My Pazz & Jop Ballot, part one

[koganbot]

Here's my Pazz & Jop ballot as I just submitted it; I've got a week to write comments. If I write any, I'll repost this with the comments added. Also, as far as I'm concerned the year doesn't end until December 31, so I'll post expanded lists then, and for all I know the order and contents of my top tens might also have changed.

Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2008

SINGLES
1. Rihanna "Disturbia" (Island)
2. Ashlee Simpson "Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)" (Geffen)
3. Ashlee Simpson "Little Miss Obsessive" (Geffen)
4. Heidi Montag "No More" (no label)
5. Robyn "Who's That Girl?" (Konichiwa)
6. September "Cry For You" (Robbins)
7. Annie "Songs Remind Me Of You" (Island)
8. Britney Spears "Break The Ice" (Jive)
9. Buraka Som Sistema f. Pongolove "Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)" (Fabric)
10. V.I.C. "Wobble" (Reprise)

ALBUMS
1. Danity Kane Welcome To The Dollhouse (Bad Boy) 13 points
2. Willie Nelson Moment Of Forever (Lost Highway) 13 points
3. Scooter Jumping All Over The World (All Around The World) 12 points
4. Ashlee Simpson Bittersweet World (Geffen) 11 points
5. CSS Donkey (Sub Pop) 11 points
6. María Daniela Y Su Sonido Lasser Juventud En Éxtasis (EMI Mexico) 10 points
7. Vanessa Hudgens Identified (Hollywood) 9 points
8. Santogold Santogold (Downtown) 8 points
9. Britney Spears Circus (Jive) 8 points
10. Buraka Som Sistema Black Diamond (Fabric) 5 points

Comments

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's gross. I don't hate Scooter by any means but they're basically a comedy joke act and I am very much not down w/comedy joke acts for longer than 10 seconds (and my 10 seconds of Scooter appreciation are long gone).

The Return Of The King

[koganbot]

Scooter are blatantly funny, sometimes irritatingly so, but I think you're quite wrong about their being a joke act. I think their essential goal is transcendence, not laughter. At least, I think it's their effect, whatever their intent. It's fundamentally religious. Each song is a story whose moral is the Return Of The Riffs And Of The Beats. So the funny chipmunk tunage is there to be indulged in but then overcome. It helps that the tunes are usually quite good and that the riffs and beats are usually very good. And the humor helps prevent the transcendence from being mired in piety. In other words they're not a modern metal band. A potential drawback in the little I've heard of Scooter (the new alb and a smattering of earlier singles) is that the chipmunk voice could be too much an escape hatch - perhaps the beauty needs to be delivered as straight-on sentimental balladic beauty, with the conviction of '50s-style rock 'n' roll ballads, or the conviction that someone nowadays like Brandy brings to her platitudes, beauty that would be a challenge to the beats and riffs, when they return, to either carry the beauty with them or to be better than a beauty you didn't think you wanted to end. I don't know. Right now the return of the beats and riffs comes as a release, but I think it might be even more or a release if it were a release from something to exquisite to bear rather. Potentially, if done well, if they were actual geniuses.

I think Scooter believe in the beauty and are using the chipmunk voice to protect the beauty from being destroyed by sentimentality, and maybe they're right.

Really, I'm so new to Scooter that I don't have them in any kind of perspective. I'll know better in six months. But I think they've got the tunes and beats and riffs.

Re: The Return Of The King

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know. I think the chipmunks are quite beautiful, to be honest! Esp. in "Logical Song," which is on an earlier album.

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[koganbot]

argh, this got mauled:

Right now the return of the beats and riffs comes as a release, but I think it might be even more or a release if it were a release from something to exquisite to bear rather

How about:

Right now the return of the beats and riffs comes as a release, but I think it might be even more OF a release if it were a release from something TOO exquisite to bear rather

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(when it comes to dance, bear in mind that I basically like poncy hipster dance - which might be because I socialise to house/techno/balearic stuff, and I believe that it is important when it comes to going out to be as scene as possible - but stuff like Scooter is just too brash, too lowest-common-denominator for me. This is kinda indefensible snobbery but I figure that I only have a finite number of years to be an indefensible scenester so I am making full use of it, and it's not as if I'm pretending to like or dislike music. Simply put, it's not a groove I can dance to right now.) (The port may well be kicking in about now.)

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[koganbot]

Well, it's so ridiculously fast I don't understand how anyone dances to it for more than twenty minutes, but for those twenty it's irresistible.

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[(Anonymous)]

>they're basically a comedy joke act <

Sorry, I gotta agree with Frank here -- I don't get this comment at all. "Funny" is hardly the same as "joke act." The idea that somebody would think funniness in music is a bad thing by definition is really beyond my comprehension. (Reminds me of fools at Pitchfork hating Northern State and Electic Six so much a few years ago, though I'd say Scooter is less overtly comedic than either of those) (I did appreciate Lex's honest explanation later about why dance music that hits him as cheeseball doesn't fit in his social sphere, though.)

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[(Anonymous)]

(Still not sure, though, what lowest common denominators Lex hears in Scooter's music, or -- more importantly, though now I'm curious -- what other bands they've got those denominators in common with.)

Re: Lex, prepare to be horrified!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I hate Electric Six for much the same reasons that I can't be bothered about Scooter. And I have a visceral dislike of comedy generally (as opposed to funniness).