to rappers who make a big deal of place names and of course to this or that particular performer who casts himself as a storyteller: Craig Finn or Bruce Springsteen): country will give you place names, car brands, and a whole bunch of other social markers, will specify that a love note is written on a luncheonette napkin. I talked about this a bit in my Rodney Atkins/Lee Greenwood review. This doesn't necessarily make country lyrics better, or even more detailed. Just differently detailed. Marit and Ashlee give you plenty of psychological details in their songs. Marit has one where the woman wears makeup to bed, but she doesn't tell you anything about the house or furnishings.

"She Loves You" and "Be My Baby" don't have place locations and the like, but it isn't as if they're missing something.

(And of course Ashlee goes "Hollywood sucks you in but it won't spit me out" in "Boyfriend.")

Well, this isn't fair to DioGuardi. Just because she vagues out in one song doesn't mean that she can't do songs where she doesn't vague out. But there's just such a difference between the lyrics you're getting on Ashlee Simpson albums and those you're getting from anything else DioGuardi's involved in. I guess it's just that I'm greatly disappointed in "Avalanche" even though I think it's a very good song. Here's my first sight and sound of Kara DioGuardi unfettered, a great talent, speaking through herself and for herself, and what I'm hearing is a first-rate melody but vague words about cries and clouds and broken promises, and a voice that's got volume and sings well but doesn't come across with a character.

Maybe it is Kara who came up with "Maybe/you don't/love me/like I/love you/baby/'cos the broken in you doesn't make me run." Maybe it was Ashlee who drew it out of her. Maybe Kara drew it out of Ashlee.

The reason I said the song could have come off the first Lohan album is that the vocal "phrasing" in "Avalanche" - by which I don't mean words but hesitations, wails, and such, the basic stuff of vocalizing - reminds me a lot more of Lindsay's than of Ashlee's (or of Gwen's or Celine's or Hilary's). My guess here is that Lindsay copies her phrasing from Kara's demos. But Lindsay gives the phrasing more life than Kara is able to give to "Avalanche."

Again, I'd like to know what you guys think.

The song being Platinum Weird's "Avalanche," not Ashlee's "Say Goodbye," though it was the latter that I had just quoted. Sorry to be so confusing.

Anyway, Je4nn3, now that I've got you here, I've been meaning to post this quote from Ashlee's Elle interview (and I'm desperate for more insights into her various photo transformations as well):

Elle: Growing up in the Dallas suburbs with Jessica, was there ever any sibling rivalry; times when you hated her?

Ashlee: We never, ever really fought. I used to wear her clothes, and they would stink and have holes. Little things. There were times when I was insecure, but not because of my sister. I was a weird-looking little kid for a while. And her world of high school and stuff I did not want to be part of. I was a ballerina with ballerina friends, and we thought cheerleaders were stupid. I was Miss Artsy Fartsy.

(And maybe it's time for me to finally post about "Shadow," but probably not today.)

Lily's "LDN" is definitely in competition with "Rush" and "4ever" as my single of the year so far.

(And yes, Matt, I realize that if I'd been 11 and with it, "Rush" would have made my ballot last year; but it's video only came out this year, so it counts this year on my P&J ballot, yes it does.)

It's really you but no one ever discovers

Those of so foolish as not to haunt the teenpop thread may be unaware that Miley and her dad Billy Ray have a TV show, in which - I gather from the theme song, which is all TV-less me knows of it - by day she's a regular middle-schooler, but at night she twirls around like Sailor Moon and takes on a SECRET IDENTITY as a... as a... well, you'll just have to look for yourself.

The theme song's OK, likable enough, not grebt.

-- Frank Kogan, April 9th, 2006.

Agreed, I like one of the other ones ("Who Said") better. I tried watching one of the episodes on YouTube with limited success (surprise, it's cute), but what IS significant about this is that "Hannah Montana" is the highest rated show in Disney Channel history (I'd be interested to see how it compares to High School Musical; Hannah got something like 5.4 mil viewers last week, though.)

They seem to show clips of songs, but not full songs, at the beginning or end of each show, previewing one new track per show with the goal of putting out an "official soundtrack" by the summer.

Last thing: Brie Larson just wrote what I'm pretty sure is her first indie rock song. Available for download at her Myspace page.

"Don't Go" - Bratcutepunk sort of halfway between Gwen and Jo Jo(maybe even some Lene Lovich), though with a tough cuteness, or a cute toughness. A toughness that'll punch you pink.

"Unforgiven" - Hey, here we are, splits the difference between Lindsay Lohan and Stacey Mosley - neither of whom had made a record when this came out. So let's say it's Evanescence (or whatever ur-pop-teengoth Rosetta Stone I've yet to find) backing and arranging Avril, adding gangshouts. Also, occasionally, a real pretty plinky-dink that could come from disco or from Lee Van Cleef's sister's locket in For a Few Dollars More. Kicks butt.

Also got B.G. Tha Heart of tha Streetz Vol. 1. As with the other two CDs, I'll report on whether the vocalist on this one most resembles Lacey or Marit.

Or it might be that your judgement is better than mine, which is hardly unlikely. (Have I mentioned recently that I love these threads? They're almost all I read on ILM.)