Is this all Ashlee's got to say?
The new Ashlee song, "Outta My Head" [NEW LINK] is ridiculously silly and catchy, Ashlee telling some nag to stop blabbing in her face, with a song that, if it gets much airplay, will be stuck in a lot of people's heads (probably won't get the airplay, though; she's been half blacklisted since SNL): the voice has that throat snarl of hers and she uses it to make her reggae mannerisms penetrate. So if this were done by some newby it would thrill me, and Timbo creates a nice little reggae rhythm with a slight hop and skip in it.
But Ashlee can get more warmth and passion from her regular voice (including doing reggae, as in "Fall In Love With Me" and "Burnin' Up"), and there's absolutely nothing striking about these lyrics; they're too vague to even be interestingly conversational (compare to the old Joe Jones rock 'n' roll classic, "You talk too much, you worry me to death/You talk too much, you even worry my pet"... "You talk about people that you don't know/You talk about people wherever you go," just naturally lays out the situation). Ashlee's got an interesting idea, "All your noise is messin' with my head, you're in my head," an invitation to metaphors (like a song worming its way through her ears and into her cranium, where she can't shake it), but lyrics like "I got a problem with the way that you behave" don't carry much at all, nor does "all of your opinions, keep them to yourself." Um. Why? Which opinions? What's wrong with opinions?
I don't get how someone who three years ago could tell a whole story in one line ("I'm the one who's crawling on the ground/When you say 'Love makes the world go round'") won't create an incident out of three verses. Maybe she's just run out of stories, though I don't believe that. Maybe she's lost the urge to tell them.
This sounds good enough for me to be conflicted about it for months, but I worry that the Ashlee of Autobiography is simply gone.
But Ashlee can get more warmth and passion from her regular voice (including doing reggae, as in "Fall In Love With Me" and "Burnin' Up"), and there's absolutely nothing striking about these lyrics; they're too vague to even be interestingly conversational (compare to the old Joe Jones rock 'n' roll classic, "You talk too much, you worry me to death/You talk too much, you even worry my pet"... "You talk about people that you don't know/You talk about people wherever you go," just naturally lays out the situation). Ashlee's got an interesting idea, "All your noise is messin' with my head, you're in my head," an invitation to metaphors (like a song worming its way through her ears and into her cranium, where she can't shake it), but lyrics like "I got a problem with the way that you behave" don't carry much at all, nor does "all of your opinions, keep them to yourself." Um. Why? Which opinions? What's wrong with opinions?
I don't get how someone who three years ago could tell a whole story in one line ("I'm the one who's crawling on the ground/When you say 'Love makes the world go round'") won't create an incident out of three verses. Maybe she's just run out of stories, though I don't believe that. Maybe she's lost the urge to tell them.
This sounds good enough for me to be conflicted about it for months, but I worry that the Ashlee of Autobiography is simply gone.