Podcast Panel #10

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Keke Palmer - 'Music Box'

Direct link above and it's streaming at http://www.freakytrigger.co.uk for the next 24 hours.

Its submitter says: "Keke Palmer got semi-shafted last year with a pretty great album. Not sure how many people actually heard her best song, "Game Song," but if it was too many, her second-best (to me anyway) song is a totally sappy but pretty number about growing up in the ghetto called "Music Box." Mom fallen on hard(er) times gets a job as a janitor and proceeds to WIPE UP HER OWN TEARS. I mean that is insane."

[Poll #1140325]

To submit a track for the Podcast Panel send an mp3 to leagueofpop@gmail.com - keep em coming!

VOTES STILL OPEN ON: Natalia y la Forquentina! Avenged Sevenfold! Fleet Foxes! and ending tomorrow Trina!

VOTES CLOSED ON: Ivanushki International (Final score: 5.64) and Lancelot Link (Final score: 7.2)

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh I love this song but Dave (for it is you I presume) I would've TOTALLY submitted 'Game Song' or 'Keep It Moving' - I don't think many people did hear them.

The great thing about songs like 'Music Box' is that the focus of the sappiness is MUSIC: anyone who's ever loved music will totally get it.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I thought "Game Song" was too obvious (I think it's technically her second single, anyway). This is the slightly-off (uh, "idiosyncratic" sez koganbot, I'll go with that!) brow-furrowing one that I keep returning to on the album...I'm surprised at how resilient the schmaltzy (also beautiful) production touches are in actually making me feel sad!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the first 10 so far (unless i'm nuts): i like the interweave of elements (it reminds me of akon's "ghetto" AND pentagle, which is a pretty awesome ask) and the sentimentality in the social-realism is weirdly distorted and palped, which speaks to the topic (music as a means of escape: it doesn't banish the poverty trapping, but it muffles it and gives you something to clanber out with)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

She has another good and more down-to-earth growing up in the ghetto track called "Hood Anthem" which is also pretty good -- but I think you're right in pointing out how there's something kind of captivating in the distortion. She creates these folkloric, almost fairy tale characters and intersperses them with lines like "it affects his teenage daughter." (Imagine someone saying of the Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe that her lack of attention to any one child, paired with the cramped living space, "affected her teenage daughter"!)

[koganbot]

This has to be from Dave.

In her singing, Keke's another sub-JoJo, like Paula DeAnda, and as a few of you have probably noticed I keep falling for the music of sub-JoJos. But Keke's lyrics are very idiosyncratic and individual on this and "Game Song" (neither of which are written by her, so hurrah for sneaky auteurist songwriting idiosyncrasy, this time coming from The Clutch), "Game Song" being about a boyfriend who neglects her for his video games. The lyrics and the sweet harmony and polyphony here make this a strong 8, at least.

Doctor Doctor will I die
"Naw naw young girl just let the song fly"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Keke's 'Game Song' vs Tiff Evans' 'Promise Ring' = WHO WILL BE THE TRUE BABY CIARA??

'Keep It Moving' is my favourite Keke: come summer, all will agree with me.

[koganbot]

The Game Song The Game Song The Game Song

Keke defying the ordinary

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yes I'm hood H-O-O-D, don't speak on it if you don't know what it means (http://youtube.com/watch?v=8dnpaYlQCnU)

[katecyvug.livejournal.com]

Its Hard Some Days Man, If You Feel Me Then Say: Im Hood Yes I'm Hood H-O-O-D Dont Speak On It If You Dont Know What It Means I Was Raised In The Hood Overcame In The Hood Not Ashamed Of The Hood, Cuz The Hood Is In Me.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

added stab of poignancy for me: knowing that gorgeous forgotten disco starlet evelyn "champagne" king was signed as a songstress in 1976 after an exec heard (aged 16) singing while she worked as a cleaner in the office after-hours

i'm trying to think of another song that has this multi-layered focus: where the self-involvement of the technics of yr escape route becomes a way of distancing yrself from the manipulative affect of saying 'woe is me my grim youth!", which somehow doubles the effectiveness; heartbreaking doubly bcz of her mum somehow NOT able to join in the pleasure and absorption of "getting on" via music...

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

That was one question I had...where is Keke in all this? She presents herself as this omniscient narrator giving us a tour. She's witnessing the woman doing janitor work (not nec. her mom, I think) and chooses to sympathize (by telling her story, albeit in a very strange way) but also drowns her out. And then she's talking about a girl with some kind of eating disorder and sneaking out at night all the time, and Keke wants her to use the music box now. (Also a weird throwback with music box being the wind-up kind and the boombox kind at the same time, neither of which are particularly uh now examples of using music to drown out the stuff in your life. Everyone hears the music, no headphones!)

Keke was 13 when she made this album, I think, which kind of blows me away.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think i took it that she was talking abt herself in the third person, as one of the characters with the the rest of the story as the backdrop to this -- and the foreground is the "being woven into music" as an escape from the backdrop

so i don't think there is an omniscient narrator -- more like a subjective (but distracted) narrator

i will have to relisten to say why i thought this tho

[koganbot]

gorgeous forgotten disco starlet evelyn "champagne" king

Oh, that's a shame.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i found her official website, from 2001 -- it has not been updated since 2002 i don't think

she had an LP out last year tho

along with her mother Johnniea King

[koganbot]

http://www.myspace.com/tibbychampagne

"Recall the discovery of Ms. King yes it's true, I was discovered while cleaning, at 'Sigma Sound Studios' along with her mother Johnniea King, to be exact. All of a sudden I hear a male's voice say one day I'm going to make you a star."

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

-10x points for the lisp. Sigh.

Otherwise this is really good, in a rather overly charming way.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(She has a lisp?)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Err, I thought so last night at 2:30am but maybe not.

Curves

[koganbot]

We've sort of got a bell at the moment, but it's not really very bellish.

Re: Curves

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

One person who thought 5 should find something in the song that says SIX.

Re: Curves

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

Not having heard the song yet, I voted a 6 for symmetry purposes. I'll go back and give it my real grade when I hear it this weekend. (We need some obliging person to give a 4 for full effect).

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't turn over if it came on the Hits. 7.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Well, that was ... surprising. I've had So Uncool on my Amazong wish list for a few months i.e. since Dave & co started banging on about it, but I wasn't expecting this. (Being totally wrongfooted is a good thing tho obv.)

I've given it 8 for now, but that score could go up or down.

Stacking the deck

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

So on further reflection (not on the song, but on the Popticast in general) I think I should probably give this a 10. Felt right to do it for Sara Paxton (I'm in a minority there!) and this one is better. Tho in all fairness I might go back and tick Paxton down to a 9. I dunno.