The MTDE Awards (MaHaWaM and Farrah Abraham)

[koganbot]

Dave posted this on Tumblr:

I seem to be subconsciously looking for the closest thing I can find to the vibe of “My Teenage Dream Ended” each year (last year it was Jenny Wilson's EXORCISM).

This year it appears to be Mahawam: Is an Island, which is very brief and very good.

I replied:

Dave, I just checked YouTube to find that Farrah Abraham has taken down all her vids from My Teenage Dream Ended. Still has "Blowin'," a more conventionally song-like track from a couple of years later, and she continues to put vlogs and the like on her YouTube channel (some contributed by her daughter, she says on her "About" page). Haven't explored them yet. [EDIT: It's possible that there's some other explanation for the absence of the videos than "Farrah Abraham has taken down all the vids." But I can't think of what another explanation would be, since I don't know who else would or could take them down or if someone else could claim some authority or ownership over them. Publisher? MTV?]

My guess is that, unfortunately, she must have internalized all the criticism and hatred that was thrown at her for her absolutely odd and original music. The music's still up in bits and pieces, posted by one fan here, another there, sometimes creating their own videos. In the meantime, no one's made music like it, before or since.

"On My Own - Farrah Abraham" (Watch on YouTube)

(I realize that it's hard to explain or justify that last sentence, since any description I'd give — "singing, but not melodically, the words being scraps of images, confession, events, feelings, some rhythm but no attempt at meter or rhyme" — could describe at least some, for instance, spoken word, improv, jazz poetry, hip-hop (the latter probably something of an inspiration; she may be an outsider but that doesn't mean she's from Mars*). So the conception isn't radical. She's not going rhythmically against meter and line, it's just that her rhythms and repetition don't come from there, come from speech instead, but with dancebeat music backing her she's not constrained by the coherence of normal conversation either; nor by poetry. So it's the result that's radically different.)

(Dave and I once talked about some related Farrah issues on LiveJournal ("I'm In With The Out Crowd"), and Dave and lots of others talked about her all over the place at the time, Dave even getting a piece into The Atlantic.)

*And it wouldn't hurt modern Soundcloud rappers to give her a listen. I bet you some would get ideas.

Comments

Album video comment thread (skyecaptain)

[koganbot]

skyecaptain reports:

The comment thread on the most prominent unsanctioned album-length YouTube video really steers into "MTDE" as avant-garde masterpiece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyYA4byQXNk

Although one of the things I like about MTDE is that it doesn't really code as "avant garde" any more than it codes as anything else.

(Wow, I took a VERY long time to actually address your questions in that thread! I am a master filibusterer.)

Availability

[koganbot]

You can download the tracks from My Teenage Dream Ended from Amazon at 99 cents a pop, or you can stream for free if you pay for Music Unlimited or Amazon Prime.

You can download My Teenage Dream Ended from iTunes for $9.90 or the songs individually for 99 cents.

You can stream for free on Spotify.

You can stream for free on Google Play if you pay for Google Play or YouTube Premium.

Or you can stream the whole album on the YouTube link Dave provided.

I can't find the original videos anywhere. Someone posted "The Phone Call That Changed My Life Official Video" with clips that are lifted from Enigma's awful and mawkish "Return To Innocence" (the clips don't look so bad with Farrah's tattered voice scraping the sheen off her own track's actual sadness).