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

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

NB: This is the first song I've heard by Aly & AJ which I've totally, totally loved, though I like some of their older stuff (pace Poptimists who've been into them for ages).

NB: I actually hate them at the moment because I've been suffering writer's block all weekend trying to write up a piece on them :(

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

They're like the fundamentalist Christian face of goth, innit? Goths who you are allowed to like even if you are not allowed to have sex before marriage. Maybe that's it- sexless goths. When they're not being a bit pseudo-incestuous-lesbian, anyway. :/

This song took ages to grow on me but I now like it a lot. Is it being released in the UK?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

You should write about twin syndrome (although they are not twins are they?) where they're wearing the same clothes but must have distinct differences like hair straightening. Or, err, not.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I hope so! The Aly & AJ UK marketing strategy = low-key release of their first album a couple of weeks ago, then full release of their new one (which this is off) in October (coinciding with its US release). When I first spoke to their PR the other week I mentioned how AMAZING 'The Potential Breakup Song' was and he was like "WTF no one is supposed to know that song even exists", but when I spoke to him a few days ago he said that the feedback has been so positive that they're lobbying the label really hard for it to be the big single in August or thereabouts.

The impression I get from this song is that Aly & AJ thought, well, we sell thousands upon thousands of records, but we're still niche and no one knows who we are unless they have a 10-year-old daughter. Let's take over the world. (ie they're less gothy and you wouldn't be able to tell they were Xtians at all.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I asked them about that actually - I keep having to remind myself they're not twins - because there is not one song, as far as I can tell, in which they are not a single entity; never any references to the other sister (contra all other pop duos I can think of), never any "we", always "I", always a single perspective throughout.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(I've actually finishd the bit of the article about THEM - I'm just struggling w/ the context b/c I'm not American and have no idea about Radio Disney etc, or at least I have an idea gleaned from emails Frank and Dave sent me but don't really get it, still.)

[koganbot]

Unfortunately, potentialbreakup.com only takes me to "The website address you entered could not be found."

[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.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

That is a very harsh break up indeed.

[koganbot]

The type of guy who doesn't see
What he has until she leaves
Don't let me go

This is the Aly & A.J. I love most, the "don't let me go," where the song shows that its own armor is cracked.

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one

Because if there were more than just one, the album would be tipping towards agony (which they're never willing to suppress anyway)?

[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?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Maybe the potential break up situation will decide the mood of the rest of the album- either they are going to make things about what a bitch it is to be in a relationship or what a bitch it is to have broken up with someone?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I heard that as album, as in photograph album, ie something charting memories - I like the idea of that applying to pop albums too (though it's not uncommon for a pop album to chronicle a relationship). (I'm also thinking that physical photo albums have been rendered obsolete by Facebook and so on, ie sites which you can upload audio and video to, so to Aly & AJ's generation of course the traditional "photo album" concept would include their songs!)

Anyway that interpretation means that that line is another subtle hint as to what she hopes will happen: if the complete album is a chronicle of a full relationship, there'll be one potential breakup song on it, either a) a bump in the road typical to all relationships which they'll work through, which will make them stronger, and which they'll look back on and laugh about one day; or b) the final chapter, the actual breakup. Which will it be?

[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.

[koganbot]

I don't hear goth at all (though maybe I'm dumb and there are some obvious visual cues; I'm a visual retard). Even Hilary - the eeriness of "Fly," for instance - has more goth touches (and then OMG there's Kelly). I would call this new wave, which is to say power pop with synths, and their previous stuff reminds me of pop-derived punk like the Ramones (though with way better rhythm than the Ramones, and not [yet] veering towards the Ramones comic-book nihilism).

Also, I don't hear or see sexlessness at all. (Anyway, chastity and sexlessness are not similar concepts. "Chemicals React" is about visceral attraction after all. And I wouldn't jump to conclusions about their views on premarital sex, either, unless they tell us.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

1. Um, awesome video.

2. Lex, if you need any more American Radio Disney insights let me know. Greg Fanoe (justfanoe on LJ) follows this stuff pretty closely, too.

3. p-mog, I wrote an OK essay on twin-pop last year that was talking about it both in terms of marketing/appeal to "inside" audience (a la Olsen twins -- coupling of production insight with star power) and its more ambiguous sorta-literary appeal to me and its "confessional shortcuts." Irony in the fact that the "shortcut" to "I" also makes the "I" (potentially) less believable and less relatable. M2M confounds all of my theories in this line of inquiry, tho. Article's here (http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/pop_playground/sugar-shock-003-pieces-of-i.htm).

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I meant abstinent goths, really; there's flirting there but it's all clean.

I think they're very gothy- not as gothy as, say, Ashlee or as you say Kelly but there is definitely something about them. Maybe as you say it's that sort of punk- I hear gothy sweeps in the synths and extended guitar, erm, wangs or whatever you call that noise where it goes on for ages on one strum but the voices are, listening to them now, much more punk than goth; slightly snotty and they shout which is against the rules of ladies in goth.

[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]

I have to finish the piece tonight so any further info would probably tip me over the edge (though thanks for offering) - the problem really is that I'm not on the spot, and therefore don't feel comfortable talking about it, and no amount of info would really help that.

[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.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

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

[koganbot]

Lex, according to Amazon, the album Insomniatic gets its U.S. release on July 10.

[koganbot]

Maybe what you're hearing as goth I'm hearing as folk-rock! I.e., drones, which can go either gothy or folky. The verse of "Rush" reminds me so much of Richard Thompson/Fairport Convention.