Musings on 'Wrecking Ball'
There are times when the hype about an examples of popular culture gets to the point where I decide I need to get me a first-hand opinion. Thus it was with Harry Potter (leading to the existence of this very LJ, ultimately), and thus it has just been with the video for Miley Cyrus's 'Wrecking Ball', which I just watched on YouTube.
On the subject of it being Miley Cyrus's song, allow me a quiet songwriter's mutter, here. 'Wrecking Ball' isn't *her* song, as such. To me, that means that she wrote it, and she most definitely didn't. I checked. Miley merely performed it. She was the vehicle by which it was delivered to the public from a team of five songwriters I've never heard of. If it is, as many speculate, an account of the breakdown of her relationship with Liam Hemsworth, then we have to assume that either the songwriters wrote the song to fit her presumed situation with view to selling it to her, or were commissioned to write material for her with her input on the subject matter. Knowing what I have learnt in the last few years about the songwriting industry, I'd say the former is much more likely. Which means a team of songwriters have succeeded in selling a song to the current US pop princess, which is a massive coup, so good on them.
The song itself isn't bad, I think. The verses are great: I love the little internal rhyme before the main rhyme (We kissed, I fell/ under your spell), and the way they frame that melodically in a minor key in a way that fits the subject matter nicely. Nice opening sequence in the backing track. The lyrics aren't bad either. They manage to carry the titular metaphor without too much straining, and while they don't say anything too profound or original, the metaphor itself is an interesting one and they have a better grasp on rhyme and scansion than many. Love the pre-chorus, as oft I do. I'm less keen on the chorus, which follows the Pat Pattison school of songwriting so devoutly (the chorus must be BIG and go UP melodically, and the production must hit an almighty CLIMAX to make it clear that the chorus has arrived) it verges on musical cliche. But hey, as the guy whose songwriting course I went to a few months ago said, there's a formula to writing hit songs, and it's worked for them. And it suits Miley's singing voice, which is likewise good.
The big controversy is the video, of course, not the song itself, so let's get to it. I've never actually seen footage of Miley before (such is my failure to be Down With The Kids), but as pop princesses go, I like the way she looks. Pretty and slim (as is mandatory for pop princesses), but with short hair, a couple of mildly punky earrings in the side of her ear, and reasonably... real-looking. She doesn't look like some pop princess types who look like they were lured into a recording studio on the way home from the modelling shoot, with cascading blow-dried locks and discreet plastic surgery. The red lipstick makes her lips look a bit strange and straight in her Sinead O'Connor tribute opening sequence, but hey, that's just my personal taste.
Alas, just as my liking for the song takes a dive at the chorus, so too does my liking for the video (which is perfectly OK up to then). Yeah, this is the Highly Sexualised Bit that people are so tutting over, but my problem isn't that it's Sexualised, it's that all the simulated sledgehammer oral sex and strutting about all pouty in underwear and swinging about on the wrecking ball in shots alternating between white cotton underwear and not-quite-showing-naughty-bits nudity with sensual arched back stuff jars with the mood of the song. What's the implication, that she's trying to tempt him back with a soft porn film sequence? If she's as devastated as the lyrics and melody of the verses imply, would she really be up to all this seductive writhing about? It just feels all wrong to me. Maybe I'm too literal and missing the ironic juxtaposition here, but to me, barely clad seductive writhing about is for Seduction Songs, or Tongue-In-Cheek (or Elsewhere) Diva Tease Songs, or Femme Fatale songs, or at a pinch any sort of love song other than a heartbreak and devastation love song. I have known heartbreak and devastation, and believe me, it didn't inspire me to set up my tripod and do a selfie peekaboo lingerie shoot for the object of my spurned affections.
Still, while the jarring moods of song and video don't do it for me, I otherwise shrug in Miley's general direction. She's hardly doing anything that new or shocking. Sex has always sold, it's just that in the internet era you've got to up the ante a lot more to get noticed. It is depressing and cynicism-evoking that sex appeal is so easy and essential a selling point for young female singers, but given that it is, finding a controversial way to use it to garner sales and attention is good marketing and she (hopefully and rather than or her publicity people) knows it and has pulled it off in a major way.
On the subject of it being Miley Cyrus's song, allow me a quiet songwriter's mutter, here. 'Wrecking Ball' isn't *her* song, as such. To me, that means that she wrote it, and she most definitely didn't. I checked. Miley merely performed it. She was the vehicle by which it was delivered to the public from a team of five songwriters I've never heard of. If it is, as many speculate, an account of the breakdown of her relationship with Liam Hemsworth, then we have to assume that either the songwriters wrote the song to fit her presumed situation with view to selling it to her, or were commissioned to write material for her with her input on the subject matter. Knowing what I have learnt in the last few years about the songwriting industry, I'd say the former is much more likely. Which means a team of songwriters have succeeded in selling a song to the current US pop princess, which is a massive coup, so good on them.
The song itself isn't bad, I think. The verses are great: I love the little internal rhyme before the main rhyme (We kissed, I fell/ under your spell), and the way they frame that melodically in a minor key in a way that fits the subject matter nicely. Nice opening sequence in the backing track. The lyrics aren't bad either. They manage to carry the titular metaphor without too much straining, and while they don't say anything too profound or original, the metaphor itself is an interesting one and they have a better grasp on rhyme and scansion than many. Love the pre-chorus, as oft I do. I'm less keen on the chorus, which follows the Pat Pattison school of songwriting so devoutly (the chorus must be BIG and go UP melodically, and the production must hit an almighty CLIMAX to make it clear that the chorus has arrived) it verges on musical cliche. But hey, as the guy whose songwriting course I went to a few months ago said, there's a formula to writing hit songs, and it's worked for them. And it suits Miley's singing voice, which is likewise good.
The big controversy is the video, of course, not the song itself, so let's get to it. I've never actually seen footage of Miley before (such is my failure to be Down With The Kids), but as pop princesses go, I like the way she looks. Pretty and slim (as is mandatory for pop princesses), but with short hair, a couple of mildly punky earrings in the side of her ear, and reasonably... real-looking. She doesn't look like some pop princess types who look like they were lured into a recording studio on the way home from the modelling shoot, with cascading blow-dried locks and discreet plastic surgery. The red lipstick makes her lips look a bit strange and straight in her Sinead O'Connor tribute opening sequence, but hey, that's just my personal taste.
Alas, just as my liking for the song takes a dive at the chorus, so too does my liking for the video (which is perfectly OK up to then). Yeah, this is the Highly Sexualised Bit that people are so tutting over, but my problem isn't that it's Sexualised, it's that all the simulated sledgehammer oral sex and strutting about all pouty in underwear and swinging about on the wrecking ball in shots alternating between white cotton underwear and not-quite-showing-naughty-bits nudity with sensual arched back stuff jars with the mood of the song. What's the implication, that she's trying to tempt him back with a soft porn film sequence? If she's as devastated as the lyrics and melody of the verses imply, would she really be up to all this seductive writhing about? It just feels all wrong to me. Maybe I'm too literal and missing the ironic juxtaposition here, but to me, barely clad seductive writhing about is for Seduction Songs, or Tongue-In-Cheek (or Elsewhere) Diva Tease Songs, or Femme Fatale songs, or at a pinch any sort of love song other than a heartbreak and devastation love song. I have known heartbreak and devastation, and believe me, it didn't inspire me to set up my tripod and do a selfie peekaboo lingerie shoot for the object of my spurned affections.
Still, while the jarring moods of song and video don't do it for me, I otherwise shrug in Miley's general direction. She's hardly doing anything that new or shocking. Sex has always sold, it's just that in the internet era you've got to up the ante a lot more to get noticed. It is depressing and cynicism-evoking that sex appeal is so easy and essential a selling point for young female singers, but given that it is, finding a controversial way to use it to garner sales and attention is good marketing and she (hopefully and rather than or her publicity people) knows it and has pulled it off in a major way.