Darling, We're A Fashion, Don't You Know?Girls Aloud...

Sadly, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t even know who Girls Aloud are.

I’m really hoping Kelly Clarkson will record “I Said Never Again (But Here We Are),” actually. There’s no way that song wouldn’t be a huge hit, and it’s not like Rachel Stevens’ record company is gonna pony up the cash to push it here.

It does sound like “then you lose your hair.” And that Girls Aloud is kinda reminiscent of the hyper-production of Junior Senior.

Yeah, that would be a great song for Kelly. I wish I could select all of the songs for her next album - there’s a lot of good ones from the past couple years that would be great for her. Like, say, “Heartbeats” by The Knife!

I keep asking myself if Girls Aloud would be popular over in the US and I am still uncertain, despite thinking they are one of the best pop acts evar.

Why is the US so fubared?

I think that there’s just no format for this sort of music in the US, and that the pop audience here generally isn’t into this sort of pop music.

Also, Girls Aloud are totally fucked over by the failure of the Spice Girls. No matter what they do, they would be seen as Spice Girls II in the US, which would alienate most people.

I guess they are, poor poppets, they don’t deserve it! Why are Americans such idiots when it comes to POP? It’s enough to make a girl want to move on out. (Well there are other reasons, but still.) The US is in dire need of some good girl!band!pop.

I don’t know, American mainstream pop gets some things right, it’s not totally awful. It’s just frustrating that there’s virtually no market for some really good things here.

Yeah, especially girl-pop. As long as it’s not a “girl group,” America loves its female pop artists.

I think Kelly should cover “Gigantic.”

I find all the tearing-of-hair over how shaggy boys with guitars are oppressing the music world a little annoying. These things come and go in cycles, and there have certainly been cycles when shaggy boys with guitars were nary to be seen (remember when Britney, Xtina, N’sync, and Backstreet were inescapable?). Get over it people.

Which is not to say that GA aren’t magnificent. But shouldn’t we really be talking about Xenomania and Richard X?

Not ragging on the boys with shaggy hair and guitars, sort of indifferent to them, honestly. Some are good, some are bad, it’s the same old drill. Nor am I saying that all American mainstream pop is dire. Some of it does the trick.

I just wish that people didn’t see musical wub as this race to snag up precious corners of the market. Can’t we just love it all? There are times when I just don’t get marketing and “capitalism.”

That Girls Aloud is smoking! I especially like how Models’ drum fills seem to come from a little behind in the beat, as if the drummer was trying to catch up to the rest of the musicians. Definitely they all sound like they were having fun, which is a plus in my book.

Girls Aloud….Pure ’80s pop. A Devo synthesizer with a more upbeat tune…Maybe just a “female Devo” is a more apt description?

But as for the talent behind these ladies, my suspicion is that it’s manufactured glamour. I don’t know, but I would wager that this “group” is as much the creation of some producer’s mind as any of the boy bands that were popular in America in the ’90s. How much of the talent involved is actually theirs? Not much, I bet.

Would I call them “rock”? Not at all.

“Rock” as a genre of guitar based sound– inspite of claims about “slavish devotion to…tradition”– is all but dead commercially. Sure, there are classic rock radio stations in many markets. But guitar driven rock songs with a great traditional structure has almost died. (”Rock” has been subsumed by the “indie” label/category in many ways, whatever the fuck “indie” means.) So why the angst over the supposed slavish devotion?

In fact, one of the things that I think makes the New Pornographers good– I don’t think they are “great”– is that they in some ways revive a traditional rock song structure/sound. But in the New Pornographers case, I find it’s all used as artifice, which is fine up to a point….

“The Sounds”….’80s pop ROCK….

Devo is a rock band. Rock and roll music does NOT need to be about guitars, and if you want to talk about TRADITION, it never did at any point until it macho guitar bullshit became an orthodoxy in the 70s. Rock music is a much broader genre than people normally allow themselves to admit. Elton John is just as much rock music as Guns N Roses or Ashlee Simpson or The Smashing Pumpkins or Yo La Tengo or Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band or The Beatles or Devo or The Fiery Furnaces or Yes. The differences lie in SUB-genres.

There are loads of huge crossover hits every year that are rock songs. Especially this year!

Also, does it really matter how much of the “talent” is in the singers? Why is Xenomania doing music with Girls Aloud necessarily different from a rock band writing music for their frontman to sing?

I think terms can be defined in lots of ways obviously. And we can debate about where to draw the lines of a definition. So I dont really disagree with your point. And our personal experiences will shape alot of how we define terms.

(Although I definitely would not call The Fiery Furnaces a “rock” band. But maybe their live show would change my mind? And a band like The Fiery Furnaces fits perfectly with the “indie” label, which I so abhor because I think it’s almost meaningless….But I do think some acts can be labeled as “indie” and the FF are one. Quirky, keyboard driven, synth driven music, trying to explore the edges of “pop” music using unusual offbeat topics and lyrics…Which reminds me, whatever happened to the label of “college rock”?)

But the synth used in the song you posted sounds like a standard synth from alot of ’80s pop music and it reminded me of Devo. (Yes, Devo used guitars but they didn’t try to make them sound like a guitar. I still remember seeing them on Saturday Night Live, their first appearance on TV.)

And as for how groups write songs, I guess the bottom line is the end product. If you like the music , you don’t really care how they get from point A to point B. But part of me still dislikes the idea of being offered a prepackaged product called “music” where a music producer picks some good looking front people to sing songs he wrote with the help of some studio musicians. I’m still old fashioned in that I like to see the organic process of a group of people who grow up together or meet in college and start a band and work their way up through the recording industry because they have talent.

But then I think about alot of other art forms like the broadway show specifically. That’s much further from any “organic” process, yet it is clearly just as enjoyable as any other art form. (I bring this up because you seem to like some music because it echoes the feeling of broadway musicals.) So I try not to hold on too tightly to my idea of a band developing “organically.” But I still like people to just go out and create music rather than producers aiming for an end product.

And what is a good way to differentiate pop from rock while recognizing the fact that they overlap?

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“Also, does it really matter how much of the “talent” is in the singers? Why is Xenomania doing music with Girls Aloud necessarily different from a rock band writing music for their frontman to sing?”

Exactness.

Also, as long as Girls Aloud are popular enough somewhere on the planet to be aloud (ha! etc.) to keep making records, who cares if they’re not hot anywhere else? You can still get your hands on the music.

You can still get your hands on the music.

Not easily! If it weren’t for the internet, I certainly wouldn’t be aware of Girls Aloud, much less have reasonable access to it outside of expensive imports.

It just blows my mind that ANYONE would not consider the Fiery Furnaces to be a rock band. I mean, a) hello, their live show! b) GALLOWSBIRD’S BARK c) BLUEBERRY BOAT d) everything else they’ve ever recorded!

I feel like I’m having a conversation with Ronald Thomas Clontle!

That Girls Aloud thing is driving me crazy. I love it! the vocal rythm is infectious and the words aren’t bad. The ” Freedom of Choice” era synth line is fantastic and it’s so aggressively dance.
I can imagine it coming on at 4am and all the exausted people get back on the dance floor one last time. You can’t deny it’s power to dance you up.

I thought my post made pretty clear I had not seen a FF show, but I guess not.

I have the EP and Blueberry Boat.

And although there are rock elements — a guitar solo in “Mason City” is very rock– the band is overwhelmingly closer to an experimental pop band, i.e. “indie.”

Synth driven, quirky, keyboard driven, electronic noises and experimentation, weird themes, classical elements, etc.

Sorry, not a rock band the way I think of a rock band.

“Experimental” and “indie” are just subgenres of rock!

Rock is not a synonym for Aerosmith, dude! It’s a very, very, very broad genre.

Hey, Girls Aloud are fine, fun pop music. Nothing wrong with that at all.

To call them “rock,” however, is a massive, massive misunderstanding of the aesthetic, and it’s got nothing to do with guitars presence (or lack thereof) or males with unkempt hair being present (or lack thereof). That’s OK, though…people have been making that same mistake for decades, so why stop now?

The term “rock” can be defined in more than one way. It’s all about how one defines it and why one defines it the way one does. To debate as if it has a fixed meaning– broad or narrow– is silly.

In part, how one uses language is based on one’s personal experiences, time, place, cultural background, etc. i.e. definitions contain an element of the subjective.

The term “rock” has not always been broad, assuming you want to adopt a broad definition. If you played what you’re calling “rock” for people in the mid ’60s to use an example, they just wouldn’t call it “rock and roll.” (That’s what it is short for afterall…) Or go back further. Imagine playing the Fiery Furnaces for someone in the ’50s…Would they call it “rock and roll”?

I would argue no. And I think that’s because definitions are in part subjective, shifting, historically linked, etc. I’m using the term in a narrow– and I would argue more specific– way. It’s better to have more specific ideas, images, sensations, experiences, etc., asociated with words and comcepts because them we come close to real communication.

Definitions will never have firm boundaries but I don’t consider the FF a “rock” band….My definition reflects my subjective experience. Definitions of words are not an exact science. If you want to be broad, that’s your choice. But then you have to account for the shifting usage of the world as it has changed over time and argue why you think it has now taken on a broader meaning.

By the way, Elton John, especially early Elton John, is undoubtedly rock and roll. Note the lack of long hair.

Hell, I’m starting to get the feeling you think ALL pop music is “rock” and that you consider the terms synonymous. That’s a real waste of the English Language.

No, some pop music is more rooted in hip hop, folk/country & western, funk, jazz, etc.

Kwame, go and listen to Girls Aloud songs like “Biology,” “Waiting,” “Love Machine,” “Swinging London Town,” “Wake Me Up,” “Long Hot Summer,” and “Graffiti My Soul.” If that’s not rock music, then please let me know WHY THEY ARE ROCKING SO DAMN MUCH. And most of those songs will make it a little simpler for you: there are lots of guitars.

Rock isn’t about guitars, it’s about the beat. Why is that so hard to grasp? It’s always been about the beat, since the very beginning.

Or, to put it another way, it’s about “rocking out.” I know you haven’t seen a FF show, Mr./Ms. Mouse, but trust me, people who are a little unconvinced by the albums often come to the show and say, “Holy shit, they really rock out!”

Girls Aloud are pop and then inhabit different concentric circles of feeder genres at different moments (as all pop acts do), but overall, I think it’s fair to say that they’re taking a rock path. Certainly the bridge/intro of “Biology” is just basic blues. There’s a europoppy bit but they also come back to that blues vamp a lot, so it seems just as fair to characterize it as a pop song with rock pastiche as a rock song with pop pastiche if you take the song in isolation.

Those are totally rock drum fills in “Models,” incidentally. And the guitar part is very late Beatles, if that helps. The hat is mixed low, which is very rock, and you just generally want to bop your head to it. Plus, it’s too fast to really be a dance song.

The sounds really suck

A day and about a dozen comments too late, but Bob Stanley (of Saint Etienne fame) wrote a piece in the Times last Friday about the “rock aesthetic” of bands being self-contained units vs. writers/producers + frontwomen. This in the context of discussing the Pipettes, who I will be interested in reading Matthew’s opinions about at some time in the future.

I already covered the Pipettes’ new single a couple weeks ago! Unfortunately, the review wasn’t particularly well written. It’s definitely one of my favorite singles from this year, and at that point, I was just kinda in the OMG OMG OMG!!! phase to get any real thought out.

I almost posted a comment yesterday saying that it was interesting how fast the acceptance of pop music became the norm …. i.e. only a year or two ago there were the big New Yorker and N.Y. Times articles about rock chauvinism, and now just a short time later it’s rare to read anything *bad* about a band like Girls Aloud. But I guess the subsequent shitstorm above shows that I would be jumping the gun on that particular theory.

This song isn’t rock!! Aside from the drum fills, guitars, and vocals, it’s totally ghetto tech!!

I love coming across new lingo the kids are using these days like “ghetto tech”….

ghetto tech’s ten years old i think

Who said it was about the guitars? Not I…I can cite examples of bands that “rocked” who didn’t use them at all (USA and The Screamers to name two).

Yes, it’s about the beat, but exactly *how* is that beat being rendered? There’s a reference somewhere in here to a “rock aesthetic” that starts to get to the point. This isn’t about good vs. bad as much as it is getting the shit right. I personally know guys who have written Girls Aloud tracks…sorry, but I know better about intent, method of execution, and how ludicrous it is to attempt to place them within some fantasy land “rock” context. To call them “rock” means that the term itself lacks any precision or definition. I don’t live in a relativist world, sorry.

kwame + Cole

I think some people read too much into my comments when they implied that I think rock is about guitars and long hair. While I don’t think the issue is settled by the kinds of instruments used, I do associate the rock aesthetic with a guitar sound. But that doesn’t mean bands can’t have a rock aethetic without guitars.

And as for “ghetto techno” being ten years old, that’s cool. I need to catch up with what the youngsters are doing and saying these days. Have they re-invented sex yet? I know when you’re young you tend to think you’re the first human to discover certain things.

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At a time when Girls Aloud are garnering 5 star reviews left, right and centre from the english media it’s nice to see our friends across the pond have cottoned on. Unfortunately, however they will always, unless they have an extremely thorough understanding of english society, never quite get it!

Part of the joy of girls aloud is how marvellously chav-tastic they are, unapologetic, full on, cheap dates.

They represent, along with Mutya of the sugababes and Lady Sovereign, the binge-drinking, street fighting, “your missus is a nutter”, exuberance of contemporary british female society.

With one member already done for aasault in the toilets of a club, we can only hope that they continue to need “no good advice” and make more music that is perfect for nights out drinking bacardi breezers, wearing fake tan and happy slapping people to.

So rock on Girls Aloud, ‘cos you ain’t bovvered!!!

D

Okay, yeah, but BACARDI?? Rum sucks.

Like every Girls Aloud song ever I am bored shitless before it’s even half-way through! Why do I keep trying to ‘get’ them??

If you’re not getting it immediately, you probably never will. It’s either that, or you’re just profoundly uptight about this sort of music, which is kinda the same difference.

No, it’s VERY immediate, there just isn’t anything worth hanging around for by the mid-point. All their cards have been revealed, and they’re simply banal. Their lyrics can be the most interesting thing about them, but it almost never saves the songs. Certainly not here.

Profoundly uptight would be a good way to describe this. They don’t rock, because they daren’t make a mistake, not ever. There’s no looseness whatsoever. It’s micro-engineered to appeal in such a charmless, life-denying way that it has zero spontenaity. If it IS rock, it’s Linkin Park.

I ‘get’ them, and I do like “this sort of music”. I just think they’re disposable garbage and not being 14 anymore I don’t see the point in pretending otherwise.

The more I write the worse I explain myself. I generally very much enjoy your downloads here.

Apologies for bespoiling your blog on this one. I will try to ignore them instead.

it’s cute watching people try to discuss this intelligently. what gives you the right? haha