There is no way Tisdale makes my albums list

[koganbot]

"Now here I stand, and I'm still just that girl, I'm following my heart, in this amazing, crazy world." Ack! And this is the second song in which she follows her heart; the first time she had an excuse; it was someone else who wrote the words. There's no way this album makes my ten-best list. Just no way. Even its having three of the best singles of the year doesn't make up for all the little-girl voicings and the rote soul-searching of the rest (oh, I know, the lyrics are heartfelt, and she means them). I can and have voted albums with awful songs on 'em - I'm made of strong stuff, I've done it, you can look it up - but I need five or six amazing songs, not just one amazing song and two really good ones and most of the rest being more-or-less OK to dull. (So is Tisdale an example of what's right with pop - that this only somewhat-talented girl and these somewhat-more-talented songwriters and producers can create amazingness - or what's wrong with pop, that we can't get her to do better or can't come up with better people to do it?)

I actually like Tisdale's energy. But I think she's fundamentally an actress who sings, which means she's conveying a personality and expressing what the lyrics are supposed to be about but she doesn't know how to let sound come in and take her - or have her voice come in and take us - so the heave and throb of music isn't in her. It is in (or is found by) Rotem and DioGuardi et al., who can give her great gobs of bass and vibrating harmonies, moments at a time.

Last night I listened to a few Naked Brothers Band songs in the background while doing my taxes; better than I expected, but I expected it to be terrible, to be blah and bland and boring; instead was easy and mild and sweet. I will listen further after the polls are sent.

The Hives The Black and White Album: garage punks who keep things light while charging around with a faux cantankerousness that keeps things moving. I listened to seven tracks, will listen to more but I've a list due so these guys will have to wait because they're not going to be on it.

Posted this on rolling country:

I did my first listen to Little Big Town's A Place To Land. Am genuinely puzzled that Xhuxk and Chris like it so much, in that the four killer songs from the previous LBT alb kill anything on this. Didn't hear one I liked until the fourth track here (about poor Evangeline who suffers verbal abuse in silence and denial) and I wasn't really whomped with emotion until the final two tracks: "Lonely Enough," where Karen Fairchild asks God to bring her dead lover back to life, and "Fury," where the band finally makes like the Southern rockers they always have the potential to be. Maybe the whomping came from the cumulative effects of the earlier tracks, so more feeling could come on a second listen, perhaps. But Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were way more scintillating in their California harmonies than Little Big Town are, and I still don't understand why Little Big Town choose to diddle around on acoustics when they've got potential monster hooks. I did enjoy the totally muddled theology. Seems to me that if you're the all-knowing and all-powerful God you would know what it is like to feel lonely, especially since Karen insists that the Almighty can do anything. (I myself can't figure out how an almighty being can know what it's like to be uncertain and lonely, but then I'm not an all-knowing being; maybe the big guy sent his son to feel such things and report back.) I was amused by Phillip Sweet's modest ambitions in "Vapor": "He was here only 33 years but his life changed the world/And he gave up all he had/I want to leave a legacy like that." Well, work on your harmonies and get some people to chronicle your life and maybe you'll have a shot.

Didn't notice any deliberately ridiculous and funny metaphors this time, nothing like the last album's "You plowed me like a tractor/And you used me up and put me out to pasture/And I'm left to eat your dust," though I haven't been following the words with great attention on these first listens, so I could have missed some. I think "Firebird Fly" - which rocks pretty well - was meant to be metaphoric or parable-like in an amusing way, but I didn't manage to get the gist.

Comments

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

So is Tisdale an example of what's right with pop - that this only somewhat-talented girl and these somewhat-more-talented songwriters and producers can create amazingness - or what's wrong with pop, that we can't get her to do better or can't come up with better people to do it?

By that definition, Ashlee Simpson is an example of what's right with pop. But the problem with Ashley Tisdale isn't that they can't get her to do better, or can't come up with better people to do it -- it's the sense that they don't want to. It's the sense that you could replace any (or all) for the people involved in this album, and it wouldn't change anything at all. It's the sense that this album was assembled using step-by-step instructions: insert singer into song, affix song to album. "Rote" is the right word for it.

I'm not quite sure why I get that sense. I mean, I like "Be Good to Me," because it's heartbreaking, if you think about it, and because it's Kara -- but think of how much better it would be if Ashlee were singing it, or how much better it was when it was called "Say Goodbye." Nobody bothered to do anything more than what was absolutely necessary to get the job done.

(I myself can't figure out how an almighty being can know what it's like to be uncertain and lonely)

Well, he's the only one, and people are always asking for things...

Kelly Clarkson does a pretty excellent version of this, by the way, with "Irvine."

I remember moderately liking the Little Big Town album, when my crazy fucking boss made me listen to it over and over on the way to and from DC. Especially the song about being raised in a small town and being muddy or something, and that one where they welcome the guy to the family and then threaten to shoot him, which may actually be the same song, now that I think of it. (Although the latter, if it's not the same as the former, is just kind of a less effective, less interesting version of Kathleen Edwards's "Back to Me.") I would mostly wait for those two (or one) to come on again, though -- can't recall a single line.

[koganbot]

That was the previous Little Big Town album that he made you listen to. The muddy one is "Boondocks" and the one where they welcome the guy to the family and threaten him is "Welcome To The Family." I thought you also might have liked "Bones" (about where all the skeletons are buried) because it's obviously modeled after Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain," and "Mean Streak," 'cause it to sounds Fleetwood Mackish.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Oh. Maybe we listened to both, because I also remember something about someone's dead boyfriend/husband/whatever. I definitely need to listen to both, then, if only to figure out why I spent nine hours in a car with them and didn't pick up a single lyric.

You know what, I probably do like "Bones" -- he played me something at the interview and I went, "This sounds like 'The Chain,'" and then I forgot the title, lyrics, and what it actually sounded like, making it impossible to ever find again, so thanks.

[koganbot]

it too sounds Fleetwood Mackish, that is.

[koganbot]

Did you see the Jukebox reviews of "Be Good To Me"? One of them is mine, but my favorite is this one, by M.H. Low:

Oh sure, she doesn't ask for much, just somebody to be good to her, that's all, pinkie swear! Then you start dating her, and discover that "being good" is a very broad and fuzzy term that includes gifts of expensive jewelry EVERY DAY, and walking her poop machine of a dog EVERY HOUR. But you only have yourself to blame, for being seduced by this thundering teenpop number - complete with urgent pizzicato strings, a plaintive "please!" ending, and even "oh!" shouts from a vaguely "street" male backing vocalist for that extra "cred" - into signing on the dotted line without reading the fine print. Low maintenance my ass. [7]

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I remember being confused / pissed off about that one. I'm still confused / pissed off about that one -- it's kind of like Dave's riff on "Don't Talk," except not funny or interesting, because at least Vanessa is clearly being demanding, and Dave is clearly writing about the song.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Not sure how relevant this is, but is MH Lo a man or a woman?

Also, I think I'm going to post our subsequent "Don't Talk" convo on a more public blog, as you made good points and rightfully call me out on some (intentionally) spiteful bullshit.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the same thing. Google turned up nothing, and reading through other Jukebox blurbs, I'm going to guess MH is a man, based on the tone, but...like you can really tell, based on the tone.

Excellent. I am going to respond to your last comment, I just haven't had a chance yet.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Er, in that convo, I mean. Your last comment in that convo.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well my friend Ross referred to Lo as FEMALE when plugging his or her blog (posts as Brittle Lemon here: http://trembleclef.blogspot.com).

[koganbot]

Oh, I don't think M.H. is claiming that such demands are in the song, just that they're a subtext that he feels like bringing to it. And it sure seems witty to me.

(I assume M.H is a he, but I don't know.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

So...why write bring it up in a review of this particular song? I mean, it contradicts the song itself (she makes one clear statement of what she wants: for you to be there when you say you'll be there), so what it says to me is that M.H. didn't bother to listen, or didn't think it was necessary to listen. S/he had something s/he wanted to say and was going to say it, reality be damned. It's lazy, it's arrogant ("if I write it, it must be true!"), and it's insulting to the reader ("they'll totally never notice that this is the opposite of reality!"). It's like the tiny blurb version of the Salon Britney review. Like, why bother writing about the music if you're not interested in the music? Start a blog about all your shitty girlfriends, if that's what you want to write about.