We started discussing this PopMatters article over at Poptimists, about a subgenre/sensibility/demographic called "teenipop," which according to the article is basically the tween-geared (and explicitly sexualized) version of boybands that appeared in niche outlets like Radio Disney after the Backstreet Boom. The key example is Dream Street, and this is extended to subsequent girl groups like Play, P.Y.T., etc., all of whom prefigure (and, apparently -- by being so explicit about appealing to young sexuality, enough to change programming at Radio Disney -- even create an environment for) the current in-house Disney crop, including Hannah Montana and the Jonas Bros.
I was a little bit off-base in my original comments at Poptimists and PopMatters; I'm not giving the author, Hayley Lerner, enough credit for delving into an aspect of teenpop that she's rightfully pointing out as strange, even within the general strangeness of the post-Spice Girl teenpop renaissance in the late 90's: a sort of "missing link" between (to use my usual gauge, for no particular reason except I know it better) Radio Disney mk 1 (the "freeform" programming described by Metal Mike Saunders in the Village Voice) and mk 2 (the Disney-produced and Disney-distributed in-house network, with little significant outside competition that I outlined in my update-of-sorts to that in 2005/6).
Interesting that here, "teenipoppers" are actually distinguished from the regular Radio Disney audience ("more families and younger kids") that I was conflating in my original comments. To that end, I do think that novelty is probably a more appropriate lens through which to look at almost all of the Radio Disney favorites of this period, but in the context of this "other audience," which presumably had significant overlap with Radio Disney, but also had its own network of magazine and fansite interaction helping Dream Streets unexpectedly [to me] huge sales.
I'll re-post the convo so far here, but worth noting that I think an article dealing specifically with those firsthand accounts through interview will be more revealing than most of the figures cited in the article -- this is my beef with their ideas, though, not the use of "expert testimony" in general. I think the important point here, contrary to my first impulse, is that it potentially explores, in a more honest and thorough way than the vast (vast vast) majority of thinkpieces on this subject, the actual sexual relationships between target audiences and the artists themselves.
I'm guessing such analysis would be a lot more complicated with some of the in-house Disney favorites -- Aly and AJ have a song about sex and sexual desire ("Blush") that I'm sure a lot of people in their target audience sympathize with, but it's not as clear what the sexual relationship to the artists themselves is, in a general sense, (1) because the majority of Aly and AJ's audience is female and (2) the intentions of their messages, when they're even that obvious, aren't particularly or overtly sexualized (in fact bring a lot of the confessional impulse even to pretty straightforward love songs, like "Like Whoa").
---------
Anyway, here's the exchange from yesterday:
HAYLEY: I enjoyed your well thought-out comment! I don't have the time to fully respond now, but I will say that all of the girl groups you listed came out after Dream Street, most notably Play (whose debut album featured a duet with Chris Trousdale after the Dream Street breakup) and No Secrets, whose album came out, as I recall, in late 2001 or early 2002 -- I know that I had already had the Dream Street album for several months before No Secrets' album was released.
Also, in interviews with the former creators of Dream Street and the former members, they talk openly about how purposefully sexual their songs and performances were. RadioDisney has rules now that were actually implemented after what they viewed was sexually inappropriate behavior by Dream Street, Play, and Aaron Carter that are a partial cause for the intentional sexlessness of The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana (not so much Miley Cyrus), etc.
Also, there is no actual teenipop today -- there is a bubblegum pop variant promoted primarily by Disney, but teenipop itself was staunchly in existence musically from 1999 to early 2004, the last real teenipop artist being Stevie Brock, pre-voice change.
Speaking from the perspective of a boy band researcher, the fandom of Dream Street much more clearly mirrors the current Jonas Brothers fandom than that of *NSync, The Backstreet Boys, etc. because it is the ages of the artists, not the musical content, that seems to be affecting fan response. Until the Jonas Brothers have hit their zenith and decline or end, there won't be a significant base to research the mirrors of Dream Street versus other boy bands versus other age-related groups.
The former members of Dream Street actually continue to have an interesting relationship with the Dream Street fandom, which interestingly still considers itself the "Dream Street" fandom rather than the fandoms of any particular boy, despite the band having broken up in 2002. It was just an interesting thing that I discovered in the 500 interviews that I did to write the piece.
It's also interesting to see what the perceptions of someone outside of the teenipop culture sees when looking at it -- especially the automatic assumption of Disney involvement, when almost no teenipop artist was actually backed- or promoted by Disney at all. Interesting also to me was the view of endurance on the playlists being a basis of outside judgment on the endurance of a group in general, rather than judging by magazine coverage, fan response, etc.
I appreciate your comments, though, like I said; as a student, I appreciated your different point of view regarding my area of research.
HAYLEY AGAIN: Also, as far as I have heard from the former No Secrets girls, their album didn't even certify gold. If it has, at least, none of the girls have been informed! On the other hand, both Dream Street and Play were certified platinum, as well as, of course, Aaron Carter.
ME: Yeah, I just had to get a word in edgewise ;)
All good points, and I realized I'd messed up the timelines (esp. with Play) after I posted the comment. And most glaring omission on my part was the A*Teens, who were also certified platinum (I had no idea Play were though...or that No Secrets didn't make gold! I was about 16 when this stuff came out, so I was pretty much ignoring it...hindsight has a way of distorting popularity & stuff).
Yeah, I only judge "endurance" based on Radio Disney performance, since I think it kind of gets a section of the demographic that isn't really into the fansites and magazines. Though of course I haven't done a heckuva lot of research myself. Disney backing of the teen groups didn't start till 2003 with Hilary Duff (aside from a few aborted experiments thru Hollywood Recs) so when I reference them I'm usually just talking about airplay and a built-in fanbase or cross-promotion thru Disney comps and Disney Channel airing.
Funny, I'd actually work backwards from the Jonas Bros, since I still see them as a (near-)fluke -- orig. on Columbia, found 0 audience, and got picked up naturally by Disney, who had been supporting Nick Jonas solo (featured on the Aquamarine OST) and the Jonas Bros in the "incubator" feature....
...Point being, I guess, that Jonas Bros themselves have a kind of weird path, which is how I also view Dream Street -- in hindsight I think that tween-focused boy/girlgroup boom in the early 00's makes a lot more sense, but that it's actually a kind of...uh, "accidental evolution" (to nick a phrase from Chuck Eddy). But anyway, your points about my errors in the timeline and sales are nuthin' to sneeze at...
Hmmmmm. I guess the general point I'm floating is that there's nothing very "logical" or even intuitive about the teenpop boom, and that it's a very strange little niche to explore, less strange with more recent successes. But I do think that the sexual aspects are more ambiguous. Out of curiosity, what was your experience as a fansite creator with other fans of Dream Street?
ME AGAIN: Actually you're kind of saying some of what I am with the "no teenipop" comment above (re: my "working backwards" comment...) though I think there's a pretty strong younger teen market -- maybe stronger than in the early 00's. But the distribution for it is a weird patchwork outside of Disney itself, so you get stuff like Girl Authority and Clique Girlz and...about a billion nonstarters, whereas there seemed to be a more manageable number c. Dream Street.
HAYLEY: That's an interesting note -- the number of nonstarters. When I said there is currently "no teenipop," I was speaking purely in genre-specific terms of the music -- even these nonstarters are not performing music that would conform to the standards of teenipop proper; they are indeed bubblegum pop, and I look forward to seeing the coinage used for it, but the content of the songs is different than that of teenipop songs. The closest act currently to making teenipop music that I have found is Savvy & Mandy (a nonstarter recently getting airplay on RadioDisney).
I'm not sure that I can agree that the younger market can be stronger or weaker in any specific generation since the introduction of child-based advertisement as it stands in the 1980s, particularly because I'm not an economist, but I will say that I think that the wave of young artists that became popular c. Dream Street is part of what lured more money into the marketing of younger performers today. Miley Cyrus, for example, is stalked by paparazzi; however, Hilary Duff, during Lizzie McGuire, was not, even though Lizzie and Hannah have comparable viewing audience numbers and cater to the exact same demographic. There is more societal attention towards young artists now, but I'm not sure that is a reflection of its actual audience taking more interest. Again, I'm not an economist, and there hasn't been sufficient prior research for me to follow up on that idea, but it seems to me that much of the public attention paid to younger artists today is by adults -- not the demographics under 18.
And, ahh, my experience with other fans of Dream Street -- I actually still speak with the boys, and they still see hundreds of comments a week from girls who honestly don't realize that they have aged or that they are not just objects of lust.
When I ran my fansite, I got vastly, vastly more comments about the sexual desirability of the boys than I did about their music, accomplishments, etc. and the comments that I've gotten from former Dream Street fans on this article tend to be along the lines of "That is so true, Dream Street really did start my sexuality!" Of the 500 interviews that I did, 475 of which were with former fans, 382 mentioned specific incidents of sexual acts, enlightenments, or realizations. That alone inspired me to look towards the movement as a form of sexualization rather than strictly as an ideological music genre.
ME: 500 interviews! Is this part of a bigger project? I feel like this observational/investigation focus adds a lot of strength to the discussion of sexuality, actually -- more so than some of the "experts."
This is exactly the kind of stuff I'd love to see more of in talking about a lot of the tween-boom music -- I guess my own reservations to pointing to the more controversial issues that come up with this stuff have to do with really wanting to provide a corrective to what I see as a poisonous conception of sex and sexuality re: most teenpop (and here I'm usually concerned with artists who are NOT in your "teenipop" range -- artists like Ashlee Simpson and the Axis of Shevil, Paris/Lindsay/Britney, who get trapped in expectations of a hypothetical younger audience without being tweens themselves -- sort of extraordinary cases that point to, I think, a greater cultural problem at large).
So I'll admit to being a bit defensive, and you're probably on a productive track -- frankly I'd love to see a long "study" discussed in personal terms as an "insider," though I imagine that'd be hard to pitch. And ultimately I bet our perspectives differ somewhat, since a lot of what I do here is carve out a makeshift canon in the hopes of starting a good convo about it (which is why I usually view the mags and sites and gossip stuff as context rather than source).
Wouldn't discount the teenipop proper, though -- check the Bratz movie soundtrack for a couple of examples. And you might also want to consider that hip-hop/R&B is having a pretty much unparalleled young people/novelty kick lately with Webstar and Lil' Mama and Soulja Boy (all 16 when they got big, I think), and Tiffany Evans (not sure) and Keke Palmer (13 -- really one whose music is worth checking out in depth). Again, not quite the strain you're talking about.
I think the gossip/tabloid intensification is a culture-wide thing -- Miley Cyrus and Hilary Duff were being tareted by paparazzi and around the same time, Hilary (as far as I can tell) only significantly (musical timeline speaking) around or after her greatest hits alb came out and before her most recent one, and Miley only as her career really took off in the past year. There certainly wasn't a whole lot of stalking going on at the very start of the show, but it also didn't take very long for a "scandal" to emerge. (And most of the High School Musical stars have remained relatively untouchable, even Ashley Tisdale, aside from the nose job, and maybe more surprisingly Vanessa Hudgens, who hasn't been a huge target even after her own scandal died down.)
OK, enough from the armchair -- I think I'll probably re-post all this stuff in its own post.
------------
For a different take -- uh, mine (duh) -- you can see the (equally audience-ambiguous, but less identifiable in terms of a clear fan base) discussion of sexual issues in non-"teenipop" teenpop in the FUCK section of the Bluffer's Guide to Teenpop I did for Stylus last year.
No comments:
Post a Comment