Rules Of The Game #9: The Teens Are Cool But They Burn Out

[koganbot]

The Rules Of The Game #9: The teens are cool, but they burn out

I make a bunch of bald statements many of which I barely even try to explain much less support. Which means I've got lots of bones I can put flesh on in the future, if I can find the right skin for 'em.

But here's a bone that's especially worth getting some flesh, fat, and muscle from you guys: If you were to form a band, what would it sound like? An implication of what I've written here is that, though I love hearing scads of modern music, I can't imagine myself making any of it. To paraphrase Pink, it's so pretty (or icy or funny or brutal) but it just ain't me.

This isn't necessarily so different from how I felt 27 years ago when I was looking for fellow musicians by placing ads along the lines of "Teena Marie meets Johnny Rotten On The Corner" or was calling for the great James Brown-Stooges fusion. (Ironically, when the JB-Stooges fusion actually came along - Public Enemy, say, or Phuture - I was a lot less interested than I'd expected to be. By then I wanted Public Enemy to meet L'Trimm in Judy Torres' bodega.) I wasn't calling for such an amalgam out of any commitment to eclecticism, but because I couldn't imagine myself doing any of the available musics straight up.

(Meet Brie Larson and Lisette Melendez in your own kitchen.)

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

If I started a band, it would definitely take some of the Ashlee melodic strain (okay, what I really mean is Kara DioGuardi's particular brand of melodic rock-pop) but would have MORE SYNTHS.

And I can totally iamgine making that sort of stuff. Except I have the musical talent of a deaf person with no fingers.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'll answer the qn next comment but I wanted to say that this is my favourite column yet, possibly - maybe because it is 'bony', but also it presents a bit of content on "what makes teenpop good" (young-old collaboration) which is interesting and useful and which I've not seen so starkly put elsewhere: I wish some of the people who don't like (or like the idea) of teenpop would engage with it, though I'm doubtful this will happen.

[koganbot]

My guess is that a lot of people who don't like the idea of teenpop don't realize that their idea of teenpop is at variance with a whole lot of actual teenpop.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I was going to say this is my favourite column so far too, but then again - as you know - it is poking about in my comfort zone. So perhaps what I should do is read the other columns (that aren't doing that) more carefully.

Afraid To Rock

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Anyway I think if I was to form a band, it wouldn't sound very good. Even assuming I somehow acquired some kind of musical ability. I think the content of the music - emotionally, lyrically - would tend to the clever and the indirect and at best I'd end up with a hollow-sounding, ersatz Magnetic Fields knock-off.

Re: Afraid To Rock

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

tasty!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

What I like about this column is that it tackles how authorship of a song does matter - obv not about whether it makes the song good/bad or valid/invalid, but in how this precise alchemy of these two classes has the result it does.

I would not form a band. If I made music it would be melodic, texturally gorgeous minimal techno, and I would remix lots of my favourite pop songs so that they sounded amazing on MDMA. I'd like to be an r&b singer but it really does look like a lot of work, and I don't like work.

[koganbot]

Outtake that I left on the cutting room floor ('cause it was too much of a speedbump):

Of course, there also could be personality differences between the singer and the people who would have written the song if she hadn't, and these differences matter too. This last point may be kind of obvious, but it has implications that haven't necessarily been thought through. I mean, if you ask me, "How does music come to sound the way it does?" I'm not sure I have an answer. (And so far I haven't even mentioned the character of the audience and how this affects music.)

What I had in mind in regard to "implications that haven't been necessarily thought through" is that a performer is defined to a big extent by her early hits, and since there's some chance involved in what hits and what doesn't, there's also some chance involved in which part of her or her songwriters' (!) and producers' (!) and bandmates' (!) musical personality becomes her public personality, her musical identity. Whereas the songwriter - not being the public face of the music - can change his musical personality any old time he wants, provided he can sell the results.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh! I also love the Boney Joan column; that's something I think about regularly but can never articulate, how a reason for liking X is the same as a reason for disliking Y, and what is the difference, and is there a quality Z which X has in addition to the original reason which Y doesn't, but sometimes there isn't, and then I tie myself in knots. I think that's the fundamental question of criticism, why we like what we like, why our tastes are how they are, and it's something which should be so logical and instinctive but which makes no sense at all.

I'm not sure if Mariah/Cassie is a contradiction though: I like restraint AND I like melodrama. But only when they're done well: there's restraint and melodrama which I hate too, though I think I'd only use those particular words in a positive context. Something like "abrasive" is my bugbear, it's my fallback criticism of a lot of music (Justice) AND my fallback praise of other music (Hole).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Blah meant to insert something about how it's the "when they're done well" which is the nub of the matter blah.

Brie meets Ashlee In Da Club

[koganbot]

What if we put Ashlee In Da Club but with the same dreamy confused contrariness as she has in "Better Off" or "Love Makes The World Go 'Round" (as in "I'm the one who's crawlin' on the the ground/When you say 'love makes the world go 'round'"). Ashlee's done the hazy sound of day - bright days and sad days and overcast days - but she's never done the sound of night.

Of course, club-shmlub: I like dancing, but I've no urge to jump into the night stalkings. But maybe I can be the guy sitting at a back table taking notes and reconceptualizing the whole thing. I mean, I don't have to be the lead singer. I can give the music a darting, analytic personality.

What's She Got That I Don't Have?

[koganbot]

Also, I want to hear Courtney Love sing Ashlee's "I Am Me," because Courtney (assuming her voice isn't totally shot) could shoot that song through the back of my skull.

And one of the great disappointments when I finally got broadband was discovering that no one had posted online Ashlee's live version of "Celebrity Skin." My blood surges just knowing that Ashlee once sang, "Oh look at my face/My name is Might've Been/My name is Never Was."

I could imagine, if I'd had the voice, singing songs like that 25 years ago. But that was a different me. I occasionally sing my own songs, to myself in my living room, and they still hiss and scratch and sting, but I'm glad I'm no longer the guy who wrote them.

Re: What's She Got That I Don't Have?

[koganbot]

could shoot that song through the back of my skull

What I meant was that she could shoot that song out through the back of my skull. (I.e., she's facing me head on and blasts the song through and out the back; rather than shooting me in the back of the head execution style.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Ashlee Simpson by way of Tusk, which is to say a controlled sonic mess (a la Christina Aguilera's "Make Over"), combined with Sheryl Crow's acoustic downers and a little bit of No Doubt, and lyrically I'd want the the "sounds happy / is sad" trickery of Barenaked Ladies and the meta cleverness of "Potential Break-Up Song," plus the sex play of Tatu or The Cliks (a bunch of sexually ambiguous girls who cover "Cry Me a River" without changing the pronouns) for good measure, so basically I'd be Fefe Dobson's "If I Was a Guy" and Platinum Weird's "When We Met" as bonus tracks on My December.

I'm the opposite of you--teenpop is the only music I can see myself making, because it's the only music that feels as rich and contradictory as my actual life. As much as I'd love to be Stevie Nicks, she doesn't quite do it for me the way Britney and Lindsay do.

[koganbot]

Well, it's like I'd want to take Stevie Nicks but replace her brain with Grace Slick's, and give her Ashlee's warmth. (Grace was my teen heartthrob.)

[koganbot]

I wonder if hip-hop and r&b could grow itself into the richness and contrariness of teenpop. 'Cause hip-hop and r&b are still the sound that lays a claim to adventure and to the future. Back when I reviewed Missundaztood I said that if Pink had been a guy she'd maybe have been able to express herself within r&b (and staying in r&b might have been good for her craftsmanship), since hip-hop and r&b allowed guys (Eminem, ODB, David Banner) but not girls to make messes. I think it would be interesting to take the sound of "In Da Club" and "Get Low" and "Beware Of The Boys" (each of which manages simultaneously to be buoyant and menacing and joyous and melancholy) and make it sloppier and therefore more of a home for warm-throated poetry girls. I don't mean the artsy-fartsy messiness of the Anticon indie hip-hop; but what if we took the darkness of "In Da Club" and added mist to it? What if Dre had co-produced it with the guys from PM Dawn; you know, the fellows who said, "Reality used to be a friend of mine"?

[cis.livejournal.com]

One reason I gave up on the whole 'let's form a band!!' thing was that I realised that every song I wrote was some kind of folksy indie girl-with-acoustic-guitar wibble, that even though it's a genre I didn't listen to it was what my brain seemed hard-wired to write. I mean, I'd like to say I'd make awesome technofeiern classix, and maybe I could, I've never tried to make techno, but given that when I tried for pop I came up with folk god knows what the result would actually be. probably idm ;_____;

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

LET'S COLLABORATE! i will keep u on the 4/4 path, straight & true

[cis.livejournal.com]

:D :D :D

[koganbot]

Hah! Not so far from what I* actually came up with: Dylan E. Smith trying to figure out if he was the Chocolate Watch Band or the Electric Eels and early Ubu. (So much for Teena and Miles.)

*"I" including some musicians and songwriters at least some of whom were more talented than I was.

Uncharted

[koganbot]

Notice the double meaning of the word "uncharted" in the final sentence.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

Reading that I wondered about whether some of the older songwriters have expanded on the inner workings of the collaboration process. Wondering if it really works out like this:

"The young ’uns would bring the gall and uncertainty of youth; the adults would help make it articulate and rich."


If I formed a group it would Ut-type no-wave-ish, all 3-4 participants sharing the playing of every instrument. Just bcz I know no theory at all it might be interesting to see wtf I would come out with.

[koganbot]

Yeah, the way I said it implies that only the young have gall and uncertainty, whereas I know plenty of oldsters - e.g., me - awash in gall and uncertainty.

What I have in mind is that only by Ashlee Simpson putting herself at issue and having a hand in the process are lines (like these from "Shadow") possible:

"Somebody listen please/It used to be so hard being me."

Then, in a parallel spot, later in the song:

"So if you're listening/There's so much more to me you haven't seen."

There's an incredible vulnerability and poignancy in these lyrics, and at the same time an absolute confidence that There. Is. Something. Here. Worth. Hearing. Now, there's no reason a 33-year-old woman couldn't feel such things (Kara DioGuardi's age when she co-wrote the song)(for that matter, no reason that a - [calculates, quickly, how old was I in 2002 when I wrote the letter to managing editor Doug Simmons that became chapter 18 of my book?] - 48-year-old man couldn't feel those things either), but those lines just make more sense in the mouth of a 19-year-old, have a spring and a dance they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Hypothetically I understand how adult songwriters could come up with such lines and say to themselves, "OK, now let's find a 19-year-old to sing them" (after all, there are adult novelists and screenwriters who create convincing teen characters), but I can't think of an instant in recent pop where this has happened. Which isn't to say that it can't have been Kara who actually wrote most of the words to "Shadow" - though I strongly doubt this - or wrote those lines in particular, but nonetheless she needed Ashlee to provide plot, to provide inspiration, to provide spark. (It'd be ironic if Kara did write most of those words: talk about living in the shadow of someone else's dream.)

[koganbot]

There are some snippets on The Ashlee Simpson Show about the making of the album; I've only seen a couple of episodes, but those who've seen the whole series say that what it shows of the creative process is frustratingly incomplete. (Commercially it makes sense that the show would concentrate on boyfriends and girly goof-ups rather than songwriters, though I have a feeling I'll find it just as fundamentally unrevealing when it comes to boyfriends and the girly psyche; Ashlee's got such an appealing surface that maybe no one including Ashlee thought of any value in exploring the depth; I suppose some people could argue that the "depth" on the album was John's and Kara's doing, but the people likely to discredit Ashlee probably never noticed any depth in the album anyway.)

There's a Boston Globe profile of Kara DioGuardi that tries to paint Kara as the brains of the process (Kara describes working off of emails from Lindsay to come up with "Confessions Of A Broken Heart"), the article giving the impression that, while the girls provided spark and themes that Kara tried to stay true to, it was who Kara did the actual dogwork. But I don't trust the author of that article (and the Ashlee songs on Autobiography where Kara's not on the credits are just as smart and complex as the others). There's a Day In The Life Of Kara DioGuardi piece in a recent Billboard that has a great moment where Kara is working with r&b singer Cassie, Cassie trying to come up with lyrics about a romance that doesn't get beyond emails. Cassie: "It keeps coming around, but it never turns into anything." Kara: "Like a revolving door, maybe?... [sings, while instrumental track plays in background]... 'My heart's not an open door... even if it was before.'" But that's something of a different situation, Kara coaxing Cassie to express herself, whereas with Ashlee and Lindsay there's no question that these girls are going to express themselves. Lucy Woodward, a young singer who worked with John Shanks and Shelly Peiken, describes John bringing out his guitar and the three of them just sitting down and creating songs. skyecaptain told me that you see Shanks and Ashlee doing something similar on her show but that the snippets don't give you enough to know what really happened. In any event, nothing I've read tries to address the question of who brought what to the table in the way of psychology and experience.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

My band would sound like Scooter. Totally ridiculous boshing mayhem, with the focus on entertainment & stupid phrases.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

My first Beaties demo ("We've Got the Sugar in Our Blood") mysteriously vanished from my computer, but I gotta say that I'm actually pretty good at writing teenpop! In fact, the one pop song I wrote prior to this, now that I listen again, sounds kind of like nu-Lillix new wave w/ semi-soaring chorus. Thin line between power pop and teen pop, in fact often NO line. Except skinny white guys have given themselves POWER because they don't wanna be (associated with) teens anymore. Anyone want to do some vocals?? I can't sing.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I think my band would be twee-pop with the emphasis on pop. Like Helen Love - Debbie Loves Joey. I don't think I could do anything else really, this sort of thing is definitely the musical equivalent of my personality.