Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends”

I’ve written at some length about Britney Spears before.

I was listening to the single “Till the World Ends” the other day. Here’s the video.
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When I listen to the song, not watching the video, I keep thinking this song sounds like a suicide note. It’s supposed to be this bippy club hit, about partying and dancing and whatnot. But just as “Circus” is unhappy, just as “Piece of Me” is hopeless underneath the anger, “Till the World Ends” has a sense of resignation that gives me chills. I watched the video, looking at Ms. Spears’ face.

I can’t take it take it take no more
Never felt like felt like this before

My god, she looks like she doesn’t care. Like she doesn’t care about any of this.

Ms. Spears has been her father’s legal property since her public acting out in 2007. I can’t really tell you how ill that makes me, thinking about that. Yet the news this past month indicates that her father plans to end the conservatorship because Britney is marrying a guy of whom he approves. Jamie Spears calls it a present to his daughter for her wedding. Giving her her legal adulthood back. For her wedding.

The song and the video for “Till the World Ends” were produced long before Jaime Spears’ announcement this year. The photos of Ms. Spears that I saw while surfing for more news about this seem to show her as looking happy. Certainly she looks more alive in her eyes than she does in the song’s video.

It is entirely possible that Ms. Spears is happy now. I hope, I truly, truly hope, that she has gotten her depression under control, that she has fallen in love with a man that gossip-monger Perez Hilton characterizes as a decent, loving, kind person. Yet this looks like Jamie Spears is handing off the multi-million-dollar property of his daughter to another man. I hope I’m wrong about that.

Ms. Spears, I am rooting for you. I hope you get your life back, and I hope it’s one you can live with.

Pop culture Sunday

1. I watched the remake of The Karate Kid. I liked it, much better than the original, honestly. I kinda bounced off of the original Karate Kid. Not the right age or time or situation, I guess. And Mr. Miyagi made me think that the movie was ripping off the Star Wars franchise. But the remake I liked a lot. The Smith kids appear to be genuinely talented, and I love Jackie Chan pretty much no matter what he is doing. I will watch comedies to see him move.

And, yes, I love a training montage. I know perfectly well that one does not become a karate master in two months or whatever, no matter how talented. But it’s powerful and inspiring anyway.

2. I was listening to Lindsey Lohan’s song “Rumors,” and mentally comparing it to Britney Spears’ “Piece of Me.” Both are songs speaking directly to the paparazzi. Both ask to be left alone. Yet the Spears number sounds more powerful, angrier, than Lohan’s. Lohan sounds more uncomprehending, more confused. Like she genuinely does not understand why she can’t be left alone to go out with her friends. Spears seems to imply that, on some level, she is worth the media’s time and attention, and is simply angry at the form that attention takes.

3. I’ve been listening to a podcast by The Deceptionists, some friends and acquaintances of mine. It’s a writing group, essentially, which you the listener get to participate in via emails and Twitter and on the blog. The five hosts have experience in writing fiction and non-fiction, and all know the various blockades in the way of writing original fiction.

I recommend The Deceptionists if you are a fiction writer trying to get traction on a career, someone starting out and still trying to work out you craft. I know that each time I listen to the podcast I am itching to sit down and write.

4. N took the kids to the mall today for a massive Pokemon Black and White launch party. From the tweeted photos it looks like a good time was largely had.

5. Last week I bought Ladyhawke‘s 2008 album, Ladyhawke. I love this album, wow. I mean, I got the single “Paris is Burning” ages ago and loved it, and I don’t know why it took me this long to download the rest of the album from Zune, because, wow, I love it.

Ke$ha

I have no idea what to make of the pop artist currently going by the name Ke$ha.

I frequently have this problem with pop artists — I have no real way of assessing how much agency they have. I know they are managed, I know they are produced — not only their music, but their look, their publicity, their public image. I haven’t read much about Ke$ha — maybe the answers are in interviews with her. But going off of her music and videos alone, I am just not sure what I think.

For starters, there’s her voice. It is absolutely unclear to me whether or not she can sing. Her work is so very, very auto-tuned as to be almost entirely inhuman. She’s very nearly a Sharon Apple, whose vocals are computer generated based on a human template. Yet Ke$ha was signed by Dr. Luke — my favorite pop producer today, by the way — based on a demo tape. She’s got to be able to sing. So why, why the dehmanization?

Next, there’s her drunken image. As far as I can tell, Ke$ha is wicked smart. Tested incredibly high in school before dropping out and then getting a GED. As far as anyone can tell, she does not in fact party around L.A., but instead works reasonably hard. She is listed as a co-writer on every song on her album — a right she fought for. This is a young woman with goals, an agenda, who chooses to appear as a good-times party girl. For what purpose?

And let’s talk about her look. Ke$ha has stated in interviews that she cultivated her look to deliberately highlight the fact that her family was poor, lived on food stamps, and that her clothes were almost entirely second-hand, free, or someone else’s garbage. She dollar sign in her name is, she says, ironic, since she had (when starting out) no money whatsoever. How ironic is it at this point?

I honestly don’t have answers to these questions. This is a girl who says that Keith Richards is her fashion role model. Who apparently unironically thinks Mick Jagger is hot. Who appears in music videos fending off the sexual advances of much, much older men, who the-character-of-Ke$ha is using in order to party more and get drunk.

On the other hand, her video for “Take It Off” is disturbing in an entirely different way.

In this we see limbs dissolving into glitter, people dancing until they vanish in clouds of colored chalk. The scene is fascinatingly animalistic, with 80s-fashion-throwbacks of huge hair, big scarves, multiple large bracelets, and big stompy ankle boots. I love the look of it, I truly do. And I think I appreciate the point — that the subtextual goal of most pop-party music these days is “dance until destruction.” Hence we have Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance,” Flo Rida’s Club Can’t Even Handle Me, 3oh!3′s Double Vision, and Far East Movement’s Like a G6. Yet I am not certain I understand why Ke$ha wants this to be the point she chooses to make.

My best guess is that she is riding this as far and fast as it will go. If she is intelligent, motivated, and ambitious, as she seems to be — if her goal is to get what she can while she can so as to avoid returning to life on welfare and in occasional homeless shelters from which she apparently came — than I think this makes sense. Use the current fashion and trends, whatever they may be, to get some albums and some money and some connections. Use Dr. Luke as much as he uses the girls he produces, use him to get something before this window of opportunity closes.

I hope that’s what she’s doing. I hope that Ke$ha does not believe that this stage of her career is sustainable past the age of twenty-five. I want to see what she does, where she goes after this. Kelly Clarkson’s My December is an amazing album — it’s the one she made in response to fame and fortune. Britney Spears’ Blackout is regarded as one of her best albums, and features the song “Piece of Me” — her direct response to the media’s portrayals of her. Ke$ha doesn’t have to either crash out, or fade away. She can take what’s happening to her and use it. I hope she does. I hope she can take this and make self-aware, critical art that answers the conversation in which she is currently an object.

And, in the meantime, I’m going to watch the video for “Take It Off” again. Because I really like those clothes.

My 2009 in music

This is a personal list, a retrospective, not an attempt at a best-of. I can’t say that this was particularly a year of new music for me. Not in the sense that the music was produced or released in this year. (Well, some of it was.) But this is the music that moved me, that held me, that I fell into in 2009. (And, yes, those tactile metaphors are deliberate. Music-as-overwhelming-physical-sensation, that thing that makes me bang on the steering wheel as I drive to and from work, you know?)

Pandora doesn’t read my mind.

I like using Pandora Radio for some things. Classical music, especially, or sometime if I am searching for new music. But I find that Pandora misses some of the essential qualities of the music I like. The reason that I listen to a song or artist. And, missing that thing, it doesn’t add recommendations that make sense to me.

For example:

Britney Spears’ “If You Seek Amy”. I like this song because of the portrait it paints of a certain moment while out, clubbing. I remember being much younger and going to Metro to meet friends. And there’s this sense of frenetic isolation that happens if you are in a crowded club, looking for one other person. The noise and lights drown out all subtlety. Yet — because you are focused on identifying people, on searching for a particular person — everyone’s face jumps out with a weird clarity. Pressing your way through a crowd, scanning across a packed dance floor, it’s ever-increasingly isolating — unless/until you find your friend. Spears manages to convey that feeling in the midst of a song about being clever enough to get around the FCC restrictions on profanity. Eff-u-see-kay-me.

For example:

Silversun Pickups’ “Future Foe Scenarios”. What I like about this song is the way the singer sounds like she’s at the end of her rope. I have no idea what she is singing about. But I understand that she sings like her message is vital. Like her message is desperately important and she has been telling people, telling everyone, forever. And no one is listening, and no one cares. But she’s still telling it. Still saying what she has to say. Mostly she sings in what sounds like an emotional monotone, but one punctuated by bursts of rage and frustration.

For example:

Katy Perry’s “Fingerprints”. What I like about this song is the way it denies age and maturity and wisdom and insists that youth and arrogance, and, yes, forward momentum will change one’s self and one’s course. That past performance is not an indication of future expectations. That will and imagination will win out over a pre-determined path. I like the way Katy snarls the line “toetag generation full of regrets.” I like the anthem, the call to arms to not be forgettable, to leave a mark.

To be seen, to be heard, to leave a mark. Somehow, Pandora Radio misses that quality in its recommendations.