Not generalizing her estrangement
Feb. 3rd, 2010 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotMore convo with Tom on his Tumblr, this time as to whether or not Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" is indiepop. I say not, though I can hear the potential indieness that he hears. (Also, more generally, I can hear parallels between country and indie in that country is up to its eyeballs in alienation and social resentment; one thing I find inspiring about Taylor, beyond the craftsmanship that insists you tell a story rather than simply allude to one while hoping that the listener will do your work for you, is that, though she's personally hurt - it's all over her lyrics - and she hangs on to her bitterness, she's not head deep in social resentment.*)
The reason "You Belong With Me" is not indie:
(1) The narrator (not to mention the songwriter) doesn't generalize her estrangement and try to claim it as an advantage and as a social critique (though she could have, which I assume is why you make the connection in the first place),
(2) She's not finding her way to a potential social niche that receives her and also generalizes its estrangement (I say "potential" niche in that it can be somewhat imaginary, and she can run across it in the media or on the 'Net rather than in her school),
(3) The music that the cheer captain doesn't like and that the narrator listens to in her room isn't the Velvet Underground's "Heroin," and
(4) "You Belong With Me" doesn't fetishize musical and social incompetence (though there are hints of the latter in the vid).
I needed to add (3) and (4) because there are other niches that try to generalize their estrangement but aren't indie, one of them being country, though country tries to pull the trick of simultaneously being estranged and claiming in its estrangement to speak for the heartland and for long-time viable values. I really don't know whether Taylor is on thin ice with the country audience for no longer playing up the country signifiers, but you can imagine a reworking of "You Belong With Me" where the narrator gets the boy 'cause the cheer captain rejected him for being too redneck, and then he goes on to be a star, sort of a "country boy" variation on "Sk8er Boi." Also, you should hear - you need to hear - Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now?!" which came out two years before "Sk8er Boi." Also, try Taylor's own "The Way I Loved You," written with John Rich, where she's dating the nice-boy equivalent of the girl narrator of "You Belong With Me" but she's about to throw him over 'cause he's not her wild mistreatin' ex who fought with her and upset her and whom she still loves. (And significantly it would have been very easy for her to identify the wild, crazy, complicated boy as a redneck, but either (a) she isn't interested in kissing the country listener's ass by doing so, or (b) she's afraid to, in case it would limit her crossover appeal (but it's just an album track so she surely could have gotten away with the country signifiers if she'd wanted them).) By the way, where Taylor most comes across as heartland is in "Our Song" from the first album, where there's an implied rootedness in the past and in the timeless in all those behaviors that constitute their song. And in Fearless's "The Best Day" there's a connectedness to her dad that again suggests she's still connected to something long-term and deep even if she's alienated and hurt by the social life at school; I'm guessing that something like this would resonate with the mainstream country listener even though that particular song is vastly personal. It's also a better song than "Our Song," its being uncompromisingly personal being one of the reasons, but also I just prefer the melody.
I'm trying to pull you further into Taylor and into country (and yes Taylor is on the borderline as to whether she's country or not, and my fingers are crossed as to whether she can pull country in her direction, given that she's more and more eschewing country's bullshit and less willing than many other country songwriters to get over on signifiers and pandering, though so far there's no other Taylorette with close to her talent who could help with the pulling).
*Which isn't to say that one can't do great stuff with social resentment, mind you, as long as it doesn't devolve into an easy shtick.
The reason "You Belong With Me" is not indie:
(1) The narrator (not to mention the songwriter) doesn't generalize her estrangement and try to claim it as an advantage and as a social critique (though she could have, which I assume is why you make the connection in the first place),
(2) She's not finding her way to a potential social niche that receives her and also generalizes its estrangement (I say "potential" niche in that it can be somewhat imaginary, and she can run across it in the media or on the 'Net rather than in her school),
(3) The music that the cheer captain doesn't like and that the narrator listens to in her room isn't the Velvet Underground's "Heroin," and
(4) "You Belong With Me" doesn't fetishize musical and social incompetence (though there are hints of the latter in the vid).
I needed to add (3) and (4) because there are other niches that try to generalize their estrangement but aren't indie, one of them being country, though country tries to pull the trick of simultaneously being estranged and claiming in its estrangement to speak for the heartland and for long-time viable values. I really don't know whether Taylor is on thin ice with the country audience for no longer playing up the country signifiers, but you can imagine a reworking of "You Belong With Me" where the narrator gets the boy 'cause the cheer captain rejected him for being too redneck, and then he goes on to be a star, sort of a "country boy" variation on "Sk8er Boi." Also, you should hear - you need to hear - Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now?!" which came out two years before "Sk8er Boi." Also, try Taylor's own "The Way I Loved You," written with John Rich, where she's dating the nice-boy equivalent of the girl narrator of "You Belong With Me" but she's about to throw him over 'cause he's not her wild mistreatin' ex who fought with her and upset her and whom she still loves. (And significantly it would have been very easy for her to identify the wild, crazy, complicated boy as a redneck, but either (a) she isn't interested in kissing the country listener's ass by doing so, or (b) she's afraid to, in case it would limit her crossover appeal (but it's just an album track so she surely could have gotten away with the country signifiers if she'd wanted them).) By the way, where Taylor most comes across as heartland is in "Our Song" from the first album, where there's an implied rootedness in the past and in the timeless in all those behaviors that constitute their song. And in Fearless's "The Best Day" there's a connectedness to her dad that again suggests she's still connected to something long-term and deep even if she's alienated and hurt by the social life at school; I'm guessing that something like this would resonate with the mainstream country listener even though that particular song is vastly personal. It's also a better song than "Our Song," its being uncompromisingly personal being one of the reasons, but also I just prefer the melody.
I'm trying to pull you further into Taylor and into country (and yes Taylor is on the borderline as to whether she's country or not, and my fingers are crossed as to whether she can pull country in her direction, given that she's more and more eschewing country's bullshit and less willing than many other country songwriters to get over on signifiers and pandering, though so far there's no other Taylorette with close to her talent who could help with the pulling).
*Which isn't to say that one can't do great stuff with social resentment, mind you, as long as it doesn't devolve into an easy shtick.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:07 pm (UTC)More generally I don't think indiepop necessarily has the social connotations you're talking about. I think indiepop has lovelorn lyrics, and I think indiepop can offer the people who listen to it an option of what you're calling social resentment, but I don't think the two often connect explicitly in the music. Songs like "Bewitched" by The Wedding Present or "I'm In Love With A Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist" by Another Sunny Day barely present infatuation in a social context at all, much much less than Taylor Swift does.
(As others have said, it's TS' use of detail and context that makes her a good songwriter).
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:16 pm (UTC)Which is ridic because - this is something I think "musically" got right - the song codes to me like someone on the second or third rung sighing over someone on the top rung, rather than someone who's off the ladder entirely resenting its existence.
(which is what you're saying too re. indiepop - so I'm agreeing I guess that no its not REALLY indiepop)
(i'd be amazed if there were any indiepop songs about fancying a mainstream girl/boy and feeling overlooked and rejected, actually)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:32 pm (UTC)Or there's Kanye, badmouthing his ex for being superficial and shallow when you sense he's just bitter that they're not together.
(I have a bunch of questions about what relationship money and affluence has to a mainstream, and to what extent values of "mainstream" intersect with values of a middle class. Or whether "mainstream" is just what you call the other guy.)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 11:10 pm (UTC)Whereas in reality...
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 12:33 am (UTC)Well, this isn't music, and doesn't exist, but in my movie update of Pride And Prejudice Darcy's gonna be a punk and Elizabeth a square. (The freaks/punks/indies weren't off the ladders, they were creating their own ladder. Actually, the ladder metaphor doesn't work, given that dirtbags have their status rungs too, but the different status nodes - prep, freak, and dirtbag, or whatever nomenclature happens to be in use at a particular time and place - interact and affect one another, which is why "ladder" doesn't work. Also, I expect a lot of indie fans don't find their way to the center of any of the nodes.)
Are Wheatus considered indie? I don't actually know. "Dirtbag" and "indie" are different categories, but the band might be indie even if the protagonist is metal. I wouldn't call Wheatus metal, but then I've only heard one song of theirs. And, SPOILER, in that one, the metal boy gets the girl finally!
Does "Visions of Johanna" count as indie? (Answ. no, fortunately, but it's in indie's ancestry.)
Country has songs where the country boy wins the mainstream girl, e.g., Eric Church's "Guys Like Me" (listen to the twist at the end of that one, and also note that the song codes mainstream and middle class as female and codes country and blue collar as male) and Montgomery Gentry's "She Couldn't Change Me" and, well I'm not sure how to categorize the plot of Phil Vassar's "Carlene" where the football-player D student and the straight-A 4.0 Ph.D. girl hook up ten years later, when it turns out she's a _____ [NO SPOILER].
Actually, beyond anything I said, it's the sound of "You Belong With Me" that doesn't make it indie. If the Alphabeat girl sang and wrote melodies like Taylor she wouldn't be indie either (as long as she prevailed on the Alphabeat guy to shut up). And it's the sound of The Wedding Present that has the social connotations, no matter what the lyrics are doing. I'd say the same about Another Sunny Day, whom I'd not heard until this very second but who definitely use that indie win-by-losing sonic strategy.
At the end of Microwaving A Tragedy I want Taylor and Rihanna to generalize their estrangement, but that doesn't mean I'd want them to go indie with it, to find a niche of estrangement. I'd like 'em to use their estrangement as a basis from which to continue to engage.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 07:39 pm (UTC)Indiepop lovers of my acquaintance are also 150% more likely to listen to Annie than the VU. XD;
Why YBWM is not indiepop: because Taylor is the cheer captain these days to America regardless of where she'd place herself. But like Tom I enjoy her music because of that kinship.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 01:00 am (UTC)Good question. I'd say that the context of assumed alienation is there even if a lot of the individuals don't feel it, just as Taylor is mainstream no matter what she feels, but that's obviously a narrow way to look at music, as being either in a mainstream niche or an alien niche, since there's so much more going on. (I presume that that was one of the thoughts underlying your NOT A TEXT post, that this social analysis leaves so much out. I intend to respond to that when I get the chance.) So "wider" context might not be the word we want. But the genre "indie" in its very name assumes a separation, so the assumption is there when genre is what's at issue.
I'd say all this social differentiation stuff enriches music but sometimes impoverishes the conversation about music, if we treat social differentiation as the main thing going on. I haven't (yet?) looked at the ILM poll convo, but in general I was pleased by how varied and interested the Jukebox approaches to Taylor have been.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 01:32 am (UTC)Have the Annie fans of your acquaintance found their way to Stacey Q yet?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:18 am (UTC)This was my favorite Cpop song in, say, '98?
And this in... '05 iirc (Stefanie Sun is Singaporean):
Both of these were huge mainstream hits. Not everything these artists have done is like this; it's a sound that's generally adopted for the first album or two of a female singer-songwriter, when both she and her putative audience are young and, dare I say it, "cute".
This is Hong Kong indiepop (as in, a well known indie band on an indie label), which sounds just like Western indiepop - my point is that the vocal style (in particular) and lyrics (although I haven't discussed them) are not nearly as far off the Chinese radio pop mainstream as they would be off the Western radio pop mainstream:
Artists like Feist or Carla Bruni sell very well in China.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:58 am (UTC)Given that Taylor isn't particularly strange in her sound, and she's currently the top-selling pop artist in the United States*, she totally disrupts the genre map right now, doesn't match anything. She'd be too pop for country except fortunately country isn't ready to abandon her; but she doesn't line up with anything else that's hitting as pop. The core of pop music that hits in the U.S. is r&b, though Lady GaGa's success over the last year and a half has introduced an International r&b-dance amalgam, which I'd expected to have been really pleased by but surprisingly I'm not, for the most part (I don't mind GaGa and I like the big Black Eyed Peas hits, but I'm almost completely blank on Jason DeRulo and Iyaz and Jay Sean).
Do you know how Lady GaGa is doing in Asia? My first inkling of her was when I saw her do "Just Dance" in a vid of the Miss Universe swimsuit competition in Hanoi in early '08. It took many months after that before she finally hit in the U.S.
Were M2M big in China in '00? They had a relatively gentle sound, and I know they were huge in Southeast Asia; when Marion Raven began her comeback in late '05 she had her first showcase in Singapore. But from what you're saying of the Chinese sound, I'd think that Marit Larsen would be the one with more of a shot at a Chinese Feist-friendly market. Of all the people with pop pedigree, Marit's the one I'd call "indie pop." I'm not sure why she hasn't succeeded more internationally, on the international post-Bjork artpop circuit; but she's shy and may simply want to keep small-scale and holed up in Norway.
*The Susan Boyle album will end up moving more units than Fearless, but Boyle will still fundamentally be an anomaly, is my guess.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 09:52 am (UTC)Gaga: I really don't know! Japan - The Fame/The Fame Monster peaked at Oricon #6/#7, respectively. China - reading Douban threads: some fans saying she's not as popular as she deserves to be, others retorting she's plenty popular now (recently?). Loads of comments to the effect that she's vulgar (well, she is, by Asian pop idol standards). Then again, Douban is skewed, in the same way Pitchfork or last.FM or ILX may be.
Marit has a chance I think; Bjork is persona non grata of course after those Tibet-related remarks, but she was doing a big gig at the time, so she must've had a fanbase. XD;;
no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 05:25 am (UTC)http://www.douban.com/subject/3326410/
no subject
Date: 2010-03-03 03:18 pm (UTC)Leona Lewis is doing/has done a song for Final Fantasy. (Intricately plotted videogames are an unknown world to me. My knowledge ends with Space Invaders and Centipede.)
M2M's "Don't Say You Love Me" was on the first Pokémon soundtrack in '99, before their first album was even released.
This is how the first M2M album, Shades Of Purple, did internationally, according to Wikip:
Norway (Certified Gold, over 20,000 copies)
Philippines (4x Platinum, over 60,000 copies)
Mexico (Certified Gold, over 75,000 copies)
Chile (Certified Gold, over 7,500 copies)
Thailand (7x Platinum, over 105,000 copies)
Indonesia (7x Platinum, over 280,000 copies)
Malaysia (3x Platinum, over 60,000 copies)
Singapore (2x Platinum, over 30,000 copies)
Taiwan (Platinum, over 14,000 copies)
South Korea (Platinum, over 300,000 copies)
Their later material continued doing well in the Philippines and Mexico and Norway but seemed to have fallen off everywhere else, unless Wikipedia's info is incomplete.
Marit Larsen only sells in Norway and in the German-language European countries, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. (In Germany "If A Song Could Get Me You" was number one for five weeks, preceded by Emiliana Torrini's "Jungle Drum" and followed by Rammstein's "Pussy." In Austria it was number one for a week, also preceded by "Jungle Drum" and followed by "I Gotta Feeling," but then it knocked the latter off the top spot and held on for another three weeks until beaten by David Guetta ft. Akon "Sexy Bitch." For some reason I find those juxtapositions amusing.)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-03 08:21 pm (UTC)What I have from the rather dodgy Oricon website database is #97/1 week for M2M's Shades of Purple, #95/1 week for Big Room(?) and #13/11 weeks for Marion Raven's Here I Am (which had a movie tie-in).
no subject
Date: 2010-03-04 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-03 03:48 pm (UTC)