A Star Is Born

Near unanimous opinion online that Dia Frampton had a Cher Lloyd a-star-is-born moment several days ago on NBC's The Voice with her twisting and half wispy, half guttural version of Kanye West's "Heartless." It continues to grow for me the more I listen, her voice scooping into the soil and rising up to what I'll describe incongruously as a dark alto trill, throat-grabbing, breathtaking. Much richer than Kanye's Autotuned original. Kanye's voice seemed aligned with the lyrics' analytical puzzlement - the song circling around among Yes, she really is cold and heartless, No, they say she's cold and heartless but they'll never understand our love, I don't understand our love, as you ditch me and then play me, and voices say "heartless." Dia lets the lyrics take care of all this while she goes for earth-flow and splatter and high-pitched reflection.

NBC runs online a little too soft, so I recommend you push the volume a little:

( But what's bugging me is the narrative that Dia and NBC have concocted )

E.via (artist of the year, 2010)

For the many people* who ask me "Why Korea?" my answer is love. Yes, and there are plenty of other answers too, one being that people who know more than I do come to my lj and talk to me about K-pop, providing sociability and mindwork, and another being that K-pop is creating a hip-hop, r&b, dance-pop amalgam far better than the Billboard Hot 100's, and so on and so forth. But there's always got to be love. With rock there was Jagger**, with glitter the Dolls, with punk the Stooges, with disco Donna, with hip-hop Spoonie Gee, with freestyle Debbie Deb (both the real Debbie Deb and the imposter), with hair-metal Axl, with teenpop Ashlee, etc.***



In this instance****, though, especially given the cultural distance, my not knowing Korea or Korean, I really can't say what's going on; this has inspired me to actually read some books about Korea. Not that what I learn will tell me what I want to know here, which is whether the E.via I've fallen in love with, whom I basically constructed in my mind out of scraps and song bits*****, has anything to do with any kind of reality. Did the Jagger? Pretty much everyone on my love list above has got some Jagger in her or him, or has me projecting the Jagger, anyway, Jagger Jagger burning bright, a combination of Jagger and Miss Lonely, my believing that the world is continually picking up the baton that the Stones and Dylan dropped, and dropping and picking up again.

Watch on YouTube

( E.via's attitude towards cute like Ray Davies' attitude towards sunny afternoons )

( video for Hey!, plus commentary )