The Poptimists Review Of The Year 2006: Dancing about Arguetexture

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Two somewhat difficult categories to administer today - the "argument of the year", difficult because only one thing really got widely nominated. And the "thing to dance (to)", difficult because nothing got nominated twice!

Here are the 'argument' nominees.

The Paris Hilton Wars: Is PH's album a triumph or a travesty? Should it be taken seriously? What are the hataz really playing at? Here's The Lex vs Plan B, and Dave Moore on Paris at Stylus.
Indie vs Emo in the Freaky Trigger Comments Box: This one will run and run. Delve in here and here.
Lordi: Worthy Eurovision Winners?: The argument that tore the Eurovision community apart - pantomime or "real rock"? And is that a good thing anyway? If anyone can point me to evidence for this argument I'd be grateful.

As for the dance to nominees...

"Monster" is a rock song about a hill and a monster.
"We Are Your Friends" is a much-loved golden oldie.
"Chicken Noodle Soup" is big on YouTube.
Magda is a tea-making DJ.
"We Share Our Mother's Health" is Scandiravian.

[Poll #893038]

You can still vote in earlier polls and nominate for the remaining categories.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

What very odd choices for the dancing category! No real big pop OR dance hits in there - the only one I remotely enjoyed dancing to this year is actually quite awkward on the dancefloor ('Silent Shout' much better for dancing).

The songs I enjoyed dancing to in the 06:

Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Ooooh
Booka Shade - In White Rooms
Kelis ft Too $hort - Bossy (Switch rmx)
Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler
Rex The Dog - Maximise
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Way Out
Ciara ft Chamillionaire - Get Up
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Hot Chip - Over And Over
Justin Timberlake - SexyBack
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Relevée (Carl Craig rmx)
Cansei De Ser Sexy - Let's Make Love And Listen Death From Above
Christina Aguilera - Ain't No Other Man
Madonna - Jump
Nelly Furtado - No Hay Igual

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Some of those were nominated! I agree it's an odd category, but I also agree there wasn't an absolute cast-iron banger of the year. I would have included "Sexyback" but I now mistrust JT after it flopped at my werks party.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

'Hustler' is properly great to dance to and 'Rehab' caused some kind of dancefloor stormage at my university's Indie night. I find 'Let's Make Love And Listen Death From Above' kind of hard to dance to, though.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why The Knife song is leading at the moment here; it's actually my favourite song of the year but it certainly never struck me as a dancefloor stomper (and didn't seem so either whenever I've heard it out). Glad Monster has done so well though, it's a genuinely joyous record, which is quite unusual for indie.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I ticked it because 'Monster' is awful, 'We Are Your Friends' is a gazillion years old, I've never even heard of the chicken noodle thing, and I somehow managed to miss Magda every time she played London :(

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

disappointed that you didn't subtitle the PH Wars LET THEM SNORT COKE or something similar.

Shitheads March To Victory

[koganbot]

When I nominated the Paris wars I said that the discussion was crippled by one side being total shitheads. By the way, the argument isn't between people who like Paris and people who don't like her, it's between people who dismiss her and people who are willing to take her seriously. The Shitheads were interesting, though, because they don't actually know why they dislike Paris, and instead of trying to deal with what the music does, they run to a Hero-Vs.-Villain Story about how the music is made, the Great Story Of Opposition And Capitulation To Authority, with a subplot involving the Work Ethic. And there are some complicated - and ugly - class politics as well. And put aside the fact that Paris is rich: the opposition to her is another variation on "Disco Sucks!" Which isn't so uncomplicated either.

By the way, I think that people like me and Dave (a.k.a. skyecaptain and Lex feed off of the same Hero Story as everyone else, so I think it's important that we ourselves not dismiss the Shitheads, but rather try and understand them.

I wish someone would pay me to write about this.

Re: Shitheads March To Victory

[koganbot]

By the way, Dave examines the Paris Wars much more thoroughly in his post on Cure For Bedbugs going back to mid August, and he and I and Ross and a few others (I think Abby and Jessica show up at some point, but I might be misremembering; Greg comes along later) carry the convo on in the Haloscan comments. And his recent post (December 19) on a low-key but totally foul Voice piece really rams his point home (and here he's doing it on behalf of the Cheetah Girls, whom he doesn't like):

"Vacantly inspirational!" --Village Voice...I really hate this condescending tone, and it peeks out just enough all through this piece to really rub me the wrong way. It's also apparent in some recent pieces in the Times about Jingle Ball (which apparently had record low sales, a fact that wasn't mentioned in either the preview or follow-up). If you're gonna make an argument for vacancy, make it, but don't act like it's understood is all I'm saying.

Bingo!

Re: Shitheads March To Victory

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

To me it revealed that despite lots of big grandiose ROCKISM-IS-DEAD statements coming out this year, most anti-rockism is still pretty superficial. It extends to Justin Timberlake (male, auteur, composer) and hip-hop (how could it not, in the US?) - big fucking deal!

The most disappointing aspect of it was seeing people who five years ago were totally popist (I have read the ilx archives and I have seen their excitement about Britney, Xtina et al) dismissing Paris in such a kneejerk way.

Re: Shitheads March To Victory

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think I'm probably a Shithead re: Paris because she makes me want to put bricks through things but I think there are some non-musical and totally poptimistic arguments against her (I quite like a few songs on her album but would've cut my own foot off rather than see her become the next Britney) regarding the way she seemed totally uninterested in her pop career and appears to have already got bored. I mean, maybe that's marvellously plastic or something but I just find it a bit lame- if she really wanted/wants people to like those songs/gave a crap about them beyond the chance to play popstar for awhile, she should've put a lot more effort into promo etc., of which I've seen nothing, beyond the 'Stars Are Blind' video and a few posters. *shrug* If a new popstar without Paris' status did that, they'd be called lazy just the same.

I do live about as far away from anything as possible and don't have a telly, mind you, so possibly she was all over the place doing promo. If so, I humbly eat that.

Re: Shitheads March To Victory

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I opened a lot of questions up with the Paris talk, but I still haven't done as much with it as I probably should. I hope that by examining some of these questions in less extreme cases -- especially Ashlee Simpson, which I think is probably the most important "pop debate" of the decade, since it brings together most of the Paris strands in a less mutant/shithead form plus more explicit questions about authorship, musicianship, etc. The Paris debate encompasses these, but usually it can't get past huge class and gender issues that can't necessarily be applied to such extremes with other artists (Ashlee Simpson never made a sex tape, for instance. And could someone please clarify this for me...wasn't Paris Hilton the VICTIM of this sex tape, and then sort of rolled with the punches? Doesn't this fundamentally change the role of the sex tape in the trajectory of her career? I could be wrong about this, someone else will likely know more about it than me). With Paris, most of the shitheadness is so transparent that usually there's not really much discussion to be had. Except this thread, obviously.

Ross also wrote a great post on Paris's album and her persona on the album (http://mincetapes.blogspot.com/2006/10/heiress-to-throne-dancing-in-royal.html) on his own blog Mincetapes (http://www.mincetapes.blogspot.com/). And it provides excellent analysis of the album itself, which is even rarer than good analysis of the album as an event or symptom or whatever.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I was expecting slightly more obscure things in the 'dancing' section for whatever reason (am very pleased 'Monster' made it in there, is extremely good to stomp around drunkenly to and you can remember the chorus no matter how much cider you've just thrown down your neck) and am very surprised 'Something Kinda Oooh' didn't make it in there.

Was 'Walk Away' by Kelly Clarkson out this year? I seem to remember it being but since I remember seeing it on my parents' telly that could easily mean it was far longer ago- if it was, that's very good to dance to in the kitchen, less so in your chosen dancing establishment. Same goes for Xtina's 'Aint No Other Man,' although this might just be my chronic case of white girl booty prohibiting me dancing to anything that requires a lot of shaking in public.

Generally my danceability criteria is nothing to do with the song and entirely to do with how drunk I am. I have been very drunk when I have heard the following:
'Yeah Yeah' by Bodyrox and Luciana
'Chelsea Dagger' by The Fratelli's
'Hey Kid' by Matt Willis
'Dance Dance' by Fall Out Boy (either the original or the excellent stompy electronic remix by whoever it is that did it)
'Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off' by Panic! At The Disco
'Sounds Of Life' by Pendulum
'U and Ur Hand' by Pink
'Checkin It Out' by Lil Chris
'I Don't Need A Man' by the Pussycat Dolls

Justice vs Simian is strangely undanceable.

[koganbot]

Yes "Walk Away" is this year, though the album it came from is late '04. Strange story, which I don't really know much about; Wikipedia says "Initially, 'Addicted' had been planned for release as a fifth single, but was cancelled when RCA deemed its dark tone and message too similar to that of her previous two singles, 'Behind These Hazel Eyes' and 'Because of You.' 'Gone' was then picked as the replacement, only to be dropped due to similarities to 'Since U Been Gone.'" Assuming that Wikipedia is correct here, RCA's reasons seem fake (we don't want the tone to be too much like the two previous massive successes). "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Because Of You" don't sound much alike - one's Dr. Luke pop-rock, the other's a ballad, and the respective styles could have supported much less unhappy lyrics. It's the words that have the dark tone. On "Addicted" the sound gives you darkness as well, Evanescence-style goth metal that's way more rock than "Since U Been Gone." My guess is that RCA reasoned that the sound was too dark for the Top 40 and Adult Contemporary market and that the rock market would never accept Kelly. It's too bad they didn't test this; there's a whole lot going on with Kelly that you don't know about if you haven't heard the album ("Hear Me" is even more metal-rock than "Addicted" is). Of the five songs that Kelly co-wrote on the album ("Behind These Hazel Eyes," "Because Of You," "Addicted," "Walk Away," and "Hear Me"), "Walk Away" is the only one whose lyrics aren't desperate despair.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

That actually really surprises me, cus whilst 'Breakaway' is still on my list of albums I want but have never remembered to acquire, 'Walk Away' screamed 'MASSIVE SINGLE' to me, so I'd assumed it was always slated for release. I dunno, her last few singles hadn't been very suitable for Britain and, indeed, quite a few of them didn't make it over here at all but 'Walk Away' seemed like the sort of thing she ought to be doing more than 'Breakaway' (the song itself) which sure did sound like Avril Lavigne's hand in it. Different markets etc. I suppose.

Young Parisians

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed reading the Indie/Emo comments more than I enjoyed reading any of the Paris commentary, but I enjoyed reading *all* the FT comments boxes a lot more this year ("Popular" especially though it's yet to spawn an argument as entertaining).

I think the stuff underlying the Paris Riots (Who gets to make pop? Who gets to like pop?) is more important than indie vs emo (though emo itself could be important), so I ticked it.

Re: Young Parisians

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I was about to post this same thing. Indie v. Emo was extremely entertaining. But the PH debate, if you follow closely, has very important things to say about the nature of music and music criticism. So it gets my vote.

Re: Young Parisians

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

That was my thoughts re: the argument. I was initially like "ah yeah emo's been the big 'what the hell is this?!/OMG I love this!' thing of the year so it must be that' and then I realised the indie prefix and decided on Paris. The Paris debate was far more interesting on all levels/actually was a debate, rather than an NME coverstory.

Emo vs. The World would have got my vote, however.

Blog 27's da bomb and ya know why

[koganbot]

I don't remember what I nominated for the dance category. Was it Blog 27's "Hey Boy," which I nominated because of this (my mission is to link this on every thread I participate in)?

Re: Blog 27's da bomb and ya know why

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, that sounds familiar.

[koganbot]

By the way, it's not as if there's nothing to be distressed about in the pop market. Nonyoung, nonpretty women simply don't have a chance. (Or at least I can't think of many exceptions off-hand. Someone said yesterday that Fergie manages to be sexy while looking kind of yucky.) Men have more options, and a greater range of acceptable looks. (But how is this the record producers' fault?)

With a soda on the side

[koganbot]

Video results for 'dance to chicken noodle soup' Results 1-20 of 29

Re: With a soda on the side

[koganbot]

Instructional video

Keep your feet neat

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever danced to be honest.

Oh, maybe I did at my cousin's birthday party about 10 years ago. It was not my thing man.

Who can actually do the "We Share Our Mother's Health"?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

A major factor in my decision to tick "Chicken Noodle Soup": I can actually do the Chicken Noodle Soup! Sometimes I do it in the mirror before bed -- you don't even need music, you can just keep chanting "Chicken Noodle Soup!" and it works fine. For someone who can't dance (and doesn't get out much), this makes a big difference.

Re: Who can actually do the "We Share Our Mother's Health"?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(I usually skip the soda before bed because it keeps me up.)