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I'm In With The Out Crowd
Haven't listened yet to the whole Farrah Abraham album or followed much of the discussion. But Phil Freeman calls it "pure outsider art — fucking brilliant. Makes Peaches and Le Tigre sound like Taylor Swift." And Dave seems to be endorsing this characterization, "outsider art," in his Atlantic piece. Not sure whether or not I'd use it on her, or how often I'd use it on anyone. But to poke around further, let's ask the following questions:
(1) What is Farrah Abraham outside of?
(2) What might she be inside of? Who might her models and sources be?
I'm thinking of people like Teena Marie, Sophie B. Hawkins, Stevie Nicks — not as Farrah's sources or models, but as people who had sources and models themselves for their ideas of song lyrics and liner-note poetry; they were drawing on ideas of poetry that were probably as abundant as "real" poets' ideas, if not more abundant.*
EDIT (June 2019): Farrah seems to have deleted all the vids from My Teenage Dream Ended, but here, at least, is what she sounded like ("On My Own"):
END EDIT
*As far as I know, Teena, Sophie, and Stevie were never called outsider art (nor were Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, for that matter, whom I wouldn't say were themselves altogether "inside," and who probably helped to make Teena et al. possible, though were hardly their main sources). But this might be just because no mainstream critics ever made much of a case for Teena et al. as poets (unlike Dylan and Morrison, whom I'm keeping inside parentheses — Dylan was sometimes slotted as "folk poetry," a term that hardly explains anything, but does point to people not being merely outside).
By the way, I don't think Farrah presents her stuff as poetry, but that doesn't mean she doesn't draw on poetry. Actually, I've never seen the Teen Mom shows, nor do I know much about her, nor have I read her book; so I don't know if she's claimed any poetic ambition. I'm guessing not, from the way she embeds her words in home-made pop tracks.
(1) What is Farrah Abraham outside of?
(2) What might she be inside of? Who might her models and sources be?
I'm thinking of people like Teena Marie, Sophie B. Hawkins, Stevie Nicks — not as Farrah's sources or models, but as people who had sources and models themselves for their ideas of song lyrics and liner-note poetry; they were drawing on ideas of poetry that were probably as abundant as "real" poets' ideas, if not more abundant.*
EDIT (June 2019): Farrah seems to have deleted all the vids from My Teenage Dream Ended, but here, at least, is what she sounded like ("On My Own"):
END EDIT
*As far as I know, Teena, Sophie, and Stevie were never called outsider art (nor were Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, for that matter, whom I wouldn't say were themselves altogether "inside," and who probably helped to make Teena et al. possible, though were hardly their main sources). But this might be just because no mainstream critics ever made much of a case for Teena et al. as poets (unlike Dylan and Morrison, whom I'm keeping inside parentheses — Dylan was sometimes slotted as "folk poetry," a term that hardly explains anything, but does point to people not being merely outside).
By the way, I don't think Farrah presents her stuff as poetry, but that doesn't mean she doesn't draw on poetry. Actually, I've never seen the Teen Mom shows, nor do I know much about her, nor have I read her book; so I don't know if she's claimed any poetic ambition. I'm guessing not, from the way she embeds her words in home-made pop tracks.
Re: Outside Looking In
Obviously, you'll have to guess. But the music jumps out for being different, and commenters are jumping to conclusions about where the difference places her — or her and collaborator(s) — socially. Do we call her (them) (an) incompetent(s), outsider(s), experimentalist(s), or all three, or what? Phil wasn't just applying a concept randomly when he called it "outsider art." And while the musical arrangement makes a difference — that it's* in the general realm of pop or dance rather than, say, jazz or new age — the vocals are why we're having this discussion, their apparent inappropriateness or novelty.
I just listened to a couple of songs from Rehearsing My Choir and there's nothing socially jarring in the way F. Furnaces mix together talking, singing, and accompaniment. (I ought to ponder why it's not socially jarring.) The Autotuning and manipulation of a baby's voice on DJ Champion's "Baako" is effective and exciting but plays the role of an African horn part and fits in with time-honored DJ manipulation. Presumably, if she wanted to, Farrah (and/or possible producer) could have made the music sound somewhere in the neighborhood of Rehearsing, or in the neighborhood of "Baako," rather than what it did sound like. (Whether she/they'd do it well is a different matter. But then, I find the two tracks from Rehearsing pretty dreary.)
*The three tracks I've heard, that is.
Re: Outside Looking In
They seem to be outside of a coherent community or audience that might "receive" this work, meaning listen to it for what it is. One reason "outsider" is a strange term is that it's usually the word for performers who have brought "inside" something -- the formal art community, the indie musicsphere, whatever -- despite having characteristics (of upbringing, developmental ability, cultural context, whatever) that seem superficially to put them outside of this community. And not just superficially, since often outsider/naive art is literally incapable of participating in the conversation around the art. Now, I would guess that in music this is a little different, and already I'm thinking of a million of exceptions. There are plenty of artists whose work critics talk about that couldn't participate in the conversation meaningfully, and why shouldn't the art itself be how the artist "speaks" to the conversation, and what about when the artist is openly challenging those assumptions intellectually/self-consciously (Bob Dylan) or by just doing what they do whether the conversation cares or not (Teena Marie, maybe?).
There's long been an effective (academic) separation between fine arts and pop art in academic music, much like there is in the fine arts/museum community. The kinds of people who theorize about experimental or new classical music often don't have much meaningful to say within pop communities, even when they "use" them. And pop communities often don't really know what to do with experimental music.
I think Farrah falls somewhere between these two, and there's something strange about it. I bring a kind of focus to the album (mostly through the vocals) that I would bring to a Lygeti concert or something, but I also listen to it "as pop," because it recalls enough pop structures -- especially through electronic music ("After Prom" is close enough to a minimal techno artist like Pantha du Prince) -- that I can walk to it.
So I would posit, even if there are exceptions, that for the most part, "people who hear pop singles that debuted in InTouch magazine" have very very little overlap with "people who go to experimental music concerts in major cities or at universities or at museums, etc." But to "get" Farrah, you kind of need to understand both worlds, even when these worlds can often self-consciously define each against the other. One reason people go to experimental music concerts is to opt out of the culture typified by watching Teen Mom, etc., and there's no end of run-of-the-mill anti-intellectualism in entertainment/reality/gossip communities.
(2) So what they might be inside of would be something like "unironic straddling of entertainment culture and fine arts culture and criticism." Or: collapse of "high and low" in more than just lip service, since "high" and "low" are more social characteristics determined by "who listens and how" than some aesthetic component of the work. You can reclaim pop and listen to it with erudition, but that doesn't follow that you actually engage with the music as a target audience member or care about the natural discomfort that comes in the social chasm separating you from some other fan.
Pockets of the music crit community do this sort of, but I think it's a pretty small subset of an already small group. These are critics who are both intellectuals and fans in all of the connotations that that word holds -- shrill hordes of teenybopper intellectuals. Something like that. I think Teena Marie lives here; in their own way I get flashes of this straddling -- the "right in the middle"-ness of that straddling, not just gestures to one side or the other -- in Michael Jackson, Andrew WK, t.A.T.u., Shakira. All of them seem unstable somehow in their "preferred sphere" -- Teena Marie and MJ and Shakira in mass appeal pop, Andrew WK in an indie subset of mass appeal pop, t.A.T.u. in a chic club subset.
Re: Outside Looking In
I think that we have to go back to social expectations, though. If I knew going in that this album was done by an up-and-coming experimental artist who wanted to make a "statement" about reality TV by taking recordings of Farrah Abraham and sticking them on top of their amateurish electronic productions, I would probably be galled enough at the implications not to listen very carefully. I would probably miss the magic in the music, which is still there whether it was done in earnest good faith or not. Because I was able not to engage those expectations of electronic art -- built up through ad hoc experiences with smug appropriation projects -- I was listening to it "with Farrah," from the perspective of the reality TV star now trying her hand at art therapy pop. That put it in conversation with youth media, a really fascinating and frustrating amateur mode of production usually not widely circulated outside of enrichment programs that can often sound pretty strange. It's not too far removed (in that sense) from "Bootlegged," the weird song my students made (with some of my amateur production help) in 2009.