Another Year In America July 23, 2009

[koganbot]

Three solid ticks, hurrah, with Shakira and Demi on their first-single-of-the-album premieres, but I still find things to kvetch about.

Demi Lovato "Here We Go Again": Lovato is inventing an impressive, loud show-rock that I hope no one else tries to imitate because I doubt that anyone who isn't Demi could pull it off. It's a loud blaring rock pop like the Gerrard-Nevil tracks that Hannah Montana first hit with, but containing within the blare all the behavioral nuance that '50s show singers would cram into their performances - though, while for most '50s showsters the actorly psychology came at the expense of the music, Demi rides the music fearlessly. But I'd like her more with less blare and better music, and this is actually my least favorite of this week's new ones. TICK.

Pitbull "Hotel Room Service": Eyelids and earlobes droop at the prospect of yet another hip-hop/r&b song inviting the ladies to ditch boyfriends in favor of fucking the singer, and Pitbull's been too predictable lately anyway. But his energy carries this across and brings him to a moment of transcendent juvenile silliness: "Let me tell you what we gon' do, two plus two, I gon' undress you/Then we gonna go three and three, you gon' undress me." TICK.

Shakira "She Wolf": A classic disco bass, and Shakira manages the Boney M trick of adapting any sound to it, in this case sweet and careless high-pitched beauty. Unassuming, but quite excellent. According to Alex Ostroff over on the Jukebox, the lyrics in Spanish are seriously batshit which he says doesn't survive the translation to English. His own English summary of the Spanish words proves this, as it's far more eloquent and evocative than the English lyrics themselves. Says Alex: "Shakira casts herself as a wolf in the wardrobe, whose voracious man-eating appetite cannot be satisfied by candy, and who hunts herds of bachelors down with radar and magnetic heels." TICK.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Ah, a concise description of how I'm feeling at one listen to the album as a whole. I'd go further and say this is one of the weakest tracks on the album, not least because of a too-transparent reference to "Since U Been Gone"'s climax. I still think that Demi has a touch of elbow grease to her that's simultaneously charming and weirdly distancing. I remarked to myself that there's something Ashlee-esque about her, in moments, except she's missing ASHLEE (and Kara and John Shanks), but she's more indebted to Ashlee somehow than in the general post-Avril (or post-Kelly) copycat phase(s). And I don't think it's projection, either, though that could be part of it -- there's some spark there that I think might be for better or worse tangled in her showmanship. Ashlee seems to have two distinct places for her spark and her showmanship, so that she can do both at the same time ("Love Me for Me") or she can do spark ("Better Off") or she can do showmanship ("Boyfriend," lots of Bittersweet World), but you don't lose the definition of either aspect. Whereas with Demi it's kind of in a jumble, and I find myself looking at the knot and wanting to figure out which part leads to which other part, but ultimately give up and just admire it from more of a distance. If that makes any sense at all. Where Ashlee articulates the mess, in all its messiness, Demi is the mess.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I remarked to myself

Almost aloud, actually, as in a poorly-written novel. "My word!" he exclaimed. "But she is remarkably reminiscent of Ashlee Simpson!"

[koganbot]

Not that I disagree (I'll have to give this further thought), but Ashlee's singing style(s) is/are pretty far from Demi's. On Bittersweet World Ashlee is playing a bunch of different singers, and as each she gets into the music like a singer not an actor. What kills a lot of post-'40s show music for me is the tendency of the singer to deliver in clearly enunciated syllables the psychology of the character and the point of the lyrics, all this at the expense of the music. Whereas good singers like Ashlee just sing the song, letting the character and the lyrics take care of themselves without needing a highlighter, and everything (including character and lyrics) is stronger for this.

But Demi is one of the very rare singers who pulls off show music's full-throttle over-dramatization without squashing the music in the process.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yes, the styles are very different. There wasn't anything in the sound, really, that made me make the comparison, but I realized that I was listening with something like "Ashlee activeness," wanting to understand this person's particular iteration of life's mess. This is very different from Avril, who's too obtuse for much deep listening from me, and even from Kelly, whose anguish codes an easier form of Tragedy. Demi and Ashlee both specialize in the "hair is a mess and my life is completely fucked" style of tragedy, so in that way I think something like their mode of address(?) or maybe M.O. is similar even if their sound isn't all that similar.