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A Girl Like That: Three Pop Divas Face Off Against Their Evil Selves

January 23, 2010 in Features | No comments

Taylor Swift, “You Belong With Me” (Fearless, 2008)

Plenty of pop videos have used the “entire teen movie in three and a half minutes” schtick, but that isn’t what makes this one seem dated. Rather, it’s the giant glasses sported by our heroine, Nerdy Taylor. I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but in Brooklyn those giant specs are so ubiquitous they barely even register as nerdy anymore.

From Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady to Rachel Leigh Cook in She’s All That, the Pretty/Ugly Girl plot arc has always been a transparent sham, but here the snake seems to be eating its tail. Nerdy Taylor, Prissy Taylor, Post-Makeover Taylor — all of them are, inescapably, Taylor Swift, who is more beautiful and popular than we will ever be (no matter how big her glasses are). Us regular slobs understand which Taylor we’re supposed to root for; we just don’t quite identify.

Avril Lavigne, “Girlfriend” (The Best Damn Thing, 2007)

I don’t mean to be down on Taylor Swift; “You Belong with Me” is actually my favorite of today’s three clips, if only because the kid really does seem to mean it. You know she’s not the frumpy band geek she claims to be, but you still want the best for her — the story traces a clear line from emotional conflict to happy ending. Not so with Avril Lavigne’s entry in the canon, which lacks even a single likable character. Who’s our champion here — the fussy, possessive ice queen; the bullying boyfriend-stealer who’s into dark eyeliner and physical assault; or the “aw, shucks” pretty boy who will flash you a grin as you tumble downhill into a pool of human excrement? To paraphrase Brad Neely, people like these are the reason that God doesn’t talk to us anymore.

Mariah Carey ft. Jay-Z, “Heartbreaker” (Rainbow, 1999)

Late-period Mariah Carey is best known for being a little unhinged, so giving her multiple personalities and having them kung-fu fight is  a pretty good fit. But her personalities seem a little crazy themselves: Good Mariah dresses like a twelve-year-old and spends the video careening through mood swings, from sad-eyed stoic to beaming bootyshaker to vengeful beeyotch. Evil Mariah powders her cleavage obsessively, yet even in a mirror, she fails to notice the clump of popcorn spot-welded to the top of her head.  And in the end, they both lose for thinking Jerry O’Connell is worth fighting over.

Homegirl sure knows how to belt it, though. Respect.

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Man! I Feel Like a Woman! Two Great Gender-Crossing Covers

November 16, 2009 in Features | No comments

Lauren Hoffman, “Of All The Gin Joints in All The World”
(Originally by Fall Out Boy)

Final Fantasy, “Fantasy”
(Originally by Mariah Carey)

Among the long list of creative projects I’ve dreamt up but never seen through is this one: contact all the people I know who make music and ask them for a home recording of a song written by somebody else. Only preexisting works would qualify; the idea isn’t to commission a bunch of new covers, but to unearth the ones that were never meant to see the light of day. The resulting pool of demos would be burned onto CDRs, outfitted with some modest cover art, and distributed to all the participants.

I still might do that someday, especially now that I’ve stumbled on this gem by Lauren Hoffman. It isn’t just that it’s such a rare oddity to hear a woman singing emo. It’s that, for all the potential humor to be mined from turning a super-produced mall-punk anthem into an acoustic ballad, there isn’t the slightest trace of irony in her delivery. That speaks to her sense of subtlety and restraint—and, dare I say it, to the strength of the source material.

Owen Pallett (a.k.a. Final Fantasy), on the other hand, is clearly having fun with his audience’s expectations when he eases, bit by bit, into this blissed-out interpretation of his namesake. Granted, there’s really no other way he could have done it—the loop-pedal procedure in his live shows necessarily makes a slow build of each song, stacking layer on layer until the arrangement is complete. But just listen to how the crowd reacts as they begin to get the joke, how their shouts of approval mount and swell until, in the chorus, they erupt into ecstatic applause. These people know Pallett is toying with them, and they love him for it.

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Easy as 1-2-3: From All-Girl Psychedelic Surf Rock to Cheesy Mid-90s Eurodance in Three Easy Steps

November 6, 2009 in Features | No comments

At a Willamsburg house show last night, I learned three things. The first two are that Grass Widow is my new favorite live band, and that their drummer Lillian Maring is my new favorite drummer. That’s incidental to what I want to talk about today, but seriously, you should check them out—and if you’re  in the New York area this weekend, you should go see them play.

Grass Widow, “To Where” (Grass Widow LP, 2009)

The third thing I learned came after the live music was over, when promoter extraordinaire Todd P stepped into his secondary role: iPod DJ. Here’s what I imagine he was thinking: if you’ve got a bunch of young, beer-soaked Brooklynites in a room and they’ve just seen an incredible show, their emotions are as putty in your hands. So play Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy,” and they’ll be flushed with nostalgia and immediately revert to a middle school dance party-mode. Follow that up with Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and you’ll see them turn ecstatic with local pride, wailing along with Alicia Keys on the chorus. At this point they’ll dance to whatever you want, and that’s when you whip out this classic:

Real McCoy, “Another Night” (Another Night, 1995)

Suddenly it’s not just a dance party—it’s an Ultimate Dance Party. Music, as we well know and yet so often forget, is inextricably bound to context. Walk into a bar that’s blasting Real McCoy and you might roll your eyes and flee in disgust. But when it’s the cap on an already joyous evening, you may find, to your surprise, that it makes an awful lot of sense to you.

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