Hair n' Thingz

1. New column on hair ran today.

2. Thanks so much to Freaky Trigger to linking here from their pop section!!!

3. Yay country column! Tag-teamin' it...haha, they actually talk about REAL MUSICAL RELEASES. Crazy talk.

4. Not much else to say today, unfortunately. But I would like to elaborate on a gripe I posted about on the teenpop thread about a few stories on the Ashlee/Robert Smith collab rumor. (I was cranky so I won't follow it up there, though there are a few interesting resulting convos startin' up maybe I'll join.)

I don't really think that everyone in the universe reads the teenpop thread, but it's really strange to see a site like P4k qualify a swipe at "La La" with the opinion that Ashlee has more talent than she's often given credit for. (I maintain these are incompatible positions.)

I do think this comes from the influence of the teenpop thread -- not necessarily the thread itself, but probably the criticism resulting from it, in conversation with it. Not to say that someone couldn't think Ashlee is given too much shit just by listening to her and forming their own opinion, but that they couldn't possibly think this and then still think it's "disheartening" to hear she's working with Robert Smith. It's impossible.

I noticed in the Meg & Dia review I mentioned (which I really shouldn't even be acknowledging, but it does go to sorta back up a point here) that the writer, for all his p3do suggestions, has likely read my twin-pop column (since he refers to "twin-poppers," a phrase I'm pretty sure isn't in very wide use and calls Aly and AJ "not twins but close enough," which is exactly what I said about them) and, maybe unconsciously, referenced it.

So I guess what I'm irked at is that anything -- ANYTHING -- can be absorbed into smug-shit "neutral" journalistic but IN YR FACE style that dominates most music writing. Which means Ashlee can be painted as a pariah and martyr in the same sentence. It's like throwing shit at her and then diving in front of her to heroically catch some of the ricochet. (In this particular case, I suspect the "actually really talented!" stuff comes directly from Kogan via Paste or Voice.)

Good thing is that teenpop thread and its contributors and its soulmates and its progenitors and its lurkers are having ripples. Bad thing is that it's RIPPLING THROUGH A BUNCHA CRAP. But attracting a few people at a time to the general convo is probably more realistic than trying to undo smug-shit neutral milk journalism etc. all at once.