the most important pop things this week

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

OK all I can see on my last.fm friends page is Radiohead Radiohead Radiofvckingboringhead and I want y'all to STOP IT NOW it is hurting me in my heart! Here is a list of BETTER THINGS.

1. New Sugababes album released on the same day. I haven't heard it yet and would like to hear more about it, but I grow more in love with the single daily and frankly it should have far outstripped R****head as a topic of poptimist discussion. SHAME!

2. 'Bean Pop' by KP is an addictive bouncing southern hip-hop thing. The dancing in the video is brilliant; I like the girl whose top says GO AWAY, and the dance move where they mime popping a pill.

3. I have been waiting for a proper video to emerge for Cassie's 'Is It You?' but have resigned myself to this never happening - nevertheless the song is one of the most fantastic bubblegum things of the year. If you liked Cassie's album you will like this.

3. New Alicia Keys single! I think Alicia has one of the greatest voices around - her albums are both a bit samey but she has a really magnificent string of singles going. 'No One' is no disappointment - she's added a bit of a Mary J rasp to her voice which works very well, the bridge is amazing and the oh-oh-oh-oh-ohs of the outro are finally what make me fall hard for this. Google alicia keys no one site:zshare.net and you'll find it, here's the video.

4. I first heard Durrty Goodz's Axiom EP mixtape last week and it has totally blown me away - nine tight, focused grime bombs, not a wasted moment on the whole thing. This is the only song on youtube, 'Keep Up', and it's terrific - that sing-song flow! That incredible beat! - but there's even better on the album eg 'The Youngers' on which Goodz creates a schoolkid persona and feeds his voice through a machine for it accordingly, 'Give Me The Music' which is this glorious closing track featuring Ny, 'The Weather Man' which is a true banger...

5. Chamillionaire's new video is a MUST-SEE - a nine-minute concept video combining his new single 'Hip Hop Police' (straight-up irresistible hip-hop banger) and 'The Evening News' which is all CURRENT AFFAIRS and POLITICAL - and which works! We get commentary on racism, the Don Imus "nappy-headed hos" incident, Dubya and climate change, and it ends by calling for the APOCALYPSE. It is mad and brilliant.

6. And lastly, Miss Ashley Tisdale is what Aly & AJ would be if they REALLY wanted to take us back to the golden age of Britney copyists - not in sound per se but in aesthetic. 'He Said She Said' features an intro cribbed off Bach, a bubblegum rap chorus and a totally catchy melody. Five years ago this would have been a shoe-in for the top 10, now it appears we have to murder Jo Whiley for this to happen. I'm up for that!

There! No excuses now.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

Will check all these out and comment (probably tomorrow tho, I need bed)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

With the best will in the world, the Sugababes album is best swept under the carpet. Two OK tracks, but even there, the single is an inferior 'Since U Been Gone', and the best album track is the Xenomania one which sounds like Girls Aloud.

Also, they've done an acoustic cover of Primal Scream's 'Rocks' on the single's b-side, which is pretty much the last word in rockism.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Cracking stuff Lex - but could you bung it under a lj-cut? Cheers mdears :)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

OK! People had better still look at it though

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

That Chamillionaire video is brilliant, yes! I quite like the other songs, but the videos don't really hold my attention so much.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

The Sugababes album is great. First five tracks don't put a foot wrong.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Still haven't picked it up but the main criticism seems to be 'bland'...and I like the Sugababes when they do 'bland' (eg the Three ballads). In recent years it's their uptempo tracks which have been more hit and miss,

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I really don't get the criticism - you would think the Sugababes were signed to Warp record in a previous incarnation. Their first album is mainly slick r & b, 'Taller In More Ways' was VERY American-ised and this is just a progression. I think rather than particularly being bland it's that their sound has become so common these days.

Kara gorgeous; Ashley a trouper

[koganbot]

Lex, here's a really good clip of Kara (looking utterly gorgeous, by the way) coaching an injured but game Ashley through parts of "Be Good To Me."

Tisdale doesn't nearly have the personality of Aly or A.J. or Britney,* but that doesn't matter; the songs carry her, and she does have the energy to ride with them, at least on the three great singles from her album.

My order of preference, with songwriters given in parentheses:

--"Not Like That" (Pelle Ankarberg/David Jassy/Niclas Molinder/Joacim Persson/Ashley Tisdale)
--"He Said She Said" (Evan "Kidd" Bogart/Jonathan "JR" Rotem/Ryan "Alias" Tedder)
--"Be Good To Me" (Kara DioGuardi/Niclas Molinder/Joacim Persson)

DioGuardi you know; Rotem you know; Bogart is Rotem's frequent collaborator; Tisdale is Tisdale; Ryan Tedder is the One Republic guy, which means he's all over the radio even as we speak; he also co-wrote Hilary's strange "Gypsy" song, though I attribute the strangeness to Hilary herself.

As for the rest, any info you have is welcome.

When I listened to Headstrong streamed on AOL last February, this was my reaction: "Think the Ashley Tisdale is fairly wonderful - lively, funny, w/ globs of beauty - for the first five tracks, then it dies, then half perks up for bits of tracks nine, ten, eleven, and thirteen, before concluding on irrevocable ballad death. But better than I'd expected."

There was lots and lots of good convo about the Tisdale album on Rolling Teenpop, since it was released before ilX became everyone's last priority.

(*I mean that as a singer Tisdale doesn't come close to having the personality of Aly & A.J. or Britney; as an actress, she's strong as Sharpay Evans in HSM. I've only seen about two minutes of Aly Michalka acting; Aly was incandescent, but I can't really draw conclusions from that one moment.)

Re: Kara gorgeous; Ashley a trouper

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I don't really get a sense of who Ashley Tisdale is, which in terrific single-size doses doesn't matter at all (and the "sense of who X is" is often something that sneaks up on me over time). The title track of Headstrong is another one which really stood out.

attn: jauntykat

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

^^^I SUBMITTED THIS TRACK FOR THE FT POPTIMISTS PODCAST, LIKE, FOUR NO FIVE WEEKS AGO

Sometime Disney are idiots

[koganbot]

Oh yeah, for some reason back at the turn of the year Disney decided that "He Said She Said," or its vid, was too risque, or something, so they didn't promote it or play it much.

Existential debate: "being vs. moving"

[koganbot]

The Radio Disney "clean" edit, if you're interested.

So, taking sides:

Ashley: "Girl walk in the spot she stop traffic (uh huh)
She blowin' your mind with her asset (uh huh)"

vs.

Disney: "Girl walk in the spot she stop traffic (uh huh)
She got everything you can't pass it (uh huh)"

or

Ashley: "Baby I can see us movin' like that (like that)
Baby I can see us touchin' like that (like that)
Baby I can see us kissin' like that (like that)
We don't need no more than he said she said"

vs.

Disney: "Baby I can see us bein' like that (like that)
Baby I can see us dancin' like that (like that)
Baby I can see us chillin' like that (like that)
We don't need no more than he said she said"

Existential debate part two: if a song falls in a forest, did anybody hear it?

[koganbot]

OK, an hour of strenuous searching on the Web reveals that: (1) There was a previous video for "He Said, She Said" but I can't find it. It's probably somewhere on YouTube, but I didn't want to wade through several hundred videos to find it. (2) The original push for the song was in December or January but was called off in favor of a push for "Be Good To Me" (I'm presuming because Radio Disney was willing to play the latter). (3) In the U.S. the song is getting virtually no airplay on Top 40 (Mediabase reports 27 spins total in the entire country last week). (4) It's getting no play on Radio Disney (or fewer than 8 spins at any rate); possibly Disney is waiting on it (and maybe there's work on a "clean" video for the Disney channel). (5) It may be getting some play on TRL, or at least TRL is featuring it in its "premieres," but the TRL Website is so confusing I'm damned if I can figure out what's going on. (6) I didn't check to see if any Sharpay songs from HSM2 are getting much attention. (I don't even know if there are any Sharpay songs from HSM2, which I haven't seen [or heard].) (7) So if "He Said, She Said" is getting any kind of push, it hasn't really happened yet. Or maybe it did happen but no one felt it. (8) I can't figure out if Ashley is singing "We don't need no more than he said she said" or "We don't need no more that he said she said." Semantically it makes a difference, but not to me. (9) Her days are all about her hair, because straightening it takes a couple of hours and only then can they style it. (10) J.R. Rotem is not as good looking as Kara DioGuardi.

Re: Existential debate: "being vs. moving"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

That anyone felt the original had to be censored in any way is quite alarming, actually. Where is this hyper-sexualised society supposedly being shoved down our throats?

Re: Existential debate: "being vs. moving"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is the problem with niche marketing to tweens tho lex - sex absolutely ruled out here but then outside the corral it RUNS WILD.

Re: attn: jauntykat

[koganbot]

skyecaptain passes along this news, I'm not sure from where:

"Ashley Tisdale's music video for He Said, She Said has taken the top spot on MTV's TRL making her the first performer from High School Musical to reach that status."

So we'll see what push this gives her. Billboard is now counting online video plays as points in its singles formula, so if "He Said, She Said" gets a lot of plays on AOL and Yahoo this could, oh, I don't know, launch it into the 60s rather than the 70s? "Potential Breakup Song" is currently #5 on AOL and #8 on Launch Yahoo. TRL and online video sites may be the only line of crossover out of Disney to the broader market that Tisdale or A&A really have in the U.S.

Re: Existential debate: "being vs. moving"

[koganbot]

It's that they're kissing! And touching! At the same time! Children don't know about such things!

[koganbot]

So, incredibly, "Potential Breakup Song" is only my third-favorite single by a Disney artist this year, after "Not Like That" and Miley Cyrus's "See You Again."

(But Disney is dulling music out in a lot of other ways, unfortunately.)

Somewhat off-topic, but if you're interested here's an Ken Tucker radio review of Insomniatic. Has some crap about Aly & A.J. not being puppets because they write their own material, and the early Michael Jackson 1980s being an "innocent" time (as I said over on rolling teenpop, sometimes you wonder how it is that culture critics managed to graduate from nursery school), but also some good analysis of the lyrics and music.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if "Bullseye" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=vEtgDE09UA4) was ever actually released as a single, but if so it would probably get my vote before "Potential Break-up."

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

the HUH is deeply weird and I'm really not sure why it's there! but year the rest of the song is terrific and immediately after the HUH they launch into some quite spectacular wall-of-sound production so it's all good.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

There's a review in the Guardian today which gives it 4 stars, particularly praises the lyrics, then gives all the credit to "Their songwriting/production team" - so that would be....Aly and AJ, then?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha yeah I saw that too - though to be fair I often get promos with no credits and have to hazard a guess at stuff like that, but yeah it's ironic given how auteurish and serious Aly & AJ are about songwriting.

Was also pleased that Róisín Murphy's album got a good review - had pitched for that myself. It's really, really incredibly good.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

To be fair, half the songs are co-written by and the album is entirely produced by Antonina Armato/Tim James, who are currently probably my favorite songwriting/production team working in pop music right now. I suspect they probably have as much to do with the quality of the album as do A&A (though A&A have a lot to do with it too).

Who says gangstas don't dance?

[koganbot]

"Bean Pop" is kind of generic and obvious - Crime Mob was doing this three years ago - but it's also quite pleasing, and I always like that deep-bass-on-the-bottom-and-pretty-chimes-on-top thing; southern hip-hop always sounds so unmannered creating sounds that other electronic music falls all over congratulating itself for even though they're doing it a lot more clumsily.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I'd like to add that the Roisin Murphy album will be out on Monday and I am confident from the tracks I have heard that it will be the pop album of the year.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh it totally is - the second single is v misleading, I find it literally the only unmemorable song on the album. 'Cry Baby' and 'Movie Star' are IMMENSE.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Most of the b-sides so far great too - Foolish & Sweet Nothings from the first single, and Unloveable from Let Me Know are all great too.

Although the other b-side to Let me Know, Sunshine, is just embarrassing. (Hello Sunshine! Hello Kitty Cat)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I finally heard overpowered - thought it was pretty good but the lyrics distracted me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think the lyrics are great! Especially the oxytoxins bit.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

They were fine and quite clever, but distracting.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

just please don't tell me you heard the opening line as "your dating my daughter"

i like 'Let Me Know' so this bodes really well for the album.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"your data my data" is a GREAT opening line

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Do you mean to suggest that she is not saying "you're dating my daughter"?? (Luckily I never looked into the lyrics.)

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I really do not understand how people can hear that first line as "you're dating my daughter" based on how she says the word "data" two ways. Mind boggling.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I love the second single. I'm sorry to hear that's atypical of the album.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's not really atypical, stylistically - the album has a sound and sticks to it throughout - but I don't think the song sticks as much as some of the other songs. It's still "any good at all" though.

Anyway what I thought

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

BEAN POP: I want it to be more like jellybeans than jumping beans. Still enjoy it though in the way I seem to quite enjoy all bounce.

CASSIE: Yeah lovely, this will grow on me a lot, aching and surging, tick VG good find. Need this on MP3 definitely.

ALICIA KEYS: Ooh, stately, and yeah it is quite Mary J - three for three so far, good work Lex. Dunno that I'll listen to this often but I like it.

DURTY GOODZ: Would you say there's been much sonic movement in grime in the last cpl years Lex? It seems very 8-bit videogame still judging by this. He's obviously very good but it's a bit exhausting. Liked the funky house joke tho!

CHAMILLIONARE: The hip-hop police chorus is a bit corny but the verses are terrific (and the video is too) - Evening News only rly works with the video but it's a great video.

ASHLEY: The chorus on this is so back-to-01 it hurts. Even MOAR Bach needed.

Great to hear all these, thanks Lex.

Re: Anyway what I thought

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think grime has progressed, definitely, though it'll always retain certain features which make it grime, and I think the videogame feel is one of these (though I've always thought that it's always had a massive amount of variety even from the start, I mean even the first two big albums were miles apart in many ways - Dizzee all jerky and awkward, Wiley pristine and gorgeous). Goodz' mixtape is pretty varied though. I think grime is really benefiting from the twin influences of bassline house and dubstep - both are really intertwining with grime right now. But what grime has always suffered from is finding MCs who can stamp their character over the course of an album (as opposed to one song or just 16 bars) - Goodz is def one of these.

Two of my favourite albums of the year are grime mixtapes - this one, and Ny's Split Endz Vol 2 - Ny is an r&b girl with an amazing voice, her mixtape takes in nu-soul, roots reggae and a really fantastic use of what it took me months to realise was a White Stripes sample.

Cassie's PR has just confirmed that she will be BACK BACK BACK in early 08 - I can't wait.

Re: Anyway what I thought

[koganbot]

I was really disappointed by the Cassie when I first heard it, though that was relative to my five or six favorite things from her first album. I'm still there with my disappointment, unfortunately, which isn't to say that I dislike this - I love the sweetness she maintains while the bottom beats are bashing her around. I just think this is missing the intense focus Ryan Leslie created on "Me & U" etc.

Re: Anyway what I thought

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I can sort of see what you mean actually cos I never once thought listening to it that it was by Cassie.

Re: Anyway what I thought

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was also disappointed, initially, in much the same way I was slightly disappointed by the Cassie album after I heard 'Me & U' - but that song is such an anomaly for Cassie, really, it all made sense when I heard the original mix of it which is as pretty-dreamy-synthy as the rest of the album, rather than grinding and chilly. I think that Cassie's ice queen persona appealed so much that it just took me a while to warm to her, er, warmer real persona.

Re: Anyway what I thought

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Only listened to / watched the Cassie and Chamillionaire (already have the Tisdale LP). Enjoyed them both very much. Thanks.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

so is anyone gonna give a last.fm update? :-D

Better late than never

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

KP - I like this - the thing about Southern rap is that the more generic it is the better it is, and this is pretty generic.

Cassie - this is awesome. Also, have you noticed it has exactly the same opening line as House of Cards off the new Radiohead ARGH stop where are you taking me???

Alicia Keys - I disagree with Alex, her voice is horrible.

Durrty Goodz - tremendous, made me really excited about hearing Axiom, especially as I have been caning the Tinchy album lately. The backing isn't all it could be but is flow as usual is so good. There's been some nastiness involving Doogz that's put me off listening to anything he's done of late and I can't quite get that bad taste out of my mind though.

Chamillionaire - I was thinking 'it's alright' up until the Evening News and then WTF this is batshit! I haven't heard of this 'nappy headed ho' controversy although I'm not sure it needs to be explained to me.

Ashley Tidsdale - This didn't do much for me. All the right bits in all the right places but dare I say there's a spark missing?

Re: Better late than never

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

There's a bonus track on Axiom called 'Letter 2 Titch' where Goodz kind of makes a stab at tackling the whole business.

"Nappy-headed hos" - Don Imus (apparently a controversial US radio shock jock?) called...some women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos", controversy ensued and I think he was quite rightly taken off air.

The idea of T Yorke singing "I'm looking for a lover, not a friend" is creeping me out!