I haven't been this excited about single releases since middle school.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

The Britney and Lily videos both hit the Internets today.

Britney - "Circus"

(Better-but-unembbedable version here.)


Lily - "The Fear"

Comments

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

The Britney video proves a few things:
a) She really can't lipsync worth a damn.
b) Circus is one of the better songs on the album, but is still kind of eh.
c) She's actually quite hot, again.
d) LIONS. And ELEPHANTS.

Lily's electropop direction on her new stuff is hitting me a lot stronger than the first album did (and I really love about half of the first album). The Fear is shimmery and funny and sarcastic and amazing.

I am a weapon of massive consumption, etc...makes me smile.

[koganbot]

"Circus" is the song on the Britney album I feel least, and while watching the video I kept going "this album is going to be massive, since she's been rehabilitated" and somehow... I was forgetting to look at the video. Except to say, "Oh yes, she's barely clothed, halfway back to the Britney body of yore" and to miss the ghostly needy irresponsible blobbed-out presence of her Blackout body.

The Lily track is unexpectedly warm, and her voice fails to mock the warmth. Of course, the words are crushed icicles of fear, but for once I don't feel knocked-about by the irony - more the sadness. (That said, I miss the gleeful tuneful brat of album one.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I said it ages ago, but nobody bit and I still want to talk about it, so I'll say it again:

I was always impressed with Lily as a lyricist (see "Knock 'Em Out"), but I was impressed with her ability to be clever and distinct -- I wasn't aware that she could be evocative. Her new stuff, though, hits harder than anything on Alright, Still ever did: "The Fear" starts off mocking, and turns sympathetic and chilling at the chorus, while "I Could Say" is honest and weary (and goes to a sort of "Say It Right" place). Which brings me to "Who'd of Known" -- there's such a distinct sense of place and time; it's almost as detailed as Autobiography. And she chooses just the right details: the way she orchestrates closeness, the intimacy of sitting around his house and watching his TV, how you can hear her satisfied smile on "you accidentally called me 'baby.'"

I don't think the brat is gone, though -- one of the new songs is built around a chorus that cheerfully goes, "Fuck you! / Fuck you very much."

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Who'd Of Known, if it weren't coming out in 2009, would probably be one of my favourite songs of the year, for exactly the reasons you list. I enjoy Lily's sarcasm, but I have an (imagined?) sense that she's letting her guard down on a lot of these songs, and the returns are surprisingly rewarding.

A lot of our complaints about Kate Nash were that she writes detailed songs about nothing in particular. That said, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Foundations, minus her vocal affectations, and Who'd Of Known almost sounds like the inverse of that song. Detailed and lived-in, but warm and loved and SURPRISED by it, rather than cynical, out of love and jaded.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

If I had to sum up the artistic good that came out of the entire Britney debacle it would be that her music now feels like it contains her personality. Five or six years ago I wouldn't have known what that was. Looking forward to hearing this on the dancefloor, even though I think producers are going overboard with the Autotune thing (tendency will correct itself in due course XD).

The Fear is really brill, and I didn't much like the last Lily track that turned up (thought it was depressing - so is this one but the music makes up for it).

...2008 really feels like it was kind of dire for music, not just me surely.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

her music now feels like it contains her personality

I'm not sure that it does...it contains the sort of personality that she "should" have, if that makes sense; the moth burnt by the flame, phoenix from the ashes, self-aware but in control now and all the rest of it, but I...am not convinced, for some reason. Maybe it's just seeing clips of that documentary where she said she just wanted to escape to a desert island and missed her wild self, or reading too many tabloids about the levels of control imposed on her by the conservatorship, but the image being presented (inc on the album, and this very meta video) feels a bit too neat and tidy right now. She's physically well, at least, but...you know, we still don't know what was wrong with her mentally, but it was only a year ago that she was being strapped down and carted off to the asylum. Can you really recover fully in such a short space of time?

I guess I don't dislike 'Circus' the track, but whatever's lacking from the album is definitely lacking from it.

As for Lily...I've never been a fan, and 'The Fear' doesn't change that, but there was one moment in which was absolutely jolting - that couplet, "But it doesn’t matter cuz I’m packing plastic/and that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic." Yes I know she's being sarcastic and what have you but just for one moment she drops that faux-Cockney accent and sounds exactly like the posh rich girl that she is, and it's...kind of amazing.

[koganbot]

When she sings "I feel the adrenaline in my veins" she sounds really sad, for some reason.

Lex, I hope you read my book someday, since it opens with my talking in 1985 about how honesty in music and honesty in life are different things. Even if Britney is in control over her personality now, saying she runs the circus is bullshit in this situation, and it has nothing to do with whether she was insane last year and is now sane this year or whatever. It's bullshit because it's bullshit. Hank Paulson and Gordon Brown can't control anything, how in the hell can Britney Spears? In the midst of Britney Bedlam last year she called bullshit on the world around her, and she was right and she was smart; she was a gigantic gravitational force but she didn't create the gravitation or the attention or know what to do with it, and the album was her splashing around in the world's force fields.

But as for the song itself, it's one of the weakest on the album, and by "weak" I don't mean that underneath there's an interesting vulnerability (though actually there is, and if there had been more it would have been stronger), but just that when the music needs to take control it just strolls by dully. "F.U.C.K. Me" and "Kill The Lights" wield much more power.

(I think I like the album a lot more than you do but still like it a lot less than I loved Blackout.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I have your book! I have been dipping into random chapters of it here and there rather than reading from the start though.

[koganbot]

The chapter I'm thinking of is "The Autobiography Of Bob Dylan" - though what I'm most interested is in whether you think my ideas on Destiny's Child - their flaunting their musical sophistication and difficulty - can carry over to Beyoncé's solo work. In DC she had a walloping sense of command but the command seemed more like the ability to dance atop the world without getting upended rather than to dominate it. Whereas now I feel there's more of a feeling of pushing at the world. But I've actually never possessed one of her solo albums, and I'm wondering if I'm going to have a chance to hear the new one before we hit the poll deadlines.

[koganbot]

Those Destiny's Child ideas are in "Death Rock 2000."

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

By the way, Frank, I left Real Punks at a friend's house in Chicago over the summer in the hope that he'd pick it up and give it a read. So, one way or another, you're probably selling another copy.

[koganbot]

I'm measuring success one consumer at a time.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Except that it doesn't really contain the sort of personality she "should" have -- the image being presented on the album is just kind of frustrated and alone and tired of it all. (The image in the video is pretty tidy, yeah, except for a few glimpses of weirdness and aggression -- which is making me think about something Jenny Eliscu, who did the Rolling Stone cover story, said: "I'm not sure why Britney isn't allowed to act out in the ways that we normally consider acceptable from artists." How much better would this video be if Britney were allowed to act out? If it were Britney being as dark and vaguely threatening as the circus imagery itself?)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"Frustrated and alone and tired of it all" fits with the image of recovery, though - she may not be happy, but it signifies that she's in her right mind. Even though 'Kill The Lights' is as codependent as 'Born To Make You Happy'.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Mmm I should actually hear the rest of the album before making any kind of call but the snap-impression vibe I get off "Circus" isn't control, it's anger. Not unhinged aggression or lashing out, but a confrontational quality for sure.

Lily Allen being posh (well, what in Canada I'd call upper-middle-class) is the entire point of her as far as I'm concerned! Her persona didn't really make sense to me until I learnt about her background. Then I started thinking of her as a generational spokesperson for all the Ritalin'd kids of workaholic Gen Xers who grew up mixed-up and adrift in big suburban houses filled with personal electronics and no one to teach them to wrench their gazes from their navel. ONTD irony on the outside, desperate insecurity on the inside. In short I have met a lot of people like Lily, so to me she's one of the real-est pop stars around.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Lily wins this one. They've both clearly had a bit of budget to spend, and dudes dressed as giant presents dancing round a stately home >>> boring ringmaster shizzle that Xtina hammed up in a much better fashion last year.

Also, am much relieved that 'The Fear' sounds awesome - I heard a leak of another track a few weeks ago and was v disappointed. Fingers xd the album will be more like this one.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'I heard a leak of another track a few weeks ago and was v disappointed'

surely not 'Everyone's At It'? this is great!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

That was it. I can't remember anything specific other than the lyrics seemed very DO YOU SEE.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I feel like Lily is missing something at the end, though -- there should be a payoff to all that weirdness and dread. (Whereas the Britney is just missing Britney -- has she ever been the focus of so few frames in one of her own music videos? -- but I think the imagery works fine, so in my mind it's a draw.)

I didn't care for "Everyone's At It" (which I'm assuming is the track you heard) either -- it's kind of melodyless and unclever. But the other leaks ("I Could Say" and "Who'd of [sic] [why Lily why???] Known" ) have been in the vein of "The Fear," so I have high hopes.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

The Fear is absolutely terrific – much, much better than I expected it to be. Maybe this year's About You Now in terms of that synthy but very tuneful, 80-ish but totally non specific, kind of vibe.

Not really getting the Britney, though.

Awesome

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Lily, that is. When I heard it in demo form on her MySpace page (under the working title "I Don't Know") I was a bit indifferent about it, preferring at least two of the other demos. But it's really clicking with me now.