The Real Christina is a Phony!

Myspace post coming within the next few days and a pretty big below-radar Radio Disney piece that I've been kind of chiseling away at for a few weeks, too. But for today...

1. XXXTINA - XXX = this and this (again). Something mighty fishy is goin' on here...I should link to a 2002 article by Jimmy Draper for comparison. One interesting point among several:

The single's ["Dirrrty"] gratuitous T&A, however, is less to blame for its commercial failure than are Aguilera's desperate attempts to cash in on paths blazed by Britney and Pink last fall...a year after Brit Brit released the similar "I'm a Slave 4 U" and Pink enlisted Perry – who had a hand in writing Stripped, too – to help her transition into a faux-hawked hellion, "Dirrty" just sounds tired.

The article is about "prefab" going "real" back in 2002, giving some perspective to the two recent pieces linked above -- the idea that Christina is finally pulling ahead after being unduly bested by Britney since whenever is kind of silly. Also interesting that this article captures the confessional mode in teenpop before it really took off, or maybe as it really took off for the first time.

I think that at some point between then and now, the idea that these artists (Pink, J-Lo, even Britney was included back when she was "maturing"...now somehow it's all bubblegum, as if she hasn't changed a note since her teasingly virginal days) were becoming "authentic" in 2002 was (perhaps rightfully) displaced with a notion that this "realness" was a certain persona. Unfortunately, the adoption of a little more personal persona has been selectively conflated with dishonesty, or "fakeness," which isn't actually the case -- hence, Ashlee and Lindsay get panned for being "fake" while Kelly sort of gets by being "real" ("at least she can sing").

Now the complex hypocrisies that have developed since 2002 are starting to infiltrate a wider discussion that appears to accept teenpop on its own terms, but actually forces teenpop into the terms of legitimizers. So we get arguments that sound kind of like, "Hey, I never said I didn't love teenpop! I love Christina, always have, but it's probably better THIS way, because it's, y'know, real." Even if such a statement seems dishonest (and may or may not be dishonest), the only part of the argument that's flat-out wrong is the "real" part. That part can be concealed by changing the explicit "this is real" to "well, this just sounds better to me," which implicitly includes the "because it's real" part.

There appears to be something strange happening -- it's a variation on the Good Indie Rockist theory, writ large(r), a surface-level acceptance of all forms of music, including the "assembly-line pop" of the past, with arguments that intentionally obfuscate underlying assumptions in such a way that they're difficult to parse and almost impossible to prove. But look again at this bit in the NYT article:

Though she was widely considered the more talented artist, she was immediately dogged by comparisons to Britney Spears. Both were blond and perky, and both began their careers performing together on “The New Mickey Mouse Club,” a cavity-inducing show on the Disney Channel. She 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.

I already pointed out the last part, which is plainly ridiculous, but the first part is trickier. "Though she was widely considered the more talented artist"...well, what definition of "talent" are we using here? Singing talent? OK, she's got pipes. What relevance are the pipes on the songs? Which isn't to say there isn't any relevance, but that perhaps this assumption of "talent" still doesn't engage with either Christina OR Britney's music c. 2000 on its own terms. But it still engages with it, which is different from outright dismissal.

I think something potentially harmful is happening, the false acceptance of the early '00s teenpop boom that, perhaps through a combination of distanced nostalgia and removal from media saturation, has actually mutated the original grounds for its dismissal into backhanded praise for teenpop as genre, provided that some current teenpop artists are more real than others. This sort of thinking may have led to Cheyenne (who, truth be told, isn't as terrible as I make her out to be).

The rockism/popism debate has theoretically established two sides, but the underlying assumptions that form the idea of rockism have little to do with a specific type of music. Ashlee's rock can be considered just as "phony" as Britney' pop -- the problem has always been expectations of legitimacy. The debate itself has become something of an in-joke, but impetus for the debate is important to carry forward. But it can't be carried forward simply as an appreciation for a commonly critically-derided style of music or collection of artists, because it's too easy to expand the scope of bankrupt assumptions to include that style and those artists.

I don't want to get too preachy about it, so I'll stop, but I'll probably have more to say about it as events warrant. I suspect that Cheyenne isn't the last of "Real Teenpop" (as I'm calling it -- just think of "real" like the "new" in "New Coke"), maybe I'll expand into a more formal/less rambling essay...

2. I really like this MSTRKRFT (DFA79 dude + others, can't be bothered to google at the moment) album. Can't say it has any lasting replay value, which is probably why I plan on listening to it at least four or five times today (gotta get the replay value while you can).

3. The more I listen to "Year 3000" by Jonas Brothers, the more I think they're really on to something. They mention "boyband" in this one, too, but now they SOUND like one, and maybe they're doing the opposite of what the "Good Rockists" are doing, reaffirming boybands by living and breathing boyband while transparently pretending to hold them in disdain. At least, that's what I thought with "Mandy," but check THIS out [EDIT: anti-climax alert -- this is a BUSTED COVER, duh!!!! Covering a boyband basically supports the same argument, but worth noting anyway, thanx to WBS in comments, just sent me blurbs, too]:

He took me to the future in the flux thing, and I saw everything/ Boy bands, and another one and another one ... and another one!/ And girls there with round hair, like Star Wars/ They float above the floor

And another one and another one and another one!!! Maybe we'll be OK after all, plus the girls will have cool haircuts!

Possibly like this one:



4. The video, for further reference. If I liked the song as much as the idea of the song (and, even more, the idea of Bertine) it would probably be in the top ten. Fiddling with it still, every time I listen to "I Need a House" I am CONVINCED it's brilliant, but then when I'm not listening...nothing. But that's the point, right???

Star-Wars-Haircut-Pop

Bertine Zetlitz - 500