Frank Kogan

With Will's permission I am posting my contributions to the Jukebox's "Best-Off" for 2009, including the two rounds that never went up on the site. Apparently this does not mean that those two rounds (plus a so-far nonexistent final) will never appear on the Jukebox, but it is likely that those rounds will be replayed and rewritten.

The important thing to note in what follows is that I HAVE WRITTEN A POEM. Even if you get bored with what precedes the poem, do not leave this post without scrolling down to read the poem.

The more intrepid among you will also see that, in a less worthy moment, I say that stillness is not much of a move. I am embarrassed at making such a lame crack, but now I have warned you. Also, I somehow never found the opportunity to point out that Taylor Swift's "Fifteen" is her fifteenth best song, so I am informing you now. I know some of you may find such an assertion altogether too convenient to be believed, but I assure you I checked the arithmetic three times.

( Groups 5 and 7 )

( Round Two )

( Quarter-Finals, featuring A POEM )

( The Semis )

Another installment in this (possibly short-lived) experiment I'm conducting where I try to address people nicely who have misapprehensions about Taylor Swift songs.

Here, someone named Arianna applauds Claire Danes and her portrayal of fifteen-year-old Angela Chase in the excellent but short-lived '90s TV show My So-Called Life, then imagines Claire/Angela in other settings, including this:

"2) Claire Danes in a Taylor Swift song:

Some dude puts unwanted sexual pressure on Claire Danes. She smacks him."

So I posted this on Arianna's comment thread:

Hey Ariana.* Not sure what point you're making with number 2. Are you saying that this is what Claire Danes would do if she were playing Taylor or are you saying that this is what Angela Chase would have done instead of what Taylor and the other girls in Taylor's songs did? The thing is, the sexual attention in Taylor Swift songs has always been wanted, though often with ambivalence, Taylor or one or another of her friends wanting the sexual attention but not always knowing how far she wants to take it, and then having complicatedly ambivalent feelings about the romance after it's over, usually. Which may well have been what would have happened with Angela in relation to Jordan, except the show didn't air long enough for the scriptwriters to start working that out. Maybe some of the boys in Taylor's songs should've been smacked early, before things really got going, but I don't see how that would have been better for the songs (you then wouldn't have had Taylor's great responses to getting cheated on or to her or her friends getting dumped), or that Angela would have behaved differently from how Taylor and crew did behave.

[And Dave posted his own response on his Tumblr.]

*EDIT: I misspelled her name when I addressed her.

Alfred Soto claimed over on a Justin Bieber review thread on the Jukebox that "In our many, many teen-pop discussions we rarely discuss the interaction of sexuality and the singers' self-representations" (he also claimed that gay male critics preferred male singers, which certainly didn't accord with my experience, or that of anyone else who commented). Anyhow, I took this as a challenge to engage in familiar riffing about Ashlee, Lindsay, and Taylor. You can click the link for context; here's what I wrote:

( Familiar riffing about Ashlee, Lindsay, and Taylor )

Hallelujah I'm a bore, or the Top 40 is, anyway, with a Haiti charity knock-off and a country disappointment the only newcomers on an already snoozing chart.

( Justin Timberlake & Matt Morris )

( Jason Aldean )

Speaking of Hope For Haiti, down at #72 Taylor Swift's Better Than Ezra cover is painfully out-of-tune, though the pitch problem is the musicians' at least as much as Taylor's; I seem to be erratic as to when pitch problems bother me. Taylor herself is erratic: Cis reported last year that Taylor's London show was completely in tune, and Himes wrote in his year-end essay that he'd witnessed her being pitch perfect. Maybe for all of Taylor's apparent poise, she actually chokes in the face of a national TV audience. (But my own pitch problems never have anything to do with choking or not, from what I can tell.)

Last month I linked the "radio edit" of my decade's end piece, the version that was printed in the Las Vegas Weekly. Here under the cut is the "extended freestyle mix" (a.k.a. director's cut), a full one thousand words longer – that's 60 percent more, for the same price! To put it in brief, I'm suggesting that the musical story of the Web is words, but that this Web word story can be one of distance and isolation.

( Microwaving A Tragedy: The marriage of romance and romanticism in '00s pop )

Quote of the day, from skyecaptain:

Why on earth won't someone who wants to talk about Taylor Swift's "image" please listen to her album fucking ONCE before they write things about her? PLEASE.

Have only read some of the essays, but of the ones I read Chuck's was the only one I understood.

My decade's end piece in the Las Vegas Weekly, though after I'd pitched it I rebelled against the idea of trying to fairly sum up, hence no mention of Timbaland or Max Martin, whom I'd peg as the two most important figures in '00s music. (The Club Mix has brief mentions of "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Since U Been Gone," though not in regard to Max's input.) In about a month I'll post an Extended Freestyle Mix, and I'd welcome any suggestions as to what you think it should contain.

Microwaving A Tragedy: The marriage of romance and romanticism in '00s pop

(Links to my old Las Vegas Weekly columns are here, if you're interested.)

From June 6 to July 11 the number 1 song on Billboard's adult contemporary chart was Taylor Swift's "Love Story." From July 18 through October 24 it was Miley Cyrus's "The Climb." From October 31 through December 26 (which hasn't happened yet, but Billboard can read palms), it was/is Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me." To put this in perspective, number 1 right now on Radio Disney's Dot Com request line is Iyaz, who's 22 years old, making him a couple of years older than Taylor and five years older than Miley. Taylor, by the way, turned 20 last week; does this mean her reign as an adult contemporary queen may be in jeopardy?

This week's Top 40 newbies feature Taylor Swift twice, once on John Mayer's "Half Of My Heart" ("Haven't heard it," said Tom half-heartedly)(nor did Frank) and once on Boys Like Girls' "Two Is Better Than One" (I've heard it once and pronounced it whiny emo-pop, far inferior to Taylor's brilliant, whiny princess pop, but will require myself to give it a second chance). Only other newcomer is Leona Lewis's "Happy," which didn't make me happy a couple weeks ago over on poptimists but it too will get another shot, when the next Billboard comes out and I'm on a computer where I can hear music.

In other chart news, Glee Cast do several things that don't hit the Top 40, Chris Brown's "Crawl" doesn't crawl up the charts (and won't crawl anywhere near my eardrums in the near future if I can help it*), and Sounds Of The Season: A Taylor Swift Holiday Collection from 2008 re-enters the album chart at #20.

( *Asterisk aghast )

"Russian Roulette" entered the chart two weeks ago at 100, rose last week to an unpromising 75, then this week on the heels of a publicity blitz that included Rihanna's 20/20 interview it jumps to 9. We'll see if it sticks; it doesn't match anything else on the chart, in subject matter or severity. My guess is it holds on for a bit, maybe falling a little then hanging around as people get used to it.

( Rihanna )

( Justin Bieber )

( Jay Sean )

( Jesse McCartney )

( Taylor Swift )

( Luke Bryan )

( Birdman )