In another life, I'm a copy editor. (Which guarantees that there will be some sort of error in this post, naturally. I throw up my hands and defer to Muphry.) Now, this doesn't give me any sort of godlike ability, writing or otherwise. It mainly gives me late hours.
One thing it does give me, though, is the nagging compulsion to pick apart the lyrics to songs I listen to. And to my dismay, a lot of them are quite pickapartable. They don't make sense. They refute themselves. They grocery-bag. Luckily, most people only blatantly succumb to this once or twice per song. Most people. There are, sadly, people like...
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Katy Perry! If We Ever Meet Again and California Gurls: OK, Katy. I really want to like you. You are the sort of singer I should like: kind of irreverent, suffused with post-girlpower that's fake as hell but still real enough. And when I don't hear any of your songs, just read your tweets or see you in a fashion slideshow, it almost works.
But then you start writing songs, and everything falls apart. That PMS line in the otherwise great "Hot N Cold" (well, OK, the inability to write the letters A and D too.) Katy, Katy, Katy. This ain't how you reclaim a word, not that you care. Then there's the entire conceit of "I Kissed A Girl." The entire existence of "UR So Gay." The crashing mediocrity of "Waking Up In Vegas." You disappeared after this, of course, and your aesthetic was partially taken up -- and more! -- by Gaga and Ke$ha. And once again, I'd forgotten that your songs pretty much suck.
Take "If We Ever Meet Again." It is probably unfair for me to criticize you for this, because you didn't write it. It's still associated with you, though, and it's the smaller of your two big welcome-backs, so I'll mention it anyway. Your chorus. It does not work. Now, students, let us analyze:
"I'll never be the same if we ever meet again..."
Two components: "I'll never be the same" and "if we ever meet again." The first part refers to the past. Now that X has happened, I'll never be the same. But the second part refers to a hypothetical event in the future. If X, I will Y. It seems like it should work! If we ever meet again, I'll react to something that's happened in the past and oh wait. If this was a tossed-off line I'd just sigh and move on, but this is part of your chorus. The first part of your chorus. That ain't a sigh, it's a facepalm. And since I only listen to this under duress while driving and when nothing else is on, it's a facesteeringwheel.
But all this pales in comparison to "California Gurls" (sigh). I was willing to overlook the fact that you bottle-of-Jacked "TiK ToK," because Ke$ha did the same to you with "Your Love Is My Drug." And either way, the music is kind of catchy. But then I hear what Katy is saying, and I want to jab a red pen into my ears. Let's go through this:
- "Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top." Katy, Dukes of Hazzard took place in Georgia. So as you're playing referent roulette, you're actually repping Southern girls.
- It's patently obvious that "melt your Popsicle" is supposed to be some kind of double entendre. Now, this isn't like "If U Seek Amy" where the "double" is missing; there's both a literal and figurative meaning. The problem here is that the figurative meaning is fucking horrific! Unless, y'know, you like your junk to shrivel away like the Wicked Witch of the West.
- "Snoop Doggy Dogg." Does your radio station play Puff Daddy before that? Right after the Artist?
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Most people aren't so, er, prolific. Like I said, most people stick to one or two per song. But sometimes they're just really... memorable. For instance, there's a certain line in "Nothin' on You" by B.o.B.: "Women call me Mr. Fantastic. Now stop... think about it." I know what he's getting at. But when you give listeners' minds this kind of free rein, you get thought processes like "Mr. Fantastic. You mean like the Fantastic Four? ..." Ahhh. Nothing like sudden immaturity. All the better to facesteeringwheel. See you by the side of the road!
Friday, May 21, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
In which she propagates some leaks and spreads some news
Keeping up a good and steady one-month interval between posts here, it seems. But I've finally got some free time, so let's talk about leaks!
They never get old, at least not to me. Why not? Sonic packratism, maybe. Impatience. The slight-to-moderate transgressiveness that means I can hear them at all. Not all that ethical, perhaps, but I'm not the one originally leaking them. It's a weak justification but it works for me.
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At any rate, the biggest buzz in the blogosphere -- god, I hate typing that; it seems like the next thing I'll be doing is scraping Google Trends for the latest celebrity fuck news -- is for this leaked version of "Telephone" purportedly by Britney Spears. Well, actually, it isn't so purported anymore. We'd known for a long time that Gaga originally wrote it or Britney, and now, according to Darkchild on Ustream (skip to 3:15), we know it's probably real, albeit an early demo that hadn't been mixed yet.
So now that we've settled that question, how is it?
Well, it's a demo; of course it's going to suck when compared to the real thing. So it's really hard to call this anything but a testament to the power of mixing. The vocals are either AutoTuned to oblivion or barely-there wisps; her pronunciation is off ("sorry, I cannot hear you" in particular leaves a lot to be desired in the unslurred-words department); there's a large Beyonce-shaped hole that I know is just hindsight but nevertheless can't unhear. It's all off. If this was a sculpture it'd be at the "whacked a few blocks of clay off the block until it's kind of octagonal" stage.
But I will say this: the alto harmonies kind of kick ass. I almost want them, hearing this, to be higher in Gaga's final mix.
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Gaga's been silent on her leak -- there's probably no way to attribute it to her little monsters -- but the same definitely can't be said of Kelly Clarkson, who got rather upset at the leak of "Cleopatra".
According to Kelly, this was written for another artist and isn't actually hers, but I'm pretty sure it's her on vocals (sure, the verses sound uncannily like Pink, but so does her latest single.) It's a much cleaner demo -- as in, it stands alone as a song -- and it's kind of wonderful.
Sure, it has its derivative elements -- the intro is "I'm a Slave 4 U" and everything else is a melange of Middle Eastern-ish stylings (including the vocalise in the end out of "Naughty Girl"), but at least this time it sort of has an excuse -- if you're using Cleopatra in your lyrics, I can't really fault it.
And sure, it fits more with the early 2000s pop crop than the current one. But that just adds nostalgia value (for me) to everything else great here: the guitars that do what Jason Derulo's "In My Head" should have done, the protector-pugilist lyrics that provide a welcome dose of strength. Oh, and the fact that I've listened to this roughly fifty times on repeat without it getting old.
If there's a downside to the leak, it's that the full song will probably never see the light of day -- in a perfect world this would be retooled into WIP publicity, but it's clearly far too late for that to happen. But if I'm wrong, I know who I'm going to be listening to.
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"Cleopatra" may be an anachronism, "Naked Eye" definitely isn't. In fact, it couldn't be less of one, being a Guettafied update of "My Life Would Suck Without You" and its ilk. I like it well enough -- it's light years better than the Teddered-out Kelly -- but it's also utterly, utterly predictable.
(Side note: Is it just me, or does the chorus sound kind of like "So You Say" by Siobhan Donaghy?)
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Oh yes, and I had some news to spread. I'm contributing reviews for The Singles Jukebox and have been for a few days now. It's hardly an explanation for lack of posting, mind you, but, well, it's news. News I find fit to print. So there.
They never get old, at least not to me. Why not? Sonic packratism, maybe. Impatience. The slight-to-moderate transgressiveness that means I can hear them at all. Not all that ethical, perhaps, but I'm not the one originally leaking them. It's a weak justification but it works for me.
---
At any rate, the biggest buzz in the blogosphere -- god, I hate typing that; it seems like the next thing I'll be doing is scraping Google Trends for the latest celebrity fuck news -- is for this leaked version of "Telephone" purportedly by Britney Spears. Well, actually, it isn't so purported anymore. We'd known for a long time that Gaga originally wrote it or Britney, and now, according to Darkchild on Ustream (skip to 3:15), we know it's probably real, albeit an early demo that hadn't been mixed yet.
So now that we've settled that question, how is it?
Well, it's a demo; of course it's going to suck when compared to the real thing. So it's really hard to call this anything but a testament to the power of mixing. The vocals are either AutoTuned to oblivion or barely-there wisps; her pronunciation is off ("sorry, I cannot hear you" in particular leaves a lot to be desired in the unslurred-words department); there's a large Beyonce-shaped hole that I know is just hindsight but nevertheless can't unhear. It's all off. If this was a sculpture it'd be at the "whacked a few blocks of clay off the block until it's kind of octagonal" stage.
But I will say this: the alto harmonies kind of kick ass. I almost want them, hearing this, to be higher in Gaga's final mix.
---
Gaga's been silent on her leak -- there's probably no way to attribute it to her little monsters -- but the same definitely can't be said of Kelly Clarkson, who got rather upset at the leak of "Cleopatra".
According to Kelly, this was written for another artist and isn't actually hers, but I'm pretty sure it's her on vocals (sure, the verses sound uncannily like Pink, but so does her latest single.) It's a much cleaner demo -- as in, it stands alone as a song -- and it's kind of wonderful.
Sure, it has its derivative elements -- the intro is "I'm a Slave 4 U" and everything else is a melange of Middle Eastern-ish stylings (including the vocalise in the end out of "Naughty Girl"), but at least this time it sort of has an excuse -- if you're using Cleopatra in your lyrics, I can't really fault it.
And sure, it fits more with the early 2000s pop crop than the current one. But that just adds nostalgia value (for me) to everything else great here: the guitars that do what Jason Derulo's "In My Head" should have done, the protector-pugilist lyrics that provide a welcome dose of strength. Oh, and the fact that I've listened to this roughly fifty times on repeat without it getting old.
If there's a downside to the leak, it's that the full song will probably never see the light of day -- in a perfect world this would be retooled into WIP publicity, but it's clearly far too late for that to happen. But if I'm wrong, I know who I'm going to be listening to.
---
"Cleopatra" may be an anachronism, "Naked Eye" definitely isn't. In fact, it couldn't be less of one, being a Guettafied update of "My Life Would Suck Without You" and its ilk. I like it well enough -- it's light years better than the Teddered-out Kelly -- but it's also utterly, utterly predictable.
(Side note: Is it just me, or does the chorus sound kind of like "So You Say" by Siobhan Donaghy?)
---
Oh yes, and I had some news to spread. I'm contributing reviews for The Singles Jukebox and have been for a few days now. It's hardly an explanation for lack of posting, mind you, but, well, it's news. News I find fit to print. So there.
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