Wednesday, July 14, 2010
There's No One Here to Save
For such an outwardly positive and classically beautiful young woman, poor Sara Bareilles seems to have some bum luck when it comes to men. The antiheroes of Bareilles' best-known songs aren't physically abusive or compulsive cheaters; they're more just, well, losers: needy, passive-aggressive, bossy, childish, selfish, clingy, and so forth. They're a particularly bourgeois kind of soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, dwelling most commonly in the hallways of college dorms, the coffee shops of upper middle class New York or Los Angeles neighborhoods, and television sitcom neighborhoods. So while they may not be all that dangerous or frightening, they're pesky and annoying and mostly harmless - in other words, excellent fodder for a light pop single by a young white solo female performer.
In her breakout single "Love Song," which earned a Grammy nomination last year for Best Song and topped the Billboard Pop Songs chart, the UCLA grad (and alumna of acapella group "Awaken," for which she composed and with whom she originally recorded her much darker single "Gravity") delivered a deliciously clever rebuff to what it seems would be just the first loser to cross Bareilles' path: "I'm not gonna write you a love song 'cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one," she sang, and the whole thing would have been brutal were it not for the breezy, bright melody and Bareilles' upbeat delivery (this tone versus topic disparity, a highly effective technique, is also heavily prevalent in Robyn's work over the past five or six years), even if she looked stiff and moderately uncomfortable in the Shining Time Station-esque music video, as many first timers do. It was a great debut single for an artist like Bareilles that placed her solidly atop the crop of new moderate-appeal softcore female singer-songwriters that has emerged in the past couple years, such as Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor.
In "King Of Anything," the lead single for Bareilles' sophomore effort Kaleidoscope Heart (out September 7), the piano-playing chanteuse doesn't exactly break any new ground - but of course no one really asked her to nor would her core audience much care for too wild a stray from the comfortable path. As one might expect in a second go-around, the production is tighter and more inventive (alternating hand claps, repeated "uh-ohs" from right to left speaker and back, all perfectly mixed from the minimal opening to the fully layered final chorus). As for the subject matter, this time Sara's knight in rusty armor isn't so much needy as maddeningly self-important, the kind who spends much of the time finding (and pointing out) all the so-called "faults" of his partner so as to entirely ignore and not acknowledge his own.
Sure, ending a chorus with a harsh "who DIED" (a harshness that comes more from its rythmic placement than anything) is perhaps not the smoothest of lyrical choices, but the melody is impeccable, easily improving on "Love Song" and rivaling the coolly calculated creations of Katy Perry in catchiness and wonder. And since anyone can relate to the universal subject matter (not as deep a concept as that behind the cleverer "Love Song"), "King Of Anything" is an immensely likeable, enjoyable package that should launch Bareilles' second album to a comfortable start. If, this time around, she manages to pull out a second single from the bunch, she may become one of the few artists who not only avoids but thoroughly lambastes the traditional sophomore slump, which should in turn allow her to continue singing and writing for a good while longer - maybe even long enough to take her music somewhere off the comfortable, marketable path.
In her breakout single "Love Song," which earned a Grammy nomination last year for Best Song and topped the Billboard Pop Songs chart, the UCLA grad (and alumna of acapella group "Awaken," for which she composed and with whom she originally recorded her much darker single "Gravity") delivered a deliciously clever rebuff to what it seems would be just the first loser to cross Bareilles' path: "I'm not gonna write you a love song 'cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one," she sang, and the whole thing would have been brutal were it not for the breezy, bright melody and Bareilles' upbeat delivery (this tone versus topic disparity, a highly effective technique, is also heavily prevalent in Robyn's work over the past five or six years), even if she looked stiff and moderately uncomfortable in the Shining Time Station-esque music video, as many first timers do. It was a great debut single for an artist like Bareilles that placed her solidly atop the crop of new moderate-appeal softcore female singer-songwriters that has emerged in the past couple years, such as Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor.
In "King Of Anything," the lead single for Bareilles' sophomore effort Kaleidoscope Heart (out September 7), the piano-playing chanteuse doesn't exactly break any new ground - but of course no one really asked her to nor would her core audience much care for too wild a stray from the comfortable path. As one might expect in a second go-around, the production is tighter and more inventive (alternating hand claps, repeated "uh-ohs" from right to left speaker and back, all perfectly mixed from the minimal opening to the fully layered final chorus). As for the subject matter, this time Sara's knight in rusty armor isn't so much needy as maddeningly self-important, the kind who spends much of the time finding (and pointing out) all the so-called "faults" of his partner so as to entirely ignore and not acknowledge his own.
Sure, ending a chorus with a harsh "who DIED" (a harshness that comes more from its rythmic placement than anything) is perhaps not the smoothest of lyrical choices, but the melody is impeccable, easily improving on "Love Song" and rivaling the coolly calculated creations of Katy Perry in catchiness and wonder. And since anyone can relate to the universal subject matter (not as deep a concept as that behind the cleverer "Love Song"), "King Of Anything" is an immensely likeable, enjoyable package that should launch Bareilles' second album to a comfortable start. If, this time around, she manages to pull out a second single from the bunch, she may become one of the few artists who not only avoids but thoroughly lambastes the traditional sophomore slump, which should in turn allow her to continue singing and writing for a good while longer - maybe even long enough to take her music somewhere off the comfortable, marketable path."King of Anything"
Sara Bareilles
(Epic, 2010)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
"Are You That Somebody?" - Aaliyah
The music industry has had more than its share of notable figures who have met unfortunate and premature ends, airplane crashes having a particularly eerie prevalence among their causes. Certainly one of the biggest losses came in 2001 when R&B singer Aaliyah died at 22 in a plane crash following a music video shoot in the Bahamas. The loss of such a uniquely promising artist was a devastating one, but as she had been signed to Jive Records at the green age of twelve, Aaliyah contributed a good eight or nine years' worth of music from her 1994 debut, appropriately titled Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, through her groundbreaking, self-titled 2001 studio album, and then some. Gifted with solid musical chops, Aaliyah also was the biggest early successes of the brilliant hip hop producers Missy Elliott and Timbaland, who worked as a producing team in the late '90s and were behind most of Aaliyah's second album One in a Million, the success of which made stars of all three.
While she would later get the bite of the acting bug, Aaliyah made her first marks in the film industry with her contributions in 1998 to the soundtracks of the animated film Anastasia and the Eddie Murphy comedy Dr. Doolittle. The latter, in fact, was the unlikely origin of one of Aaliyah's most popular and important singles, "Are You That Somebody." To say the single was groundbreaking would be a gross understatement, not so much on the part of the singer but that of its producer, Timbaland, who with that track both shattered pop conventions and laid the groundwork for one of the most successful producing careers in modern pop history. To today's ear the production does not come off too far outside the box, but this is only because minimalist production has been adopted and adapted widely by Timbaland and high profile followers like the Neptunes in the years since in hip hop, R&B, and mainstream pop music alike. As the New Yorker put it, "the beat refuses to fully engage, using more dead space than you would have thought possible in a hit," and in 1998, when the Max Martin style of dense, saturated production had began running the show (or at least doing it the loudest), this was even more of a departure. And that's not to mention the mouth clicks, finger snaps, and the baby giggle. A baby giggle. I would kill to have been in the label exec's office when they first got a load of this one.
And yet, the track, released as an airplay-only single at a time when Billboard had not yet allowed airplay-only singles to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (although that policy was changed midway through "Are You That Somebody?"'s chart run), was a huge hit, reaching number four on the main airplay chart and number one on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay. The record is included on "Best Of" lists by the likes of Blender (#387 on The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born), Spin magazine, and even the Village Voice, and is easily my personal favorite of Aaliyah's strong if sadly too brief discography.
While she would later get the bite of the acting bug, Aaliyah made her first marks in the film industry with her contributions in 1998 to the soundtracks of the animated film Anastasia and the Eddie Murphy comedy Dr. Doolittle. The latter, in fact, was the unlikely origin of one of Aaliyah's most popular and important singles, "Are You That Somebody." To say the single was groundbreaking would be a gross understatement, not so much on the part of the singer but that of its producer, Timbaland, who with that track both shattered pop conventions and laid the groundwork for one of the most successful producing careers in modern pop history. To today's ear the production does not come off too far outside the box, but this is only because minimalist production has been adopted and adapted widely by Timbaland and high profile followers like the Neptunes in the years since in hip hop, R&B, and mainstream pop music alike. As the New Yorker put it, "the beat refuses to fully engage, using more dead space than you would have thought possible in a hit," and in 1998, when the Max Martin style of dense, saturated production had began running the show (or at least doing it the loudest), this was even more of a departure. And that's not to mention the mouth clicks, finger snaps, and the baby giggle. A baby giggle. I would kill to have been in the label exec's office when they first got a load of this one.
And yet, the track, released as an airplay-only single at a time when Billboard had not yet allowed airplay-only singles to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (although that policy was changed midway through "Are You That Somebody?"'s chart run), was a huge hit, reaching number four on the main airplay chart and number one on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay. The record is included on "Best Of" lists by the likes of Blender (#387 on The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born), Spin magazine, and even the Village Voice, and is easily my personal favorite of Aaliyah's strong if sadly too brief discography."Are You That Somebody?"
Aaliyah
(Atlantic Records, 1998)
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Estelle Can Be a Freak
The following is a selection from a full double track review posted earlier today on Vertigo Shtick. To see the whole review, click here!
Estelle may thus far be a one-hit wonder on our shores, but the 30 year old London native has recently unveiled two tracks from her upcoming third studio album, All Of Me, and they make an intriguing pair. The first, released in February, is "Freak," a grinding, sexy uptempo thumper that, at first, could scarcely sound further removed from the breezy "American Boy." Estelle uses the opening seconds of the track to offer what comes off as part dare, part entreaty (overture as overture?), stating "I can be a freak, every day of every week," not quite convincingly but with enough promise to rope in the skeptic listener, if just to see just how "freaky" this squeaky clean darling thinks she is. What proceeds is truly a fascinating three and a half minutes wherein Estelle at worst amuses as she offers a kink-lite manifesto via a delivery smacking with PG-rated joie de vivre and at best succeeds in the plainly stated endeavor she lays out at the outset:
Still, the track makes refreshingly good use of rapper and spelling bee champ Kardinal Offishall (best known to pop audiences as either the force behind the Akon-esque number two hit "Dangerous" and/or the rapper who apologized to Viagra on the bafflingly awful radio edit of Lady Gaga's debut smash "Just Dance"), whose bouncing, humorous featured rap provides enough "freaky" for those demanding of full truth in advertising without dragging the track down, musically or content-wise. But for the most part, "Freak" is a lesson of "Kinky Sex for Soccer Moms" over a pounding, immensely enjoyable dance beat, and that Estelle never fully convinces anyone (even herself, I imagine...as if that were the point) she has gone dirrty the way of Christina "Not Myself Tonight" Aguilera is the charming victory of this thoroughly replayable single.
Estelle may thus far be a one-hit wonder on our shores, but the 30 year old London native has recently unveiled two tracks from her upcoming third studio album, All Of Me, and they make an intriguing pair. The first, released in February, is "Freak," a grinding, sexy uptempo thumper that, at first, could scarcely sound further removed from the breezy "American Boy." Estelle uses the opening seconds of the track to offer what comes off as part dare, part entreaty (overture as overture?), stating "I can be a freak, every day of every week," not quite convincingly but with enough promise to rope in the skeptic listener, if just to see just how "freaky" this squeaky clean darling thinks she is. What proceeds is truly a fascinating three and a half minutes wherein Estelle at worst amuses as she offers a kink-lite manifesto via a delivery smacking with PG-rated joie de vivre and at best succeeds in the plainly stated endeavor she lays out at the outset:
This is something that I've learned.
Listen, I'm about to teach:
Every single girl
Should embrace their inner freaky-freak.
Still, the track makes refreshingly good use of rapper and spelling bee champ Kardinal Offishall (best known to pop audiences as either the force behind the Akon-esque number two hit "Dangerous" and/or the rapper who apologized to Viagra on the bafflingly awful radio edit of Lady Gaga's debut smash "Just Dance"), whose bouncing, humorous featured rap provides enough "freaky" for those demanding of full truth in advertising without dragging the track down, musically or content-wise. But for the most part, "Freak" is a lesson of "Kinky Sex for Soccer Moms" over a pounding, immensely enjoyable dance beat, and that Estelle never fully convinces anyone (even herself, I imagine...as if that were the point) she has gone dirrty the way of Christina "Not Myself Tonight" Aguilera is the charming victory of this thoroughly replayable single.
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Friday, June 25, 2010
Kelly Rowland ft. David Guetta - "Commander"
Kelly Rowland. Butt of Glee jokes, second fiddle to a more famous cousin, victim to some really awful production teams in the past during her rocky solo career. But the other child of Destiny seems to have found her comfortable niche as muse of the great French producer/DJ David Guetta: she contributed vocals to "When Love Takes Over" on Guetta's recent album One Love, and has now delivered her first solid dance solo single with "Commander." While I found the former a bit shouty and, as the American Idol judges like to say, "pitchy," with "Commander" Rowland stays more within her low range and the results are far less grating. I also approve of any video that brings back military dance a la Madonna's "Vogue."
What do you think about "Commander?" Is Kelly Rowland a welcome addition to dance music and would you have guessed that would turn out to be her calling?
What do you think about "Commander?" Is Kelly Rowland a welcome addition to dance music and would you have guessed that would turn out to be her calling?
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