Rules Of The Game #10: Embracing The Ashlee Whirlpool

[koganbot]

The Rules Of The Game #10: Embracing The Ashlee Whirlpool



Still think my writing suffers from a bit of stage fright at LVW, and I've only scratched the surface with Ashlee and don't say much about the sound. But I like this, hope it'll open up Ashlee for some of you the way my Pazz & Jop piece opened up Eminem for some people back in early 2001.

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]

(Oh, and to answer the question that LVW poses in the subhead, I way prefer Ashlee to Alanis, but I think Ashlee's best, "La La" and "Shadow" and "I Am Me," gets edged out by my favorite couple of Beatles songs ("She Loves You" and "You Can't Do That"). I've always hated "Let It Be," however.)

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think you've helped me finally figured out why I don't put that much importance on lyrics. An example: I will always love singing along to 'Heard It On The Grapevine' despite never having been in a similar situation. The lyrics are memorable and tell a great story, but I like the song because of the menacing arrangement and Marvin's brilliant vocal line (the Gladys Knight version doesn't do it for me at all). He could be singing about Kraft cheese slices for all I care.

Unless lyrics are witty (best done by rappers - Eminem, Dizzee, Princess Superstar), nonsensical/surreal (Fergie, TashBed, Bextor) or unbelievably catchy ("ella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh", "Muteeeya-don't-panic-panic"), the song will have to be pretty boring musically before I give the lyrics any attention.

I say all this because your article is focusing on Ashlee's words - maybe hers, maybe her writing team's - and reading all this meaning into it. You may be right and Ashlee could be a brilliant poet, but I find it very difficult to believe that there's anything more to most pop lyrics than whether they rhyme or scan well. I mean, I used to write bad poetry 'song lyrics' as a teenager just like everyone else! I couldn't believe anyone would want to hear about my trivial problems so always binned them. And (at the moment) I can't believe Ashlee has anything to say that I want to hear, either. I'm willing to be proved wrong but she's got an uphill struggle to convert me and my lyric-ignoring tastes.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I am willing to be seduced by lyrics, because sometimes they crystallise a feeling (one I have, or have had, or could imagine having) so absolutely perfectly. That thrill of emotional recognition is a perennial pop pleasure for me, just as much so now I'm less angstful myself (thank goodness).

Something I probably resist doing - and I think Frank is brave to try - is unpicking the compact emotion-moments and trying to work out what they say and how. Taking lyrical moments out of a song-context and examining them runs the risk of making them seem like aphorisms - it's a hit and miss process; the "broken in me" lyric, as explained by FK, does seem impressive, ditto the T-Shirt lyric, but some of the others come across as more banal.

So I'm interested in how the sound and voice and delivery backs up or pulls against the words Ashless is using.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Ashless?? Erm.

"The T-Shirt" lyric being that one skyecaptain quotes a lot, I don't think it's actually in Frank's piece.

[koganbot]

I used to write bad poetry 'song lyrics' as a teenager just like everyone else! I couldn't believe anyone would want to hear about my trivial problems so always binned them.

Seems like a crucial passage. But, you know, you do write about your problems occasionally and about your ideas and your triumphs and joys all the time. It's on your livejournal. You don't write your life down to the extent that poptasticuk and piratemoggy do, but that's not the point. Putting words to music is a basic way of communicating, has been for milliennia, and the restrictions of line and rhyme, and the addition of vocal timbre and rhythms, have a way of intensifying everything so that the ordinary can jump out at you as extraordinary. E.g., I think the following is actually quite profound, an entire ethic, when you hear it, in the context of a dance, or a life: "Let the music play/He won't get away/This groove he can't ignore/Just keep the groove and then/He'll come back to you again/Let the music play/He wont get away/This groove he can't ignore/He won't leave you anymore." But bare on the page they're rather "eh." And I don't particularly agree with the message anyway. (Why shouldn't you push a river? Why wait on the groove? Why trust it?) But the music adds persuasion. But the words add persuasion to the music, too. And why would you shut your ear to the persuasiveness of the words? Is there some kind of rebellion here (against your problems, that probably aren't so trivial to live through, or about some capital-M Meaning that your problems don't stack up well against, or some capital-Q quality and some capital-I Importance that good music dances circles around and that bad music lays on you like a dead fish)?

I think I'd have my work cut out for me to explain how "Let The Music Play" works as greatness. I'd have to give it a whole context for it to shine forth, and that's probably beyond my ability. Ashlee's easier because she's always pushing back against rivers and fighting against her inner grooves, which is easier for me to write down. Her struggles are fairly ordinary because life is ordinary, for the most part, and she's not writing down holocausts or epic battles. And it's "ella-ella" and "la-la" and the quick eloquence or the coming together of meter and rhyme that give life - ordinary life in song, that is - its flavor. And sometimes you're also - while, I'm also - getting flavor and a sense of mattering from the the analytical abstraction with which Ashlee lays out her issues. (As well I should, as someone who likes laying out issues with analytical abstraction.)

Often a song has won me before I even know what the lyrics are, and one of my absolute favorites ever is Paradisimo's "Bailando," which is in a language I don't understand. And when I heard them in English in Angelina's cover version I immediately forgot them. But often, when I do get to the lyrics, and the lyrics matter to me, they can then shape a whole bunch of emotions about the song, and even reshape the sound for me. Kelly Clarkson's "Because Of You" was soft and sad until I really paid attention to the words, and from thereafter the song was very loud, was wailing in my ears.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> But, you know, you do write about your problems occasionally and about your ideas and your triumphs and joys all the time.

Ah but the difference there is that although I usually write with an audience in mind (hence less focus on my problems and more on squeezing humour out of the yoghurt stone), I'm not writing to music. If I could write music as easily as I could write sentences about it (and dammit, I'd love to - wouldn't we all?) then I wouldn't bother with words.

>I'd have my work cut out for me to explain how "Let The Music Play" works as greatness.

Hearing that song for the first time on an electro compilation, it stood out because I picked up on that "burr-bing, burr-dip-bing" noise - the lyrics didn't grab me at all. I just don't think I'm wired to pick up on them. Another example is Kylie's 'Come Into My World'. I obviously know Kylie as an artist very well, and had heard the single half a dozen times when it was out (6?) years ago. But a few months ago I saw the video on telly and gave it my full attention for the first time. By the end I had started crying because it the song was so gorgeous. I had no idea what she was singing in the 'I need your love, like night needs morning' bit but the melody was all euphoric and soaring and felt like she was going to burst (I'm welling up now just thinking about it). The lyrics are perfect but on their own they'd never make me sob like a big old soppy wuss. And even when they are coupled with a great song and a great personality like Kylie singing them, all they do is stop the song from being spoiled (like if inspection of the lyrics happened to reveal Ms Minogue was singing about eg killing babies with spikes).

> But often, when I do get to the lyrics, and the lyrics matter to me, they can then shape a whole bunch of emotions about the song, and even reshape the sound for me.

The problem is, is that this doesn't usually affect me in a positive way. Popstars telling me what they've written their songs about spoils what *I* think the song should be about. Let's take Nelly Furtado's 'Promiscuous Girl' as an example: I couldn't tell you exactly what Nelly and Tim are yabbering to each other about, but I know from the tone and interplay of their voices that they're both trying their best to be cool and indifferent & as such are spiting themselves out of a potentially good relationship, oh the ironing etc. That's my idea of it - if it turned out from the lyrics that say, Nelly was being cool but Tim was being all whining and pleading for Nelly to go out with him, it would change the angle and remove the tension from the song. I'm fairly sure this isn't the case here, but it really annoys me when you learn the true nature of the song and can't go back to why you first liked it so much, or you get a lovely song about "oooh I love him" and turns out to be a clumsy metaphor for God or drugs or something. I feel cheated! I want to indulge my imagination! And most importantly, I don't like having my assumptions proved wrong. :-) I've just realise how closed-minded and unadventurous that sounds, but where response-to-music is concerned, it's such a personal thing anyway that I guess I'll keep listening the way I like it.

[koganbot]

Er, misquoted "Let The Music Play," so he keeps not ignoring the groove, over and over. It really goes:

Let the music play
He won't get away
Just keep the groove and then
He'll come back to you again
Let the music play
He won't get away
This groove he can't ignore
He won't leave you anymore

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I used to write bad poetry 'song lyrics' as a teenager just like everyone else!

But Ashlee's not writing bad poetry. If you're just listening to catchy choruses, you might think she is: catchy-chorus-wise, there's no discernible difference between Ashlee Simpson or Fefe Dobson or Avril Lavigne. But look what Ashlee can do that Avril can't: I'm always, always, always late / And my hair's a mess, even when it's straight. Two lines, and you've already got a clear character.

Avril's lyrics are...well, to be honest, I can't actually remember any Avril lyrics, hold on. Here we go: I can't stand the way you act, I just can't comprehend / I don't think that you can handle it / I'm way over, over it. It scans fine, it rhymes, it's even catchy--but she's just filling space and it shows. She doesn't finish her thought up in that first line. She doesn't need another "over" in that last one. She doesn't actually say anything--and that's why it's so easy to dismiss her as brainless and bratty and incapable of writing a good song on her own.

Or here's a better comparison:

Stay there, come closer, it's at your own risk / Yeah, you know how it is / Life can be a bitch.

Uh, okay, I guess so. Versus:

Shut up! Come back! No I didn't really mean to say that / I'm mixed up, so what? / Yeah, you want me, so you're messed up too.

These are from Avril's "Runaway" and Ashlee's "Love Me for Me," respectively, which are essentially the same song: The Messy Girl's Guide to Love. Except that Avril is unfocused and indistinct, where Ashlee is clear and meaningful.

Avril meanders from her own bad day (some vague shit about crashing the car and her phone being out of range, which I guess happens if you're in Canada) to her push/pull lyric, to some more vague shit about life being a bitch and how she just wants to scream and lose control and run away.

Ashlee stays focused: this is a song about herself and her guy, and the conflict between wanting him closer and wanting her space, from beginning to end. Her push/pull lyric is the center of the song. And she manages to slip in the best lines of all time: My head is spinning but my heart is in the right place / Sometimes it has to have itself a little earthquake. And the other best lines of all time: Here I am, perfect as I'm ever gonna be / Stick around, I'm not the kind of girl you wanna leave. And more best lines of all time: It's been three days / You come around here like you know me / Your stuff, my place / Next thing you know, you'll be using my toothpaste. See how much life is contained within those three lines? These people, this place, the essential conflict. Those are the opening lines, by the way--she doesn't waste time, or words.

And that's the thing. Ashlee's writing pretty fucking good poetry: detailed, evocative, every word earning its place, with a voice that's strong and distinct. Avril's writing bad poetry, because Avril operates under your assumption: pop lyrics don't have to do anything other than rhyme or scan well.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

All fair points, but sometimes one humdinger of a line trumps a whole lyric comprised of thoughtful, "fucking good poetry", so...

[koganbot]

Thank you Nia!

You know, I'd really like to see you in print, I mean in magazines that pay money and with readerships in the hundreds or thousands. You're funny, you're smart, you've got a strong personality, and you have ideas. (Of course, Kat and Tom should be in print too, but people are telling them that all the time.) Anyway, would you email me at edcasual at earthlink dot net? Not that I'll be in position to do much for you (New Times taking over Voice Inc. pretty much has stomped out my influence), but I'd like to ask permission to quote various things you've written, and to use your last name, which I don't even know, etc.

(I don't know Kat's last name either. I'm assuming that it's not Stevens.)

I will say on Avril's behalf that she can be moving at times. "Unwanted" has a piercing sadness, and the words work for being so simple. And I love "Mobile" too, and she struggles with the metaphor (she's saying that she's an Alexander Calder type mobile, that she's spinning around), which is somehow appropriate.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

A quick reply as I've got to keep an eye on dinner - my bad lyrics were definitely more like Avril's than Ashlee's!

I can't confess to knowing anything about Ashlee other than what Frank and the other poptimists dudes have mentioned, and this is why I'm being a little harsh on her. I know Avril is bonkers - I know WHY she writes bad poetry. Frank says above that the personal 'problems' lyrics can be like reading everyday livejournal entries, but on LJ I'm reading about my friends who I have a personal interest in even if they're writing about what they had for lunch. I know Avril and can tolerate her tantrums and vague hand-waving. I didn't even know what Ashlee looked like until I saw the picture at the top of this entry and so I don't trust her - how do I know she means what she says? Anyone could have handed her a sheet of paper with that on it. I don't doubt she's a great writer, but I'm just playing devil's advocate here. Could we be reading all this meaning into some words that just happened to fall out of her pen one day? That she saw on the side of a bus? I think I've been spoilt by Xenomania in this respect :-)

[koganbot]

It also bothers me that they don't carry forward most of my italics ("it is her," "sounds like it was written by a 6-year-old," "whipcracks and kife slashes, bearing down on the words: 'living in the shadow of someone else's dream'"), but this is a battle I've given up fighting.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

NO MAGAZINE (or more unforgivably ONLINE ZINE) ever does this! Why does nobody ever do this? Do they WANT us to use caps?!

[koganbot]

Well, he did italicize the magazine and album titles; it may well be that he just didn't notice the others.

I'm more miffed about the subhead, actually, since it makes a context of the piece "This guy says Ashlee Simpson is better than the Beatles," which has nothing to do with what I want anyone to get out of the piece, and it's not what I'm saying anyway. But I bet the subhead will attract readers, so I won't bitch about it. It's not as if I don't understand.

Btw, I think early Beatles lyrics, before Lennon quite figured out he needed to EXPRESS himself, are some of the best - and most expressive - lyrics ever, by anyone. But again, explaining why I think so might be a task. To convey the impact of "She's the one who puts you down when friends are there you feel a fool" and "You talkin' that way, they laugh in my face" I'd have to spend thousands of words telling my story, just as in high school I wrote reams about my junior high school days in a Dylan term paper so that the teacher would understand "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Interesting lyric that I was unsure of until I googled it -- kind of wish I hadn't but oh well -- from "Surrender": "And when you're spinning round and round/ I'm the psycho going out of control." Well, I thought it was "psycho," too, at first, and the more I listened, the more I convinced myself it was CYCLE, not "psycho." Which is a much better lyric (Ashlee's washing machine would trump Avril's mobile -- I still think it sounds like she's saying she's a cell phone) and would mean that she's even calling HERSELF a whirlpool (which she is anyway, since the "psycho" is the force spinning him out of control, hence acting as a cycle whether she says that or not).

Re: lyrics in general...uh, they matter when they matter? I dunno, lots of times reading into lyrics brings me around to how great the music is (like in Ashley Tisdale's "Not Like That," which I wrote off at first simply because I misheard what she was saying), but I'm also a word person. Which is tricky, because it means that as much as I love good wordplay, I can think of nothing on this earth more irritating than BAD wordplay, which Avril does constantly and Aly and AJ do too much of on their new album, except in the one song that's ABOUT wordplay ("Careful with Words") and the one song that is so unstoppable they could say anything and it'd sound great, though they manage to do some awesome wordplay, too ("Bullseye"). The "sum/using division" line in "Division" still makes me cringe, though.

I like Fergie's nonsensicality, but Fergie never conveys much to me (about "herself," or the character known as "Fergie" or whatever) except that she's FUCKING INSANE. Which is great, because the tendency is to signify fucking insanity without having the guts to be insane (this is why even though I like the new Rihanna album, it doesn't even begin to touch the WTF-factor of "Unfaithful," wherein she scares the hell outta me; Gwen does this all the time, and important to note that her production is usually a million times crazier than her words, which fly by. Might get points for audaciousness in "Rich Girl," I guess.)

Hilary is kind of a cipher, and when she goes autobiographical, in can get downright embarrassing. This is a good thing, I guess, in the same way it's (even more frequently) a good think for P!nk -- I like pop stars embarrassing themselves, and not for schadenfreude reasons; I just relate to failure. I'm hard-wired to sympathize with it, but usually when pop stars are "about" failure, they fail to fail, if they're lucky they can flail. Ashlee fails better than anyone I've ever listened to in my own musical life, because she never actually fails, she's all ABOUT failure, and she nails it again and again. Marit Larsen is a new standard-bearer too -- I was listening to it in the car with Emily and at one point I yelled "JUST STOP IT! STOP DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!" And she didn't, she kept right on smirking and sighing and it breaks my heart every goddamn time -- when "Poison Passion" comes on I almost start to cry, and that's the only time on the entire damn album (except maybe "Don't Save Me") she's letting herself off the hook, getting ANGRY. And then you realize that the "you" might really be HER, and it's even sadder, because the poison passion just might be HER passion, which is the most depressing thing I can even think of ("you cry when you're still alone" -- well, I guess she wouldn't know that about anyone but herself, right?).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I mean, try this out:

[I] give me this and leave me alone here
Do [I] presume the battle's won?
I'll keep my head above the water
'til [I] admit the damage's done

Dry shimmer dazzle afternoon
[My] poison passion came too soon
[I] waste what [I] think [I] own
[I] cry when [I'm] still alone

I will not let [myself] go destroy this
I won't allow a broken promise
[I] give me this and leave me wondering
Am I supposed to put my faith in

Dry shimmer dazzle afternoon
[My] poison passion came too soon
[I] waste what [I] think [I] own
[I] cry when [I'm] still alone
[I] cry when [I'm] still alone

Might be reading into it (well, it seems to EXIST to be read into, which is another thing about confessional-by-Avril that bugs me -- lyrics ARE important simply because of the context in which they're being hurled at you, you can't help but read into them; you're being asked to identify with the words), but of course they'd be bad lyrics if she actually SANG those words, rather than project onto the "you." Difference being, Ashlee's actually singing about a "you," while Marit is never singing about a you -- every song becomes a little dagger that ends up cutting her, and she doesn't even flinch. (Except "Don't Save Me," which weirdly, despite being one of her best-sounding songs, just fades on me a little when I try to dig into it. It doesn't terrify me; I don't trust her enough to invest myself in it and see what happens.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Lots of typos: "thing with Pink," etc. And I also mean, by "musical life," the artist that I feel is of my own time, discovering and following as it happens.

Standing in the Shadows of AOL

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Just picked up somethin' great in Boston on vacation -- a small set of Ashlee AOL live sessions between the two albums, good companion set to part of yer column (the parenthetical caveat about SNL). Track listing: "Shadow," "Love Me for Me," "Nothing New," "La La," "Pieces of Me." Listening now, it's REALLY awesome. Will upload and stick on my LJ. Damn, she can sing. (Kat, you might enjoy these. Sort of a personality shortcut -- w/ giggling -- and greatest hits combo.)

Re: Standing in the Shadows of AOL

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Woop, "La La" and "Pieces of Me" are both remixes, which I haven't heard yet. Just checked the back of the case...

Re: Standing in the Shadows of AOL

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Oof, remixes are awful. But live tracks are all good.

1. Grrr 2. Me & lyrics

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there's A BIG POINT (about lyrics and how they work, or how listeners use them) in this conversation which is about to reach, if not a conclusion, then a thesis. A point that risks being lost in LJ threading and then forgotten.

Anyway, I think The Lex's point buried somewhere above about words catching up with you some time after the music is v. important. Important to me, that is, since I think that's how I usually listen.

To put it another way, I'm always suspicious of rock and pop artists whose reputation (even in my own mind) rests on them being wordsmiths. Because it means with each new song of theirs you hear you are almost forced to focus on the words before the music.

Example: Elvis Costello, whom we were talking about on FT the other week (and please indulge my revisionist history of EC in what follows). I have happily lived another 28 years since "Oliver's Army" first appeared getting some of the words wrong - because I don't need to know what the exact lyrics are or what they mean or indeed what the song is 'about' to know that it's a great song. But I still enjoy the "Hong Kong is up for grabs/ London is full of Arabs/" bit and what follows that (my misheard lyrics and all) for reasons that are partly to do with wordplay and partly to do with their delivery. It would have taken numerous radio plays of the song before these lines came into focus. But singing along to these (and the chorus obv) were a key part of the pop thrill. They enhanced the existing thrill of the music.

But there came a point at which Costello's reputation rested on his words rather than the idea that EC & The Attractions had been releasing one good pop record after another for something like 5 years (oh and that speccy guy at the front, he sang the odd humdinger of a line too). That point was probably "Pills and Soap"/"Shipbuilding", although the fact that around this time I also started reading the NME occasionally may have had something to do with it. After that, he was Elvis Costello: songwriter and the lyrics just got in the way.

Re: Me & lyrics

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Another good example, since Dave has brought up Marit Larsen, is "Don't Save Me". The internet is all, before I've even heard the song: "is this about her and Marion Raven? Marit says no, but..."

So I found myself forced to listen to the lyrics to try and divine every last drop of meaning from them. Which didn't matter too much in this case since it's a well-written song which survives (resists?) analysis. But it did deprive me of the pleasure of great song that sneaks up on you gradually.

Re: Me & lyrics

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Good phrase for it -- "resisting analysis." It's actually...Costelloish, really, like "reads the same way upside down" (ha, she means SOS! Cool! But...um, so what?), lots of wordplay but not a lot to really sink your teeth into lyricswise. Would probably suffer from teeth-sinking, really, since it worked for me as my sorta access point to her solo career -- if, say, "Under the Surface" was the first single, it'd be less likely to grab as many people (not that it grabbed that many outside the influence of Poptimists/Stylus/ILM anyway) who weren't already interested in following the various M's of M2M in their solo careers.

Re: 1. Grrr 2. Me & lyrics

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

this is tom's point about spoilers, isn't it? and not just "critical" spoilers -- where the reviewer gives away the thing you should encounter as a free lunch, but self-generated spoilers

Re: 1. Grrr 2. Me & lyrics

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i mean tom's point in one of his popitimist columns -- no time to chase it and he is off a-bouzin i think

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I still think Ashlee's European counterparts are far, far superior to her and others like Paris and Hilary. The songs are just better, and for me all this analysis is unnecessary when it comes to pop music. Although I must add that Ashlee's general persona doesn't appeal to me at all - she doesn't seem like the kind of girl I'd want to be friends with or would admire if I met her, whereas Robyn or Margaret Berger for example would be the complete opposite.