Some Albums Through Early November, 2011
If the Osmonds can make a metal album, so can Feist - though it turns out she merely made a metals album... Best track on the Lauren Alaina alb is "Growing Her Wings," lyrics something of a prequel to Sara Evans' "Suds In The Bucket," which it also sounds like. Incidentally, "Suds In The Bucket" was written by Billy Montana, Randy's dad... If Feist can make a metals album, Sunny Sweeney can surely make one of concrete... Sunny of SNSD survives tractor mishap to return to Invincible Youth. We at koganbot had a discussion a few posts ago regarding her political prospects... How in the world did little teeny-voiced Selena Gomez make a track that reminds me of Judy Torres?
Albums and EPs I like, some I've not listened to in months, more than several I've not yet listened to twice:
1. SNSD Girls' Generation (1st Japan Album) (Universal Music Japan)
2. Britney Spears Femme Fatale (Jive)
3. Dev The Night The Sun Came Up (Universal Republic/Island)
4. Miranda Lambert Four The Record (RCA Nashville)
Click to view5. Rainbow SO 女 [EP] (DSP Media)
6. SOOLj Electro SOOLj [EP] (CNH)
7. Various Artists Mr.Collipark Presents Can I Have The Club Back Please? (colliparkmusic.com)
8. T-ara Temptastic [EP] (Core Contents Media)
9. HyunA Bubble Pop! [EP] (Cube Entertainment)
10. LPG The Special (Windmill Media)
11. Selena Gomez & The Scene When The Sun Goes Down (Hollywood)
12. Sunny Sweeney Concrete (Republic Nashville)
13. 2NE1 2nd Mini Album [EP] (YG Entertainment/KMP Holdings)
14. Lauren Alaina Wildflower (19 Recordings/Mercury Nashville)
15. DJ Bedbugs Teen Pop Lock And Drop Vol. 1 (cureforbedbugs.com)
16. Randy Montana Randy Montana (Mercury Nashville)
17. Feist Metals (Cherrytree/Interscope)
Btw, those of us who might vote for the SNSD 1st Japan Album need to coordinate what we're going to call the group's name and the album title. I think I came up with a pretty good solution (SNSD as band name, Girls' Generation (1st Japan Album) as title; SM is calling it 1st Japan Album on their YouTube page, and of course the album's title in Japan is Girls' Generation, not to be confused with the Korean album Girls' Generation, which came out four years ago and has no songs in common with the 1st Japan Album).
Thoughts about the format: Albums haven't gotten less interesting in the last few years, they've just been superseded in importance by singles, songs, tracks, hence I've been paying them scant attention. And no one's been paying me to review them.
A few things in the form's defense: if you put together a number of cuts by the same act, they're likely to resonate with one other. The big whomp of impact Ashlee Simpson had on me mid-decade wasn't just this or that song, but a whole lot of them together. Of course, such an impact can happen across a performer's albums and among her singles, which also happened in a big way with Ashlee (and then I was onto the rejects and one-offs). But getting a bunch of songs all together and listening at once can help the resonances and contrasts to resonate and contrast. (Songs by different performers resonate and contrast with one another nicely too, of course.)
Sometimes interesting oddities show up as album tracks that'd never be allowed if they had to stand in the single spotlight.
In Korea, the album now seems to be the culmination of a promotional push, rather than the start of one. Often only one new track gets to be a single, some or many of the other tracks being older singles. And the single that comes along ten minutes later may well lead off the deluxe edition, which the Koreans call, with greater honesty than we manage, a repackage.