Frank Kogan

In which a blogger blogs briefly:

( Nicki Minaj )

( Jason Aldean with Kelly Clarkson )

Jonathan writes ("Luis Miguel 'La Incondicional'"):

This project has really been testing my patience with the Big Ballad, the single song form which I have to work harder to appreciate and, appreciation won, have less desire to revisit, than any other. I'm hardly alone: the single most widely-hated song of the last twenty years (at least among respondents with pretensions to youth and cool) is "My Heart Will Go On"...

So I thought I'd reprint here my Pazz & Jop ballot for 2005, where I asked "Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?":

Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop Ballot 2005

Has a ballad ever won Pazz & Jop?

The answer is maybe - if you're willing to call "Ms. Jackson" and "Gangsta's Paradise" ballads ("Fast Car"? "When Doves Cry"? "O Superman"?). But basically no, and whichever nonballad wins this year will come from a long line of previous nonballads. (None of the strong contenders is a ballad, though I suppose "Stay Fly" is something of a crypto ballad, which is why I didn't vote for it.) Occasionally a ballad makes my list (for what it's worth, Hilary Duff's "Fly" - which is something of a power ballad, if "power" is a word that's usable in connection with small-voiced Hilary - would have been my number one in 2004, if I'd been paying attention to Hilary), but in general I don't vote for them, and in general I don't like them.

This isn't just about ballads. I'm looking back on Nelson George's half-smart essay in the 1989 P&J supplement, wherein he identifies white critics' blind spot in regard to upscale bourgeois black music but doesn't take in that the blind spot is shared by most black critics as well and that it's a blind spot that critics black and white have in regard to white music too (Phil Collins, anyone?); furthermore it's based on a very questionable idea of what counts as upscale: the Sex Pistols' progeny that we (or "we") often vote for are at least as upscale as the performers we shun, but it's our version of upscale, and we're not willing to call it such (among other reasons because it, and we, have some genuine populist ideals).

Let's pretend for the sake of argument that most P&J voters are pretty good critics. Well, this means that Pazz & Jop has a built-in blind spot in regard to music that sucks. I mean, most ballads are sentimental shit, and they're deadening to listen to. That's why I don't vote for them. But it therefore means that P&J doesn't represent the year in pop and semipop. It can't. My ballot doesn't even represent my year in music, much less pop's. It wasn't designed to. "Gasolina" made the bottom of my Top Ten, and I'm guessing it'll make the bottom of P&J's Top 40, but it - and the hot-dance Luny Tunes reggaeton thing it represents - is not the major story in Latin crossover of the last few years, or it's only half the story, the other half being genteel stuff for smooching like "Suga Suga" (which is nice enough, but kind of bland); for the most part it's only Latinos who even know that the guy - Baby Bash - who did "Suga Suga" is Latino.

( Why do women rock critics hate ballads? Why don't girls who like ballads become critics? )

Nitsuh writes about my homies in the 303:

It's not like there's anything new about boyish white guys trying on the kind of masculinity they're getting out of hip-hop - in these cases it can lead to some incredibly boyish bullshit. No, the bits that get me are the really pop ones, these 3OH!3 choruses that represent pretty much the only place you can hear boyish white "rock" guys singing the kinds of pop hooks you could almost expect from a Gaga or Britney song. (Or, you know, Ke$ha or Katy Perry collaboration.)

And Nitsuh says much more as well. Cites FOB and MCR as precursors but thinks of 3OH!3 as breaking a barrier. Then he gives us 140 characters to say what we think, so I write this:

Stooges-Eminem (self)contempt but deliberately paper thin; Kelly C crucial precursor for tune-rock, Megan McC "Tap That" for tune-rap-rock

Meanwhile Tom, expanding luxuriously in his tumblr lair, writes:

3OH!3 and Ke$ha and even Katy Perry (still not heard Brokencyde) are the first pop to make me feel old. Maybe just 3OH!3 Not in a "I don't get this" or "I couldn't get this" way, I think I get it OK even if I couldn't articulate it - but I don't think getting it could feel natural.

Tom also points out that grime-pop amalgams are hot atop the Brit charts these days.

( I cite the Stooges and reflect on my inability to get old )

Familiar faces as the summer stumbles to a close.

( Lady GaGa )

( Kelly Clarkson )

( Cascada )

A star glistens typically, a couple of country acts straddle the borderline, and there's a dead man walking.

( Kelly Clarkson )

( Brad Paisley )

( Eminem )

( Sugarland )

I'M BACK! Well, I was always here, but my column is back, dealing with an issue that has stirred the hearts and shaken the minds of many a poptimist: what is the nature of legacy and continuity in country music; or, if my mother blows her house to pieces, does that mean I have to blow my house to pieces too when I grow up?

The Rules Of The Game #26: Because Of You I Am Afraid

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )

I'm getting poxy fuled over on the teenpop thread, so I'll post the link here:

Kelly Clarkson joins Metal Skool w/ her friend Jack Daniels.