Coulson's Musical Taste

[lizifer]

Sampaguita said:

To Liz: I think Craig David's a great R&B artist too, but I haven't heard any singles of his on the radio lately. Tell me about this one. Oh! And if you could send over the lyrics of that song's hook, I'd be much obliged.

yeah craig is a great artist. will find u the lyrics to the song later

[freelancer]

Chantal Kreviazuk?
Oh she's around. She put out a song for the Stuart Little 2 soundtrack. *cough*crapcrap*cough* In the meantime, sit down to Colour Moving and Still. Hurrah! Good times.

[Sampaguita]

That album came out in 1999 or 2000, right? I really liked her... but I recently sat down to listen to her first album and found that I only still liked a few songs on it.

Did you know that she sang the theme song to the newly late "Providence"? I can't believe that timeslot is going to be filled by Josh Brolin pretending to be a progressive senator.

"Realness"... that's certainly a loaded term. I think you can define "realness" in a performer as being comfortable in their own skin and knowing who they are as performers... or willing to legitimately question who they are in front of billions of people. I think J-Lo is real. SOMETIMES it almost seems like Britney is real (though, sometimes... NO). Norah Jones is real. Avril is not.

Singing talent, though, is a different story. But then, you can have all the singing talent in the world but if you go in the wrong direction with it, you can certainly look ridiculous or pretentious or talentless. God, look at poor Christina... Look at what Mariah became... Augh and Sheryl Crow-- who doesn't look as bad as the others but still... A former member of her band came and guest-lectured for one of my classes last year and it was illuminating. And why turn a poem about two people going to Los Angeles to drink themselves to death into a pop-single?

But as fun as this is, I've gotta get to my advisor's office because i'm 15 minutes late for an appointment.

[Mandragora]

I have to admit Cristina Aguilera can sing, but I don't know what happened to her. She seems like she has become a Britney rip-off or just plainly following the footsteps of Mariah Carey. I liked Mariah in her "I'll be There" and "Dreamlover" days, a weebit on her "Breakdown" days, but "Glitter"... oh dear.

I have to commend Britney, at least, for being original, with her Lolita look in that school video. It started with HER anyway. Look at Shakira. She looks like Britney. J-Lo, she has mader her mark, and she's doing better, in my opinion, as a music artist than an actress.

Girlbands are okay... but not all of them. Spicegirls... yeah, they have created a hype and it was fun... I am more of an All Saints girl, though. Sugarbabes, they have a beat, at the least. And I quite understand why even Prince Charles is smitten with Kylie Minogue, her dance music is something. There are music that are just contagious, it doesn't matter if it's real or not.

[Sampaguita]

Shakira... Funnily enough, she's a big part of my senior thesis. (The abstract of which I've gotta come up with by Wednesday... bleck.) I'm working on figuring out how race gets played out on and by the bodies of women of color in popular music... and I'm looking at three different women: Janet Jackson, Jocelyn Enriquez (Filipina-American who was rather successful in the dance music industry), and Shakira.

Josh (my mentor) actually wrote a pretty good article/column about her around a year ago... It's to lengthy to reproduce in this posting, but here are a couple of quotes I enjoyed from the piece:

With the U.S. release of her first English-dominant album, Laundry Service, the alternative-leaning pop-rock innovator from the coastal carnival capital of Barranquilla, who used to perform barefoot and rock dreadlocks and headbang as hard as Univision would let her, has become a belly-dancing and ass-shaking stand-in for multinational money. Groomed by the Estefans and former Madonna and Michael Jackson manager Freddy DeMann, the once difficult to pin down style-switcher has been made into an exotic ethnic brand – a feisty Latina with a hint of the mystical East, an exotic replicant programmed to speak the global language of commerce (English).

And it's working. Laundry Service debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, and her video for "Whenever, Wherever" – where Ricky's hips and Jennifer's ass do a Moroccan table dance – became an instant Total Request Live favorite (she's like a brown Britney!). So much so that she all but reenacted the video for her live TRL and Saturday Night Live performances, right down to the belly undulations cued to the swell of Middle Eastern strings and drum slaps.


"The spirit of conquest is a trait that has survived in human beings from the beginning," she said. "I want it for the same reason the Spaniards wanted to come to America. You have to cross the oceans. To be able to sink my Colombian flag in this land, that is a motivation."

So I suppose we've gotten off easy. When the Spaniards sank their flag into Colombia at the turn of the 16th century, they enslaved Africans, converted Indians, and exploited the local corn crop. All "this land" has been left with is another blond with a toned midriff who speaks English and drinks Pepsi.

The link to the full article is: www.sfbg.com/36/17/x_frequencies.html

the rest of my message to follow...

[Sampaguita]

Now, while on some levels I absolutely agree with Josh, I think that there are some things about Shakira's positionality that can be seen as empowered and "authentic" in terms of music and representation. Her existence within mainstream pop IS-- whether Josh wants to admit it or not, though I don't think he'd argue with me-- a disturbance within dominant culture. The fact is, she is rocking out... as she has been for a while. It's just that her image got all sexed-up and she's singing in English. She got her foot in the door AND she's sorta refusing to become Carmen Miranda.

But the fact remains that she did sex-up her image, dye her hair blonde, start singing in English AND she did name her album "Laundry Service" (almost an obvious declaration of "white-washing). In keeping the sexed-up image, she's venturing into the dangerous realm of exoticism (a seemingly innocuous form of racism, but extremely hurtful once racial and sexual politics come into play). It's a provocative issue centering around what her marketing strategies/strategists hope is her provocative image.

As for the rest of it...

Glitter-- there are no words to describe the disgust. Oh, that poor actor that played her love interest... I don't think any casting director will ever take him seriously ever again. ::shudders::

Kylie Minogue-- Good dance music, I'll admit. I don't know how many of you know about Paulina Rubio, but I think it's disturbing how much she and Kyle resemble each other... Sometimes I think their singing voices sound the same... And we all thought cloning was impossible 20-some-odd-years-ago.

GOOD Girlbands? Wild Orchid-- based on the name. Dixie Chicks-- based on the songs and the sound. The Spicegirls were okay for 5 minutes, then I got my sanity back and realized that they were much too old to be acting the way that they were. Whatever happened to them, BTW?

Contagious and catchy... Here's a catchy-as-all-hell song: "Mmmmm Bop" by Hanson.

[Mandragora]

MMMBOP! Oh dear, I heard this story once when a guy nearly got into an accident because of that song... he was driving his van and then all of a sudden the radio station started playing the song and it REALLY annoyed him and he reached for the dial to change the station... he nearly bumped into a bicycle-cart.

"So I suppose we've gotten off easy. When the Spaniards sank their flag into Colombia at the turn of the 16th century, they enslaved Africans, converted Indians, and exploited the local corn crop. All "this land" has been left with is another blond with a toned midriff who speaks English and drinks Pepsi."

--- I very much see the point in that. It's the emerging popculture of other countries (very much including this one) that have been influenced that much by or former colonies of the West. There is ALWAYS like this Western counterpart of a perfomer in the local industry, ie the Elvis of so and so... really pathetic.

Well, that would be another topic on the subject of identity and popular culture. But then, it has also affected very much the mode of artistic expression, and then just wrap these expressions into nice shiny packages and what we have is a commodity. Sad but true.

Just finished reading the script "Basquiat", and I like what this character (I think it's Albert Milo) who said that art has never really been popular, it's writing about art that has become popular. And the litany on how to be famous.... dear, I should hunt a copy of that movie.

I think "Basquiat" is one of those stories that have effectively illustrated the rise and fall of one artist and the struggling powerplay of fame and talent. Reminds me of Christian in a way. And yes, responding to such thing as fandom would be a part of the 'being famous litany', so I quite understand his, uh, resistance.

Another good read in relation to that subject would be Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", but then it's more of a story of a non-conformist.

[ifrasnyccoulson]

don't worry ausaims, i live in the states and have no clue what ms dynimite, or whatever there name is, is.

[cheesy_badgers]

jencoulson said:

Right now I'm in an Avril Lavigne mood. Her music is about stuff I can actually relate to. She's just a normal teenager with ordinary problems and stuff. The reason I like her and NOT Britney Spears or whoever is because her music is very real, it's not all sugar-coated.

Yep, I agree with that, I like Avril Lavigne's album, it's great. I also like Michelle Branch's album.

I'm also a huge fan of the Manic Street Preachers (and no-one better try tell me these are pop!! Lol!), they are fantastic. They're so original and actually care about what they are singing about, which makes a change. Coldplay like I said are another of my fave bands, as are Oasis, Travis, Stereophonics and David Gray is good.

[lizifer]

christina, girl can sing and some of her stuff is cool.

britney; some of her songs are ok.

shakira, 'underneath your clothes' is good, rest of her stuff i've heard, i don't like!

'mmmmm bop' that song is so catchy, a great, fun song!

kylie, she was good in her early days, these days i think shes crap!

mariah, shes gone down-hill too!

girlbands; sugababes are pretty good, personally i prefer all saints and destinys child.

[Sampaguita]

"Basquiat"!!!! Josh also wrote a column related to him... but it's much more about music...

www.sfbg.com/36/20/x_frequencies.html

As for colonialism, I think I already told you my issues with that. And I know I'm implicated in this crap just being "American" by birth. Did I ever tell you that my dad was once part of the New People's Army [in the P.I.] in his youth? But anyways... yeah, I'm very conscious about racial and ethnic identity and how prone it can be a tool for Western cultural imperialism. I agree with Josh more than I disagree with him. I suppose it's because I've barely just entered that "angry" stage after realizing that I belong to a people that was colonized for 400 years-- first by Spain and then by the U.S. It's ironic that the nation of my birth is the U.S.-- so sometimes I don't know if this is an anger I'm justified in having because I don't feel the effects as strongly. God, I must sound patronizing and arrogantly idealistic... I should shut up about this now.

Oh, and Liz: If you liked "Underneath Your Clothes" by Shakira, you'd probably like her song "The One"-- and if you were particularly attracted to the "Penny Lane" influence present in "Underneath Your Clothes" you'd probably like her song "Pies Descalzos, Suenos Blancos"-- and download her song "Estoy Aqui" from the MTV Unplugged album [not from the Pies Descalzos Album-- that one sounds to clean and produced but it's worth listening to at least once]. She's a good artist/ musician when she's not about the exoticism and selling out to the Global market. And I have to say, she's a wonderful poet-- especially in Spanish.

As for Avril: I like some of her songs, but I hate the fact that she acquired her image with such affectations. And her self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude bothers me. Her credibility as a "punk" artist is very questionable, because she doesn't know much about punk music. She's only doing what her marketers and image-makers told her to. I like to think of her as one of those candies that pretends to be sour, but is almost as sweet as the others. Her tunes are catchy, though.

Michelle Branch kicks ass... even though her songs have the potential to be disposable. We'll see how her career plays out. Maverick promises to be a positive force in her career, though... It's run by Madonna-- and look how long her career lasted.

I'm having some regrets about starting this music thread... I can't seem to make myself shut up on it. But then, I don't really regret it because this is way too fun.

Jen, what's your favorite Oasis song? Mine remains "Don't Look Back In Anger."

[Mandragora]

WOW Sampaguita, really? My father was a studet activist and never got around joining the movements that long because he got kicked out from his first college because of that. The time I was bordering to be one, he got REALLY mad at me. I think he knew a couple of people who disappeared and joined the Army.

If that's the case with Shakira, that's interesting. I don't know, I only know "Whenever, wherever" and I wanted to scream whenever wherever I hear it!

I am quite careful criticizing Avril when my sister's around, she's a fan (she actually calls me a musical eilitist, which I don't really care, if that meant standing up for my opinions in music). And yes, I have this friend who dislikes Avril's self-righteous claims of being an original, and I cannot help but gawk at it.

I liked Oasis at first, but I eventually got tired of it. I still like "Wonderwall" though. My father, who's a major The Beatles man, heard some notes of "Don't Look Back in Anger", and he was like, "Ach, another Beatles rip-off". I couldn't comment then, he CAN play wonderfully the Beatles in bass and guitar by ear, and he knows the notes, therefore knows what he's talking about.

[lizifer]

Sampaguita said:

Oh, and Liz: If you liked "Underneath Your Clothes" by Shakira, you'd probably like her song "The One"-- and if you were particularly attracted to the "Penny Lane" influence present in "Underneath Your Clothes" you'd probably like her song "Pies Descalzos, Suenos Blancos"-- and download her song "Estoy Aqui" from the MTV Unplugged album [not from the Pies Descalzos Album-- that one sounds to clean and produced but it's worth listening to at least once]. She's a good artist/ musician when she's not about the exoticism and selling out to the Global market. And I have to say, she's a wonderful poet-- especially in Spanish.

i think i may download those songs u suggested!

[clare]

Gah I don't like Oasis, they try to be like The Beatles, then they call people from here names and stuff so meh to them. I don't like Britney or Christina either, I'd have to admit Christina's the better singer out of the two but I wouldn't buy her stuff. I like female solo singers like Lene Marlin, Norah Jones, Dido, Enya and Nelly Furtado, because they're unique & write their own music/songs. Avril Lavigne is ok too. *likes too many bands to list* lol

[Sampaguita]

Yup. My dad was NPA... but I'll e-mail the details to you when I have time to deal with the headache that is Yahoo mail (it's not treating me very nicely as of late). It's actually part of what got his parents to send him here to the U.S.

Shakira: Yes. I remember that when "Whenever, Wherever" first came out, I was VERY anti-Shakira. But she grew on me-- her songs did, at least. "Objection" as well as its Spanish counterpart because of its use of the tango habanera... "Underneath Your Clothes" because of its poetry-- and the fact that she successfully rejuvenates a couple of old hits as strong musical influences. (Contrary to popular opinion, "Underneath" did not completely lift its musical line from "Eternal Flame" the chords and harmony are very different... it's only the melodic line that SORTA musically quotes "EF.") But yeah, you'll find her lyrics here: www.shakiraheaven.com/laundryservice.htm

And you can judge for yourself whether or not she's a poet. But her words affect me. There are some songs that I really didn't like-- "The Rules" and some others... but whatever.

Rip-offs: Josh once told me that what distinguishes an artist from someone who just rips something off is their ability to turn whatever it is into their own. I'm not yet confident enough to declaratively state that "Don't Look Back" isn't a rip-off, but it really doesn't feel like it to me. I really wish that Josh didn't have the year off on fellowship. I could glean some more guidance off of him instead of these sporadic meetings and communications.

But I must squeeze in some reading for classes before I fall behind. Do you all ever regret signing up for classes even though you like the subject matter but the work just gets to be too much?