Drunk in Love

in which we discuss Beyonce, Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus and Gloria Leonard.

So, I didn't watch the Grammy Awards. I don't really give a shit about them. It's yet another entertainment industry self-aggrandizing, mutual masturbatory, solipsistic bit of industry insiderness, and I really could give half a hairy fuck.

(and in another post, I'm gonna tell you how I REALLY feel about the Grammys. Maybe next year)

But then the New York Times reported on what they say is a "lively debate" on Facebook and twitter (ok, so I don't give half a hairy shit about Facebook either) regarding the Beyonce and Jay-Z performance during the Grammys. (granted, as my husband pointed out, it has an excellent shout out to mimic octopuses)

Ok.

1. It grosses me out that the NYT is reporting on things being said on social media, especially regarding entertainment. Egyptian protests - yes, I get it. The Grammys? FUCK YOU, NYT.
2. I grossed myself out, first by reading the article, and then by immediately going to YouTube to watch the performance. So here it is:

now you can hate me too.

This was sexy? And intimate? Did I watch an entirely different performance? Jay-Z and Beyonce have what must be the best choreographed marriage in history. And you can take that however you want.

One of the Facebookers was quoted as writing: “No good reason for a married mother to be on a chair with her legs gaped open for the whole world to see.”

Which brings me to my point:

Why shouldn't Beyonce act like a stripper if she damn well feels like it? For that matter, why shouldn't Miley Cyrus, former child star or not?

It's along the lines of what the porn star Gloria Leonard said: “...the whole point of the women’s movement is for women to choose whatever they want to do. Why should my choice be considered any less or more valid than your choice?”

Yeah, I fully support the choices of Beyonce, Miley, Rhianna, and whichever other women out there choose to act like strippers, sluts, or whatever other sexually charged image they wish to portray to the general public.

But that begs the question of whether or not these female stars are actually choosing these particular images, or if they're being chosen for them.

I'm not trying to denigrate their power as self-actualized human beings to choose, based on their gender. But I wonder how much the music business actually allows them to express themselves as they wish to be expressed, and how much of this sexuality (and/or controversy) is manufactured in order to generate record/iTunes sales.

Especially after having read numerous biographies and interviews with male musicians bitching mightily about the music industry not allowing them to fully express their creative personas, as music executives want to continue along the lines of what sells. If this is happening to men in the music business, what is happening to the (historically marginalized) women in the biz?

Comparing Beyonce's expressions of sexuality to Miley's may be like comparing cognac to kool-aid, given that Beyonce is one of the richest, most powerful women on the planet, (or so we're told), and Miley is just testing out her wings, but how much is Beyonce also playing into the market place and how much of this is actually her?

Just sayin'.*

*apostrophe courtesy of my husband.

Lastly, the lyrics of Drunk in Love. Really? Surfboard? I mean, I'm all about dumbass lyrics. I'll admit that Robin Thicke's "what rhymes with hug me?" cracks me up EVERY TIME. But the surfboard/riding on that wood thing? UGH.

soft, safe & sanitized?

in which I have a good "these kids today" moment.

So, you may have heard, the Superbowl happened.

Apparently.

Honestly, I wouldn't have known that it had happened, except that it took place across the river from my city, and the meatheads wearing football jerseys who were in town for it made my commute hell for three days.

(and NYC is making their commute back home a living hell today, in kind repayment. Heh. Snow rocks sometimes)

This morning, after reading through the news, out of morbid curiosity, I clicked on the New York Times review of Bruno Mars halftime show. (also, I like Bruno Mars)

Photo from the New York Times

The review called him "harmless." It pointed out that the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who also played a set at the show) had lost their teeth (so to speak). I'm not sure I can disagree with either of those two statements, so amazingly enough, I'm not arguing with this review. For once.

But the last paragraph... dude. It basically called Mars out as the kind of ultimate American, "reinforcing the idea of the Super Bowl as an indomitable American institution."

Which, for a guy who once said that he had issues before he made it big because of his race, who comes from a Puerto Rican-Jewish-Filipino background...

It made my little American heart smile. Times have changed. And that makes me damn happy.

sex, subtle and not so subtle.

all at the same time, too. 

U2: If You Wear That Velvet Dress (1997)

Jessie Ware: Devotion (2012)

Listening to Devotion lead to the other. All part of this evening's playlist.

Fancy.

I wuz rong.

In which I eat crow. Or something. 

So, back on September 30th, I wrote that I would end up hating myself for buying part two of Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience the following day.

Here are the things I was wrong about (and for a short post, it's impressive that I was wrong about pretty much everything:

1. I didn't buy the album the next day. (I waited until it went on deep sale at Amazon, and THEN bought it)
2. I didn't hate the album (in fact, I really like it).
3. My soul is not actually redeemable. (I was joking about that anyway. I already knew this)

I like Part II. Some of this may be due to the fact that Part I sucked so hard that I had much lower expectations. But honestly, I feel like Timbaland (and Timberlake) brought it on Part II. There is even a song (Drink You Away) that I am planning on learning to play on the guitar.

Not much else to say about it. It's a good album. Yay. I still can't forgive Part I.

On the list of other things I've been wrong about recently, I've gotta say that Miley Cyrus tops the list.

It might be easier to list the things I was not wrong about:

1. Her album cover sucks.
2. The video for Wrecking Ball is still ridiculous. Licking sledgehammers. Simulating sex on/with a wrecking ball. As my favorite fridge magnet says, "Jesus would slap the shit out of you."

Yeah. This album is surprisingly good and, believe it or not, listenable. Miley has considerable singing talent. The songs are creative, and, dare I say it, push the envelope of what a good pop song is. I even like the song Wrecking Ball. It's just that the video was so godawful it totally colored my perception of the song. (this happens rather frequently to me. I should probably write a post about that too). 

Additionally, I really enjoy how she and/or her producer, let her country side show quite a bit on a few of the songs. I mean, with a different backing track, some of these tracks could have come straight out of Nashville.

Anyhoo. Twerking, obnoxious public persona, masturbating with foam fingers and licking inanimate objects aside, I like this album. I like it a lot. And I am absofruitly NOT the target audience for it whatsoever.

Go figure.

The Best of the Worst

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:

1. 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. 
2. Salon.com: The 17 most jaw-droppingly terrible lyrics of 2013 which 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?
3. Faster Louder - The 50 Worst Things in Music This Year John Mayer's album cover. Absolutely Everything About Pitbull. #Hastagsongtitles.
4. 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.

And, my personal favorite from Faster Louder - Haters Gonna Hate: A Guide to Hating End-of-Year  Lists dude. totally should have read this BEFORE writing my post yesterday. heh.

The Worst Top 10 Lists of 2013

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.

So, a quick comparison:

Top selling albums of 2013 (that came out in 2013, according to VH1):

1. Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience, Part I
2. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP 2
3. Luke Bryan - Crash My Party

Top Rated Albums of 2013 (my completely unscientific compilation from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, Spin, Billboard, and other publications):

1. Kanye West - Yeezus
2. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
3. 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).

It's so fluffy! I'm going to die! (of boredom)

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." 

Photo via Perez Hilton

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?