In my email this morning was an ad targeting parents of children much younger than my college and high school kids. Take a look:
This is an out-of-touch marketer. If the goal to strive for alteration and invoke another E name overrides common sense marketing and being topical, then I guess they hit their goal. But Eminem as the bogeyman? Go ahead, click the image and make it big so you can see it.
I don’t want that kid listening to Em except maybe a clean version of Mockingbird. But I’m not so sure I want her listening to Elmo either. There’s a middle ground, and my hackles raise up when I see music being used to scare parents. Look, this happened with blues, with jazz, with doo-wop, with pop and Lord knows, it happened with rock.
But isn’t it time to say, “I don’t need that little cutie to be a real emo kid and start cutting herself, but you’re not going to scare my family. She’s listening to Louis Armstrong, early Bach and a mix of the more melodic McCartney tunes. She’s quite fine, thank you.” For her seventh birthday, we’re buying her the new Common release.
We’re not necessarily down to the nitty gritty just yet, but we’re close. With just six competitors left, we’re halfway home.
You could say that last night’s show was the most competitive one thus far, though I disagreed with a lot of the love the judges were throwing out last night. How about next year, you can’t hide behind the guitar and just play?
George, the big kahuna of this website had a pretty good idea for next year.
He said:
My real hope for this show is that next year, you get to play a guitar ONCE if you make the top 12 and you get to play a piano/keyboard ONCE. That’s twice you get to play an instrument.
I like that idea. This way, Casey James and Lee DeWyze don’t get to be boring behind their guitar and get major love from the judges. It’s a singing competition yes, but if your winner has zero personality and charisma, or in DeWyze’s case, looks like he’s going to pee his pants whenever Ryan talks to him, how can you sell any of his or her records?
Rascal Flatts is on stage performing Unstoppable. Even though I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a fan, I’ve always liked them from afar. They’ve always seemed more pop than actual country to me, but that might be simply because I’m not a big country music connoisseur.
Cameron Diaz and the man who once looked like Antonio Banderas are on stage to promote the newest Shrek film. Diaz is wearing heals, but she’s at least half a head taller than Ryno.
Dim the lights, and here we go…
Ryno tells creepy girl to stand up. She goes to the far left of the stage to be in one of three groups.
Ryno calls up Aaron Kelly next. Kelly forgot the take the hanger out of his jacket before he put it on. He goes to the center of the stage.
Last night, I thought that Big Mike sounded a lot like Shawn Stockman from Boyz II Men. Tonight, he’s wearing a Boyz II Men cardigan sweater. He goes to the far right of the stage. Motown Philly back again…
Ryno asks Lee DeWyze a question and he answers by saying, “I mean…” Um, Lee. You don’t mean anything if you haven’t spoken yet. He joins creepy girl on the left side of the stage.
Casey joins Big Mike on the right and Crystal joins Aaron in the middle.
Ryno tells creepy girl to walk towards Big Mike and Casey and they are the bottom three.
Carrie Underwood is out to introduce Sons Of Sylvia. Can someone just give Carrie a sammich? That girl is going to wither away. The lead singer from SOS looks like Bill Hader from Saturday Night Live, except with a mullet. He’s straight up singing while playing a violin.
Lady Antebellum is out singing Need You Now. I know they’re hot and the song is very nice, but I’m not overwhelmed. I’ll take a mulleted Bill Hader any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Now, Shakira is on stage playing the harmonica singing Gypsy with Rascal Flatts. Is this American Idol or the American Music Awards? Sorry, I didn’t get that at all. Thankfully, I’m watching this on the DVR. All I saw was Shakira dancing really fast.
Ryno tells Big Mike that he’s safe. It’s between Casey James and creepy girl.
And, the person who goes home tonight is…
I’m sad. How can I keep writing this post for the next month without my creepy girl? The creepy girl has left the building.
I know that I once said that whenever I see Siobhan on screen I feel the need to lock my door, but I have liked a bunch of her performances. I’ll leave you with my favorite.
The guys in Hot Chip are only too aware that they are not high-school locker pin-up material. But that has never stopped the quintet of English synth-nerds from fancying themselves as the kinds of cheek-boned pop idols guys like me followed avidly in the pages of Smash Hits 25 years ago. Over the last 10 years, they’ve become indie darlings while perfecting a dance pop sound that, for hipsters, comes dangerously (and for me, deliciously) close to something you might hear on Top 40 radio with their fantastic latest album One Life Stand.
In the hilariously confounding video for the album’s second single “I Feel Better”, an alluring Auto-tune seduction over skipping beats and syncopated synth-strings, the guys play on the notion that they sound like Top 40 but aren’t by portraying themselves as Britain’s Next Boy Band. Six-pack abs and blank supermodel eyes abound! In fact, the parody is so dead-on that it actually fools one of the video’s commenters (“Don’t like boy bands, that said I think English ones are Much better than American ones.”). Those who actually know Hot Chip know immediately it’s a joke, but then the video turns on itself and the joke gets weirdly violent. Only then the video turns on itself again. And gets weirdly violent again.
Maybe the band is making fun of boy bands, or maybe they’re paying tribute to their own Inner Boy Band, or maybe the band is just video-game laser-zapping the notion that there’s any meaningful distinction to be made between the pop of Hot Chip and the pop of, say, Taio Cruz. And if there is a meaningful distinction to be made there, we need to be ready to see that distinction erased. Interestingly enough, the video implicates, and destroys, not just “Hot Chip” (the boy band), and “Hot Chip” (the resurrected boy band with new lead singer), but also the audience for both (including the real life Hot Chip, who get zapped around 3:25), which is obliterated with the cold efficiency of War of the Worlds martians.
