koganbot | Rules Of The Game #5: What's Wrong With Pretty Girls

this is where yr themes begin to focus and tunnel thru to the next stage

(not sure what i mean by that exactly -- that's how i feel tho)

And not one mention of rock1sm! Well done :)

The "but they don't play their own instruments" excuse is one I spouted plenty of times as a teenager and have only just grown out of in the last few years. I now place more value on the quality of the end product rather than the integrity of the musicians.

A THEORY:
- Britpop explosion means a bunch of teenagers (male and female) decide to take up the guitar [NB I was one of these teenagers].
- Sudden demise of Britpop leaves teenagers frustrated & musically uninspired, but unable to accept new 'pop' overlords eg Spicers/Westloife due to 'integrity hangover' instilled by Britpop
- Fast forward ten years, said guitar-wielding teenagers are now in charge of/prevalent within music industry trends, but have split into two factions: EMO/INDIE, for the snottier (nearly all male) 'musicians' intent on proving their worth (inspired by Manics etc); FOLK for the wimpier chaps/chapesses who couldn't get anyone to form a proper band with them, and hence write songs about miserableness/crap boyfriends (inspired by Pulp etc).
- So we end up with James Morrison, Arctic Monkeys and KT Tunstall representing the new UK talent, and whether they're good or not they are frustratingly traditional and serious. I find it really depressing, and I doubt whether the next crop of teenagers will be inspired by this lot - of course they won't, they're all too busy waving around glowsticks and wearing bright pink hoodies and having a whale of a time to notice who is on stage. I don't blame them one bit.

Thankfully there is light at the end of the 'serious musician' tunnel, with a small crop of UK producer-performer acts coming through that seem to actually enjoy themselves and are less worried about 'doing it properly' (Calvin Harris springs to mind although I don't particularly like him myself). Thank god we don't need to be holding a guitar to make 'proper music' anymore!

If we're thinking of a cause and effect theory then the fact that people my age grew up with Spice Girls, Steps and Backstreet Boys as their introduction to music is quite promising for current and future new acts to not be so snotty about integrity. However, I worry for when people a few years younger than me are the new 18-20 year olds getting into music careers as their intro to music was Busted, Green Day and My Chemical Romance - I hope I'll be living abroad by the time this lot get their turn!

The teenagers ten years ago were all Green Day fans too, but I get your point ;-)

True! I'm thinking American Idiot era of Green Day fans here. They seemed to act as a bridge into rock music for a lot of teenagers who were 13/14 at that time.

This intersects some with an article I wrote ages ago about Al Green's version of How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? - I talked there about auteurist ideas and genuine feelings and ideas that certain kinds of music come from the soul and others don't. Al wrote most of his own hits, and as a soul singer the default assumption is of authenticity and sincerity, but I think that is nothing to do with what makes that record great.

I'm not sure that thinking about class really helps us towards why the Beatles are revered and the Monkees are often dismissed. I think the idea that writing your own songs is important kind of started or at least was established firmly in the public mind by the Beatles.

here's martin's tremendous article which he is too shy to link: everything they say about soul is wrong

i think to decouple class from contempt as per frank's argument you have to actually address the specific line of logic he uncovers in nathan's series of positions: which reveals reverence for the beatles as a kind of a red herring -- yes it's the quasi-grounding for the introduction of the "stand-in issue", but the actual issue is why is non-auteurship a shoo-in for the justification of a generalised dismissiveness

(bearing in mind when frank says class he doesn't "class" he doesn't simply mean what a simpleton marxist or a doctrinaire sociologist might mean)

on other words, yes it's almost certainly true that the vast success and popularity of the beatles totally changed the game but why was the world-that-wanted-the-game-to-be-changed drawn to THIS reason as a stand-in for the arrival of "better" cultural value (why for example was it not spotted as contrary evidence that such conditions didn't exist within soul)? (or apply to elvis, say?)

the issue of the control of the means of cultural production IS fairly old-fashionedly a class issue -- one of the things going on here is a scrim of aspirational identification being projected onto the loved object, and elements that threaten that ease-of-identification being demonised

Your first paragraph is something that particularly interests me, and I'm not sure I have an answer. I remember talking to a music teacher when I was a schoolboy in the '70s, and he was telling me about his music teacher ten years or so before making a big deal about the Beatles writing their own songs, about the sound almost classical skills on show, and so on. I have a feeling this might have been the first place in pop where a chunk of the cultural elite both liked what was being made and found their traditional way of discussing musical talent, i.e. a heavy focus on composition, found they could apply their paradigms with minimal adjustment and no great embarrassment to a big pop act - Sinatra, Elvis and so on were 'just' singers, and Louis Armstrong and jazz had taken their place a large step nearer that old High Art Music than pop long before.

On top of that, the general public were probably quite keen to latch onto anything that validated their love for pop music, that enabled them to regard it as something more than disposable crap, as something artistically worthwhile. The importance of composition takes a central role in this, as does judging artistes on their longer works - symphonies rather than short songs, LPs rather than singles - so we start getting more focus on the idea of the album, which had already been trickling in from jazz via people like Sinatra doing a concept album in the '50s, arguably several such (suites of thematically linked songs, anyway).

The authenticity bit that partly ties into writing your own songs and composing longer sets is basically the modern idea of what art should be like - it kind of kicks off from Van Gogh in 'fine art' (he is painting's Beatles!), from the modernists at the turn of the century in literature (Kafka is perhaps the iconic figure here)(and I hope I use iconic reasonably aptly!), and so on. The idea that inner necessity, a burning need that can't be denied by the marketplace, and so on, are what art is all about becomes part of Western Culture. It had already been applied to the tortured geniuses of classical music, and then to jazz (what's that story about someone asking Louis Armstrong "Do you want to be great or do you want to be rich?"?), and here was a partial opening for it in music (though the Beatles acted as if they were having the times of their lives, rather than being tortured, of course, at least until Lennon later on). This ties it all together: an auteurist view, sincerity, artistic ambition (most easily seen/shown in a concept album rather than a single) and all that, all towards the artistic status of a Picasso rather than the Monkees. Lennon certainly got that in the wide culture, and would feature high up in any poll for the great geniuses in the arts of the 20th Century (not that I'd vote for him).

I think all this makes it a lot easier for people to admit to huge admiration for Holland/Dozier/Holland rather than the Supremes, and maybe Xenomania rather than Girls Aloud*: the performers we see are regarded as actors moved by the auteurist writer-producers, like actors in a Bergman movie or some such, and of much smaller interest and importance. This seems to happen more easily with female performers: I deliberately cited the Supremes rather than the Four Tops - both were dressed and trained and so on by the Motown machine, both had their songs written and produced by the same people, but Levi Stubbs voice is credited with a depth of soul and passion that Diana Ross's never was. I can't think of any counter-examples where the boys were dismissed and the girls praised, which I guess is just the continuing state of the culture as a whole, rather than being much to do with anything specific to music.

* Sugababes are a slightly special case, in that they got big play for writing their own stuff early on, and that credibility boost has kind of stayed with them even when their hits are written and produced by Xenomania. Acts finding fame with their own material and then turning more and more to pro songwriters is something of a rarity.

There are two - well, more than two, but let's concentrate on two for now - impulses here that combine to "validate" the Beatles. First, is the standard art classic cred, e.g., they write their own material, they are artists, they create masterpieces, etc. And the second is they write their own material because they are rebels and they are saying things the Man would not allow. (And the Beatles material changed as they [or Lennon anyway] became more willing to see themselves this way.) And of course the rebel is part of the image of the artist anyway, but the two cred impulses don't quite get along, and there's probably something of a counterstrain as the Beatles seem to be progressing away from rock 'n' roll, which could be seen as progressing away from "commercial pop" but could also be seen as abandoning working-class rock 'n' roll.

But a crucial point of the class I'm calling the freaks/artsy-fartsies is that they were born in sin, that is; they were born mainstream, most of them middle-class. They all had to be born again as freaks, and there was the fear (quite justified, actually) that they could slip back to normality. And this is one of the reasons that soul in general, even obvious producer- and owner-driven operations like Motown, escaped a lot of the opprobrium aimed at "commercial" music. "Black" fundamentally meant not born in sin.

And of course the freaks' attitudes towards the working-class was very equivocal. Freaks actually came from all classes, and there was a huge biker element in the following of bands like Big Brother and Santana and the Grateful Dead. There was probably a difference among the kids who felt at odds with their middle-class parents and those who felt at odds with their working-class parents. But I do think most freaks were from the middle-class, and were probably confused as to whether "working-class" was a validating trope or not. Attitudes towards Elvis would have been quite ambivalent.

But anyway, Opposition To Authority (ill-defined though the opposition and the authority are) is much more crucial as a validating trope than is They Write Their Own Material.

Minor point, but auteur once upon a time being a term of art amongst the Cahiers crew and Sarris et al., auteurism as I learned it there and elsewhere is very much a reason for NOT dismissing commercial pop. Don't get hung up on the fact that the auteurists tended to valorize directors. It's not at all crucial to the concept that authorship be confined to a director or an individual. In fact, what archaeologists do in trying to make sense of ancient artifacts and what cops do at crime scenes are basically what auteurists do with movies: try to learn what the film/artifact/crime tells us about the people who made it.

The issue I'm trying to raise is what's going on in a subterranean and way when it's implied (but not stated or necessarily believed) that a particular class is considered capable of art and other classes are considered incapable of art?

Whereas, the thing about auteurism is that it can be applied to anybody doing anything, as long as there are differences. (E.g., what does it say about these people and their world that they fired their pottery in this way rather than that? What does it say about Britney Spears that she "apologizes" in this way rather than that?)

what's going on in a subterranean and way = what's going on in a subterranean way

Yes, but how many uses of the ideas of auteurism have stuck with that? It's kind of what I am getting at in my Al Green piece when I say that I don't care how much of the thought and intelligence was Al's and how much was Willie Mitchell's.

The classes I mention in the piece are freaks/artsy-fartsies vs. cheerleaders and mainstream girls. And I don't mention it in the piece, but the basic attitude of, say, anti-Monkees people would be that the performers are people who can go either way, can be artists/freaks/one of us or they can sell out and be tools for the biz, and the Monkees supposedly chose to sell out. Writing vs. not writing your own material was only an issue because there was seen to be a class difference between who writes the material. E.g., the Jefferson Airplane doing a Dino Valenti song was not considered selling out. The point isn't that the Beatles wrote their own material but that they were seen as having social commitments that differed the British biz people who'd have written British-Invasion-sounding hits for Brit Beatle imitators except that they didn't know how, whereas Beatles and Kinks and Zombies and Stones et al. did know how. Of course, "class" here is a very equivocal term and the Beatles probably had to learn from folkies like Dylan and even from their own fans that they were members of a new class, and I think the Beatles were too smart to ever quite believe this. (As really were Stones and Dylan.)

I am in Connecticut visiting my parents and at the University of Connecticut Library about two miles from the house where Peter Tork grew up, son of an economics professor, upper-middle class. I think Mickey and Davey were showbiz kids; Michael was another musician like Peter. And the show and music producers weren't clearly NOT committed to the freak thing; Rafelson and whoever were definitely into experimentation a la Hard Day's Night. And at least some of the Brill building alumni who wrote the songs probably believed the anti-establishment homilies they put into song lyrics such as "Pleasant Valley Sunday." The thing is, the Monkees got outflanked on the left by people who understood the freak thing in their bones: Airplane, Doors, Byrds, Dead, Hendrix. And most of the garage rock bands were outflanked in a similar way.

The write-your-own-lyrics thing was a red herring 'cause it was never used as a critique of the Stones, who did mostly covers on their first three albums, and the Animals, who hit with songs written by the same people who wrote for the Monkees. And it was never used to praise, e.g., Neil Diamond, who wrote his own songs (as well as writing for the Monkees). The sound of the Stones and the Animals - hard rock - gave signals about the apparent social commitments of the people who made the music, put them on the hard left socially no matter what they may have felt as individuals. The Monkees, of course, went both ways, went hard on a few songs but did ballads for the little girls, too. So they were equivocal, ocmpromised. And the Beatles were very equivocal figures, actually, whom many considered to be pop sellouts for sounding pop.

seen as having social commitments that differed FROM THOSE OF the British biz people...

I certainly remember statements, I think from Jagger and/or Richards, that the way the Beatles were seen made them feel totally pressured into writing their own songs, so I think that period totally supports what I was saying.

You're right that there are exceptions: the idea of writing your own material was never all that counted. It seemed to me more that rock acts felt they ought to write their own material, or most of it; and this became part of what rock was supposed to be; and the quality was subsumed into the genre, so a band that clearly sounded like they were part of the same scene as the Stones and all that could get away with not doing so.

I'm not sure the Monkees went both ways at once on their first few gigantically successful albums - there is the odd 'okay Mike, we'll include this song of yours' moment, but they are pretty straight pop until they decided to play their own instruments and all that. Yes, some tracks are fast and some slow, but I don't think there was any sense that they belonged to different genres. Obviously they are an extreme case, both in outselling the Beatles during the latter's highest artistic rep, and in being so blatantly, publicly manufactured.

The phrase "pretty straight pop" wouldn't have meant much in 1966. Were Love's "Little Red Book" and "Seven And Seven Is" pretty straight pop? Was the Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" pretty straight pop? Was Sam The Shams' "Little Red Riding Hood" pretty straight pop? Tommy James' "Hanky Panky"? The Troggs "Wild Thing"? I don't see how the ears can do the distinguishing, either at the time or in retrospect.

I mean, if "Steppin' Stone" and "Last Train To Clarksville" are pretty straight pop, it's hard to argue that "For Your Love" and "Paperback Writer" aren't pretty straight pop.

I agree with dubdobdee BTW - strongest yet.

Anyway something you're not covering - though you're implying it in Nathan's "squib" reply - is that boy X may already have all the proof he needs that mainstream girls Y and Z are suckers, viz. that they find other boys (probably mainstream ones) more attractive than him, despite the fact that he is sensitive and has integrity. And if they can be so wrong and so fooled about such a crucial thing then they can surely be wrong and fooled about something as relatively small as pop music.

I'm not saying that every act of dismissal is born out of a prior rejection - but a lot of them are born out of an assumption of rejection, "I'll get my retaliation in first".

Obviously this isn't just about boy and girls, it's about girl and boys and girl and girls and boy and boys etc. And it's not just mainstream/alternative either, it happens within alternativism too and perhaps within the mainstream as well.

I remember with some embarassment, as a late teenager/early 20something, mistrusting "indie girls" intensely, basically because while they were fiercely outspoken about how their own shortness, chubbiness, etc should not matter, they all seemed to only go for rake-thin Jarvis/Kurt wannabes (rather than less-than-rake-thin me). I rationalised "why don't you fancy me" as a critique of a clash between their self-actualisation and their desires (whereas if I'd just taken inspiration from their confidence I might have got on better).

Gotta say, I STILL mistrust indie rockers/fans, meaning the collegiate to post-collegiate social group that I'd be part of if my brain hadn't broken/been fixed around the beginning of 2005. In the same way I'm mistrustful of academia/academics, or people who align themselves as such, or align themselves as such with a quasi- stuck in front of it. I still draw these social distinctions, but the difference is, I have experience identifying as an indie type, have friends who are indie types. I don't believe most people mistrusting "the mainstream" are constructing a social group they would ever identify with. Along these lines, I've noticed that my female friends who were into boybands etc. but went more indie/underground/singer-songwriter/etc. when they got to college never violently reacted against the boybands, in fact still hold a certain fondness for the style and are open to most types of pop.

I went violently anti-boybands when I was... er, about thirteen (having been very into Take That from about age eight to ten), and only came out of that by eighteen or so. Among the girls I was friends with it was a very accepted way to denigrate any rock group we didn't approve of by accusing them of being a 'boy band' (oddly it seems to be rock groups rather than indie groups - the examples i can think of off the top of my head are linkin park and lostprophets). In fact boybands were considered 'childish things' by just about everyone at my school: there was one girl in my year of a hundred or so who everyone took the p1ss out of for still liking Boyzone when she was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen even; when we went on a German exchange we thought the German girls weiiiiird for loving BSB. This probably had a lot to to with Britpop, as

katstevens says above: Blur and Oasis were basically our boybands, poster pages in Smash Hits and Just Seventeen and all, and anyone who still liked the old form of boyband was behind the times -- plus there was that new discourse of authenticity going on.

The boybands of our childhood/teenhood are now acceptable nostalgia, as well: whatever you're into now, saying 'oh i really loved take that when i was little (subtext: but now I know better)' is accepted, even expected, the way everyone's supposed to remember Thundercats or He-Man (this is one sense in which 'popism' has 'won').

Everything was better when you were twelve.

There might be a slight UK/US discrepancy here, because most girls I know were into boybands into their teens, and BSBs, for instance, had a significant teen audience (though probably not extending TOO far into the teens, maybe 14-16 or so). E.g., girls at my high school liked boybands, though not in the same way they might have when they were 11, and recent nostalgia kick was in full effect even before boybands were totally out of popular favor (c. 2001-2002).

Cf. the massive popularity of "Pop" by *NSync, which all girls at my high school that were into pop absolutely adored even in 2001 or 2002, whenever it came out.

So what did the people who considered themselves in opposition to the mainstream at your school listen to (if there were any such people, and there must have been)?

My friends were the ones considering themselves in opp to the mainstream, and they listened largely to rock and metal (sometimes a bit of indie but I was rather on my own there for a while). It started with the smashing pumpkins, bit of skatepunk, moved into nu-metal when that came along.

(I don't think I made it clear that the mainstream girls still listened to pop - it was just the mechanism of the boyband that they considered themselves too old for.)

Same here - it was my group of friends (between, say, ages of 13-15) that liked metal (none of them liked Elastica though, so no-one would form a band with me) and continued to be very vocal indeed about their love of metal (Metallica, Korn, Sepultura) and 90s American-ish rock (Green Day, S.Pumpkins, Wildhearts). There was a heavy emphasis on the 'guitar' aspect - could we play along on our newly acquired semi-acoustics that we'd finally saved up for after hanging around the guitar shop in Harrow for three months hoping the fit shop assistant would notice us whilst 'testing them out'?
Another group of friends entirely whose taste I definitely didn't share was the US RnB 'bling' crew who were also very vocal about their love for Mary J Blige, TLC, Puff Daddy & co (then later Aaliyah, Destinys Child etc).

Bizarrely I was probably the only girl in my year who was really into Elastica and Radiohead (both declared 'wussy' by the metallers). I was mocked for liking Skunk Anansie even then!

I say these two groups were 'vocal' about their love for music (of whichever type) as the 'popular kids*' at school didn't seem to care much what was playing on the stereo (mainly UK garage, two-step and Ibiza house/trance). I didn't get on with that crowd very well at all but for non-musical reasons. The fact that they didn't take music seriously didn't help their case, though.

*No-one was really that 'unpopular' as all the groups were big enough that no-one was really left out, but our group was decidedly 'leftovers' where everyone was accepted no matter how 'weird', even if they liked Steps. How egalitarian of us!

The pattern was the same for my age group (I just checked your user-info and I am 4 yrs younger than you, so not much but music changes a lot in 4 yrs) - from the age of about 13 it was uncool to like pop music, and everyone moved towards rock or rap. The music was more aggressive and masculine, and I think it shows how the power balance changes in those years. In primary school even the boys liked pop music (eg. Spice Girls), then in the early years of secondary school the boys started liking rock or rap (it was basically a choice of Limp Bizkit or Eminem at the time) and made the girls feel silly and uncool for liking pop, so we were pressurised into liking their music.

During this time I basically pretended to have no interest in music at all, despite actually being obsessed with Will Young and Savage Garden (very mumsy music actually) and starting to get into foreign pop, and it wasn't until age 15 or 16 that gradually we were allowed to like what we wanted again, as people became mature enough to realise that it was pointless to lie just to impress people, and really Limp Bizkit were never any good. Nowadays none of my friends like commercial rock or rap music (although many like more obscure rock, as is natural for middle class kids I think), although I think this is due to the group I hang around with - of course there are still loads of 19 year olds who do like those genres, but those are often the ones who aren't really into music in an active way.

“They don’t even write their own songs.”

Well, then, he'd really have hated most artists from before about 1965.

Ha! For the second week in a row the Las Vegas Weekly - at least the online version - lost my italics.

"only pretty girls get to make music" - but only average girls get to make music without male interference, even if they don't get much success for it. Commercial pop music (by which I mean major label, mass-marketed stuff) is very anti-feminist cos it's all about pretty girls being given nice songs and made into a nice little package to be sold to the public. It doesn't make the songs worthless, of course they are often brilliant, but I know if I was a talented singer I'd never get a major record deal - it is just impossible, however good I was.

"Lots of mainstream girls bought Nirvana records" - kind of like me but backwards. If I was in America I'd be with the "freaks and geeks", not the cheerleaders, so I should prefer Nirvana over the BSBs but in fact the latter are one of my all-time favourites. And I don't think I'm alone - there are a lot of geeky girls who love BSBS etc. Perhaps they're the ones who should have been cheerleaders but were made too clever and too clumsy for it.

This is sadly very true and it makes me angry (see my other thread, which contains a rant I wrote 2 years ago that reading back over makes me yet MORE angry as hardly anything has changed, although I've softened towards Avril Lavigne an awful lot...).

If Lily Allen makes another amazing album I think she could really change things around. But from the sounds of things the current pressure she's under is preventing that from happening.

I've softened to Avril as well when I heard Girlfriend, but now I've realised it is only cos it sounds so much like I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend by Lush.

I think Lily will have great trouble having a successful second album. Already people are getting tired of her, and I almost feel bad to say I like her these days. She sprung to fame so fast that the backlash was only a few steps behind and although it hasn't kicked in too badly I can see it brewing. It is natural that excitement about an artist dies down after a year or so, and it explains why second albums are so difficult. It's almost better if the public hate you than if they're just bored of you - at least you're talked about.

For her second album the pressure will really be on and she'll have to work with excellent producers. I think sticking with Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson would be fine as long as they don't just make Smile and LDN clones. What she must not do is a Kelly Clarkson i.e. think that the success is all due to herself and write the next album all on her own. Luckily Lily did seem to have a lot of input in the first album and it shows her personality, but then this could be bad if people are bored of her personality and she then can't win them back because the personality shown in her songs is her main charm. If Smile had boring, conventional lyrics it wouldn't have been no.1.

I hope she manages it. It would be such a shame if she was written off as a one-album-wonder and we would be left with Amy W to hold the solo lass fort.

If she does fall down there might be others who'll last - Kate Nash maybe? Then again, thinking of other female acts like Natasha and Sophie, I always have a feeling of them being vulnerable - if their next song is a flop they're over and done with. The one thing that does annoy me is when a female singer or band becomes popular and people start looking for other girls similar, as though 'female solo act' is a new niche. Meanwhile, 'male solo act' is an accepted staple of music, probably the second most common type of act after 'male group'. We shouldn't be looking for a new female singer because it's the current trend, we should have an endless supply of them like we do their male equivalents. And there are plenty of them to be found if you look for them (they make up a big chunk of my music listening) but not many people are bothered enough to look.

Totally - its interesting that I can name an endless stream of highly characterful non-UK ladies who have dominiated pop in the last five years (Bouncy/Nelly/Shakira/Xtina/Kelly/Amerie/Rihanna/Gwen/Avril/Britney etc etc PLUS they are established enough that I only need state their first names!) compared to lets see, Lily, Amy, Natasha, SEB, er..... Jamelia? EXACTLY. Our British solo lads haven't been particularly active either - for the last two years or so UK music has been far too reliant on guitar/indie bands and nameless producers. Plenty of worthy attempts but more often than not we end up with Beware Of The Dog instead of Since U Been Gone.

without male interference

What do you mean by this exactly? Lots of producers are male, but plenty are female, too, and there are major exceptions like Kara DioGuardi, whom Hilary Duff worked with almost exclusively to write and record most of the songs on Dignity. Anyway, just because males are involved in the production process doesn't mean that they control all aspects of it -- my sense of John Shanks from the footage of him working with Ashlee Simpson is that he's a receptive, thoughtful, REALLY nice guy genuinely invested in the artists he works with.

If you're talking about the structure of the labels themselves -- marketing, promotion, etc. -- it's the same across the board, regardless of what kind of artist you're discussing.

I mean more the labels and management. I think it applies more to Americans than British female acts actually, people like Lindsay and Ashlee are very interchangeable. It seems the managers just send their young girls off to whoever is the latest hot producer or writer, whether it's Kara or Max Martin or wheoever, and the songs they release could just as easily have been recorded by any other of these girls - Hilary, Paris, Aly & AJ and so on. Of course within this group of girls some lean more towards certain types of songs but ones like Nothing In This World by Paris could have gone to any of them. This is what makes it seem like the label wants a big pop girl and they'll just get someone to fill that space, rather than her appearing of her own accord and choosing to sing these songs and have this image. It's much more about tailoring her to what's popular, rather than making the girl as she is a big star.

I do think you're underestimating the extent to which some of these people write or co-write their own songs, but I've been trying not to push that line of reasoning TOO far, since it becomes speculation. But I will say that in your above examples, Hilary worked extensively with Kara DioGuardi in the studio on her last album, Aly and AJ co-write almost all of their songs, and have exclusively written several of them (I imagine they do more of the initial writing than the producers they work with, from my brief glimpses into their artistic process from interviews etc.), and Paris confused me by getting more out of the same producers than they can muster with anyone else. Kelly is now being attacked because she's (said to be) writing her own songs, while we're currently having a debate on another koganbot thread as to what it means to say that Ashlee's involved in the writing process, combing through her reality show for evidence/lack thereof. (Unfortunately, very little of the recording process is actually documented on the show, and as Nia says, the editing is super sketchy/flat-out incoherent sometimes.)

Anyway, guess my point is that I don't think that any of the American pop acts you mentioned are interchageable at all!

My partner, roommate, lover, tormentor, and best friend, Jessica, saw me scrolling through a blog link from one of your past columns w/ candied photos of teen pop divas. She was offended, and thought it creepy that I a middle-aged man should be taking an interest in music associated w/ such tarted-up young girls. I tried to explain it wasn't a sexual interest. I work with teenagers, after all, it’s not that strange that I should take an interest in their enthusiasms, right? But this wasn’t work either, really. It was the music, my interest, I mean. Only one Paris Hilton song, actually, "Stars Are Blind." I liked its danceable buoyancy, the sly hook twist on the you-show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine refrain, even the way her voice barely goes w/ the beat or melody but still seems to assert this deadpan-come hither personality that is, well, funny, sassy, sweet-hearted even. She's got no talent, Jessica insisted. Does Madonna have talent, I retorted? Yeah, more than bleepin’ Paris Hilton! This is where our conversation intersects with yours. So, in addition to your list of stand-in issues for not liking this stuff, I’d like to add another. Teenpop/dance music like the Back Street Boys, Paris is insipid, unoriginal, repetitive, “soulless” (this is what a long review on Amazon boils the Paris album down to), and explicitly hedonistic or sexually objectified enough that self-respecting older people shouldn't have anything to do w/ it. Time to pull out our Lawrence Welk records, Frank.

I think "Stars Are Blind" is fine but it's maybe the eighth best song on the Paris album, which is remarkably, consistently good except for the Rod Stewart cover at the end. Maybe it's so good because with her voice there's no way she can do ballads so she doesn't try.

"Explicitly hedonistic" and "sexually objectified" aren't stand-in issues at all, and take away "insipid" and "soulless" [and understand that rock 'n' roll sounds "unoriginal" and "repetitive" only to an ear that doesn't grasp African American and hillbilly idioms] and the list of supposedly derogatory adjectives can attach not only to Paris and the Backstreet Boys but to Elvis, Jagger, James Brown, not to mention the Shangri-Las and the Supremes, not to mention the New York Dolls and Dolly Parton (talk about tarted up! she modeled her look on the prostitutes she knew as a kid). Of course, all of those people did stuff that was a lot more complicated and varied than "explicitly hedonistic" and "sexually objectified" imply - e.g. "Down From Dover" and "Gimme Shelter" and "In The Ghetto," have their hedonism and antihedonism too. But so does a lot of teenpop, which covers a wide range. Does Jessica ever actually listen to teenpop, or does she just have opinions? If she doesn't listen, as a shock effect you might want to play her in quick succession M2M's "Give A Little Love," Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me," Avril Lavigne's "Unwanted," Kelly Clarkson's "Hear Me," Ashlee Simpson's "Shadow," Lindsay Lohan's "I Live For The Day," and Aly and A.J.'s "Not This Year." Those young women can sturm and drung with the best of them.

I haven't heard those songs, but I don't think they'd impress her. Your "sturm and drung" would be to her pop pablum, I'm afraid. It's like once she found the Velvets she put away her GoGo's records as childish things and never looked back. So she doesn't listen to teenpop, right. Nor do I much, really. She opposes Paris as an example or role-model to young women. (I only wish when we were arguing I would have thought to ask her your question about how ridding the world of Paris would benefit society!) Regarding Paris's music I take this as a stand-in issue, like the age argument, for uncomfortable feelings Jess feels about gender and power, but apparently I misconstrued your idea totally. At any rate, I like teenpop in small doses (I mean, I like "Rush" or "Show Me Love," for example, as much as I like a fave tune by Yo La Tengo or Public Enemy or anybody else). Later.

Fans of the Velvet Underground's "Venus In Furs" are directed to Ashlee Simpson's "La La."

Rules Of The Game #5: What's Wrong With Pretty Girls

yay! very strong

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Auteur

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Why mainstream girls are suckers

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Not very ital

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teenpop adult advisory

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