Baby DON'T come into me, you canNOT stand under my umbrella

[koganbot]

Another Nonapology Apology From Britney:

I apologize to the pap for a stunt that was done 4 months ago regarding an umbrella. I was preparing my character for a role in a movie where the husband never plays his part so they switch places accidentally. I take all my roles very seriously and got a little carried away. Unfortunately I didn't get the

Comments

[edgeofwhatever]

(I am so breaking up with LJ comments.)

Didn't think it was as clever as you did. You said:

I don’t suppose you can make consistently good music with a whole bunch of different collaborators without having some smarts, somewhere.

But I don't suppose you can consistently "come across as a typically self-addled, self-deceiving ditz" without actually being one; I think you may be too quick to give her credit, too quick to conflate your interpretation with her intent. (This statement can also apply to you + Ashlee.) Which is not to say that she can't have some smarts, or be making some sort of statement about the media circus--just that, given her history, I don't think she's capable of being as sharp as you think she is.

Plus, it's not as if the joke (on Lindsay, on the media, on whomever) hasn't been made before, in the same stylized, mocking ditz-speak, even.

This apology is an apology! Disappointing. It's not about true vs false, for me, it's about apology vs. non-apology, "I'm sorry for my actions" vs. "I'm sorry...for you. Smell ya later."

[koganbot]

Since I haven't really been following Britney I don't know how to read her tone that well, but this apology is so lacking in remorse... I actually can't tell if it's sarcasm or not.

Of course, some self-addled ditzes are very intelligent, just not high on the self-insight scale (I'm not necessarily claiming such intelligence for Britters, but I really liked the social instinct that went into the album-title poll).

Ashlee on the other hand is clearly intelligent, the question is whether she'll be the probing intellect I want her to be, rather than just a woman who sometimes feels her way into sudden poetry in regard to her relationships with guys, and forces or inspires her collaborators to outdo themselves. I've been disappointed in all the singers I've had intellectual hopes for.

[edgeofwhatever]

I actually can't tell if it's sarcasm or not either--but I miss the whole, "Just kidding! Not sorry at all! You're the one with the problems!" tone of her previous apologies.

I wish you would watch The Ashlee Simpson Show.

[skyecaptain]

I dunno, I think the sarcasm is pretty evident. (I laughed without even considering that it wasn't sarcastic.) "I'm sorry I fucked that umbuberella, bummed it didn't get me the part :("

I admit that I could be giving Ashlee too much credit, but her role in the production process, as I previously understood it, is pretty well backed up by the show. (If anything, I wasn't giving her enough songwriting credit, because the two songs we see her write and create the demo for, "Unreachable" and "Surrender," were written without Kara, before she even met Kara. The former before she met John.) Unless these are straight-up LIES, which would be possible, I guess, but I mean what would be the point? It's not like someone else is singing all the songs or fucking up in the studio and being hard on herself or scribbling lyrics or shooting the shit with the producers trying to feel out the song. Do wish there was much more documentation of the latter part, though.

I'm blind

[koganbot]

My home Windows Media Player (which is 2,000 miles from where I'm sitting, and I will soon be sitting where I will have no computer access) won't give me visuals on avi files, so I've only watched one Ashlee episode. In episode one she plays An Ordinary Girl, and my guess is that's what she'll play all through, but I haven't followed up yet. No clue as to how Josh breaking up with her produced a line like "You can't push a river." Such things don't seem to be a concern of the show. My favorite part was listening (remember, I can't see) to her mom teach her how to mop. A Guide For The Young Woman Upon First Leaving Home. Very charming. I like her mom.

But anyway, in regard to Britney, maybe she genuinely thinks she owes people apologies, or explanations. I guess the thing is, maybe if I were in her situation I'd do supersmart things that were way smarter than what Britney's doing. But I'm not in her position, which is to say I'm not in a position where my defiance means a big deal to anything (that was the real point of my piece), and people like me - or my social set, whatever it is - have managed to find ways to put ourselves in negligible positions so that our defiance/acquiescence/whatever means zilch. I don't mean that we lack fame, I mean... what do I mean? In any event, Britney, strangely, is in a position where her smarts, such as they are, seem to signify. Even if she is a ditz. Even if she never does anything smart again.

My only clue how to act smart now, for me, is not to sneer - not to sneer at Britney and not to sneer at the people who sneer at Britney. But I'm glad Britney's sneering at Hilary.

Re: I'm blind

[edgeofwhatever]

VLC Media Player will play pretty much anything. Her mom is fantastic indeed.

Re: I'm blind

[koganbot]

Back in Denver, downloaded the player, IT WORKS! Thank you thank you thank you. Watched episode 2, then played I Am Me, then looked at my own lyrics from a quarter century ago when I was in my late twenties and early thirties, trying to figure out what she's got that I don't have. Seems to me that if you'd videoed me and band, me and girlfriend, band in rehearsel, etc. you'd have gotten better repartee, funnier jokes, more interesting personal and social analysis, better band fights, better guitar playing (from bandmate Andrew more than from me, and even when Shanks appears later in The Ashlee Simpson Show he may be as good as Andrew but not better), worse singing, and - this doesn't make sense - worse lyrics. My words were smart, savage, funny, surprising. Complete avoidance of clichés except when I used them deliberately to give 'em a new twist ("You broke my heart, well fuck you, bitch/I won't be sorry long/I'll make the tears run down your leg/In my real psychedelic song.") But what my songs lacked was the sudden eloquence you sometimes get from Ashlee, words that suddenly open everything up into the richness of a human being. Gives her a richness her own show doesn't, actually, at least not yet. I like her on the show: her default mode (in front of the camera, anyway) is people pleasing and positivity; she has nice things to say about everybody. This could be irritating but so far it's appealing. But it's not all that engrossing. Ashlee likes being in front of the camera, but she obviously keeps her own counsel about a lot of things (imagine if Lindsay Lohan let a camera follow her around; I get the impression from interviews that everything that pops into Lindsay's mind immediately comes out her mouth). And Ashlee's not showing much analytic reflectiveness, at least not so far. Ordinary though it is, I can see how the life that's (barely) shown on the screen could provide the raw material for her lyrics. What I'm not seeing is where she got the words. (Yeah, Nia, I know what you're gonna say...) Three things that struck me: (1) Ashlee didn't recognize how mediocre the material was that she was creating with her two original collaborators, Steve and Stan; though the evidence on record is that Ashlee brings out the best in John, Kara, Shelly, etc., I'm guessing that this isn't because she commanded or demanded it of them. (2) She told Steve and Stan she was going to fight for their music; then, when she agreed to work with other people, she gave us no thoughts about that turnabout. Of course, she might have said plenty about it that was kept out of the show, but still, the absence bugs me. Even if only for dramatic purposes, something needed to have been said. (3) Apparently no one had a vision of what the record was going to be like. Jordan heard a voice and a personality but he didn't know where to take it. It wasn't "Oh, we'll send her along the teen rock confessional path blazed by Pink and Avril."

[skyecaptain]

Nia, I'm loving the Ashlee Simpson Show so far -- I don't think she's gonna get inducted into MENSA anytime soon, but she's about as bright as I expected, and takes most of what happens on the show in stride -- esp. her reaction to the SNL fiasco (I saw that before most of Season 1, so I didn't realize taht she was serious when she claimed it was her acid reflux!!! But it was, I've seen the throatcam pics!). I also unfortunately got no evidence that she and Kara really clicked in the studio (just because Kara's only in one ep. in Season 1, havent' watched all of Season 2). John Shanks is a big cuddly teddybear type.

[edgeofwhatever]

I heart John Shanks.

I wanted to re-watch episode four before I replied to your post about it, but: the thing that gets me about Ashlee is that, yes, she's fighting to make her album her way, but "her way" is so vague. ("I want to make a rock record," she says, but doesn't tell a potential producer what kind of rock she means.) I don't get a sense that she has a specific sound she's going for--she never brings up Garbage or Hole, does she, just latches onto it when someone else points out the similarities? And she doesn't settle on a sound till she hooks up with John Shanks. She can be insincere ("Ryan's my best friend and I love him...he didn't get me a Valentine's gift, I'm so over him!") and entitled ("Mama, I don't want an album if he's going to make me do pop!"). And she doesn't really take what happens in stride--in interviews after the fact she says some nice things, but she's stressed and scared as things happen, probably because she isn't given time to learn.

I don't see, watching the show, that Ashlee is an artist who had something to say, and fought to be able to say it. I see that it was the other way around--she fought to be able to say something, and figured out later what "something" was, with a lot of prompting and pushing.

It's not that I think she's not bright or complex--she had a hand in "La La" and "Love Me for Me," and John/Kara/etc. didn't pull these ideas out of nowhere, and her pre-John/Kara/etc. songs (what little we saw of them) hit just as hard, too. But she doesn't strike me as bright enough to have come up with it all on her own, and I think it's disingenuous to say her fighting is documentation of her authenticity. She's also got documentation of her brattiness and lack of skills/experience, so...

Kara doesn't appear again--she briefly shows up in the John Shanks love montage in episode three, then she's in the studio and at Ryan's show in episode four.

[edgeofwhatever]

Of season one, I mean. No appearances is season two at all, that I can recall.

[skyecaptain]

No, I'm pretty sure she's explicit about Hole... "You know...Hole. I want to sound like HOLE!" And she's pretty obviously tending toward the sound if she did, in fact, write "Unreachable" in its entirety before she met Shanks. Again, this COULD be a lie, but I don't see why they would do that, just doesn't make any sense (you'd have to be as obsessive as we are to even notice!). Anyway, "Unreachable" really fits into her album seamlessly, didn't seem to need John or Kara for it.

But brattiness and lack of skills and experience aren't related to brightness or complexity, in fact contribute to those things. Like the fact that she'd never performed before and was handed a showcase and (seemed to) tear the roof off tha mutha. And she's dealt with her entitlement ("I've got more than anyone should") and with her bratiness ("Get out/ come back") and insincerity ("you want my autobiography? Baby, just ask me," right after "You think you know me? Word on the street is that you do..."). And her fighting only goes to prove that what other people SAY about her is patently idiotic -- I don't make huge claims for Ashlee, but I do think that she has much much more input than most people give her credit for (i.e., zero). I think that you're underestimating how intensely people in my neck of the woods hate hate hate hate her! (Just from having conversations about her, with real people, not internet-people.)

[edgeofwhatever]

If she says that about Hole (before anyone's suggested it to her), then I take that part back--it's been a while since I watched the first season, so I don't remember everything. But she didn't write "Unreachable," she and Stan Frazier and Steve Fox and Robbie Nevil and Billy Mann did, and we never do hear the pre-Shanks version, do we? I remember a scene of her singing it with Steve & Stan, but the Shanks production is piped in.

You're right, it does fit seamlessly with stuff like "Love Me for Me," and that's why I don't think she had zero input--but because I've seen her say petulant shit like "then I don't want an album," and refer to fifteen or twenty different "best friends," I don't think she's particularly sincere or driven to make music, either. (She says it herself: she could be an actress instead, for all she cares.) The show supports "inauthentic" just as much as it supports "authentic."

(I don't think she tore the roof off that showcase, at least not in the way they wanted us to think she did, either. The editing was too weird.)

Maybe I am underestimating the hate, but then again I used to hate her too (even if I did like her show). The funny thing is, when I hated her as a musician, the show had me inching toward liking her. Now that I like her as a musician, the show has me inching back toward hate.

[koganbot]

I'm not seeing an issue as to whether or not she's driven to make music, and I don't see what the authenticity issue is, really. Is something being misrepresented, if the girl in real life doesn't always match the girl in song? I in person don't always match up with the Frank on page, either, and so what?

I think I imprinted on Ashlee when I heard "I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep" (which, oddly enough, came after I'd already reviewed the subsequent album), and then I basically fell in love when "So if you're listening, there's so much more to me you haven't seen" sunk in, so I want her to be that person, and to be the mastermind, even. And I don't see her being that person and her being a petulant brat are incompatible, any more than writing what I write and being a petulant brat are incompatible ("OK, then I won't write the piece" isn't exactly foreign to my thinking), and one person's petulance is another integrity. BUT, it seems to me that if "Ashlee" is something of a group achievement that various handlers and producers and writers and bizzers created, with Ashlee merely the nexus-vortex, then in some ways that's an even better story, all those contrary hands creating an interestingly complex, winning character. Either way, Ashlee being Ashlee on the one hand or music pros creating "Ashlee" on the other, it's art, and very human, and something the evil biz is supposedly incapable of nurturing or creating. And I don't see that John Darnielle or Craig Finn or whoever today's officially great songwriters are supposed to be are doing half as well (though I suppose I could study them more). No one since Eminem, actually. (Which isn't to say that great songwriters X and Y aren't there; I jus haven't found 'em.)

[edgeofwhatever]

Dave called The Ashlee Simpson Show "documented evidence of her authenticity," but it's not, unless you willfully ignore some scenes. It's documented evidence that she turned out to be awesome, and had some sort of input into that awesomeness, but the whole process is still a mystery. The show doesn't prove that she can write, she's not a record company creation, she deserves her contract--whatever it is people get all worked up about with Ashlee--precisely because the girl on the screen doesn't match the girl on the page, and she wasn't working toward music all along, and she didn't have any music till the record company entered the equation. It just leaves a lot of space for people to insert writers and producers and record execs into "Ashlee."

[skyecaptain]

To be totally fair, though, you're quoting my blunt jumping off point for a new feature on my blog called MAD AS HELL, starting with a quote from Simon Reynolds blatantly divorced from its context. The idea was for the conversation to start because of a spark from a fucking crazy person shouting out their window in a blast of unformed rage. Y'know, "proto-conversational acrimony" as SR might say. The biggest failure of the show is not trusting that showing the recording process is interesting -- I was really fascinated to see her dissatisfied with vocal takes, getting tips from John and Kara, etc., but there was hardly any of it. (And yeah, I fudged the point that "Unreachable" easily could have had no relation to the demo cut with the Sugar Ray dudes. So you're right on that one.)

Important to note that it is quite possible for Ashlee, on her second tour which I saw, anyway, to tear the roof off tha mutha. That sequence didn't give a great feel for the performance, but they also didn't hesitate to show BAD performances directly before and after that event, either.

[edgeofwhatever]

Yeah, so I'm jumping off. Convince me!

I mean, I believe it's possible for her to tear the roof off--beyond the Orange Bowl and every ending note, I've never seen her suck, and almost always seen her rock--but the MTV editing is so sketchy, I figure something must have been up. (But then again, this was pre-SNL, when they weren't trying to prove she could sing live, so maybe they were just piping in album tracks for the sake of piping in album tracks. But they piped them in selectively, so I don't know.)