The Tris McCall Report
Pop Music Abstract, Iraq War Edition
3 Doors Down -- "When I'm Gone"
Mid-tempo bozo rock from grueling corporate grungemeisters. Which is not to say I don't dig it, kinda I do. 3 Doors Down won notoriety by hitching this generic "ho, stay faithful to me while I'm banging chicks on tour" lyric to video footage of troops leaving for the Gulf War. I found it pretty barfadocious myself, but you might not be so cynical. Another example of how even the most boneheaded rock songs can achieve added resonance when coupled with a current event.
50 Cent -- "In The Club," "21 Questions" (with Nate Dogg)
Or maybe I'm being too hard on them. Certainly it's possible that 3 Doors Down meant "When I'm Gone" to be a political statement, and in any case, singer Brad Arnold had to sign off on the interpretation. If you caught him in a self-impressed, confident mood, he'd probably suggest that the midrange guitar sturm-und-drang that is his group's stock in trade is in fact a response to our troubled international situation. For years, gloom rockers had nothing to moan about except their parents' treatment of them -- now, war and turmoil gives their groups a legitimate, real-world backdrop for their portentious expressions of looming dismay. Contrast with hip-hop, where the party continues like it's 1999. Mainstream emcees have refused to recognize the end of the financial boom and the beginning of the cannon report. Consequently, they feel out of step for the first time since the mid-eighties, chasing trends rather than setting them. Flow, wit, and a great sense of humor have made 50 Cent the rap star of the moment, yet his Dr. Dre-produced dance floor anthems feel forced -- missives from the other side of the NASDAQ crash and a currently unrecoverable version of American prosperity and upward mobility. It doesn't help that 50 has misplaced most of his mixtape glibness and streamlined his lyrics for mass consumption. The swagger is still there, but much of the off-the-wall personality is gone: "I love you like the fat kid loves cake" is a great line worthy of his early material, but he doesn't back it up with anything equally inspired. I get the sense it's a conscious decision. Instinctively, I trust him more than Jay-Z and he's more enjoyable than serious-minded Nas, but I fear he may have picked the wrong moment to enter the King of New York sweepstakes. The title is feeling increasingly irrelevant.
All-American Rejects -- "Swing Swing"
It's good to see the lead actor from Smallville has his own band. No, seriously, folks, some major label somewhere wants you to believe that these photo-file WB pop stars are old chums from a small town in Oklahoma. Right, and I'm Ichiro Suzuki. At least with the Backstreet Boys and O-Town, everything was upfront: Orlando schlock merchants with an eye for what the kids at Disneyworld would go batshit over assembled those acts with all the craftsmanship and calculation of stained-glass window repair. I know we're now under the misapprehension that emo purity sells, but this ain't Get-Up Kids. This is much closer to Hanson: songwriting mastery masquerading as youthful enthusiasm, media conglomerates fronted by fresh, unspoiled faces. Of course the material is fan-tastic -- compressed to fuck and back and super-slick, but undeniable as a Frosty on a hot summer day.
American Hi-Fi -- "The Art Of Losing"
Noticing an Ashcroft-approved trend here? For the duration of our recent, er, adventures in the environs of Baghdad, our popular culture offered us an American Hi-Fi, some American rejects, Madonna's crass "American Life," and several corn-fed American Idols jockeying for top chart position. In 2003, it pays to fly the flag. After the first half of this year, anybody who still wants to argue that hit radio isn't a shorthand (but often quite deep) approximation of our national discourse is just tripping.
If you are getting the feeling that I'm somewhat disenchanted with this year's batch of pop songs, well, you're right. The embargo on non-North American forms of cultural production has really begun to take its toll on the airwaves, and we're beginning to settle into a dunderheaded, all-American earnestness that is positively Nebraskan in its insularity (not to mention isolationism and rejection of irony). Snobs and philistines regularly castigate hit radio for broadcasting idiotic sentiments, and as you probably know by now I'm fond of roaring back with twelve-page discurses on the sublime poetry of the collected works of Ludacris and others like him. But I'm afraid there's no defense for Amanda Perez, whose "Angel" reads like a remedial second grade poetry assignment turned in under duress. I don't think lyrics this artless would have been tolerated on the radio a few years ago, and it pains me to consider "Angel" and songs like it a product of the New Earnestness we're all supposed to be cultivating in the face of national tragedy, the miraculous rescue of Private Lynch, and the sacrifices of our brave men and women in uniform. Give me gallows humor any day.
Avril Lavigne -- "Losing Grip," "I'm With You"
If you're scoring at home, Vanessa Carlton is the instrumental talent, Michelle Branch is the interesting quasi-intellectual songwriter, and Lavigne is the Voice. "I'm With You" blew its immediate competition off the radio this winter by the gale force of Lavigne's desperate teen-queen performance. A power ballad with a bridge as sturdy as the Verrazano, "I'm With You" is probably the best song ever written about wanting to get the hell out of Canada -- and that's in the face of some hefty competition. Lavigne makes the uncomfortable winter conditions palpable for the listener by singing so furiously that it sounds as if she's desperately trying to warm herself. "Losing Grip" isn't quite so successful, but hell, it's the fourth single. You'd have to go all the way back to the debut of Morissette herself to find a radio singer who went four deep with such skill and consistency. I'm a fan.
Beyonce Knowles & Jay-Z -- "Crazy In Love"
Glad these kids finally got together. It spares anybody else the agony of having to go out with Beyonce Knowles or Jay-Z. Still, as annoying as she's been about her departure from Destiny's Child, it's impossible to listen to this song and not feel for her a little. I mean, here she's ga-ga, singing things like "when you leave I'm begging you not to go/call your name three times in a row," and "you got me sprung and I don't care who sees," and how does Jay-Z answer? "My pocket's fat like Tony Soprano," "My texture is the best fur, chinchilla" (gross!) , etc. In short, Knowles's verse is all about how Jay-Z is the best, and Jay-Z's verse is all about how Jay-Z is, um, the best. All you impressionable youths out there: ninety nine out of a hundred women surveyed do not enjoy this kind of dynamic. The rest are probably working at S&M clubs. Good going, Jay, man, you're a prince.
Black Eyed Peas -- "Where Is The Love?"
Another in the series of litany-of-vague-social-problems songs that generally get heralded as trenchant by social studies teachers and fools (see also Gaye, Marvin, "Inna City Blues," Flash, Grandmaster, "The Message") . I applaud B.E.P. for bucking the general trend in hip-hop by attempting to engage with the war on terror, but c'mon, guys, you've gotta do better than "when you hate you're bound to get irate." This is why arguments on the left can't get any intellectual traction -- our popular spokespeople throw together an unrigorous mishmash of associations, and expect audiences to fill in all the blanks. Even KRS-ONE would be hard-pressed to lump together overseas terrorism, the CIA, urban street gangs, and the KKK and make the argument work. Where are Dead Prez when you need them?
Blu Cantrell & Sean Paul -- "Breathe"
Sean Paul has lately replaced Ja Rule as the most ubiquitous radio ruffneck, and by my reckoning, that's been the single most welcome top-40 development of 2003. While Ja Rule spent song after song barely engaging with whatever R&B chick he'd been paired with that day, Sean Paul treats Blu Cantrell conversationally, and their duet feels natural rather than scripted by a horny record exec. Part of the credit goes to Cantrell, who remains one of the most underutilized talents in radio music; a pouty but knowing crooner with deep roots in jazz and an affecting upper register. She's the singer who Macy Gray was supposed to be. It's good to have her back.
So Damon Albarn got rid of Graham Coxon, went to Morocco, and brought in Fatboy Slim to monkey around with his mixes. Because this is Blur, there's a detailed ideological explanation for every decision, but when you examine closely for coherence or depth of argument, there's always less than you think there's going to be. Think Tank leans toward discussion of terrorism -- most of the songs positively beg to be taken seriously as ominous pseudopolitical statements -- but Albarn lacks the commitment to really follow through on his inclinations. Mind you, I am not asking him to jump on the barricades and sing "Masters Of War," but a little less nebulous discontent and a little more specificity would serve his music (and his intellectual reputation) well. Blur is much too smart to make like Black Eyed Peas and rhyme drama with trauma, but the distance between B.E.P.'s "let your soul gravitate to the love" and Albarn's "where is the love song/to set us free" is only semantic. Both writers (and plenty of other putative leftists) want to blame an absence of love for global turmoil; that's their bottom line, and their ostensible solution is to push for a grassroots love movement. Unfortunately, mushy neo-hippie reasoning like this gets blown out of the water by writers on the other side of the aisle -- particularly country musicians who have not shied away from naming names, do write specifically about actual events, and avail themselves of the crunchy rhetorical force of directness. Albarn's sad observation is that "the world is spinning gently out of time"; that's graceful and poetic, but hardly an urgent call for either action or nuanced understanding. It's not Blur's job to dance to the drumbeat of any particular political movement, but nor does it distinguish or elevate them to tiptoe around issues and statements they clearly want to make, on behalf of an outdated notion of their own relevance and poise.
Bowling For Soup -- "The Girl All The Bad Guys Want"
Weird Al once did an album called Dare To Be Stupid. I thought at the time it was just him being a wiseass, and of course it was. But I've come to understand it's also a decent piece of advice. Writers who are afraid to be stupid will go out and make U2 albums, which are of course awfully stupid in spite of their own impulses. But writers who dare to be stupid will frequently foray Dead Milkmen-style into some patches of brilliance. This is called the Rodney Dangerfield Axiom, and Bowling For Soup knows it well. "The Girl All The Bad Guys Want" is a ridiculously stupid song, but as it lurches around from goofball observation to associative correlation, it stumbles into some territory worth revisiting. As grown men pretending they are snotty high school students, these jokers often ring untrue -- their song is rife with pop culture references too knowing for their subject matter. But "she broke my heart/I wanna be sedated/all I wanted was to see her naked!" is a simultaneous tip of the cap to The Ramones and a good example of punk irreverence, and when Jarret Reddick caterwauls "all I've got's a moped… moped… moped," well, you know you've got a song on your hands. This one will be remembered, and probably in spite of itself.
Busta Rhymes & Mariah Carey -- "I Know What You Want"
Like Donald Trump's presidential campaign, Busta Rhymes's elevation to the status of sex symbol is one of those weird pop cultural phenomena that defies easy explanation. Busta Rhymes isn't a love man, he's an irritating freakazoid who comes up to you and yells "woo-haa!". That's a long way down from Tommy Mottola, let alone Derek Jeter. Then again, the happening trend in R&B duets is to sing as if you've got no idea with whom or what you're sharing the track, and nobody evinces obliviousness as reliably or completely as Carey. You get the feeling she may not even know who Busta Rhymes is, let alone that they've got a hit together. But you do know her handlers have told her to be sultry, because she's intentionally leaving out all of her consonants and slurring her words together. Some people's idea of sexy is a Demerol overdose. Not mine, though, and hopefully not yours, either.
Christina Aguilera -- "Fighter"
That which does not kill Nietzchean superhero Christina Aguilera makes her stronger, or tougher, or just more willing to grind her vowels like Whitney Houston undergoing painful dentistry. Something terrible happened to this woman between the release of her first and second albums -- that much is apparent. It's on her to make us care what it was, though, and the sheer disingenuousness of her new stance precludes engagement. Right now, Aguilera is like a disturbed young woman you might meet at a bus stop, down on her luck, dirty, talking to herself and cursing passersby. You know all she probably needs is a little TLC to set her straight, but you damn well aren't going to sit next to her and administer it.
Clay Aiken -- "This Is The Night"
Forget weapons of mass destruction or huge oil reserves north of Tikrit. We all know the real reason the war was fought: men's TV programming. For years, network and cable broadcast executives have been trying to figure out how to rope in the fickle male viewer and his disposable income, and searching for an analogous formula as effective as the Lifetime Channel algebra that turns otherwise intelligent women into zombies before the tube. In massive one-sided war and its accompanying commentary, they appear to have found it. For a few months there, men finally had state-sanctioned moral authority to wrest the remote control out of their girlfriends' hands: "Dana! How can you sit there watching Dawson's Creek at a time like this? It is our civic duty to turn on CNN and see 24-hour footage of tracers and sheds being detonated!" Frequently, this conversation wasn't even necessary, as networks pre-empted soap-operas and serials to broadcast such historically crucial events as big tanks rolling through the desert and armchair generals endlessly pontificating over minutia. It must have seemed to guys like they'd gone to TV heaven: not only did they get all the decontextualized explosions and know-it-all posturing they love, but they got to treat their bored-silly girlfriends like ingrates and fools for wanting to catch One Life To Live. In fact, the Iraq war was such a televisual success that as an opponent of U.S. military adventurism, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Spike Network works out. If the ratings are in the dumps, you can expect the infantry on the road to Damascus before long. Anyway, in consequence, I'm feeling much more charitable about crappy women's programming like American Idol; it may be screwing up the airwaves, but at least nobody is getting killed. Aiken is the skinny white guy with the big ears -- I was initially goofing about how he was a reincarnation of Jeffrey Osborne until I found out that he'd actually recorded "On The Wings Of Love." Guess the joke's on me. Straight-faced, boombastic romantic balladry is in once again as our popular culture takes a sharp, unfortunate turn back toward Star Search. Still, it beats Bill O'Reilly, Tom Brokaw, and four-star general Barry McCaffrey (Ret.).
Counting Crows & Vanessa Carlton -- "Big Yellow Taxi"
Leave it to Adam Duritz to cover the only Joni Mitchell song that could be fairly categorized as dumb. And of course it isn't; it's got reserves of meaning and humor behind its hippie exterior. But Duritz has never shown a capacity to understand anything besides hippie exteriors, and he presents "Big Yellow Taxi" as Statement with a capital S. In so doing, he makes an ass of you, me, Mitchell, the Counting Crows, and poor Vanessa Carlton, who really just seems to be along for the ride. I understand that Duritz is attempting to trot out the cover as an attempt to tangentially address our national crisis, but all his good intentions are useless if he cannot be a better curator of his own presentation choices. For Christ's sake, "Woodstock" is the next song on the album. What?, did his CD player break?
Daniel Bedingfield -- "If You're Not The One"
If hit radio suddenly sounds like your great aunt Anna's Englebert Humperdinck 8-tracks, blame American Idol. Watching these charmless belters qualify with their souped-up power ballads has reawakened the national taste for grand, sweeping romantic crapola. "If You're Not The One" is probably the best of them, so it's unsurprising that it was recorded by a Brit: not an Idol at all, but close enough to beat the embargo and land on our newly mushy airwaves. I don't really mind this song; it's got enough sonic references to the lighter side of Michael Jackson to keep me satisfied, and the vocal outro is swell. If it was an anomaly on the radio, I'm sure I'd enjoy it. But hearing it back to back with Clay Aiken or Ruben Studdard drives me over to the classic rock station, and usually for the rest of the night.
Darryl Worley -- "Have You Forgotten?"
Let's get this straight right off the bat: Merle Haggard he is not. But the wild radio success of "Have You Forgotten?" thrust this Tennessee tough-guy into the conservative counterpoint role once held by the Okie from Muskogee. That he proves himself far from up to the task heartens the peacenik in me, but greatly frustrates the aesthete and advocate of discourse. I know damn well there are articulate pro-war arguments to be made, and I believe it would be generally improving if some of these Nashville cats would drop the tearjerking shenanigans and emotional appeals to the stars and stripes and quit insulting our intelligence. Worley wins points for his specificity, but that's about it; his conflation of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is facile and not a little bit bloodthirsty. Worley's populism and appeals to righteous indignation may make the converted cream their jeans, but reductive arguments like this only exacerbate divisions between country and city residents and make crosscultural communication more vexed. Somebody ought to lock this guy in a room with the Black Eyed Peas and leave him there.
Eminem -- "Sing For The Moment," "Superman"
Or More Songs about Resentment and Lawsuits. The king of self-righteousness and ad nauseum reiteration continues his campaign to bore the pants off hip-hop heads and rock fans alike. Let it be remembered that this paragon of truth spoken to power and uncompromising nonconformity has administered his beatdowns to Moby, Christina Aguilera, and Weird Al Yankovic. What a profile in courage, huh? His refusal to let Weird Al parody the "Lose Yourself" video (thereby becoming the first pop star too Important to brook a lampoon by the savage, cutting Weird Al) tells you everything you need to know about the real Slim Shady: thin-skinned, megalomaniacal, criminally self-important and fundamentally humorless. Weird Al's "Polkas on 45" was a pretty trenchant piece of satire. I remember when I considered Eminem capable of the same caliber of writing. No longer.
Evanescence & Paul McCoy -- "Bring Me To Life"
Yes, Linkin Park would sound better if they were fronted by Tori Amos. Now that that's been established, back to business, everybody.
Fabolous, Mike Shorey & Lil' Mo -- "Can't Let You Go"
The best cheating spouse release in hip-hop since "Ma, I Don't Love Her," which came out about a week before this one did. But seriously -- even if the subject matter is old hat, Fabolous has a few amusing things to say about his godawful misbehavior. No, not "the entrée ain't as good without something on the side"; that's disgusting, and I'd like to take this opportunity to suggest a long-overdue moratorium on rappers comparing their girls to meals. Elsewhere, the kid does a bit better: "Keep it on the down low/call the car celly/you seen what happened to Mr. Big and R. Kelly." Now there's an inspirational verse worth tens of thousands in legal fees.
Field Mob -- "Sick Of Being Lonely"
Oh, what evil has the Outkast wrought? Since the popular acceptance of Stankonia, every Georgia farmhand with a pitchfork and a plate of collard greens has decided to become a "zany" emcee. If that means exaggerating the country drawls and rhyming about chasing pigs around the barnyard, at least it's less in overhead than purchasing bling bling and a Lexus. "Sick Of Being Lonely" represents the purest distillation of this approach, and as such, it's about as forced and phony as a great club track can possibly be: a rapper named "Boondox," claiming his girl is "looking mo' gooda' than a plate of neckbones"? Is this for real? My guess is that his real name is Tripp Chesterton III, and he's a marketing major at Tufts. Their stealth weapon is Toruca, who sings the chorus with maximum verve and minimum melismatics. The "Cotton-Eyed Joe" of hip-hop.
Strip away the stage antics and affrontery, and what have you got? A pretty engaging synth-FX duo -- not as cool and thoughtful as Ladytron, not as reckless as Add (N) to X, not as cheeky as Trans Am and completely without the associative brilliance of Daft Punk, but with more catchy hooks and infectious beats than all of them put together. Ironic, isn't it, that these notoriously campy theater people seem better positioned to become mainstream hitmakers than their more careerist electropop peers? The new Dead Or Alive.
Fleetwood Mac -- "Peacekeeper"
Because they're soft-rock Californians and forever linked to the Clinton Administration by Al and Tipper Gore's infamous interpretive dance to "Don't Stop," Fleetwood Mac read as vaguely leftish. "Peacekeeper," therefore, has been generally understood as an attack on the Gulf War, or at the very least, the Bush administration. I don't see it. I know we're encouraged to hear lines like "take no prisoners, only kill" and "don't be afraid to fight" as facetious, but listen to those harmonies -- does that sound parodic to you? On the flip, the unmistakable whiff of nuclear apprehension and fear of unlimited power is more than present in the first verse, and Lindsey Buckingham never sounds entirely comfortable; he chews these words over, shuffling them around, showing you facets of meaning without disclosing the whole gemstone. What Buckingham seems to want to suggest here is that peace is unpreservable. All of the formulations in the song illuminate a world in constant flux -- the peacekeeper moves amidst a tableaux of blackness and sudden flashes of light, experiencing vanishing trails and the costs of forward motion. And if "we make all our suns the same," and "everyone will suffer the fire we made," how can the promise the chorus makes to the protagonist -- "soon all the suns will rise" -- be understood as anything other than an affirmation of the inevitability of the worst kind of conflict? The peacekeeper might be encouraged to do his best to pursue stability, but the narrative doesn't like his odds; even the language shifts dangerously from words of closed-fisted certainty ("every one," "no going back," "still have time to hate") to those of ambivalence ("they all tell us… but." "you thought you had your fill"). Lindsey Buckingham has never exactly distinguished himself as a lyricist -- even on Tusk, he's always willing to toss around platitudes and fill out verses with reiteration -- but here he's written some difficult and ominous poetry that only becomes more complicated and rich on closer inspection. He's responsible for hit radio's most interesting contribution to the ongoing discourse about our national crisis.
Ginuwine & Baby -- "Hell Yeah"
So much Big Willie posturing is lost on me because I don't drive. For instance, emcee after emcee wants to assure me they're really, really great because they've got a Lexus. To me, the Lexus is a mom car, and ugly to boot. You don't win any cool points from Tris McCall for poking around in a Lexus. Maybe they drive great, I couldn't tell you. In "21 Questions," 50 Cent (well, Nate Dogg, to be fair) challenges his girl to love him on the bus. To 50, this would be an act of incredible devotion -- like most emcees, he's paranoid and suspicious that his lady friends are only after his bank, and since only broke losers who can't afford a Bentley take public transport, a girl who'd love him on the bus would love him under any condition. As a Union City resident and a dependent on NJTransit 123, I think the bus is romantic. I get to participate in a part of public culture, and feel like I'm making a dent in my country's dependence on foreign oil. This just isn't on the minds of playa emcees like Baby when they go on and on about their sport utility vehicles and expect us to be impressed. Sure, you're laughing at me now, but I know you feel it, too. Subliminally or overtly, hip-hop and its emphasis on conspicuous consumption and upward social mobility seems out of step with the concrete reality of our present situation. I know we all want to be entertained and have a good time, but hip-hop attained its position of cultural prominence during the nineties by seeming perennially relevant. That comparative advantage is evaporating.
Good Charlotte -- "The Anthem"
That said, no matter how much I love "Swing Swing" and Simple Plan, hip-hop still has it all over modern rock. If you want to know the difference between hip-hop and modern rock, examine the choruses of two recent representative specimens: Jay-Z's "Izzo" and this mildly catchy eardrum-shredder by Good Charlotte. "This is the anthem," screeches Joel Madden, "throw all your hands up." Compare to a refrain familiar to regular listeners of Hot-97 -- "That's the anthem/get your damn hands up." Superficially similar, sure, but radically different in valence. By singing "this is the anthem," Good Charlotte overindicates their own value as messengers -- the "anthem" is something they have in their personal possession, and that they're hyperactively calling your attention to. By contrast, Jay-Z, always Mr. Cool, says "that's the anthem"; i.e., the anthem is over there where he put it, it exists, you can ratify it or not, he isn't going to bother sweating you about it. Refusing to get histrionic about the whereabouts of the anthem insures that it seems important, imposing, transcendent of its communicator. Jay-Z can then tell you to get your hands up personally; he addresses his command to each receptive individual. Good Charlotte doesn't know how to discharge that one-to-one relationship -- awkwardly, Madden presses his audience to "throw all your hands up." At first blush, this seems awkward: all my hands? Don't I only have two? Then, charitably, you recognize that he means everybody in a circumscribed group: "each of you should throw your hands up, thereby generating the impression that all hands have been thrown up." It's choppy and poorly-phrased, it lacks the ease of static-free communication that comes so naturally to good emcees. Jay-Z wants to tell you, individual reader, to get your damn hands up in response to an anthem that exists for everybody as a force of nature. Good Charlotte wants to address you as part of a faceless mass, and encourage you to throw your hands up not as an individual choice but as a collective act -- and on behalf of an anthem that exists in their own personal possession. The former feels like a tough-guy tactic but is actually quite generous; the latter pretends toward generosity but is ultimately selfish.
Interpol -- "PDA," "Obstacle 2"
Listening to Turn On The Bright Lights, it's easy to forget how startling some of these instrumental performances are; you get interpolated into the logic of the album and you begin to accept the mindblowing drumming and serrated-edge lead guitar as components in a sonic tapestry rather than virtuosic anomalies. Hearing "Obstacle 2" on the radio is another story altogether. Similarities aside, nobody in U2, Joy Division, or the Chameleons could play like this. Nor can anybody else on the radio right now. They've earned their ambition through sweat and woodshedding, which is not the conventional course taken by college kids in rock groups. But then nothing about Interpol is conventional.
Ja Rule & Ashanti -- "Mesmerize"
Funny how Ashanti turned out to be a monster. She seemed so sweet and innocent before she morphed into her demon form, and had a shirtless Xander (pretty pernicious act right there) bleeding onto the Seal Of… oh, no, wait, that was a TV show. Ja Rule, on the other hand, may in fact be a manifestation of the First Evil. Consider: he is omnipresent and amorphous, he always pops up in the most annoying places, his attempts to act villanous are largely inept, and at base he's little more than a plot device. Ja Rule, get out of my face.
Fact: this earnest jam-band refugee from Virginia employs the same song doctors as Avril Lavigne does. Hey, I don't have a problem with it; if it keeps Mraz out of DMB territory, everybody wins. Mraz is a little too impressed by his own supposed cleverness, and his big observation here ain't too groundbreaking, but it's energetic enough, the production is nice, and unlike his peers on the Dave Matthews circuit, he doesn't sing like MC Blowfish. As radio singer-songwriter confections go, it's pretty enjoyable; the firm of Christy, Edwards & Spock know what they're doing. See, this is why I'm loath to sell any old CDs, even ones I don't plan on revisiting much: who knew back in '97 when I dug a copy of Lauren Christy's Breed out of the El Cheapo bin at Tunes that I had the future of hit radio in my hands? The team that met while putting together that mostly forgettable Morissette knockoff record has since metamorphosed into The Matrix, a hitmaking firm so formidable that Liz Phair paid out for their services. Further proof that you never know where the gold dust is blowing in from, or what pedestrian backing band of today will go on to become the master orchestrators of tomorrow.
That faint rustling that you hear is Shawn Carter and the Neptunes resting on their laurels. Well, perhaps they've earned a trip or two on autopilot. But Jay-Z never exactly checks out on you -- he's just begun to behave like a senile history professor, obsessing over irrelevant details to keep himself interested as he rehashes the same old lecture for the ten-thousanth time. For instance, did you know that "Scooby-Doos" are shoes? Jay wants you to know. He even lays some Old Fuddy-Duddy puns on us: "Either she's the one or I'm caught in The Matrix/but fuck it, let the Fish Burne!". Ba-dum bum, chhhh!!! Get this guy a Vegas act!
Jennifer Lopez -- "All I Have" (with LL Cool J)
Three megaplatinum albums in, what do we know about J Lo? She knows where she came from, she's real, she's glad. Here, the master of monosyllabic chic teams up with geriatric LL Cool J for new explorations in post-Janet chillout groove; if the result is vaguely enjoyable in a radio set, it also reveals itself to be dispiriting and robotic upon close inspection. The repetitive, flown-in choruses are this year's best argument against digital recording. It's time to cut bait.
Justin Timberlake -- "Rock Your Body"
My web server offers a free stats program that lets you trace the search terms used to arrive at the site. My favorite, beyond a doubt, is this one: "Justin hot boy body pictures." Some poor schmuck looking to wank off to digital images of shirtless Justin Timberlake got the Tris McCall Report instead. I'm guessing that was a quick click-through. Of course, now that I've related this story on the site, the next person searching for hot boy body pictures of Justin Timberlake will be sure to arrive here, find nothing but the usual rants and screeds about Radiohead, and smash his computer terminal in sexually-deprived frustration. I'm sympathetic, and somewhat guilt-ridden about it. Apparently it is a well-known fact that you can greatly increase website traffic by interspersing pornographic keywords throughout your hypertext. The future shape boob of argumentative writing on the Internet blowjobs seems clear.
Kelly Clarkson -- "Miss Independent"
Stupid "mis-" jokes aside (hey, Graham Parker indulged in them, too), all the mechanics are well-calibrated. Rhett Lawrence and Cathy Dennis have pitched "Miss Independent" somewhere between the hard pop-funk of Christina Aguilera's recent singles and the computer-processed effects of the second Garbage album. If the approach doesn't exactly match the lyrical concerns, Clarkson's performance is elastic enough to bring it off. I didn't watch the American Idol television program, but I can't imagine this is characteristic of the material she sang on the show; you don't win the hearts of Middle American boob tube junkies with songs like this. I've got no theoretical objection to the direct popular election of radio singers -- since the court of public opinion holds sway eventually anyway -- but it opens up the process to grandmammies who don't ordinarily listen to hit radio, and whose tastes run toward treacle. Clarkson wins points for quickly refashioning herself from TV star into the sort of big-voiced pop-R&B howler who's an asset to the top-40. It remains to be seen if any of the other Idols will follow suit; early indications suggest we may be in trouble.
Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow -- "Picture"
If Kid Rock's version of Americana lacks the intellectual subtlety of, say, Wilco, it's usually gonzo enough to register an impression on mass consciousness. Take, for instance, this crafty slice of melodrama; a road song complete with enough guilt, tears, and reconciliation to keep it in circulation on Z100 for the next ten years at minimum. See, he's really a sensitive guy. If "Picture" isn't as cloying as "Same Old Lang Syne", Kid Rock fulfills the same emotional need that Dan Fogelberg did in the seventies -- he's a grizzled warrior with hard-won, bittersweet All-American wisdom in the form of twice-told tales. Sheryl Crow is always game to sign on for some heartrending emotional manipulation, so it's no shock to see her overexposed ass turn up here.
Liam Lynch -- "United States Of Whatever"
Surely this particular MTV smartass did not mean to be submitting a political statement for general review. But sometimes you guide events and sometimes events guide you, and in the spring/summer of 2003, it's impossible to perform a song with the words "United States" in the title and escape its polemical charge. Now, Liam Lynch is legitimately funny, and taken as a straight goof, "United States Of Whatever" would still be the catchiest and snottiest novelty tune to hit the airwaves in years. But good satire is nothing if not adaptable and multidimensional, and current events have rendered the song a relatively effective indictment of kneejerk patriotism and a kind of celebration of conscientious objection. Lynch himself would probably scoff at any attempt to graft a serious dimension onto this great piece of wiseacre fluff, but I doubt "United States Of Whatever" would have made the impact it has were it not for our heightened state of sensitivity to discourse about our country -- no matter whatever register it comes in. Though we hide behind our facades of purported ignorance and feigned disregard, we're hungry to discuss what it means to be American, what our role in the world should be, what stance we ought to take. In this one case Noam Chomsky is absolutely correct.
Lil Kim -- "Magic Stick" (with 50 Cent), "The Jump-Off" (with Mr. Cheeks)
Not as pornographic as we'd all probably like, but the grand dame of hip-hop raunch still wants you to know she can make a Sprite can disappear in her mouth. Not that anybody asked, but I for one am glad she volunteered the info. I love Lil Kim and I always, um, respond to her filthy lyrics, but if I were one of her producers, I would encourage her to totally change pace and put out an album of folk songs about economics -- because how many artists could really effect a mindfuck of that degree? I guess Andrew W.K. could do a chamber pop record. But if you put Lil Kim in a business suit and wire-rim glasses, you'd probably give our whole culture a heart attack.
Speaking of pornography and filth -- and radical changes in sound -- we're all supposed to dismiss Liz Phair now that she's hired song doctors and betrayed the indie establishment by shooting for mainstream acceptance. I'm sure it would be comforting for many if Phair had been cranking out Guyville clones for the past ten years. But she's not a hack, she's an actual artist; and an actual artist is going to change, and find previous versions of her muse unrecoverable. The principle objection to Phair's decision to work with the Matrix is that the gap between Exile In Guyville and Avril Lavigne is yawning and impossible to breach. But it's in the nature of pop song obsessors to radically overstate the difference between artists. Insofar as rock writers have collectively determined that it's gauche for a thirty-six year-old woman to put on the trappings of a teenager, I have to believe that those critics are allowing a combination of puritanism, prejudice, and possessiveness to obscure their judgement. They're correct to pin Phair as one of rock's absolute finest, but they err massively in their assessment of Lavigne, who is a considerable talent with several affecting records under her belt already. It is perfectly understandable why Phair would want to be Avril Lavigne for a season. And if you make records, you would want to be Lavigne, too -- you'd want to possess an instrument as powerful and undeniable as her singing voice. To be fair, Liz Phair doesn't possess such an instrument, and on "Extraordinary", the shadow of automated pitch correction hangs heavy over her vocal. But that's on her producers to remedy, and for the most part, they're up to the task; Phair might be a bit more remote here than you're used to, but "Extraordinary" sounds like the exact precisely-crafted summertime hit she wanted. The lyrics are weak in comparison to, say, "Help Me, Mary", but so is everything else; Phair set the bar as high as anybody ever has, and that's difficult for anyone to contend with. This isn't the last record she'll make, nor, when all is said and done, will it be her most representative. Don't deny yourself its pleasures on behalf of a set of totally misplaced principles.
Middle-of-the-pack young adult songstress with a nice voice and a predictable set of concerns. Wear out your Michelle Branch records first.
Lumidee -- "Uh Oooh (Never Leave You)"
The coolest song on the radio comes from a Spanish Harlem kid with unfettered, relaxed sex appeal and a plainspoken voice that ripples like tradewinds. Lumidee lays into one of the sparest grooves you're likely to hear on a pop song -- little more than a diwali drumbeat, finger snaps, some distant bass instrument or another, and a chorus of unearthly (and not a little spooky) backing vocals. Imagine Wayne Wonder's "No Letting Go" without the synthesizers, a Caribbean sun so hot that it's burned off everything except the white sand and the island heartbeat.
When certain athletes lose their skills, they spend a few years trying unsuccessfully to recapture their former glory, and then go bananas and wind up stabbing people to death. Such is the social cost of unfulfilled megalomania, and I tremble to consider the swath of carnage Madonna will cut through our city streets once people finally stop paying attention. She's entered the late Dick Allen phase of her career -- manufacturing faux-controversies in a vain and vulgar effort to call attention to her increasingly flaccid techno records, and looking more and more pathetic as an uninterested public moves on to fresher artists. Releasing and then withdrawing the "American Life" video as if it was some kind of political hot potato (rather than an amalgamation of shallow images that would barely raise the ire of Sean Hannity) smacked of absolute desperation. If the crassest opportunist in pop music history can't even use the Second Gulf War as an effective marketing strategy, what, really, does she have left for us? Her materialism used to be the message; now, she can't even give her records away. Dead-bolt your doors.
Most likely it's another song of schizophrenia, but there's a creeping feeling that those shadows and voices that chase the narrator aren't exactly internal. If it's about post-9/11 stress syndrome, this is pretty powerful. It's tough to duck the reading altogether: "pretty soon they'll come to get me", sings Rob Thomas, and it doesn't sound like he means the men in white coats. I don't like his singing very much, either, but he's become a part of the pop landscape. If I'm going to knock him when he goes through the motions, I've got to give him his props when he comes up with that rare Matchbox 20 song that bites to the bone.
Great manufactured voice, even better perspective. It's a KRS-ONE tribute whether Nasir Jones knows it or not; the final verse in particular, with its elaborate and sweeping expression of African history, could be spliced into the first side of Edutainment without much dissonance. Because he's not particularly playful, Nas rarely gets his deserved credit for the studiousness and rigor of his writing; he regularly employs representational techniques that have been dormant in hip-hop since the mid-nineties. Crossover radio audiences prefer clowns, though -- even erudite ones like Jay-Z. Nice use of "Fur Elise"; I'm happy that got into a hip-hop song. You know the kids love the classics.
What the hell is going on in this song? Not the eighties synthpop groove, that's an understandable infusion of nostalgia; the lyric, though is a weird, fragmentary, and dessicated piece of poetry. The title of the song is "Feel Good Time", but I don't think she says those words at any point -- it's always "real good" until the very end, when she croons "feel good -- don't got no more brain!" Normally, I'd just chalk this up to anti-intellectualism or the usual zombie chic, but Pink neither sounds excited nor satirically edgy. She's just stating a fact, with the same flat and frightening affect with which she discharges lines like "sleeping in the church/riding in the dirt" and "sell me something big and untamed". The perspective here seems to be that of a ghost, and not an incorporeal haunt either, but something more undead, tactile, and disturbing. Does "feel good time" come after a ghastly resurrection? Is this twisted scenario a commentary on the entertainment industry and party culture, or does it go even deeper?
The standard rock-crit reaction to R. Kelly singing lines like "please let me stick my key in your ignition" seemingly minutes after his arrest for statutory rape has been a kind of bemused respect for his unrepentance. But off-color verse about "driving the stick" are as old as the rock and roll/automobile axis itself, and to some degree Kelly is just a machine running a tape. That's not to suggest the song isn't inspired -- it is -- only that to pretend there's anything unexpected about the raunch here is to fundamentally misunderstand R&B conventions. To me, the bigger question is this -- how did Kelly get away with ripping off Daft Punk's "One More Time" so shamelessly? By my count, his producers have borrowed most of the backing track, the melody, and even some of the vocal effects. Well, the French do know a thing or two about naughty business, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at the homage.
Ruben Studdard -- "Flying Without Wings"
If we believe Secretary Rumsfeld -- and not the steady, ominous trickle of reports filtering in about continuous car bombings, grenade blasts, and mosques on fire in Baghdad -- major combat operations are over, and guess what?!, we won. It's questionable whether America will ever again fight a war for which a V-Day celebration would feel appropriate, but even so, you'd expect a slackening of our cultural clampdown and patriotic earnestness after victory abroad. That hasn't happened. It is almost as if Americans, most of whom never exactly trusted the government's pretext for invasion, consequently disbelieve the government's pretext of success. This invasion began, ended, and continues within a thick haze of indeterminacy. This isn't inconsistent, mind you, with strenuous support for the war -- if the past year proves anything to us, it's that Americans can fiercely support a military action even when they're more or less convinced that the government is fibbing right and left. The more frightening observation is that Americans are supporting the government because it is fibbing right and left -- that the administration's commitment to the Big Lie is understood by citizens as a simultaneous expression of earnestness, potency, and admirable ruthlessness. Meanwhile, war goes on daily. Everybody knows that combat troops remain in Afghanistan, continuing their desperate efforts to wriggle out of that Chinese finger-trap. If there is an end in sight to guerrilla warfare between the Tigris and Euphrates, recent indications suggest it might take the shape of a five-year U.S. occupation, complete with molotov cocktails, body bags, and immense budgetary red ink. And Osama Bin Laden -- who kick-started the change in the national mood by setting our cities on fire -- remains at large. These loose ends won't be gathered up by the fall, or by Christmas, or by the presidential election of 2004. Long, indeterminate periods of combat require sustained patriotism, and sustained patriotism inevitably devolves into cultural malaise. We shut our imaginative borders to foreign influence in late 2001 and have sustained a cultural embargo ever since; we fly the flag outside the New York Stock Exchange and continue to sing "God Bless America" during every seventh inning stretch. We're in the grip of a paralyzing earnestness that threatens to wring all evidence of crosscultural pollination out of the country. Records like "Flying Without Wings" sound sentimental but are in fact savage -- they are the product of a sustained effort to rid our national discourse of any cosmopolitan or sophisticated elements that might look suspiciously like a foreign import. Buy American, listen to Ruben Studdard's empty language and emptier performance, fly Old Glory, turn out the lights.
With a few notable exceptions, the mainstream entertainment industry has two areas of subject matter: ass and cops. Party entertainment tends to focus on ass (booty rhymes, dance music, "shaking it", cheesy sitcoms, Sweet Valley High novels) while "adult" middlebrow entertainment offers cops (courtroom drama, country music ballads, murder shows and true crime books). Because of the omnipresence of these obsessions, it's hard to dismiss them out of hand without junking the entire culture. But I do mean to stand hard against the notion that ass production is juvenile and unworthy while cop stuff is somehow received by more intelligent consumers. Look, ass is intrinsically entertaining. Cops, on the other hand, are only entertaining to us because of our intense perversity, self-punitive instinct, and secret desire to narc on our neighbors. Getting entertained by ass is life-affirming. Getting entertained by cops is absolutely not. I dig Sean Paul for several reasons, not the least of which is that he understands that ass is very nice. So, yes, he gives you songs as sleek as a Metroliner and twice as shiny, relentless vocal performances, and indelible synthesizer hooks. But he also exhorts you to shake that thing. And maybe you should.
Simple Plan -- "I'd Do Anything", "Addicted"
Nothing too flashy, three minutes of guitar splash and sheer pleasure. You sing along, you laugh along, it ends, you've digested it completely and you're ready to move on to the next track. If every link in the chain was as perfectly conceived as Simple Plan, we would never turn the radio off. Songs like this are why hit radio exists.
Sixpence None The Richer -- "Don't Dream It's Over"
Why? Sure, it's a good tune. It's a natural reaction, I guess, you hear a good tune and if you're a musician yourself, you imagine singing it. But then, you've got to actually stand there and make the sound waves come out of your throat. Then, you've got to learn the chords, teach the chords to your bandmates, and make the sound waves come out of your throat while they're fumbling around in the practice studio. Then, you've got to convince the label to shell out huge amounts of green. Then you've got to record it, edit it, master it, turn it out, and stand by it. If at any point along that road you fail to notice that you are not, in fact, the original performer, and you do not have the ability to discharge the song successfully, well, you probably deserve to release a record as crappy as this one.
Smilez & Southstar -- "Tell Me"
Energetic Orlando duo with a knack for memorable phrases and a penchant for grandstanding melodrama. Southstar is the gritty, angst-ridden one: "when I felt like killin' myself, you stood by me", he hollers at his ex in an effort to win her heart back. Hmm, perhaps he should rethink that approach. Smilez is the smartass and emotional manipulator, and he's got most of the jawdropping lines: "How could you do me wrong?/I invested three years, ma, and this song". Bumping, and inadvertently hilarious, too!
Snoop Dogg & Pharrell Williams -- "Beautiful"
The Neptunes have evidently decided to take their Grammy slight out on their audience; recent singles have been little more than excuses for Pharrell Williams to insert his non-voice into the songs' non-choruses. My guess is that Snoop lacks the capacity to mind; he's so smooth that Williams could probably throw him No Exit backing tracks and he'd barely break stride. That said, I simply cannot understand why on earth he would tell his girl to hurry up and finish so they can watch "Clueless". Huh?!? This has got to be either temporary aphasia, a sudden irruption from a completely different soundalike emcee, or shameless product placement and cross-promotion. Yeah, yeah, my money is on the latter.
t.A.T.u. -- "All The Things She Said"
The most damning evidence that our culture has completely lost its compass: we ignored teenage Russian lesbians. Are we insane? What a staggering pack of ingrates we are. Is our embargo on all Euro signifiers so stringent that we can't get down with this effective piece of shameless exploitation? Has Howard Stern taught us nothing?
The White Stripes -- "Seven Nation Army"
Elephant is a bone-shaking set of songs -- particularly the seven-minute blues workout "Ball And Biscuit", which features lead guitar scalding enough to smelt steel -- but it contains no real radio single. Now, "Fell In Love With A Girl" and "I Can Tell That We Are Gonna Be Friends" weren't exactly Britney Spears, either, but they were able to exist outside of the contextual framing provided by White Blood Cells. "Seven Nation Army", on the other hand, will just sound reiterative to anybody who encounters it loosely -- without understanding how it functions within the ruthless logic of the new album. It's just as well. My sense is that the Stripes have done their singles trip, and they're getting back to doing what they do best: reminding listeners of the experience of being a kid and listening to Led Zeppelin albums through transistors and crappy Fisher-Price speakers. What, you don't think alt-rockers peddle nostalgia? Generally, that's all they're hawking -- selling sense-memories of childhood to Peter Pan types.
Why?, part two. Well, to be fair, revisiting "Drift Away" probably makes sense to Uncle Kracker as a piece of wartime escapism. If Kracker is a history student -- and since he rose to prominence as one of Kid Rock's backing musicians, he probably is -- no doubt he'd suggest that the Dobie Grey original was best understood as a balm for a nation reeling from Vietnam's uncertainties. But, you know, they wrote banalities back then, too. As irritating as it is to hear scenario after scenario of friends rolling in a Benz, at least nobody is trying to free their mind anymore, nor are we so inhibited by the "pourin' rain". No wonder those clowns re-elected Nixon.
Wayne Wonder -- "No Letting Go"
Diwali has been the great exception to the embargo. With three diwali tracks on the charts ("Get Busy", Lumidee's "Never Leave You" and "No Letting Go") simultaneously, this dancehall rhythm has provided hit radio with what little spice it had to offer lately. Much as I love Sean Paul, I reject the Great Man Theory here -- his talent and charisma, considerable though it is, cannot possibly be driving this anomaly. No, my best estimation is that reggae and dancehall simply do not register as foreign to an American public raised on Bob Marley records at the mall. Superficially that seems crazy, but hey, Jamaica is part of North America. Much as it pains me to say it, I am afraid the diwali is functioning as the Club Med of hit radio: off the coast and exotic, but still firmly within the mainstream American sphere of dominance.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- "Date With The Night"
Meanwhile, back in New York City, the snow has finally melted, and with it, some of the trepidation of Code Orange has been washed into the gutter. The town had a rough time partying this spring -- attempts were made, to be sure, but always, lurking in the background, was the threat of repercussions for a war we didn't ask for. When National Guardsmen patrol the subway stations with high-powered rifles it's difficult to proceed as if it's business as usual, yet city bands averted their eyes from the hole on Vesey Street and continued to pound out big rock stompers. The form was perfect, but the confidence was missing. Our current city metier -- studied garage rock and twee indiepop -- is terribly positioned to communicate our fears and concerns effectively to the rest of the country. But our contribution to the debate remains the most important, because now and forever, we sit on the front line. If we don't have the language and confidence to express ourselves on the subjects that frame our lives, we lose -- because as we've seen, the rest of the culture industry is anxious to do it for us. Again I am startled and dismayed to observe the lack of New York voices in the debate, and I wonder again if we are still shellshocked. This administration isn't listening to our spokespeople. They took their case to Washington, and were shown the door. New York City writers are our last line of defense -- and we need to take the case to the rest of America. Yes, that means you.
All your e-mail is all I have.