A little light reading for those of you stuck at work, or in front of your computer, today (some stories may even give you anecdote material for your New Year’s socializing):
• Stephen Holden recalls the career of Eartha Kitt, who passed away at age 81 on Thursday. [NYT]
• Kelefa Sanneh emerges from the depths of The New Yorker‘s TV-reviewing beat to profile Will Oldham. [TNY]
Rap battles’ origins, Moby, and Madonna after the jump!
Writing teen-oriented pop is a fairly specialized talent. Writing for a musical is an even more rarified art. Combining the two—and introducing the musical-theater art form to an entire generation that previously had little use for the stuff—is some kind of pop triple-lutz, a strange sort of accomplishment.
Two songwriters behind Disney’s High School Musical series, Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil, acknowledge the strangeness, or at least uncanniness, of their feat. I recorded a conversation with them a few weeks ago, about a month after the third chapter in the series—its cinematic debut, after two high-rated made-for-TV movies—debuted atop the box office list with the highest-ever debut gross for a musical. The two writer-performers sounded both gratified and mildly dumbfounded by their good fortune, even as it represents to them the culmination of a couple of decades of happy toil in the pop-music trenches.
Rock scribe Jimmy Guterman wants to know how he might get his 12-year-old daughter in to see Ida Maria at a 21+ show. There are the obvious solutions: getting her in for soundcheck, getting her in as press, getting her in backstage, bum-rushing the door with the rest of her punk friends. But what are the less sensible, less effective methods she could use to get in?
More helpful suggestions after the jump!
This is what you’ve all been waiting for, right?
THE GOOD: Nos. 50-41 would have made an awesome alternate-universe top 10, what with Marnie Stern, Ponytail, High Places, and Beach House all being within. Alas.
THE BAD: I will not quibble with the No. 1 choice and the reasons for its placement being wholly attributed to its comforting throwback nature (“The threads of Brian Wilson’s intricate coastal pop, Appalachian folk, modern indie rock, Grateful Dead jams, and other influences are masterfully synthesized in the band’s harmonies and simply orchestrated but constantly shifting instrumental arrangements”… “pastoral tendencies”); instead, I will just chalk its absurdly high placement up to “yet another reason why this year needs to be put out to pasture ASAP.”
THE WHAAA? Those who “follow” Pitchfork as a hobby probably won’t be surprised by any of the picks for the top 10—the fake ‘Fork top 10 posted by the NME earlier this week, which was reportedly based off the site’s highest-numbered reviews of the year, had a remarkable overlap with the real one. It even got No Age’s No. 3 ranking right! (The only album from the proposed top 10 that didn’t make the real one: Fucked Up’s The Chemistry Of Common Life, which came in at No. 17.)
Earlier this month, we took a look at Christianity Today‘s best-of list, which seemed to judge records on an “is this Christian enough?” scale as much as it did musical merit. To balance that out, the online music mag Patrol serves up a list that looks at vaguer connections between faith and music. Patrol started off analyzing the fringes of the Christian music biz (it was called CCM Patrol then), but now it has a broader aim, tackling New York City from a faith-based perspective. Their list’s intro shows their disdain for the Christian mainstream, although at this point, you have to wonder which artists they’re talking about. CCM Magazine bit the dust this year, turning into a digital shell of its former self, and other publications working the Nashville center of the biz aren’t exactly lauding the work of Michael W. Smith these days either. Patrol goes a bit more obscure than Christian Music Today or (the horribly named) Jesus Freak Hideout, but by and large, the same discs lauded by the establishment are showing up on Patrol‘s list too. I understand the intent, but labeling your list the best “faith-inspired” albums doesn’t mean much when there’s only one “faith” represented.
THE GOOD: There really are a lot of quality discs in the mix here: Deas Vail (No. 45), The Welcome Wagon (No. 27), and Doug Burr (No. 8), to name a few. It’s almost like a case could be made with this list that Christian music—I mean “faith-based” music—doesn’t really suck as bad as advertised. Plus, the Jonas Brothers made the list (No. 42)!.
THE BAD: On the other hand, you can tell that there’s a certain style to the genre on its indie fringes, and that style is singer-songwritery folk. There are exceptions, but all in all, there’s a very Paste-y sound dominating the proceedings. If the point is to poke the mainstream, championing a different, but no less cliched aesthetic as an alternative seems to defeat the purpose. (Case in point: Recommending Francesca Battistelli (No. 44), an act seemingly engineered in a lab to emulate the success of Sara Bareilles.)
THE WHAAA?: How far can you stretch the idea of “faith-inspired” until the idea has no meaning? Joseph Arthur seems to have little connection to Christian circles, and if there’s a connection between the Mae Shi and a personal Lord and Savior, I’ve never seen it mentioned in any of their press. Next to those dubious connections, you have Richard Swift, who’s done everything possible to distance himself from the Christian-music world. I get the aim, and there’s an impossibility to trying to discern who is in and out, but the standards here still teeter on the absurd like the lists they’re aiming to out-cred.
Every week in the “Shhhh-it!” AnonIMous Super-Secret Music-Biz Interview Series (S-I!AS-SM-BIS for, uh, short) we interview a grizzled music industry veteran via the rough-and-tumble world of instant messaging. This week we bring you Windupbird, a freelancer for various online music websites as well as some print outlets. Windupbird does the music writing thing for the love, not the money, and holds down a main gig writing for business types, as many freelancers do. In this interview, Windupbird discusses editors’ unwillingness to take stands on new music, the problems with consensus, and whether music has value in people’s lives:
StumpyPete1975: ever thought about branching out into other sectors?
StumpyPete1975: like food, movies, etc.
Windupbird: Well, honestly, I make a lot of money writing about other stuff. I really like writing about music. I’d like to make enough so that I can write off my expenses, but it’s not going to feed my family.
StumpyPete1975: that’s too bad
Windupbird: It’s like the bands. We have to face the fact that what we do has no real economic value anymore…but it’s still maybe worth doing.
StumpyPete1975: do you think that this lack of economic value means less cultural value?
Windupbird: I think that music has tremendous value to people…but that doesn’t necessarily translate into $50000 a year for anybody.
An inside look at the life of a freelancer after the jump!
Music coverage has been rather light in the post-David Browne era at Entertainment Weekly, to say the least. To be frank, their non-celebrity music coverage is moribund at best, usually gathering as much print space as the stage section does. It almost feels like an afterthought. Heck, I wasn’t even sure who they’d tap to come up with the mag’s 2008 year-end lists, but Leah Greenblatt and Chris Willman answered the call with Ten Best Albums and Five Worst Albums lists, and the mag threw in a list of singles for good measure. (I’ve always liked the fact that EW publishes worst lists, even though the criteria for “worst” often seems more ephemeral, cross-referencing expectations with actual quality. I think that’s an OK measure of “worst” as far as it goes, but I’ve never as intrigued by the music worsts as I am by the movie or book picks.) TV On The Radio’s Dear Science tops Greenblatt’s list, while The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive tops Willman’s; complete rundowns after the jump.
THE GOOD: These are easily some of the most diverse lists you’ll see out there. Why, Greenblatt’s best and worst lists are almost half female and half African-American! I love “Live Your Life,” and I’m glad to see it on here. Also good to see Q-Tip and Erykah Badu representing, although I won’t hold my breath for the hat-tips to translate into sales.
THE BAD: About that No. 1 single. Does anybody really think that “Love in This Club” was the No. 1 song of the year, chart prowess aside? I sure don’t. Also, I’m not a Fleet Foxes hater like some around here, but “White Winter Hymnal” has never struck me as much of a “single.” And speaking of singles, I think that MGMT record is a good pair of them. Overall, I’m not one to really say someone should or shouldn’t be on these lists, but I do think it’s funny that Dave Sitek appears in the best (Dear Science tops Greenblatt’s list) and worst (Scarlett Johansson’s Anywhere I Lay My Head tops Willman’s list) sections.
THE WHAAA?: This has more to do with EW.com than anything. I get so tired of them burying their content in gallisticles [tm], those slow-operating gallery-based listicles that bring them crazy page views but bring me nothing but endless frustration. I hate them so much and it seems like they make up half of EW.com’s content these days. Gross.
Here are some top 10 lists I can get behind, if only because they are based on something slightly empirical: AOL has posted its lists of 2008’s most-searched-for musicians, songs, and music videos. The results are not completely surprising, with the Jonas Brothers taking the top slot and American Idol-bolstered David Cook coming in at No. 2. I imagine that Jonas Brothers fans are the types who comb the internet for any new morsel of information. I know I do! The top 10:
The music video channel that could Fuse had been running its “Top 40 of 2008” special over the last few days, but I just couldn’t bring myself to watch—Katy Perry wasn’t just performing two songs, she was co-hosting the whole thing. The premise was amusing, matching the year’s “best” videos against each other head-to-head, tournament style, but in the end, it just turned into a battle of who could mobilize their fan club to the greatest effect. Guess what? Even through it all, the followers of Britney can come through in the clutch.
THE GOOD: Paramore defeating the Offspring, Staind and Linkin Park before running into a train called “Womanizer” (and losing by four million votes in the finale)? Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” and Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” losing in the first round? That’s about all the good news I have, really.
THE BAD: Disturbed won two rounds of voting. Disturbed. In 2008. Two rounds.
THE WHAAA? While the video for “Vida La Vida” is not something Hype Williams should add to his demo reel, losing to Secondhand Serenade isn’t a fate Coldplay should be forced to suffer.
So, Friday night was the 2008 installment of Z100’s end-of-year-fest known as the Jingle Ball, and while this year’s lineup didn’t have any guaranteed swoon objects like last year’s Jonas Brothers fest, the lineup was nowhere near the crapfest that was Zootopia. Kanye West and Ne-Yo and Rihanna (and even Leona Lewis and David Archuleta, to a lesser extent) made me realize that while the ever-shrinking beast that is “pop music” certainly has its problems in 2008, its high points can still bring smiles to faces and twitchiness to butts.
