Not herself at all.

Christina Aguilera's new single "Not Myself Tonight" is a prime example of an artist adapting to the market. Christina's been out of the music scene for a while; her last album came out in 2006. Her new album is scheduled for release this June.

I'm not really a fan of hers. I mean, girl can SING, but I don't really like her stuff. Even so, I'm a little appalled by her sudden shift in musical style. Back when she and Britney Spears were fresh out of the Mickey Mouse club, she made a move to be the grungier, wilder of the two so they wouldn't be competing for the same demographic. She kept singing stuff, though. Like actually singing stuff, not just speaking at a set pitch like Ke$ha and Britney do. Well now, I guess she's realized that little teeny boppers like the monotonous, repetitive, dance pop fluff stuff. And so she decided to cash in.

Compare "Candyman" from her album Back to Basics



with "Not Myself Tonight" from her new album Bionic

Being sucked deeper into "the system"!

So I can't find my laptop charger. I haven't had it for like two weeks now. This means I can't turn my computer on, and that means I can't charge my iPod. And that means I can't listen to my iPod when I'm in the car, and I don't have a working CD player in there, so I end up listening to the radio. I work as a delivery driver/pita roller for Pita Pit about 30 hours a week. I'd say I'm driving about half the time. So I've been listening to about 15 hours of radio a week.

I've never really been into radio music. Even when I was into the Backstreet Boys and Blink_182 (Yeah, I have diverse interests), which are both bands that got a lot of radio time, I usually chose to just buy the CDs and listen to them that way. Or on the computer through one of those post-Napster file sharing programs like Morpheus or Kazaa.

And you know, it's gets all boring driving for that long. So I need to listen to something. And so I'm limited to the radio. And I'm afraid.

I generally listen to DIVA 92.3 or B97. Eh, it wouldn't be that big of a deal if I just listened to WTUL, and I like the music on that station, but I just can't stand the DJs. They always sound so scared to speak.

So anyway, I'm afraid. Because I'm actually starting to like the ultrapop generic crap that these two stations play. Crap like Lady Antebellum and Lil Wayne. And Adam Lambert. And Taylor Swift. Like... stuff that is such awful shit that I've never been able to really sit through it patiently before. But now I sing along and jam out. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

Here are a few songs that I'm ashamed to admit I now know all the words to:

• Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
  
  "Need You Now" By Lady Antebellum. The anthem of codependent people worldwide. Get a tissue, finish that boxed wine, and find yourself a new boo. Don't whine about it through the guise of a #1 single. (But I can't help but sing along!)
  
  
• Whataya Want From Me - Adam La...
  
  "Whataya Want from Me?" by Adam Lambert. He's soooooo famous because he's soooooo different. Congratulations. And he can sing soooooo high. The lyrics are plain. I could have written that song at age nine. Actually I think I did. (But I've been practicing, and I can hit those high notes too! Eek!)
  
  
• 
  "Bedrock" by Young Money. Oh my force, this song disgusts me. When did "artists" start being so blatant about sexual lyrics? Take a tip from John Donne! His "Flea" is perfect in its subtlety, and isn't that what makes good poetry/lyrics? Subtleey and imagery and all that stuff. Stuff like "I'm attracted to her for her attractive ass" and "I think it's time to put this pussy on your sideburns" is just disconcerting. Is that all today's pop artists are capable of coming up with? (But holy shit do I jam out to this one.)
  

Ke$ha just wants to have fun.

A recent addition to the pop music scene, Ke$ha has undergone criticism ranging from her alleged advocation of underage drinking to her also alleged "ripping off" of Lady Gaga's image and musical style. I can't say I like her music. I mean it's fun to make fun of, but that's really all. I can say that anyone who takes her lyrics seriously probably doesn't know how to have a good time.

The criticisms dealing with her advocation of underage drinking stem from one like of lyrics from her single "Tik Tok": "Before I leave, [I] my teeth with a bottle of Jack." She's since said that people have asked her if she actually partakes in this disgusting evening ritual, to which she says she replies sarcastically something to the tune of, "Oh, of course, doesn't everybody?" The lyric is clearly representative of, perhaps even a criticism itself of, the modern young person's tendency to "clean up" their lives by ignoring their issues and just having fun.

As far as I'm concerned, Ke$ha deserves as much artistic respect as does any other musician who writes his or her own music. (That's really where I draw the line; if a professional musician doesn't write his or her own music I wouldn't really give them the title "artist." So people like Kelly Clarkson and NSYNC don't make the cut.) Her music is laced with lyrics ripe enough to analyze.

Her lyrics are strongly feminist, maybe even misandrist. She portrays men as objects for her own pleasure in response to decades of pop music degrading women and respecting them in direct proportion to their beauty or chest and butt sizes. "The dudes are lining up, 'cause they hear we got swagger, but we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger."

Some other controversy surrounding Ke$ha:

• She's criticized artists for lip-syncing at concerts. She said she'd rather be winded and genuine that on-key and artificial.


• A recording of her singing the lyrics "In ten years, Britney Spears... Britney who?" recently leaked and sparked some heat between the two pop divas. Ke$ha has since clarified that she was fifteen years old at the time of that recording and did not write the piece she was singing. She stated that she has "mad respect" for Spears.


• She called 16-year-old heartthrob Justin Bieber a "little baby" and said something about wanting to push him around in a stroller on stage? Whatever, I don't really care if he gets mad about that. I'm pretty much agreed with her on that one.

Lady Gaga (again)

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I read an article from Cosmopolitan. Okay, not almost; I'm incredibly embarrassed to admit that I read an article from Cosmopolitan. I couldn't help it, though! Lady Gaga was on the cover!

And isn't that pretty much how everybody reacts to the sight or mention of Gaga? Love her or hate her, she interests you. I don't even have much of an opinion of her one way or another; I could do without her music, but I don't mind singing and moving along to it when I hear it on the radio or in a club. But there's no doubt she interests me.

So I was in Barnes and Noble and my boyfriend Dennis wanted to check out the magazines. He usually reads GQ and (occasionally) Vogue. I don't read any magazines regularly, and I'm positive neither of us have ever considered opening up an issue of Cosmo, but when we saw Gaga on the cover of a magazine, it didn't matter to us which one it was; we were going to read that article.

The interview is all about getting to know her. And that must be a challenge. I feel like if I ever met Lady Gaga, I would still feel unsure that she was being genuine with me. She's just so wild and mysterious that I feel like she might not even have a personality. She's some alien robot zombie who controls every situation and has an evil diabolical plan to take over the world. And even if she did go evil and take over the world, everyone would thoroughly enjoy that because her beat-heavy ultrapopmusic would convince us that there is no better way to live than we would in Gagaworld. Right? Anyone else feel that way?

A man focus of the interview is Lady Gaga's addiction to the spotlight. “'My friends joke that I’m dead until I get onstage,' she says. 'I’m dead right now as you’re speaking to me.'" There was a quiz she filled out that came after the interview (I assume every celebrity who gets a Cosmopolitan interview takes this quiz). One of the prompts was, "When the spotlight isn't on me..." leaving her the option to finish the sentence. I'd guess most celebrities put something like "I dance in my underwear like Tom Cruise in Risky Business" or "I sleep all day." How did Lady Gaga finish the sentence? "When the spotlight isn't on me... I wish it were." From her fashion to her isolationism to her refusal to answer to her birth name, Lady Gaga is an elusive and thoroughly intriguing woman.

Here's a pretty dece* cover of Lady Gaga's recent single "Telephone (ft. Beyoncé)" just for a little bit of semi-related music video watching pleasure.



*dece (DEES) adj. - abbreviation of "decent"

Viva la vie Bohème

In this scene from the Broadway musical RENT, Maureen has just performed at a benefit protesting Benny's expulsion of the nearly-homeless bohemians from buildings in East Village, NYC, and the homeless from a nearby lot so that he can build a state-of-the-art cyber studio. When the main friends (Maureen, Joanne, Mimi, Roger, Mark, Angel, and Collins) end up dining at the same café as Benny and his business partner, Benny antagonizes them by saying that "Bohemia is dead." In mockery of Benny, the friends toast to all the "children" of Bohemia in honor of her death.

In so doing, Mark, Mimi, Angel, etc. honor several artists, events, and objects that are typically rejected my mainstream America. To dildos, faggots, marijuana, playing hookie, 8BC, and "to being an 'us' for once instead of a 'them.'" The bohemian life.

This song honors Bob Dylan, Pablo Neruda, Susan Sontag, Stephen Sonheim, Václav Havel, Maya Angelou, Allen Ginsberg, Buddha. It celebrates participation in activities generally seen as offensive: masturbation, smoking marijuana, homosexuality, ambiguous sexuality, hallucinogens, sodomy, S&M, "people living with (not dying from) disease."

"Let he among us without sin be the first to condemn," they challenge the audience. And Mark sings a noteworthy solo towards the end of the song questioning the validity of the concept of "the mainstream." "To anyone out of the mainstream: is anyone in the mainstream?" He urges "anyone alive with a sex drive" to "tear down the wall. Aren't we all" already doing that anyway? "The opposite of war isn't peace," he says—"it's creation."

WHO DAT. SUE ME.

First, a brief thought on the Grammy's.

And the award for Album of the Year goes to Taylor Swift—Fearless.

Really?

Here's what PopEater.com has to say about it.

I know I said I don't like Lady GaGa that much, but she definitely deserved that award. Such a significant amount of the songs on her album The Fame were incredibly successful on radio stations. "Just Dance," "PokerFace," "LoveGame," "Paparazzi," "Boys Boys Boys," etc. And Beyoncé! I Am... Sasha Fierce was an incredible album. "Single Ladies," "Halo," "Diva," "If I Were a Boy."

And now, I'll talk about the Saints.

two-piece cissy strut on the night new orleans finished strong from Justin T on Vimeo.

Above is footage of a couple of my friends and I completely losing ourselves in the celebratory music of a couple of French Quarter residents immediately following the Saints' miraculous victory over the Vikings last Sunday night. Presenting this video is the closest I think I'll ever come to adequately describing the wave of (tear-filled) joy that swept over the entire city right as Garrett Hartley kicked that already-legendary field goal.

Most (I think 85% is a fair estimate) of the conversations I've had over this, the subsequent, week have revolved around this amazing football team. I've discussed the drunken hilarity that is Bobby Hebert and the fashionable men in dresses honoring Buddy D.; the disappointment this city's come to expect for the last 43 years and the extreme astonishment that will follow a Superbowl win (which I'm sure will force the city to completely shut down for several days).

I'm writing this immediately after having attended the Battle of the Saints Songs at the Howlin' Wolf. All the local artists who have put out Saints related tracks this season and some other special surprises (Rebirth Brass Band!) performed their respective songs. Such hits as Leslie Limberg's "Party in the MIA" set to the tune of Miley Cyrus's much inferior song and Baby Boy da Prince's "This is the Way We Live (2009 Saints remix)" were performed to a crowd of screaming WhoDatters. And since I just said Who Dat, I feel like I should mention that nearly all of the artists expressed their disapproval of the NFL's recent claim to that phrase. Puh-lease, NFL, that's like Budweiser saying they own "What's up?" (I guess "WHAAAAZZZZAAAAAAAAAAP" is a more accurate spelling, though.)





WHO DAT?

Fela! (edited to include Spring Awakening)

Fela Kuti was a pioneer of the afrobeat musical genre. This type of music was invented by blending together American jazz, pop, and funk and West African highlife music. In addition to being a multi-instrumentalist and composer of several albums for a career that spanned three decades, he was also a prominent political figure. He was first politically inspired by (and later became a central symbolic figure of) the Black Power movement. He was also a supporter anti-colonialism and pan-Africanism, pushing for a single, united, republican African nation. He tried several times to run for the position for President of Nigeria but was never allowed to because of his socialist political views, which often had him arrested in Nigeria and other African countries.

A musical based on Kuti's life entitled Fela! opened on Broadway this past October. Occasional hip-hopper Will Smith, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and the inarguable reigning king of hip-hop Jay-Z are all producing the musical. "I think that the show had something in it, y'know, there's something in it that it just needed to be recognized by people, but y'know the show stands on it's own. It's really a struggle about pain and passion and inspiration," said Jay-Z.

Below, a live performance by the actual Fela Kuti.



And here, a clip from the musical based on his life.



More information about the Broadway musical can be found on their official website.

27 January 2010 EDIT

After our class discussion today pertaining to ideologies (fighting against them vs. submitting to them) I thought it would be interesting to note that Fela! is housed in the Eugene O'Neill theatre, which also recently housed the winner of the 2007 Tony Award for Best Musical, Spring Awakening. Spring Awakening, based on Franklin Wedekind's play by the same name, is the story of adolescents in 19th century Germany who are sheltered from any knowledge other than that which can be found in the Bible. This structure of parents dominating the subordinate children is shaken when one teen, Melchior Gabor, a professed atheist, teaches his peers about the science behind reproduction and enlightens the boys and girls as to the meaning behind their sexual attraction to one another. Here are two musicals, Fela! and Spring Awakening, with very different settings, characters, and issues, but both of them are directly addressing the problem with submitting oneself entirely to authority.

Below, Spring Awakening's Tony performance, a montage of a few of the more popular songs in the show.