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

[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.