Another Year In Pop: 31

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Some movement in the top ten at last! Kid Rock has turfed Dizzee off the top spot, the Script have whinged their way up to number 3 and Katy Perry's questionable ode to lesbianism is the highest new entry at 4 (its bosh remix is at no.50!), making this week's poll an aptly all-girl affair...

[Poll #1234871]

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's less to do with how authentic her sexuality, or the narrator's sexuality is - actually, her performative failures don't stop at just being smug, she doesn't convince at any point as a girl who liked kissing another girl. When I hear her sing/bellow the chorus I don't hear a girl, straight or bi or gay, who's enjoyed kissing another girl and worries about what her boyfriend thinks, I hear a loud, obnoxious brat who only cares that she gets to SHOUT AT THE WORLD that she liked kissing a girl. Whether she actually liked it or not - whether she even DID kiss the girl or not - seems immaterial; none of those feelings are in her voice at all, it's all "look at ME".

It really doesn't help that she spends only ONE line in the entire song actually focusing on the girl she kissed - the girl who's meant to be the focal point of the narrative! - and then only in the most cliched, crude, soft porn terms (and not even about the girl, about her LIP GLOSS).

[koganbot]

But these attributes as you describe them could all nonetheless combine to make for a GREAT track, shouting for attention often being an aesthetic virtue (see entire musical career of Lindsay Lohan). Problem for me is that, beyond energy, she just doesn't have a feel for the sensuality of sound. She sings with a lip-smacking sense of being very pleased with herself except that in the experience of hearing it, it's not all that lip-smacking.

[koganbot]

not even about the girl, about her LIP GLOSS

Well, "cherry chapstick" seems to be a metaphor for something more vulval.