Courtesy of Tim. Not sure what I think yet.

The Circus Tour

I've been meaning to properly recap 2009 (a good year in pop indeed), but recapping 2009 has meant writing up Britney's Circus tour, which is an act that I've put somewhere down around 'tax return' and 'check if I have diabetes' on my 'to-do' list. Because what is there to say really -- it was awful. Stunningly awful. But bizarrely, not at all enjoyable. If I'd spent $200 on a spectacularly entertaining debacle, that would have been fine (such as I imagine Victoria Beckham gigs would have been, if they'd happened). But this was deeply boring, which is quite an achievement -- to create a spectacular that fails to entertain. There's a long essay in why these sorts of shows often fall over (their alienating slickness for one thing), but to wrap this up quickly, and to provide an outline of the show using effort levels similar to that which Britters put in to the show, dot points are in order:

• Proceedings started dubiously with a series of people with disabilities performing circus tricks. On one level empowering to see such amazing physical achievements, but then, this is the opening of the 'Circus' tour. I'm not sure Britters' fully thought through the cultural baggage attached to that...
• Rather than dancing per se, Britters' tended to strut, shake her shoulders and point to the ground, all the while lazily miming. As in opening and shutting her mouth with no apparent relation to the words...
• Occasionally you'd lose her on the stage, and then realise the person you thought was a slightly tipsy backup dancer was actually the star.
• The show had no taste or subtlety. Even William Baker's efforts on costume design seemed tainted by tack.
• Each tack sounded the same. The show was relentless. Tim fell asleep.
• Many 12 year old girls were in attendence. They took over the men's toilets, leading to an unfortunate experience in which I was literally urinating in front of 12 year old girls.
• She didn't bother performing 3, the single she was, like, promoting.
• Britney Spears has absolutely no star quality in the flesh. The end.

The 'Spiritual' section...

A song to make me happy...

I somehow got a hold of a physical copy of Shakira's new She Wolf album, even though the release has now been pulled until 2010, which suggests record company disarray and panic. Very sad. But anyway, the album is strong, although only nine tracks (if you exclude the Spanish version of She Wolf), which puts it in The Fame Monster mini-album territory. Men in this Town is by far the highlight, with its heartwarming disco yelps, soaring chorus, bizarre lyrics about Matt Damon and suicide. Shakira at her best has a pleasing obtuseness, and here it's perfectly fused into the album's electro-disco template, unlike some of the Pharrell Williams tracks which could have turned up on Hard Candy with only slight modulation. (In an album of nine tracks, how can there be filler?). But this is good, good, good.

KylieNY2009

For me Kylie is imbued with all kinds of transformative meanings, which made my extravagant jaunt to New York feel like a pilgrimage of sorts. Partly offsetting the cost of 42 hours of flying, it ended up being my greatest Kylie experience yet, not only because of the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing (for both me and her), but also because of the novelty of seeing ‘our Kylie’ among a foreign crowd with a completely different take on who she is and what she represents. This crowd did *not* include tipsy secretaries, or families having their once-yearly night out. This crowd was hip, and 90 per cent male.

With nothing in particular to promote, the tour was framed as a composite of the best Parlophone-era live moments, stitched together into something new for an American audience previously denied access to her shows. Accordingly, projection artwork and compositions were borrowed from KylieFever, Showgirl, Showgirl Homecoming and KylieX. Occasionally this led to some odd sequencing, and also the slightly eerie sight of a 2001-era Kylie towering above the 2009 model, who seemed slightly, umm, older. But it basically worked well, and for the uninitiated would presumably have seemed relatively cohesive.

Proceedings kicked off with Light Years, with K descending from the rafters on the famed glitter skull, donning a very GaGa costume, including a new take on the Showgirl Homecoming pink feathers, fused with the American flag. The new choreography was some of the best since Fever, and thankfully moved past the tired robo-moves that were heading steadily towards farce. Her voice was in fine form, she looked suitably refreshed, and she was having a ball. As was the crowd – at random intervals well-dressed men started pashing each other suggesting some kind of overflow of pop pleasure.

The unfortunate return of Red Blooded Woman...

Subsequent sections saw the welcome return of the towering SmileyKylie medley, a fantastic rendition of White Diamond in ballad form (which went beyond show tune to evoke actual emotion), Confide in Me from the first Showgirl tour, Burning Up/Vogue (which seemed to confuse the crowd) and, of course, The One.

There’s not much more to say really. Kylie in New York, and all the wonderful connotations that brings. And also the end of my own bizarre Kylie odyssey -- London, Sydney, Melbourne, New York. I am now truly an obsessive. It has to stop.

Update

I haven’t blogged for a while. I think it’s because I’ve been processing the shock that I actually very much like the new Sarah Blasko album. As much as I’ve always thought (assumed?) that she’s annoying and affected, my god I relate to her lyrics and her sentiment. Am I affected? Is this why I’ve loathed her so? Who knows, but the Peter Bjorn and John production works, and I think albums about tortured separations from long-term creative/romantic partners are generally creatively fertile (not that I expect such self-sacrifice from my artists).

So what else has been going on musically? Had the pleasure of watching the amazing Aimee Mann at the Palais (but pointedly missed her support, Ben Lee). And she was brilliant. So in control, her voice in fine form, funny, jumping from request to request, ignoring her set-list for the last 2/3 of the show. I find her music quite unique in how it skips between dark humour to (once again) desolation from line to line, yet somehow still makes sense as a whole. Although only 28, 31 Today is, once again, devastating.

What else? The new Natalie Imbruglia album shows promise, although not sure about her strategy of releasing a single but releasing a clip for a song which is not the single. Why do mainstream artists go independent then do stupid decadent things like this? For example, Darren Hayes' 2-disc opus which I'm sure even Savage Garden royalties are struggling to pay for. And I’m also increasingly respecting Tina Arena, which I will blog about soon. This is a confronting topic, but Just Me, aside form it’s awful first two singles, is really a very fine album. I'm sure there's more thing's I've missed (the implosion of Mariah Carey, Heidi Montag's 'live' performance debut, Madonna's sleazy Celebration clip), but I will attend to these in time.

Sophie, I love you.

Sophie B. Hawkins is one intense lady, and I love her. But she is also a sort of living testament to the fact that a life lived in full adherence to emotional truth inevitably heads towards living with lots of pets, and writing songs about them -- for her, it's all about shadows of life and death, the merging of body and soul, drumming and Virginia Woolf. But for me this is of course an entirely good thing, as I prefer my emotion to be *bluntly* expressed through music.

It's ironic that someone who consistently channels such a sexual energy is probably most well known for the TTfm (as it was then) staple As I Lay Me Down and the Dawson's Creek soundtrack, as well as, of course, the classic Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover, with its famous sleeveless flannel shirt. But running through most of her work is a theme of destructive sexuality -- an evocation of a sexual/spiritual force (of the elemental variety) that can never be fully expressed, and would most likely tear you apart if it could be. Thus the pets. Thus the drums. I don't really have a point here, except that I like my music overblown, and I think Sophie B. is often overlooked. Looking back, her unrestrained and forceful music is quite refreshing. She also had a fight with Sony Music over a banjo, which I think is pretty cool. Try that Delta, Tina and the rest...

Your Madgesty is dead... long live Shakira!

If one needs any more evidence of Madonna's increasing musical irrelevance, here it is. Celebration is a dud. While theoretically I support her return to dance, this is a track with zero originality -- it could be anyone's track. She doesn't even seem herself in the spoken word sections, normally a Madonna strength. And despite it's celebratory intent, there is no soul. Once again she sounds like she's phoning it in. She makes all the right noises about being yourself, chasing pleasure etc., but she may as well have been recording it from the treadmill, slave to her insatiable work ethic. A sad day this is. I was hoping that after such a setback as Hard Candy, she would be reborn.

Shakira on the other hand has snuck out of hibernation to produce a killer track with a fantastic clip (which echoes Madge's Sorry, as if to emphasise some kind of changing of the guard). She Wolf is disco fun at its best. My hips shake even writing about it. And I love the clip's bizarre concoction of contrary scenes: Shakira gyrating in some kind of glitter womb; her recreation of MJ's Smooth Criminal 'lean forward' move; the bit where she basically detaches her hips in some kind of cage; and her climactic dance solo which evokes early 2000 J.Lo 'house' dance in a thoroughly satisfying way. This is adventurous, progressive and full of soul. Shakira is the new pop innovator.

Delta called on it...

A very spot on article about Delta Goodrem's addiction to advertising dollars (do Age journalists trawl pop fan sites for stories? What is going on...). I was already slightly overwhelmed with the Sunsilk ads, Nintendo ads, soy milk... but now Proactiv?? Surely this is a bit low rent? The article speculates that she's trying to cash in on her fame while it lasts, and this seems like a sensible hypothesis considering Sony's decreasing interest in her quest for global domination (after the lukewarm local success of Delta, and her dumping in the US). I'm generally ambivalent about celebrity cash-in endorsements, but I think the extent of the cash-in has to be in proportion to the extent of one's fame. If the ratio is off then a festering 'career decline' stench can set in... Delta's ratio is certainly off.

But about that Proactiv ad. Because, you see, it is HILARIOUS. Not only because Delta has the cheek to say that 'she wants to make a difference to people's lives in a positive way... and this [her Proactiv endorsement] is part of it.' But she's also clearly turning into some parodic Ja'mie King type -- all those shots of her purring at the camera, flicking her extensions about, signing autographs etc... 'the most important part of what I do is connecting with people.' Oh dear.

This is a trivial aside, but I notice that her NZ Sunsilk TV ad was projected behind her during the opening act of her creatively awful Believe Again tour. This makes sense as I remember thinking at the time that the footage of her parading down a fashion show runway looked a bit expense... so the commercial world is now fully integrated into her art (but not in a cool Madonna Pepsi ad type way). I miss old-school Delta. I blame Brian McFadden

Apologies for ripping this straight off Pop Justice, and indeed, ripping off the gist of their commentary too, but this is quite fascinating. While making Madonna comparisons risks accusations of hysteria, I think it's true to say that the sense of shock and surprise attached to a GaGa press conference evokes Blonde Ambition era Madonna. Or maybe it's just her referencing of a 1970s gay porn aesthetic.

It's interesting this face-concealing thing she's wearing, as it's still playing around with themes of suffocation and fragility (like her tea-cup bearing Alice in Wonderland creations). There's something fascinating about watching someone who's obviously wielding such power choose to emphasise aspects of powerlessness, and also gain a kind of power through the strangeness of the look they're creating. What unsettles demands attention.

The clip's a mish-mash of ideas, but I think this is the strongest song yet from I am... Sasha Fierce. Perhaps this is the album of increasing returns, considering the trajectory from the limp If I Were a Boy, which seemed to be splicing If God Was One of Us with some essentialising gender assumptions. (Single Ladies never completely grabbed me.) But I remain opposed to the basic concept -- that Beyonce's 'true' self and 'Sasha Fierce' self aren't able to be reconciled. AND PS I don't want to mention her by name, but I also want to acknowledge how horrible this is. It pleases me that she's fast becoming a caricature of herself, even though she was going for pastiche all along -- I'm sick of her wide-eyed I'm innocent but not look. And seriously, the song (which I will not name) appears to be a RomCom synopsis sung (badly) over MOR rock. I give it 2 years before she's got a Rita style sitcom.

Up! revisited

I saw you flinch! Shania Twain, you say? Well, yes, I acknowledge the cringe factor, but let’s not forget that around 1997 Shania Twain was an unstoppable force, bringing country to the masses, and From This Moment On to TTfm and wedding chapels the world over. Come on Over sold 34 million, and established Twain as one of the world’s top artists, and a byword for dependable, no-nonsense country spirit (even though she was, umm, Canadian). But what happened next? By the time Come on Over was stomping over the globe, Shania was living a very un-country vegan life holed up in her Swiss chateau, with her hubby/producer John ‘Mutt’ Lange. We didn’t hear much for a while, but in 2002 the Shania machine was back in gear with Up! which was, arguably, music’s first ‘world album' and, arguably, a complete disaster.

Country Shania...

This wasn't a world album in the sense of later-years Peter Gabriel oddity, or Readings 'world' section, but in the production line sense of population-specific tinkering of the same product to suit distinct markets. This was the plan: each population would receive the same ‘Pop’ disc, but in the US this would also come with a ‘Country’ disc in which the same songs were recorded according to US country tradition. In the ‘International’ markets (defined in classic US imperialist terms as everywhere not in the US), the album would come with a ‘World' disc, in which the same songs were recorded with, wait for it, a Pop-Bollywood style. I cannot convey how hideous this disc was, which, unfortunately was lumped on the Australian market (by this point I must confess that I bought the thing back in ’02.) Just imagine the country sass of I’m Gonna Get You Good recorded with a Bollywood beat… So impossibly awful, you must listen here. Apparently this Pop-Bollywood travesty was intended to ‘crack’ the Indian market.

Not surprisingly the album did not fare well (although Wikipedia tells me it was huge in Germany). As with any lofty album strategy, people got confused: why was a country-pop artist releasing Bollywood tracks? And for a country market already suspicious of Twain’s country cred, a token trad-country disc was not enough to appease concerns triggered by her dabbling in threatening ‘World’ music (was this… ANTI-AMERICAN?? Even though she's Canadian). While Shania had big plans of conquering the globe with a little bit of what everyone wanted (as seems so inevitable in retrospect) the results were spread too thin, and only produced one hit single (I’m Gonna Getcha Good). And Shania hasn’t really done much since, apart from a lazy Greatest Hits album.

World music goddess...

But what of the music itself? While for the most part it’s catchy in a kitchen-sink kind of way, and produced from the same comforting formula as Come on Over, it remains very hard to connect its sketches of average-Joe American life with the Shania Twain vegan living in a Swiss chateau. Which means it all seems a bit mannered. Note the too-eager use of exclamation marks: Nah!; (Wanna Get to Know You) That Good!; Ka-Ching!; Waiter! Bring Me Water!; What a Way to Wanna Be!; Thank You Baby!; I’m Not in the Mood (to Say No!)...

In a systematic fashion, all the average Joe boxes were ticked. There was a song about a brave young mum deciding to keep her baby (‘I had a baby at 15, Daddy never did forgive me, never heard from the guy again…’), an everyday gal havin’ a bad day (‘even my skin is acting weird, I wish that I could grow a beard, then I could cover up my spots…’), and a stab at the hypocrisy of the beauty industry (‘Why be perfect, no, it’s not worth it… don’t be so obsessed'). As was pointed out in a particularly prickly interview, Shania as of course modelling for Revlon at the time.

The problem’s not so much that Shania was sketching characters – if I knew anything about the country tradition I'd assume that was part of it – but rather that the characters being sketched were a bit two dimensional. In contrast, Taylor Swift, for example, manages to put together a concept album about the schoolyard that, through its wit, detail and humour seems much fuller (although, to be fair, Taylor was barely out of school when she wrote it). But this two-dimensionality wasn’t new for Twain – Come on Over’s similarly full of faux-down-home vignettes. The difference, perhaps, is that during the Come on Over period Twain was maintaining the fiction that she was a country artist. When it came to Up! however, she was holed up in her Chateau with her eyes on India. Here's another hideous 'World' version. And another. Got the point? This needs to be remembered.

Kylie X revisited

Some people have lumped X into the Body Language clearance bin, framing it as yet another failed attempted to recapture the voodoo-magic of Fever. But I disagree. While like many other K fans, I’m sad it didn’t represent the hallowed fusion of Impossible Princess lyrical openness and Fever pop smarts that's been anticipated for so long, it’s still a quality pop album that holds some of the best songs of K’s Parlophone era. Unfortunately X, as a set of songs, is obscured by two things. Firstly, cancer, or its absence: for some the album was immediately written-off because it didn’t deliver the confessional that was expected of Kylie after her two year ordeal, dramatic cancellation and spectacular comeback (a pretty arrogant assumption, I’d say). And secondly, the disastrous promotion the album received from a beleaguered Parlophone, which was at the time caught up in the near-disintegration of EMI. As we start gearing up for the next album, I think it’s time to look back at what went wrong, but also at what actually went right.

The comeback

While 2 Hearts signalled an appropriately oddball new direction, one of the first reactions X met with was a bewilderment that someone who’d just been through cancer could sing about Speakerphones and ‘lookin’ hot’ before a big date. Against that enormous emotional backdrop, I guess it was inevitable that X would seem shallow in comparison. But its lack of reference to the last few years (with the exception of No More Rain, Stars and Cosmic) did seem particularly pointed. There was no White Diamond-style melding of life-affirming sentiment with pop sparkle. For the most part, she was singing about cheap nightclub thrills, just like she did in Light Years and Fever.

This is criticism that seemed to grate: whenever it was put to K, she would visibly bristle, and seem almost defiant when she made the very logical point that part of what she wanted to embrace with X was a new kind of normality. Her experience had made her value the normal and the trivial even more – a sentiment most people who’ve been through a health crisis, big or small, would share. But this is also a criticism that pre-dates ‘the cancer stuff.’ It’s been a perennial complaint of K fans that we rarely get to see beyond her pop façade. She rarely reveals anything. Which would be fine, except that after the dark, revealing and lyrically brilliant Impossible Princess, we know there’s a lot going on.

Love me, I’m…. The One

But as with most K albums, the odd moments of brittle vulnerability end up channelling something much more personal than the words themselves, and seem all the more powerful because we really don’t know anything else of her (while harbouring a deep suspicion that, like us, she’s fragile and slightly messed up). For me, the most personal moment in the album is also its most formulaic track – The One. Yes it’s about circling someone in a club (probably The Peel or its international equivalent,) but when she sings ‘I’m the one… love me, love me, love me, I’m the one’ the effect is so potent she may as well be singing about that basic human need for connection that’s never quite possible, but haunts you nonetheless (or, umm, something). Because of this emotional punch, as well as its elegant production, The One is by far X’s standout track. Which makes its commercial failure all the more dispiriting, and infuriating.

Parlophone screwed it all up…

X’s promotion started out alright. We already knew the script after William Baker was photographed walking out of a hairdressing salon clumsily/cannily displaying an A4 sheet of paper with the X campaign strategy sketched out in biro: internet marketing, TV special, tour etc… In the beginning all the cogs were turning as they should, apart from a series of damaging internet leaks. The buzz was there, The Kylie Show, while a little hokey in parts, showed off the songs to good effect, the reviews were mostly positive and 2 Hearts did alright, while not setting the world on fire. But with the choice of Wow as single no.2 in the UK/Aus, and In My arms as single no.2 in continental Europe (do they not realise we use the internet?) it all started to go pear-shaped.

Not only was Wow a retrogressive choice (in parts it sounded like Aunty Christine singing a Karaoke version of Love at First Sight after a big night on the piss), but the decision to release different singles in different jurisdictions signalled that Parlophone was nervous about the album. It also meant two very bodgy clips for the price of one: in Wow she looks like a frigid Star Trek creature, and In My Arms, while clever visually, seemed like it was filmed for pennies. But it gets worse. There was a half-hearted crack at the US market, with the decision to release the Janet Jackson-lite All I See. While K gamely went on the promo trail (albeit with a few shaky performances), Parlophone decided that the US could be cracked sans clip. Eventually K suffered the indignity of filming, and funding, her own promo vid (canoodling with dancer Marco de Silva against a white screen) as a ‘gift’ to her fans. Not a good look for a superstar. And when finally there was talk of releasing The One, first it was on, then it was off, then it was digital only, then it was canned. Once again K stepped in and filmed her own clip (which wasn’t bad at all), but to anyone looking closely, it seemed like the Kylie machine was in chaos. Apparently there had been a rift between K and Parlophone after the decision to release Wow/In My Arms (although this rumour doesn’t quite make sense as she seems to love both of those songs, although it would certainly explain a lot).

By this point it didn’t really matter that Parlophone was fucking her ‘round, since the KylieX2008 tour was kicking off and there was finally a chance to present the songs as she wanted to. I’ve obsessed over the tour here, so I won’t go over it again. Although, the fact that the tour rolls on with no rhyme or reason (Morocco, some ski resort, Poland, Madrid, US) suggests that the normally slick K machine is still in a state of partial chaos. But what of X? What would we make of it if things hadn’t turned out the way they did? It’s not a great album, but there are moments of greatness. It’s biggest weakness is perhaps its lack of adventure – while tracks like Speakerphone and Nu-di-ty are interesting, and quite oddball, they disappoint by sticking firmly to the Bloodshy & Avant mold, channelling the generic Sleazy-Britney sound pioneered by Gimme More. And for the record, hearing a 40-year old Australian singing about ‘dropping socks with your mini boom box’ is less than convincing.

But a further light is shed on X by the tracks that never made the album. Lose Control for example, another Kish Mauve track, perfectly fuses themes of claustrophobia and escape (in its talk of ‘wheels turning’ and ‘ropes tightening’) with modern, anthemic dance. Why K chose not to include it, and other similarly revealing tracks, is food for thought. Whether it was record company medelling or her own fear of personal revelation, we’ll never know. But as the forums heat up with talk of album no.11, the same debate will no doubt rage on – will this finally be the confessional watershed we’ve been waiting for? Or maybe what we actually want from K is that she has the self-possession to not reveal herself, realising, as I think she does, that what we all invest in her is meaningful in itself.

MJ

Umm, so Michael Jackson died. And I feel strangely unmoved. Obviously I feel terrible for his kids who will no doubt be launched into an even more intensely surreal circus, and I feel sad that a man has died, but in terms of Michael Jackson the icon dying, I don’t really feel much at all. And I think it’s because for a while now Michael Jackson, the legend, had ceased to need Michael Jackson, the person, to tend to make it real. So when I hear Billie Jean I won’t feel sad that Michael Jackson has died, but will just think it’s a really awesome song.