Not generalizing her estrangement

[koganbot]

More 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.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Although, obv, if the Western radio mainstream is now Taylor Swift (among others)... but if, in '98 or '03, you enjoyed a Cpop aesthetic and wanted to hear Western music that remotely approached it, welcome to Belle and Sebastian land.

[koganbot]

Ah, I hear this, though I can also hear that the Pancakes are indie and the other two aren't, though if you'd told me that Stefanie Sun was indie I'd have believed you.

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.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Marit Larsen is currently enjoying HUGE success in Germany. "If A Song Could Get Me You" stayed for five weeks at #1 there, and four weeks in Austria. She's nominated for an Echo alongside Gaga and Beyonce at the moment. Common sense says this success will lead her label to try their hand at the UK. (Although the German region is much friendlier to pop with a guitar twang than the UK)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I don't really know what Western pop was big in China in '00. XD;; Tons of stuff was still banned then. I was there in '98 and '04, and on the earlier trip it was all ABBA and the Carpenters. Loreena McKennitt, Enya. But in recent months of reading message boards I've realized that by turn of century stuff was filtering to the kidz via means other than CDs from stores - bootlegs, video games.

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;;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I think your guess was right: M2M has a lot of ratings on Douban, relatively speaking, and a lot of reviews of the "I used to listen to them in junior/high school" type.

http://www.douban.com/subject/3326410/

[koganbot]

Do you know if M2M ever had a tie-in with Final Fantasy? In wandering around YouTube I've noticed a lot of links, but they all may simply be fan vids where the fan posts visuals from Final Fantasy and uses an M2M song for the backing track.

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.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Leona: LOL I'm not surprised. I don't think M2M ever had a FF tie-in, more likely they just grabbed the Pokemon fanbase.

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).

[koganbot]

Oh, I see what Wikip did; they had Marion Raven number one on the Japanese Oricon International Album Chart, not the regular album chart.

[koganbot]

Conspicuous by its absence on M2M's sales list is Japan, although perhaps the absence is merely from Wikipedia, not Japan. Marion Raven's first solo album went number one in Japan.