Attempt to get Jessica to love what I love

[koganbot]

Hilary is all over the place musically, jumps from style to style, and Hilary the singer is a lot less warm than Hilary as Lizzie McGuire. And I have absolutely no emotional investment in her (this sentence is not necessarily related to the previous sentence). And nonetheless "Fly" and "Come Clean" rank one-two as my favorite teenpop singles* since "...Baby One More Time." For further reading on the subject, search this thread [i.e., this thread] for "haunted, gorgeous" and "tremulous beauty ache" - though "tremulous" was probably the wrong term, since the voice doesn't tremble; it's not even fragile; it's ice-thin except it's not icy; translucently thin? In any event, this translucently thin voice singing, in a clear thin line, "I wanna feel the thunder I wanna scream," seems very right, this achingly, beautifully thin voice calling forth the deluge. (And the melody imprinted itself in me when I heard it, making me feel I'd always heard it. Perhaps that's just me, but doubt it.)

(*M2M's "Our Song" wasn't a single.)

Comments

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

1. I like "Come Clean", a lot, but sometimes I wonder if I don't prefer a) the DANCE REMIX RADIO EDIT which puts it behind some low-quality but quite entertaining bosh, or b) the version by German reality pop group Become One, which has slightly different lyrics: "coming out is sexier than always staying in" and might thus be about teh gays. "Fly" didn't do it for me, though.

2. Best M2M songs, I think, are the lush "Everything You Do" (which was a single) and the weirdly rueful "Payphone" (which wasn't).

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, I printed off the ILX Rolling Teen Pop thread yesterday (having not looked at at all hitherto). I've read the first 15% of it so far. TBH I wish there was more Hilary, more Li-Lo and more about teens who make pop than rock bands that appeal to teens* (maybe it gets to that later on?**) - I have zero interest in e.g. Morningwood and SOAD.

*or maybe a thread about artists that appeal to pre-teens would have been more like what I was hoping the thread would be like

**I will stick with it for a bit longer

[koganbot]

In fact, the remix is the version I own, and I love it, definitely has a tension to it during the dance break, with different overdubs of the vocodored "let the rain fall down" echoing around each other. Found a Become One version on YouTube, thought it was mediocre, but it was live so may not have conveyed the wonderfulness of the single. It did seem gay-friendly, however.

Love "Everything You Do" and "Payphone," even if cellphones were making the latter's premise obsolete. Sweet yearning from teens.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

"Come Clean," is definitely up there for me. Even above "...Baby One More Time." What's odd is that you distinguish Duff as McGuire from Duff as Pop Singer. For me, Duff is so adorable as Lizzy McGuire that it seeps into my listening of her music. Which is to say, she seems so much like Lizzy that I've come to view her entire persona as being that of Lizzy McGuire. Partially that could be because Lizzy's character overwhelms Duff's character. Partially, I think, it's because Duff's music is a little more angsty than Lizzy McGuire ever was, but isn't so different that it reshapes the way I think of her (like the Xtina reinvention completely shifted the way I thought about Christina).

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

OK I read another 10% this morning and the thread's picking up: you and Chuck clomping about in size 14 hobnail boots all over the place. I fear for the flowerbeds ;)

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, she just doesn't do anything for me. Maybe it's an American/British divide or something, or I've heard more similar and better stuff that makes me unimpressed. I guess really we're just looking for different things in her music, you find it and I don't.

"The Math"!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

It crosses all cultural divides, because unlike music, math is actually a universal language. (Although I'm not sure if you guys have *69 in the UK. I could imagine a British song that included the "hash key" going over American heads.) Hilary understands that Me + You = Us better than 2ge+her!

I think Paris and Hilary share some qualities in being, to a degree, indecipherable -- trying to understand Hilary's persona through concepts like sex or angst or anger or humor or _____ (all of which she employs in some capacity) is frustrating, because there's a personality there that's somehow crucial and almost ineffable...like I can't imagine anyone else singing a Hilary song, but I also can't define anything that makes Hilary "Hilary" and not any of the "similar stuff" you have in mind. Or to put it another way, you can "look for different things" in the music without really finding them, but still find something (and this varies from song to song) that suggests whatever it is you're looking for is there. Which is why it's interesting (in a less controversial way than Paris-pop-star vs. Paris-tabloid-star) that Hilary's "baggage" as Lizzie might enter as an issue, despite the fact that on record there's no real trace of Lizzie (even though I'm pretty sure her first single was released on Radio Disney as Lizzie McGuire, not Hilary Duff).

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what *69 is but we might still have it. The problem with the song The Math is that I already knew the version by Swedish singer Sahlene before I heard Hilary's and since it's Swedish I'm obviously going to like it better. That kind of makes it funny that you say you can't imagine anyone else singing her song! Hilary being Lizzie doesn't really affect my opinion of her as I'd seen music videos of Hilary before I saw anything of Lizzie, and I've only ever caught a few minutes of the show anyway. I just don't engage with Hilary as a popstar, even though she has the same basic attributes as other acts that I like, for example being a young, cheery singer of poppy music and more recently in the direction of pop-rock and electro-pop, both of which I like very much. This is why it surprises even me that I don't like her music (I actually think Hilary herself is quite ace, at least compared to Lindsay as a person, but I prefer Lindsay's music) but there's just something in her act that is unappealing to me. I want the music to jump out and grab me and it doesn't. Paris is a similar thing, I quite like her but apart from Stars Are Blind which I liked a reasonable amount I haven't been bowled over by any of the tracks I've heard from her album. I'm sure this is just a case of personal taste, though, since opinion does seem to be pretty split over her.

Re: "The Math"!

[koganbot]

Well, actually you've given a good explanation as to why Hilary and Paris don't bowl you ever: they're not bowl-you-over singers.

Re: "The Math"!

[koganbot]

Er, bowl you over.

Also "The Math," unlike "Come Clean" and "Fly" isn't exquisitely absolutely gorgeous, though the chorus is catchy. I do wonder what a bowl-you-over singer like Kara DioGuardi, for instance (who co-wrote "Come Clean" and "Fly") would do with those two songs. Kara's got a rain-come-tumblin-down song on the Platinum Weird album which she delivers with a tough Sheryl-Stevie vocals, and I can imagine her blasting her voice into "Come Clean" for a whole nother effect that would be a viable performance but would end up as who-cares competence. (Or maybe it'd be great.)

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

And I want bowl-you-over pop stars, proving the point that we are looking for different things!

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not the strength of Hilary's or Paris' voice that bothers me. It's normal for pop stars not to be great singers, and it doesn't really affect whether I like them or not. It's the combination of the songs and the way they sing them which aren't appealing to me. Also, I think I have different criteria for a disposable pop song than I have for something with a bit more depth. I tend to go for the pop acts who really grab your attention, whereas with less mainstream pop type acts I have different criteria, some of which Hilary or Paris might fit, but I don't find any very convincing signs of depth or meaning in their music.

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

By "less mainstream pop type acts", I mean acts who don't go for a commercial pop sound, whether or not their music could actually be classified as pop.

Re: "The Math"!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I should qualify that "The Math" is probably the closest Hilary has to the sort of bubblegum single I could imagine someone else singing (like Lindsay Lohan circa "Drama Queen" and "Ultimate"). Didn't realize it belonged to Sahlene first, though, will check it out immediately! (I'm bad with figuring out which European acts beat US teenpoppers to their own material...)

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I just realised actually I was mistaken, it's not The Math which is a Sahlene cover but in fact The Little Voice. I'll have to give The Math another listen now I realised I've got the 2 songs confused. You can hear Sahlene's Little Voice if you still want to by going to http://www.sahlene.com/ and whizzing through the playlist at the bottom about 10 tracks until you get to it.

The main offenders with US acts taking European songs are people like Play, who are (were?) actually Swedish but marketed to the US and covered loads of British hits. US acts covering European singles is fairly rare, though, cos I guess a lot of songs would be offered to the Americans before the locals as it makes them likely to get more exposure.

Re: "The Math"!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Hey, turns out I've written about Sahlene before in one of my Myspace posts, she's "friends" with Marie Serneholt. I remember her being good. Just got a Play album in the mail today (meh). Sort of ironic, the Cheetah Girls took one of their songs ("Cinderella") and have done better with it than Play did (ha, the other album I got today, the "Girl Next" comp, has the CG cover on it).

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I haven't bothered to listen to any Cheetah Girls yet - should I? Their silly name put me off, maybe cos it sounds like the Cheeky Girls, a terrible UK novelty act you may have heard of.

Sahlene's first album was really great, but her new one (released as Anna Sahlene) is just OK. She did have a great Melodifestivalen (Swedish Eurovision) entry this year, though, called This Woman. I'll send you her best 1st album song, a fun pop track called House that I think you will like.

Re: "The Math"!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Cool! And no, nothing of note by the Cheetah Girls yet. Yeesh, they're everywhere (in Disneyland) because of this TV movie they just did. Raven-Symone's solo stuff can be OK, but pretty mediocre overall.

Re: "The Math"!

[koganbot]

The name "Cheetah Girls" is probably the best thing about them, as it makes me imagine them doing the Tarzan and Jane vine-swinging thing in tropic jungles. Haven't seen the movies, though. Raven Someone is lead singer, right? (Er, Symoné.) The Wikipedia entry is hilarious, as the whole first half of it is devoted to whether Adrienne and Raven really hate each other or are just pretending, like a whole joke on the catfight thing. (You know, cheetah, cat-fight, get it? "The whole 'catfight' thing was just a joke about 'cat' and 'cheetah.'")

Anyway, what I've heard is absolutely ordinary r&bish pop, not despicable but not memorable either. Did a pale version of "Shake Your Tailfeather," have some Latin rhythms in the new movie, which is called The Cheetah Girls Go To Barcelona And Learn Catalon, and it stars Sandra Dee. I am joking, except about Barcelona and the Latin tinge. More people saw it than saw the High School Musical premiere, but I don't think it's having anything like the HSM impact. Album did open at #5 on the Billboard 200, where it's lodged for a second week, fending off Paris's debut but way behind Danity Kane up at number one with a bullet.

Re: "The Math"!

[koganbot]

xpost

Re: "The Math"!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

It's quite impressive that a properly cheesy pop album can do that well, even if it is giving pure pop music a bad name with its lame imitations of better artists. I'm glad that Danity Kane are doing well, even if they are r'n'b of the non-ace kind. Reality TV still has power.