The Illiterate

no more use than bubbles

There’s a lot of apologizing going around on the pop charts these days: Akon, Timbaland, Linkin Park, even matchbox 20, who have decided, just like Linkin Park, that not only do we all need to apologize for what we’ve done (whatever it is) but that we’re all doomed to destruction whether we apologize or not. They’re not alone, either. As this article from The American Scholar suggests, we are living in an age of apology, most of it shallow and meaningless. I particularly like the quotation regarding Mrs. Touchett, a character in Henry James’ A Portrait of A Lady: “[Apologies were] of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn

little girl lost

Ann Powers says much the same thing, only with more clarity and detail, about Britney Spears’ Blackout as I did about “Gimme More” (scroll down to find the review). Nice to see someone in the mainstream press willing to point out what would be obvious to everyone if they weren’t indulging their self-inflicted blindness in the tabloid glare. Of course, Ann isn’t exactly the mainstream type, thank God.

fair and balanced, too

A couple of weeks back, when I made my quip about Rolling Stone liveblogging their review of In Rainbows being a sign of the death of music criticism, I didn

things I’m probably not supposed to understand

Let me get this straight: Ozzy Osbourne says that illegal downloading is costing him millions of dollars, and as a result he has to play 90 some shows a year to break even, and yet this is the same guy who put on a touring festival last summer for free, expecting all his costs to be offset by merchandising. Does this mean someone’s figured out how to bittorrent t-shirts?

top ten update

There

rap factory

In case you were wondering how so many faceless hip-hop records get made these days, and why there are so many one hit wonders, the saga of “Shawty”, as told by producer Chris “Drumma Boy” Gholson to Billboard, should give you a good idea:

I ended up with a song deal for six tracks [with Atlantic]. Paul Wall’s “Gimme Dat Flow” was the first, and Plies’ “Shawty” was the second. After I gave Atlantic the “Shawty” beat, they sent the record to T-Pain, who recorded his hook as soon as he heard the beat. After that, Atlantic shot the record to a few of their artists

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