Miley Cyrus Interlude 3:23*
This is exactly why I listen to them: to force-feed myself a brutally efficient diet of what, in a certain worldview, is current. Liking it is not necessarily the point. I’m 39, and at this stage of my life, if I don’t make a conscious effort to keep up with mainstream pop - a genre that historically I have considerable love for, believe it or not - it won’t happen. I leave on “the Zoo,” as it is colloquially known, most weekday mornings for as long as I can bear, and it keeps me on more or less speaking terms with a certain segment of popular culture. (Indie rock, hip hop and R&B, all of which I also care about, require different strategies, and the fact that paying attention to new music now requires so much conscious and differentiated strategy, no matter how old you are, is a source of ongoing frustration and resentment in my life.)
The current very weird state of affairs might have begun with “Use Somebody.” One crack of dawn earlier in the fall, while still lying in bed in a state of protesting semiconsciousness, I first heard this song on Z-100, along with artist ID, and thought, “Why the fuck are Kings of Leon on the radio?” When a credible quasi-indie band (they have actually been with RCA for their entire recording career, but you know what I mean) gets a push into the mainstream, it’s never accidental, arbitrary or the result of grass-roots public enthusiasm alone; someone somewhere made a conscious decision to put promotional money behind this band and to con people like Z-100, for whom KOL represents a very noticeable programming departure, into playing them.** So although I owned KOL’s previous album, liked it, and in fact liked “Use Somebody,” I remained suspicious and aloof for a good while, until a weekend came when I walked around singing “You KNOW that I could USE somebodAY…” at top volume inside my head for twenty hours straight, and was forced to give in and download the album.
Until I saw the Only by the Night album art, I had no idea how photogenic these guys were - one possible clue to the "Why them?" mystery.
After that, it kept happening: more songs appeared on the radio that I heard not only with interest, but with active pleasure. Lady Gaga, who had, with no particular fanfare, released three consecutive very solid dance records that I didn’t quite love (“Just Dance,” “Poker Face” and “LoveGame”), suddenly released a fourth, poppier single, “Paparazzi,” that I became fixated on. Almost simultaneously, her new and similarly poppy “Bad Romance” appeared, and while I don’t love that one quite as much as “Paparazzi,” any idiot can hear that a) it’s an excellent song and b) Lady G is cooking with gas at the moment.
Meanwhile, months of exposure to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” had miraculously caused its hooks to grow even stronger and more indelible as time went by, to the point that it came to seem the equal of “Love Story” in my mind, and “Love Story” is one of the best songs of this year, last year, or whatever fucking year we’re talking about. Then Jay-Z started crowding the airwaves with better-than-decent songs about New York, which, historically, might not seem out of the ordinary, except for that informal consensus which seemed to have taken hold a couple of years back that Jigga ought to re-retire to Tribeca to play Scrabble with fellow former gangsta Robert DeNiro and spare us his increasingly tired thoughts on New York or anything else.
Nice guitar, even!
More startlingly, Mariah Carey chose this moment to release the least lyrically generic (and this is an artist whose picture is in the dictionary next to the phrase “lyrically generic”), most personally vindictive single of her entire career. I mean, did you ever expect to hear an extended topical metaphor like “You’re a mom and pop, I’m a corporation/I’m a press conference, you’re a conversation” coming out of Miss Mimi’s mouth? Never mind that Marshall Mathers is well beyond the mom and pop level, or that Mariah unquestioningly equates being the corporation in this scenario with being the victor, or that the obsessiveness described in this song clearly exists on both sides: the amazing thing is that she put this song out there at all.
When Top 40 is really working, even junk by forgettable artists is fun, just like it is now. Cascada’s “Evacuate the Dancefloor” is so overwrought both lyrically and musically that I kind of almost dig it, and David Guetta’s*** “Sexy Chick” (aka "Sexy Bitch") fascinates me with its hilarious (and successful) attempt to turn the politically and rhythmically awkward line “I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful” into a hook.
Who the hell is David Guetta? This guy, apparently.
But can we discuss perhaps the most weirdly transcendent recent pop music development of all? I’m speaking, ladies and dudes, of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.”
This song is good. I am not being even slightly ironic. Musically, it’s the best and catchiest thing she’s ever released; while I am not familiar with her Hannah Montana-related output and don’t intend to become so, I would venture to guess that it’s the best thing she’s ever done, period. And while it might not seem like that’s saying much, please note that her previous single, “The Climb,” was listenable enough that if that song constituted your only acquaintance with Miley, you might seriously wonder why so many people revile her.
Lyrically, “Party in the U.S.A.” is fascinating on multiple levels. It’s disarming, “relatable,” truthful and obnoxious, all at once. In case you have somehow managed to remain unfamiliar with the song, it describes what it would have you believe is Miley’s virgin visit to L.A., where she has of course come to Make It Big.**** In a slight variation on the “I came to Hollywood with thirty bucks to my name, and look at me now!” cliché, Miley arrives “with a dream and my cardigan.” She must have, in addition, considerably more than thirty bucks to her name, because she takes a cab (approximate cost: $42 plus tip) straight from LAX to an unnamed club (where she presumably has to pay the cover of 20 bucks or so, since she is, in the song’s world, not yet famous).
She's learned a painful footwear lesson, but in a nod to her roots, she's still got the cardigan.
Miley feels nervous and homesick because everyone she sees seems to be a celebrity, a commonly reported sensation in certain parts of L.A. “Welcome to the land of fame excess/Am I gonna fit in?” she worries. Now, one of the reasons people typically want to be famous is so that they don’t have to fit in, but for Miley, who only turned 17 a week ago, the old trope that Hollywood is high school with money is almost literally true, so I’m gonna cut her some slack here. Anyway, Miley’s fears of unintentional nonconformity are not eased at the club, where not only is she not in stilettos like every other female in the place, she has made the rather extreme faux pas of showing up in sneakers. You’d think if she was gonna buck the dress code, she could’ve at least chosen, I don’t know, Frye boots or something, which are pretty safely badass in any context. But like I say, Miley is trying, and on a certain Oprah-esque level succeeding, to be human and relatable in this song, so she wants you to know that she’s still at least as sartorially naïve as you would be under the circumstances, and maybe even more so.
All things considered, Miley is rather ill at ease in her new surroundings: she’s alone, friendless, dressed wrong, and uncertain of the future. But as it has sometimes been known to do in such cases, pop music comes to the rescue: in the cab and in the club, she hears Jay-Z and Britney Spears, respectively, and feels suddenly happy, reassured and at home. The fact that she can groove to the same stuff in L.A. as back in Nashville means that the whole country is, on some level, united in song and good times: it’s a Party in the U.S.A., you see? Music makes the world go round and the people come together, that kind of thing.
Put your hands up, they're playin' your song.
The Jay-Z and Britney references here are interesting and worthy of analysis all by themselves. When I first heard this song, I didn’t catch those name checks, and I thought that when Miley said “They’re playing my song,” she meant this literally: that in the cab and the club, they were playing, for instance, “The Climb,” or, more meta still, “Party in the U.S.A” itself. “How obnoxious!” I thought, but I was simultaneously kind of impressed by her apparent egotism, which had a frank, self-aware, Kanye-esque quality. When it turned out that, no, Miley was merely giving shoutouts to two fellow pop artists she either genuinely digs or wants us to think she does, my relief was still alloyed by cynicism: since Britney is, of course, Miley’s fellow Disney-spawned princess-of-all-media, this name-dropping might not represent the unifying power of pop music so much as mere corporate synergy. Pursuing this thesis to its logical ends, I was inspired to research Jay-Z’s current corporate affiliations, which I’d been kind of foggy on in the wake of his defection from the presidency of Def Jam, and comb through them for Disney connections. But I found that, on the surface at least, there are none (Jay now has his own imprint at Live Nation, which is a spinoff of Clear Channel Communications - yeah, them again - but has no apparent link to Disney).
So Miley is, perhaps, no more guilty of kissing her corporate benefactor’s ass than the average labelmate-shoutout-prone rapper, and the even weirder and funnier thing is that if you take her references to be to current Jay-Z and Britney, the stuff by them that you might literally hear in a taxi or club this very day, she is talking about good songs: Britney’s current single - yeah, that thing about threesomes - is, let’s be honest, pretty choice as well. All of which supports Miley’s position that American pop music, even at its most corporate, is a benevolent force for mass pleasure and national unity - that, in other words, Top 40 is good. At the moment, at least, she’s pretty much right.
In other news, the Half-Blood Prince DVD is out next week. Avada Kedavra to you, too!
*I am a lot less obscure than Chuck Klosterman. This is the actual track length of “Party in the U.S.A.”
**Meanwhile, there is nothing going down AT ALL (ironic Velvet Underground reference fully intended) in actual indie rock lately. Seriously - did anything of note happen in the indie world this year? Were there any breakout bands around which any kind of consensus formed? Were there any significant album releases at all, by either newbies or veterans? - I mean, Wilco put out a new CD and nobody besides the band and Robert Christgau even noticed.
***When I started writing this post, I had no idea who the hell David Guetta was - I mean, I’m old, OK? But I looked into it, and learned that he is a French DJ who produced the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feelin’” (which, deny it if you will but you know I’m right, is already a classic) and is also responsible for “When Love Takes Over” by Kelly Rowland, from earlier this year - which, argh, I also liked. So for “forgettable,” better substitute “anonymous.”
****Miley herself had no hand in writing this song, which, like Britney Spears’ recent singles about her own celebrity, comes courtesy of adult male songwriting professionals. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, such people (though they are occasionally female, too) will generally be better at writing about your life as a teen star than you are.
The current very weird state of affairs might have begun with “Use Somebody.” One crack of dawn earlier in the fall, while still lying in bed in a state of protesting semiconsciousness, I first heard this song on Z-100, along with artist ID, and thought, “Why the fuck are Kings of Leon on the radio?” When a credible quasi-indie band (they have actually been with RCA for their entire recording career, but you know what I mean) gets a push into the mainstream, it’s never accidental, arbitrary or the result of grass-roots public enthusiasm alone; someone somewhere made a conscious decision to put promotional money behind this band and to con people like Z-100, for whom KOL represents a very noticeable programming departure, into playing them.** So although I owned KOL’s previous album, liked it, and in fact liked “Use Somebody,” I remained suspicious and aloof for a good while, until a weekend came when I walked around singing “You KNOW that I could USE somebodAY…” at top volume inside my head for twenty hours straight, and was forced to give in and download the album.
Until I saw the Only by the Night album art, I had no idea how photogenic these guys were - one possible clue to the "Why them?" mystery.
After that, it kept happening: more songs appeared on the radio that I heard not only with interest, but with active pleasure. Lady Gaga, who had, with no particular fanfare, released three consecutive very solid dance records that I didn’t quite love (“Just Dance,” “Poker Face” and “LoveGame”), suddenly released a fourth, poppier single, “Paparazzi,” that I became fixated on. Almost simultaneously, her new and similarly poppy “Bad Romance” appeared, and while I don’t love that one quite as much as “Paparazzi,” any idiot can hear that a) it’s an excellent song and b) Lady G is cooking with gas at the moment.
Meanwhile, months of exposure to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” had miraculously caused its hooks to grow even stronger and more indelible as time went by, to the point that it came to seem the equal of “Love Story” in my mind, and “Love Story” is one of the best songs of this year, last year, or whatever fucking year we’re talking about. Then Jay-Z started crowding the airwaves with better-than-decent songs about New York, which, historically, might not seem out of the ordinary, except for that informal consensus which seemed to have taken hold a couple of years back that Jigga ought to re-retire to Tribeca to play Scrabble with fellow former gangsta Robert DeNiro and spare us his increasingly tired thoughts on New York or anything else.
Nice guitar, even!
More startlingly, Mariah Carey chose this moment to release the least lyrically generic (and this is an artist whose picture is in the dictionary next to the phrase “lyrically generic”), most personally vindictive single of her entire career. I mean, did you ever expect to hear an extended topical metaphor like “You’re a mom and pop, I’m a corporation/I’m a press conference, you’re a conversation” coming out of Miss Mimi’s mouth? Never mind that Marshall Mathers is well beyond the mom and pop level, or that Mariah unquestioningly equates being the corporation in this scenario with being the victor, or that the obsessiveness described in this song clearly exists on both sides: the amazing thing is that she put this song out there at all.
When Top 40 is really working, even junk by forgettable artists is fun, just like it is now. Cascada’s “Evacuate the Dancefloor” is so overwrought both lyrically and musically that I kind of almost dig it, and David Guetta’s*** “Sexy Chick” (aka "Sexy Bitch") fascinates me with its hilarious (and successful) attempt to turn the politically and rhythmically awkward line “I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful” into a hook.
Who the hell is David Guetta? This guy, apparently.
But can we discuss perhaps the most weirdly transcendent recent pop music development of all? I’m speaking, ladies and dudes, of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.”
This song is good. I am not being even slightly ironic. Musically, it’s the best and catchiest thing she’s ever released; while I am not familiar with her Hannah Montana-related output and don’t intend to become so, I would venture to guess that it’s the best thing she’s ever done, period. And while it might not seem like that’s saying much, please note that her previous single, “The Climb,” was listenable enough that if that song constituted your only acquaintance with Miley, you might seriously wonder why so many people revile her.
Lyrically, “Party in the U.S.A.” is fascinating on multiple levels. It’s disarming, “relatable,” truthful and obnoxious, all at once. In case you have somehow managed to remain unfamiliar with the song, it describes what it would have you believe is Miley’s virgin visit to L.A., where she has of course come to Make It Big.**** In a slight variation on the “I came to Hollywood with thirty bucks to my name, and look at me now!” cliché, Miley arrives “with a dream and my cardigan.” She must have, in addition, considerably more than thirty bucks to her name, because she takes a cab (approximate cost: $42 plus tip) straight from LAX to an unnamed club (where she presumably has to pay the cover of 20 bucks or so, since she is, in the song’s world, not yet famous).
She's learned a painful footwear lesson, but in a nod to her roots, she's still got the cardigan.
Miley feels nervous and homesick because everyone she sees seems to be a celebrity, a commonly reported sensation in certain parts of L.A. “Welcome to the land of fame excess/Am I gonna fit in?” she worries. Now, one of the reasons people typically want to be famous is so that they don’t have to fit in, but for Miley, who only turned 17 a week ago, the old trope that Hollywood is high school with money is almost literally true, so I’m gonna cut her some slack here. Anyway, Miley’s fears of unintentional nonconformity are not eased at the club, where not only is she not in stilettos like every other female in the place, she has made the rather extreme faux pas of showing up in sneakers. You’d think if she was gonna buck the dress code, she could’ve at least chosen, I don’t know, Frye boots or something, which are pretty safely badass in any context. But like I say, Miley is trying, and on a certain Oprah-esque level succeeding, to be human and relatable in this song, so she wants you to know that she’s still at least as sartorially naïve as you would be under the circumstances, and maybe even more so.
All things considered, Miley is rather ill at ease in her new surroundings: she’s alone, friendless, dressed wrong, and uncertain of the future. But as it has sometimes been known to do in such cases, pop music comes to the rescue: in the cab and in the club, she hears Jay-Z and Britney Spears, respectively, and feels suddenly happy, reassured and at home. The fact that she can groove to the same stuff in L.A. as back in Nashville means that the whole country is, on some level, united in song and good times: it’s a Party in the U.S.A., you see? Music makes the world go round and the people come together, that kind of thing.
Put your hands up, they're playin' your song.
The Jay-Z and Britney references here are interesting and worthy of analysis all by themselves. When I first heard this song, I didn’t catch those name checks, and I thought that when Miley said “They’re playing my song,” she meant this literally: that in the cab and the club, they were playing, for instance, “The Climb,” or, more meta still, “Party in the U.S.A” itself. “How obnoxious!” I thought, but I was simultaneously kind of impressed by her apparent egotism, which had a frank, self-aware, Kanye-esque quality. When it turned out that, no, Miley was merely giving shoutouts to two fellow pop artists she either genuinely digs or wants us to think she does, my relief was still alloyed by cynicism: since Britney is, of course, Miley’s fellow Disney-spawned princess-of-all-media, this name-dropping might not represent the unifying power of pop music so much as mere corporate synergy. Pursuing this thesis to its logical ends, I was inspired to research Jay-Z’s current corporate affiliations, which I’d been kind of foggy on in the wake of his defection from the presidency of Def Jam, and comb through them for Disney connections. But I found that, on the surface at least, there are none (Jay now has his own imprint at Live Nation, which is a spinoff of Clear Channel Communications - yeah, them again - but has no apparent link to Disney).
So Miley is, perhaps, no more guilty of kissing her corporate benefactor’s ass than the average labelmate-shoutout-prone rapper, and the even weirder and funnier thing is that if you take her references to be to current Jay-Z and Britney, the stuff by them that you might literally hear in a taxi or club this very day, she is talking about good songs: Britney’s current single - yeah, that thing about threesomes - is, let’s be honest, pretty choice as well. All of which supports Miley’s position that American pop music, even at its most corporate, is a benevolent force for mass pleasure and national unity - that, in other words, Top 40 is good. At the moment, at least, she’s pretty much right.
In other news, the Half-Blood Prince DVD is out next week. Avada Kedavra to you, too!
*I am a lot less obscure than Chuck Klosterman. This is the actual track length of “Party in the U.S.A.”
**Meanwhile, there is nothing going down AT ALL (ironic Velvet Underground reference fully intended) in actual indie rock lately. Seriously - did anything of note happen in the indie world this year? Were there any breakout bands around which any kind of consensus formed? Were there any significant album releases at all, by either newbies or veterans? - I mean, Wilco put out a new CD and nobody besides the band and Robert Christgau even noticed.
***When I started writing this post, I had no idea who the hell David Guetta was - I mean, I’m old, OK? But I looked into it, and learned that he is a French DJ who produced the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feelin’” (which, deny it if you will but you know I’m right, is already a classic) and is also responsible for “When Love Takes Over” by Kelly Rowland, from earlier this year - which, argh, I also liked. So for “forgettable,” better substitute “anonymous.”
****Miley herself had no hand in writing this song, which, like Britney Spears’ recent singles about her own celebrity, comes courtesy of adult male songwriting professionals. Unless you’re Taylor Swift, such people (though they are occasionally female, too) will generally be better at writing about your life as a teen star than you are.