And the best is no one knows who you are, just another girl alone at the bar
Nitsuh writes about my homies in the 303:
It's not like there's anything new about boyish white guys trying on the kind of masculinity they're getting out of hip-hop - in these cases it can lead to some incredibly boyish bullshit. No, the bits that get me are the really pop ones, these 3OH!3 choruses that represent pretty much the only place you can hear boyish white "rock" guys singing the kinds of pop hooks you could almost expect from a Gaga or Britney song. (Or, you know, Ke$ha or Katy Perry collaboration.)
And Nitsuh says much more as well. Cites FOB and MCR as precursors but thinks of 3OH!3 as breaking a barrier. Then he gives us 140 characters to say what we think, so I write this:
Stooges-Eminem (self)contempt but deliberately paper thin; Kelly C crucial precursor for tune-rock, Megan McC "Tap That" for tune-rap-rock
Meanwhile Tom, expanding luxuriously in his tumblr lair, writes:
3OH!3 and Ke$ha and even Katy Perry (still not heard Brokencyde) are the first pop to make me feel old. Maybe just 3OH!3 Not in a "I don't get this" or "I couldn't get this" way, I think I get it OK even if I couldn't articulate it - but I don't think getting it could feel natural.
Tom also points out that grime-pop amalgams are hot atop the Brit charts these days.
I apparently can never feel old, since the newest of the new still seem like 1969 to me, or 1965 (though the first Wednesday in February was a landmark day, when I was given a seniors discount at Albertsons without even being asked if I was eligible for one). This the Stooges ("I Wanna Be Your Dog") comparison I made last year on poptimists' Yet Another Year In Pop:
I ticked [3OH!3's "Don't Trust Me"] 'cause it absolutely kills everything else on the list including the fine JLS in a distant second, 'cause it's stinging and obnoxious and unsure and oversure, and I think that except maybe for the two or three people here who hate rocked-up harmonies no matter who does them, if you claim that this is not good MUSIC, you're a liar. My only real objection to the Helen Keller part is that 3OH!3 stop the song dead to sing it, and this cuts off too much of the momentum. But if you're sure what this song means and how it plays culturally then you must be way more penetrating than I am, 'cause I live in these guys' area code and I don't know how to read it, or how to read the fact of all the women singing it or acting it out online themselves, so I'm going to have to use my imagination based on what's actually going on in the song: a lot might have to do with the way you can dig in and live the line "I'm not fuckin' scared o' him" - when the line comes, you're in it, this is about a party with a fight bubbling out of itself, partying yourself into oblivion and anonymity, as if the oblivion itself were a way of putting up a fight, or a way to outlast the fear, anyway, a release that the trust fund can't buy, now I'm ready to close my eyes, now I'm ready to close my mind, now I wanna be your dog, and that's what the girls singing and miming might identify with, and the couple of guys who wrote the song might identify with, too, 'cause that's what I identify with. But I knew I liked the song before I went through any of this thought process, knew halfway in, even before Helen Keller, knew when I heard the "oh woah" and the "I'm not fuckin' scared o' him."
[But 3OH!3 are to the Stooges and Eminem what the Syndicate Of Sound and Shadows Of Night are to the Stones and the Yardbirds, grabbing at the attitude and bratting it up, though I wouldn't know if 3OH!3 know anything about the Stooges. They must know Eminem.][Maybe they're the new Brownsville Station.][I only know one song by Brownsville Station, actually.]
It's not like there's anything new about boyish white guys trying on the kind of masculinity they're getting out of hip-hop - in these cases it can lead to some incredibly boyish bullshit. No, the bits that get me are the really pop ones, these 3OH!3 choruses that represent pretty much the only place you can hear boyish white "rock" guys singing the kinds of pop hooks you could almost expect from a Gaga or Britney song. (Or, you know, Ke$ha or Katy Perry collaboration.)
And Nitsuh says much more as well. Cites FOB and MCR as precursors but thinks of 3OH!3 as breaking a barrier. Then he gives us 140 characters to say what we think, so I write this:
Stooges-Eminem (self)contempt but deliberately paper thin; Kelly C crucial precursor for tune-rock, Megan McC "Tap That" for tune-rap-rock
Meanwhile Tom, expanding luxuriously in his tumblr lair, writes:
3OH!3 and Ke$ha and even Katy Perry (still not heard Brokencyde) are the first pop to make me feel old. Maybe just 3OH!3 Not in a "I don't get this" or "I couldn't get this" way, I think I get it OK even if I couldn't articulate it - but I don't think getting it could feel natural.
Tom also points out that grime-pop amalgams are hot atop the Brit charts these days.
I apparently can never feel old, since the newest of the new still seem like 1969 to me, or 1965 (though the first Wednesday in February was a landmark day, when I was given a seniors discount at Albertsons without even being asked if I was eligible for one). This the Stooges ("I Wanna Be Your Dog") comparison I made last year on poptimists' Yet Another Year In Pop:
I ticked [3OH!3's "Don't Trust Me"] 'cause it absolutely kills everything else on the list including the fine JLS in a distant second, 'cause it's stinging and obnoxious and unsure and oversure, and I think that except maybe for the two or three people here who hate rocked-up harmonies no matter who does them, if you claim that this is not good MUSIC, you're a liar. My only real objection to the Helen Keller part is that 3OH!3 stop the song dead to sing it, and this cuts off too much of the momentum. But if you're sure what this song means and how it plays culturally then you must be way more penetrating than I am, 'cause I live in these guys' area code and I don't know how to read it, or how to read the fact of all the women singing it or acting it out online themselves, so I'm going to have to use my imagination based on what's actually going on in the song: a lot might have to do with the way you can dig in and live the line "I'm not fuckin' scared o' him" - when the line comes, you're in it, this is about a party with a fight bubbling out of itself, partying yourself into oblivion and anonymity, as if the oblivion itself were a way of putting up a fight, or a way to outlast the fear, anyway, a release that the trust fund can't buy, now I'm ready to close my eyes, now I'm ready to close my mind, now I wanna be your dog, and that's what the girls singing and miming might identify with, and the couple of guys who wrote the song might identify with, too, 'cause that's what I identify with. But I knew I liked the song before I went through any of this thought process, knew halfway in, even before Helen Keller, knew when I heard the "oh woah" and the "I'm not fuckin' scared o' him."
[But 3OH!3 are to the Stooges and Eminem what the Syndicate Of Sound and Shadows Of Night are to the Stones and the Yardbirds, grabbing at the attitude and bratting it up, though I wouldn't know if 3OH!3 know anything about the Stooges. They must know Eminem.][Maybe they're the new Brownsville Station.][I only know one song by Brownsville Station, actually.]