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koganbotJonathan writes ("Luis Miguel 'La Incondicional'"):
This project has really been testing my patience with the Big Ballad, the single song form which I have to work harder to appreciate and, appreciation won, have less desire to revisit, than any other. I'm hardly alone: the single most widely-hated song of the last twenty years (at least among respondents with pretensions to youth and cool) is "My Heart Will Go On"...
So I thought I'd reprint here my Pazz & Jop ballot for 2005, where I asked "Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?":
Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2005
Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?
The answer is maybe - if you're willing to call "Ms. Jackson" and "Gangsta's Paradise" ballads ("Fast Car"? "When Doves Cry"? "O Superman"?). But basically no, and whichever nonballad wins this year will come from a long line of previous nonballads. (None of the strong contenders is a ballad, though I suppose "Stay Fly" is something of a crypto ballad, which is why I didn't vote for it.) Occasionally a ballad makes my list (for what it's worth, Hilary Duff's "Fly" - which is something of a power ballad, if "power" is a word that's usable in connection with small-voiced Hilary - would have been my number one in 2004, if I'd been paying attention to Hilary), but in general I don't vote for them, and in general I don't like them.
This isn't just about ballads. I'm looking back on Nelson George's half-smart essay in the 1989 P&J supplement, wherein he identifies white critics' blind spot in regard to upscale bourgeois black music but doesn't take in that the blind spot is shared by most black critics as well and that it's a blind spot that critics black and white have in regard to white music too (Phil Collins, anyone?); furthermore it's based on a very questionable idea of what counts as upscale: the Sex Pistols' progeny that we (or "we") often vote for are at least as upscale as the performers we shun, but it's our version of upscale, and we're not willing to call it such (among other reasons because it, and we, have some genuine populist ideals).
Let's pretend for the sake of argument that most P&J voters are pretty good critics. Well, this means that Pazz & Jop has a built-in blind spot in regard to music that sucks. I mean, most ballads are sentimental shit, and they're deadening to listen to. That's why I don't vote for them. But it therefore means that P&J doesn't represent the year in pop and semipop. It can't. My ballot doesn't even represent my year in music, much less pop's. It wasn't designed to. "Gasolina" made the bottom of my Top Ten, and I'm guessing it'll make the bottom of P&J's Top 40, but it - and the hot-dance Luny Tunes reggaeton thing it represents - is not the major story in Latin crossover of the last few years, or it's only half the story, the other half being genteel stuff for smooching like "Suga Suga" (which is nice enough, but kind of bland); for the most part it's only Latinos who even know that the guy - Baby Bash - who did "Suga Suga" is Latino.
But being what it is, Pazz & Jop is good for telling us something about "us," that is, about the sort of people who become rock critics. It isn't that we vote only for people like ourselves, but that we vote for the sort of thing that people like us vote for - which is a tautology. But, among other things, by liking what we like and writing about it in the way we do, we turn some of the readers into people like us. But this is the question that P&J starts to address but never quite gets to: Why do people like us like what we like? You can't really address this unless you're willing to ask why people like us don't like the things we don't like. The P&J supplement (and too much of the ILM commentary about P&J) fumbles around because it keeps changing the question to something like, "How can we get white male rock critics to stop overlooking all this good stuff by black people/women/Hispanics/Asians?" So here are some alternative questions: Why do women rock critics hate ballads? Did they always hate ballads - most teenybopper girls like ballads - or did they learn to hate ballads? If the former, why don't girls who like ballads become critics?
Look back at the 2002 P&J: The most important hip-hop track of the year - one of the most important of the decade, probably as important as "Get Low" and "Still Tippin'" - Fat Joe f. Ashanti "What's Luv," got 4 votes, as opposed to Missy's "Work It," which got 212; now my problem isn't that Missy clobbered Joe (though 212 to 4 is ridiculous, and "What's Luv" is better than "Work It" anyway), since P&Jers shouldn't vote for something if they don't like it, but that neither you nor Sasha F-J said anything about it, and this was an absence that should have screamed at you. Jess and Sterling over on the ILM thread were the ones who, reading Sasha's piece, asked "Where's Gotti?" I'll point out that I didn't vote for "What's Luv" either - it was a near miss at #11 on my ballot, and I genuinely felt that my 10 choices were better (though it would be interesting for me to relisten now). But also I was looking hard for better choices because I wanted "What's Luv" off my list, due to Joe's telling Ashanti from the start that he wouldn't go down on her and because of all the similar but terrible thug-n-slush tracks that followed "What's Luv" onto the charts.
I wouldn't say that "What's Luv" is a ballad, necessarily, and the fact that I did like it makes my example not quite typical. When people dislike something they don't think to themselves, "This is the sort of thing that people like me don't like," they think "This sounds terrible." (And of course they might be right to dislike it.)
But the question here: Why "Since U Been Gone" and not "Breakaway" or "Because of You"? Well, "Since U Been Gone" is better, but why do people like me think so? In 2005 the Kelly Clarkson song that got the most play on Radio Disney was "Breakaway," with "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Since U Been Gone" getting about three-quarters as much play. (And of course Jesse McCartney's "Beautiful Soul" was ahead of all of them.)
But this leads into a final thought. In the past I'd have assumed that someone like Kelly Clarkson would eventually feel the need to go legit and leave stuff like "Since U Been Gone" behind. I'm not so sure now. For one thing, "Since U Been Gone" - its sugar as well as its rock - is considered more legit than it would have been in the past. And another is that the adult charts have changed. Not only do a lot of adults stick with Top 40 rather than jumping to Adult Contemporary, but also the ones who go AC aren't necessarily forgoing the bouncy stuff. Mediabase actually lists two AC formats to register this difference: Mainstream AC and Hot AC. (I think Billboard divides it into Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40.) The cliché is that you go from "fun" to "serious" as you mature, but I don't know if this ever was the case - or, for that matter, that the bounce and the sugar make "Since U Been Gone" altogether not serious. In the song she claims she can breathe for the first time, but lots of other Clarkson songs (including some that, unlike "Since U Been Gone," were written by her) have her unable to breathe, not breaking away, or breaking away but finding that her breakaway leads to fear not growth, etc. etc. So the bounce is part of a more complicated story.
SINGLES
1. Kelly Clarkson -- "Since U Been Gone" -- RCA
2. Rich Boy -- "Get to Poppin'" -- Zone 4/Interscope
3. Ashlee Simpson -- "La La" -- Geffen
4. T. Waters -- "Throw'd Off" -- So So Def/Virgin
5. Deana Carter -- "The Girl You Left Me For" -- Vanguard
6. Miranda Lambert -- "Kerosene" -- Epic
7. Foxy Brown f. Sizzla -- "Come Fly With Me" -- Roc-A-Fella
8. Pharrell Williams f. Gwen Stefani -- "Can I Have It Like That?" -- Star Trak/Interscope
9. Ciara f. Ludacris -- "Oh" -- LaFace
10. Daddy Yankee -- "Gasolina" -- V.I.
ALBUMS
1. Fannypack -- See You Next Tuesday -- Tommy Boy (13)
2. Ashlee Simpson -- I Am Me -- Geffen (13)
3. t.A.T.u. -- Dangerous and Moving -- Universal (13)
4. Various Artists -- Run the Road -- Vice (12)
5. Lady Sovereign -- Vertically Challenged -- Chocolate Industries (11)
6. Deana Carter -- The Story of My Life -- Vanguard (9)
7. M.I.A. -- Arular -- Interscope (9)
8. Annie -- Anniemal -- Big Beat (8)
9. Franz Ferdinand -- You Could Have It So Much Better -- Sony (6)
10. Robyn -- Robyn -- Konichiwa (6)
This project has really been testing my patience with the Big Ballad, the single song form which I have to work harder to appreciate and, appreciation won, have less desire to revisit, than any other. I'm hardly alone: the single most widely-hated song of the last twenty years (at least among respondents with pretensions to youth and cool) is "My Heart Will Go On"...
So I thought I'd reprint here my Pazz & Jop ballot for 2005, where I asked "Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?":
Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2005
Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?
The answer is maybe - if you're willing to call "Ms. Jackson" and "Gangsta's Paradise" ballads ("Fast Car"? "When Doves Cry"? "O Superman"?). But basically no, and whichever nonballad wins this year will come from a long line of previous nonballads. (None of the strong contenders is a ballad, though I suppose "Stay Fly" is something of a crypto ballad, which is why I didn't vote for it.) Occasionally a ballad makes my list (for what it's worth, Hilary Duff's "Fly" - which is something of a power ballad, if "power" is a word that's usable in connection with small-voiced Hilary - would have been my number one in 2004, if I'd been paying attention to Hilary), but in general I don't vote for them, and in general I don't like them.
This isn't just about ballads. I'm looking back on Nelson George's half-smart essay in the 1989 P&J supplement, wherein he identifies white critics' blind spot in regard to upscale bourgeois black music but doesn't take in that the blind spot is shared by most black critics as well and that it's a blind spot that critics black and white have in regard to white music too (Phil Collins, anyone?); furthermore it's based on a very questionable idea of what counts as upscale: the Sex Pistols' progeny that we (or "we") often vote for are at least as upscale as the performers we shun, but it's our version of upscale, and we're not willing to call it such (among other reasons because it, and we, have some genuine populist ideals).
Let's pretend for the sake of argument that most P&J voters are pretty good critics. Well, this means that Pazz & Jop has a built-in blind spot in regard to music that sucks. I mean, most ballads are sentimental shit, and they're deadening to listen to. That's why I don't vote for them. But it therefore means that P&J doesn't represent the year in pop and semipop. It can't. My ballot doesn't even represent my year in music, much less pop's. It wasn't designed to. "Gasolina" made the bottom of my Top Ten, and I'm guessing it'll make the bottom of P&J's Top 40, but it - and the hot-dance Luny Tunes reggaeton thing it represents - is not the major story in Latin crossover of the last few years, or it's only half the story, the other half being genteel stuff for smooching like "Suga Suga" (which is nice enough, but kind of bland); for the most part it's only Latinos who even know that the guy - Baby Bash - who did "Suga Suga" is Latino.
But being what it is, Pazz & Jop is good for telling us something about "us," that is, about the sort of people who become rock critics. It isn't that we vote only for people like ourselves, but that we vote for the sort of thing that people like us vote for - which is a tautology. But, among other things, by liking what we like and writing about it in the way we do, we turn some of the readers into people like us. But this is the question that P&J starts to address but never quite gets to: Why do people like us like what we like? You can't really address this unless you're willing to ask why people like us don't like the things we don't like. The P&J supplement (and too much of the ILM commentary about P&J) fumbles around because it keeps changing the question to something like, "How can we get white male rock critics to stop overlooking all this good stuff by black people/women/Hispanics/Asians?" So here are some alternative questions: Why do women rock critics hate ballads? Did they always hate ballads - most teenybopper girls like ballads - or did they learn to hate ballads? If the former, why don't girls who like ballads become critics?
Look back at the 2002 P&J: The most important hip-hop track of the year - one of the most important of the decade, probably as important as "Get Low" and "Still Tippin'" - Fat Joe f. Ashanti "What's Luv," got 4 votes, as opposed to Missy's "Work It," which got 212; now my problem isn't that Missy clobbered Joe (though 212 to 4 is ridiculous, and "What's Luv" is better than "Work It" anyway), since P&Jers shouldn't vote for something if they don't like it, but that neither you nor Sasha F-J said anything about it, and this was an absence that should have screamed at you. Jess and Sterling over on the ILM thread were the ones who, reading Sasha's piece, asked "Where's Gotti?" I'll point out that I didn't vote for "What's Luv" either - it was a near miss at #11 on my ballot, and I genuinely felt that my 10 choices were better (though it would be interesting for me to relisten now). But also I was looking hard for better choices because I wanted "What's Luv" off my list, due to Joe's telling Ashanti from the start that he wouldn't go down on her and because of all the similar but terrible thug-n-slush tracks that followed "What's Luv" onto the charts.
I wouldn't say that "What's Luv" is a ballad, necessarily, and the fact that I did like it makes my example not quite typical. When people dislike something they don't think to themselves, "This is the sort of thing that people like me don't like," they think "This sounds terrible." (And of course they might be right to dislike it.)
But the question here: Why "Since U Been Gone" and not "Breakaway" or "Because of You"? Well, "Since U Been Gone" is better, but why do people like me think so? In 2005 the Kelly Clarkson song that got the most play on Radio Disney was "Breakaway," with "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Since U Been Gone" getting about three-quarters as much play. (And of course Jesse McCartney's "Beautiful Soul" was ahead of all of them.)
But this leads into a final thought. In the past I'd have assumed that someone like Kelly Clarkson would eventually feel the need to go legit and leave stuff like "Since U Been Gone" behind. I'm not so sure now. For one thing, "Since U Been Gone" - its sugar as well as its rock - is considered more legit than it would have been in the past. And another is that the adult charts have changed. Not only do a lot of adults stick with Top 40 rather than jumping to Adult Contemporary, but also the ones who go AC aren't necessarily forgoing the bouncy stuff. Mediabase actually lists two AC formats to register this difference: Mainstream AC and Hot AC. (I think Billboard divides it into Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40.) The cliché is that you go from "fun" to "serious" as you mature, but I don't know if this ever was the case - or, for that matter, that the bounce and the sugar make "Since U Been Gone" altogether not serious. In the song she claims she can breathe for the first time, but lots of other Clarkson songs (including some that, unlike "Since U Been Gone," were written by her) have her unable to breathe, not breaking away, or breaking away but finding that her breakaway leads to fear not growth, etc. etc. So the bounce is part of a more complicated story.
SINGLES
1. Kelly Clarkson -- "Since U Been Gone" -- RCA
2. Rich Boy -- "Get to Poppin'" -- Zone 4/Interscope
3. Ashlee Simpson -- "La La" -- Geffen
4. T. Waters -- "Throw'd Off" -- So So Def/Virgin
5. Deana Carter -- "The Girl You Left Me For" -- Vanguard
6. Miranda Lambert -- "Kerosene" -- Epic
7. Foxy Brown f. Sizzla -- "Come Fly With Me" -- Roc-A-Fella
8. Pharrell Williams f. Gwen Stefani -- "Can I Have It Like That?" -- Star Trak/Interscope
9. Ciara f. Ludacris -- "Oh" -- LaFace
10. Daddy Yankee -- "Gasolina" -- V.I.
ALBUMS
1. Fannypack -- See You Next Tuesday -- Tommy Boy (13)
2. Ashlee Simpson -- I Am Me -- Geffen (13)
3. t.A.T.u. -- Dangerous and Moving -- Universal (13)
4. Various Artists -- Run the Road -- Vice (12)
5. Lady Sovereign -- Vertically Challenged -- Chocolate Industries (11)
6. Deana Carter -- The Story of My Life -- Vanguard (9)
7. M.I.A. -- Arular -- Interscope (9)
8. Annie -- Anniemal -- Big Beat (8)
9. Franz Ferdinand -- You Could Have It So Much Better -- Sony (6)
10. Robyn -- Robyn -- Konichiwa (6)
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Date: 2010-04-11 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 05:17 pm (UTC)