Yet Another Year In Pop: 9'

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Kelly's jumped a hundred and two places to the top spot; Taylor, Gaga and T.I squeeze in behind her knocking Lily down to 5. Other than that: bvgger all this week, really.

[Poll #1358146]

Lower reaches watch: MY GOD, some new music in the top 100!!!111! Enrique & Ciara, Jennifer Hudson, Ladyhawke and Chase & Status are all sticking their oar in.

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

contrary to the single, quite a lot of the new kelly clarkson album is really very good.

i think i may have confused 'beautiful' with 'right now (na na na)' but oh well i seem to be liking akon at the minute for some reason so will give him the benefit of the doubt.

ciara & enrique FTW. altho i am surprised chase & status isn't doing better, what with it being very good and also radio one hammering it all damned day long.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the K Clarkson album gets better in the second half, but...you know, I really hate everyone who slagged off her last album because it was too "dark" or "bitter" or whatever, and why couldn't she be FUN!!111 because that's all pop should be used for. I mean, I hated them at the time, but All I Ever Wanted is so obviously K Clarkson or her management trying far too hard to pretend My December never happened. Look! She uses the word "suck" in a song title! She's saying she loves you, not that she hates you! She's entirely abandoned concepts such as "subtlety" and "nuance" because those aren't fun! She's confused "being loud" with "having a hook" on the chorus! (Seriously, how can anyone think that 'My Life Would Suck...' is hookier than 'Never Again', which was so immediate for me?) The production blares and blares and blares to no emotional effect at all and can Dr Luke just DIE now?

I love Kelly and I don't want to see her like this :(

Also, the very first line of the song = 'Regret' by New Order, y/y?

I'm really pleased about Taylor Swift and T.I. gatecrashing the top 5 though...I have been absolutely caning Taylor Swift this week. The first couple of times I heard 'Love Story' it underwhelmed me slightly but once it clicks it never lets go. She has such a gift for a great denouement - obviously that triumphant "he knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring" here, just as she sets the verse up so you expect a sad ending and a farewell. And on 'White Horse', which I don't want to go into for SPOILER reasons, but it's really wonderful. I love the details and the ambiguities in 'Love Story', the way the chorus subtly changes each time, the "I was a scarlet letter" line...she lets us fill in the gaps in the narrative for ourselves, it's not all given away.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"White Horse" is making its way up the Radio Disney charts, if not the Billboard charts. Though I haven't checked the latter recently.

[koganbot]

"White Horse" has been on the Billboard chart for several months without crashing the top ten, is now hanging around the mid 30s. Meanwhile, half a year in, "Love Story" is going strong in the Top 10.

"White Horse" is one that loses too much of its mood in the chorus, which was a complaint I had about "Teardrops On My Guitar" in the first alb, and seems to be a more general problem on the second. She needs to question the habit of trying to make choruses deliver a payoff or have a hook that makes listeners come back; on some songs I think she'd be better off either making the chorus less differentiated from the verses or not having a chorus at all.

(I'm strictly talking about the music, not the lyrics.)

There's still a lot for me to figure out about that album, however.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Thinking of "Fearless" (album) within a high-concept frame of "first day of high school to graduation," even though this doesn't work perfectly, helped me figure out how it works emotionally a bit. It's more of a grower than her first one, whose immediate impact was obvious but I just didn't give it the attention it deserved until the year after it was released (first heard it, I think, in Dec. of '06). This one is a subtle but deceptively tightly-coiled album, full of little insights here and there that kind of glossed over me on first listens. But I still haven't wrapped my head around it.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Really? I listened to both of them for the first time last week - back-to-back! - and Fearless grabbed me a lot faster than Taylor Swift, which had a number of obvious stand-outs ('Our Song', 'Teardrops On My Guitar', 'Mary's Song') but long patches of blah...a typical songwriter's debut, basically. Fearless seems a lot more tightly focused, as if she's consciously stepped up her game and honed her craft. I also disagree w/Frank, I think she has a real knack for effective pay-offs, melodic and lyrical - 'Fearless' is another one of those.

[koganbot]

I really like the central blah on Taylor Swift, "Place In This World" --> "Should've Said No," a lot of which foreshadows "Fearless" ("Cold As You," especially; love the line "I start a fight because I need to feel something").

Fearless has a richer sound that's more swamped in femininity. Not at all surprised that you like it. I do too, though as I implied, I wish its swamp:hook ratio were higher (i.e., want more swamp, fewer hooks).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I'm not getting any particular sonic buzz from Taylor yet, bar the hooks, but I suspect this is the kind of thing one appreciates in time. Really, this album is just a trove of Easter eggs though - that line in 'Hey Stephen' (which is brilliant anyway), "All those other girls, well they're beautiful - but would they write a song for you?", and then that wry laugh, and the way she sings the rest of the song with that laugh still caught in her throat. AMAZING.

[koganbot]

Yes. Extraordinary singer. I'd like her to try "Take A Bow" in the studio, since her live versions totally pwn Rihanna's.

[koganbot]

Her live intro to "Should've Said No": "Basically, this is a song I wrote about a guy who cheated on me and shouldn't have because I write songs."

I sleep but I don't rest

[koganbot]

Btw, I don't remember if I ever answered your Miranda Lambert question: First album Kerosene, despite its title track, does real well by the thoughtful story ballads, is spottier than the second, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which is great for its "Kerosense"-like incendiary drinking-and-driving fire-breathing tear-'em-up-and-blow-it-all-to-pieces-including-me provocations, and celt-goth-like invocations of doom ("Down"), much more consistent than the first but falls down a bit on the thoughtful ones that were the first album's strength.

Re: I sleep but I don't rest

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I now have Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and will give it a proper listen later but OMG 'Gunpowder & Lead' is incredible.

Re: I sleep but I don't rest

[koganbot]

Btw, I don't know if you saw when I posted about it, but when Xhuxk interviewed country singer and Miranda boyfriend Blake Shelton, Blake told him that Miranda considers Ashlee Simpson a great singer and songwriter.

The Climb and Hoedown Throwdown

[koganbot]

(Btw, Miley Cyrus is now officially starting to target the country market, though she's going after it not from the introspective singer-songwriter side à la Taylor but with a Faith Hill-style power ballad. There's a country mix that's microscopically different from the pop version (has bits of steel guitar and less guitar crunch, mainly). And she's also putting out a line-dance hick-hop melange that in its preview clip doesn't sound promising. (Instructional vid here.))

Re: The Climb and Hoedown Throwdown

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

She's got nuthin' on Da Stanky Legg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czR1yxKfhUc&feature=related). Straight outta Texas, no less.

Re: The Climb and Hoedown Throwdown

[koganbot]

Holy shit! Well, it's not strange or anything, but it's real good.

Try and peek between the leggz

[koganbot]

Seems to have been around for a year, but the song is only getting its commercial push now. Here's the remix w/ TRINA!

Re: Try and peek between the leggz

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, according to my friend who's a Philly schoolteacher, it basically hit her schools pretty hard as a fad two weeks ago, which means it should be getting onto some kinda wider radar within a month or two (if it's going to go anywhere). Remix is AWESOME.

Re: Try and peek between the leggz

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

THANX FOR THIS, THIS IS A+ FOR REAL

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole message of the album is so much "forget about all that bit" which could be her getting back with whoever but I agree, it reeks of her backpedalling. The reaction to 'My December' was so weird; 'Never Again' is far catcher/instant than 'My Life Would Suck Without You,' which basically has absolutely nothing going for it and the mighty 'One Minute' was, despite being hidden down the back of the album, one of the best songs of the year and yet the bad reviews seemed to manage to completely trump it, despite the fact it was easily less w4nk than 'Behind These Hazel Eyes' in the angst stakes and just grr. I mean, I didn't personally like 'Never Again' very much but the rest of the album was awesome.

There are some good songs on 'All I Ever Wanted,' it just all sounds so forced and I know the crappier ones will be what become singles, instead of, say, awesome t.A.T.u.-esque melodrama-fest 'Impossible' or 'Long Shot' or the title track.

I am reviewing T.I. & Justin this week, yey.

T.I. video

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Was going to post this in a video club post but couldn't be bothered. It's a great video though, they both look hott and I WAS THERE. Note how heavily it's raining towards the end :(

Music From Big Loud Pink

[koganbot]

Only two Brit tracks in the Top 10, which feels as if it's suddenly allowed the modern world in.

Kelly Clarkson "My Life Would Suck Without You": Bigger! Louder! Pinker! (Regrettably, I can't stop myself from humming this. Is actually one of the more distinctive tracks on the LP, though unfortunately it's not distinctively Kelly. My favorite track, "If I Can't Have You," also barely sounds like Kelly. Sounds quite a bit like "Fly On The Wall," actually.) TICK.

Akon "Beautiful": Pretty song, and he's restraining himself enough not to come off as a bucket of lead this time. TICK.

BAH

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

*adopts Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino "grrr" expression*

Never understood the appeal of K Clarkson. Horrible foghorn voice, rubbish arrangements of what may or may not be decent songs (who knows?). This one's no different. No tick.

Re: BAH

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I like "opulent foghorn" better than "opulent battering ram" (to date the best description of her voice that I seem not to tire of repeating).

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I hope there is some new metal album coming out next week, can't buy just Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift! I know I shouldn't worry about looking cool...