'08 Heartbreak

I want to float the idea that '08 in some ways was a, not "the" by any means, year confessional broke, but I'm not sure how well I can actually support my argument. So consider yerself MUSED.

Anyway, there was a lot of low-level pleasure happening this year; arguably more albums I enjoyed than last year or the year before, but definitely fewer albums I wanted to take to the grave. I'm not even sure my tentative #1, Erykah Badu, qualifies for grave-taking.

But one thing that seems to jump out when I think over some of my favorites is the total ingrainedness of the confessional impulse -- reductively, the idea that (your) life is a mess but you try to do your best. (Except usually that isn't good enough.) I'm finding it in the expected places, a Demi Lovato song here and a Jonas Brothers ballad there, but it seems also to have crossed into hip-hop and R&B in somewhat subtler ways.

Ne-Yo and Kanye both have what basically amount to confessional jamz albums -- Kanye's more obviously, Ne-Yo's more...confessionally, I guess. Ne-Yo's brand of confessionalism is closer to what happened to teenpop over the course of the decade; a kind of creeping in of self-doubt and in some cases self-pity that sounds, if not like an afterthought, at least like something that doesn't deserve the kind of spotlight that someone like Avril would stick on it.

Jazmine Sullivan's album connects as attempted empathy, so says Tom Ewing, and the most meta example -- "Fear" -- is also weirdly confessional, in that the universalism of the song's message sounds strikingly, maybe suspiciously, unique to Jazmine. Surely all of the fears she mentions are common ones (every artist worries about his/her album flopping, plenty of people are afraid of sex because they're afraid to touch) but when you stick 'em all together, you get a strangely specific picture of fear. You get an Amy Diamond-esque mixing of cliches in a certain specific string that sets up a foundation that other "universal" songs don't have (a bit like my point in a previous post about the differences between Amy Diamond's strings of cliches and Hannah Montana's).

Lil' Mama and Karina Pasian follow Keke Palmer's own foray into ghetto lament with "L.I.F.E." and "Sixteen at War," respectively, along with about half of a surprisingly heavy Lil' Mama album, wiped clean (after track three) of any evidence of lip gloss. Karina's has some of Tiffany Evans's confessionalish setting of terms for romance in "Baby, Baby," and there may or may not be more confessional happening in some of the ballads, but frankly I haven't listened enough to remember.

Christian pop is pretty hit or miss with the sound of other people's (notably Kelly Clarkson) confessions, but Krystal Meyers has one song, "Beautiful Tonight," that actually reaches the kind of conflict between sin and pleasure that Aly and AJ have dealt with more consistently -- no idea what it is Krystal did that night, but it must have been a doozy. Very interesting that there isn't really the obligatory escape hatch of redemption, although it's implied -- "does that make me beautiful tonight?" is asked with a nice dose of acid under the tongue, blanketed in druggy minor-key synthpop backing.

And my unexpected confessional track of the year takes me way back to Demento Confessional, like Nancy Tucker's literal confessional classic "Everything Reminds Me of My Therapist": Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse (of "Connecticut's for Fucking" semi-fame) lounging through "I Miss Your Arm," in which the singer lists parts of her ex she still loves. It's precious, sure, but there's something weirdly affecting about it, too. I'm a sucker for oh-so-clever songs that unexpectedly display genuineness -- the former can be enough (Tom Lehrer -- though he gets me sometimes, too: "sliding down the razor blade of life"), the latter is a hallmark of confessional, but the combination is really something special (and rare), I think.

Anyway, I'm putting together an '08 Heartbreak mix after I do a little more of the ol' yearly ketchup.

Jesus H. Christ - I Miss Your Arm