Year In America June 26, 2008

[koganbot]

Billboard was late posting the Hot 100 yesterday, so this was pushed back a day.

This week, an onslaught of singles from Camp Rock, most of which will fall off the charts after the initial download flurry, since they'll get little airplay beyond Disney. Results are middling: lyrics are rote self discovery with no discernible character, a contradiction I don't find charming, especially given all the Taylors and Alys and AJs (not to mention the Ashlees and Britneys and Lindsays who used to dominate the genre) who do have character and are much more deserving of attention. Demi Lovato has potential as an actual Avril Lite, if she were given better settings, and I prefer "Our Time Is Here" to the charting singles. The Jonas Brothers had a fine moment several years ago where they turned "Anarchy In The U.K." into Hanson-style bubbleboy pop, and they're generally not terrible but haven't matched that moment since. So, a lot of tracks are on the borderline this week. Oh yeah, and buried amidst all this is a song I've currently got penciled in as my number three of the year and that could rise, by someone who's not much older than the mediocrities hanging out at Camp Rock.

Miley Cyrus "7 Reasons": Miley sings well - blares roughly in the blarey part without being grating - but so far I find neither melody nor lyrics even passably interesting. NO TICK. [EDIT: Song title is actually "7 Things" but I've got a massive mental block against remembering it; two posts back I called it "7 Seconds."]

Demi Lovato & Joe Jonas "This Is Me": Plenty of musical accompaniment to give this heft, the result actually weakening what might be flashing and alive in Demi's singing. There's enough flash and melody to justify a BORDERLINE TICK.

Rihanna "Disturbia": Delicious, joyful, agonized, made me laugh, made me cry - well, to be more accurate, made me smile, made me bop, made me furrow my brow in thought. Bright glaze and deep passion. How does she do it? My only reservation is that the words are abstractly and poetically strange rather than genuinely disquieting. While this track may not be as striking as "Umbrella," it's just as good. GIGANTICA TICKIA.

The Jonas Brothers "Play The Music": This would be nicer if it weren't so relentlessly nice, but even then wouldn't be a tick, since the song isn't worth much in its own right. WON'T TICK YOUR MUSIC.

Joe Jonas "Gotta Find You": A pensive song: "I need to try to get to where you are/Could it be you're not that far?" Indeed, it develops that "You're the voice I hear inside my head/The reason that I'm singing/I need to find you/I gotta find you." Uh, look inside your head? But Joe, I'm not the voice inside your head, or if I am, you don't seem to be listening. Well, enough of this chit chat. What does this sound like? Sing-alongable, not bad, would be better with someone who could do more than force the words out in thin blue lines. NONTICK.

Cast Of Camp Rock "We Rock": Weak performance of gang-shout pop-rock that's a distant descendant of Gary Glitter and the Runaways. Likable. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Flo Rida f. will.i.am "In The Ayer": Been consistently so-what on this guy. Southern hip-hop; somewhat catchy pronunciation set in a somewhat doomy setting; strong, slow groove. Does a good job, the groove, the mood, would be nice to move to in the deep A.M. of a dance club, but leaves nothing. NONTICK.

Comments

Pedigree

[koganbot]

Lovato's mom, Dianna Hart, was a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and country recording artist.
--Wiki

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Does it bother me that "Gotta Find You" is a spinoff of "This is Me," or do I think it's really genius / narratively skillful? I can't decide. (Either way, "Gotta Find You" is WAY BETTER as the bridge to "This is Me" than as a song of its own.)

[koganbot]

Yeah, I'm wondering how these would work in context.

The two of the recent Disney Made For TV Movie Events that I've seen - HSM and Cheetah Girls 2 - were pretty pictures with music but I only intermittantly was able to connect to them as drama, HSM more than Cheetah 2. So far I've felt only one great song in all these soundtracks, "Breaking Free"* from HSM; no coincidence that its performance was a genuine, ecstatic tension release in the movie.

(*Though it is kind of obvious when Drew Seeley is taking over from Zac in the high parts.)

[koganbot]

But I still grimace in "Breaking Free" when they say "different than" rather than "different from."

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

It's a Cinderella story with "This is Me" (performed no less than three times during the movie) serving as the glass slipper -- Shane (Joe Jonas) hears but doesn't see Mitchie (Demi Lovato) singing it to herself, and ostensibly spends the rest of the movie obsessing over this mystery singer, to the point of writing a song based on her song. At the end of the movie, Mitchie gets up on stage and sings "This is Me," and Shane says "That's the song!" (or something), stands up, and begins singing his song in the middle of her song, at which point you realize holy shit it is the same fucking song.

Which is why I can't completely hate it, despite whatever it is I find so distasteful about making two songs out of the same song -- it is pretty clever, in context. (And wait, why do I find this so distasteful when I was so pleased about Lindsey Buckingham essentially doing the same thing throughout Tusk, and Stevie Nicks essentially doing the same thing throughout...well, her entire career?)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

It's a perfectly cromulent phrase.

(No, seriously, what's wrong with it?)

[koganbot]

Oh, back when I was a kid (when we walked miles barefoot in zero-degree weather to and from school, uphill both ways, and there was no water so we had to do our laundry with rocks) "different than" was considered bad English*, and we were expected to rephrase sentences in order to support the "different from" construction - though in this instance rephrasing wouldn't have been necessary, since "different from who we are" works fine.

*And the actual England English "different to" wasn't even within our awareness.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

The two of the recent Disney Made For TV Movie Events that I've seen - HSM and Cheetah Girls 2 - were pretty pictures with music but I only intermittantly was able to connect to them as drama

Overall, as dramas, I think the new DCOMs are only as effective as the least effective of the old DCOMs, but Camp Rock is particularly terrible as A Movie Which is Supposed to Make You Feel Things -- they keep pausing the action to perform mediocre pop songs that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot. (On a related note, it is terrible as A Movie in Which We Are Supposed to Believe People are Performing These Songs Live. At one point, Shane sits beside the lake with Mitchie and his acoustic guitar, and sings a song to her -- complete with background vocals and a rhythm section! That boy is magic!)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

"Different to": driving me crazy since 2006.

[koganbot]

The idea doesn't bother me. The displeasure I get from the "Gotta Find You" is Joe's singing, which I'm liking less and less over the years, and which doesn't hold up within the song's naked-ballad arrangement. (Do think on further listens, however, that the song probably deserves a tick, whereas "We Rock" fades, isn't even borderline close to tickiness.)

In real movie life do Shane and Mitchie get on each other's nerves, esp. Mitchie getting on Shane's nerves, like Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in Shop Around The Corner, so that the musical revelation is simultaneously an emotional revelation (they'd actually been falling in love throughout the movie)? I think the idea of basing the two songs on the same song is fine, especially as you describe and I've further imagined the narrative, where, even though the world can see them in a way that's different than (or from) who they are, creating space between them 'til they're separate hearts, the sameness of the songs proves that the two hearts beat as one.

In other news, Michael Lohan has informed us, on his OK! magazine blog, that he's probably the father of a 12-year-old girl from an affair he had in the past during a time he was separated from Dina (as a wild stab I would say the affair was thirteen years ago, more or less); perhaps the 12-year-old could be cast in a movie where she shows up at a camp and is put under the tutelage of a goody-goody counselor (Lindsay Lohan) whom the 12-year-old - a horrifically rebellious sort - drives to utter distraction. Later in the movie it is revealed...

[koganbot]

Well, that's standard for musicals, the full orchestra coming out of nowhere - notice the arrival of drums, bass, and guitars on the piano-only "Breaking Free" - but if the drama is halfway competent it's not something that you're really going to think about much. (It helped in HSM that Zac Efron could actually act. Just seemed that script and settings were a rushed job. As the unexpected breakthrough blockbuster, I imagine it was pretty low budget. Whereas Cheetah Girls 2 had no such excuse.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

In real movie life do Shane and Mitchie get on each other's nerves, esp. Mitchie getting on Shane's nerves, like Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in Shop Around The Corner, so that the musical revelation is simultaneously an emotional revelation (they'd actually been falling in love throughout the movie)?

Not really, no. She and Shane are quite aware that they're falling in love/like/friendship (not really clear because they are SO CHASTE) throughout the movie -- until, of course, it is revealed the Mitchie lied about who she is ( she said she was the daughter of a music television exec, but her mom is actually the camp cook). Shane is like "I THOUGHT I KNEW YOU, BUT ALL I KNEW WERE LIES!" and stomps off. So they do get on each other's nerves for about five minutes (literally). But then he sees her crying in the corner of the dance class he inexplicably teaches (he's a guitarist! he doesn't dance!) and makes some speech about how your music needs to be WHO YOU ARE (dude, why are you giving songwriting tips to a DANCE CLASS?) while staring soulfully into Mitchie's eyes in a way which indicates that he has forgiven/believes that there is something true and good about her.

Thus the movie undercuts the revelation, fixes the undercutting, and then undercuts it again, and really it would have been a better movie if it had your plot.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

But Camp Rock isn't a musical. People don't sing and dance in lieu of dialogue -- they sing and dance because they are at a music camp and have to perform in talent shows.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

"7 Things" is an Armato/James song, highly disappointing. "Our Time Is Here" and "What It Takes" from Camp Rock also Armato/James, I haven't heard those ones yet.

The Miley Cyrus and Jordan Pruitt albums are both released this month. One of the new Jordan Songs, "One Love" is on Radio Disney, have you heard that one yet?

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

Disney needs to learn how to pick and choose which cliches they want to swipe for which movies.

[koganbot]

"Breaking Free"