top teen tunes!

[eta: here is a MixTube of all the songs discussed in this post. listen as you go!]

i picked up the veronicas' hook me up the other day (good ol' $2.99) and just listened to it again... it holds up very well, which makes me feel better about having written such a glowing review of it a year ago, despite the fact that i've barely listened to it since then. it is, in fact, a pretty great record. i'd forgotten about the how riled up some of us were getting at the time about the somewhat questionable girl-kissing references in "take me on the floor" (and also on skye sweetnam's contemporaneous "[maybe i should] kiss a girl")... little did we know then that that sh[l]ockstress katy perry would come steal that stale thunder and somehow warp it into 2008's most reviled, inanely 'zeitgeisty' pop inevitable.

anyhow, hook me up finally got a u.s. release this year - "untouched" even made it onto the p4k top 100 tracks list (which is notably ho-hum, but in a pleasant way; a low-key list for a low-key year.) not surprisingly the domestic version comes with a bonus track, advertised as such on the cover sticker (but not listed as a bonus): "goodbye to you", which i didn't realize until just now is a cover of a 1982 hit by scandal. hm. not sure what to say about that, since i don't really know anything about scandal. i do have the basic sense that they're not nearly as hip or worthy as tracy bonham, but what i do i know. (they did come from the magic decade, after all. and i suppose we owe them something for being the butt of all those lame patty smith/patti smyth jokes.)

i was gonna say that it's a sort of strange addition to the album, probably the lightest and frothiest thing on there - and an especially stark contrast to the high melodrama of the now-penultimate track "in another life" - generally pretty dispensable, although it's musically in keeping with the rest of the record. indeed it pretty much straight jacks the electro-candy groove from the title track, just sped up a bit. the verse melody is naggingly familiar ("solitary man"? "good riddance (time of your life)"?) but probably just generic; the most notable part is probably the silly squelchy synth solo, which nods almost undeniably to the organ solo from del shannon's "runaway," one of the greatest proto-teenpop hits (surely: who else would run away besides a teen or younger.) turns out that keyboard lick (and of course the melody) are also present in the original version too, so the v's didn't do a whole lot here worth noting except to revive the song for the benefit of weirdball birth control ads and fellow '80s-babies like me who missed out on it the first time. oh-kay.

speaking of teen-pop (because i haven't been, much this year at all), i wanted to mention a couple of my favorite recent jamzz, from artists who aren't quite so teen-centric (or, well, teen-aged) as they used to be, but have been showing a bit of that teeny-boppin' spark, more or less surprisingly.

the new beyoncé record has grown on me a fair amount - now i actually think the premise of splitting it into a ballad half and a banger half was a fairly smart or at least creative move (although it's still silly to split so little music onto two discs and call it an album), since they really are doing totally different things. no dispute that the ballad half is "better," more substantial and actually more engaging ("halo" in particular has been in my head a lot), but my favorite song on the whole package might be the entirely silly "radio."

it's a great and very fresh-feeling gooshy '08 club track production-wise - sounding, it must be said, a good deal like something we'd expect to hear from rihanna - but what makes it especially fun is how far it strays from typical beyoncé territory emotionally. it's beyoncé like we've maybe never heard her; not the mature, scorned-but-powerful icy-perfection goddess diva woman (though we get that again, a bit too explicitly so, in the next track), but an enthusiastic, excitable, slang-talking little kid.

i mean, who over the age of 16 would say something like "i think i'm in love with my radio/cuz it never lets me down." are there still people who actually feel that way? probably so (i hope so!), but the sentiment still feels decidedly like a throw-back, if not to the "golden age" of radio pop (um, whenever that was), at least to ll cool j c. 1985. i also just love the scene-setting opening stanza, in which she establishes her recent-to-current radio-rap cred, in highly un-beyonce-like fashion, by slurring "like erryday" and making sure she's rocking those stunna shades. it's totally preposterous, but in a very different direction from the way b is usually preposterous. and she totally hams it up - to hilarious effect, but at the same time it's an entirely convincing performance.

my favorite jam on the new taylor swift album isn't nearly so out of character for its artist (who after all is still a teen, and a full eight years younger than B), but it is striking for its highly teen-specific setting, as well as for its blissfully bountiful overabundance of melody (seriously, the song has like two-and-a-half separate choruses, and the verse melody is pretty catchy in its own right.) that's "you belong with me" - take a listen.

fearless has gotten a fair amount of ink for its 'maturity' - the song "fifteen" in particular, which does indeed seem like something that could be sung to a 15-year-old from somebody much wiser in years - but it's got plenty of youthful heart, and never more than on this track (the biggest standout for me, but that's probably just a quirk of what i happened to hear first, since plenty of the other songs seem like they're just as good.) "she wears short skirts, i wear t-shirts/she's cheer captain and i'm on the bleachers"... just says it all, no? [nb. "bleachers" rhymes with both "t-shirts" and "sneakers." that's some songwritin for ya.] and you have to love the snarkiness of "i'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like." [eta: and check out the accompanying image in the cd booklet, taylor as bespectacled band dork while her beloved fawns over the ditzy hussy with her bra showing:

notice that taylor is wearing neither t-shirts nor sneakers in this image... also: "go, tiger"]

finally, the recently rather quiet paris hilton, whom i and others discussed under the umbrella of "teen-pop" back in '06 even though neither she nor her presumed audience were teen-aged, and her music had a pretty obvious adult slant, has released one of the most teeny-sounding songs in recent memory. (i wasn't at all sure she'd actually get back to making music at all, so this comes as a very pleasant surprise...new album due in 09!) from it's title on down, "my BFF" nods to classic late-90s/early-00s teen-pop. it makes me think, in particular, of toybox and aqua, though the whole max martin parade of poppettes could be invoked as well.

lyrically, unrepentantly g-rated - the conceit is basically the same as "is it you?", except that paris is looking for a friend, not a lover. (it is the theme song from her reality show, of the same premise.) a little silly coming from a 26-year old, ya know? musically too, it's squeaky-clean and peppy, eurodance-style kidpop. so wholesome you want to gag (and it's actually pretty catchy, which might make it better or worse.) and this is paris hilton we're talking about? good one girl.

lovesex/futuresounds, more like!

that's right, justin, disco sucks! smash it smash it!!
oh, and what's that you say about your ex/love?

meanwhile, just as i've been falling under the starry spell of love, pain, i've also finally succumbed fully to the charms of futuresex/lovesounds. keith urban and justin timberlake both present themselves as lovermen first and foremost, but it's been interesting to consider the contrasts. it's hard to ignore the differences in their real-life (or at least gossip page) public faces: we know that urban is recently married, and from all evidence blissfully happy about it, while timberlake has gone from one much-publicized romance that turned out to be little more than a summer fling to making waves by macking it with the world's sexiest woman and then killing her off on video. and compare keith's liner note love letter to the glaring lack of thank you's in the futuresex booklet - almost unheard of in contemporary top-40 productions.

i had thought "my love" (inspired by cammy, or so we were told) was quite sweet and endearing, but now i feel a little bit exploited. it bears noticing that only maybe three other tracks on the album have similarly romantic sentiments (including two sappy ballads tucked away at the end); the rest are mostly boastful/lustful nightclub narratives in the paris vein. which is fitting: fs/ls gives paris stiff competition as the most inventive and exciting dance-pop album of last year - it's definitely not as consistent, but musically it's at least as inspired if not more so.

i know that some of the popist cabal have questioned why justin has reaped credibility and acclaim from the wider (and especially, hipster) music community while his closest musical peers continue to elicit disdain. (although that's not exactly true in terms of his teenpop-alumni contemporaries: britney's pretty much got the thumbs-up at this point, and while christina's latest wasn't raved about, it certainly wasn't mocked.) i'd argue that justin really is doing something markedly different from standard mainstream dancepop. actually it's timbaland doing it - or at least they're doing it together - but ultimately fs/ls functions almost as much like a hip hop or electronica album as a pop album. or rather, it's a little like all three and ends up being something fairly unique.

timbaland's still-stunning production aside, the album's most striking feature is how fluid its structure is - there are discernable songs, of course, but their songness is pushed and pulled almost to the breaking point, as they stretch beyond standard pop formats into extended breakdown sections, bookending preludes and interludes, flowing and mutating into one another. the clear musical breaks seem to happen in the middle of tracks as often as the end. even though most of the songs have verses and choruses, these are often subservient to the structures established by the groove, production, and orchestration: witness "sexyback," whose lyrically delineated structure ("take it to the chorus") hardly convinces us that it's anything other than a monolithic minimalist groove. (it gets much better when you start thinking of it as an house track rather than a pop song.)

then there are the true epics, the album's twin centerpieces (and masterpieces.) a lot has been written lately about "what goes around...comes around" - suffice to say it's possibly even greater than merely a (pretty damn great in the first place) resurrection and synthesis timbo's past glories: the stutter-beats from the late '90s, the 'eastern' hook c. 2001, and of course the synth symphony of "cry me a river." its less vindictive predecessor is the one i put in the 'cast:

10 lovestoned/i think that she knows Y justin timberlake

i've discussed some of its idiot-savant lyrical subtleties elsewhere - essentially, it's a dancefloor fantasy on par with loose joints' "is it all over my face." and fittingly, while the song part is sweet, it doesn't really take off until three and a half minutes in with a bongo breakdown that spends almost a minute practically begging to launch into full-on beardo space jam territory (there's gotta be a 15-20+ minute edit of this somewhere) before it remembers that it's ostensibly on a pop album. then it unexpectedly switches gears with some micro-emo guitars that usher in the convulsive yet harmonically rapturous "interlude" (if the breakdown was a bit longer, you could almost call it a reprise.)

if the album can't quite sustain the glory of these two back-to-back epics (next to which the first four tracks - including the first two singles - feel almost like preperatory intro material), it still maintains the sense of nearly limitless possibility, its dance-hip-hop-electro-pop love-in persisting even through the two decent but comparatively pedestrian slow jams and the gorgeous, sobering addiction parable "losing my way." in between, we get a pair of hip-hop/r'n'b joints which seem almost run-of-the-(endlessly-innovative-modern-rap)-mill until you consider what they demonstrate about justin's range. and then there's the breezy late album highlight "summer love," which almost approaches the heights of "lovestoned" and "my love," and would have fit perfectly on gold star for robotboy if i had listened to it in time.

it's taken me a while to get a handle on this album, i think because its unorthodox structure doesn't offer many clues about how to proceed. and while i wouldn't say it's flawless or necessarily destined for classic status, i do think it's a stunning piece of work, and a major statement. it's self-assured, but not always sure what it wants to be. in some ways it's a perfect pop record for '06/'07, as the lines between genres and audiences continue to blur and disappear. quite a bit like paris, in fact, it reaches out to many of the best aspects of modern dance music, and brings them together to create something undefinable but vital; experimental in the best sense of the world, an exploratory and open-ended whole. and i can only hope (and trust) that it helps to continue to break down the barriers it so engagingly transgresses - and since justin, for better or worse, seems better positioned to do that than paris is at this point, it's good to know he's on our side.

goddamn i am so excited for the new timbaland album.

heiress to the throne: dancing in the royal suite

as of now, i'm pretty sure that paris, the debut full-length release by paris hilton, is my favorite album from 2006. it only came out in late august, so i've spent less than two months with it so far, and things could certainly change. (i bought a used, promo-stamped copy the week of its release for $8.99 - which is the most i've spent on a [tangentially] teen-pop album except for maybe a couple of europe-only releases.) i can't say my feelings about it are comparable to (or as confident as) those i had for earlier no-brainer favorites like oh! inverted world ('01), think tank ('03) and the sunset tree ('05), all of which connected with me on a uniquely personal level. (and which i'd like to think would still be strong favorites if they came along now for the first time.) it's definitely not [yet] one of my favorite albums... (are there other dance-pop albums that are? i feel like robyn should be; it's new to me still but i trust its staying power. feels funny to say it about come and get it or fever. maybe some of this hesitancy is that the kinds of albums the genre produces - of which robyn is strongly atypical - [still] don't seem like "favorite" material, regardless of how much i enjoy the music. contemplating them explodes the notion of "album" sufficiently to make equilateral comparisons feel inappropriate.)

i digress though. maybe paris ain't here to stay, but she's here today, so let's have a look at 'er. why is this album impressing itself on me so? and how? in my last post, i ran down the discs that have been my touchstones as far as album-based pop goes, which will serve as points of comparison here. paris stands apart from these since it's not electro-pop, or at least not entirely. actually, one of its greatest assets is its stylistic diversity, which encompasses hip-hop/r&b, "rock", disco, reggae, and (for lack of a better term) straight-up dance-pop. none of these appear in their "pure" forms (well, except the last) - which is to the record's credit, since it retains a fairly cohesive sonic identity - but even so, it's an impressive range.

i've been challenging folks (and myself) to come up with any recent pop album that spans so widely. ashlee and kelly come close, but neither really has anything "urban" (hip-hop/r&b) (oh, the missy "L.O.V.E." remix, but that's not on an album) - the only contender might be love angel music baby, which i haven't given enough attention, mostly because it seems like a lot of filler. robyn is also extremely diverse, and includes hip-hop and (could it be?) soul - nothing rock per se, but the experimentation within what's technically pop is practically radiohead-worthy - and it has ballads (good ones too!), which paris/paris (wisely) doesn't really attempt.

point being, its eclecticism within the basic dance-pop template is one thing that makes paris relatively unique, even if it has a couple of fellows. i've heard a lot of complaints about her music being derivative, and that might be valid (not that i really care), but it certainly works hard trying to be derivative of as many things as possible. besides, it's kind of a laugh saying that she sounds just like/is trying to be like gwen stefani, who's sort of the queen of derivativeness (you say that like it's a bad thing.)

the albums that i discussed in my last post succeed primarily on the strength of their songs and production (little more of the latter on fever maybe; the former on anniemal; both - in spades - on come and get it.) as more than just (reasonably cohesive) collections of songs, anniemal goes some distance towards creating an identifiable and engaging persona; robyn accomplishes this masterfully (as i've raved about enough for now.) come to think of it, fever does present a fairly strong persona, it's just not a very relatable or human one (and the album art doesn't help.) i feel like the rachel stevens album could be compelling on this sort of level - the situations in the lyrics, when i stop and think about them, are intriguing and well-developed - but something prevents me from recognizing anything in it that seems to relate to her in any way.

* * *
paris, meanwhile, may not be quite as consistent on the songwriting front, and production/arrangement-wise it's in a whole different ballpark; but - as i hear it, anyway - it does develop an extremely vivid and fascinating sense of identity and personality. and - great songs notwithstanding - i think that's really what sets this album apart for me. here's what i take from it:

there is a very particular setting involved here, and it is the dancefloor. tons of dance songs are about dancing, obviously, but for me even the songs on paris that don't explicitly reference it seem to draw their sensibilities from a quintessentially "dancefloor" state of mind. this album is all about the complex interpersonal, emotional politics of a night out at the club. the narrator(s) in these songs - let's think of them as all the same girl, and let's call her paris - encounters strangers (or, if not exactly strangers, men she's met before only here in this superficial setting), decides she wants them, fantasizes abouts them, teases them, tries to seduce them. or else: she knows they want her, and she'll play along and flirt, dance, tease - but that's as far as it's gonna go ("ooh, sorry, did i do that?") 'course, how are they to know, really, which one it is, what's she playing at this time, do you like me or are you ignoring me? is this love or just desire? paris holds all the cards, and that's the way she likes it. she's the queen of the scene, and when she holds court on the floor, who can say what machinations are going on in her pretty little head?

the politics of dancing are all about codes, sublimated language, the chance to express with our bodies what we never could or would verbally (our inner, yearning emotions about these people we're just meeting for the first time, may never meet again.) it could be a code for sex - isn't that what this is really all about after all? - or maybe not, maybe that's just what everybody is thinking but that in itself is another layer of encryption, an intermediary, decoy code; dancing masquerading for sex standing in for intimacy giving way to deep, human, connection - could it be? - the whole goddamn meaning of life hidden right there in front of you while you're moving on the dancefloor, and all you need is the courage to go out and grab ahold, no need for words to get in the way.

of course, the singer is using words - most of the time, when she's not reduced to (liberated by?) breathy dahs and las and oohs and yeahs - she's expressing the only way she can, in crude, code-bound language, what you are thinking and feeling, and as you map your movements to her beats your thoughts meld to her meanings...and everything can be understood. except, the singer's just letting you in on a little secret, because, remember, they don't know what paris - remember paris? - has got on her mind, up her sleeve, close to her chest, she is in control (she's sexy and she knows it: clap your hands) and she's teasing the bejesus out of em...or else they're too blind, or scared, or dumb (or could it be they don't want her? unthinkable...most guys would die!) to see that she's not playing a game, this moment is critical, they're starting to win, that they're the one that she likes!

except when i say "they," i really mean do "you," because every one of these songs is about and addressed to, not just a generalized, impersonal, queen-of-the-club address to her subjects, but a very specific and unmistakable singular subject you. yes, you, baby, i see you. the oldest trick in the book, sure, simple and effective, and you are - forcibly, but who's complaining - involved; doubly so -and that's the real trick - if you were already physically involved (as storch and co. try their darnedest to ensure), freeing your ass so your subjectivity will follow. r. kelly famously spelled out his layers upon layers in his teleology of hedonism (per mike powell) - but i wonder if there's not just as much meta-flexivity going on here in these grooves, and in real-time to boot.

* * *
let's get this party started. a single siren blast - make way! queen paris comin' thru! - cue utilitarian/utopian late-period-missy beat ("yeah") bring on those wooshy string flutters ("that's hot") and in bursts "turn it up," offering just yr garden-variety dancing/sex conflation/ambiguity. seems like a sex jam ("gonna make me scream"), but with enough "move yr body/time to party" talk that she might just be hyping up the club heads, getting 'em excited, and giving 'em some practical advice - or just laying down the law: "you gotta know what to do/if you wanna get down/so don't blow the first move." pay attention, she's talking to you. the titular instruction is for you too (though the dj might take heed as well) - even if the "you" at this point is a little imprecise and general (well, it is only the first track - a little early for intimate dirty-talkin' one-on-one, no?) don't worry, you'll get your turn.

only not quite yet. "fighting over me" is the one song on the album not in second person. (the boyz - whom you will soon become - are there, but for now they're simply, generally, they. those silly boyz.) it's also the worst track on the album. potentially inoffensive (or even worthwhile for the chuckleable jadakiss verse and fat joe's "straight swoosh" line) but sunk by a lackluster beet (plinky piano, thin rudimental boom-bap; both way lame) and truly insipid chorus delivery. [paris gets points for the effort, but her hip-hop's got nothing on robyn - "konichiwa bitches" sure, but "handle me" even more so, uncannily street in both diction and cadence for a weepy-hearted swede.] presumably slotted second to spotlight the guests, it does couple decently with the (much more satisfyingly) hip-hop-inflected opener, and i'm happy to have it over with so early in the album. really, i don't mind this track that much, it's just rather dumb. [and i do have a special fondness for it ever since i noticed it playing in a very strait-laced looking forty-something's SUV in west philly rush hour traffic. brings to mind "c'mon, he's just going home from work, he's got his backpack on!"]

"fighting over me" is the first song that's explicitly set in a club, and it also sets up paris' so-so-so-sexy self-image rather nicely (with corroboration, even, though i'm not sure those hired thugs are trustworthy.) this is important because we actually won't be reminded of it again until "turn you on" (also a partial return to hip-hop) nine tracks later: for the bulk of the album, paris isn't a sex goddess, or at least she doesn't feel like one; she's just that girl, out there on the floor, hoping. see her? she's waiting for you, you can have her, she's relinquished her power - her heart's wide open! or maybe that's a put-on to; that's just what she wants you to think, and this time she's pulling one over on you as well as them. (she still sounds pretty darn confident.) the locus of power in these songs is constantly shifting, the tension of wanting/being wanted - the word "want" appears in 8 out of 11 songs - constitutes a slippery dynamic that propels the action forward, anxious and hopeful, in the quest for that elusive, crucial knowing. (because knowledge is power.) does the wantee want the wanter too? are you thinking what i'm thinking? what you waiting for? what do i gotta do? (and: why shouldn't we be with the one we really love?)

couple more exceptions, which i might as well get over with. two songs don't fit with the dancefloor framework (which is to say they occupy a different narrative space from the rest of the album, not that they're incongruous.) as it happens, they're also the two you can't really dance to. "jealousy" is a curious one, a moody mid-tempo angst-pop misfit (wall-of-guitar choruses don't quite constitute "rock"), and the only song that seems to reference the "real life" paris beyond the persona. we're not invited to identify with the "you" here, since it's an actually specific (and, almost uniquely, female) one: nicole ritchie. the nature of nicole's crime is a little unclear, despite the fascinating second verse: "now i'm like the devil/well if i am then what does that make you/you sold yourself for your fame/you'll still never walk a day in my shoes" - so nicole sold her soul to the devil i.e. paris herself, and is jealous because she can never be as diabolical? (and paris is upset by nicole's change even though she now owns her soul?)

anyway. "heartbeat" follows and doesn't quite return us to the dancefloor milieu so aptly established in the preceding "i want you." the "you" is yet again unattributable, although identifying with it takes a little more work since paris clearly knows this person somewhat well. in fact, this is the closest paris gets to a love song - notwithstanding the references to "kissing" and "lying here" and the throwaway double-entawdre on "come," there does seem to be more going on here than sex and superficiality. indeed, paradoxically, the sincerity and sweetness of its emotional landscape threatens its credibility, when set against the gloriously vapid, fantasy-driven realm of the rest of the album - but regardless of whether we want to allow paris the capacity for "real love," it's easily the album's sweetest moment. musically too, as it goes "be mine!" and "heartbeat" and "heartbeats" one better by actually sampling "time after time" (has that song become the inspiration for a whole subgenre?), and overlaying it with a gorgeous new melody that rivals "s.o.s." as '80s pastiche/mashup-pop track of the year.

the spectre of love raises its head elsewhere on the album of course - its possibility is insinuated all over the place, in fact, with the determinist-fantasy logic of dancing>sex>love posited just as inexorably as the old love>marriage>baby-in-the-baby-carriage schtick. one could choose to read "heartbeat" as a particularly well-developed dancefloor crush-fantasy (it's lyric is certainly generic enough) - and you could probably dance to it after all, or slow-dance at least. it does feel like a reverie, and as i suggested its reality is already somewhat suspect. (but no need to force an interpretation - i'm happy to leave it open.)

at first blush, "stars are blind" also seems to be specifically personal and about "love" and all that - but closer examination reveals it's pretty much all in the conditional. the love that's discussed is a potential, not a present, reality, despite paris' confidence that she's "perfect for you" and that "you can see the real me inside." she seems to know you at least somewhat, though she mostly just sees you as a contrast to "those other guys" (joe, jada, et. al.) who just wanna take her for a ride. key moment here is the bridge (a friend of mine claimed it's the song's biggest flaw - peter, are you reading this? - but i beg to differ), which lays out what's at stake: "excuse me for feeling/this moment is critical/it might be revealing/it could get physical." the song suggests a promise of love (though it's never straightorward - consider the ambiguous referent of "i'll show you mine") but the critical moment - the present moment - is all about a revealing physicality: sex - or dancing - that might just be the confirmation of love.

there's enough ambiguity to confound clear interpretation, but it's no stretch to imagine this exchange taking place in a club, (although i tend to imagine it on some perfectly airbrushed sunny beach - that's thanks to the music, natch, a reggae-pop confection that i'm always tempted to describe as a "slice" of something. doesn't need to be discussed more, but it was an excellent and creative single choice.) things are clearer in "i want you", wherein paris is "the kind of girl who likes to tell you what [she] want[s] in life." (even though she doesn't, exactly, beyond "you.") i initially thought this was sort of annoying for its valli/gibb sample, but is now one of my favorite tracks (the melodic overlay is quite nicely done) and also contains the excellent line "you'd be living in a dream if you were waking up next to me." this song is basically the thematic template for the whole album, and the opening stanza in particular sets out the modus operandi of dance-club "relationships":

excuse me, i think i've seen you on the dance floor
excuse me, i think they're playin' one of our songs
i see you, you've been here a lot of times
and you've been on my mind 'cause baby you're just so damn fine

viz: i've seen you, you're hot, i want you. (i love how - and this is totally plausible and psychologically accurate - she identifies the song as "one of ours" even though she hasn't spoken to the guy before.) this basic model holds, though the situation becomes more complicated, in the songs that i see as the core of the album - this one and tracks 7-9. these can be read as a sort of narrative sequence revolving around the same guy (in which case "not leaving without you" comes before the others) or they can be - as i sort of prefer - parallel but separate instances of the same kind of thing happening, much as, in the dancefloor-centric utopian vision of the world this album conjures, it must happen all the time, every night, in every club, all over the world. even though the songs are all addressed to a clear subject, it's an open question whether paris is actually literally speaking to "you" or whether these are simply her unexpressed thoughts, her inner emotional monologue that you as the listener are privy to but "you" the addressee are not. (one could also, of course read the songs as having different narrators - but that's definitely against the grain of my reading.)

in "nothing in this world" (yeah, probably her best song), "you" came to the club with somebody else, but she's not going to let that stop her: you and she "can do this thing tonight." "screwed" (my initial favorite and still way up there - i love the remix too) feels most like a continuation of this strand, wherein she's been initially shut down in favor of the other woman (and isn't it "so cliché" that you're "under the spell of a woman from hell"?), but is still holding out hope that you'll "turn down the lights" tonight (more on this later) - or failing that that you'll take her number for when you realize your mistake. things get twisty in the name of lyrical scansion, but it seems like she has resigned herself to being "screwed" for tonight - hence the unwieldy "tonight you could have found out [she] might have been the girl of your dreams" - however she could still, in may or mid-december, say, be the "perfect girl for you to..." what? root? run? love? (definitely not what she's saying, though it's on a lot of 'net lyric engines) i had myself convinced it was "ring," which at least makes sense in the context ("tell me that you want to take my number"), although it doesn't really sound like that either. by the way, the repeated phrase "please don't let it begin" is a bit confusing as well, anyway...

"not leaving without you" (another very catchy tune, with a really cool funky groove) inhabits similar thematic territory to "i want you," with some more of the nuances i was teasing out earlier. it has another excellent opening line - "i got my eye on you boy/and when i get my eye on something it's like search and destroy" - and it emphatically re-establishes the dance floor setting. i love how it intersperses oddly specific inner stream-of-consciousness romantic speculation ("i need someone who's sweet/someone who wants me for me/and when i'm not around he's not gonna cheat") with matter-of-fact addressing of the present moment ("we can dance, we can dance, we can dance.") she wants to "know things about you," but unlike in "screwed" (which she's clearly not, or doesn't think she is anyway), she doesn't want you to ask her for her number ('cuz it's "undercover," obviously) - she's confident that you'll be hers, and it's not just that she wants to let you know before you go home alone (like in "i want you"): her mind's made up and she's not leaving without you.

after this unstoppable, exquisite suite (easily the album's pinnacle, if you ask me), it's time for a change of pace, and a recapitulation. "turn you on" - musically a pale reflection of "turn it up" and the closest thing to filler ("fighting over me" is at least unique enough not to quite qualify) - is also a lyrical return to the thematic material of the first couple of tracks. in a sense, it works as a concluding summation of what has gone before, pulling the camera back to take in the whole club after a series of close-framed one-on-one scenes. the third-person "boys" are back (with girls too, this time), still after her 'cause she's sexy (and she can't blame them.) they even get to speak, by way of paris' snide impersonation ("i'm hot and i can't take it/i need a drink/she's cooler than i ever thought she'd be.") "you" - her dance partner - is still here too, though her attitude toward you has changed enough - "don't dance too close/i might turn you on" - to suggest this is a different you (though one that you the listener is still encouraged to identify with.) (of course, maybe it was all in your pathetic little head the whole time, loser.) for the first time, paris directly addresses a female (plural) "you" as well, even if it's just to briefly and abruptly chide the women in the club, among them, presumably, those hellish interlopers from "nothing in this world" and "screwed": "don't be mad at me go check your man". it's a harsh shattering of the utopian vision presented earlier, of the dancefloor as a land of opportunity and unspoken romantic potential, a reassertion of paris' power and everyone else's lack of it (including yours), and an affirmation of the crass and blatant superficiality of the entire situation.

how's that for rereading what i initially took as derivative late-album filler into a cynical, overarching statement-of-purpose? just goes to show you can interpret anything however you want. maybe. of course, the album doesn't end on that bleak if intriguingly unidealized note. there's still the closing "throwaway cover." which i would offer instead as a kind of alternate ending - a return to the possibilities suggested in the mid-section of the album, that a connection on a dance floor can deepen into something "real" - that there even exists something real beyond the dance club demimonde, or the empty, artificial, power-obsessed mode of life it might easily be taken to represent.

"do ya think i'm sexy" is the only moment on the album in which the action clearly progresses from the club into the outside world - past the night to the next morning, when "they wake at dawn" and contemplate going to a movie. notice the crucial shift though: this story is told in third person, and it isn't our paris who "at last" has been taken home, but "two total strangers" - to her and to us as well as each other. the chorus shifts to direct address, saying the same thing paris has essentially been saying for the entire album - "if you want my body and you think i'm sexy/come on sugar, let me know" - but it's presented as dialogue in the story, at least until the final chorus, when it's no longer relevant to the story at hand, no longer necessary to help these characters find their happiness, and instead, perhaps, enacts a shift back into paris' own familiar voice, with her still stuck in the club, wanting you, waiting for you to take her home, and why hasn't it happened yet, don't you, doesn't everyone think she's sexy???)

(one final aside: i'm curious about the way three consecutive songs - the exquisite tracks 7-9 - make reference to "turning down the lights." the most straightforward is in "not leaving without you": "when the lights go down" = when she finally gets you home and in bed and will, cleverly, "see what it's all about." "nothing in this world" substitutes "turn out the light" for "stop us tonight" after the second iteration of the title phrase in the chorus, which kind of seems like a throwaway, but suggests, i suppose "the light" that exists between you and her can't be extinguished. which is sort of a nice image. finally, "screwed" - probably the most interesting song on the album lyrically - finds her hoping that "tonight you're gonna turn down the lights and give me a little more room just to prove it to you." my sense is that this turning down of the lights will happen when he's (you're) at home and going to bed, and since - according to my reading - she's not going to be there, the "making room" is metaphorical - she hope's he'll think about her as he falls asleep and that he'll reconsider her offer. that's definitely a more subtle and nuanced scenario than the lyric initially suggests. none of this is especially significant to the album, but i do like how the thematic repetition - which occurs in a few other places too - reveals itself to be so multivalent.)

* * *

now, i can't say for sure that this reading of mine has anything to do with what the album's creators intended. my understanding of this persona is after all based primarily on a handful of the songs and specifically-inflected readings of others, and doesn't entirely apply to all of them; nor do i necessarily think that the thematic resonances across the songs are the result of careful coordination among the various writers and producers involved. they're essentially unexceptional and probably even predictable - not so much coincidences as the unremarkable redundancy of stock clichés. indeed, there's nothing especially contrived about any it, which may be why it's so effective: nobody's trying to present paris as anything unexpected (least of all paris herself) - or when they are ("heartbeat," possibly?) it's so transparent as to be a harmless, even cute diversion - and so i have no problem accepting the persona i encounter in this album to be the "authentic" paris, or at least her earnestly presented public face.

(come and get it, by way of contrast, is full of sincere relationship songs - lusting and falling and loving and getting confused and breaking up - with nuanced, heartfelt lyrics, any number of which capture some essential truth about 'humanity,' and none of which believably, or even recognizably, capture anything about rachel stevens. she has one co-writing credit on the whole record, by the way.)

one could press further and examine the writing credits, and possible previous appearances of some of these songs, as well as looking more closely at paris' real life and publicly-expressed opinions (none of which i know much about) and consider how much intention we can ascribe to paris and/or her collaborators. but i'm more than happy to leave all that aside for the time being (always one of my favorite beings), because ultimately it's not very relevant to how i experience of the album. i don't pretend that my reading of the album in any way definitive, or any more true than any other response to it (of which there have been many.) but it is clear to me that it lends itself to speculation and exploration, and is substantial enough to sustain it. i've very much enjoyed the process of writing this as an opportunity to explore possible meanings in the songs and the album as a whole. hope you've found it worth reading. let me know if you have any thoughts. and if you think i'm sexy, well... come on, sugar.

pop goes the canon

hi girls! want to reserve a spot in the pance-dop pantheon? just throw your hands in the air!

the topic is pop albums. good ones, i.e. all the songs are good (or, only very few are noticably not good.) (pop=dancepop, basically, because that's what it means, basically.) there aren't very many of them, it seems (exactly why that is is the bulk of the thorny analytical tangle i've just decided to absent myself from.) at least, there aren't very many compared to the very many pop albums that have some good (or great) music but are no-way good albums.

i hope we can agree to agree on this.

ignoring roughly everything before the birth of "modern dancepop" - which i shall somewhat arbitrarily designate the late '90s teen-dance xplosion - my canonical example of a good pop album (and ergo, practically, a bona-fide classic) is kylie minogue's fever. only one truly unmemorable cut (track 10, "love affair"), and the next weakest thing is probably the opener for goodness sakes. which, if nothing else, is a seemingly-revelatory departure from the single-first pop tradition.

coincidentally or not, i trace my modern pop fixation - as it has become - to my first exposure to this album, a good year or two late, in the winter of '03. i it borrowed from rabi, along with avril's let go, after being curious, if not entirely surprised, to find them in her sacrosanct collection. (she'd deny it or laugh it off, but at least in terms of wonky 'net-message-board cool, she was definitely a good step or two ahead of me.) anyway, the avril disc didn't do much for me (though i liked the singles, which i'd heard. i have recently acquired it for myself, but haven't really revisited it properly)...but fever, damn. i can't say it was its albumness that did the trick - indeed, i was mostly just falling in love with individual songs one after another, most chiefly the title track (which i still don't think gets enough love) but also <3@1^stsite. but its consistency surely helped encourage my repeated plays.

from there, the combo of my "professional" interest as a dj, my culture-satured summer in nyc during the reign of many of the most attention-grabbing pop singles of the young decade, the continued influence of rabi and her mysterious multi-aliased friend, and of course the effects of great populist critical glasnost worked collectively on my musical sensibilities such that, when dave moore started raving about annie and then abba and skye and pretty soon bet the farm and, you know, became "unusually shrewd pop blogger dave moore" - i'm going to stop talking about him now, since he's evidently the only person who reads this page anyway, and this sentence is ridiculously long - well anyway i was primed and ready to take up the charge of poptimism, lining up to fight behind dave's (purple, dumb-pun-happy) standard. ashlee lindsay rah rah rah.

except... i still have a strong attachment to the album, and though i wouldn't say it's exactly been a stumbling block in my open-armed investigation of this brave new genre-world (the good news: teen-pop cds are generally so cheap that it's easy to forgive high filler ratios) it leaves me conflicted as to how i actually want to experience it. exploratory mp3 downloads, cream-culling mixtapes, and dj-career-writeoff-patchfest-purchases are all very well, but i still want (it feels naive) to be able to put on an album, sit back, and just enjoy away (i never bother with skip buttons) naturally, i'd rather not waste time on mediocre music that shares plastic with tunes i actively enjoy, but the record collector/librarian/completist in me won't really be satisfied unless i can assimilate and, hopefully, learn to like all the things by the artists i like. (why else would i seek out the best-of comps with the longest possible track-listings for artists in whom my true interest probably doesn't extend beyond a couple of big singles.)

all which means i'm going to keep buying (used) and being disappointed by well-intentioned pop records, in the hopes that i can force myself to construe them as good albums even though they're probably merely angling to avoid embarrassment.

eh, that sounds too dire. let's get on with the listing that you probably thought was going to be the focus of this post. to be honest, fever isn't a very interesting album - apart from the electroclash appropriation/apotheosis of the CGYOOMH monster and its clone with the clone-centric video, nothing even tries to feel innovative; and save the classic[read: 60s]-pop formalism of the title track and the funk jitter of "give it to me" there's hardly any sonic or textural variety.

anniemal, which shares fever's consistently "icy" cast, encompasses far more musical range - and accordingly has much more distinctive singles (by which i actually mean standout album tracks, by which i mean almost all of them.) which translates to an album that's similarly cohesive (and equally consistent, quality-wise) but has a lot more personality, even if annie's vocal presence isn't that much more empathetic.

rachel stevens' come and get it is very much in the same camp, and even though nothing on it quite matches the lovable idiosyncrasy of "chewing gum" or the blissful rush of "love at first sight" (or, i'll admit it, the smile-inducing scene-solidarity factor of "heartbeat") it's probably the best album of the three. rachel herself may not present much of a persona (certainly compared to annie), but her singing is undeniably fuller and more emotive, albeit in a sort of mannered way. her album definitely has less of an emotional arc than annie's does, however, despite a nearly comparable diversity of musical approach and tone.

indeed, the sequencing of the album feels almost arbitrary, its most potentially poignant moments stranded mid-album amongst incompatible, higher-energy numbers. but more to the point: nothing on come and get it even approaches filler. (was gonna say the clunky-funky "je m'appelle" comes closest - but screw that, it's totally good!) on the flipside, nothing on it stands out as an obvious single choice (if pressed, i might tap "so good," although "i will be there" is perhaps my favorite song) - and i can't decide if that might feel like a failing even though the reason for it (every bloody song on the record is great!) is obviously to the album's undying credit. maybe if it did somehow have a true head-and-shoulders stand-out (it'd have to be seriously classic calibre) the album would have been a hit (in the u.k. i mean) - i seriously do not understand how it wasn't; i mean, rach's an established celebrity, right? 'course, look at paris, but rachel's a famous singer. well, blimey. maybe her affectlessness hurt her more than you'd expect.

a very different cd in many respects, and one which i enjoy at least as much if not more, is robyn's dramatically unconventional self-titled 'comeback' from last year. robyn does share with rachel's album a dearth of unambiguous single contenders, although the number one slot is appropriately given to a banger - "who's that girl?", whose only (quibbling) fault is rubbing up dangerously close to (its producers/composers) the knife's "heartbeats". actually, there are really only two or three other dance numbers on the whole album, including "crash and burn girl," whose infectious, sinuous bass slither resembles nothing so much as a double-time "closer." but "be mine!", it's ultimately obvious, is the album's most singularly glorious moment. that exclamation point in the title - and even the title itself - seem to have less to do with the subject matter of the song than the sheer effervescence of the song itself, so sublimely conceived that it can't help but exult despite the heartbreak of its lyrical content.

trying not to turn this into a yawning/fawning belated capsule review here, but singling out songs, even as a hypothetical exercise, is like choosing among children. reasonably ignoring the two cute but tiny introludes and the truly bizarre, scene-setting first track, this record only contains ten songs; but each one feels like a world in itself, a perfect little construction that follows its particular lyrical and stylistic conceits to their necessary ends. just as important, each seems to fulfill a vital role in the context of the whole, combining to present a complex and engaging portrait of this tremendously likable woman, among whose attributes are a top-notch melodic sense, a dynamic and versatile voice, a totally nutty sense of humor, spiky cattitude, and a mile-wide sentimental streak. sigh. (don't even get her started on her bada-boom-booms.) especially effective is the closing quartet of songs, each a sweet and affecting portrayal of a different aspect of romantic relationships, which taken as a whole form the tail end of the non-narrative yet unmistakable emotional arc that renders he album so deeply satisfying.

these are the albums that come most clearly to mind. girls aloud have a lot of supporters along the lines of these things, and i like several of their singles, but what will the neighbors say? - the album of theirs i know best - leaves me unconvinced. i may also need to hear a different sugababes disc (angels... gets half marks.) madonna's music and possibly confessions... should probably be mentioned, especially since we're canonizing kylie - the former, in particular, was a favorite of mine pre-poptimism (at the time of its release i heralded its use of house-based beats as a triumphant reclamation of contempo dance music from the essentially undanceable teen-pop legions - and i'm not entirely sure i disagree with that assessment.)

otherwise, you may note that everything i've discussed so far has been european. americans are traditionally limited at this kind of thing (that is, electro-pop, and i guess i should really say "uninterested") - anyway our contributions in this period have been more r'n'b focused (would be good to do a good albums survey there too - aaliyah, sure, but what else?) or more rock than dance. but i have been wondering about britney spears - britney, in particular, has a lot of strong, and envelope-pushing (i guess) album tracks, towards the end especially. i should also probably spend more time with m!ssundaztood.

likewise, i haven't mentioned anything from this year (last year was the glut, it seems, and i haven't even discussed i am me - which is not really a dance-pop album, and anyway isn't adding anything new to the conversation dave and i and those guys have all the time.) it just occured to me to bring up the junior boys, who are obviously (or just seemingly?) in a somewhat different category, but are somewhat cordoned off by themselves anyway, and definitely made at least one album of brilliant dance-pop (last exit: the new one is more brilliant, more pop, but less dance, though possibly still dance enough - will have to consider whether and how to deal with this.) does that mean including ladytron (yeah, they and also goldfrapp are valid contenders, though i'm not sure if either fully deliver the goods. black cherry maybe.) however... and this is pretty straight up: erlend øye. definitely sweet. whoops i forgot the knife too. or maybe not, now i'm just confusing myself. indiedance affirmative action should not be allowed to make me feel better about my pop album quandary, no matter how poptastic it is.

all of which brings me...or rather, it was meant to...to paris. which i'm not going to write about now, because you've had rather too much to read tonight, and i to write, with the realness. but. hopefully somewhere in here i've managed to dispense with some preliminarities that will allow me to get down to business next time, when i thrillingly assert that (wait for it) ms. hilton has crafted (see what i did etc.) a fully worthy addition to the petit canon of post-teenboom dance-pop album statements. surprised yet? and despite what you may think, on the robyn-annie-kylie-rachel spectrum (is that right?), i say she lands firmly left of center.

yow is it ever bedtime!