Frank Kogan

I posted this over on poptimists, where meserach was asking if any blogs focused on pop lyrics:

Girls Aloud would be interesting to explore because, even though I sometimes like them quite a lot (made my P&J ballot last year with a song that most Brit critics didn't seem to like), I'm sure I don't get them. There seems to be a Brit tendency to simply declare control over style, as if to assert you're using fashion rather than following it. Not that most Brits do this, just the ones who make a point of manipulating style. Whereas their American counterparts - Warhol, Madonna - are much more contentious in their manipulations, which I think is a tacit admission that they're not in control, that one has to fight for style. So naturally I tend to identify harder with the Americans. Back forty years or so I recognized that the Stones were the best rock group, and I identified with Jagger's mind, and with Ray Davies', and his distance from the gorgeousness of his own music, but my heart was with Dylan and the Airplane and the Velvet Underground.

(Not that there aren't counterexamples. John Lennon always seemed to be fighting for his very right to breathe.)

OK, the latest Rihanna discussion that people frustratingly put under flock regards the second line in verse two of "Fire Bomb." Candidates are:

"Like the way that I'm at a tragedy"
"Microwave and a metal tragedy"*
"I echo within a metal tragedy"

My heart says "microwave" but my mind says "I echo," though the issue is hardly settled, and a third-party candidate may well carry the day.

*Leads to discussion of late-evening college entertainment consisting of different objects experimentally placed within microwave oven (some reliably characterized as "it's beautiful and it's blue").

EDIT: "Microwaving a metal tragedy" seems to be the - excellent - consensus, now. Or perhaps "Microwaving the metal tragedy." See here, especially weasel_seeker's suggestion that we add a dash:

Seems cold but baby no it doesn't have to be / Microwaving the metal - tragedy"

These are the eleven lyrics that no one identified last time, now with second line added and hints made broader. RULES still are to identify the song and performer, no googling. Song titles and other obvious spoilers are replaced with characters on TV detective shows.

( first and second lines plus massive hints )

OK, for my record third post in one day, here's a stream of the new Ashlee Simpson single, "Little Miss Obsessive."

I love it, love the singing (very warm, reminds me of "Fall In Love With Me"), a slow lead melody but a lot of movement and crosscurrents from the percussion, so an r&b feel on a pop-rock song, and I also love the way the words follow around her variously divided feelings, she being the one who shuns long goodbyes but who doesn't want to close out this affair. And the chorus going "I guess we're really over, so come over, I'm not over it" - I like the three "overs" saying successively different things. That's very skillful. And she's going for a specificity that was missing from "Outta My Head," the guy tossing in bed, her arguing with herself the next morning, and so on.

( but... )

First lines shuffled on MP3 playa (or first non-title-quoting lines, where this is the case I has used an ASTERICKS) - artist/title pls!

( lines )

BONUS QUESTION (more interesting than the actual quiz): Which of the ones you don't know would intrigue you, as a first line? (assuming they were performed OK) And which would put you off?

( hints )