Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

Ashlee Simpson Ghostwrites Dylan's Autobiography

I had a wonderfully impossible assignment from Paste magazine to write 625 words on Dylan as a songwriter. I did my best to present the guy's mid '60s achievement as a potent, problematic, living thing to be grappled with rather than revered, but I sure could have used an extra five thousand words. If I'd had 'em, I would have started by quoting "Tell Me Momma," in which Dylan sings "Everybody sees you on your window ledge/How long's it going to take for you to get off the edge" but doesn't say whether getting off the edge means pulling back or whether it means jumping. Now, the music he helped invent - "rock" - is supposed to have an edge, to be sharp, to cut; and it's supposed to take you over the edge. Of course the idea of an "edge" long proceeded Dylan, but he's one of the ones who brought it from bohemia to the center of the culture. So when Ashlee Simpson spits out her anguish in the chorus of "Shadow" ("living in the shadow of someone else's dream"), and when Eminem in the role of mad, sick Stan goes "I hope your conscience eats at you and you can't breathe without me," they're each using anger cadences that entered popular music in the '60s with Dylan and Jagger.

My idea of "The Autobiography of Bob Dylan" is that the true autobiography of Bob Dylan wouldn't be his story but our story, not just how he got to be that way but how we got to be that way, how the edge got to be the edge, what in our context and our culture takes him and us up to that ledge. Dylan dropped out of his autobiography in 1966, but the autobiography continues without him; thousands of other people carry it forward on from there (I'd originally written "carried it forward," but I don't know if we do carry it forward or just keep running into the same old wall and then eventually retreat; that's why Dylan '65 has a living presence but a problematic one).

I think Ashlee is discovering that it was a cinch getting out from under her sister compared to getting out from under all the other stuff the world saddles her with, not to mention what she lays on herself. But she's got a strong urge to reconcile with what she's trying to surmount, which is one reason she might take the story somewhere new. She's more a Johansen than a Johnny, wanting to embrace more than to shatter. The danger is that she'll settle for too easy a reconciliation. Tim Finney has talked beautifully over on the teenpop thread about the lyric in "Say Goodbye":

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

Tim says: "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."

And then:

"I think one of the things that makes it work so well is that, yeah, at first glance it sounds pretty straightforward, but actually it's almost encoded. A straightforward line would be something like: 'You can't handle me 'cos I'm complicated' or 'You only like me when I make you look good.' But instead she says: 'Maybe you don't love me like I love you, baby, 'cos the broken in you doesn't make me run. There is beauty in the darkness. I'm not frightened - without it I could never feel the sun.' It's a lot less judgmental and, I guess, more reflective, this way: like she's just coming to understand the difference in the way that she and her (soon to be?) ex approach questions of love and relationships. And she's not sure which is right or wrong (if right and wrong there is) but she's not sorry for being the way she is. And then on another level she's telling him that it's okay to be damaged."

I agree with Tim wholeheartedly, but I do think that "without it I could never feel the sun" is something of a platitude, too easy a resolution. The question as Ashlee's career goes on is whether she's going to do right by the darkness, the damage, whether she'll find the words and sounds to make us feel it, think it, comprehend it, analyze it. Interesting that the abstractions in "Say Goodbye" - "love," "broken in you," "run" - tell a powerful story in one sentence. Astonishing, actually, and she's done it before, not as compactly but just as powerfully, in songs that sound even better: "Love Makes the World Go 'Round" and "Undiscovered." But on "Beautifully Broken," the track on I Am Me that's supposed to be the crucial, self-revealing one, where she deals with the SNL and Orange Bowl debacles, she just vagues out. "I'm beautifully broken/And I don't care if I show it." Well, show what? This is where we need details, need the scene, need to feel the breaking. "Every moment I'm filled with hope 'cause I get another chance/But I will try/I will try/Got nothing left to hide" - I'm truly grateful that she'll try, but this feels too much like Norman Vincent Peale. "Without the highs and the lows/Where would we go/Where would we go..." is a nice "ending" in being irresolute, and she is admirable in her determination to make positive use of her setbacks, but still, this is reassurance not revelation (compare to "Love Makes the World Go 'Round," where she questions the sentiment in the song title, wants to believe it but won't believe it from you). For actual darkness you need to go to lines like "What's she got that I don't have" in "I Am Me" or even to her undercover bitchiness in "Boyfriend," and of course "Shadow," which deserves its own 25 posts. And to Dylan: "You say you never compromise/With the mystery tramp but now you realize/He's not selling any alibis/As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes/And say do you want to make a deal." Like, you've really got no secrets to conceal, out on that ledge, and damn, we all know this Ashlee girl has lived it, but she's got to put it into words.

(To honor the people in the trenches, I'll point out that Ashlee's got two co-writers, John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi. But since most of the world wants to acknowledge the trenches only so it can sneer at Ashlee, I'll also point out that Shanks and DioGuardi have a co-writer too, and her name is Simpson, and if they've written lyrics this good with or for anyone else, I haven't seen it. And on "Love Makes the World Go 'Round" and "Undiscovered," John and Ashlee do without Kara. I suppose it's possible that Ashlee's role could be primarily as muse and inspiration and that her name is on the writing credits mainly as a courtesy. If that's the case, we all should have such a muse.)

(Another observation regarding the trenches: Shanks plays signature Dylan-style riffage at the start of "Shadow," a style that Dylan would use incessantly, playing the full chord with the mi note, then playing it with fa, then going back to mi.)

And there are what look like more up-to-date photos here, but it's some flash stuff that I'm not going to try and link.

(I'm feeling the Kara photo more.)

Ashlee Simpson coy on rumors of a new nose
From Associated Press
May 10, 2006 5:38 PM EDT
NEW YORK - Ashlee Simpson is laughing off rumors that she had a nose job - but she's not denying it either.

Recent photos splashed across the Internet and in tabloids suggest the multiplatinum singer has made an alteration to her profile, removing the bump that made her nose distinctive.

When asked about the speculation during a phone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Simpson giggled and said: "Everybody's already saying it, so I just don't talk about it. I'm like, OK, whatever. It doesn't bother me."

But when asked whether the rumor was true, the 21-year-old singer didn't confirm or deny it, but just giggled more.

"Maybe - who knows!"

Simpson - the younger sister of Jessica - is about to launch a summer tour in June. Her latest album is "I Am Me"; her first album, "Autobiography," was released in 2004 and sold 3 million copies.

"But I wouldn't be surprised if Tim F. has warm feelings towards attractively vulnerable young woman too, even if those feelings don't come from the loins."

Probably true!

I guess I haven't paid enough attention to the lyrics, though.

So, these are a few of my favorite things about Lily.

It's Danni Minogue syndrome!

Keith Allen, 90's drama school vulgarian, art school lad culture etc.

In England, during the mid-90's there emerged a thirty something lad culture, fronted by Baddiel and Skinner, Loaded magazine, britpopism's dominance in general, Cool Brittania etc. Keith Allen would be spotted at Glastonbury throwing fish and chips at hippies with a prosthetic boob suit on or sniffing coke off the bar at the Groucho (infamous new media members club) with Damon Albarn and Damian Hirst, whilst releasing a 'comedy' single in support of the England footie team glorifying, our nation's favourite Curry sauce, the Vindaloo (a totally English invention, and of kidney-failure levels of spiciness) with the self-proclaimed blackest man in West London, Albarn.

Now, matured (or laddism having somehow evolved into the bestubbled, bespectacled man around town we see today) he occasionally presents the odd thing on the telly. Worst thing about him is that although he lives in Islington (probably on a diet of painfully overpriced organic produce) he maintains a 'man-of-the-people' persona about him.

As you can gauge from the feelings on ILM, Allen is universally reviled, and judging from his recent performance on Celebrity Art School, actually plays up to this fact.

Anyway, Lilly Allen went to Bedale's School, an extremely expensive boarding school, which is where most 'socially-conscious' famous people's kids go, as it is very liberal whilst also maintaining an excellent level of education. Or in other words, the kids are allowed to have dreads and smoke pot, but are still amongst their own.

This is why I find the lyrics in LDN particularly cringeworthy. As does her Sarf Lahndan accent which seems pretty affected.

I don't want to sound like some kind of embittered class warrior as I also went to a private school, just I am used to meeting far too many middle-class kids who present themselves as underpriviliged street rats.

I wish the lurker with the mustache would post here.

wz it LEE!

Is the mousetache a clue?

shamefully yes

>i feel even more contrarian than the year i went nuclear when JHO
(jennifer
>hudson, now a major movie role in Dreamgirls coming out Dec as we all
know)
>and Jon the Hobbit boy got booted before the final 3.
>
> i LOVED kelly pickler's "Unchained Melody" (that got her booted);
it was
>the first time in my life i have enjoyed the song. and yes, i
listened
>with my eyes closed so i didn't have to look at her goony face. her
giant
>country-voice accent and style had total raw-cred points by me; real
>country (whatever the hell country is these days) singers DO wobble
and
>miss exact pitches, and they got giant accents that are the OPPOSITE
of
>Faith fucking Hill. i liked her/Kellie way better than last year's
winner
>whatshername. and because she's a dumbfuck village Carolina tinytown
girl,
>maybe she coulda got miranda lambert (from a tinytown Texas ditto) to
throw
>her some song rejects.
>
> america is stupid and missed on a likely platium or double-platinum
>country act.
>
> i can't stand the voices of the chumps that're left. the only
other
>voice that i liked of the Top 10, was the little 16 year old black
girl who
>sang Signed Sealed & Delivered back in the days when Bucky was still
>allowed to show his ugly face. well, i kinda liked her singing but
the
>song (choices) were mostly lame.
>
> and that Chris I'm the Grunge Guy...good lord, a CREED fan still
roaming
>the earth. shoot that motherfucker now! this is not what my daddy
went
>to world war II for.
>
> good fucking god, MANDY MOORE in American Dreamz craps all over
these
>losers. and the theme song was better. and funnier.

(revised projected encore sectoin after the first 30 songs / 37 min playing time) --

Kelly BEHIND THESE HAZEL EYES
Black Flag NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
Kelly SINCE U BEEN GONE


yes, i am planning on turning kelly and swedish pop's biggest hit in to a "Black To Comm" vehicle, people all over the stage out of the crowd (there's three vocal microphones to turn them loose on, four if we unhook the drummer's)

times they are a changin!

vocal microphones to turn them loose on, four if we unhook the drummer's.

kelly picklere shoulda won weeks ago, she smoked Bohemian Rhapsody, was an automatic 1x or 2xplatinum nashville-facotyr country/pop prototype (much better voice than Carrie Underfuckingwood), AND i loved her "Unchinaed Melody" . even if looking at her goober idiot face was disconverintg.

i'd close my eyes and listen to voices (during the middle 30 seconds of each 90 second tune), that's why i'm the best AI judge who ever said "fuck!" ten times onstage during a punk rock set. Kelly had a great voice, huge natural southern accent. woulda been a good honky tonky singer in the 50's a la Jean Sheperd.

the only other voice i enjoyed in the Top 10 was the little richkid black girl from Anaheim who made horrible song chioces after "Signed Sealed and Delivered," she just lost her confidence quickly in the following weeks.

the others (singing, not performaing) just made my head hurt. i enjoy grey haired dork guy as a performer mightly, but his voice is just horrible....3rd rate Ray Charles hyrbird.

but that's what Pro Tools is for!

look at how great Bo Bice's Mx/Luke tracks sound! 2 of em on th ealbum are they are fucking great!

re A*Teens tracks -- the great dance mixes for Heartbreak Lullabye and A Perfect Match ("radio mix") are on the CD-eps, ie german/scandanavia CD-singles.

not to mention their great cover of Wizzard's #1 xmas hit (of 1973 i guess)
I Wish It Could Christmas Everyday

A*Teens = my favorite pop vocal group of the last 30 years since ABBA!

*Nothing against ILE, I just have to draw the line somewhere, and not stay online perpetually.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), May 15th, 2006.

Make that 3rd rate Michael McDonald hybrid...and I like his voice. He really should've done Brown Eyed Girl at some point. He will win, of course.

>Unregistered users cannot post on this board<

Fuck that shit. I'll keep Metal Mike's ramblings here (and Ramon, it was Mike who called the grey-haired dork guy's voice horrible, not me; I only watched one half of one *Idol* episode this season).

"Teenage vulnerability is the official language of the Internet," it is claimed, by Greenwald. Asinine quotes are the basic phlogiston/hydrogen molecule of newspapers. This was no exception, but perfect for the article.

McFly was briefly on in the background of Ebert & Ropeman as they reviewed Lohan's new movie last night. Not enough to persuade me to buy it even though they are described as Beatle-esque in popularity in the UK.

But the music story I was most interested in over the weekend was the Dixie Chicks on "60 Minutes" which is not for here.

And I'm sticking a link to my Wolfmother hate here since they were on an iTunes/iPod commercial last week and I sort of know a teenager who had two of her iPods stolen which bugs her one parent to know end because he has to replace them.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/05/wolfmother-their-natural-seventies.html

"Teenage vulnerability is the official language of the Internet," it is claimed, by Greenwald. Asinine quotes are the basic phlogiston/hydrogen molecule of newspapers. This was no exception, but perfect for the article.

McFly was briefly on in the background of Ebert & Ropeman as they reviewed Lohan's new movie last night. Not enough to persuade me to buy it even though they are described as Beatle-esque in popularity in the UK.

But the music story I was most interested in over the weekend was the Dixie Chicks on "60 Minutes" which is not for here.

And I'm sticking a link to my Wolfmother hate here since they were on an iTunes/iPod commercial last week and I sort of know a teenager who had two of her iPods stolen which bugs her one parent to no end because he has to replace them.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2006/05/wolfmother-their-natural-seventies.html

So, Kelly's D is radder because it's longer, BUT ... the Lillix song is a considerably more ballistic - approx. 148 BPM vs. 130 BPM - and the Lillix singer's hollering is pretty darn full-bodied sounding, though smaller sounding than Kelly's pretty extraordinary belting.

"if she/they hit a higher note right after "feet on the floor," like hitting the "on" note for "feel it..." as well, then it would be much closer to "4ever" et al. I don't know if that's exactly what they were going for, there's no climactic note/line in "Beat of My Heart" either, except maybe "Away away." Maybe it's all those shouting voices singing such a restrained chorus."

That was in response to this from Abby who originally linked to the song earlier:

"I've been listening to the Lillix a lot, and I have to say it's growing on me, especially the pacing. But I have managed to pinpoint my issue with that chorus: the sense of strain on the vocal range.

Ok, imagine Hilary Duff was singing it - think how much clearer, easier that "Get your feet on the floor" would be because of her voice. Now listen to the obvious trouble Tasha-Ray/Lacey-Lee has hitting that top part. For me, that's what brings it down, even though they've layered with lower shouting and volume and changed the feel of it, I still hear it and think "Not quite there, honey." And that's a shame, because the rest of it is really well written. It'll be interesting to hear the rest of the album and find out if she really can't make those notes, or if it was just this song that was written this way."

You make me wanna LA-la in the kitchen on THE floor
I'll be your FRENCH maid when I meet you at THE door
I'm like an ALLEY cat
Drinkin' milk up I WANT more

oh god nooo, someone brought back Real McCoy from the dead. is nothing sacred?

what next Bad Boys Blue?

they still have 5,000-10,000 12" singles in the 25 cent graveyard section of Rasputin's Newark, but i don't think there's been a good dump (even a couple handfuls is a goldmine) of 80's dance or Eurodance in onver a year. i do have some crazy good 80's euro 12" from that store.

the 15,000+ vinyl lps in the adjacent 25 cent album graveyard has been quiet for a while too...i loaded up a boxful in january, but i don't see any big influx.

they did have a brand new dump of about 15,000 into their 15/$10 cds...ha. a sealed copy of the SLEEPOVER soundtrack! (alexi vega movie i actually saw in the theatres). and a sealed Tangled Up In Me cd single. and i dunno, i filled up a plastic crate with 75 cds by the time i was done...including a dozen of the first two britney albums (and some other random things) to sell at our gigs for 50 cents each...music is for the people you dig.

but when you get down the serious music....it's all about the Kylie 12"ers. that and the occasional PWL 12" remix that actually doesn't suck.

----------------------------------------------

for about one week i have played Behind These Hazel Eyes and Since U Been Gone, with an occasional Because Of You and/or Walk Away (? the most recent hit) thrown into the cd-program, over and over and over at near-deafening volume. ok, at least once a day.

has year 2005 already started yet?

lesson again learned that you haven't really heard something until you throw it up onto a loud stereo system, even just mid-fi as opposed to high-fi or low-fi.

Dr/Max have great judgement in live studio drummers...the (two) guys who played on those tracks are awesome. from 1998 on out, i have loved Max Martin's percussion/rhythm section tracks.

If you're gonna buy records by those hippie singer-songwriters (below) then i have a few dozen early Cat Stevens albums i can get you for 25 cents/ea at the nearby Newark Rasputin's "graveyard store" (where's there's always 10,000-15,000 25 cent lps).

singers should just fucking sing and leave the writing to the professionals. two words = Eric Burdon & the Animals! bad things can happen when you let an act write "their original materia, man." ok, Miranda Lambert is allowed cause she's got skills. speaking of singers --

yes -- the Mylie Cyrus (billy ray's girl in real life and on the TV show) tune "Best of Both Worlds" being played on Radio Disney sounds awesome! didn't make much of an impression on my 3" TV speakers, but on the bathroom boombox her twangy accent really jumps out in a great way.

---------------------------------------------------------------

why Skye Sweetnam is smarter than all of us:

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Lowdown/2006/04/25/1549941.html

good lord, d'you think she wrote enough songs in pre-production (for the album).
70? are you sure 70's enough? maybe 170 would do the trick.

70 songs sounds like a mercury/venus conjunct in Gemini (hers) to me. plus the Taurus sun for the hard work.