He was a good boy 'til he got behind me
Aug. 30th, 2007 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotPosted this on rolling teenpop:
New Ashlee track "Get Away With Murder" was pirated and is streamed here (recording soft in relation to the ad voice doing voiceovers in front, and track isn't in final form, and I'm sure hoping that a lot of the lyrics are just placeholders).
From what I can tell, her singing is authoritative, which doesn't surprise me, fits fine with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms, actually, which does surprise and please me. But the lyrics aren't taking me very far.
"He was a good boy until he got behind me"
Well, that's risque, but so what? And mixing sex talk with implications about "good boys" and "bad boys" is very conventional-minded and doesn't impress me. "I got a monkey on my back, he helped me get it off" is a double-entendre on "get off," but again, so what?
"My fears go black in the moonlight" is a powerful line, the one here that makes me really feel that I'm hearing an Ashlee Simpson song. Throw in the reference to "monkey on my back" and the good beats and the good minor-key eeriness of the singing, and maybe this is, like, an evocative poke of a stick at love addiction, risky passion, identity-destroying obsession. The lyrics aren't as random as I'd originally thought, nor as negligible. Maybe they matter, even. But it seems to me that I'm having to do all the work to get the mattering out of her opaque references to handcuffs and addiction and anal sex and fears and struggle. I'd rather she be articulate than that she poke sticks, rather she tell a story than toss saucy little hints, rather she be analytic than "shocking."
I suppose, if Gwen or Nicole or Madge did those lyrics I wouldn't complain, they're just words to a song and the music could be great, and maybe this is a work in progress anyway. If Bob Dylan sang them it would be a lunatic change of pace, quite refreshing. But Gwen and Nicole and Madge never wrote any lyrics remotely as great as, for instance, "Love Me For Me," and Dylan's never done a relationship song as good as that one.
(Yeah, and you could say that maybe it wasn't Ashlee who's most responsible for the "Love Me For Me" lyrics, since we don't know, but has Shelly Peiken ever had her writing credits on any other lyrics half as good as those? Well, I don't know, not having heard most Peiken songs, so I ought to be genuinely open-minded, but I'm not betting on it based on what I have heard.)
This lyric from Travis's rap is genuinely funny:
"They told me to put my muthafucken hands up
But I was handcuffed to the bed and couldn't get 'em up"
So, initial evaluation: music and singing good, maybe very good, much like her "Burnin' Up," which was also funny and sexy though more full-bodied and big-bosomed in its humor. Idiots who think her singing needs more "cred" and who bother to listen will probably grant it to her for this. Shows great versatility, like tracks five through ten on I Am Me. And hearing it loud and for real will no doubt make it powerful. Possible rating: 7.5. Maybe more at full volume. Good solid club track. On its own terms, if I forget that it's an Ashlee Simpson song, as a tough-vulnerable-funny-sexy caught-up-in-desire song, it's good. You know, the way that something like Nelly F's "Promiscuous" is good. And it's also somewhat bullshit in the way that "Promiscuous" is somewhat bullshit. And on its own tough-vulnerable-funny-sexy caught-up-in-desire terms it quails in comparison to Corina's searing, flaming, hilarious "Temptation," which actually I'd love to hear Ashlee do because she could burn it through the walls.
But as an Ashlee Simpson song, who needs Ashlee Simpson to do high-quality club tracks that don't express her complicated soul, when she's already put more fire and feeling into a single couplet like "I'm the one who's crawling on the ground/When you say 'Love makes the world go 'round'"?
Which isn't to say that she can't do higher-quality club tracks that either do or don't express her soul, and this is good enough to make me think that her going "dance" won't be the total mistake I'd feared. But, you know, it's not the Ashlee I love.
New Ashlee track "Get Away With Murder" was pirated and is streamed here (recording soft in relation to the ad voice doing voiceovers in front, and track isn't in final form, and I'm sure hoping that a lot of the lyrics are just placeholders).
From what I can tell, her singing is authoritative, which doesn't surprise me, fits fine with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms, actually, which does surprise and please me. But the lyrics aren't taking me very far.
"He was a good boy until he got behind me"
Well, that's risque, but so what? And mixing sex talk with implications about "good boys" and "bad boys" is very conventional-minded and doesn't impress me. "I got a monkey on my back, he helped me get it off" is a double-entendre on "get off," but again, so what?
"My fears go black in the moonlight" is a powerful line, the one here that makes me really feel that I'm hearing an Ashlee Simpson song. Throw in the reference to "monkey on my back" and the good beats and the good minor-key eeriness of the singing, and maybe this is, like, an evocative poke of a stick at love addiction, risky passion, identity-destroying obsession. The lyrics aren't as random as I'd originally thought, nor as negligible. Maybe they matter, even. But it seems to me that I'm having to do all the work to get the mattering out of her opaque references to handcuffs and addiction and anal sex and fears and struggle. I'd rather she be articulate than that she poke sticks, rather she tell a story than toss saucy little hints, rather she be analytic than "shocking."
I suppose, if Gwen or Nicole or Madge did those lyrics I wouldn't complain, they're just words to a song and the music could be great, and maybe this is a work in progress anyway. If Bob Dylan sang them it would be a lunatic change of pace, quite refreshing. But Gwen and Nicole and Madge never wrote any lyrics remotely as great as, for instance, "Love Me For Me," and Dylan's never done a relationship song as good as that one.
(Yeah, and you could say that maybe it wasn't Ashlee who's most responsible for the "Love Me For Me" lyrics, since we don't know, but has Shelly Peiken ever had her writing credits on any other lyrics half as good as those? Well, I don't know, not having heard most Peiken songs, so I ought to be genuinely open-minded, but I'm not betting on it based on what I have heard.)
This lyric from Travis's rap is genuinely funny:
"They told me to put my muthafucken hands up
But I was handcuffed to the bed and couldn't get 'em up"
So, initial evaluation: music and singing good, maybe very good, much like her "Burnin' Up," which was also funny and sexy though more full-bodied and big-bosomed in its humor. Idiots who think her singing needs more "cred" and who bother to listen will probably grant it to her for this. Shows great versatility, like tracks five through ten on I Am Me. And hearing it loud and for real will no doubt make it powerful. Possible rating: 7.5. Maybe more at full volume. Good solid club track. On its own terms, if I forget that it's an Ashlee Simpson song, as a tough-vulnerable-funny-sexy caught-up-in-desire song, it's good. You know, the way that something like Nelly F's "Promiscuous" is good. And it's also somewhat bullshit in the way that "Promiscuous" is somewhat bullshit. And on its own tough-vulnerable-funny-sexy caught-up-in-desire terms it quails in comparison to Corina's searing, flaming, hilarious "Temptation," which actually I'd love to hear Ashlee do because she could burn it through the walls.
But as an Ashlee Simpson song, who needs Ashlee Simpson to do high-quality club tracks that don't express her complicated soul, when she's already put more fire and feeling into a single couplet like "I'm the one who's crawling on the ground/When you say 'Love makes the world go 'round'"?
Which isn't to say that she can't do higher-quality club tracks that either do or don't express her soul, and this is good enough to make me think that her going "dance" won't be the total mistake I'd feared. But, you know, it's not the Ashlee I love.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 07:31 am (UTC)OK, first verse, she's addicted to him and she ignores entreaties to stay away, and why shouldn't she? She can take care of herself.
Don't keep me in the dark...??? Is this more of her ability to fend for herself? Don't tell fibs 'cause she'll find out?
Second verse. If the "he got behind me" isn't about anal sex, what is it about, and why should we care? Um, why should we care anyway? What does this have to do with what's going on in the song? What is going on in the song? Not that tossing words and implications around for the fun of it is necessarily a bad thing, but I hope she subsequently makes the words and implications more vivid. Ashlee, your great talent has always been to make me care!
"Monkey on my back" recalls the medicinal addiction in the first verse (assuming that there is an addiction in the first verse). "Get it off" also implies "get off" (maybe), but as for dumping the monkey, I'd thought she was fine with the monkey on her back and doesn't see what all the fuss is about, and no she doesn't want to go to rehab.
OK, the rap and the handcuffed-to-the-bed dominance-submission thing, and the diplomatic immunity, and curiosity killing cats and OJ being his favorite Simpson, so here's sex and being apprehended and immunity (so, getting away with it) and a shocking OJ reference to getting away with murder. And there's whatever else Travis is saying that I can't discern. Not sure what any of this has to do with the initial love potion and with Johnny from behind and Ashlee finding her sight in the dark, but it does foreshadow her going eventually going scot free.
Concubine in brightness, and then crying, and then fears or tears turning black or back, and I like these words and there's more sex and more light and more dark, which echo earlier darkness and light, so there's unity of imagery but not of, like, sense.
So, she gets away with murder, and maybe with fucking around with words and images as well, and she sounds good with these words, lilting with the tongue and light with the rhythm, tosses vocabulary in the air and shoots it like skeets, while meaning goes on the lam, but, you know, I'm still disappointed.
But your understanding of this might be more penetrating than mine.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 02:52 pm (UTC)This is what I could catch of Travis's rap:
They told me to put my motherfucking hands up
But I was handcuffed to the bed and couldn't stand up
Caught me red-handed, no telling what they gon' do to me
It's cool, 'cause you know, we can get diplomatic immunity
Now we're sitting in front of that button everyone's warned us not to push
And paranoia's start to set in, sweating [???]
Curiosity killed the cat
[???] orange juice
And OJ's my favorite Simpson