Reflections on Popular Music
Feb. 4th, 2004 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaSo. My English 15 students are currently writing response essays to a number of articles in our text dealing with popular music and assorted issues. The most popular article amongst the students is Dave Barry's most-excellent hatchet piece, "Bad Songs," which prettymuch states that Pop Radio can go fellate a anthrax-ridden bull for overplaying "hit songs" to the detriment of so many other perfectly-good tracks. The responses I've gotten have generally been most excellent--as I knew they would, since gods know everyone can get they bitch on when it comes to music...especially me. In fact, these response papers have even inspired a response of my own.
Yesterday, I picked up the newest Britney Spears album, In the Zone. Yeah, I admit it, I'm an uncloseted Britney fan. Her voice is the very definition of bland and average, but she has some of the best producers on earth writing music for her so her albums have been consistently very listenable and catchy, even if they lack any real, lasting substance. As pop ephemera, though, her songs are fucking genius, and this latest album may be the very epitome of that statement.
That is not to say that every track on the album is equally good--a few of them, frankly, blow. "Outrageous," for example, could have been neat if it hadn't been produced by R. Kelly, who took an otherwise nifty, raga-flavored jam and threw in some idiotic lyrics and sexy little jeans and sex drives that no doubt are just thinly-disguised, Britneyfied fantasies of doin' the nastay with a fourteen-year-old. Nonetheless, there are some amazingly good songs on this album: "Breathe on Me" is pure vocal-house erotica with a distinctly Eurotrash flavor reminiscent of Delerium gettin' it on with Amber; "Shadow" is just a flatout beautiful ballad that reminds me a LOT of my teen-queen idol, Debbie Gibson; and the Moby-produced "Early Mornin'" is a straight-up funkdafied 70's-style jam about partying all night. "Toxic" is great, too, with lots of interesting synthwork and mutated strings--it almost sounds like something *I* would write...though without my signature epileptic rhythms and retarded use of the patented "note retrigger buzz."
Any one of these songs could've been the lead single from the album and would've inspired me to go out and get it...but instead, what's the first single? "Me Against the Music"--her insipid "duet" with Madonna. Let me tell you: that song is fucking HORRIBLE. The music is pretty fly, but the vocals just sound like shit, the lyrics are even dumber than usual, and...well, Madonna sounds like a drunken teenager on the damned track. Madonna hasn't been relevant or even interesting in years--not since Ray of Light--and I'd rather shove a fork up my ass than listen to her old soccer-mom ass babbling about "losing control" and "baring your soul" on a teenybopper dancehall track. But, just because Britney suckered her in on that shitty song, it's the first single.
And, of course, the radio played it TO DEATH. Feh. I'm surprised I even bothered to pick up the album at all--"Toxic" prettymuch rescued it for me, and I'm glad it did, because a lot of the songs are great. Which brings me to a point one of my students made: Let's dispense with the idea of "singles" and Top 40 alltogether and just let DJs play whichever album tracks they like best--that way, folks would get a better taste of what they may be getting into with an album without: A) hearing one or two songs played to fucking deat; or B) hearing the one good song on the album, rushing out to buy it, and realizing that...the single is the one good song on the album. That's why I'm glad there's WRCT: at least the DJs that I know there manage to play different tracks from different albums on their shows, so I have a better idea of what to look out for when I'm cruising for new jams.
The same goes for club DJs.
Ohwell, though...as long as there's Top 40 radio and Clearchannel stations, the airwaves will be saturated with at most 20 different songs at a time, and I'll still stick to listening to the 80s Lunchtime shows and stupid-ass talk radio until I get a CD player jammed into my hooptie.
Yesterday, I picked up the newest Britney Spears album, In the Zone. Yeah, I admit it, I'm an uncloseted Britney fan. Her voice is the very definition of bland and average, but she has some of the best producers on earth writing music for her so her albums have been consistently very listenable and catchy, even if they lack any real, lasting substance. As pop ephemera, though, her songs are fucking genius, and this latest album may be the very epitome of that statement.
That is not to say that every track on the album is equally good--a few of them, frankly, blow. "Outrageous," for example, could have been neat if it hadn't been produced by R. Kelly, who took an otherwise nifty, raga-flavored jam and threw in some idiotic lyrics and sexy little jeans and sex drives that no doubt are just thinly-disguised, Britneyfied fantasies of doin' the nastay with a fourteen-year-old. Nonetheless, there are some amazingly good songs on this album: "Breathe on Me" is pure vocal-house erotica with a distinctly Eurotrash flavor reminiscent of Delerium gettin' it on with Amber; "Shadow" is just a flatout beautiful ballad that reminds me a LOT of my teen-queen idol, Debbie Gibson; and the Moby-produced "Early Mornin'" is a straight-up funkdafied 70's-style jam about partying all night. "Toxic" is great, too, with lots of interesting synthwork and mutated strings--it almost sounds like something *I* would write...though without my signature epileptic rhythms and retarded use of the patented "note retrigger buzz."
Any one of these songs could've been the lead single from the album and would've inspired me to go out and get it...but instead, what's the first single? "Me Against the Music"--her insipid "duet" with Madonna. Let me tell you: that song is fucking HORRIBLE. The music is pretty fly, but the vocals just sound like shit, the lyrics are even dumber than usual, and...well, Madonna sounds like a drunken teenager on the damned track. Madonna hasn't been relevant or even interesting in years--not since Ray of Light--and I'd rather shove a fork up my ass than listen to her old soccer-mom ass babbling about "losing control" and "baring your soul" on a teenybopper dancehall track. But, just because Britney suckered her in on that shitty song, it's the first single.
And, of course, the radio played it TO DEATH. Feh. I'm surprised I even bothered to pick up the album at all--"Toxic" prettymuch rescued it for me, and I'm glad it did, because a lot of the songs are great. Which brings me to a point one of my students made: Let's dispense with the idea of "singles" and Top 40 alltogether and just let DJs play whichever album tracks they like best--that way, folks would get a better taste of what they may be getting into with an album without: A) hearing one or two songs played to fucking deat; or B) hearing the one good song on the album, rushing out to buy it, and realizing that...the single is the one good song on the album. That's why I'm glad there's WRCT: at least the DJs that I know there manage to play different tracks from different albums on their shows, so I have a better idea of what to look out for when I'm cruising for new jams.
The same goes for club DJs.
Ohwell, though...as long as there's Top 40 radio and Clearchannel stations, the airwaves will be saturated with at most 20 different songs at a time, and I'll still stick to listening to the 80s Lunchtime shows and stupid-ass talk radio until I get a CD player jammed into my hooptie.
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Re:
Date: 2004-02-05 07:23 am (UTC)Any new suggestions are welcome!