teen scene
OK, so obviously i didn't go far enough in explaining the whole "britney with guitar" thing last time; it was a throw away paragraph but obviously sparked at least one person's interest (thanks tim!). it was basically a "wow, these new TRL gals be hot, yo" and tim comes back with a "hey, what about the alicia keys, the nelly furtados, why aren't you giving them props, bee-hotch?" (well, i am paraphrasing here.) so i'll spew a few thoughts on each separate group (since for me they are separate) and their relation to the basic singer-songwriter scene they all seem to want to reinvigorate.
basically, yesterday i hinted how the new, TRL-approved teen pop seems to come heavily from the "pretty people who play instruments" category. since MTV themselves know the exact course of a trend (since they, well, dictate it), they have slowly segued from Britney, Mandy, and Christina to people like Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, and Avril Lavigne. All the prerequistes of the intial triumverate are there---great faces, great bodies, winning smiles, and catchier-than-all-get-out songs. But, these latter three actually write and/or play instruments on thier tracks!!!! This is a darwinian evolution for the typical 15 year old MTV fan at home on the scale of the advent of opposable thumbs. they're at homethinking, "hey wait, Britney doesn't play the guitar...hey wait she didn't even write that song, and uh, f$ck Britney" while watching Michelle stand in the CG-created rain screaming in melody to a boy at #4 on today's countdown. and somewhere, britney flips off another non-English speaking country, sealing her fate even faster.
the appeal makes sense. if the former teen gods and goddesses were indeed about their very unattainability, the powers-that-be have constructed a slightly-more accesible version; they wear jeans, they skateboard, they suffered through the same piano lessons your mom made you go through, and look, they have something to say about it! these new artists are being marketed as having an authentic point of view in their songs; that is, there is the sense that even if the songs aren't autobiographical, they come from within the artist themselves, not from a Swedish pop factory.
authenticity, then, becomes a factor. yes, girls can sing along to "what a girl wants", but there's not the sense that the message comes FROM Christina, but rather THROUGH her. she's more of a conduit than the physical embodiment of that ideal. (case in point---"baby one more time" was originally offered to TLC. can you for a second even imagine that? but there's dozens of these switch-a-roos, songs that exists only on paper until a studio executive decides Person A gets the right to sing over the already-produced track). now, for a 15 year-old, TRL-approved demographic, the very fact that these new girls have any "say" in their music is enough authenticity. every high school girl can relate to avril's hit "complicated" because it's a very useful, alebit teenage dilema. ok, yes, the "you're one person around me and a jackass around everyone else" does not stop at 19, but the specificity of the lyrics prevents a generational leap in application.
where the whole thing gets tricky, and where the first schism occurs between the "TRL Gals", for lack of a better term, and the rest of the young singer-songwriters, lies in this issues of autheticity tied into the nature of the genre. these TRL gals want to be important, be songwriters, not pop stars. however, these TRL Gals are limited simply by their age and scope of musical influences to truly trascend into the pantheon of the Carole Kings, Joni Mitchells, Tori Amos, even Sarah McLachlans (though even she cuts a bit too close for my tastes, but I still love most of her work). when one listens to say, alicia keys, nelly furtado, jill scott, you hear an entire history of a musical genre being distilled through a personal interpretation. stylistically and lyrically, their's generations of artists being filtered into a modern sensibility. as such, just as the rolling stones were stepped in blues and rose heads and shoulders above almost everyone around them, artists such as these distinguish themselves through their intelligent reading of the history of themusic, which allows a little more slack if the lyrics say never quite get to the height of "What's Going On?"
with the TRL Gals, it's almost a one to one ratio of influences, with small differences in this iteration:
Avril Lavinge---Alanis Morrisette, on a skateboard
Vanessa Carlton---Tori Amos with a slightly hunched back
Michelle Branch---(this one's tough, I wanna say a Til Tuesday Aimee Mann but that's giving her slightly too much credit)
the power of "you oughta know" by alanis was in the voyeuristic feel one had listening to it. i mean christ, you almost felt dirty when it came on. but you listened anyways. cuz the song was sold as a "damnit this really happened and the f#cker ain't getting away with it anymore". and THAT struck a chord across every female demographic and voila, 14 million records got moved. then alanis found peace in india and now one gives a rat's ass. in comes avril, with an album full of canadian pop angst with a heavy guitar sheen and "confessional lyrics", same as alanis. hoever, as catchy as her album is, and as much as i like it as a pop album, it's a cycle of songs that can be distilled into
1) "I'm not Britney".
2) "By the way, I'm not Britney."
The problem with an initial album spent telling everyone what you're NOT is that you can't know what you actually ARE. and with the angst firmly entrenched in a 16 year old girl's perspective, it fails to transcend.
Vanessa Carlton makes the fatal mistake of having her lyrics actually make sense. the beauty of tori is that 90% of the time, even she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. but she writes pretty, obtuse lyrics about horses and clouds and demons, and everyone gets to put a little (or a lot) of themselves into the songs themselves. this is a very powerful tool, and the devotion of tori's fan base indicates this trend is happening---by purposeful obscuring the meaning (without making the sense purely menaingless), tori places the listener in control of the ultimate message of the song. every album since "little earthquakes" has taken this approach. the lyrical directness of "me and a gun" :
it was me and a gun
and a man on my back
but i haven't seen barbados
so i must get out of this
and replaces it by "black dove (jaunary)" with
she had a january world
so many storms not right somehow
how a lion becomes a mouse
by the woods
but i have to get to TEXAS
as my sophmore year philopshy professor would say, "well, that's as clear as mud".
"me and a gun" works purely on the strenght of the lyrical content. her later albums use the vocals and the lyrics often as melodic counterpart to the music proper---the add color, tonality, and shape, but are often a great fury signifying nothing.
one more interesting note about these two---tori's last song on her last album of original mateiral was entitled "1,000 Oceans" and featured possibility her most direct lyrical content since her breakthroug album. Vanessa's big song is "A Thousand Miles". the choruses are eerily similiar:
Tori:
well, i can't believe that i would keep
keep you from flying
and i will cry 1000 more if that's
what it takes to sail you home
sail you home sail you home
Vanessa:
If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time
Would pass me by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you
Tonight
*does that dr. evil finger to the mouth thing*
I don't have as much to add about Michelle Branch as the other two. As I have said, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where she is derived from musically, but even this uncertainty points to me that's it's not grounded in something entirely solid or lasting. And yes, I know some artists simply spring from a new well of inspiration and muscianship, but even these come from SOMEWHERE. (nothing comes of nothing, lear says to cordelia). when you first hear "fallin'" by alicia keyes, you KNEW you has heard it before. or at least you SWORE you had. that's what i mean about music steeped in a history so thick it's in our very essence. avril doesn't stick the same way becuase her source material (at least on the surface) dates back 5 years. in "fallin'" was every great Motown and/or soul ballad wrapped up into a 4 minute package by a dynamo virtuoso piano player who made you simply prick up your ears and listen. the first time i heard it i went "damn, aretha's got one helluva new song out".
the fact that this song hit every radio station but the country ones attests to the cross-demographic nature of this hit. yes, it was on TRL, yes she performes at the VMAs, but do you see Michelle Branch winning 5 Grammies next year? yea, not so likely. and my mom owns "songs in a minor".
now, confession time---i am not a huge fan of alicia keys. i like Fallin' just fine, but her follow-ups were disappointments to me. "a woman's worth" is a great lyric attatched to a terrible song. i can't even tell you the name of the 3rd song. but what she, and by extension the entire neo-soul movement, did was both introduce the TRL set to soul music AND do justice to their forefathers and their fans. soul music is amazing at conveying emotion in a way that shimmering pop, for all its catchiness, simply can't touch. and by the 5th time you hear avril whine about "all i can be is me", you wish she'd attempt something of the lyrical content of "what a woman's worth". in the end, you don't care what avril's worth.
and lyrical honesty is at the core of the entire movement. let's take a perhaps surprising example (and one of tim's favorites, so he'll be sure to reply): no doubt. every song on "tragic kingdom" was a response by gwen to her breakup with the bass player (know in the press as "the moron who dumped gwen stefani"). america (and in particular american girls) responded to the emotional honesty in her words, not necessarily in the music itself which, while catchy, wasn't necessarily the best ever (there's a reason why there was no big ska movement in the wake of no doubt). this unflinching honesty, where the artists bore his/her self to the public was long out of the pop realm until Lilith Fair and its inhabitors made it safe waters again. people responded to JamesTtaylor, Joni Mitchell, and the horde of 70's singer/songwriters becasue the impression was given that no filter existed between the artists' mind and the listeners' ear. yes, maybe you had to work for the ultimate meaning, and maybe the meaning was yours only to derive, but it could be found, in a direct one on one relation between you the listener and the artist coming though your stereo.
with the TRL Gals, it should hopefully be only a matter of time. i only devote so much time pointing all these faults because I think eventually they will mature into the artists some poeple already claim they are. even people such as alicia are not wizened people compared to these young women, but the alicias of the world do have a slight advantage right now. i personally look forward to seeing how Avril, michelle, and Vanessa progress, because if they're successful, it means i never, ever have to see "Lady Marmalade" again.
and that, friends, will be a great thing.
