Good God, it's been a long time since I've posted here. I blame work. (Hey, actually, I really CAN blame work -- last post May 21, first day... May 21? In that stand of the ballpark.) I also blame, in a good way, the Jukebox, where I've been doing some writing.
But now those CDs I burned for the commute (I traded up from 40 to 50 minutes!) are all scratched up and I have things to say.
- OMG is the most depressing song ever, no? I'm mystified that "oh my god" is way too offensive to say but "honey got some boobies like wow oh wow" somehow isn't. (Although maybe my ears are wonky, but doesn't it sound like will.i.am is saying the real thing?) If you needed an example of how American culture has its priorities seriously mixed up, this is it.
Maybe it'll accomplish something good, though! Maybe it'll excise "loving one's style" from the lexicon, even though the "lexicon" here is primarily that of teen magazines. No, Cosmo Girl, he doesn't "love your style," or if he does, it's only insofar as it reveals the proper latitude/longitude of skin.
- So there was a video for Alejandro. It's a step up from her last one, thankfully, and even if it's just bleak atmospheric piffle, it uses that for all it's worth.
But correct me if I'm wrong, and I can't be very wrong: Is every single person in the Alejandro video pasty as hell or what? Like, you name your song "Alejandro" and you talk about two other guys named Roberto and Fernando who may or may not be Alejandro too and bleagh tangent, but you get to the video and there's a bunch of questionably-SS dudes with oil-slicked sea otters on their heads. What?
It gets me thinking. The last video you did with a lot of half-naked dancer guys was LoveGame. (Telephone and Paparazzi were too short-film; the dancers in Bad Romance weren't guys.) And LoveGame didn't have this problem, from what I remember of the video. It had a nice diverse cast of half-naked dancer guys. They were also playing criminals. So let's recap here: overtly hawt soldier objects of lust = ALL PASTY; less overtly hawt (or at least not specifically cast to blare that) criminal objects of standoffishness = NOT ALL PASTY.
I don't like this pattern; it's beginning to sour the song for me. Make me want to listen to Ace of Base even more. Except the guy there is a confirmed white supremacist, or was at least, so I don't even know.
- I remain perplexed as to why the radio is just NOW finding out about La Roux and look forward to Little Boots hitting in summer 2011.
Showing posts with label lady gaga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lady gaga. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 16, 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.
---
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.
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.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
My thoughts on Telephone, let me show you them.
So I was all ready to send a post on Orianthi down the chute (fuck that song, incidentally; more on this later) when Lady Gaga decided to release the music video for "Telephone."
Now, before you read any further, please understand three things:
- "Telephone" is my favorite fucking song right now. You have no idea. I first heard it on our local radio station a month or so ago and it turned an absolutely crap day into something beautiful for a few minutes. I listen to it at least three times per day. I don't know how much of this is attributable to Gaga and how much to Darkchild (because I was a heavy, heavy, heavy Mya fan back in the day. Still am.) but still.
- The "Bad Romance" video was the best video I've seen in a long time, if not ALL TIME, and if it does not win big at the awards ceremonies I will personally hunt down someone to Kanye that shit. So I was one of the masses who refreshed YouTube right at midnight. I was looking forward to this. But then...
- If you are a true fan of something, you will be open to criticism of it. Period. White-knighting only makes you look immature.
With that said, I thought the video sucked.
Why? Let me count the ways!
- The product placement. The product placement. Oh my fucking God, the product placement. Now, I understand that in an interview, Gaga meant this as "commentary" on how many ads people see. This is where people will argue "See? You just don't get the art!" But look. You can't do product placement ironically, because it's still product placement. It accomplishes its goals either way. And you can't do it satirically either for the same reason. You've either got to make up tacky fake products (like lots of speculative-fiction authors do) or take your real-world product placement to such vulgar extremes that you can't see it as anything but as an indictment. And this is harder than it sounds -- Idiocracy is about the only thing I can think of that pulls it off.
So what we have here is an extended ad for Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, Coors Light, Wonder Bread, Plenty of Fish, Honey Buns, etc -- and the fact that I can remember all of these brands two hours after watching the video is proof of how damn insidious this shit is. Your video's about diner poisoning? This is mind poisoning. Seriously, Gaga, fuck the product placement. You have enough money to go without it, and its presence is annihilating your attempts at being transgressive.
- The fact that the warden is on a dating site at all is a standard laugh-at-the-ugly-person and/or laugh-at-the-old-person joke. She has the GALL to want to find companionship, but of course she's FAILING, because she's so OLD and UGLY and has a MANNISH VOICE! Laugh, little monsters! Yeah, not cool. And you'll also notice that damn near all the people who get to parade around in near-undress fit conventional skinny-blonde beauty standards. Which reminds me....
- I'm by no means averse to nudity on principle. I'm the farthest thing from a prude that you'll find. But damn, can we get some equal opportunity in here? At least LoveGame had shirtless guys. Here, all the men get clothes and all the women get outfits from a porn set. I give it five years before porn and pop culture are indistinguishable. This is where a lot of people are going to argue "But it's not exploitative -- it's art!" Those things aren't mutually exclusive, though. Look at art history. You can have both.
- From a racial perspective, it's concerning how Beyonce basically plays the sidekick here. Yes, I know about Video Phone. But which video became a worldwide event? When was the last time you heard Video Phone on top 40? (On a related note, a commenter on the YouTube site pointed out that, apparently, Beyonce's "fuck" is bleeped while Gaga's isn't. Food for thought.)
So what's an overlord to do? Simple. Continue to love the fuck out of the song and forget the fact the video ever happened. Should be pretty easy. I'm not hurting to watch Just Dance or Poker Face.
Now, before you read any further, please understand three things:
- "Telephone" is my favorite fucking song right now. You have no idea. I first heard it on our local radio station a month or so ago and it turned an absolutely crap day into something beautiful for a few minutes. I listen to it at least three times per day. I don't know how much of this is attributable to Gaga and how much to Darkchild (because I was a heavy, heavy, heavy Mya fan back in the day. Still am.) but still.
- The "Bad Romance" video was the best video I've seen in a long time, if not ALL TIME, and if it does not win big at the awards ceremonies I will personally hunt down someone to Kanye that shit. So I was one of the masses who refreshed YouTube right at midnight. I was looking forward to this. But then...
- If you are a true fan of something, you will be open to criticism of it. Period. White-knighting only makes you look immature.
With that said, I thought the video sucked.
Why? Let me count the ways!
- The product placement. The product placement. Oh my fucking God, the product placement. Now, I understand that in an interview, Gaga meant this as "commentary" on how many ads people see. This is where people will argue "See? You just don't get the art!" But look. You can't do product placement ironically, because it's still product placement. It accomplishes its goals either way. And you can't do it satirically either for the same reason. You've either got to make up tacky fake products (like lots of speculative-fiction authors do) or take your real-world product placement to such vulgar extremes that you can't see it as anything but as an indictment. And this is harder than it sounds -- Idiocracy is about the only thing I can think of that pulls it off.
So what we have here is an extended ad for Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, Coors Light, Wonder Bread, Plenty of Fish, Honey Buns, etc -- and the fact that I can remember all of these brands two hours after watching the video is proof of how damn insidious this shit is. Your video's about diner poisoning? This is mind poisoning. Seriously, Gaga, fuck the product placement. You have enough money to go without it, and its presence is annihilating your attempts at being transgressive.
- The fact that the warden is on a dating site at all is a standard laugh-at-the-ugly-person and/or laugh-at-the-old-person joke. She has the GALL to want to find companionship, but of course she's FAILING, because she's so OLD and UGLY and has a MANNISH VOICE! Laugh, little monsters! Yeah, not cool. And you'll also notice that damn near all the people who get to parade around in near-undress fit conventional skinny-blonde beauty standards. Which reminds me....
- I'm by no means averse to nudity on principle. I'm the farthest thing from a prude that you'll find. But damn, can we get some equal opportunity in here? At least LoveGame had shirtless guys. Here, all the men get clothes and all the women get outfits from a porn set. I give it five years before porn and pop culture are indistinguishable. This is where a lot of people are going to argue "But it's not exploitative -- it's art!" Those things aren't mutually exclusive, though. Look at art history. You can have both.
- From a racial perspective, it's concerning how Beyonce basically plays the sidekick here. Yes, I know about Video Phone. But which video became a worldwide event? When was the last time you heard Video Phone on top 40? (On a related note, a commenter on the YouTube site pointed out that, apparently, Beyonce's "fuck" is bleeped while Gaga's isn't. Food for thought.)
So what's an overlord to do? Simple. Continue to love the fuck out of the song and forget the fact the video ever happened. Should be pretty easy. I'm not hurting to watch Just Dance or Poker Face.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)