THE LOWS
Tasteful Imitations and Sagging Follow-Ups
Jon Pareles, Neil Strauss, Ben Ratliff and Kelefa Sanneh listened to a lot of bad pop music in 2003; herewith, their least fond recollections.
PARELES My biggest letdown was Madonna's "American Life." It was the perfect opportunity to do something. We're on the verge of war. She poses like Che Guevara, she calls an album "American Life," and it should be a big statement. And it's all about what life is like in Hollywood. It was a complete misfire.
SANNEH Yeah, I was surprised the album sounded so much like the last one, had the same producer. And by her standards at least seemed kind of rote. There were a few songs on it I actually did like. But by and large it just wasn't very interesting.
PARELES All she could get people talking about was that kiss with Britney, which was strictly show biz.
STRAUSS What's amazing about that to me is that something that's totally rehearsed and scripted gets so much attention. It wasn't like they actually kissed out of passion.
SANNEH Well, yeah, it was staged. It was a live music video in a sense. And so in that sense it was a totally appropriate moment for the Video Music Awards.
STRAUSS My biggest letdown was watching the recording industry deal with downloaders. I just think it's terrible p.r. I don't see any fewer people on Kazaa. The only thing it's encouraged people to do is to take their downloaded files and not share them. But they're all still there trying to get music.
PARELES The recording industry keeps trying to build a wall in the ocean. They keep trying to shut down the Internet. And they think they can do it by suing 12-year-olds, when what they need is a great subscription service.
RATLIFF I think this was a bad year for jazz records but a good year for jazz in the larger sense. I go to clubs all the time and I hear lots of interesting things. And then I hear tons of records that are just like calling cards and placeholders. The major labels have figured out a way to make more money by signing soul singers and folk-pop singers. The tiny labels are troubled and low budget. A lot of incredibly good groups are not finding a way to represent themselves on record.
STRAUSS Did all the Norah Jones Grammys and success help or hurt?
RATLIFF I don't think it really had any impact per se on jazz music. But I think it reorganized the priorities of Blue Note, which released her record. They're going to look for more people like her now and fewer dedicated jazz small-group band leaders, the kind of bread and butter of what they've always been doing.
PARELES The great hope is that when you have a windfall like Norah Jones, then you can bankroll less popular things.
RATLIFF That's the great hope. So far it hasn't happened. And there's a lot of nervous expectation about Norah's next record. Nobody quite knows what it's going to be like.
Did anybody feel disappointment with the Andre half of the OutKast record?
STRAUSS That was my favorite half. I thought that it was fantastic.
RATLIFF Well, I thought it was in theory. And in practice, I couldn't get with his singing. The fast version of "My Favorite Things" was stomach-turning. I mean, the disc was messy and interesting, ultimately just not nearly as good as I wanted it to be. But it seemed to get so much more attention just because of how dynamic he is.
SANNEH Well, "Hey Ya" is the No. 1 song in the country, isn't it?
RATLIFF Well, that's a good song.
STRAUSS A) That's a great song. B) I love listening to the whole CD because it's like watching a suspense movie. I really don't know what song or what style he's going to do next or even what he's going to do next within a song. And when you're talking about "My Favorite Things," just the fact that all of a sudden he busts into drum and bass out of nowhere is fantastic.
PARELES I'm more with Ben. I like the spirit of it because it's so goofy and light-hearted and lubricious. But I wish he was a better singer, and some of the songs sound incomplete.
SANNEH To me that album is a little bit like a sketchbook. And the group is interesting enough and good enough that I love rifling through the sketchbook. But I can't listen to it all the way through.
PARELES It's got the classic double-album problem. It's just too big.
STRAUSS I know it's long. But I really can listen to both sides all the way through and even play it for people to show them how innovative it is.
SANNEH OutKast party at Neil's house!
PARELES There's the White Stripes album, which I think is also a couple of bricks short of a load.
RATLIFF Yeah, I finally feel that that album has a real problem with maybe the last third of it where the songs just fall off in quality dramatically. And the excitement I felt on first hearing it has kind of dimmed as the year went on.
SANNEH I like the album but it does feel a little bit to me like a stunt, where sometimes even when you're listening to it you're thinking about how much you like it in theory. Then there's the Strokes; they put out this album that you could almost have written yourself after listening to the first one, which was depressing.
STRAUSS I feel there are some bands like the Strokes that put out one great album and that's all I really need from them. I don't need five or six or seven or eight records.
SANNEH Except we don't really know that a band is that kind of band until they put out their second album. Beyoncé put out a monster single, "Crazy in Love." For anyone else that would be plenty, but having loved the Destiny's Child albums I was expecting her album to be great all the way through. And I thought her album wasn't as interesting as Mya's or Monica's or even Ashanti's.
PARELES I played that album the other night. The first three or four songs just knock your head off and then serious sagging ensues. The thing is, Beyoncé has a wonderful voice.
SANNEH She has a very particular voice: a brassy, slightly hard voice. And I think if the material's not quite right it can be off-putting.
PARELES How about Liz Phair? That was just the shot not heard round the world.
SANNEH It's on pace to outsell her last one. And I thought the album was actually pretty good.
PARELES This year's album was like an old-fashioned, blockbuster album. Spend a lot of money on producers, hype it to the skies.
SANNEH I'm not mad that Liz Phair worked with the Matrix, who also write songs for Avril Lavigne. I like Avril â?? I just don't think Liz Phair has Avril's voice. I think Avril's record was better than the new Liz Phair album.
PARELES Meanwhile, if you put the CD in your computer and download the five songs she calls an E.P. â?? "Come and Get It" â?? they're actually pretty good Liz Phair songs. It's just that you have tolaboriously download them and give away the privacy of your Windows Media Player to play them.
SANNEH She's definitely set herself up for a triumphant return-to-the-roots comeback.
RATLIFF Should we wade into Damien Rice or Ryan Adams?
PARELES I was thinking about Ryan Adams and the Rapture. They have fabulous taste. They can do a great imitation of things that were really good. And as you're listening to the songs, each song is thrilling. And then you think, well, I heard that in 1982. Or I heard that in 1987 or whatever. It's been a good year for tasteful imitations. The Strokes, to some extent. And Alicia Keys too, who I think made a wonderful album but it's 1970's soul. It's a real time capsule.
STRAUSS A lot of my favorite albums this year â?? the Thrills, the Rapture, Fannypack, the Shins, the Fountains of Wayne â?? seemed inspired by record collections.
PARELES Then there's the Darkness, which I hope is a joke.
RATLIFF Sure it's a joke. It's not a very warm joke. I feel like the Darkness finally is just not that nice to listen to. The guy's voice is ugly, uglier than the sources that he's imitating. But I think that as a joke it's sort of complex and funny.
SANNEH I just wish people would pick better targets. It seems so easy to do a cartoonish version of those hard-rock records. What seems harder is to take those influences and turn them into something new and interesting and passionate. That's what Coheed and Cambria did â?? it's a similar feeling in some ways but a much more interesting record.
STRAUSS The thing about the Darkness is if you discover them for yourself they're great. If you hear the hype and go see them you're disappointed.
PARELES That's the Damien Rice syndrome too. Because that's a sweet, pleasant, sad album. And the fact that it won the Shortlist Prize suddenly elevates it to some pinnacle of innovation? I don't see that. Damien Rice is one of the people who's much better in concert than the record. The record's very subdued. And in concert he actually has a distortion pedal that he uses to great effect that suddenly wakes the songs up.
SANNEH This year, a lot of the best underground rock I heard focused more on songwriting than it did on trying to find a new sound. It was conservative in a sense.
PARELES I don't think there has to be an opposition between songwriting and innovation. Have all the ways to present the song been exhausted? I don't want a commentary on how all the good ideas have been used. I want a new idea.
