From Arcade to Ashlee

[koganbot]

"Here's Frank Kogan, here's Chuck Eddy, and here's this dude!"

Dave Moore has posted a transcript of his rockcritics.com interview - had originally been a podcast (Scott Woods the interviewer):

(When I saw there was a third vote for I Am Me, I said to myself, "Must be the father of a couple of pre-teen girls. What other critics listen to this stuff, outside our circle?")

Comments

[koganbot]

I myself was late to the game when it came to teenpop's Ashlee-style rock confessional. Back in '01 I'd reviewed Pink's Missundaztood favorably and referred back to Michelle Branch and Nelly Furtado in the review, but I'd pretty much shrugged when Vanessa Carlton and Avril came along, and subsequently barely even noticed that there was a Hilary Duff or a Lindsay Lohan. When Chuck sent me the Skye Sweetnam album I thought it was pretty generic; I didn't get as far as "Hypocrite," its greatest song, on my first play, and don't think I made it back to the album for a year. I'd liked Jessica Simpson's "Irresistible," and so clicked on "Pieces Of Me" and thought, "Hey, this is likable," and then forgot about it, the teen song that was really exciting me being JoJo's "Leave (Get Out)."* 2004 was the year of Big & Rich and a lot of interesting permutations on crunk, so it wasn't as if I was casting about for things to listen to. When Mikael Wood compared Ashlee to Courtney in his Voice review I should have immediately run slobbering to the record store, but I didn't. Ditto next month when Rob Sheffield put "La La" on his Pazz & Jop.

Strangely enough, what finally got me going was that I heard Deana Carter's "The Girl You Left Me For" and said, "Damn, if she weren't pushing forty this could be the greatest teenpop song of the decade." And then to back up this assertion I decided I actually needed to listen to some more teenpop of the decade, and I realized that, no, wait, there's a whole shitload of amazing teenpop ("Since U Been Gone" was just revving up its dominance on the radio), and also, it was playing the cutes a lot less than I was expecting (playing the cutes less than Deana was, actually, though Deana was playing the angry cutes). So over 2005 and 2006 I was doing a lot of catch up. In late 2005 I gave I Am Me a good review but in retrospect a lot of what I wrote seems beside the point to what I now think is going on in Ashlee - not that I was wrong about anything: the review was certainly smart, but I wasn't seeing her all that well yet, through the haze of the arguments about Ashlee. While writing the review I'd gotten a used copy of Autobiography on the Voice's dime, and it was the line "I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep" that really flipped me. It did what it was supposed to (first line of second verse of first song), which is to make me stop, and say, "OK, really take stock of this, now." And Miccio had burned me a copy of Lindsay's A Little More Personal, and I traded in a couple of promo albs at Twist And Shout in order to get Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway. So December 2005 was when I really began to dig into '00s teenpop, working out my thoughts starting on Rolling Country (giving only the barest excuse for writing about this stuff on a country thread), which was the only place I felt comfortable writing anymore, and then starting Rolling Teenpop.

*Which is still pretty damn great.

[koganbot]

And of course I've revised my opinion of Vanessa Carlton and Avril Lavigne upward, as well.

[koganbot]

I just posted this on a rockcritics.com comment thread, in response to Scott saying "the thrilling and frequently surprising evolution of what has come to be known as 'teenpop' (yeah yeah, I'm old — still prefer 'bubblegum' myself)":

Scott, a lot of teenpop isn't remotely bubblegum (Ashlee's "Shadow," Kelly Clarkson's "Because Of You," Aly & AJ's "Not This Year," to name a few obvious examples), and at least some bubblegum isn't particularly teenpop: for instance, there's a whole slew of silly Italodisco and Europop going back to "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" and continuing on through Aqua and "Mambo No. 5" and modern bosh like Cascada that's gum-smackingly chewy without being marketed specifically to kids.