The end of today all over the sky

[koganbot]

Trying to start a conversation over on poptimists about the new IU video ("Good Day"):

http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/793519.html

By the way, what would you say are the best IU tracks? I've heard very few of them. I like the one variously translated as "MIA," "Missing Child," and "Lost Child"; and I totally love her live version of "Gee"/"Sorry, Sorry."

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This version has subs…




What I found problematic about IU is all this discourse about the “real” that fans use to articulate their thoughts about her music. To use another strictly contemporary example, let’s use T-ara “Ya-ya-ya”, the new E-TRIBE (“Gee”, “U-Go-Girl”) production. Both of them turn around the idea of objectifying the image of their loved one. In T-ara’s MV, visually this is expressed (and is quite a “concept” choice coming from a country that always is remembering you what happened to their people under imperialist and colonial rules and playing the victim card (when things don’t go for them as expected)) through kidnapping and making the guy lost his freedom when he becomes an object of desire, something to be rearranged, repackaged, redesigned according to each member dreams and desires (last part expressed through their “primitivism”?). But what I like about this “T-ara goes glossolalia” is the way in which you can’t disentangle “personas” from sounds, how the song structure uses common features from dance music used to express desire (repetitive musical sequences and filtering as tension builders, peaks becoming chorus) in an interchangeable way with the lyrics or the vocal performances. Losing themselves (losing myself in the music) in the feedback process of making images about their loved one, repeating themselves, accelerating to reach the bliss point, going through multiple variations of the same motive to feel the pleasure of the text they are writing about their own desire.

In that sense I don’t think the IU track is so different, maybe they are different points in this sequence (T-ara still on their own, IU confronting those feelings and images with reality (but still not dismissing them)), with the beautiful and uplifting arrangements pointing in similar directions, making visible similar emotional motifs (but in more melancholic way), using pleasure to express plenitude (even if the melancholic thing going on makes the point that this plenitude will pass once this coherent narrativity of desire confront itself with everyday life and customs). That last bit maybe is too subtle to make believable this “real” discourse their fans are using, even if it is directed at that, to reinforce it. But is to weak to make a difference, or to express the meaningfulness, and deepness, and realness, and truthfulness that their fans seems to see in her (music) to justify their own emotions. I think is still the same process that we are seeing usually with K-Pop, where idols become, erm, idols, objects and images to be adored, surpassing everything that surrounds them (music, etc.)through their personas. Kind of prefer the T-ara option because I find some moralistic overtones in this less polished rhetoric way to achieve transcendence cutting through desires and some other ‘undesirable’ things that make me enjoy less the music.

[(Anonymous)]

In my case I also make value and aesthetic judgments, I select which experiences are meaningful to me and which ones not, so in that sense some are real for my tastes. Or to put it in another way, the ways some artistic object shapes my worldview make me appreciate it for what it proposes, for how it affects me or how I let myself be affected by it (leaving emotional barriers aside, or shame, or mental images about myself). For me that’s not so much the problem as the way people use that debate to protect themselves from those experiences or at least make them acceptable to their surroundings. I’ve been reading bits from “The Science of Passionate Interests: An Introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s Economic Anthropology” and I liked the next quote:

“How can we explain the fact that economists made such a serious mistake concerning the recto and verso of their science? The reason given by Tarde goes along with what market anthropologists have shown again and again over the past decade or so: no relationship is economic without there being an extension of the calculation techniques of economists-in the broadest sense of the word. The field of economics, invented in the 18th century, did not discover a continent; instead, it built one from scratch, or, rather, organized one, conquered it, and it colonized it. To quote Michel Callon's powerful phrase, it is the economic discipline that frames and shapes the economy as an entity: 'Without economics, no economy." Contrary to the robinsonades of the 18th century, and just as Karl Polanyi and later Marshal Sahlins had so skillfully shown, man is not born an economist, he becomes one. On condition, however, that he is surrounded by enough instruments and enough calculative devices to render otherwise imperceptible differences visible and readable. To practice economics is not to reveal the anthropological essence of humanity; it is to organize in a certain way something elusive”.

So just thinking (reading about economic devices is boring) these days which are the equivalent to those “instruments and calculative devices” but in tastes about music, movies and the rest… Do the real vs. fake debate, as usually seen, work as one of them? Do the way people talk about idols, being sublime or lifeless puppets, caring about them or showing all their weakness, work also as one (and one we can’t leave aside but that we could make more accurate…)?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I liked that cover too, but The Marshmallow Song so traumatized me (previous to this convo - I saw it on a screen I happened to be sitting in front of at a... restaurant? bubble tea parlour? I didn't know who the singer was) that I haven't dared to look up more of her stuff. My tolerance for cute/twee is high but my tolerance for burikko is extremely low. XD; If it's not representative I'll check out the rest.

[troisroyaumes]

Hm, she reminds me a bit of some older K-pop solo artists:

이수영 e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdTlRg-qPmk
Wax e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMTr7-eXV3s
박졍현 e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8crYjX7eam0

Her image does read as a lot more conservative to me. I don't know if that necessarily translates to being more "real" though, since it still comes across as very carefully constructed (a lot of appeal to nostalgia). I wonder if her fanbase skews older, since I think both her music style and image would appeal to an older demographic (around mid-20s to mid-30s would be my guess?).

RedOne on reality

[koganbot]

Presenting The real Nicole Scherzinger:

BBC: I imagine that record labels constantly come to you asking for "something that sounds like Poker Face".

RedOne: Yes, all the time. And I say, "no - because that's Gaga!"

That's her sound. I made that music, yes, but I made it for Gaga, because that's her. That's what she breathes.

I'm not doing any more of what I call "fast food writing" - where people demand a single, a single, a single. No. If you want me to invest my time in you, you need to invest yourself in me, as an artist.

BBC: So you're saying you've been guilty of that in the past?

RedOne: Yes, but not any more. Because that's what I love from the old times. You listen to Stevie Wonder and it could only be Stevie Wonder. Led Zeppelin is the same. I think that's missing nowadays.

Take Nicole Scherzinger [former Pussycat Dolls frontwoman], I just finished her album. Her last one never came out because it was collecting hamburgers, like fast food. One from McDonalds, one from Burger King, and so on. It tasted good, but it wasn't consistent.

Her new record - people are really going to go crazy about it because it's the real her.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

New IU single

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and a new track, "Cruel Fairy Tale"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8x9SsZIg0o