robyn + rye rye

hmm...just came across this. apparently it just appeared yesterday. (so, doing ok on the insta-blog-reaction tip, for once.) two of my fave genius poplets of the last while...together at last(!?):



worth a watch or ten, obv, for the clothes alone... rye's green jaguar jacket + turquoise illuminati dress combo is particularly amazing, but really nobody's wearing anything less than stunning here.

and the song? hm... well i think it successfully avoids tarnishing "be mine"'s delicate everlasting perfect magical tenderness, tho it hardly adds anything that the original song was missing. and ryeisha's spitting is on point as ever. but: i'm not at all sure that this is what i want/need to be hearing from either party here... rye can do so much better than what's basically a lazy whole-hog hook interpolation. [though if that's what it's gonna be, it's possibly preferable to something like this miley cyrus interp – which i previously didn't know existed – why did I not know there was a Rye Rye mixtape!?! – notwithstanding that the Philly flamethrower DJ Sega gutter club action is def closer to where I want her to be energetically. may or may not be preferable to this other brand-new rye rye jawn, which is a bit too rote of a banger – she quotes m.i.a. but it actually reminds me more of spiss' goofball, go-nowhere bloodshy-produced "my slang."]

it's also just sad to realize that "ft. robyn" doesn't mean what it once did [i.e. guaranteed utter brilliance] – see also teddybears' hokay-but-lackluster sub-dragonette fluff "cardiac arrest," which album i just reviewed for amg. even though it's good to hear her back in sensitive/ballad mode, which she does so beautifully but was mostly absent from her 2010 mega-output.

still: for a summery, easy-going pop'n'b trifle, it'll do just fine. [i guess time will tell if this has the staying power of "your love," but i kinda doubt it – that song at least had its own hook to offer too.] and it can't help but make me smile.

reminds me i need to get on de-warping my copy of the "bang (ft. m.i.a.)" 12". also, rye rye needs to put out an album already.

also, there better be some big summer pop hits pervading my consciousness right soon, cuz so far that has not happened. can we work on that?

i keep dancing on my own

this was an awesome summer for dance-pop. really, the whole year has probably been the best, quantity+quality-wise, since 2006, which might have been the last year i was excited about dance-pop on a large scale (the year of paris, etc.) even if there was sort of a dearth of bona-fide massive summer jams – which i define as massive enough to penetrate the consciousness of my relatively pop-averse friends (katy perry came close, i guess. rihanna, the erstwhile queen of summer, got her smash on in the springtime, rudely enough.)

sadly, though, there didn't seem to be all that much actual dancing, at least in my world. save for a couple-few transcendent daytime dining-room get-down sessions to Lazerproof. there was a pretty promising start to the summer with the /\/\ /\ Y /\ release party (once we made it through the album, that is.) and I did see LCD in NYC, and The Rapture at Making Time. but then La Roux had to go and cancel their tour... at least Robyn and Kelis came through – and how! though, again, i went by myself. i think i only dj'd that one real party all summer, too (heat activated.)

but, at least i made this mix, pretty casually, and it is, i think, pretty close to phenomenal – little credit to me, but to our faithful friends the pop pros, who cranking out jams on all fronts. still, what's a summer jam without a pool-party posse to share it with?

sort of a fabricated document, then, of a summer of fun that never exactly was. maybe the problem is that i made the mix on cd. and who listened to cds in the summer of 2010?

title: Froth of July
date: July 2010
format: cd-r; daydream

1. The Spell – Alphabeat
2. Shampain – Marina and the Diamonds
3. Nothing on You – B.o.B ft. Bruno Mars [Villains Remix]
4. You've Changed – Sia
5. XXXO – M.I.A. ft. Jay-Z [Fulton Yard/Waltboogie Remix]
6. In Ruins - Fol Chen
7. All The Lovers – Kylie Minogue
8. Seasun – Delorean
9. Swoon – Chemical Brothers [Don Diablo Remix]
10. One – Sky Ferreira
11. Drunk Girls – LCD Soundsystem [Holy Ghost! Remix]
12. Come With Me – ceo
13. 4th of July (Fireworks) – Kelis
14. Take That – Wiley & Chew Fu
15. Push It Fembot – Robyn vs. Salt 'n' Pepa [A Rokk Pie N Mashup]
16. Daydreaming – Kid Sister [Telephoned Dreams Version]
17. Wile Out – DJ Zinc Ft. Ms Dynamite
18. Tenderoni – Kele [Ryan Hervé Re-Fix]
19. Dan – Grovesnor
20. Independent Kill – La Roux & Major Lazer ft. Candi Redd
21. Dancing On My Own – Robyn [Jakwob Remix]

quasi-mixed – that is, sequenced and edited for reasonably beat-smooth transitions in most places, but no actual dj tweaking. this ranges pretty far over the map, geographically, stylistically, all across the indie-mainstream divide and back. (what divide you say?)

notable omissions (cut out for space reasons only): Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Big Boi, Goldfrapp (i still haven't really gotten into Head First, though i feel like it should really be up my alley...still, the first two tracks are lovely in that frothy way), Hot Chip (was still rocking One Life Stand hard at this point, though it had been out for a pretty long time.) and the Scissor Sisters album hadn't even come out yet.

the Alphabeat feels a bit like a throwaway intro (though i do love that song in the context of its album...which for whatever reason hasn't quite stuck with me the way i thought it would.) Kid Sister probably wouldn't have made it (that's a 2010 remix, i think, of a 2009 track) except i had just written her up for CP and had belatedly realized that it's a pretty darn sweet album (though that remix may not be too representative.) likewise, the Delorean, which i love, is a belatedly-discovered favorite from their 2009 ep which is sadly better than anything on their (generally quite good) 2010 album. otherwise, the vast majority of these are still solid favorites, some surprisingly so (Marina; Fol Chen.)

the real question is whether i'm going to reuse/recycle many of these for year-end mix, so that this will end up feeling like scrap fodder for that, or whether i'll try to keep this as a strong separate entity. time will tell...

mixtube: girlpop earworms '08

i was gonna do a post with embedded youtube video clips (as a low-hassle alternative to mp3-sharing) but then this came along: mixtube, an excellently-named successor to muxtape (r.i.p.), admirably resourceful and utilitarian-minded, which lets you create and share mux-styled playlists using the audio from any video on youtube. brilliant! (and seemingly relatively riaa-proof, though, we'll see...) (it's especially clever how there are no accounts associated with the playlists; if you want to revise a mix you've made, you don't log in to edit it, you simply make a new one "based on it.")

so here's my first stab, a guided tour through some of my favorite girlpop tracks these days. expect to see most of these show up on a forthcoming installment of ladies love (although one was already on the last one.)

cue it up and listen along!

i must say i haven't been bowled over by too many girl-pop songs this year; unlike '06 the year of synths and sirens (and heiress-pop) or '07 with its uk-chart and disco-soul retro-diva glut, the female artist i've been most excited about in '08 slings a ukelele and lives in my neighborhood (bertine zetlitz comes in a close second, but that was all back-catalog catch-up.) as the year draws toward a close (it's already half-past november - shocker! - and i'm feeling the itch to switch into critical-review mode), the big guns have started coming out of the woodwork (britney, xtina, beyonce, pink), and they've all been more or less misfiring, not so much spectacularly as perfunctorily.

meanwhile, perhaps the clearest contender for my favorite song of the year - if it counts - is cassie's "is it you?," which i first heard late last year. i liked it enough then to slot it first in my 07 year-end mix (which probably disqualifies it.) i still like it now, a hundred or so listens later, and it still hasn't even been released as a single (in this country - it went top ten u.k. r&b, which may not be very impressive), let alone on cassie's still-AWOL second album (the wiki article for which has apparently been deleted seven times in the last year.) it was on the step up 2 the streets soundtrack, which just so happened to launch the year's longest-running #1, a song ("low") which i enjoy a lot less than i enjoy the name of its artist (flo-rida).

"is it you?" was featured in the movie itself (which cassie starred in) over a montage sequence, although the shots of her character performing didn't make the final cut (you can see it as one of the dvd bonus features - which i highly recommend - and, of course, on youtube.) that version was just piano and vocals, featuring producer/rising star ryan leslie on the ivories, but i haven't been able to find an mp3 (or decent-quality youtube audio) of it. instead, this is the "piano version," which is only different for the first thirty seconds before the beat of the "normal version" butts in and it turns out more or less the same. beats me why this hasn't been a smash. maybe next year.

meanwhile, cassie's been doing other stuff - my favorite "new" song of hers is "official girl", which has a great slinky, fresh-sounding beat-displacement beat (can't wait to hear it in higher quality) produced by "danja.... and the.... clutch," as they inform us in probably my favorite producer-id bit ever (it's so cute!) i really like how the weirdly herky-jerky, rushed and overlapping vocal phrasing of the verses (it sounds like she's trying to squeeze in more words than quite fit) contrasts with the relatively languid, drawn-out delivery of the chorus ("i'm tired, i'm tired, i'm tired...") also, ultimatum/verbatim is a pretty sick/silly rhyme. lil wayne does nothing for this one...

another candidate for my fave song of the year is solange knowles' "sandcastle disco", which has, similarly, mysteriously failed to become a massive hit (while her big sister b is ruling the charts with so-so re-hashes of her past glories.) well, not so mysteriously in that it hasn't actually been released as a single yet, which is the only reason i can forgive the u.s. listening public (though i thought they weren't supposed to care about technicalities like that anymore.) literally every time i've played it for somebody they have been remarkably enthusiastic, so i know that it's not just me (it is possibly about a DJ, which might have swayed me a bit.) damn, just listen to it. how can you not swoon? [eta: according to wkpd it's not going to get a u.s. single release. d'oh! also, btw: evidently produced by danes soulshock and karlin, of "leave (get out)" fame, among other things.]

otherwise, the only new girl to really catch my ear lately has been jazmine sullivan, whose album i'm still digesting. it's not quite what you expect from '08 r&b, which in this case is a good thing. shades of jill scott c. 1999 - especially on the willie-hutch-sampling "my foolish heart" - which almost makes me feel old. "dream big" samples daft punk, which is getting obvious but it's in a quite different (and much less obnoxious) way than "stronger," if equally shameless. and the results are pretty irresistible. apparently the missy "suckas!" call-out is really part of the track?

madonna's album this year fell pretty flat (though i actually liked the single ok), but her long-since-eclipsed contemporary cyndi lauper put out a dance-pop album that was, in striking contrast, remarkably tasteful (not surprising) and remarkably decent (not sure), though also not as great as i'd hoped. i haven't decided yet whether i prefer her "lay me down," produced by kleerup, or his mostly-instrumental version of same, "thank you for nothing," allegedly so-titled in churlish response to cyndi not allowing her vocals to appear on his album. anyway, i think "echo" is my favorite track - sleek minimal glide, not too much going on, but lush and lovely nonetheless, and kinda funky.

my hands-down favorite girl/pop full-length of the year, though, was the almost entirely overlooked debut by cloetta paris, which continues to impress and delight me. she deserves a full post later on, but check out "broken heart tango" if you haven't heard her yet.

i've still got some more 2008 to sift through (including the new taylor swift), but apart from a few outliers like ashlee simpson's "boys" and rihanna's "disturbia" - and let's not forget "no air" and "shorty get loose" - that's about the best of it so far. pretty slim pickings indeed. man, what happened this year?

i'll finish up with a few songs from 2007 have been worming their way back around to my brain lately. i never really gave much of an ear to "bottoms up" when i was first listening to keke palmer's album last year, but it is pretty great. big stupid electro crunk'n'b dance jam, with finger-snaps and tweety tweets, an awesome/unfortunate semi-entendre of a title, a rotating parade of quasi-referential hooks, and an utterly charismatic vocal performance from miss keke p. i love her little kelis impression. (completely with MIMS-esque arrangement-quote.) i heard it at a basketball game last week, strangely enough, as part of the half-time cheerleader-dance medley, which also included a mash-up of pink's "so what" (already?) with rihanna's "s.o.s." (i hope it's called "s.o. what." oh, yes, it is.)

i've probably talked about the veronica's "this love" before, but it's been in my head and i thought i'd air it again. apparently their album actually came out here a little while ago, not that anyone noticed (but good because it means i will find a used copy eventually.) this one is pretty near perfect. it pops, it rocks, it dances. and it's way sentimental - and sure, completely melodramatic - but it's damn effective. still tears me up a little, particularly when the v's actually show a bit of vocal restraint on the a capella bits. and the "take on me" snatch at the end is just inspired.

dragonette made an album last year that just came out here, and which i've been listening to a bunch. i'll have more to say later, like that you should probably watch the "take it like a man"
video, which requires some forewarning but is actually much tamer than the song itself.

in the mean time, enjoy the title track from marit larsen's new album, the chase, which i'll get around to reviewing one of these days...

♥ girls ♥ girls ♥ girls ♥

title: Ladies Love [vols. 1-3]
format: CD-Rs
date: spring 2006; summer 2007; winter 2007
package: various. red and pink (and black) lettering, hearts, flowy letters, etc. folded notebook paper passed-note envelope for delux compendium version.
made for: martha, my sister, the opposite of hallelujah. 3-disc omnibus edition prepared for rebekah 10/08

Ladies Love
1. 4ever ♥ The Veronicas
2. Don't Say You Love Me ♥ M2M
3. Overprotected ♥ Britney Spears
4. L.O.V.E. ♥ Ashlee Simpson
5. I Will Be There ♥ Rachel Stevens
6. Behind These Hazel Eyes ♥ Kelly Clarkson
7. Whatever ♥ Brie Larson
8. First ♥ Lindsay Lohan
9. Round Round ♥ Sugababes
10. What's In It For Me? ♥ Amy Diamond
11. Stars Are Blind ♥ Paris Hilton
12. Like Wow ♥ Leslie Carter
13. Hypocrite ♥ Skye Sweetnam
14. Sweet Temptation ♥ Lillix
15. Graffiti My Soul ♥ Girls Aloud
16. Pull Shapes ♥ The Pipettes
17. LDN ♥ Lily Allen
18. Don't Let Me Get Me ♥ P!nk
19. All About Us ♥ t.A.T.u.
20. Pieces of Me ♥ Ashlee Simpson
21. Rush ♥ Aly & AJ
22. Hand On Your Heart ♥ Kylie Minogue
23. Should Have Known ♥ Robyn

Ladies Love Double Deuce [22nd birthday edition sequel]
1. Lip Gloss ♥ Lil Mama
2. So Do I Say Sorry First ♥ Stephanie McIntosh
3. Lose You ♥ Linda Sundblad
4. Potential Break-Up Song ♥ Aly & AJ
5. Never Again ♥ Kelly Clarkson
6. Everything Back But You ♥ Avril Lavigne
7. Crazy Chick ♥ Charlotte Church
8. Can't Behave ♥ Courtney Jaye
9. Love Story ♥ Katharine McPhee
10. Never Stop ♥ Hilary Duff
11. Me and My Imagination ♥ Sophie Ellis-Bextor
12. Don't Save Me ♥ Marit Larsen
13. Gunpowder and Lead ♥ Miranda Lambert
14. Because I'm Awesome ♥ The Dollyrots
15. I Get Around ♥ Dragonette
16. The Initiator ♥ Fefe Dobson
17. East Northumberland High ♥ Miley Cyrus
18. Headstrong ♥ Ashley Tisdale
19. Shut Up And Drive ♥ Rihanna
20. Will You Remember Me Tomorrow ♥ Margaret Berger
21. That's Life ♥ Amy Diamond
22. Teardrops On My Guitar ♥ Taylor Swift
23. I Want To Have Your Babies ♥ Natasha Bedingfield
24. Girlfriend (Lil Mama Remix) ♥ Avril Lavigne

Ladies Love 3
1. Music Is My Boyfriend ♥ Skye Sweetnam
2. He Said She Said ♥ Ashley Tisdale
3. Ah-Ah ♥ Bertine Zetlitz
4. Nobody's Perfect ♥ Hannah Montana
5. Gotta Work ♥ Amerie
6. Stay My Baby ♥ Amy Diamond
7. About You Now ♥ Sugababes
8. Revenge Is Sweeter (Than You Ever Were) ♥ The Veronicas
9. If I Could Have You Back ♥ Aly & AJ
10. The Math ♥ Hilary Duff
11. Our Song ♥ Taylor Swift
12. One Step At A Time ♥ Jordin Sparks
13. Music Box ♥ Keke Palmer
14. Is It You? ♥ Cassie
15. Pretty Rebels ♥ Linda Sundblad
16. Movie Star ♥ Roisin Murphy
17. Radar ♥ Britney Spears
18. Misery Business ♥ Paramore
19. Getting Ready ♥ Miranda Lambert
20. Blow My Fuses ♥ Lambretta
21. Breakin' Dishes ♥ Rihanna
22. Outta My Head ♥ Ashlee Simpson
23. Get You Off ♥ Fefe Dobson
24. Hot ♥ Avril Lavigne
25. I Like A Boy In Uniform (School Uniform) ♥ The Pipettes [unlisted bonus track]

chronicling, obviously, for anybody who cared to listen (which turned out to include a few people beyond me and my sister, though not many), my discovery and exploration of teenpop, specifically girlpop, which have been almost entirely coterminous for my purposes. (if these comps weren't gender-exclusive, i would have wanted to include the backstreet boys' "just want you to know" and a couple of songs from the jonas bros' debut, but probably not much else.)

these were a good bit influenced (at least the first one) by dave bedbugs' teenpop mixes for stylus: confessional jamz and the five-disc bluffers guide, even though i never had copies of either and i still don't know about half of the songs on there... anyway, that's where i got the m2m>britney opening sequence.

vol. 1 is vaguely historical, covering 2000-06 as viewed from my then-unfolding sense of so-dubbed "confessional" teenpop historiography as filtered through/created by the ilx rolling teenpop crowd and specifically dave, who was my gateway to most of this stuff in the first place. the song that started it all out for me was the veronica's "everything i'm not," which i have very vivid memories of listening to in my carpeted attic bedroom at 6th and fairmount on my grade-school boombox, although the song doesn't stand out to me nearly so much now except as a smashing pumpkins faux-rip ("4ever" is clearly the more distinctive, tho i had forgotten until tonight that "when it all falls apart" was the one that really broke as a hit in the states.)

some of the stuff - the british electropop - comes from a slightly different place for me; i was into it earlier (starting with kylie's fever, though when i made this i had started delving back into her early days, when she was actually a teen herself, hence the inclusion of "hand on your heart," from 1989 though also recently notable famous by josé gonzalez.) i'd have hardly thought to include lily allen, or at least the pipettes, now, since they so clearly have an "indie" rather than "pop" audience, but at the same time they equally clearly fall into the rubric of "girl-pop." (though so do rilo kiley and hello saferide, i guess.) no r&b here, though there's no reason a bit of blu cantrell or nina sky wouldn't have fit right in.

vol. 2 is semi-strictly limited to just the year roughly preceding its creation, and perhaps as a result (though not necessarily) it suffers a bit in quality. actually, the only real issues i have with it (apart from tracks 4-6 turning out to not be very good songs, after all) is that it's somewhat rock-heavy, and the lil mama and rihanna inclusions feel slightly tokenistic. whatever. still great. "east northumberland high," "so do i say sorry first" and especially "can't behave" (though i know nothing at all about courtney jaye) are all great songs that i rarely think about otherwise.

vol. 3 is similarly trying to keep it strictly '07, though there are some obvious exceptions/concessions (scandi-pop retro-grabs bertine zetlitz - even though she's really too old - and lambretta, which is linda sundblad's old band - i'd just written them up - and hilary duff deep cut "the math," i guess because i was saving "dreamer" for new years, and plus it's an awesome track that fits perfectly coming out of the aly & aj.) not sure why i picked all of those and nothing from the new kylie. in any case i think this is a strong mix even though it starts of kind of weird ("music is my boyfriend" is an obvious opener but an uncomfortable one, and the next three tracks don't really find a groove)

"if i could have you back," "our song," "hot," and of course "is it you?" are all utter brilliance. "gotta work" and "misery business" not far behind. girl-pop was alive and well last year.

this year? well... i'll save that rant for a future post, when i will hopefully compile and document two more volumes of ladies love - one current (07-08) and one catching other historical loose ends (00-06-ish) and just good songs that have not made it to the series so far... should be good!

[oh] waitin' for the hits to hit

something is missing from 2008 so far. not great music - there seems to be plenty of that around, and seemingly even more around every corner you look [whoa!] - but there is a conspicuous dearth of POP AWESOMENESS.

i went out dancing last night, and i recognized nearly every song the djs played. that's not the problem... well, i guess it's a different problem. this problem is what became evident when they played a very large majority of the amazingly excellent mainstream pop/dance hits of the last ten-plus years (and also a bunch from the '80s, the early-mid-'90s, and the jackson five), and... i believe, exactly three songs that were released this year.

i have been feeling a little out of it lately, to be sure, as far as pop POP pop music goes. [been traveling, and finding myself unable to successfully download anything, and focusing my deep-listening attention mostly on un-famous local folk singers and (this week anyway) minor swedish indie-pop albums from 2003-5, you know the drill.] but i'm sneaking to suspect that there just hasn't been much worth keeping-up about anyway, notwithstanding the essential underlying maxim [which i...more or less believe] that there's always an equal amount of equally amazing music out there at any given time, it may just take greater or lesser amount of effort to discover it.

hm. but even that's a little beside the point, because there's something specific about pop music that really is popular; that doesn't require energy to discover; especially if it's not just popular but massive, so much so that the proverbial everybody can't help but be aware of it. that's the kind of thing they were playing last night [and, yknow, every saturday nite, which is why i don't really like to go to those kind of places more than, well, actually about as often as i can get a group to go with me anyway]: "crazy in love" [omg!], "since you been gone" [omg!], "gimme more" [omg!], "work it" [omg!], "got yr money" [odb!], "don't you want me"/"wannabe"/"kiss" [er...yeah!], and no less than three songs by mr. west mr. west [omfj!...i just actually bought graduation, for $5.99, almost worth it for the artwork and cultural sig factor but, jeez... it is such a not-that-good album. i just do not get how ppl see this as primary evidence of hip-hop's vitality...ok whatevs.]

rite. now, there is a sort of standard trope around this time of year (or usually a bit earlier, when more organized folks do the half-year list thing) bemoaning the lack of good music/albumz, until there's an onslaught of high-pro releases (or, more likely, ppl discovering things they'd passed over earlier) and the rush of year-end list thinging and everybody's ready to declare it the best year since whenever. i'm not feeling that now, actually. there have been a dang bunch of good albums that i've already been rocking [see best of 2008 sidebar], and more that i'm sure are good but haven't quite gotten my head around yet... and even a decent number of pretty excellent dance jams [short list: "far away," "ready for the floor," kelley polar's "entropy reigns in the celestial city," ashlee's "boys," juvelen's multiple bangers, most of the hercules album...] [then, complicating things a bit, there's also a number of great things that hit at the end of '07, which might make sense to include in this year's reckoning - including "is it you?," "see you again," sophie ellis-bex and amy diamond's albums, jordin sparks and kylie's x, all of which have continued to improve in my estimation well into this year]

long-rant-reduced, haven't been feeling very poptimistic of late (whaddaya call pop pessimism?), which is i guess why i am relieved, if not actually that surprised, to see that the folks that make it their business to follow this stuff (and whose ranks i would probably join if days [and/or nights] were 48 hours long) more or less agree with me. that thread lays out essentially my thesis above, albeit more with an eye to critics' polls than clubland funtime (also, i am just starting to wonder a little about what will happen to my new years eve dance mix this year - the last two felt so overflowing with pop goodness that they practically made themselves...) they have more candidates/near-misses discussion fodder than me (gotta play me some catchup), so let's take a look at some of that:

curiously, in the roughly 40 tracks they've brought up in the comments thread, they neglected two of the decidedly prominent songs i heard at the club last nite: "i kissed a girl" (which i've actually only heard a couple times, but have been pre-emptively brainwashed into indignantly dismissing by mr. bedbugs, and yeah, whatever, is clearly not in the same league as "girlfriend" or whatever would be comparable, though it's not un-catchy - max/luke pedigree obv. counts for something) and "low" (which, empirically, seems like easily the biggest song of the year so far - i like it only middling - maybe a 6/10 - but i don't mind dancing to it, and i have been enjoying the gradual realization that the artist is not named "florida", nor is he named "flo rida" like "flo'" like as in "hitting tha flo" [like in the lyrics, = floor], but rather "flo rida," as in flow rider. oh yeah, duh. and why didn't somebody think of that before?)

they also neglected probably my personal favorite big pop song of the year, "senxsual sedrupction" [omg it definitely needs to be referred to thus], which i really hope didn't hit too early for people to remember it. [esp. rmx ft. robyn. speaking of, did she strike pop bronze even in the u.s.? guess not?] oh, and they snubbed "in this club", which i at first thought was just preposterously derivative and faceless, and - actually, i still think that, but i now kind of love it, perhaps for those exact qualities. hearing it blasting out of one of the beachfront mall stores in eilat this june, when i was wandering alone and wading into the starlit water, was definitely a turning point in my relationship with it. they also did not mention madonna. i haven't given up on her yet, but i guess they're probably right.

they did mention the third '08 jam that was pumped at silk city last night [twice, i believe]: "american boy", which i would probably like a lot more if it didn't always every time make me think of the will.i.am track from last year on which it is baldfacedly based, and which i apparently think is far superior (hm, i guess i do.) which so far has prevented me from really engaging with it. too bad. i loved estelle's "1980" a few years back, not that anybody heard it in this country.

other things they mentioned to which i say "well yes, there is that...":
"shawty get loose"
"wearing my rolex"
"time to pretend" [i guess...]

things i had not properly heard/processed, but must investigate further:
solange knowles - "sandcastle disco" [heard her other one that sounds like the supremes, and i liked it a good bit. this one jacks the beat from "young folks." so basically she's doing the '60s/motown revivalism, but in a way that sounds surprisingly fresh so far.]
rihanna - "disturbia" [sounded meh at first, especially from the queen of late-'00s summer monster-jams, but we'll see]
missy - "best best" [ditto. what about the other missys though, from step up 2 - i liked them jawns]
ciara - "high price"
mystery jets [liked the sound of this one]
"the rolex sweep" [oh, my goodness... - scroll ahead for the actual dance instructions]
bassline [the genre - i love the name of it but it doesn't seem to be a very apt description of the sound, which is too bad...]

what-else?

i remain, thus far, pretty much underwhelmed by ms. santogold. have not really given ms. duffy a proper but she doesn't seem terribly exciting either. i like "early winter" but wasn't that like two years ago? and i think i like alphabeat, but not sure yet. apparently sway's got a hot new one? ["f ur x" - it's on the mix he gave me at sxsw!] looking forward for cassie and annie and i guess ryan leslie [and beyonce? now that would probably about clinch it.]

and then there's mr. wayne. oh dear. basically, i am [still?] not [particularly?] a [very big?] lil wayne fan. which makes me feel more out of it than anything. but, really, is he even a pop artist? is his medium "songs"? i can't sing you a single hook of his. "a milli" is what they're liking these days? three listens so far, and not sold... but i guess we'll see there too.

[eta: future research avenues may include checking in on the 2008 output of production heavyweights -

the clutch
bloodshy and avant
timbo/danja
max/luke
stargate

who else?]

sparks & spears & sophie & so on (cont.)

a couple more things, still riffing on jordin sparks.

first, to correct an oversight (you might want to read the last post first if you haven't...if you care...if you dare): even though it was mentioned on the teenpop thread, i neglected to note/recognize that "see my side," which i mentioned as by far the sweetest (almost wrote sweedest, ha) of the recent bloodshy/avant crop, was written not just by karlsson/winnberg and åhlund, but also by r. carlsson. which is of course (not me, though i am also r, carl's son!) but robyn, of robyn fame. (of whom discogs has more images than it has credits - well, under that version of her name.) (sorry tapestore - is that someone i know? - but i'm pretty sure the connection probably came via bloodshy and windbag, er, i mean, since apparently they'd already submitted the track to britney. nice thought though - let's keep working on that.)

which, come to think of it, makes perfect sense, because it has an extremely similar sensibility to robyn's heartbreaking closing trilogy, particularly "eclipse" and "anytime you like" - it's not quite as achingly gorgeous as those two, but it's close, and i can imagine robyn doing a pretty stunning rendition of it. (actually, as long as we're getting particular, robyn didn't write "eclipse" - she didn't write "robotboy" or "handle me" either; åhlund did. she does have the third co-credit on "anything you like" with two people i don't know - how significant do we think order of credits is? but the point holds.)

meanwhile, "young and in love" is (in addition to b&a and their frequent crony h. jonback) by cathy dennis, who is a bona fide legend in this game - behind hits from basically everyone in uk chartpop starting with spice girls and s club 7, peaking with kylie, and recently sugababes ("about you now" - with dr. luke!), sophie ellis-bextor ("catch you") and roisin m. (non-album tracks only) and a legit artist in her own right. her previous co-writes with b&a include rach stevens' "sweet dreams (my lax)" and, oh yeah, "toxic."

besides jordin's album, i've been following the links and connecting the dots for sophie la-bex's trip the light fantastic and for kylie's x, both of which i've only started to listen to recently, and about which i feel much greater capacity to care. which is partly because they're almost certainly better albums; partly because i have a much better sense of who sophie and kylie are, as artists and people - tho you can blame that on the no tv if you like i guess. how much those two factors are linked is a crucial question i want to get into a little bit later. anyway, trip has cathy dennis/greg kurstin (who till has no wiki entry, amazingly), pascal gabriel and hannah robinson, xenomania, the guys from sneaker pimps, the feeling, and the b-52s...though, imporantly, sophie has a co-credit on every song except the dennis/kurstin "catch you." x, with minogue credits on just over half the tracks, has dennis, hansen/jeberg, calvin harris, freemasons, karlsson/winnberg with karen poole (of alisha's attic), kurstin/minogue/poole, and, if wikipedia is to be believed, which i doubt, kurstin producing a bloodshy/avant/poole/minogue/quant co-write.

also kat mcphee's album, which in stark contrast to sparks' has no scandinavian names - and the difference is quite audible - but does have six kara dioguardi credits and six nate hills credits (five overlap.) and "open toes" is written/produced by the clutch (along with those two and kat herself), who also did "ice box," "like a boy," dave's two favorite keke palmer songs, and blackout's "radar" and "freakshow" (the latter, interestingly, britney's only writing credit on the album)... both of which are bloodshy/avant tracks, not danja tracks.

which is interesting, because it means the scandinavians electro-pop crew were working together with the american r&b crew (the clutch, which seems to be a slightly loose collective, are timbaland proteges or something; at least they include keri hilson.) though knows how directly they were working together - actually, the liners reveal that all of the bloodshy tracks were recorded partly in the states as well as in stockholm. well whatever.

it's really hard to say what any of this means. how do these songs get written? how much of the way credits are presented is based on legal/contractual considerations that don't necessarily accurately reflect the creative process? in the vast majority of the cases i've been looking at, the producer or producers are credited as among the writers of a given song. which in plenty of cases probably makes sense, especially for sonically inventive/electronic-based music where so much of the song's essence comes from the production rather than the writing per se. but to what extent are songs usually finished before they go into the studio; or to what extent do "'songs" sometimes get fleshed out after the creation of the beats and backing arrangements (which counts as "production.")

i've been fairly focused on songwriting credits lately, in my amg pieces as well as these posts here - calling attention to it, for various reasons, in my reviews of albums by the veronicas, rachel stevens, skye sweetnam, and marit larsen - and while it makes sense as an interpretive key of sorts, it also feels strange to be so fixated on. i do feel in some ways that my interest in pop has been taking a turn for the academic ... that at least a lot of the recent stuff i've been listening to hasn't managed to excite me quite as much on a musical level as some things in the past - or, certainly, to engage me on an emotional level.

indeed, as much as i enjoyed listening to and familiarizing myself with the skye and 'ronnies albums for review - and i stand by my (respectively) generally positive and enthusiastic assessments of them - neither has shown exceptional sticking power. certainly neither has compelled me (so far anyway) to keep listening and re-examining the way rachel and marit's albums have (in both cases i came to fundamentally new shades of understanding in these most recent revisitations.) meanwhile there's been this whole series of teen-pop and dance-pop albums - most of which, admittedly, i only have as itunes playlists - that i've been enjoying, to a greater or lesser extent, but that have so far largely failed to stand out as especially distinctive. that'd include the new ones by sugababes, roisin murphy, keke palmer, ashley tisdale, amy diamond, vanessa hudgens, and the aforementioned sparks, mcphee, kylie and sophie e-b, and aly + aj (though that one is making major strides - probably shouldn't be on this list anymore.)

admittedly many of these will require more listening, though some are simply not going to be worth the effort - my overwhelming impression of a lot of this is that it's, well, overwhelming - just too much, too fast, that's all impressively good but not quite great. and though of course there are some stylistic distinctions among these various albums, i'm struggling to distinguish them more fully. so i guess i may be delving into the minutiae of credit information, in part, as a shortcut to understanding them.

but i'm also on some level trying to link these lackluster impressions to the effect of having too many cooks, as it were. as fascinating as it is to realize how incestuous and intertangled the world of mainstream pop/r&b/dance/etc. can be - especially when the behind-the-scenes players intermingle internationally (well, across scandinavia, the u.k. and the u.s.) even though the public personas often don't - it grows increasingly harder to know what to make of all this prodigious cross-collaborative output, let alone to keep the endless but recurring array of practitioners straight.

many of the albums i listed above have quite a hodge-podge of writers and producers working on various tracks, as i've sort of demonstrated in exhaustive detailed. insomniatic is a clear exception, and is decidedly stronger for it - as are the veronicas and skye album's (though the latter is pretty scattershot even with the same producers/writers on 9/12 tracks) - though it should be noted that all of these are much more pop/rock than anything else on the list, despite their dancy frills. (same goes for ashlee's two albums, primarily the work of the sorely missed simpson/dioguardi/shanks trifecta.)

some other (slightly less recent) albums that are primarily written and produced by the same people: linda sundblad's oh my god [all songs sundblad/karlsson - a different one - with a couple adding others - max martin on one, klas åhlund on "lose you"], sally shapiro's disco romance [the possibly fictional sally herself doesn't write anything, but mr. johan agebjörn wrote all but two songs and produced everything], and the work of bertine zetlitz, especially her last two albums, which were produced entirely by fred ball [aka pleasure] and written entirely by zetlitz/ball. (two people...made the whole album? is that even possible?) the shapiro album and zetlitz's rollerskating are two of my absolute favorite albums at them moment - and the sundblad's pretty great too - i'll hopefully have reviews for all three up on amg shortly.

so those are some scandinavians (there's also annie and robyn, both of whom are starting to get seriously overdue for new albums - but though they do co-write most of their material, neither of them write all of it, and both of their celebrated albums had a fair range of different producers involved, which is interesting to note in light of how auteurist their public personae tend to be.) then there's madonna's confessions on a dancefloor [all madge co-writes; all with stuart price and/or mirwais except for two bloodshy/avant tracks] and hilary duff's dignity [a handful of producers, including, hilariously, richard "humpty" vission, but 12 out of 14 cuts are by dioguardi/duff, often with the producer as a third co-credit] - both solid if not amazing, but certainly stylistically cohesive.

and then there's blackout. it's telling that this album has, by far, fewer producers (or, maybe more relevantly, fewer production teams) than any of spears' albums since her debut - either five or six, depending on how you count the clutch, but basically only two for 3/4 of the album. to recap: four tracks are produced by bloodshy and avant (two with the clutch co-producing) and five are produced by danja. that leaves one by the neptunes, one - "heaven on earth," very possibly my favorite track - with music by onetime (?) ambient electronica duo freescha and vocal production by kara dioguardi, and one - consensus weakest-link "ooh ooh baby" (though i kinda like it; possibly too bad they didn't actually sample the turtles) by dioguardi and "fredwreck" nasser, who also did something on the mcphee album. anyway, as i think i've established, it's quite cohesive sonically and consistent song-wise, and, well, it just keeps growing on me, even though my interest in it has relatively little to do with britney herself.

i'm happy to continue absenting myself from the controversy over the extent of her actual involvement, as fascinating as it is. as far as i'm concerned, as long as the job is done and done well, i'm not going to complain - and whoever it is that's behind blackout has accomplished something pretty remarkable, just by virtue of creating an album that stands out from this season's teeming pack. i will point out, however, that there is only one person listed as executive producer for this album. and that's britney, bitch.

one disclaimer, and one final question. just to be clear, i certainly wouldn't want to contend that a record needs to have a reasonably consolidated writing/production crew to work well as an album. my review of rachel stevens' come and get it - which just might be my personal yardstick for the entire genre - should make that evident enough (even though it's definitely not the album-iest album.) similarly, kylie's fever - an obvious touchstone of an '00s pop album if there ever was one - is cobbled together from a surprising array of talent (truly, surprising - i'd always assumed it wasn't so much, because the sound is so consistent, but nope.) and then, of course, i'll always have paris ... the presence of many sets of writers and producers did little to stop me from erecting a grand glittering interpretive edifice to its conceptual perfection. and i don't think i need to say any more about that.

but as a general rule - and as one would imagine - albums with fewer writers and producers do tend to hold together better as albums. the exceptions generally have some other overarching unifying element - a clear shared stylistic approach, or a front-person with enough individuality, vocal/lyrical distinctness, or sheer force of personality to make everything hold together.

so my question is this: what is the historical context for albums with songs by many different writers and producers? i know it's a longstanding pop tradition in some ways (tin-pan-alley, brill building, motown, what-have-you), but it seems like there's been a resurgence and an intensification, probably just within the last 15-20 years, and possibly increasingly over that span. it seems at least partly related to the rise of hip-hop and r&b (and even in those genres it has gotten far more pronounced - even when the black album came out it was a big deal that each track was by a different producer, which i guess would still be noteworthy today, but i think less so.) if there are discernable trends along these lines, can we link them to other trends in the nature of pop albums?

and, more broadly, what else can be said about the historical development of the pop album? admittedly, it's a somewhat academic, limited question - in pop, albums will always be secondary to singles and songs - but as both a confirmed poptimist and albumist, it speaks to a very present tension in my musical exploration, and as year-end album list time grows ever nearer, it's also timely one - and i'm gonna keep on teasing it out.

it's poppin'

okay, liveblogging as i listen to jordin sparks' self-titled first album for the first time. and browse wikipedia musing on the tangled connections in the pop universe. 'cuz, why not.

first track/first single "tattoo" - written/produced by stargate, the same norwegian team behind "so sick" and "irreplaceable" and "hate that i love you" (and three more songs from good girl gone bad) and it sounds exactly like those songs, which makes me realize how much they sound like each other. (stargate also did mis-teeq's "scandalous" which sounds most different from these of anything i recognize in their discography.) it's not bad - the title metaphor (he's written on her heart like a tattoo) sort of continues the trend somebody pointed out of everyday objects (lip gloss, open-toed shoes, vans i guess) taking prominence lately over namechecking big brand names.

doesn't feel like it should be the first song on the album - it's probably not good enough for one (though, i haven't heard the rest of it yet), but it has that kinda epic vibe that comes on too strong off the bat. irreplaceable (from which the drum groove is lifted verbatim, with added open hat or two) was track 9 on b-day (b'day, get the punxuation right) until the bollixed deluxedition when it was moved to track two (after new track beautiful liar, which is also by stargate. think they're hot right now or something?

scanning the writing credits, every song except for maybe three has at least one writer with a conspicuously scandinavian name.

track two - "one step at a time" - really love the footsteps sound for the beat - surprised that hasn't been done more often. especially before the rest of the beat kicks in, but i like how it's still audible throughout. lovely lilting harp riff very reminiscent of ryan leslie's production for cassie. (i guess i'm thinking of "just 1 night" in particular.)

ok, good, production credits here. (should discogs and wiki merge?) (they're my top two resources for amg bio research.) so the producers/writers are jonas jeberg, who also has credits on vanessa hudgens' V (under the name Jay Jay) and mitch hansen, aka cutfather, who hasn't done much since the new jack era, apparently, when he used to work with soulshock (aka carsten schack), the dane best known as half of the duo behind, well, all kinds of things, including more recently-ish, leave (get out) and some jamelia stuff. [eta: and skye's "kiss a girl"] and also robbie nevil, an american who's apparently been around forever (had a song on the cocktail soundtrack) but doesn't seem to have much connection to current stuff. jeberg and hansen also worked together on a track for kylie's X (working their way from the end of the alphabet i guess?)

"no air," duet with chris brown, about whom i have managed to remember nothing so far, though i guess he's supposed to be important somehow. his name sure sucks. producers/writers are eric "bluetooth" griggs, who has no other credits that i can find, but does have a good name, and the underdogs (whoa, harvey mason's son!) who have been around and worked with lots of r&b names, and pink, britney, and kat mcphee in case they don't count.) ok whatever. not norwegians.

"freeze" is by stargate again. not too impressed.

"shy boy" on the other hand, is neat-o, with snaky synths snaking all over the place (sometimes into midi-ringtone arpeggiator territory, but that's cool) and bleeps and vocals and whatnot. and a minimal (hyphy-ish, i guess) boom-bap and processed vocals. it's by bloodshy and avant.
produced by them; written by them (aka christian karlsson and pontus winberg, whose name sounds like pompous windbag) and the bassist (?) j honback, and klas åhlund of teddybears.

bloodshy and avant are half of the reason i decided to write this in the first place. they are responsible, of course for ("toxic" as well as) four of the key tracks on blackout, the album that's been fascinating me more than most these days. (åhlund also has a co-credit on "piece of me," which means another coup for the robyn/teddybears camp, although i haven't yet been able to notice robyn's b. vox on that song.) according to their very interesting wiki article, B&A wrote more songs intended for blackout that were rejected and subsequently given to sparks (three songs including "shy boy") and to jennifer lopez (the title track of her new album brave)
and to kylie (two of them appear on X - a-ha, another connexion - the very ones tom ewing complained about in pitchfork as sounding like nu-britney. er, also the one he said sounded like ol'-daft punk.)

yeah, bloodshy & avant (what names, right?) have a knack for smashing productions that almost totally obscure the artist "fronting" the track in the process. "toxic" never really sounded like britney to me one whit, i can barely even recall what she sounds like on it. actually of this recent crop j-lo may fare the best - she sounds reasonably like herself on "brave," which makes sense since she possibly has the strongest (in character, not quality) voice of the four. also there's enough harmony in the song that it doesn't feel as frosty as many of the others.

of the jordin tracks - actually of all ten in this crop - "see my side" stands out as the most sweetly touching - music-box harp lines, simple melody, gently pleading "see my side and i'll see yours better." the chorus has funny big boom-bap beats that don't quite fit but don't quite disrupt it either. "young and in love" is more in line with the other tunes - it frankly sounds like a blackout reject. need to hear it more to know if there's anything worthwhile in it; doubtful.

i've jumped ahead and gotten off my album-sequence reportage schedule. which is okay, because i never really cared about the album in the first place. the other half of the reason i'm writing this, in case you were curious, is that two of the tracks were co-written by espen lind, a one-time tourmate of one-time norwegian idol finalist alejandro fuentes (chilean-born, unlike josé gonzález who's only argentinian by parentage), who i don't care about really but i was gonna write a bio on him for amg. but i didn't because i wrote this instead. oh yeah - lind co-wrote "irreplaceable" too (and a ne-yo song, and an elliott yamin song), and stargate produced one of these two songs; the other one was produced by 'espionage' which i'm guessing is lind's producer-hat moniker.

okay, just for the sake of completeness: two of the other tracks, "next to you" and "permanent monday" were produced by one emanuel kirakou (what kind of name is that?) who did two songs i don't remember for kat mcphee and one ("love me for me") for ashleey tisdale, and were co-written with an l. robbins who's connected to people whose names are vaguely familiar (melissa o'neill, anastacia.) and the last song is by a friend of hers, which might be worth paying attention to, but i don't have time now.

i guess the thing to get to, eventually, is the question of what all of this does to the identities of pop artists and pop albums. it's no shocker and no news that albums are (often) cobbled together from the work of multiple songwriters, producers, etc. and hence often don't have a lot of personality - that's where the weakness of a sparks or a mcphee comes through; not having enough force of personality to make a record cohere when there's nothing otherwise coherent about it. i guess having a good executive producer or whatever has to be important, but you never hear anything about that.

but when the individual producers and writings have such strong styles - and especially when those styles are as dramatic iconoclastic as bloodshy & avant's recent work - that you recognize them as they crop up again in lesser and lesser variations across the albums of second- and third-tier artists, we end up with a handful of interchangeable albums that are familiarly, systematically piecemeal.

"toxic" sounded fairly out of place on in the zone; the producers of blackout were savvy enough to run with b+a for much of the album, so that the style ("sliced up" vocals, among other things) is now, already and probably inevitably, shorthanded as "nu britney," since we heard it there first and best and most. and, better, they aligned those tracks with the sympathetic style of danja + co (who do essentially the r&b take on the same basic premise), and a few other producers who seem to be on board with the general concept. i don't know how it came about, exactly, but clearly there was a concerted effort to put together something stylistically cohesive and fresh-sounding. the fact that the style they came up with for it is also has this curious and unsettling effect of distorting the singer (to the extent that she becomes enmeshed within the production rather than riding on top of it) is either convenient or consciously confundatory or both. it's tremendously provocative either way, and blackout is almost certainly the most innovative pop albums of the year, as well as one of the most enjoyable.

jordin sparks on the other hand, frequently sounds fantastic...but leaves me with next to nothing. scandinavians are magic, as is well known. but even magic can only do so much.

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.

"play those oldies mister deejay"

Title: untitled ("enjoy.....classic")
Format: cassette tape (90 min)
Date: early january 2006
Packaging: several unique designs, of which this was my favorite (with the words typed on the construction paper):

enjoy

classic

[hey mr. dj...]
1. play those oldies, mr. dj - anthony and the sophomores
2. baby doll - chuck berry
[it's ray charles!]
3. ooh! my soul - little richard
4. soldier boy - the shirelles
5. soldier of love - arthur alexander
6. is it true? - brenda lee
[gladys knight + the pips with a soul full of coca-cola]
7. poor jenny - everly brothers
8. foolin' 'round - patsy cline
9. oh no not my baby - maxine brown
10. walkin' the dog - rufus thomas
[the who drink coke after coke after coke]
11. ain't that peculiar - marvin gaye
12. i'll do a little bit more - the olympics
13. look through any window - the hollies
14. love me til the sun shines - the kinks
[it's summer swingin' with the everly brothers]
15. itsy bitsy p'tit bikini - johnny halliday
16. i don' care if the sun don't shine - elvis presley
17. rain on the roof - the lovin' spoonful
[the boxtops would like to buy the pretty girls a coke]
18. baby it's cold outside - jimmy 'n' wes
19. it's cold outside - the choir
20. don't think twice - the wonder who
21. little boy blue - bobby "blue" bland
22. the fat man - fats domino
[the real thing: jerry lee lewis for coca cola]
23. movie magg - carl perkins
24. saturday night at the movies - the drifters
25. don't sleep in the subway - petula clark
26. elenore - the turtles
27. comic strip - serge gainsbourg
28. sunday morning - margo guryan
[the supremes ask: "want another, honey? another glass of coke?"]
29. south street - the orlons
30. l.s.d. - the pretty things
31. my uncle - flying burrito brothers
32. the boat that i row - lulu
33. teenage blues - barbara lynn
34. every little thing - the beatles
35. stand by me - ben e. king
36. go cry on somebody else's shoulder - f.z. and the mothers of invention (excerpt)

so this was the mix i made a year and almost a month ago, of which the mix i made yesterday is sort of the little sibling, or perhaps child. (you'll notice it inherited two of the same songs - that's allowed, in the family.) it is labelled as follows:

vol. 1
'50s/'60s vs. '05/'06
ageless pop from the soda fountain of youth
jerked by ross of love
insp. by a. a. biggs

inspired specifically by angela's '50s/'60s american/french mix which we listened to driving back from wnkn new years, and made specifically for the three ladies in the car with me. but also obv. also insp. by my childhood oldies radio days (hence "youth"), even though i only remember a handful of these tunes actually being played by WKLX (4, 11, 13, 20, 35; possibly 22 and 25.) i tried to make it seem a bit like a radio broadcast by including selections from this lp i have of coke commercials ("things go better with...") performed by everybody, often in the style or lifting the melody from one of their own hits, sometimes constituting entirely new little mini-songs in their own right. (best punning use of that record since i didn't actually intersperse it while djing the "pop/art" party in kitao.)

meanwhile, the musical selections are probably too widely ranging in both style and date for this to be an accurate portrayal of a '60s-era radio station - but i don't think it's that far off. i did overexaggerate the range of styles, to include country, "hard rock", folk-rock, blues, and even jazz, on top of all manner of soul and pop. i think my favorite thing about the mix is how
nicely that balance comes off - despite the variety, everything seems to relate and coexist naturally. i feel like it would be difficult to achieve that in an encapsulation of the pop-musical world of 2006 with a similarly wide-ranging (albeit admittedly skewed) selection. i also like (and contributing to the radio-effect, for me) the balance between fairly recognizable songs and more obscure ones.

it does stray a little farther into the late '60s than i had really wanted (there's an imprecise but distinct chronological drift to the whole thing) - the thought being that vol. 2 ('60s-'70s vs. '06/'07, presumably) could cover something like 65-76, where this one does roughly 54-66 - mostly to accomodate some recent acquisitions i was excited about.

about the other day's minimix, by the way - which i want to be perhaps the first installment in a monthly (ish?) podcast series - it draws primarily and deliberately on the vein of male vocal pop which i talked about here (pts. 5 and 6) as being underrecognized. also, i hadn't realized this when i made it, but perhaps the opening mamas and papas snippet and title reference can serve as tribute to papa denny (r.i.p.), who died last week. (if you missed it, those are from "california dreamin'", which i decided against actually including despite that absolutely rippin' flute break.)

i make summer mixtapes for no reason

Title: Gold Star for Robot Boy
Format: iTunes playlist (~80 min) CD-R!
Date: early-teens, December 2006
Packaging: optional...but the CD's got a purple star on! [r = 1/2 k csc 36º, thanks lys.]

1 ★ Gold Star for Robot Boy - Guided by Voices
2 ★ Come Closer - Marit Larsen
3 ★ Something I Must Tell You - Aberfeldy
4 ★ Kate - Sambassadeur
5 ★ Let's Get Out of This Country - Camera Obscura
6 ★ I Write Summer Songs for No Reason - Acid House Kings
7 ★ Paris 2004 - Peter Bjorn and John
8 ★ Suffer for Fashion - Of Montreal
9 ★ Robot Rock - Daft Punk [excerpt]
10 ★ Robot Song - Margaret Berger
11 ★ Robotboy - Robyn
12 ★ Heartbeat - Paris
13 ★ Beat of my Heart - Hilary
14 ★ I Built This City (original maxi mix) - Baxendale
15 ★ Promise (Kyaal Remix) - Ciara
16 15 ★ All This Love - The Similou
17 16 ★ Yours to Keep - Teddybears ft. Neneh Cherry
18 17 ★ Month in the Summer - Sway
[eta:] 18 ★ Summer Love - Justin Timberlake
19 ★ Ditto - Cassie
20 ★ No End - The Ark
21 ★ Evening Sun - The Strokes
22 ★ Build Me Up - Rhymefest ft. ODB
23 ★ I Love You - The Pipettes
24 ★ Gold Star for Robot Boy - Jon Auer

still not supersatisfied with this mix, which i've been working on for week or so now, but i think it's time to give up and post it here. i don't have any particular plans for it; i may not even burn a physical copy, though let me know if you especially want one (there are some fun transition edits and such.) i may keep tinkering with it, but it may just end up being an exercise. (hence i will feel free to cannibalize from it in the future.)

it's trying to do a lot of different things simultaneously (maybe too many):

• just wanted to make a straight-up mixtape (as opposed to a dj mix) since it's been a long time since i've done that. (but it's just not the same with mp3s...)

• an opportunity to salvage and capitalize on a title ("gold star for robotboy") that i was playing around with a while back. along with that, naturally, it's a robot mix. except not overly so, because there just aren't that many suitable robot songs, and i didn't want to overplay my hand there (didn't include peggy lee's "robot man," or folk implosion's "mechanical man," or the futureheads "robot," etc.) wasn't sure if i should include the title track, but then ended up doing it twice. (sort of think of them as 'bonus' or would-be hidden tracks, the bookends/frames for the mix rather than part of the mix proper.)

• it's a love mix, and specifically a rosy, optimistic, beginning-of-relationship love mix. which is sort of wish fulfillment on my part, since at the moment i'm not in love with anybody, not even (much less?) a robot. hum de dum de dum. (i wasn't necessarily trying to tell a story with the song sequence, but you might be able to find one in the track titles. the final segment of blends solemnity, playfulness, hope, resignation, and certainty in ways that might be important to pay attention to.)

• it turned out to be a summer mix too, which sort of goes hand-in-hand with those kind of happy love songs, though not so much robot love songs. [see trx 4-7, 16-18, 21] so it's a summer love mix - but of course on the other side of blissful and carefree there's the awareness of how fragile it is, just as summer fades and the days grow older and colder. so many summer love songs are really about the end of summer, looking back at it fondly. ["summer's gone," probably the best tune on the aberfeldy album, would almost have fit, except it's no longer sentimental, it's already resigned to moving on; also it's on the ghost of valentine's past mixtape that i should get around to publishing here sometime.] the end of summer is about the end of youth too, and innocence ("i love you more than being seventeen"), but on balance this mix is still in that beautiful, idealistic, sunny moment ("i'm all about you, you're all about me, we're all about each other.") anyway, in this and a couple senses this it's a bit of a belated successor to popsical.

• also, likewise, it's a pop mix - in this case encompassing/trying to reconcile indie pop with chart/dance pop (or maybe just b/c that's what i'm mostly into these days.) no vintage pop in this case, though i played with that a little bit. sometimes it gets to feel arbitrary picking and choosing from among recent music, especially when there's so much of it. but old stuff doesn't necessarily help. in this case there's not a lot of musical reconciliation - indie and charty remain almost entirely segregated in a fairly predictable fashion [even more so than popsical actually, though the general template is similar, with a false peak in the early middle, then backing off a bit before a bigger peak, then a more experimental concluding taper.] production-wise and generally sonically (which is indeed the issue), contemporary indie-pop feels about as far from big-budge dance-pop as '60s-era stuff is.

act one [2-7] alternates scandinavian and scottish cutesy-rootsy sing-a-longs almost evenly 'til my favorite swedish sandwich tips the scales; then glam-pop exploders of montreal simultaneously create and detonate a bridge to the amped-up mid-section of top-down dancey-synthy heart/fist-pumpers, which comes fully equipped with its own amped-down mid-mid-section [10-11] of robo-tripping emo-power ballad slow jams. [but n.b.! this is not a "heartbeat" mix - that would be way too easy and obvious - i'd have had to go consciously out of my way to avoid heartbeat songs. i did have to include hils though cuz i feel like i've been giving her short shrift in general.]

things get more complex in the final chapter, maybe more sober and more whimsical at the same time (and if MB's "robot song" is the centerpiece of the mix, then sober whimsicality, or whimsical sobriety, is probably the appropriate mood.) this section [?18-23, i guess] reads like odd ends but may be a painstakingly re-re-sequenced melting-pot of sentimentalist album-closing moves from a remarkable range of genres; each one either building on and/or second-guessing the pathos of the one before. for me, even as the irony-potential warning indicator increases from sway>cassie>ark>strokes>odb>pipettes, the level of sincere emotion actually attained grows all the more touching. but them i'm a sap.

as for my own closer, turns out jon auer's spare acoustic balladization of pollard's pseudo-surrealist title nugget, which bursts in gently here like reality after waking from a dream, emphasizes it as a kinda tender little self-empowerment anthem ("if i waited for you to signify the moves that i should make...") that fits in quite nicely.

well anyway. that's that. if nothing else, nice to spotlight some overlooked gems - i like all of these songs a good deal. ("all this love" and "let's get out of this country" verging on overplayed rather than overlooked, but still good.)

i'm sort of working on a (companion? probably not) mix of, erm, sadder music (which will probably make me feel better.) or maybe something else. then there's a big question of how my year-end mix tradition will manifest this year. been playing around with live and working towards a maximalistmashymash, but unclear whether i'll have the whatever to go through with it. (?)

[revised 2/07, swapping in justim's "summer love" for the promise remix, which is already on oh-six, and is not really on topic anyway.]

You Don't Wanna Mess With Sweden.

really, you don't. especially when it comes to the P-word. even just keeping track of the names of bands is a losing proposition. i've been keeping a running list on a sticky for a month or two now, and it seems like scarcely a day goes by when i don't run across another gushing reference to another indispensible Swedish pop act to add to my file.

this review suggests that the list of collaborators on the new (weirdly mish-mash, if you ask me) Robyn ep encompasses "every single Swedish group worth talking about," and...yeah, it is impressive for five songs. but not even close. and see, even that short list includes an artist i'd previously not heard of, and who on the basis of this amusing video may be worth keeping an eye on, despite her bland, non-nordic name.

i would really like to hear - perhaps at EMP; it would fit in nicely with this year's theme - an explanation or some theories about why the Swedes produce so much and such uniquely excellent pop. (throw in the Norwegians too - hey, it was the same country until a hundred years ago - and it's even more impressive.) i'm not sure exactly how impressed to be by it, but at the very least it is striking. anyway this entry is not about analysis or commentary or theorizing; i'm just trying to get a handle on my mental database here.

some resources:
allmusic's swedish pop page
swedish charts (haven't even looked at this yet)
wikipedia, of course. (says that the Ark, the Knife, and I'm from Barcelona have "less emphasis on pop music." bizarrely, this page makes no mention of pop)
labrador records, "sweden's and the world's finest purveyor of pop music" (on the indie tip - but popwise, naturally sweden's finest is also the world's)

incidentally, the wiki entry on teen pop (should that be one word?) suggests that it's synonymous with Swedish pop. and is also otherwise completely egregious - somebody from the ilx thread/poptimists/bedbugs massive (well, maybe it's not that massive) really ought to do something about that. maybe i'll even do it. (though weird al informs me that editing wikipedia is nerdy, so maybe i shouldn't.)

[EDIT: swapping out chronological/stylistic for audiobiographical organization]

well, there's ABBA
and Ace of Base and the Cardigans (are these guys, like, legends at this point?)

all this i know and love:
Komeda, the Knife, Robyn, Teddybears, the Ark, Jens Lekman.

more recent acquaintances:
Amy Diamond, Margaret Berger, Play, Acid House Kings, Peter Björn and John.

have heard; should investigate further:
Alcazar, Marie Serneholt, Kleerup
Caesars, Concretes, Hello Saferide, Radio Dept.
Firefox AK, Jenny Wilson, Frida Hyvonen
ETA: Sambassadeur (!)

extremely vague familiarity with
Roxette (!), A-Teens (!), Love is All
Ronderlin, I'm from Barcelona, Shout Out Louds

i have really never heard
Army of Lovers
Eggstone, Cinnamon, Atomic Swing, Cloudberry Jam, Waltz for Debbie
Happydeadmen/the Shermans/the Charade
Red Sleeping Beauty/Club 8/The Legends
Wan Light, Starlet, Girlfriendo, the Sounds

hum hum hum...i think there's more but i'm getting tired. hard to know where to draw the line around pop. dance, synth, indie, /rock, otherwise. i'm trying to only include artists that seem worth checking out (apart from the ones i already love.) this list isn't too well set up to show it, but it's really crazy how many of my current favorites are represented here.

more work to be done, as always.

[ETA: crikey! apparently there actually is a Marit Bergman. and she is Swedish. and apparently she's Important or something. see what i mean?...]

p.s.
careful boys, she's Norwegian:
Annie, Bertine Z, Marit2Marion...hm, they've nearly got the swedes beat in the pop-princess division

i feel (all this) love (and space)

oooooooooooooooooooohitssogooditssogooditssogooditssoooogoood.....oooooooooooooooooohheavenknowshea
venknowsheavenknowsheavenknowsheavenknows.....ooooooooooooooooooooooooohifeelloveifeelloveifeelloveif
eelloveifeeeeeellove.........ifeeeeeellooooooooooooooooooooooooooveifeeellooooooooooooooooooooooooooove


now that i've got that out of my system (for a little minute), i'm gonna keep you on your toes by listing, in scattered commentary form, some singles i'm feeling these days. blam!! (not that any of it is especially timely):

i feel single(s)

[apart from "i feel love" that is - funny belting that out, on my bike, waiting for the light at broad and spring garden - like who am i trying to convince i feel love i feel love? anyway been going to paradise @ key west lately (see me up there? thanks for photos - that's from last week when optimo played there!) and adding italo disco to the growing list of "subgenres to investigate, learn, and master, preferably in a single feverish evening of downloading". also crushing on "i feel space" (not news, but sogooditssogooditssoetc) and wondering what follows logically.)]

"i feel time...love...joy...i feel space...i feel...me." (?)

(ACTION!!)

also feelin all this love like whoa. uh, more on that later. (haven't seen the video yet.)

feeling ain't no other man. found it a little tacky at first, i think the horn stabs seemed canned and flat, but it's got me now. i actually do think it's pretty soulful. (and stylish, duh, classy i guess, badass even?) anyway i like the lyrics.

also love a public affair, which is technically (obviously) doing an '80s throwback thing, but the song itself for some reason sounds sort of like the '60s to me (like the xtina song, which is pretending to be a '30s throwback, at least based on the video.) i wanna layer that opening glockenspiel line over the end of "crash and burn girl," but it's too late 'cause i already did that with paris. haven't heard any more from either of these albums, but i guess i should.

me & u is probably up there for actual-pop single of the year. when i first heard about it from kate she said it was all about the (undenibly awesome) synth line, not the vocals. (then she tried to sing the synth line - the plinky clave one, not the high winding one - which wasn't very helpful.) but in fact i've had the melody in my head all the time, and have been singing that (which doesn't work so well either, at least the part where i can't sing three-part harmony with myself.) this fits really well over the pack's "vans", which is similarly cool and more than a little ridiculous. (2nd cassie single=also hott.)

otherwise...not hearing too much rap this year (again). i like "kick, push" (quite a lot), but i'm not quite feeling the lupe fiasco album (and the title and cover aren't helpful.) maybe i'll get there though. meanwhile, whatever else it may be, "3 freaks" is a lot of fun. hyphy is on that subgenre list - i'll report back later. (maybe my cousin in SF knows something.) (oh yeah - i like "ridin'" too, especially the sinister synths.)

i like pretty much everything i've heard from the beyonce album (more than the first two singles, actually, though they were both fine) but the standout for now is totally irreplaceable. yay for pop with melodies.

what else? love love love young folks (ooh, cartoon whistling!) and was psyched to hear it out dancing on my birthday. does this mean i should like the concretes? it's good that people are fusing '60s pop and contempo dance, so that i don't have to do it all by myself.

not so new, but i just discovered "this is the world we live in" (whoa, maybe better not to watch the video?) reminds me a little of "i could be that woman." speaking of christina milian, i should probably see what's up with her album these days. should also find out who alcazar are exactly.

i love the whole ark album, and i'm glad they seem to be catching on a little bit, but it's all about "one of us is gonna die young" as far as annum-ruling singles go. (scissor sisters are nice too.)

and speaking of singles of the year (which i'm not), don't think i've forgotten about 4FR, for eva-evah, forever-ever! cause i haven't, and it still works as good as eva.

"pull shapes" and "LDN" meanwhile...are still quite nice too. and the camera obscura singles are sounding stronger, if anything.

oh, before i forget: not like i need to say any more about paris(ite), but i'll take the opportunity to post this video, because i think it's awesome. (it has a moral!) (also it's for one of the best songs this year.)

not feeling so much:
"sexy back" - eh, it's ok. but why are all the hipsto djs playing this and not better current chart pop? the groove is pretty cool for mixing. but nothing else about it is at all interesting. the auxiliary vocal bits in particular are pretty annoying (possible exception: "let me see what yr twerking with.") supposedly it's better in the context of the album (?) (it is somewhat better in da club, i guess.)

"bossy" - also sometimes gets played at the khyber, etc. i want to like this, but the chorus vocal is really annoying and non-melodic. the basic beat also isn't that good. i do like the "diamonds on my neck" part. and "she's fine and she's pretty."

ETA: "get myself into it" - um. well. why is it so slow? why doesn't luke jenner sound like he's into it? (i mean besides that being lyrically appropriate.) sure, you can dance to it, sure, it segues smoothly out of madonna's "holiday." but the beat's uninspiring, there's no real hook, the saxophone is neither obnoxious nor at all memorable. extra points detracted for the notably awkward scansion on the title line. (gotta get myself intto it.) i don't hate this song - i don't really have a problem with it, i just really hope there's something better on the album.

"london bridge" - is not in this category because i don't like it. actually, i do like. a lot more than i thought at first. the bari sax poppin' groove is really really hot and fresh-sounding. her vocals i'm only so-so on (and no comment on the lyrix.) the worst part is actually the hook (also the only part that sounds like "galang", contrary to what some have said.) i even like the goofy doo-doo-doo bridge. also: the OH SHIT/SNAP needs to be at the beginning of my year-end mix, if i can get voices to sound like that saying "OH SIX!"

so that's that.

i feel (my)space

what's really been obsessing my headspace for the last twelve+hours, which i feel silly about waiting until this late in the post to menion, so i'll probably do it again later, is this mix, which i finished at about 6am last night/this morning, and then finished a little bit more after i woke up at 11:30. (added the big star bit at the end, not 100% sure about that.)

it's an attempt at a "straight-up" dance mix, for demo purposes among other things, following angela's wise suggestion that i try to make a demo mix of "regular club music," by which she meant no oldies. of course, it's not exactly all that straight (or entirely free of oldies, though you have to be fast to catch them.) but i think it works pretty damn nice. what brought all this up is that some (actually only three? that's silly) of the singles i mentioned above are included.

what does it say about me that i feel much more cheesy (faux-guilt) about using the lindstrøm track than christina aguilera?

i'd give a track listing, but it's probably more exciting without. but please take a listen. for the most part it hovers around indie dance territory (er, whatever that means) even though it's primarily synth-based - it does get rather trancey at times, which was not deliberate but i like it anyway. (comes of mixing late into the night perhaps?) the transitions are mostly live (with a bit of live 3-way turntable/cd action towards the end) but heavily cherrypicked and edited. (i'm getting more fluid with garageband.) also: note that it obeys the four tet rule. i dedicate it to my roommate who has been mysteriously absent all weekend, enabling me to occupy the living room with my various projects (this + my newspaper jacket, also made a pie last night that i haven't touched.)

and the title of the mix is (ahem):

RAINBOW STYLING!

(because of the similou track which i consider the centerpiece of the mix)

i want to post it on this (typically time-sucking, but atypically awesome) ilm thread, and the electro-soul mix too, but it won't let me sign in, and the password reset isn't coming... hm...

anyway (you might have guessed) it's also at mymymyspace. yay!

so that's what's up. what's new with you?