Premature ChaffPost

My week of atonement/vacation isn't over yet but I thought I'd blog about a few things anyway.

1. Kristy Frank. New CD is called Freedom, she was previously featured on Darcy's Wild Life OST, a few Disney comps, and this here blog. The album (from what I've heard of it so far) is great. Great voice, score more points for bubblegum-rock tending toward country, not exactly Hannah Montana material but since that just got pushed back AGAIN to late October, this is the best we'll get so far. Don't have full art/liners yet so I can't comment on the production team, but will discuss in more detail when I have that info...this and Katie Neil will be getting more attention in next month's column. GET READY FOR A teenPOP QUIZ (GET IT?)! And my first Disney swag, mwahahahaha, don't worry the eds are sharing the wealth.

2. Hannah Montana. OCTOBER 24TH? This is bad news -- Miley's still going strong on RD (finally heard her competition, "Year 3000" by Jonas Brothers, much closer to the boyband Hanson comparisons and quite fun) but I can't imagine there being a game plan for pushing back the release date. I'm wondering if they're having difficulties getting it finished or something; this would have been a perfect summer release. Metal Mike Saunders with some context re: Lizzie McGuire/Hilary Duff:

the Lizzie/Hilary campaign was meticulously worked out between all parties involved.

I Can't Wait video (played on Disney Channel only) / and the Lizzie TV soundtrack in fall (?) 2002

full Xmas album (which i really like) Xmas 2002

the Why Not video , March 2003 which broke into MTV within 30 days i'm pretty sure the So Yesterday single/video early summer 2003

and the album, back-to-school purchase for every grade schooler in american late august 2003, went straight to #1 (its SECOND week...it bumped Mary J. Blidge which had higher 1st week sales, but not the 2nd week).

"Sweet 16 in Hawaii" special on the WB channel on her Sept (23?) birthday
then the sequence of club gigs (about 6 or 7 max) in late fall 2003 -- i saw santa cruz at a 1,000 head venue and it was great, loved the band

following by a full on arena tour early 2004 that did just great

from zero to 100 miles an hour in just 15 months or so

In comparison, the Hannah Montana timeline:

♥ March 24: "Hannah Montana" premieres, simultaneous introduction of "Best of Both Worlds" into the Radio Disney playlist.

♥ March 25-ish: "Best of Both Worlds" and "Who Said" (and underexposed "This Is the Life") all leak simultaneously to YouTube (presumably from Disney Channel sneak peeks; this was during a sans TV stretch).

♥ April-ish: "Who Said" makes it into RD rotation

♥ April through May: A bunch of talk and few live dates, no further material surfaces except a one-off for a Disneymania comp.

♥ June: Whole lotta nothin. The two released singles continue to climb the charts.

♥ July: Performance at the Radio Disney "Totally 10" concert. The one review I read reveals that Miley was lip-syncin'. Shockingly, no one cares.

♥ End of July: Still nothing. Album has by now been pushed back from its original date of early June to exactly SEVEN MONTHS after the premiere. September-November tour with (yuck) Cheetah Girls announced.

The trajectory isn't all that different than Lizzie/Hilary (Hannah will probably reach full speed around the one-year mark, start of season two maybe?), but they'll be stretching the two singles pretty thin by October. Although I still listen to them all the time, so who knows (hey, great cover band streaming tracks!). If the show had premiered in the fall season (does Disney Channel even recognize the network season system?), a Christmas release might have followed.

What might be happening is a further exclusion of Disney-bred pop acts from TRL land, which is somehow always on the verge of both combining with and separating from Radio Disney...Aly and AJ succeed on TRL with "Chemicals React" (still strikes me as strange that this is a breakthrough on the level of "Rush," maybe even surpassing it) but Miley doesn't stand a chance of leaving Disney any time soon. Which might be why they keep pushing it back; the show's still going strong and Miley/Mileyfans got nowhere else to go.

3. SKYE. Release date pushed back even later, at this point late October would probably be optimistic. I wouldn't be surprised if the album was pushed to 2007 and the Sweden single released end of 2006...just speculation, but that particular scenario sounds like the Veronicas release.

4. t.A.T.u. Started obsessing over them after the twin-pop column ran and I've been listening to Dangerous and Moving for about a week now. I need to get the other album; I'm interested to see the construction of the persona that they're clearly experimenting with, er, amusingly. Start with two statements of WE assertion, two women, TA and TU, first insisting it's all about us and then following the island utopia "All the Things She Said" to a strange, almost cartoonish end in outer space, the only place they can really be alone. Then some gender issues, back to the "I" in "He Loves Me(/She Loves Me)"...then hints at a tumultuous relationship, presumably between the girls themselves, then a weird reconciliation toward the end, shouting together but still hopelessly alone. Very self-conscious and very effective from within this strange and sort of beautiful character/entity they've created. Also, the music makes me do a wavey arm dance, even when I'm lying down.

5. Henry Miller. Finally coming around. Hat tip to Brie. Nice photo, too.

EDIT #1: New Hannah Montana Single, "Pump Up the Party" is "going for radio rotation." This means Radio Disney is going to start playing it on the radio many many times. But not as many as the other songs because (from what I've heard of it) it isn't very good.

EDIT #2: Insulted by this quote in the Times:

[Mizzzzzzzzz Aguilera] beat out Ms. Spears for the best new artist Grammy in 2000, but Ms. Spears, with her teasingly virginal persona and revealing Catholic schoolgirl costumes, was the bigger star.

Yes, girls aged approx. 8-16 all responded to Ms. Spears' "teasingly virginal persona and revealing...costumes" by purchasing her album. That sure explains it. It couldn't be that Christina's first album was INCREDIBLY BORING and had ONE GOOD SONG, making her one of the luckiest hacks in the hacktiverse. One of these days I'll write an essay.