cup cup sip sip yep yep YURR

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

It's been brought to my attention that we haven't had a thread about Electrik Red, despite them being seriously relevant to our interests for the last, err, year. So let's do that.

Here is a piece of largely irrelevant writing on the topic that I've spewed out in the last ten seconds, excuse my grammar:

So we're fairly used, by now, to the slew of whorepop that's appeared in the US girlgroup arena following the surprising success of My Secret Favourite Band, The Pussycat Dolls. It's a sort of delicate combination between sassiness and a brutal level of crudeness that crosses the 'sexy' line into almost emo morbidity levels in terms of 'excessive honesty.' Or TMI, whatever. I absolutely love all the whorepoppers, from the emotionally resonant 'Dolls to the straight-up skanks that are Girlicious to Danity Kane's stripper-in-an-empty-club routine; I partly like them because I frankly can't be getting along with good girls and I see them as an extension of, say, Courtney Love et al who I worshipped as an early teenager and also because the music is layered harmony awesomeness and the overall result is me finding a new favourite genre.

Still, they're not quite me. In the same way that Courtney Love is not quite me. I see what they're doing but I generally can just about keep my clothes from falling off and have a vague concept of how to use Twitter. Where I'm just not particularly respectable, these young ladies are no-nonsense, well-groomed slvts and well, I'm maybe just a little too lazy for that. Same way as I probably can't be bothered to marry Kurt Cobain, historical continuity problems aside. The Danities and the Courtneys and the Dolls are fvcked up in ways that I can relate to but through a sort of 'there is a general theory here which is relevant to the both of us' lens, rather than as a directly applicable thing.

Then there's Electrik Red; easily confusable for whorepop, insofar as they have the same brazen approach to lyrics and a certain propensity for not bothering to hide the fvcked up aspects of How They Roll but ...different. Where the PCDs now look almost Disney somehow (partly due to various bar-raising activities cf. Tila Tequila et al) and have acquired an air of good, clean fun, whilst the Danities implode and who the fuck knew what Girlicious were doing in the first place, Electrik Red are sort of ...real. They get drunk, they fvck innappropriate people, they get so emo they can't get out of bed, they have one of those weeks where you feel exactly in control of things for five minutes, they fvck themselves in the head with stupid men, etc.

I'm willing to concede that I'm never going to be that well-groomed but somehow Electrik Red feel like they're much more me. I was going to say 'girls like me' but I think I mean 'people,' occasional gender politics in their songs aside. The lyrical TMI gets the same heart-swelling-and-bursting formula right as, say, Pete Wentz or Conor Oberst does; a little too honest, a little too raw, a little too vicious and faintly embarassing for that. Sort of lyrical blogging, from the drunken Twitter updates of 'Drink In My Cup' to the epic thoughtmaze of 'So Good,' which is basically the sound of those thoughts that stop you dead in front of the kettle/telly/front door/etc. and temporarily take all your braneRAM for their own crush-y purposes. And then there's 'We Fvck You,' which is a really ballsy discussion with yr friends, instantly deleted by 'So Good' existing; whilst 'thought I wouldn't really give a fvck' =/= being the fvcker rather than the fvckee, there's a ho-rap hardness to WFY that all turns out to be bravado when the emo kicks in, which isn't because they're grills or whatever, it's because most people are actually kind of emo and the gender-political posturing turns out to just be rubbish because you can relate to boys after all etc. WHICH IS AWESOME.

I know I'm probably DOIN IT RONG by revelling in the emo aspects of slvtpop but 'Bed Rest' is seriously amazing;

And they swear all over the place, whilst somehow managing to actually look quite big and clever. As part of the Eminem generation, I obviously think swearing is a brilliant idea: V GOOD, TICK.

Anyway, I should probably do some work and this is absolute nonsense, so DISCUSSION: GO. Feel free to post details of yr own relation to (or dislocation from) the 'Red.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem is that I've forgotten how to empathise with any lyrics that don't discuss who's going to do the night feed and whether we're out of wipes or not.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

This may be a fair point.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

See, it's interesting about needing empathy to get lyrics.

Like, I have nothing at all in common with Electrik Red's lyrics in general: I like to dance but that's about it. But I enjoy them a lot as a description of a lifestyle, perhaps as a commentary, or as vicarious experience.

However to really LOVE a lyric (rather than like it, respect it, thing it clever or funny or amazing), I do have to emppathise with it somewhat.

I rarely directly empathise with a song lyric because they're usually too specific, but I have to find some channel of empathy. A good example this year is Royksopp "The GIrl and The Robot" which I ahve come to love since really attending to its lyrics, but not because they describe my situation as such but because I empathise with parts of it (oddly enough, from the robot's side of the equation rather than the girl's, but that's another thread).

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i wish for the video they had gone with 'the robot' in question actually being a, gasp, human too

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Literalism was the safe way to go, yeah.