A Year In America December 11, 2008
Dec. 12th, 2008 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotNew Britney jumps into the top five, surprise.
Britney Spears didn't exist for me as a human being until she shaved her head. I loved some of the music but never paid attention to the person. Which doesn't mean that once I knew what to look for I couldn't look back and find all sorts of personality. But that's a process I've only half gotten started on, which is why Britney comments from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girlboymusic and alexmacpherson tend to have more depth than mine.
Britney Spears "Circus": Starts strong, her seductively self-involved chirp morphing into a sadness that the lyrics ignore. Well, I guess the sadness is implied in her claim to be controlling the circus. I don't know if the claim - coming from this overwhelmed woman - is even meant to be convincing. Without Blackout to compare this to, not to mention "Touch Of My Hand" (talk about autonomy drifting into sadness!), this is plenty powerful, but it's still disappointing. A TICK nonetheless.
Akon f. Colby O'Donis & Kardinal Offishall "Beautiful": Akon's lightening up even more than on "I'm So Paid," and again goes for simple prettiness. Song doesn't have anywhere to go beyond the prettiness, and it goes for a while. But this time the prettiness is enough. TICK.
Montgomery Gentry "Back When I Knew It All": It's not like MG weren't always peddling stereotypes, but I could usually count on these guys to make me care. The rebellious young man finding it's too late to learn anything from his mortally ill dad made me cry a couple of years ago. But this new song makes me shrug. A Sunday sermon can turn life around? Well, not if you give the sermon nothing to say and instead rely on the word "sermon" itself to convey the whole message. Preferred Montgomery Gentry back when they were defiant know-it-all know-nothings, to tell you the truth. They were actually more articulate back on "She Couldn't Change Me," going on about the change they were resisting - the new gf coming in with her pink wallpaper and hip-hop mess and treating him like her darling little country pet - than they've been since then about any change they've ever embraced. And "Back When I Knew It All" itself is at its most evocative in the first verse, about when they were con-artist kids putting the moves on chicks. In general, what they're teaching themselves to unlearn (trucks can jump a ditch!) is delivered with more wit and appeal than what they're learning. Which doesn't mean the theme of "change" won't continue to be an inexhaustible source of interesting tension in country music, given that the genre is officially wary of change. Few have done that tension better this decade than these guys. I've given the rest of their album only a half-attentive listen (was startled by fires and snakes on track one, found inventive guitar licks all through, but no melodies have clicked yet), so it's too soon to say for sure they've worked the theme into a rut, but that's the way it seems. This track has good jangling Byrd-guitar interludes that I wasn't expecting - "Turn Turn Turn" would be a reference - and an equally unexpected folkie harmonica (reminding one of the author of "My Back Pages," perhaps), but the melody falls into lameness. NONTICK.
(For those of you who've not listened to much Montgomery Gentry, 2001's Carrying On is the place to start.)
Britney Spears didn't exist for me as a human being until she shaved her head. I loved some of the music but never paid attention to the person. Which doesn't mean that once I knew what to look for I couldn't look back and find all sorts of personality. But that's a process I've only half gotten started on, which is why Britney comments from
girlboymusic and alexmacpherson tend to have more depth than mine.Britney Spears "Circus": Starts strong, her seductively self-involved chirp morphing into a sadness that the lyrics ignore. Well, I guess the sadness is implied in her claim to be controlling the circus. I don't know if the claim - coming from this overwhelmed woman - is even meant to be convincing. Without Blackout to compare this to, not to mention "Touch Of My Hand" (talk about autonomy drifting into sadness!), this is plenty powerful, but it's still disappointing. A TICK nonetheless.
Akon f. Colby O'Donis & Kardinal Offishall "Beautiful": Akon's lightening up even more than on "I'm So Paid," and again goes for simple prettiness. Song doesn't have anywhere to go beyond the prettiness, and it goes for a while. But this time the prettiness is enough. TICK.
Montgomery Gentry "Back When I Knew It All": It's not like MG weren't always peddling stereotypes, but I could usually count on these guys to make me care. The rebellious young man finding it's too late to learn anything from his mortally ill dad made me cry a couple of years ago. But this new song makes me shrug. A Sunday sermon can turn life around? Well, not if you give the sermon nothing to say and instead rely on the word "sermon" itself to convey the whole message. Preferred Montgomery Gentry back when they were defiant know-it-all know-nothings, to tell you the truth. They were actually more articulate back on "She Couldn't Change Me," going on about the change they were resisting - the new gf coming in with her pink wallpaper and hip-hop mess and treating him like her darling little country pet - than they've been since then about any change they've ever embraced. And "Back When I Knew It All" itself is at its most evocative in the first verse, about when they were con-artist kids putting the moves on chicks. In general, what they're teaching themselves to unlearn (trucks can jump a ditch!) is delivered with more wit and appeal than what they're learning. Which doesn't mean the theme of "change" won't continue to be an inexhaustible source of interesting tension in country music, given that the genre is officially wary of change. Few have done that tension better this decade than these guys. I've given the rest of their album only a half-attentive listen (was startled by fires and snakes on track one, found inventive guitar licks all through, but no melodies have clicked yet), so it's too soon to say for sure they've worked the theme into a rut, but that's the way it seems. This track has good jangling Byrd-guitar interludes that I wasn't expecting - "Turn Turn Turn" would be a reference - and an equally unexpected folkie harmonica (reminding one of the author of "My Back Pages," perhaps), but the melody falls into lameness. NONTICK.
(For those of you who've not listened to much Montgomery Gentry, 2001's Carrying On is the place to start.)
