let me repeat that: i want my STUFF BACK

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

This is the second best single of the year, after Umbrella-ella-ella-ay-ay-ay.

Watch on YouTube

The tune is killer, the vocoder touches neat, Aly & AJ deliver their lines with pizzazz, but what I love best are the lyrics: it's really well-crafted as a narrative, each line revealing an extra aspect to the situation; and it's concise, like Aly & AJ are tying a knot. It's an ultimatum which leaves the guy they're addressing in no doubt that they mean what they say and that they're not going to take any bullshit any more, but also leaves room for what they secretly hope he'll say in response with the neat twist at the end. Which will it be?


It took too long
It took too long
It took too long for you to call back
And normally I would just forget that
Except for the fact it was my birthday
My stupid birthday

I played along
I played along
I played along, it rolled right off my back
But obviously my armor was cracked
What kind of boyfriend would forget that?
Who would forget that?

The type of guy who doesn’t see
What he has until she leaves
Don’t let me go
Cuz without me, you know you’re lost
Wise up now or pay the cost
Soon you will know

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ for me

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one
Oh baby please
Please tell me

We got along
We got along
We got along until you did that
Now all I want is just my stuff back
Do you get that?
Let me repeat that:
I want my stuff back

You can send it in a box
I don’t care, just drop it off
I won’t be home
Cuz without me, you know you’re lost
Minus you I’m better off
Soon you will know

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ for me

You can try, you can try
You know I know it’d be a lie
Without me you’re gonna cry
So you better think clearly, clearly
Before you nearly, nearly
Mess up the situation that you're gonna miss dearly, dearly
C’mon

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ for me

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one
Oh baby please
Please tell me

This is the potential make up song
Please just admit you’re wrong
Which will it be?
Which will it be?

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

That's what I find difficult about them- they seem very inaccessible on some level (or at least certainly used to) because they're part of this big Disney base that I totally don't understand; they're going to need to really sort that out if they're going to take on the UK/Europe. That and I have a deep mistrust of people from creationist hick zone with blonde hair and blue eyes who start their career on Radio Fascist but that is just me being racist about blonde people and I should really get over it.

Where are you writing this piece for, if you don't mind me asking? I'd be quite interested to read it and Borders seem to have a very relaxed attitude towards paying for things before you read them.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Thing is, Radio Disney and High School Musical and all of that is HUGE over here too - the PR went to a HSM show and even he was shocked that it was so popular. I dunno, everything I read about its popularity is so conflicting: I know it's the 8-14 demographic and NO ONE ELSE who buys it, apparently this translates into huge sales - but where? where? not on the CHARTS, or at least not on our charts, poor Hilary D. I don't like this fragmentation, I don't like pop existing in some weird Disney-owned ghetto, I want it on mainstream radio and in the top 10 where it belongs.

The article will be in the Grau on Friday if I don't miss another deadline, at this rate though it will be neither good nor informative.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

HSM is 12-25 females, I will swear. Although they probably don't buy it what with all this internet business but nearly every other girl I know in that age bracket is going completely mental over the idea of a sequel. :0 I personally find HSM repulsive but there you go.

Is it only bought of retailers who don't play the chart game? Like can you buy it off the Disney channel or something so somehow it doesn't pass through sales? It is strange how it never registers. It always surprises me that things like 'Further Songs For Children In Cars' (if I ever make an album I am calling it that) aren't in the album top ten all the time- maybe there's some things which don't count as chart eligible if they are For The Kids or something?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly taken with HSM either. No one I know has even HEARD of all of this - this is what's unsettling! This is a supposedly mega-selling empire but it is just not on anyone's radar. My editor has heard of it all though because he has a daughter who is in love with the Duff and into HSM etc...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I mean obviously if I was an ACTUAL JOURNALIST I would have done research and stuff, and actually found out the answers rather than sitting here having a strop about how I don't know them, but I have never been one for doing that kind of journalism.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I don't think any journalist, music or otherwise, does that kind of research. As far as I can tell from my lecturer who used to be an African conflict reporter, she just stuck on a pair of high heels and some jabs and stomped off to see who put a gun in her face.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's my usual tactic for dealing w/ writer's block, "look at everyone else".

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like you've GOT an angle already Lex - this stuff sounds like and plays like mainstream pop as we knew it but it's incredibly niche, and is it a good thing that pop is marketed so tightly and is so exclusionary now?

(Maybe I'm imposing my angle on yours now - I think this is the big question of all popular culture right now: is mass popcult going to be MySpace - huge shallow networks which encourage openness - or Facebook - tight networks which put up barriers?)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah that is my angle - I'm just not v comfortable with putting it into words though, every time I write something I think, hmm, is that actually right? and backtrack.

(Myspace v Facebook is something I'm REALLY interested in right now - nothing to do with this but since joining Facebook it's actually begun to feel like something which could actually become a default socialising option for EVERYONE, like mobile phones or something, which Myspace never did - partly because it increasingly seems like everyone in the world is on it.)

(There are more barriers, and more obvious privacy, on Facebook, which is WHY everyone's joining it and not Myspace (also it WORKS), but actually it's far more conducive to stalkery behaviour, really.)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Isn't the stalker potential why everyone's joining it?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I don't think so! Or at least, there are loads of people on it who would never have dreamed of getting a Myspace, because it looked too public and open. I mean, on Facebook your friends can stalk you, but the default is that random strangers can't, which to most people makes all the difference I guess.

I've found the events thing on Facebook REALLY useful, unlike anything on Myspace.

[koganbot]

Aly & A.J. aren't related at all to HSM other than that they're both on Hollywood Records and Aly & A.J. have acted on Disney shows (though not that one). The sound is different, they don't use the same songwriters (in fact they're their own songwriters, though they do collaborate with some music biz pros, but the ones they collaborate with aren't the ones who create the stuff for HSM and Cheetah Girls and Hannah Montana [there's a little bit of overlap, in that they've worked with people who did a couple tracks for the Vanessa Hudgens alb]).

From what you're saying the HSM audience is older in Britain than in the U.S. My guess is that HSM got kids from about 6 to 14; if they were getting kids through 25 they'd be on the Top 40 radio, which they're not. Ashley Tisdale (who's also mostly shunning the HSM producers) is going for an older audience on her solo stuff, but I don't think she's going to get it.

HSM has one tremendous, wonderful song, "Breaking Free," and a couple fairly fun ones (the ones Tisdale-Gabreel tracks) and some quasi-r&b that runs from blah to very blah. I thought the four leads in HSM were quite good, and overcame a good deal of the weirdly distant staginess of the way it was shot. Can't stand the new HSM song.

[(Anonymous)]

High School Musical is pretty popular in actual high school too, in my experience. Which, admittedly, is fairly limited.

Movie I just watched, Music and Lyrics makes a (probably artificial) distinction between music which is dinner and music which is dessert. Pretty much all Disney is dessert, but A&A is dinner.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

Uh, that was me.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

It really surprises me that the audience was so young in the US. I haven't ever seen it and I've only heard a few songs, which I disliked so I don't really know much about it but from what I've heard it's being ranted and raved about by the same people who really like Rent and Disney songs... which in the UK is 12-25 females.

I wasn't intending to suggest this was the same as Aly and AJ's demographic. :) In fact I'm slightly confused that they're even played in the same places- I think this is some of what puzzles me about Radio Disney. I should really stream some at some point and educate myself.

Although in the UK, Aly and AJ might find their audience was what the HSM audience is in the US, bizarrely. :/

[koganbot]

Well, the audience is young 'cause it was shown on a kids' network. It was a made-for-TV-movie on the Disney Channel. And if you see it you'll see that all the conflicts and characters are laid out for the viewer very obviously so that an eight-year-old can understand it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Woolworths is full of HSM stuff, and a hundred other kids and tweens franchises of which I knew nothing but found out loads about today cos I was buying a Teletubbies DVD.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Haha, I noticed that, too- this was why it surprised me that people didn't think it had broken in the UK. I don't listen to the radio or watch TV and Woolies is the only mainstream music outlet in Aberystwyth (although I often berate Andy of Andy's Records to order me stuff but Woolies is a lot cheaper and seems to have a consistently amazing sale for all my Rihanna back catalogue needs) so I had no idea it wasn't totally blowing up over here. :D

[koganbot]

In the U.S. the HSM and Hannah Montana songs get no top 40 airplay but lots of Radio Disney play, and they sell huge huge huge on downloads. And, like, the album is available in, like, buildings where retail goods are exchanged for currency. (My guess is that HSM does big business in the all-purpose chains as opposed to actual record stores.)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Woolworths is a UK one of these, so I'm sure your guess is right.