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

i'm not a stripper but i dance like that

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I just remembered how FVCKING AMAZING 'Muah' is-


I'm not a freak, I'm not a nasty ho' -well I'm lying but I'm classy, tho

and also I'm not a ditz I got a brain; you see my titties before you see my face; it's all good nigga don't be ashamed, i would feel the same cus you know I know I'm the sh1t with this sh1t -k so sometimes I think I relate to whorepop particularly because, tbh, I am reasonably hot and used to be fancied loads when I was a teenager but this is such an awesome deconstruction of flirtation. Like, 'ok, yes, you're looking, fair play' >>>>>>>>Avril Lavigne beating someone in the head for checking out her tits. And yes, I get upset about builders etc. too but y'know, context. 'Muah' is like the 'grown up, got over it, feel more in control' version of 'Beep' by the PCD. ♥ ♥ ♥

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I liked this post a lot and think more ppl should comment. But honestly I don't really listen to the lyrics much on the ER album, I mean apart from sthing like "We Fuck You" and "P Is For Power" where they jump out at you a bit. I couldn't tell you what "So Good" is about, aside from obviously someone/something being so good. And probably not specifically so good at knitting, or differential calculus.

Pete Wentz lyrics seem completely un-emo to me though! His stuff is all about the OMG thrill of finding the perfectly outrageously OTT way to express Emo, giving his fans a kind of performative psychic toolkit. Exactly like Morrissey did back in my day, except FOB rock harder.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The chord change on 'Bed Rest' may well be the sexiest moment in pop this year.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

"As part of the Eminem generation, I obviously think swearing is a brilliant idea: V GOOD, TICK."

As part of the NWA generation I concur!


The "whore" aspect of all this doesn't do much for me tho tbh and it's surely only represents at most half of what they're about. As a means of distinguishing them from other acts with similar emotional and romantic content I guess it works tho, and is probably important (tho not to me - it's just not what interests me about this music so glad there are other ways to get into it).

I keep thinking back to "Whatta Man" and similar tracks from all those years ago and how ER probably represent En Vogue and Salt n' Pepa combined into a single force. Both gave good sass and sexuality but in slightly different ways. In this process ER lose the vocal prowess of the more trad/soulful En Vogue but gain the egregious 'tood of SnP without having to rap a lot (or at least not as much as TLC, who may a better comparison really as far as their position goes).

Reason I mention those 90s acts is because I'm not sure how much ER (and we should also be talking about Richgirl altho they don't seem to have an album yet so that's tuffer) advance that schtick, tho they certainly match it for quality and that would be enough. I guess they ramp up the naughtiness outside of a more hip-hop context tho (including more use of the n word, which I brought up on a previous poptimists thread).

Pull the pin and throw the grenade

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

May as well post the AMAZING Richgirl single here too (Richgirl being Rich Harrison's current girl group project). Commentary at the Jukebox (http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=949), A+ video, one of the singles of the year, you need this in your life. Apparently their sales make the gigantic commercial flop that is Electrik Red seem like Destiny's Child :(

[cis.livejournal.com]

I really, really love the Electrik Red album: it's musically fantastic, it's endlessly quotable, I enjoy the image. I also have huge problems with it. I'm going to do a kogan here and repost something I wrote under f-lock in Lex's lj a month-odd ago:

when they talk about how they're earning it's pretty much always in the context of "i make more than you so step up your game and buy me shit or i won't let you fuck me". I totally enjoy that why-spend-mine-when-i-can-spend-yours trope in rnb lyrics! But basically because it has 0 relevance to my life: the way i was brought up suggested that having even a drink bought for you was giving more ground than a self-respecting woman should. So it's fun, to me, because these people are playing with the idea of sex as a commercial transaction and being brassy about it, which is totally alien to me and basically seems like fantasy to me because I am pretty much well out of it.

I mean on the one hand yes 'having self respect about yr sexuality and not settling for little boys who don't make paper' is a good message in that it's not 'he hit me and it felt like he loved me' or indeed not creepy s. shapiro-style passivity, but at the same time--

It means I'm in the funny position where the weakness of "Bed Rest" and "So Good" is for me preferable to the strength of "On Point" or "P is for Power", because being all laid up emo ditzing around a kitchen cos you miss a guy doesn't stick in my craw half as much as "if you wanna see the P let me see those dollar signs" does.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Yeah so everything I hear of Elctrik Red is just so totally amazing.

Hoeveer lyrically I can;t say I identify with Elctrik Re dat all, but I do ENJOY the lyrics. I am not really sure why - I am not entirely sure I would like the answers - but if nothing else they are audacious and witty and clever in their description of a lifestyle which is to me largely alien.