A Year In Pop: Week 4

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Mika still #1, "Exceeder" in the Top 3, young person's indie music as far as the eye can see, and what's that coming over the hill? Is it an emo?

[Poll #916901]

Next week we'll do the first monthly roundup poll - how exciting eh?

In other orgafun news: We have enough league of pop entrants, I will start the ball rolling on this one soon, tomorrow maybe. I need to write the rules!

The last four qualifiers for the Jop poll: Sinead, Pixies, ODB, Salt N Pepa. The first round proper kicks off at lunchtime.

Comments

[koganbot]

Beth Ditto is an obnoxious little b*tch

Little?

(Also, is being an obnoxious bitch necessarily an aesthetic flaw? Cf. Courtney Love, Diana Ross, Grace Slick, Madonna.)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily, it's true but she personally affronts me by assuming that because she is fat (although she professes to hating the word 'fat') she is better than someone who is thin. To me, she can say 'look at me, I am beautiful' but it should be met with frowns in the same way that, quite rightly, Mary-Kate Olsen standing up and saying the same thing would be. Neither of them is healthy, both of them have a problem. They may each perceive themselves to be beautiful (although in Ditto's exhibitionism I see insecurity rather than a self-assured attitude and of course Ms Olsen must be far from psychologically "together") but the fact that she is at the other extreme of the see-saw doesn't make her better. I realise I'm probably throwing about a load of my own complexes and prejudices here but I see Beth Ditto as the equivalent of that well-known picture of the obese man wearing the 'I beat anorexia' t-shirt. Maybe she chooses to be the weight she is but then advocates of the supposed "pro-ana" lifestyle claim that they choose to be anorexic and so I don't feel that it's appropriate for people to advocate Beth Ditto as psychologically sound any more than it would be Nicole Richie. I realise this actually has nothing at all to do with her music but she does rather shove it in the audience's face, as it were and so it's hard to separate.

I also find that the way the press treat her, purely because she is fat and loud is somewhat offensive, given that her views are really neither more developed nor extraordinary to those of many other female singers (I'm not just saying that because obviously Beth's music is intended to be danced to, whereas, say, Ani DiFranco's obviously isn't particularly but purely because I haven't seen anything more developed than some of Tegan and Sara's stuff, which also has the sexuality parallel with Ditto and they aren't even considered political) and she is taking exactly the same route as, say, Charlotte Church or Lily Allen or Cheryl Tweedy or whoever by attempting to court controversy by slagging off others. I do see that the political nature of her music makes it easier to interview her in a political manner but that isn't what she's known for and she seems to be more on a vaguely burlesque mission to expose herself more than she is to awaken political awareness in the youth of today etc. I find her a bit grotesque and pitiable, to be honest, because perhaps I'm transposing my own angst onto her but I can't help thinking she's probably prey to a similar monster, as it were.

Hrmm. Maybe I have leapt to conclusions about her too easily from flicking through irritating Guardian and NME articles but nothing particularly impresses me. If she was shown as some terrible decay, in the way Courtney Love is, then I would buy into it but the pantomime that she is strong and healthy is not something I can (personally) stomach.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think I should probably say 'Beth Ditto is marketed at me as an obnoxious b*tch, not that she is one. She may be lovely but that's how the press force her at me.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is something I wrote about Beth D and the Gossip about five years ago.

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/essays/2002/01/gossip/

It's a bit excitable. I do still find it interesting how 'fat-friendly' (or otherwise) different kinds of music are. I don't think I've read an interview with her since then - I can well imagine that she's played for shock value and noise value now though.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if people spoke about her the way you do there, I don't think I'd find it so difficult to like The Gossip but instead it's like she's touted as some kind of feminist liberation icon, when she's exactly as bad as anyone else in terms of costume, etc. I dunno, I just find her awful where I found, say, Skin (who could be identified as equally self-conscious by her shaved head and masculine posturing) life-changing.

And it's true, she's marketed as something wholly different to what you describe there, which is basically a deeply earnest punk with interesting stylings as I read it. Now it's all "Beth Ditto says she doesn't give a fuck! Wow, she said 'fuck!'" and the usual direness the NME slobs around printing these days.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Ha, I've somehow managed to miss the bulk of Beth D's fat-feminism posturing - only caught a few hints of it. I basically agree with you that she shouldn't be held up as an example of a healthy role model for much the same reasons BUT I think what IS a good thing is her confidence, the way she wears her weight well, which is less to do with the fatness per se as with accepting who/what you are, which is pretty fantastic. Miss AMP wrote a really, really brilliant editorial in Plan B, the issue with Beth on the cover, about how as a fat teenage girl herself, merely seeing someone like Beth Ditto on the cover of a magazine would have been important.

Of course this isn't the same thing as harping on about being FAT AND PROUD - surely the Missy Elliott way is preferable, when she was fat she didn't care and she looked great, but she slimmed down because her doctor told her to and she STILL didn't care and she STILL looked great.

Anyway I am pretty against the idea of popstars as role models in any case. People who need role models also need to grow one brain of their own.

(I love SITWOC because it's not just an anthem in the dancefloor sense but because I think it's the first song since 'All The Things She Said' which I can relate to as a fist-pumping standing-together gay anthem - also they have clearly taken on board the fundamentals of DISCO whereby you take lyrics about sadness and loneliness and set them to a massive beat and tus defeat the sadness and loneliness hurrah.)

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

agree with all of this.

the Missy comparison is interesting because no-one ever really came down on her for drawing attention to her weight (having the attention put on this from others regardless of course). and Missy is a genuine legend in this and other respects as far as i'm concerned.

[koganbot]

I don't know the Ditto story, but there may be something similar to Lily Allen. That is, Lily's known for slagging people so she's asked to slag people and reported as doing so even when she's not; whereas when you read her blog, from which she got her original reputation for slagging, she comes off as someone excited/distraught without much of a built-in censorship apparatus, and is far more warm than mean. (Actually, haven't read that much of the press about her, so maybe they don't push the slagging bit; that's just something that jumped out at me the few times I saw it. Of course "slagging" does seem to fit in with "biting lyrics.")