Posts Tagged ‘Glee’

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Bubbling Under 8/20/11

Saturday, September 3rd, 2011

Victorious Cast featuring Victoria Justice—”I Want You Back”
#108
This is pure karaoke—the only thing that sounds different from the original is the vocals—but it’s a world away from Glee or the worst of American Idol. Still, it’s a well-crafted curiosity and nothing more. It helps that Justice doesn’t try to do Michael Jackson. More and more, in fact, she reminds me of Katrina Leskanich. I await her version of “Walking On Sunshine”.

Darius Rucker—”I Got Nothin’”
#109
After the warm and sleep-inducing paeans to family life on Rucker’s last album, the bleak desolation of this record comes as a surprise. What may be even more surprising is the way Rucker sings it: there isn’t a trace of country phrasing. If anything, he sounds like a grunge singer dabbling in a different genre (if you ever wanted to hear Eddie Vedder sing country, this may be as close as you get). Not a great record, but better than I would have expected.

David Nail—”Let It Rain”
#115
One of the things that makes country so fascinating right now is the sense of growing stylistic openness; more and more it sounds as if they’re willing to try anything. This may be desperation in the face of imploding sales, but it may also have to do with the broadening of the country audience not just beyond the south (which has been going on for decades), but from a rural and suburban base to one more urban. So now you get more traces of urban styles, even touches of hip-hop and urban soul, besides the obvious blues, southern rock, and easy-listening pop. This record, good but not great, features pumping organ as it’s rhythmic base, along with background vocals that suggest both black gospel and the sophistication of Fleetwood Mac, plus the unfortunately de rigueur power ballad climax (when is someone in country going to fight the loudness epidemic? they, of all genres, should be leading the charge). It doesn’t veer far from the basics, especially in the vocals, but it’s enough to make it sound fresh, and to make you wonder just where country is going to be a few years from now.

Skrillex—”Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”
#24
The sound of an early-twenties DJ/producer with a love of not only techno but heavy metal, playing at fun and games in the studio (or on his laptop). In other words, nerd music, but with a twist. It’s no surprise when near the end the relatively unfiltered vocals sound as wimpy and wan as Death Cab for Cutie or Owl City, but Skrillex isn’t interested in emphasizing his sensitive side, he’s into creating alter egos that reflect multiple aspects of his personality, even the nasty ones that aren’t that pleasant to listen to. Right now the dichotomy is obvious, jarring, and somewhat off-putting; if he should ever manage a synthesis, though, he could be something.

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Hot 100 Roundup—7/9/11

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera—”Moves Like Jagger”, #8
Javier Colon—”Fix You”, #52
Dia Frampton, “Losing My Religion”, #54
Vicci Martinez—”Dog Days Are Over”, #68
Xenia—”The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”, #92

Pitbull featuring T-Pain & Sean Paul—”Shake Senora”
#69
This record doesn’t sound like a good fit for anyone involved—too brazen and obvious for T-Pain, but, if anything, too subtle for Pitbull, who’s better at leering and lustful growling than the lightness of touch that would be required to make this work. As for Sean Paul, only his biggest fans would notice that he’s here. It doesn’t even work as parody. All they’ve done is overemphasize what the song is already about, and not in a way that points out anything interesting. I do like Pitbull comparing booty, which reminds me of “My Gal Is Red Hot”, but the rest is a disaster.

Selena Gomez & the Scene—”Love You Like a Love Song”
#72
One of the things I love about the production team Rockmafia is their belief in traditional pop form and structure. They’re well aware of the possibilities of emotional tension and release inherent in verse-chorus-verse form, and they do their best to take advantage of it while keeping the music itself as simple and catchy as possible. Sometimes the results sound too simple and automatic, as they do on the chorus here. But it also helps them to create classic pop moments like the first verse, as perfect a melding of music, mood, lyric, and performance as you’ll ever hear. If the rest of the song came close to it, this would be a great record. As it is, it’s only a very good one. Not that that isn’t achievement enough.

Bella Thorne & Zendaya—”Watch Me”
#95
What’s most fascinating about this Disney-pop variation on Ke$ha is how well it works. It isn’t as brash as Ke$ha—the music is more bass heavy, and of course the “sleazy” is removed—but otherwise it would be difficult to tell the two apart. It isn’t that Ke$ha’s music is easy to imitate, but that it’s tapped into a generation’s universal mood of directionless, hyped-up energy and restlessness that, oddly enough, Disney has helped to promote and capitalize on, and maybe even helped to create. The Disney tweens of five years ago are the Ke$ha, Katy Perry, and GaGa and Glee fans of today, and it’s a sign of Disney’s marketing savvy that they’re trying to keep up with them. I don’t think they are, quite, since it’s all out of their control now, but this is a good record nonetheless, and they deserve credit for trying.

Jill Scott featuring Anthony Hamilton—”So in Love”
#97
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 5/14/11

Train—”Save Me, San Francisco”
#98
The Loggins and Messina of their era, and if they’re not as irritating as, say, Rascal Flatts, it’s only because their tunes are catchier and clever self-deprecation is a part of their act. They’re just as clueless, though. They can’t even get a song about their hometown right. Except for a few obvious lyrical references, nothing about this record sounds like San Francisco. What it sounds like, instead, is an above average Rolling Stones cover band, and considering the Stone’s history in the bay area, is that really the vibe you want to go for?

Brantley Gilbert—”Country Must Be Country Wide”
#100
True enough, but does that mean it has to be heavy metal, too?

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Hot 100 Roundup—6/25/11

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Paramore—”Monster”
#36
As their craft improves their energy, though still strong, becomes more streamlined and automatic, and less interesting. This is above-average pop-metal, but if the song weren’t so obviously about the band’s fractious split last year, would anybody care?

Brad Paisley with Carrie Underwood—”Remind Me”
#59
Frustrating. It’s a good idea for a song, the chorus is cute and catchy, and Paisley’s first guitar solo is as erotic as country ever gets. But Paisley loses control of this record somehow, which is rare for him. By the end, the arrangement seems designed to drown out the singers, and since we’re talking about Carrie Underwood, more drowning out is required than normal ears can stand; some of her high notes are so piercing they could be used in invisible fencing systems.

Pitbull—”Pause”
#73
A gimmicky confection based on what I assume is a Euro-disco sample, which, coming from Pitbull, is just about my favorite sub-genre right now. It gets a bit tiresome when you sit and listen, but I bet it kills on the dance floor. Pitbull isn’t a genius, but he knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. His single-mindedness may be his greatest virtue.

Dia Frampton—”Heartless”
#78
I’ve been debating whether I should refuse to comment on The Voice singles the same way I have Glee, and this record, horrible in every way, certainly makes me lean in that direction. I understand the power of television to make hits, but this, even more than Glee, is an unjustifiable waste of time and energy. It isn’t a waste of talent though, because no actual talent is involved.

Selena Gomez & the Scene—”Bang Bang Bang”
#94
What has always separated producers Tim James and Antonina Armato (otherwise known, unfortunately, as Rockmafia) from their Disney-pop colleagues is the undercurrent of smoldering eroticism that runs through their music. Even though they’re making straight pop records in a time of excess, they almost always keep their cool, and rarely overplay their hand. Gomez, it turns out, is the perfect delivery system for their brand of low-key sensuality: relaxed, knowing, and all-powerful without once raising her voice or engaging in meaningless melisma, she sounds more mature and experienced than not only her own 18 years, but than most 30-year-olds. The obvious double entendre of the title may make the message too clear, but even without it everyone would know exactly what this guy will be missing. And yet radio still treats Gomez like she’s kid’s stuff.

Toby Keith—”Made In America”
#95
In a way it’s a relief that Keith saved his jingoistic nonsense for the fourth or fifth single off his new album. He’s probably as tired of this stuff as most everyone else, and only does it because it’s expected of him. If the earlier tracks had been more successful he probably wouldn’t have released this as a single at all. But here it is all the same, another stolid piece of propaganda, country-style, all about the patriotic act of paying a little more for locally produced goods (maybe he should join the locavore movement). Odd exception: the King James bible. Keith must know that’s not really an American product, right?

Gavin DeGraw—”Not Over You”
#96
Ryan Tedder, as producer, continues his way down the pop music foodchain and finds a willing victim in DeGraw, who hasn’t had a decent hit since his debut six years ago and welcomes Tedder and his echoey drums with open arms. The result is old-school faux-soulful sincerity updated with new-school faux-soulful sincerity. Just what we’ve all been waiting for.

Romeo Santos—”You”
#97
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 5/28/11

Martina McBride—”Teenage Daughters”
#100
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/16/11

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Hot 100 Roundup—5/14/11

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Glee Cast
“I Feel Pretty/Unpretty”, #22
“Somewhere Only We Know”, #42
“Born This Way”, #44
“As If We Never Said Goodbye”, #80

Javier Colon—”Time After Time”
#65
So Glee and American Idol aren’t enough, but now I have to review this crap, too? Colon has a voice, alright, but he has no real idea of how to sing with it—he’s all affectation and sentimentality. The arrangement is terrible, as well—the lines and phrases are broken up with no consideration for meaning or sense, turning a good song into a pile of sticky glop. Until I hear different, that’s what I think of The Voice in general, and may we never cross paths again.

Duck Sauce—”Barbra Streisand”
#89
This is about as predictable as dance music gets, and once they’ve recited the title and brought in the vocal hook, you know exactly what this record is going to do and where it’s going to go: nothing and nowhere. The non sequitur of the title is the only interesting thing about it, and even as a joke it’s only funny about one and a half times. By the third time around you’re struggling to pay attention.

Foster the People—”Pumped Up Kicks”
#96
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/2/11

Nicki Minaj—”Super Bass”
#98
This isn’t Minaj at her best or most outrageous, but it isn’t Minaj at her most sentimental and cringeworthy, either, the side of her personality I was afraid was taking over. In pop terms it’s may be best thing she’s done: a clever and meaningless piece of fluff, with a great hook and hilarious word play. Which doesn’t mean it lacks bite. Congratulating her man for being in touch with his feminine side is as sharp a slap at male rap culture as you can get, and even if she’s being sarcastic it’s a great line. Especially since Minaj’s feminine side, and the way she plays it, is the scariest thing about her.

Jana Kramer—”Whiskey”
#99
A wonderful song, and Kramer, whose voice reminds me of Dolly Parton, sings it perfectly. Which makes this an appropriate time to lament country music’s continuing inability to keep the goddamn volume down. The band is so loud it all but drowns out the funniest and cleverest lines of the song, which also happen to be its emotional center. Kramer’s too gifted a singer to be overshadowed in this way, and maybe the best thing she could do for herself, since she already has an ear for material, is find a producer who knows how to set that material properly.

Maroon 5—”Never Gonna Leave This Bed”
#100
The groove is impressive as always, but it’s still automatic, and Adam Levine’s egotism just won’t go away, even when he’s pleading. A line like, “Fake it, fake it, I’ll take whatever I can get” may sound as if he’s being brutally honest with himself, but what it really means is that he doesn’t care whether the woman is having a good time or not as long as he’s getting some. He also doesn’t help his case by waking her up in the middle of the night to tell her he’s not going to leave her. Like she asked. What a selfish little fuck.

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Hot 100 Roundup—5/7/11

Monday, May 16th, 2011

Luke Bryan—”Country Girl (Shake It For Me)”
#22
The intro, especially that throbbing guitar line, shakes pretty well, but after that it’s all by rote. If Bryan actually demonstrated some honest lust, his sexism might be forgivable, but instead he goes on automatic and gets progressively duller.

Beyonce—”Run the World (Girls)”
#33
Based on a Major Lazer sample (aka Diplo and Switch), this is essentially an M.I.A. track with all the third-world references and atmosphere removed, and that loss of texture makes a huge difference. The bare bones sound is as bald and uninteresting as Beyonce’s well-meant lecture on sexual politics. Since this song makes explicit what has been implicit in almost every record she’s made as a solo artist, I assume Beyonce is either running out of patience or running out of ideas, probably both. Either way she’s beating us over the head with a message that was more powerful when it was partially hidden and presented in dramatic terms. “Irreplaceable” is a far greater feminist work than this preachy bore.

Adele—”Turning Tables”
#63
This woman knows how to sing (though not this time), but she doesn’t know how to write a song (or arrange one). When the strings come in you realize her real stock in trade is melodrama, not emotion.

Glee Cast
“Turning Tables” (featuring Gwyneth Paltrow), #66
“All By Myself”, #87

Bridget Mendler
“Breakthrough”, #88
“Somebody”, #89
Two more songs from the Lemonade Mouth soundtrack, and though neither is as good as “Determinate” (which is quickly turning into my favorite pop song of the year), both are far better than one would expect from Disney. It would be easy to say that this is simply Disney doing a better job of keeping up with pop trends than they have in the past, but the fact is that in the last few years it’s pop that has been moving closer to Disney rather than the opposite. Now that Glee has taken over the High School Musical audience (who are, after all, five years older) and Nickelodeon is chasing the latest tweeners, Disney moves on to high school pop-rock, tracking close behind Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, and Avril Lavigne, and downplaying the showtune cheeriness that spoiled so much of their earlier music. It’s still derivative as hell, but it’s also right on track with the times. And catchy. Don’t forget catchy.

Jennifer Lopez—”Papi”
#99
Though there’s nothing to indicate it on the credits, this sounds like something Lady GaGa may have cooked up for a b-side and then decided to give away instead. With GaGa singing, this might stand a chance to be both sexy and defiant. Lopez, instead, sounds cheerfully submissive to her man—which is her idea of being sexy—and invites every other woman in the world to join her in her self-degradation. She should ask Luke Bryan to appear in the video—he’d feel right at home.

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Hot 100 Roundup—4/16/11

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Wiz Khalifa—”When I’m Gone”
#57
In which Khalifa proudly explains why he doesn’t really give a shit. It’s not “When I’m Gone” as in “I know you’ll miss me but you’ll get by”; it’s “By the time I die I’ll have spent all my money and you guys won’t get jack.” Why? Because he can, that’s why. You don’t honestly believe he thinks about this stuff, do you?

Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer—”Give Me Everything”
#60
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/9/11

Sara Ramirez—”The Story”
#69
Having pioneered the commercial endorsement of music in prime time, Grey’s Anatomy finds itself behind the curve and goes Glee on us and lets one of its cast members throw a record together over a weekend and release it for purchase. For all you Katy Perry haters who wonder what she’d sound like without the assistance of Dr. Luke and Max Martin, here’s your answer. I don’t think even Perry would be this off-key on the loud parts, though.

Britney Spears—”I Wanna Go”
#73
I suppose it’s healthy on a personal level that Spears is now making jokes on the same subject she sang so passionately about just a few years ago. It’s good she’s over it, but the loss in both intensity and musical value is obvious. Besides, whenever Spears tries to be funny it always sounds forced. “Lably, lably, lably”, indeed.

Victorious Cast featuring Victoria Justice—”Beggin’ On Your Knees”
#83
Nickelodeon’s campaign to wrest the teenpop crown away from the wounded Disney is so intense that it’s almost fascinating in its own right. It must be expensive, too, bringing in producers like Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and, in this case, Shellback, to boost your chosen teen idols. Too bad those first rate producers are only bringing their second rate material. I mean, did Katy Perry and Kelly Clarkson already reject this, or did Shellback not even bother offering it to them?

YC featuring Future—”Racks”
#86
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/2/11

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Piracy schmiracy, what if it’s radio that kills sales?

Monday, February 28th, 2011

A couple of weeks ago Billboard’s print edition ran a fascinating graph (for some reason it’s not in the online version of the article) charting sales of Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck [Forget] You” against its place on the Mainstream Top 40 radio chart. For the first couple of months radio play and sales ran pretty much in parallel, rising and falling together. But somewhere in its third month of release something strange happened: the song dropped off the airplay chart, and as soon as it did, shot up the digital chart, more than doubling its sales in two weeks. A few weeks later it reappeared on the airplay chart, where it’s been slowly rising ever since. But as airplay has risen, sales have dropped in almost exact inverse proportion to the song’s airplay ranking.

This may be a singular phenomenon (and the jump in sales may have been related to the song’s appearance on Glee), but it would be interesting to track other records and see if the same thing holds. It makes perfect sense, after all, that people would avoid buying a record as long as they can hear it on a regular basis on radio. I was reminded of this yesterday when I was reading Chris Molanphy’s presentation at this year’s EMP conference (I wasn’t able to go this year, but a PDF of Molanphy’s talk can be downloaded here). In it he discusses the way the major labels tried to kill the single in the ’90s by creating radio hits but refusing to release actual singles. Records would remain on the airplay charts for months at a time, quite possibly because it was the only inexpensive way for people to hear music they loved without paying an exorbitant price for it (not that the albums didn’t sell, but you have to wonder how many singles might have been sold if they had ever been released). The same phenomenon still exists, to some degree, on the Adult Contemporary Airplay chart, where records can remain in the top ten for months at a time while barely selling at all.

This has been said many times before, but people are always going to seek out the least expensive option of hearing something as ephemeral as pop music. It’s as if they already know that they’ll get tired of it soon enough, and don’t see the point in making a major investment. Maybe the labels’ problem is that they refuse to recognize the ephemerality of the music they’re making; they think they can sell it forever, even when most of the time they’re lucky to keep people interested for more than two months.

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Glee: the final word

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

For months now I’ve been trying to come up with some final statement regarding Glee. I’ve made at least three attempts, but every time I think I’ve gotten close I stumble over the amount of historical knowledge I thought was required to really understand it and the theoretical framework I’ve built up in my head to explain its import. But this weekend I came up with an idea that for some reason had never occurred to me before: Glee has no import. Not just aesthetically (which should be obvious), but culturally, as well. It doesn’t move the culture forward, but it doesn’t move it backwards, either. I had thought of Glee, at first, as a musical graveyard which eventually became, as so many graveyards do in popular culture, a zombie playground, but it’s too unimportant, and too late in the game, for that. The old pop it seems to kill was dead, at least as a cultural force, long before Glee arrived, and though it appears to be devouring modern pop, it does so only to consume those parts of it that are reminiscent of the old, ignoring anything new and important. Glee is like an historical marker at a rest stop, where an exhausted culture can catch a quick nap and absorb some sketchily delivered history before it moves on to its next, only vaguely understood, destination. In any other sense, Glee is insignificant. And if Ryan Murphy can keep his mouth shut, or unless some miracle occurs, I don’t intend to ever mention it again.

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Gleeful publishing

Friday, January 28th, 2011

EOnline presents an estimated breakdown of how much the appearance of a song on Glee can bring in for songwriters and publishers. No mention of money for the cast, though, who last I heard were getting royally screwed. Maybe that’s whose money Ryan Murphy donates to arts education.

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Anger can be power

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Alfred Soto at Humanizing the Vacuum performs a public service by reprinting part of an essay by Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys that appeared in Details in 1992, about the power and importance and positive aspects of hatred.

When people are told about Coke – “It’s the real thing” – they should think, “No, it’s a hideous soft drink that is fantastically unhealthy to drink, full of sugar that turns into glucose that turns into fat.” …And they should hate the people who represent that. They should hate Michael Jackson for trying to foist Pepsi onto them, to make them fat victims of their own society. They should hate more. Hate Pepsi, hate Coca-Cola, hate Michael Jackson. Hate George Bush. And think about the alternatives. That’s another good thing about hatred. It makes you think about the alternatives.

It reminds me of my favorite quote from Pauline Kael: “Has it ever occurred to you that caring for others brings a bite to the voice?” All those people who complain about snark should remember that it doesn’t always come from a jaded cynicism (though too often it does), but also from a deep and real hatred and anger on the part of people who actually care about what’s going on in the arts, in the culture, and in the world. Just remember that the next time I mention Glee.

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