Paris Is Yearning

Has anyone made this pun yet? [Results 1 - 10 of about 156 for "paris is yearning", tho a few are accidental and a few are based on Bertolucci's The Dreamers; there seem to be no puns left unpunned in the blogosphere, but please prove me wrong in the comment box] Based on this review, discussed over on this thread.

And then there's this review, from the Phoenix. I'm conflicted [EDIT: eh, not so conflicted]. Here are some problem paragraphs:

If after her disastrous shitshow of a Saturday Night Live performance Ashlee Simpson was able to rebound with a sophomore effort for Geffen that puts L.A.M.B. to shame, who’s to say Paris can’t serve up a sonic bitch slap on her first try?

Well, a warm-up. Including it becuase the author really doesn't seem to grasp some of the most important facts about the pop culture icons she's supposedly "defending" in this piece -- to say that simply making the record was "rebounding" is a stretch, suggests that she ignored the important part, not whether or not it was made, but how it sold (and how the accompanying tour did). At this point no one would claim that Fefe Dobson's being allowed to record another album is the indicator of her "success," but OK.

OK, now to Paree. No wait, one more:

Popgeneration.com caught on early. The site’s an on-line HQ for grassroots street teams, serving up 10 pristinely packaged, super-femmy recording artists, with plenty more en route.

Um, did she notice that Popgeneration is basically a thinly-veiled PR site for Hollywood records? They even have a contest to name the Hollywood Rec's Girl Next comp (which you can try to win a copy of in the upcoming Sugar Shock Teenpop Quiz!). Saying they "caught on early" is like saying that Radio Disney "caught on early" in promoting Aly and AJ or Hannah Montana.

Followed up with:

Pop Generation is a reflection of just how easy it is for songwriting squads like the Matrix and mixers like Serban Ghenea to manufacture girl pop in industrial quantities and then model it all as designer exclusives.

Gotta call bullshit here, or at least sneaky (not so sneaky) backhandedness...it typifies the tone of this piece (which on the whole is much more reasonable than the Observer article I spent way too much time and possibly embarrassed myself a little "analyzing" the other day) to use this sort of questionable terminology and not really convey how these songwriting teams actually work. She instead fuels broader bankrupt assumptions with a neo-rockist (yeah I said it, or to use another phrase, "good rockism") pro-"manufactured pop" twist.

Most of these artists have some authorial control over their work -- in the case of Aly and AJ, they have a great deal of control, as they write almost all of their songs themselves with some help from their parents. They're a lot of things, but "manufactured" isn't one of them. Ditto the Veronicas, who, as she just mentioned, not only write and play their instruments -- not sure if that's actually true, but whatever -- but wrote a song for t.A.T.u.

OK, now to Paree:

“Never be predictable . . . that way, they will never get tired of you.” That’s Rule #21 of “How To Be an Heiress,” from Confessions of an Heiress, the adult picture book Paris “authored” in 2004. Only Paris would take the high road and assume that we haven’t grown bored of her. And yet she’s right. Cue Rule #22: “If the media plays with you, play with them.”

Note the quotation marks around author. I don't know whether or not this was ghost-written, in which case I guess that's sort of valid, although that does sound like something Paris could and maybe would actually say. You'd have to be a sucker to pay someone to come up with that.

Re: a recent "vow of chastity":

Nobody who’s seen five minutes of the notorious 1 Night in Paris would buy into her promise to stick to first base for the next year. Especially once you hear Paris, which is even more concerned with getting down and getting off than Paris is herself.

Maybe a sexual riff on "good rockism," or just sexist. Paris, who -- again to the best of my understanding -- was the victim of this sex tape (which I've never seen) is attacked with the tape used as evidence of the disparate claims people are hurling at her -- "she's even bored and apathetic during sex!" Or here, "you know she won't keep a vow of celibacy since she's on camera and on record gettin' down and gettin' off!" Why should a singer's "vow of chastity" be inherently unbelievable simply because her songs are about sex? Or, for that matter, because she had sex with her ex-boyfriend?

“Stars [Are Blind]” already trumps “A Public Affair,” Jessica Simpson’s feeble “Holiday” ripoff call to the ladies. And unlike Disney Radio darling Hilary Duff’s “Wake Up,” it gives Paris a chart-topping crossover that will have 11-year-olds shaking underdeveloped hips alone in their rooms. It also all but guarantees that boozing club kids will be grinding to remixed versions straight through the holiday season.

Jeeeeeez. Get it, she likes pop! She's heard Jessica Simpson and has (sort of) heard of Hilary Duff and Radio Disney! Didn't bother googling it, or she'd get the name right and maybe figure out that "Wake Up" was number one among eleven-year-olds on RD for almost a year -- and to date has been one of "Disney Radio's" (and eleven-year-olds') biggest hits ever. Man, Disney really took a chance on that one, they got to it before anyone else! Unless a careless editor separated the second-to-last and last sentence from one longer sentence (it reads that way), this makes no sense at all. More proof of a flimsy "pop-lovin'" facade for a confusing series of bizarre (rockist) arguments. Also yuck for the phrase "underdeveloped hips."

During an MTV special on the making of the album that aired two weeks prior to its release, I was transfixed by a scene that shows Paris hard at work in the studio with Storch. She claims that this is how the songwriting process went: he’d mess around on his keyboard with the beats while she’d grab a pen and write whatever came to mind. Wait a minute. Didn’t she hire someone to do that for her too? The camera pans down to her paper. I try desperately to make out what she’s scrawled on the page. Just as quickly, the camera flashes back to her cleavage. I’d kill for a better look at that notebook — it’s probably just a shopping list for new sex toys.

Why is it so completely unthinkable to anyone -- especially someone who acknowledged and then dodged the issue of co-authorship earlier in this same piece -- that Paris had a hand in creating this? What exactly are people responding to, what are they afraid is going to happen if they accept this music on its own terms (which, judging from that clip, might include Paris' co-authorship)? I'm glad the author included this description of the special, which I haven't seen, because it proves that Paris wasn't sleeping the whole time while they surgically extracted the music from her undisturbed. Like, maybe she wrote a couplet. Get over it.

This is another part Paris pays to play. But she’s discovered how to ensure that she’s no longer the punch line -— high-rolling with the right staff is all it takes. When you’re signing blank checks, the transformation from celeb-trash-princess to chic pop star is even easier done than said.

Nothing is easier done than said. If that sounds overly literal-minded, remove snarky but essentially nonsensical jabs like that from the piece and what's even left? Paris Hilton scribbling a note to Scott Storch during a recording session and a gratuitous cleavage shot? Why, when it involves Paris actually contributing to the music she's invested in, in all senses of the word, is it another "part Paris pays to play," but when, say, it involves the decision not to have sex, she can't play the "tired of having sex" part?

In these pieces I'm at least seeing a few trends: laziness, falling back on the same tabloid language that Paris ostensibly emerged as a celebrity from, but in this case from the other side; or is it the same side? Love/hate, whatever...the important thing here is that there are no clear sides in this debate -- everyone who's against her seems to be against her for the wrong reasons (because they don't hold up when examined) and everyone claiming to be for her is somehow for her for the same reasons the other people are against her, but now these baseless assumptions equal "good" whereas before they equaled "bad."

Still more to say about this; I think I've got most of the initial huffpuffing out of my system for now, but I can almost definitely promise an actual essay on this subject in about a month's time.