Fine, So Fine

For a considerable amount of time my daughter’s favourite song was, Maude help me, Roar. I’ve managed to redirect her towards Goldfrapp and Pink.

Doktor Avalanche is one of the few doktors I trust.

From pretentious academese to someone badly imitating Lester Bangs. You’ve got it all at crookedtimber.

Belle I love you. But your writing on music will only be interesting after you offer an opinion on Aphex Twin’s turn towards drum and bass. This will allow a calibration.

Im gona go with Katy Perry. I agree she cant sing, at least not in the pitch her songs are. Dont care, dont have to go to a live concerts of her. Treasure is also a pretty clean radio pop song, just like Katy Perrys music, not the kind of music where it matteres if the performer has any talent.

No doubt it’s my weak mind, but I just can’t see how you could play a guitar with bow-tie frets without having it be exceedingly sharp on the top and bottom strings. Although I suppose sufficient mastery of the whammy bar might allow you to bring the note back close to pitch.

Belle, I want you to know that since your clown posting I’ve become totally addicted to Postmodern Jukebox. I am quite pleased to see the hideous “We Can’t Stop” and the less hideous but still deeply inane “Timber” turned into songs suitable for the American Graffiti soundtrack.

The drum machine for The Sisters of Mercy *still* plays drums, and is still called Doctor Avalanche, although the machine itself has by now been reincarnated many times. Heck, Doctor Avalanche played bass for many years too. He’s very talented. And The Nurse handled the keyboards, plus pharmaceutics as required. Sadly Andrew has not yet invented a machine to do the singing for him.

See, now? That’s cause you and me always agree on music, and the other important stuff. Always! ‘Cept now and then when you’re wrong, but can I help that?

Katy Perry also had the whirlwind romance with Russell Brand going for her, publicity-wise. I haven’t the faintest idea whether it was real or not, although I was exactly 0% surprised when they broke up, but for a while there she was in the teen and women’s magazines A LOT. And a known name sells more than an unknown name.

And piling on the Janelle Monae love. She is amazing.

Also, like Belle, I love drum and bass and quite liked Aphex Twin back in the early 2000’s, but can’t quite aurally picture the two together. Hie me to You Tube!

Fwiw (not much), but to add a grain of sand to all this, I find myself utterly unmoved by Janelle Monáe, whose image seems perfectly seductive to me, if perhaps hyper-engineered, but in whose music I find it difficult to find any coherence, alas.

I have sometimes wondered what Belle does @15 in regard to Katy Perry, with the shuddering thought of who might be the more annoying singer, Katy or her lookalike (but not signify-alike) Zooey D.

Nope. Tried three songs. Is it sexist to say Monae is almost unbearably beautiful?

While getting some tires a while back listened to pop for a while. All sounded like most everything else since mid eighties. Very very good, but nothing new. Except maybe the lyrics are smarter now.

All power pop.

after Roland of Big Black

Does that count as personification? Picture of Roland here.

Rihanna just too focused on her sexuality to the exclusion of all else.

Hm. I thought “Umbrella” was pretty great before I had any idea what Rihanna looked like.

But back to Bruno Mars: that “Treasure” video is great, but I mostly tend to agree with oldster @7: it was better the first time, if only because it was the first time. (See also: Gang of Four/Franz Ferdinand.)

Also, just a random shout out to whoever it was on one of Belle’s music threads (the mash-ups one?) that turned me on to Greg Wilson’s ‘original british mixes’. This shit is the fucking awesome!

(Sorry, Belle. I’ll stop threadjacking just about now.)

Katherine, I might have reacted the same way if I had heard Tightrope as audio-only the first time. Clearly a lot of my reaction is to the video, the dance, the ambiance, and the muthos. The camaraderie between the inmates. The confidence and dignity of every participant. The vision of a better society, kept down by a worse one.

Can’t say I share McManus’ reaction to JM–I don’t find her beautiful. Just riveting.

Yeah, I did wonder that myself oldster. I think the video is definitely a large part of the experience.

It’s not as good as The ArchAndroid because, really, unfortunately, how could it be?

… I might have reacted the same way if I had heard Tightrope as audio-only the first time. Clearly a lot of my reaction is to the video, the dance, the ambiance, and the muthos.

Interesting. I was going to say that I think The Electric Lady is a distinctly stronger album than The ArchAndroid, but that I was never as excited about The ArchAndroid as most of the people here. I wonder if oldster explains it, and that my reaction is based on approaching it as an audio production, rather than following the videos and other additional material.

My reaction to The ArchAndroid was that I could understand why people were excited about it — she was clearly talented, smart, thoughtful, and ambitious, but I felt like her ambition exceeded here talent to some degree. The Electric Lady felt much more fully realized musically, and I thought that as it switched between different genres, it was better at doing each genre well, whereas The ArchAndroid felt like it alluded to a variety of genres, but never succeeded at any of them.

De gustibus . . .

And did they have to autotune Maurice White? Did they have to autotune Philip Bailey?

res ipsa loquitur, baby.

Autotune should be so lucky. Autotune gets calibrated by being reset to Maurice White’s voice.

Belle, did you get the Purple Snow comp?

I don’t see why it matters if someone is auto-tuned, unless it sounds bad. I don’t care if someone is lip-syncing to someone else’s singing, if I can’t tell. Just as many other things, musical presentations are a collaboration, and I don’t think the division of labor particularly matters. Sincerity is particularly important to the emotional impact of music, especially if it’s faked well.

I don’t see why it matters if someone is auto-tuned, unless it sounds bad.

The concern is that there’s a slippery slope of sorts (and, I admit, this is almost as much of a cliche as, “the youth of today are vulgar and have no respect for culture.”). If you get something that sounds weird and artificial to 20% of the listeners and cool and new to 80% of people then eventually the 20% of people will gradually stop listening to newer pop music and occasionally grumble about wanting the kids to get off their lawn.

Eventually that sound, whatever it is, no longer sounds new to anybody and the process can repeat with something else that sounds weird to another 20% of people and so on . . . I doubt that story is actually true, but there are moments when I believe it.

Listening to a couple live Bruno Mars performances on youtube my impression is that he has a very pleasant voice, and actually knows how to sing, but doesn’t have a lot of vocal power (which is hardly a requirement for a pop star). And, let’s not forget, he was an incredibly cute 4-year-old Elvis impersonator.

Going back to the OP, I have to admit, however, that his music doesn’t do much for me. I wanted to like it, because I do think he’s charismatic and like Mars’ persona as a performer. But, for me, I just don’t have any reason to listen to his music — it isn’t something that I’m looking for. But it is good to know that somebody is excited about contemporary, “sleazy early 80s dance-track winners.”

So darn charming (and also). Talk about a million-dollar smile.

I remain sort of fascinated by “Lazy Song.” It’s a good song which hints at a completely different emotional reality. As far as I can tell the set-up of the song is, “you just left me, and I’m so depressed that I can barely get out of bed.” But perhaps I’m just reading too much into the lines about “Tomorrow I’ll . . . meet a really nice girl” and “I bet my old man will be so proud of me / but sorry paps, you’ll just have to wait.” Both of which suggest somebody who’s a little bit stuck in their life, rather than just lazing around with everything going well.

But maybe that’s just because I want to hear a darker story behind the sunny pop song. Either way, it’s interesting that in the fragment above (the “also” link) he doesn’t sing that verse.

btw the mashup is here

Autotune is a bit like the aural version or airbrushing and photo shopping. Theoretically, it can just be used to correct a small something, take a bit of an edge off something else. And that’s how it starts.

Except now it’s used to “perfect” things to such an extent that “perfection” is an utterly unobtainable, literally unreal version of reality, that makes actual reality look dull and lumpen.

I can certainly see the same thing happening with autotune, if it hasn’t already. The lumps and bumps that make sounds individual and interesting are smoothed out to create a plastic perfection.

Sure, sometimes there are disasters where everyone’s points and laughs (see Photoshop Disasters for the visual version), but for the most part we stop noticing. Until we notice that everything’s so “perfect” that imperfect reality is just not good enough any more.

A related thought not about the market but about technology. Autotune corrects imperfect pitch. But having vocal character and being off-key are very different things. Louis Armstrong was never off-key, but he had plenty of vocal character. Sam Cooke was never off-key. Both of them bent plenty of notes, but they bent them with total precision.

Singing the wrong note, or a bad approximation of the right note, is not a good-making feature in a voice, even for those of us who like voices full of character. It’s more like a face with an extra nose, or the eyes on the chin, than a face that shows age.

So what autotune does is somewhat different from what photoshop does, or at least not exactly parallel.

Except now it’s used to “perfect” things to such an extent that “perfection” is an utterly unobtainable, literally unreal version of reality, that makes actual reality look dull and lumpen.

I think that’s a reasonable theory but, like oldster, I’m not sure that’s what’s actually happening. The best evidence I would offer is that if you go back and listen to pop music from 30 years ago, it sounds dated, but not because the voices sound “imperfect.” I’d guess that the biggest difference you would hear is that the older recordings will, on average, have a lot less bass (and less tightly defined bass). I do think that there are recognizably contemporary vocal production effects, but I think of that as being different from auto-tune.

It’s entirely possible that some successor of auto-tune will accomplish that feeling of “invisible perfection” in the future, but I don’t think it’s here yet.

FWIW, my experience of badly produced pop music isn’t that it sounds “perfect”, but that it has all the subtlety and nuance engineered out of it. For example, I found the Adele album unlistenable because it was so blatantly obvious that the piano and voice weren’t occupying the same space, and weren’t interacting, it was just big block of piano, and big block of voice side by side. It was engineered to sound good on radio, where you you aren’t going to be listening for details like that. When you listen to it on a decent system it’s like looking at a Roy Lichtenstein print — it doesn’t pretend to be representation, and you can see that the shading is just different colored dots.

Also, on a separate note, Katherine, I remember you mentioning in a previous thread that you had appreciated having some recommendations for good country music. I’d been meaning to pass along the link to a mix that I did a while ago of country singer-songwriters, that I was quite happy with.

I’m not sure that a female Dylan would have made it.

Interesting question. The first person who comes to mind is Patti Smith who obviously has a great voice, but one that is not traditionally feminine.

Belle. Oh, Belle:

“She a) can’t sing; b) can’t dance; c) isn’t that hot.”

This isn’t you. You are neither a consumer nor a purveyor of Hatorade. And yet here we’ve got you setting up a whole Hatorade stand on poor Katy. A whole chain of Hatorade stands, even, serving up extra-large tumblers of that noxious beverage spiked with Tabasco sauce and extra gall.

The contention “Katy Perry cannot sing” is objectively just totally wrong. One may not particularly like her voice, that’s a matter of taste, but she can clearly sing and has authentic musical talent. That, combined with the charisma — and obviously the rack doesn’t hurt either — is why she is a star; the Christian girl-next-door thing and the oh-so-naughtiness of “I Kissed a Girl” may have been the hook for her “break-out,” but she only sustains it because she has actual talent. It boggles the mind that a person can recognize this about Bruno Mars and not be able to admit it about Katy Perry.

I mean, she’s no Janelle Monae, obviously. But an “incomprehensible phenomenon”? Madam, I challenge you to tear this Hatorade stand down!

Doctor Slack:

She’s not an interchangeable pop starlet; her voice is sufficiently recognizable that it’s rarely possible to mistake her for anyone else.

But is it so distinctive? Compare with others in Christina Bianco’s repertoire:

Okay, someone should assemble the constituent videos that made up the Mars thing.

The contention “Katy Perry cannot sing” is objectively just totally wrong.

I was hoping that somebody would show up to defend Katy Perry because I’d heard that she was somebody who could actually sing, but didn’t know any good examples to demonstrate that. I do think she sings quite well in that video.

However . . . I’m not convinced that the video is actually live. There are a couple of dissolves between different performances. Note that at 0:55 she’s wearing yellow, and then at 1:11 she’s wearing read which dissolves back to the yellow outfit at 1:19, and then at 1:48 she’s in red again . . . And I think it’s possible that the audio track is edited separately from the video. I’m not positive about that. One of the things that I look for is whether you can hear changes in the sound as she moves relative to the microphone. For example at 2:30-2:36 she’s moving backwards, it doesn’t sound like she’s getting farther away. But that depends on the mic, so I don’t have a strong opinion about that. But it’s clearly an edited performance, so it’s interesting that whoever posted it called it “LIVE”.

I’d give you guys that Katie Perry has a fine voice for pop. Nothing wrong with it. But the tunes, and the whole simper and pout schtick that sells them … ugh!

What makes a good pop tune, for me, anyway, is not the voice, or the schtick, or the groove, or the hook , etc. etc. It’s not about technique or attitude — though those things can matter (and I’d say attitude can go a long way in making up for lack of technique).

The tune, and sometimes the artist, has to somehow transcend the basic commodity function of pop music. So yes, you will metaphorically enter through the metaphorical gift shop. But a good pop tune gives you some room to do more than consume. A good tune has a back room, where you can really dance, or really laugh, or really cry, or just be really tragically hip, and so on and so forth etc.

I’ve yet to hear a KP song that is, for me anyway, anything other than the gift shop (and please feel free to change my mind!). And that’s why I think she sucks.

Also, tying together EWF, Aretha Franklin, and the ubiquity of the pretty damned good, it’s worth remember that Maurice White and Louis Satterfield of EWF were the rhythm section behind the best James Jamerson bass line that James Jamerson never wrote, and the best Aretha Franklin song that Aretha never sang. I mean “Rescue Me,” by Fontella Bass, which is of course an awesome, awesome song. Fontella was another graduate of the gospel school of singing, and she was cute to boot in her houndstooth suit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=domtQ6k2gvc

How come more people know about KP than about FB? Luck, breaks, race, many things other than basic vocal ability.

oldster: I agree, the video that Doctor Slack linked is a good demonstration of the fact that Katy Perry can sing. My second paragraph wasn’t intended as debunking, it’s just that I find it interesting when you can’t tell how edited something is.

The Temporary Name–

you could have given us a scene where she actually sings, you know, instead of one in which she remains silent in the face of egregious sexual harassment?

That said, Robert Preston’s performance is amazing. And Shirley Jones has excellent pipes, too, despite her lung capacity being reduced during the filming by pregnancy. And right now, in thousands of dinner-theaters and high schools all over the country, people are doing decent versions of those roles. Without the assistance of autotune!

Ah, I see. I meant “singing M the L” in the sense of singing that role, rather than that song.

Is Preston cute? Beats me. If there’s one thing I find less comprehensible than why certain talented singers become famous talented singers, it is the vagaries of male attractiveness. I’m no judge of male beauty, but I can at least sort of see why Cary Grant or Robert Redford were considered attractive. But Bruce Willis? Nicholas Cage? Kevin Costner?

Clearly I’m just color-blind to whatever frequencies are the relevant ones. And that’s fine–I’m not the target audience. But given that I have no ability to discriminate in this region, I would also not be surprised to be told that Robert Preston was a matinee idol and a heart throb. All I know is he can sell a song.

Yes. The Music Man is much more fun than everything we’ve been talking about (though not so danceable) and I think Hot’n’Cold is great.

There’s no question at all that there’s some autotuning on Katy Perry – there’s some weird obvious vibrato on Hot’n’Cold for instance – but the use of autotune is not necessarily because the singer can’t get the job done, but you get guys in a studio messing around with vocal tracks and they do what they like to do.

This mix/production guy is charitable to Katy but it’s clear he loves playing with the vocals… because!

oldster,

The think you link at 79 is ridiculously awesome — thanks! (I mean, I don’t really know anything about this “singing” thing people are on about—no seriously, my go-to genres are like 60’s pop/garage, punk and hip-hop, singing is unheard of! But that’s wonderful.)

Re auto tune, they are all good points. I don’t think that it is currently obliterating all distinctiveness. Only that Photoshop started out as as way to just even out the rough edges, and look what it does now. Images that most people would find perfectly acceptable, beautiful even, are subtley and skillfully manipulated to do a lot more than correct errors – of lighting, of position, whatever – and have changed our mental expectations of what already beautiful people look like.

If you jumped from the origins of Photoshop to now, then sure everyone would notice the difference, but things rarely go so suddenly. There is a gradual drip drip of change and manipulation that it takes a professional to spot.

I’m aware I’m making a slippery slope argument, but we’ve already slipped down a similar slope, so I think I’m justified in worrying.

Also, NickS, thank you very much for that link. Much appreciated.