in which schadenfreude comes to the forefront of this blog for a minute.
After my completely hypocritical lambasting of best-of-the-year lists yesterday (while reading them, and then listening to all of the music on them, because, as I mentioned, I'm a sucker), I realized that I forgot to mention my TRUE favorite, which are the worst-of-the-year lists.
Here are the best of the worst-of-lists from this year:
Entertainment Weekly - The Five Worst Singles of 2013 The song Chinese Food. Really. Need they say more? Oh yeah, of course, there's also Accidental Racist (which was unintentionally racist, and completely demoralizing), and the truly execrable I Hit it First, Ray-J's ode to Kim Kardashian. Their sex tape made her famous. Him, not so much.
Salon.com: The 17 most jaw-droppingly terrible lyrics of 2013which had gems such as this:“Cause I understand you/We see eye-to-eye/Like a double rainbow in the sky/And wherever you go, so will I/Cause a double rainbow is hard to find.” — Katy Perry, “Double Rainbow” Is Katy Perry aware that rainbows don’t have eyes?
Idolator - The 10 Worst Album Covers of the Year If you were confused as to why Bangerz looks like something from the Miami Vice era. The crappy paintings that Drake and Jason Derulo used on their respective covers... ugh.
In which I bitch, once again, about music criticism.
It is that time of year (ok, well, really this started in November, and I've been tortured by it for nearly two months now) in which magazines and websites love to publish their top 10 lists for no apparent reason other than (possibly) ass kissery, impressing us with their obscure music knowledge, and slutty editorial practices.
And, like a sucker, I read them. And then get pissed off. And then rail against them. And then spend hours talking about how much I absolutely can't stand Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and Yeezus. (well, that's this year anyway).
All these music critics must have much better taste than me. And all the other people I know. Because I really can't find anyone who actually likes any of the aforementioned artists/albums.
It just seems like popular opinion and those of music critics are wildly divergent, and honestly, despite the fact that "the masses" made songs like Macarena popular, I tend to land much more on the side of mainstream music.
Yes, I listen to plenty of non-mainstream stuff, and no, I'm not automatically opposed to anything that hipsters are into. I frequently get accused of being a hipster (probably am, but shh...)
However, for the most part, the songs that are going to be remembered, that make the biggest impact on us as a culture, and that fundamentally add to our day-to-day existences collectively, are the ones that get the biggest airplay. And if songs don't fit in with the zeitgeist of the moment, they're not going anywhere, no matter how much a record label pushes. And some, like Macklemore's Thrift Shop or Same Love, explode despite the lack of big budget music label support.
Top Rated Albums of 2013 (my completely unscientific compilation from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, Spin, Billboard, and other publications):
Kanye West - Yeezus
Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
Arcade Fire - Reflektor
Hmm. Not much overlap. One of the few albums that actually on both top critics lists and top sales was Drake's Nothing Was the Same.(Which, of course I haven't listened to yet. I'll get around to it eventually, when I'm in the mood.)
I feel like arts criticism and popular opinion are on fairly parallel tracks (or at least have gotten closer) for movies and television. (My husband completely disagrees. I'm sure this will show up in his comment. And yeah, I may be talking out of my ass here, as I pretty much only read movie reviews in the NYT or Entertainment Weekly).
With books, readers generally know where to go to read reviews of books that they'd be interested in. I mean, your average romance/horror/sci-fi reader is not going to be perusing the NYT Review of Books or the New Yorker, and readers of "serious literature" are not going to be poking around in The Romantic Times, Oprah's book club or Entertainment Weekly.
So, as usual, I conducted an orgy of music listening after reading the lists, catching up with things that I may have missed or overlooked over the course of the past few months. Many of the albums on the lists were boring, unlistenable, or one-note.
On the positive side of the best-of lists, I discovered that I actually LIKE Haim's album Days are Gone, which was surprising. Everything that I've read about it made it seem like exactly the type of music that I'd hate. Here's a recent big hit of theirs:
I re-listened to Yeezus, thinking I'd missed something the first time around. It still sucked. And I have been a huge champion and defender of Kanye for quite a while. While I firmly believe that every album of his up until now has advanced the art form (of music/hip-hop/whatever, take your pick), this one is just... bad. Not good bad. Bad bad. Case in point, the most unintentionally hilarious video of the year:
Hell, I even listened to Miley Cyrus' Bangerz, and discovered that it's not bad (more on that in another post).
In which I try to figure out exactly which part of Katy Perry the movie "Part of Me" portrays.
Confession time: Sometimes when I'm alone at night with my craft beer and my knitting and my 30 cats (ok so there are only two, but one of them is the pain in the ass equivalent of 30), I'll get extra fluffy and watch something. It would be so much cooler if I said it was something sexy, but usually it's something that Mr. Deviant doesn't give a shit about.
I figured the Katy Perry movie was a pretty safe bet, as Mr. Deviant is a male of the heterosexual variety.
And, safe it was.
After watching it, I felt... nothing?
Ok, look, I'm a sarcastic, cynical bitch (if you hadn't already figured that out), and while I usually heckle tv and movies, especially the ones I like, I couldn't bat aside my ennui enough to actually find anything to snark on while watching this thing.
The overarching blandness of the film... it just didn't touch me one way or the other. Katy Perry seemed nice. Her tour seemed nice. Her breakup with Russell Brand seemed absolutely bloodless. Her sister, brother and parents seemed nice.
No, I'm not fooling myself into thinking that this movie, commissioned by the evil empire that controls Katy Perry's career, is at all the truth. I think that maybe bits and pieces of the truth may have been inadvertently left in the movie here and there, where nobody noticed it.
On the whole, this was one of the most banal things I've ever sat all the way through. I couldn't even get inspired enough to turn the fucking thing off.
Shit, at least Shine a Light disgusted me enough to walk out. And that was some lame ass starfuckery.
It was a weird experience. I usually have strong feelings about (all the) things one way or another, and you'd think that bright colors and glitter would have been enough to elicit at least SOME reaction out of me.
I actually like Katy Perry's music. I didn't really care about I Kissed a Girl, but Teenage Dream and Prism, I've purchased, and regularly listen to a few tracks from both albums.
The fluff, the tight song-writing, and (admitting it) the bright colors and glitter appeal to me. I enjoy the good girl-gone-wacky n' wild vibe that she puts out. And it cracks me the fuck up that she calls her cat/mascot "Kitty Purry."
So why didn't this silly movie connect with me? Have I actually reached the age where I refuse to look for meaning in the completely vapid? Is it just too fluffy? Is there such a thing?
in which i discuss my incredibly mixed feelings about R. Kelly.
So, R. Kelly's first solo album, 12-Play, came out in my senior year of high school, and our school's administration desperately tried to keep "Bump N' Grind" off of every school dance's playlist ever after. (they failed). They also unsuccessfully prevented us from doing the "Tootsee Roll" at school dances (that, kids, was 1994's version of twerking. It can also be seen in the Bump N' Grind video below).
After that, there were what I deem "the blackout years," in which I was too busy doing other things (sex, drugs, & rock'n'roll) to actually pay attention to popular culture, so I missed pretty much everything from 1995 to 2000 (ish). There were a lot of drugs.
Which means that I completely missed "I Believe I Can Fly." Thankfully. However, my daughter's day care had the kids sing the song at one of their "graduations" (seriously. as it was put in The Incredibles it's a celebration of mediocrity). My child, at 3, mangled the lyrics into "I be like a fly." which cracked me the hell up. Also couldn't pass up the irony of a group of children singing a song by a suspected child molster, but nobody else at the daycare saw it. Le Sigh.
I didn't really catch back up with R. Kelly until the Chocolate Factory era, at which point, he'd become a caricature of himself. I didn't quite take him seriously, but there were so many good songs on the album, that I was caught.
That made it a little difficult for me to actually, you know, purchase one of his albums. It's one of the few times that an artist's personal life has actually impacted my desire to own their music (Chris Brown being another notable case). And it's a tough place to be in as a music lover, and a huge R&B fan. If I buy the music, am I supporting that type of behavior? Am I really putting money into the pocket of that guy?
Here's the thing. His songs are good. Some of his songs are transcendentally brilliant. Some of his work is such unbelievable crap that it comes all the way back around to awesome again (Trapped in the Closet, I'm looking straight at you). It's tough to ignore these amazingly beautiful songs. The man has talent, even if he is a child molesting ego maniac. (I'm not saying that he is, just if he is. Don't sue).
Anyway, after Chocolate Factory and TP-2 & TP-3 (which really makes me wonder about some sort of Freudian obsession with anuses), I contented myself with purchasing the occasional song or two of his off iTunes (Amazon now, thank you), and working them into guilty pleasure mixes on my music listening devices. And quoting his lyrics constantly, because, well, they're hilarious.
But now... with this most recent album, Black Panties, and the, might I say, NUMEROUS references to cunnilingus, I feel that I must support R. Kelly in this endeavor. Although it would be even hotter if I could just listen to Benedict Cumberbatch do a dramatic reading of then full album.
I watched/listened to "Cookie" today. And it was... magic.
Is it funny? Should I take it seriously? Is he taking himself seriously? Is it feminist? Is it exploitative to women? Who cares, just as long as Kelly is referring to eating pussy like an Oreo, and continuously refers to himself as the "Cookie Monster." I'm liking this trend, Kells. Keep it up.
heh.
(though honestly, what woman is going to be turned on by scantily clad females shaking their asses all over the screen? Really.)
in which I go to lady gaga’s artrave, and then listen to the new album. really late. because I have things that make me busy. stupid things.
So I went to this little thing back in November called Artrave, which was basically Lady Gaga’s album release party. Here’s a photo:
My takeaway from the event: I’m really old. And jaded. Probably far too old to actually go to Artrave, but whatever. When I get offered the chance to go to a random Lady Gaga event, you’d best believe that I’ll go.
There were a lot of skinny white girls there who seemed to think it was necessary to be naked. I’m not complaining, mind you, I just find it odd. Is Lady Gaga’s music really that liberating? Is being naked the conventional person’s way of being “wild” these days? Are we as a society just lacking imagination? I felt like saying “yes, honey, you’re being super unconventional by taking off your clothing, just like the 315 other skinny white chicks with glitter on their faces who have also taken off their clothing at this event. Go you.” Also, I thought that taking off one's clothing in public was generally considered to be a sign of mental illness?
Lady Gaga was showing her performance art videos on six huge screens on the walls. Apparently Maria Abramovic had a hand in some of them. Performance art is not my bag, y’all. I’ve participated in enough performance art over the years (ok, all before I turned 22 and stopped taking drugs, but still) to know that it is mostly bullshit. It was fun bullshit, but man, I do NOT want to watch it any more.
Lady Gaga was naked in a lot of her performance art videos. Maybe that’s why so many of these girls were taking off their clothing.
I hate to tell y’all this, for fear of disappointing you, but underneath her clothing, Lady Gaga appears quite human. Not an alien or anything.
There were Jeff Koons pieces all over the place. They were shiny.
Lady Gaga performed some of her new songs. You can watch most of the performances on YouTube if you haven’t already.
There was an open bar.
Here’s one last picture:
So, onto the music:
For the first few hours of Artrave, DJ WhiteShadow, a producer that she worked extensively with on Artpop, performed (does DJing count as performing?). He was fine, if a bit repetitive in his beats. He tended to have very similar beats throughout each song, and tended to drop the beat at exactly the same point on each track.
Anyway, if you want to know what his set sounded like, listen to the song Aura (here’s a link to her performing it at Artrave), which honestly, sounded so much like the rest of Whiteshadow’s stuff, I didn’t even realize the performance had started.
So yeah, the album. I bought it. I’ve been living with it for the past month or so. Despite my complaints about the repetitiveness of WhiteShadow, I really like the song Aura, as I feel like that goes in a somewhat new direction for Gaga. Applause, Do What U Want, Applause and Gypsy are also fun tracks. The rest of them, honestly, I can live without.
On the whole, after a month of listening to Artpop, I’m kind of… tepid. Which sucks. I’m bummed. Maybe some of the other songs will grow on me, but for the most part… eh.
