Hip-hop marmalade spic and span

[koganbot]

Just posted this on Dave's tumblr, my disagreeing with his designating LFO's "Summer Girls" a novelty song and with his contention that LFO are trying to be really stupid:

The song doesn't feel like a novelty to me, but rather just what it seems to be, a summertime song that's steeped in a haze of free-associative nostalgia. And none of the lyrics come across as stupid or strange in that context, since their premise is that a particular time and place, and friendships with particular people, will call forth particular associations. So New Kids had a bunch of hits (yeah, OK, a summer ten years earlier, more or less), Chinese food makes him sick (a reference to a particular incident, you can see it happening among him and his friends), Shakespeare and Paul Revere (not as clear a picture, maybe Will S. is assigned summer reading; LFO are from Massachusetts where Paul Revere's ride is part of official local history, the Boston Marathon run each year on the ride's anniversary), the mixture of references we understand and those we don't making perfect sense given this premise. Rather skillful, I think, more effectively dreamy than it would be without the idiosyncrasies. But not a novelty, given that summer songs are something you get every summer.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I'm guessing that the Beasties and Backstreets were essentially from the same places, generally speaking -- suburban, seeming to be "imposters" or imitators in what they were doing (hence "boyband" sticks to BSBs, NSync, etc. hearkening back to NKOTB, even though BSBs sounded very little like NKOTB and much more like, say, Boyz II Men -- Boyz right in the name yet they weren't a "boyband"). I can imagine a Rich Cronin taking great solace in the Beasties, especially when thrown into the Lou Pearlman universe of boyband construction -- aside from being popular among the demographic pretty generally they also offer someone like Cronin a way out of the biz world's baggage -- respect on his own terms. Which sounds like what he kind of wanted (out of the biz world's baggage) in the few interviews I've read of him (he did a big one with Howard Stern recently).

[koganbot]

Not that this is particularly relevant, but I don't think that either the Beasties or the Backstreet Boys are particularly suburban (though it depends on how you define suburban). The Beastie Boys are from New York City. The Backstreet Boys were assembled in Orlando, where a couple of them were from, but they're from all over (Nick Carter is from a small city in western New York; another is from Lexington, Kentucky; another originally from West Palm Beach).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I guess what I really mean in all honesty is "goofy white boys doing black music."

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

And perhaps a better word than suburban would be "safe." You don't need to literally be of suburbia to nonetheless shelter your audience from the assumed dangers of "pure" strains of whatever is you're deviating from.

[koganbot]

Beastie Boys didn't seem safe to me, any more than Eminem did. They're punks. (Not that they seemed "dangerous," but they were hardly milder than labelmates Run-DMC and LL Cool J.)