Another Year In Pop: 6

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's nu-mumpop vs old-mumpop! And some other stuff in the busiest week so far this year!

[Poll #1136678]

There is another BIG POLL to come on Poptimists today - DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL especially if you like BORING OLD ROCK MUSIC (erm). EDIT: BIG POLL delayed until tomorrow, sorry dudes.

Comments

[koganbot]

Yikes, I was only one song away from DON'T LIKE ANY, then at the last minute an unlikely ringer from last week snuck me into tickland.

Wet Wet Wet "Weightless" - I know this is going straight for the mainstream AC market, but as such it's sorta rocked-up new age as if Enigma had decided to become a stodgy rock group. Not awful, but wanky. Ticks nought.

The Feeling "I Thought It Was Over" - Good melody, strange shifts in chords which defeat the melody, and I agree with the fellow upthread who spoke of the band's inherent wimpiness. Ticknot.

Morrissey "That's How People Grow Up" - Voice is huskier than in his famous days. This has the man's inherent presence but doesn't connect as a song, and the huskiness makes it wearying.

Goldfrapp "A & E" - The voice is warm, but ends up as boringly respectable Feist delicacy; and when the pitch rises the delicacy thins into something infantile.

Biffy Clyro "Who's Got A Match" - Walking gingerly around the edge of the melody, nothing about this reminds me of a fire. Song has potential, but the rock clumsiness ruins it.

Michael Jackson f. Will.I.Am "The Girl Is Mine" - Never was wild about this song, but this stands up in the real power and ease of the singing. But Will.I.Am is fuzzy and clodmouthed, and I don't see why I should reward this for taking an OK song and making it worse.

Timbaland f. Nicole Scherzinger and Keri Hilson "Scream" - Beautiful, the way the females sing "Scream," but Timbo has pushed the foreground so far back that the interesting drum thumps become an impediment, and I'm not feeling this (esp. given how little support the genuinely pretty "Apologize" got in these quarters). Strange. I don't know - except I just don't want to hear Timbo's beefy voice at start and finish, even when he's doing an intentionally funny loveman parody; funny doesn't necessarily sound good.

30 Seconds To Mars "From Yesterday" - Kind of overemoted, but this is nice until the giant power guitars come in. From that point, the histrionics are searching for and not finding an actual good melody to get all bothered over. No tick, even if Angela Chase once loved him.

Adele "Hometown Glory" - I hate the way these tropes play culturally: lush but not too lush piano, slow-voiced lounge alto* - I might insultingly call it "folk-lounge," "folk" because she retains a socio-regional** nonupscale accent while being thoroughly upscale (Starbucks here we come). But I vastly prefer this to the irritating, quirky "Chasing Pavements." In fact, the lushness is lush enough to bury the irritating aspects of the voice (and make the lyrics ignorable, and so far I've ignored them). So, in fact, this is the serviceable mainstream AC that the Goldfrapp and Wet Wet Wet tracks fall short of. Tick.

*Is "alto" the right term for her voice?

**You guys will have to identify the socio-regional accent for me (it may merely be a psychosocial region on the musical landscape, rather than having an actual physical location).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Wiki says Adele is from Norf Lahndahn. As much as I like the bit of Norf Lahndahn where I live, I can't quite comprehend why she's extolling the virtues of Tottenham as the majority of said locale is really quite grim (no offence martinskidmore!). Not even background-grim in a optimistically cheerful Junior Spesh people-actually-live-here way, but in a soul-crushing rubbish-strewn retail park estate oh-god-lets-move-to-Slough-instead kind of way. Though it's not as bad as Edmonton.

[koganbot]

Thank you!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Wess Lunnun 'swell more wicked enn-way. Blatantly.

[koganbot]

Btw, every other song on Adele's MySpace is dreadful.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's even consciously extolling Tottenham per se - in fact I don't think she's consciously thought about the lyrics AT ALL, there aren't any specifics of anything in there, it's entirely composed of vague platitudinous we-shall-overcome clichés or just plain LIES. Like in the first verse:

"Is there anything I can do for you dear? Is there anyone I can call?"
"No and thank you, please Madam. I ain't lost, just wandering"

Since when do people do this in Tottenham! Or even in London! Or ANYWHERE. It's as bad as Sandi Thom, except instead of yearning for a golden age which never existed, Adele's pretending it still exists.

And then:

I like it in the city when the air is so thick and opaque
I love to see everybody in short skirts, shorts and shades

We're a verse and a chorus in and this is the closest we get to ANY kind of specific visual imagery about this hometown she's been going on about - and it could be ANY city in the world. Adele's an Everygirl and this is her Everytown, and instead of making her feelings and her home seem universal enough to ring true she makes them sound banal and cardboard.

I like it in the city when two worlds collide
You get the people and the government
Everybody taking different sides

Shows that we ain't gonna stand shit
Shows that we are united
Shows that we ain't gonna take it
Shows that we ain't gonna stand shit
Shows that we are united

What shows that?? What, in any of your lyrics, shows that we are united?? "Everybody taking different sides"??? I can't go on. Adele is so fucking stupid. How has this dumb bitch managed to be so successful?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent example of why I don't normally bother paying attention to lyrics :)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Sometimes they just LEAP OUT at you!

Adele's music: zzzzzzzzzz.

[koganbot]

These lyrics are impressively idiotic.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think I was being a bit harsh on Tottenham above. It's an ok place really, just probably not worth writing an emotional song about. I mean, Ickenham is a perfectly great place to grow up, but if I was going to write a wistful song about it I'd write about the tiny patches of it that I experienced, or at least try and capture what makes it unique.

Wherever it is she's from, I find it all a bit strange.