Them's fightin words!

In 1998, Britney Spears released “Baby One More Time,” and created the template for teen pop for the next four years. In 2002, Avril Lavigne released “Complicated,” and her bratty pop rock became the new standard for girls on the radio. Another four years later, having been through Avril, Kelly Clarkson, the Veronicas, Ashlee Simpson, Hilary Duff, and a whole bunch of non-starters like Skye Sweetnam, Cheyenne Kimball wheezes the genre’s last breaths. We’re due for a brand new take on teen pop right about now and “Hanging On” suggests the reinvention cannot come soon enough.

From the jukebox I woulda contributed to if I wasn't on vacation (wait, can you go on vacation if you aren't going on vacation from something [except maybe from forced vacation]?).

Jonathan Bradley's got a pretty good blog, actually agree with him on the bizarre Pfork take on "Public Affair," which is called out as neo-PMRC (ha), as if even the Good Indie Rockists are KILLING MUSIC with their pop tokens and bile must be restored. Hey, I wrote plenty of this sort of crap, knee-jerk and usually late-night (and night-before) and getting called out on it sucks, but it is what it is.

Anyway. There's some crazy shit goin' on in this blurb and some of it might be useful. It seems kind of revisionist to assume that what Avril was doing in 2002 (and maybe Michelle Branch in 2001) has been consistent for four years, so that Cheyenne Kimball's (admittedly shitty) single could somehow be the symbolic "death" of a "movement" [EDIT: I'm deviating from the quoted text here, he doesn't actually use the word "movement," but you could probably replace with "genre" where applicable. No need to be unfair...] (and that this "movement" is synonymous with "teenpop"). Kelly Clarkson is probably the key artist in the above list, along with Ashlee's first album, and the impact of it wasn't felt until late 2004 (at the earliest) or 2005. And if that's the case, any "movement" probably starts there, with Avril being more of a popular progenitor (but not founder). In fact, Cheyenne is pretty much the only artist doing the confessional bit at a high level of exposure that unequivocally fails at it (the current list includes Marion Raven, Pink, the Veronicas, Aly and AJ, and Lillix, among others...seems like a pretty strong movement to me). The reason for that isn't that this particular "wave" is finally "dying" and something must take its place in order for teenpop to survive (it isn't a genre, anyway, so how can it really die? It can maybe mutate in such a way that we won't call it that any more, but teenpop isn't dead until, for instance, Disney's dead, which will happen never...more likely there will be MORE teenpop as other media institutions catch on to -- and figure out how to tap into -- what Disney has done to isolate and mobilize child culture in the last five years, continuing what it's been doing for ten years, maybe twenty, maybe forever).

I think the reason her album fails is that Cheyenne Kimball is perhaps the first popular teenpop artist to directly capitalize on the sort of bullshit "authenticity" claim that seems to have crippled Ashlee's pop career for the time being. "Look, finally, here's one that can play a guitar! And she can sing! And she can write songs!"

Yeah, except she's working with the same people as everyone else and she has nothing to offer them or the rest of the known universe -- except, of course, for her "authenticity," which has never been a viable route for teenpop artists in and of itself. This isn't an elitist culture and the fanz don't particularly give a shit who does what and how "legitimately" they do what they do. That's in part what makes teenpop versatile, possibly indestructible. Which isn't to say that Kelly/Ashlee-style angst-rock will always be in style, but, again, teenpop can't die -- as a term of classification it can be fought over, but structurally, there's not much that can be done to undermine, say, TRL or Radio Disney and the artists who succeed there, who will always be teenpop, because that's where teenpop lives. In fact, they're all getting stronger. Aly and AJ are crossing over to TRL audiences and Billboard, and High School Musical's sales figures are a reminder of the Disney kids' solidarity.

But the important point here is that these Disney artists, or any others encompassed in teenpop, don't set unreasonable terms of acceptance. Aly and AJ play their own instruments and write their own songs, too, but they've never been actively set or marketed in opposition to artists who don't. Cheyenne, in how she's been marketed, seemingly in how she's been conceived as an artist, is the anti-Ashlee. She has the anti-Ashlee MTV reality show (er, unseen by me, gulp, no leg to stand on, oh well) that demonstrates how competent she is. She has the "one original thing," even if it isn't original -- she really means she wants one authentic thing. Which means precisely zero to teenpop's audience...it goes against the entire development of all music in the category since Britney (or since the Spice Girls, since Hanson). The fact that much of it was (and is) already "acceptable" even by the anti-Ashlee standards of a "real artist" (including Ashlee, who DID co-write her songs, and can play her own instrument -- her voice) has nothing to do with whether or not it was ever actually accepted.

So Cheyenne seems to be a perplexing outlier, an egregious miscalculation, an experiment in selling "justifiable" teenpop whose dullness can be attributed, simply, to a bunch of bad ideas. There is no inherent value in a precocious young gal who knows her way around a guitar and a sheet of paper being a star if what she plays and (co-)writes isn't any good. More often, the ones who got it don't flaunt it.

I say this song blurb is useful because it's evidence that teenpop, slowly but surely, is becoming an increasingly viable fightin' word -- which is awesome, because it's some of the only music worth fighting over right now (qualified: that I want to fight over right now). Acknowledgement of it dates back to its origin as a term, but only a few writers have been able to defend it, to respect it enough to call it very much alive in the first place in order to pronounce it dead (which assumes that it was once very much alive, meaning someone's gotta think it is still). So, honestly, thank you for declaring teenpop dead. Because now I can say NYAH NYAH! NO IT ISN'T! And we can go from there.

PS - artists to watch for to reinvent teenpop:

Shemo: Meg and Dia, Flyleaf, Paramore, ~30% of Myspace

Neo-boyband: Jonas Brothers

I'm-not-dead-angst-rock: Ashlee 3.0 (hopefully...), Pink, Veronicas, Aly and AJ, Lillix, Kelly Clarkson, ~30% of Myspace

PG R&B: [insert Radio Disney incubator artist], Jojo, ~30% of Myspace

Dufftwang: Miley Cyrus, Kristy Frank

Duff 2.0: Ashley Tisdale, Vanessa Anne-Hudgens

Pink Bulldozer Crew (assorted): Skye (most definitely NOT a "non-starter"! Kinda hasty, considering her new major label Max Martin-single-havin' new album hasn't come out yet!), Fefe Dobson, Brie Larson, Katie Neil, Colette Trudeau, ~10% of Myspace

Whomever Max Martin works with next: see description. This includes Skye (I think...when's she officially gonna let that one out of the bag??)

And on and on and on and on...