Ke$ha Day 2

Mar 04, 2010 23:57

I was with friends at Tokyo Joe's this evening, a quasi fast-food Japanese joint, and music was piped-in, adding noise to a place already full of crowd noise. Not sure what the purpose of the music is, since it's not loud enough to help create the ambience. Perhaps by adding more noise to the noise it provides cover for people who don't want the ( Read more... )

bosh, ke$ha

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chuckeddy March 5 2010, 15:51:41 UTC
Man, still not hearing this -- "Blah Blah Blah," I mean. I like the album fine. But to my ears, "Blah Blah Blah" really goes downhill after its amazingly visceral first 17 or 18 second (which I'd probably give a 10 to), and after that -- when the melody comes in, I guess -- it slips into averageness. Good averageness, but still averageness I'm having trouble caring about. Need to listen to the album more; honestly have yet to pick up on all the audaciously retardo lines everybody keeps raving about either, so obviously they're at least not jumping out of the background at me. Mainly, though, I guess I'm starting to realize that I might have no idea what people mean by "bosh" -- not clear to me, say, how this song is more HI-NRG Europop than, say, "Bad Romance" much less, I don't know, Aqua or Las Ketchup or Jordy or somebody. (Maybe they were too early to be bosh-worthy, or didn't get high enough on the charts? Though it is interesing Gaga and Ke$ha are Americans!) So basically, so far, I wish I was hearing more Scooter (and Dictators ( ... )

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chuckeddy March 5 2010, 15:57:10 UTC
"17 or 18 seconds" plural I meant, obviously.

Also wondering why nobody has compared the album yet to Licensed To Ill (not that I'm saying it's necessarily comparable, but that one definitely reminded me of the Dictators in its day -- and you could dance fast to it, too.)

(And right, I know it was Metal Mike -- not you -- who made the Dictators comparison {See my reposting of it on Dave's Tumblr and on Jukebox.} I don't even know what you think of the Dictators, come to think of it, Frank! And Mike was talking about her lyrics, where you're talking about her music -- get that. Yet somehow you end up in a similar place.)

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skyecaptain March 5 2010, 15:59:49 UTC
Don't think that "Bad Romance" is any less indebted, but I think "bosh" has to be a little less...I think the word is "tasteful"?...in its execution. The three you mention after "Bad Romance" may just pre-date the concept, yeah, though I think Aqua comes closest. There's also a specific strain of bosh in which non-Europop songs are given a throbbing techno beat (the ones I think of most readily are Cascada, though to be honest I think in some ways their version of "Sk8er Boi" is less in your face than the original). The only direct sonic Scooter link that I find on Animal is "Take It Off." But there's something about Scooter's single-mindedness that I think Ke$ha has in a way Lady GaGa doesn't.

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chuckeddy March 5 2010, 16:06:52 UTC
See, I don't hear how Cascada are less tasteful than Gaga, at all. (Not sure I hear how Ke$ha is either, though apparently it's in the lyrics and the noise I haven't yet picked up on.)

Do get how Scotter is less tasteful than all of them, though.

Actually, I'd say the synths in "Hot And Cold" by Katy Perry sound pretty darn boshy, or at least Europoppy, too.

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skyecaptain March 5 2010, 16:44:09 UTC
This is why Cascada doesn't quite fit the example, it's just the one I think of most obviously as doing something boshy. Scooter seems to be the Center of All Bosh in my own mind, though.

Ke$ha's tone of voice, whether she's singing nonsense or not, often seems of the "neener-neener" variety, snotty and petulant (I even find this to be true in the more Katy Perry-like ballad songs, her singing voice having a certain throaty screaming quality to it), whereas Gaga actually makes even her gibberish signify somewhat...well, maybe "tastefully" isn't the word after all. But there's something cool about Gaga that Ke$ha doesn't have.

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edgeofwhatever March 5 2010, 22:15:27 UTC
I think that cool has at least a little something to do with how much more stuctured GaGa's songs are. The melody/music is a lot more structured, for one -- in a lot of Ke$ha's songs, I found it difficult to tell when the verse was ending and the chorus was beginning as I listened to it for the first time, whereas I could always tell with GaGa (and of course GaGa's beats are much more rigid). But the vocals are more structured as well -- they both have tracks where they just singsong their way through the verses, passing time till the big chorus, but GaGa's singsong, like her beats, is more rigid and even. The overall effect is that GaGa feels cleaner, more stylish than Ke$ha.

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koganbot March 5 2010, 16:53:56 UTC
This'll no doubt by a xpost by the time I hit submit.

I'd forgotten Aqua, despite being the person who put "Lollipop (Candyman)" in my top ten of the '90s list. Aqua's beats might be too non-techno-aggressive to be bosh, though.

I think katstevens may be the person most responsible for popularizing the term "bosh" (at least in its poptimists use; I seem to recall that in the intertitles to the original Douglas Fairbanks' version of The Mark Of Zorro Don Diego's father always kept saying "bosh!" but I think he merely meant "nonsense," since in 1920 Eurodisco had yet to cross over to the U.S. in a major way). I don't know if Kat would endorse my view of the blah blah blah chorus as being essence du bosh, but I don't care; I think the blah-blah-blah chorus is the pinnacle of bosh, and I'll define bosh any way I want in order to get that result ( ... )

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skyecaptain March 5 2010, 17:11:52 UTC
junior high school creeps playing tough

I certainly get a vibe of "junior high school creep playing tough" from Ke$ha. It squares with the "13 year old's sense of what being a party girl is" commentary (perhaps the missing link between legit party girl and girlboymusic's vision of Ke$ha as something more like a street urchin). Maybe the difference between Ke$ha and Gaga is that Ke$ha would have terrorized Gaga on the playground, only for Gaga to get her revenge off the playground. Ke$ha still treats LA as a playground, and the game she's playing isn't very good -- her details aren't very imaginative, and she's been playing the same game for so long that it's more of a ritual than something one does for fun. Which would explain why there is a lot of disaffection in, e.g., her "blah blah blah." But there's also still a playground around it, which makes what she does in it secondary to the idea of where she's doing it. (OK, metaphor is starting to wheeze and buckle under its own weight here so I'll let it go.)

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skyecaptain March 5 2010, 17:13:38 UTC
And no, I'm still not clear on why where Ke$ha chooses to play her games is different from where Gaga chooses to play hers. It's still just a gut feeling at this point still.

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koganbot March 5 2010, 17:37:04 UTC
I'm saying this in ignorance, since I haven't delved enough into either GaGa or Ke$ha, and this is conceptual as much as (or more than) it is aural, but GaGa is everyone is a star, it all can be art, which can come from the Merry Pranksters and the Dead and the Airplane as much as from Warhol and Madonna, but it's definitely an artist's viewpoint, someone who's committed to long-term creation, building your art over many nights and many dances, not the moment's pie-in-your-face explosion. And Ke$ha may actually be a long-term artist (though my money's not on it), but her sound and persona are the blotto and the instant blat.

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chuckeddy March 5 2010, 17:47:42 UTC
GaGa is everyone is a star, it all can be art... it's definitely an artist's viewpoint, someone who's committed to long-term creation

I see that in her videos and in pictures of her in magazines, obviously. Not so sure where it shows up in her music, though.

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koganbot March 5 2010, 18:17:52 UTC
Actually, Ke$ha's album turned out to be less blotto and blat than I'd hoped (though maybe doing the blotto and blat once very well and going onto other things is the saner course).

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chuckeddy March 5 2010, 17:33:27 UTC
Not sure what you mean here; from the Jukebox thread a lot of the complaint about Ke$ha - at least a lot of Lex's complaints about Ke$ha - is that she's doing a boring old hat version of big dumb party

Oh that's easy (though there's no reason you should know what I mean there, I was just strafing aimlessly by that point in my rant); it came from Dave's Tumblr yesterday (though I'm pretty sure Dave didn't write it -- with Tumblr, I can never tell who wrote what half the time, which drives me nuts): "I hear people talking kind of anxiously about how the emptiness of her (persona’s) party-always lifestyle isn’t reflected in the lyrics, and I wonder why I never hear that about 3OH!3 or Kid Rock or Lil Jon." I wonder where whoever wrote that has been for the last several years, myself -- though now that I re-read the comment, it may not have been saying what I thought it was saying; seems to imply people want the party-always lifestyle to wind up in her lyrics more?? (And maybe in Kid Rock's and Lil Jon's lyrics more too???) Weird. I ( ... )

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koganbot March 5 2010, 18:01:31 UTC
I think what that person meant was that this is a silly thing to take Ke$ha to task for, for not saying that there's a sad emptiness that underlying her partying, and so the person would be asking, how come no one's criticizing Kid Rock and Lil Jon and 3OH!3 for not themselves writing songs that portray the sad emptiness that underlies their partying. (Seems to me that Rebel Without A Pause did have sad emptiness songs, and Ke$ha does have one herself, which I'm sure that the people over on Tumblr were aware of and I'm typing fast and not checking back, so now that I think of it I may just be confused; Dave and Erika were saying that they consider Ke$ha's tears of a party clown song one of her worst; I'd place it in the middle; it has a nice tune.)

But then again, I don't know if Lil Jon or Kid Rock ever did a song about brushing their teeth with Jack. I wouldn't put it past the Ying Yang Twins, however; though I'd hope that they wouldn't follow it up in concert with "Wait (The Whisper Song)."

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chuckeddy March 5 2010, 18:06:49 UTC
Seems to me that Rebel Without A Pause did have sad emptiness songs

Yeah, I'd probably put "Only God Knows Why" and "Black Chic, white Guy" in that category. And as Kid's gotten more country tears-in-your-beer sorry-for-himself later in life, I'd guess that his sad emptiness quotient has increased, if anything.

But okay, I do see how I probably misread that (twice) now.

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chuckeddy March 6 2010, 02:36:42 UTC
That was me who wrote that, and I'm positive that Chuck's right and I'm wrong about people not taking Kid Rock and 3OH!3 to task for their consequence-free party-hearty music; I just haven't seen any of that taking-to-task. (Where have I been? Mostly listening to very old music; I've only really started trying to participate in current pop discussions within the last year.)

And also of course Kid Rock addresses the emptiness plenty. (I don't know 3OH!3 beyond the one hit, or Lil Jon beyond his guestwork.)

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