Two years ago, at the height of Born This Way furore, I identified the problem with Lady Gaga's pop trajectory: after Bad Romance Gaga took as her model the more conceptual, overexposing 1989-1992 Madonna, the Madonna whose music feels secondary to exhibitionism, cultural provocation and domination for its own sake. That was a problem for Gaga because Madonna had all the cultural political capital gained from her first three albums to spend down during that period, while Gaga's obnoxious and exhausting phase had to be 'funded' out of only the handful of broadly appealing singles up to Bad Romance.
Fast-forward two years and Gaga's OK-ish (and certainly better than BTW) next album, Artpop, arrives together with all sorts of extra-musical, antic and excessive promotional stunts, but only the hard core of fans are paying any sort of positive attention: Gaga's selling a few hundred thousand records not millions. The sort of good will you need to have to get the casual fan to buy your stuff no longer exists for Gaga - it's all been spent. Maybe Gaga will enjoy being a more cult figure, albeit one's that's possibly about as big as Bowie was for much of the 1970s:
"As of June 1983, Bowie’s total global album sales were as follows (according to Zanetta/Edwards’ Stardust, figures rounded up/down):
Three top sellers: Ziggy Stardust (1.38 million units moved), ChangesOneBowie (1.33 million), Young Americans (923,000). A few gold records: Diamond Dogs (745,000), David Live (598,000), Station to Station (552,800), Aladdin Sane (533,000); a few mid-list sellers: Space Oddity (455,600), Hunky Dory (445,600), Pin Ups (421,250), Scary Monsters (347,400). With the “Berlin” records, a complete cratering: “Heroes” (279,000), Low (265,900), Lodger (153,360), Stage (127,350). Between 1977 and 1983, one of every two new Bowie LPs was returned unsold by retailers. By contrast, Michael Jackson sold over a million copies of Off the Wall between August and December 1979 alone." (Pushing After The Dame)
Here's hoping she can come up with some 'Berlin'-worthy music once she realizes her new status.
2013 has seen the rise of the exciting, brilliantly precocious Lorde. This was a genuinely unexpected development; 2013 was supposed to be the year of the 'Baby Robyns': Frida Sundemo, Faye, MØ, and the like:
I'm not sure that it quite makes sense for all these Scandi-gals to sell nothing while Lorde sells millions! Indeed Robyn herself has never had quite the global success (esp. in North America) that Lorde is having. Thus, while Lorde is a fantastic development for the charts, the flukiness and winner-take-all-ness of pop chart success remains troubling. Incredible luck is involved in becoming a 'chosen one'. Lorde shows signs of understanding this, and of appreciating her good fortune more generally. Let's hope she never forgets the point (it's probably one of the keys, along with staying a little bit 'alternative' to the mainstream, to Lorde's preserving good will and having a long career).
Update 2019: The mystery gal is Jan Wiley, credited as Harriet Brandon for Stage Door and for her debut, New Faces of 1937. Wiley succeeded as a serials star throughout the '40s.
As part of the avclub's 'What we're rooting for at the Oscars' rundown, one Phil Dyess-Nugent (not an avclub regular as far as I'm aware) remarks as follows:
The only legitimate reason to care about the Oscars is the effect they can have on the careers of the people involved... For that reason, I’m very happy to see Jennifer Lawrence’s Best Actress nomination for Silver Linings Playbook. There’s not a chance in hell she’ll win; young actress[es] don’t win Oscars for being that funny and sexy and insanely alive, unless (like Marisa Tomei and Mira Sorvino) they can be squeezed into the Best Supporting Actress category, and even then they can expect to spend the rest of their lives being expected to apologize for it. [My italics]
The suggestion that there's a kind of vengefulness against youth and beauty associated with Academy Awards to young actresses is as intriguing as it is chilling. I'm not sure that the suggestion is correct, indeed I suspect that much of the evidence for anything like Dyess-Nugent's thesis is also evidence of the Academy's larger aversion to comedy, hence can't differentially establish what Dyess-Nugent needs. But the point deserves further study.
While Britain's Jessica Ennis may have won the race for pure, Olympic sweetheart, for cool cheekbones and for the body of an alien robot from the future here to kill us all, it's hard to go past the High Jump gals. C'mon down gold-medalist Anna Chicherova (Russia).
Is she ready for her closeup? Yes, yes she is. Get on this Hollywood. I'd even go for her and Isenbayeva as a dynamic duo of some sort. Make it so.
Note that High Jump is one of those events where records set in the 1980s still stand (for both women and men), notwithstanding all the improvements in diet, training, and general sports science ever since. (Things that make you go 'Hmmm'!) Current athletes, however, are getting close, especially on the female side. Chicherova's personal best (2.07m) is 2 cm short of equaling the World Record, hence 3 cm short of breaking it. And Croatia's Blanka Vlasic is 1cm closer still.
What about the lies Adam told Hannah about HPV testing?
What about the 'Hannah's Dad is gay' idea?
How is Hannah planning to keep the apartment that Marnie's been paying for? Hannah needs a flat-mate who'll cover her share of the rent. Good luck with that! Did the show not stress this point because then having Adam move in would have made too much sense just on a practical level (i.e., Hannah's offering the room to someone else would then look certifiable)?
Hannah's old writing prof. says that Tally (Hannah's nemesis) is a terrible writer, but Marnie liked Tally's book. Are we supposed to conclude that Marnie is lacking in judgement and taste?
And how is an Oberlin prof. on the scene so conveniently in NYC?
Jessa's marriage can't be serious. Neither can Marnie's throwing herself at tubby, bombastic wedding guy. Was a shark jumped?
And why in the original 'threesome' ep. didn't the unimpressed Jessa just leave and wish Marnie well in her effort to get laid by Thomas John? (And is that guy's ridiculous name a clue that none of this whole side of the narrative is to be taken seriously?) That Jessa would insist on, as it were, vag.-blocking her friend seemed quite out of character for her.
Does this show and its characters make even basic sense?
Update August 1, 2012. And a Non-question:
Why are Hannah's friends and broader peer-group so white? Good god. Lena Dunham should be allowed to write about what and whom she knows. Her world's a little narrow and bordering-on privileged. So was Jane Austen's. So is Richard Curtis's. Comedy thrives under these kind of self-imposed constraints. Don't like it? Don't watch it. Make your own show. Stop whining.
Mad Men's pivotal, Season 5 Episode 11 ended with a terrific musical flourish: The Kinks' immortal 'You Really Got Me' from 1964, which cuts off over the credits. It seemed like a good idea to put together a montage starting with the song's entry point in the episode but then continuing on for the whole song.
When you find yourself getting inexplicably angry whenever Community spends much time with anyone other than her character Annie: I'm starting to think that this response might interfere with Mad Men Season 5 when it screens. Like everyone else, I've loved the Trudy and Pete Campbell 'surprisingly strong marriage' sub-plot on MM, but my now evidently borderline prurient interest in Trudy (Alison Brie) may throw off the equipoise of my interest in the show. I'll be slightly, unconsciously angry at Don and Sally etc...for drawing attention away from Trudy, which is crazy!
At any rate, I hope Brie does some movies soon, and that, in particular, someone writes a great screwball comedy for her. She's incredibly funny and smart as well as being smoking hot in a pretty-gal-next-door way. That's the combination that Lombard/Colbert/Stanwyck/Dunne/Hopkins/Arthur had in Hollywood's golden age. Make it so again Hollywood!
In 2011 women, and particularly solo women dominate both the pop charts (Gaga, Perry, Rhianna, Beyonce, Adele, Winehouse, Pink, Kesha, etc.) and the, as it were, indie charts (Florence, Janelle Monae, Robyn, Lykke Li, Calvi, PJ, Newsom, Bat for Lashes, Feist, Glasser, Class Actress, etc.). Not to mention acts like Dirty Projectors and Sleigh Bells that have strong female components.
I suspect that, for better or worse, this level of female dominance is a recent phenomenon. That said, I think one can make a case for 1980 as a banner year for women in rock/pop, one that's at least the equal of current times in terms of quantity of female excellence if not in terms of, say, overall quantity or overall market share. So let's make that case by listing important female-centered acts, singles and albums from 1980 in the order, near as I can judge, of their importance and excellence. Note that I've included items that charted very extensively in 1980 even if they were first released in 1979, and I've honored the best by selecting two vids. just for each of the 'top seven' items on my list.
1. The Pretenders (First self-titled album, Brass In Pocket, Stop Your Sobbing, Tattooed Love Boys, Up The Neck)
Chrissie Hynde arrives and explodes. This flawless album, with monster song after monster song, one of the greatest debuts was deservedly everywhere the whole year. Tragic deaths would scar the band soon after this, and the first album's incredibly tight guitars and rhythm section wouldn't repeat. Hynde would be good again after this but never quite this good.
2. Marianne Faithfull (Broken English, Ballad of Lucy Jordan, Broken English, Working Class Hero)
A '60s 'it'-girl returns a woman and makes an angry masterpiece and testament album. With brilliant synth-work from Steve Winwood (who'd obviously paid close attention to Eno's work for Nico in the mid. '70s).
3. Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees (Kaleidoscope, Happy House, Christine, Red Light)
Siouxsie the prototype, highly haughty, super-creative, indie 'it'-girl with the great haircuts arrives. With John McGeoch in her band she was now unstoppable, as 1981's Juju would further establish.
4. B-52s (First self-titled album, Rock Lobster, Planet Claire, 52 Girls)
Huge down under for the whole year, the B-52s debut contained three of the best party dance-tracks of all time.
5. Blondie (Eat to the Beat, Atomic, Dreaming, The Hardest Part, Call Me)
Blondie's strengths - clever concepts, Debbie Harry's voice and image, Clem Burke's ace drumming (fusing disco beats with rock power) - were perfectly displayed across this series of singles.
6. Abba (Super Trouper, Super Trouper, The Winner Takes It All, One of Us, On and On and On, Gimme Gimme Gimme (A man after midnight), Happy New Year)
Abba were fraying at the seams personally by 1980, were just past their hit-making prime, and were in any case subject to incredible back-lash. But even firing on only 80% of their cylinders, Abba's output was still better than most acts ever achieve.
7. The Motels (First self-titled album, Careful, Total Control, Danger)
Martha Davis introduced a note of LA Noir to pop across two albums in 1980, both of which were all over the radio down under. She and the Motels would break through in the US only with their third album, but their earlier records, and Davis's original sultry, smokey schtick were more deserving.
8. Kate Bush (Never for Ever, Babooshka, Army Dreamers)
Kate Bush continued to show that she was smarter and weirder than anyone else in music since Bowie. Even if you didn't like her latest exactly, she was someone to be reckoned with.
9. Diana Ross (Diana, Upside Down, I'm Coming Out)
Diana Ross had the two classiest dance tracks of the year courtesy largely of Chic, with whom Ross fought. Ross brought in her own engineer to remix, change tempos etc.. I'd always assumed that Chic's original mixes would be better, but having heard them recently, I must say that I prefer Ross's speeded up, slightly poppier mixes. Ross appears to have been very shrewd.
10. Young Marble Giants (Colossal Youth)
The retiring, intellectual, cool person's record of 1980. Alison Statton's vocals are tightly rationed throughout the record, but are an indie blueprint whenever they appear.
11. Olivia Newton-John (Magic, Xanadu, Suddenly)
One of the worst movies ever made had three good, cheesy, pop hits for Ms Newton-John.
12. Pat Benatar (Heartbreaker, We live for love, Hit me with your best shot)
Benatar arrived in 1980 with a series of great singles, spread over two so-so albums. Her albums would improve after this but her singles were never this good again. The gods are cruel!
13. Grace Jones (Warm Leatherette)
Grace wouldn't really arrive until 1981's Pull up to the Bumper single, but the Warm Leatherette album and its title track (a The Normal cover) announced the arrival of someone to watch.
14. Pointer Sisters (He's So Shy)
The Pointer Sisters continued their run of great singles by revisiting the ace groove from The Brothers Johnson's I'll be good to you and Prince's I wanna be your lover. (Note that the rudimentary video's shot in LA's famous Bradbury building.)
15. Holly Vincent (Miles Away)
Holly and The Italians (w/ Holly Vincent's stonking voice, guitar, and general coolness) released a pretty great album in 1981 (which they never really followed up), but this 1980 single was an especial stunner.
16. Lori and the Chameleons (The Lonely Spy)
This pretty stunning single could have been featured on Pitchfork last week! It anticipates and may have influenced recent, well-received work by Charlotte Gainsbourg, Glasser, Lykke Li, Grimes,...
17. Lipps Inc. (Funkytown)
An alternately irritating/awesome hit song.
18. Toyah Wilcox (Ieya)
Some sort of masterpiece that Toyah was never able to follow up.
19. Flying Lizards (Money)
Just a fun as hell cover and video.
In sum, there were a heck of a lot of women in both mainstream and, as it were, indie charts in 1980. The best stuff was all-time-great, and much of the rest was either solidly entertaining or interesting in a where-will-this-person-go-next? way or both.
What a gal! I'd not seen any of Davis's TV interviews from the '70s and early '80s until recently. Before that I knew her just from her ding-dong classics (esp. All about Eve, Now Voyager, Dark Victory, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and The Letter), and from her later near-disastrous, post-stroke, Oscar shows appearances (as presenter but also as Testimonial awardee IIRC). Youtube, however, enables me and others to fill in that sort of gap: it's a treasure-trove of interviews that awesomely display Davis's smarts and 'stand and deliver' personal style. Having spent a few hours clicking around through these items, I'm blown away again, resmitten. Over the next month I'll try to rewatch some of my existing Davis faves and check out at least the obvious biggies that I've missed before (esp. Jezebel, Of Human Bondage, and her Elizabeth I movie, if I can get hold of them). Go here for Meryl Streep's lovely tribute to Davis if you need further inspiration to do the same. Streep describes herself and her high school girlfriends regularly watching Davis's classics on after-school tv in the 1960s, and as taking lessons from Davis on 'how to scare the hell out of men'. Haw haw!
Update July 13, 2011: Just saw The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Pretty good w/ a powerhouse lead performance from Davis (who's unafraid to play ugly and unappealing and super-high-maintenance - Davis's frantically fidgeting Elizabeth I feels like a prototype for Olivier's later Richard III). Unfortunately, despite some interesting, almost 3-D effect focal length tricks from director Curtiz, the script and production is very stagey and somewhat hard to believe. E.g., the few outdoor scenes are filled with incredibly bright, steady CA sunshine that's ridiculous for England - the soundstage, interior light is much better although it's still unrealistically bright for the renaissance/medieval world; and Flynn's Essex is given some absurd lines that make him a proto-Locke or Thomas Jefferson. Moreover, the casting of Errol Flynn (w/ a Korngold score) and Olivia de Havilland as an insolent lady-in-waiting (who should surely have lost her head!) invites comparison with Robin Hood and GWTW, respectively, but PLEE isn't nearly as much fun or as spectacular as those. At any rate, next up: Jezebel. Update August 1, 2011: After some delays, Jezebel! More excellent work from Davis in a well-made film with an unfortunately too predictable script. The 'noble'/self-sacrificing ending is an odd beast because it's evidently also a deeply self-interested ending on Davis's Julee's part. At any rate, it's impossible to be moved by what happens because of the conflicted stances the action embodies. The ending then comes to symbolize the complexity of our feelings about all of the main characters. Nobody comes out especially well, so I guess that makes J a rather good drama, but it's no Dark Victory or Now Voyager. J's setting and content invites comparison with GWTW - but, alas, that just makes me appreciate GWTW's scale, spectacle, casting, and score even more. Fonda's a bit of wet-blanket compared to Gable, as is the good-girl foil to Davis (Margaret Lindsay's Amy) compared to De Havilland's Melanie. Deep down too, I wonder whether Julee's character even quite makes sense. She's supposed to be a free spirit/spitfire. But she's also supposed to mope around the house, to receive no callers etc. for a year after things blow up with Press. That doesn't seem like a plausible combination to me. Also, we're supposed to believe that Julee's red dress scandalizes society, and that that then has consequences with Press. But the movie focuses completely on the fallout with Press, so that it's as if it forgets that Julee is now regarded as a scarlet/wild/trollop-y woman and should be paying social prices independently of Press for her non-conformism. Maybe my two complaints are connected and may be jointly answers as follows: maybe we're supposed to infer that Julee holes up for a year after Press leaves in part because New Orleans society now largely shuns her. But if that's so then I think it needed to be clarified, e.g., there's a scene missing, perhaps of people crossing the street to avoid Julee that we need.
The best scene in Mad Men Season 4, Ep. 13 ('Tomorrowland') - the climax of the whole season, maybe of the whole show so far - was Peggy and Joan's smoking, cursing, laughing together at events and their lots. Christina Hendricks (Joan) gets lots of attention for her Monroe-/Jayne Mansfield-esque figure, but to me she's principally an amazing facial actress - Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Stephane Audran are good reference points for her. Elizabeth Moss (Peggy) acts in a more balanced way, through her face and body and limbs, but opposite Hendricks her facial acting blossoms.
At any rate, in this crucial payoff scene, where the characters really spoke for the shocked audience as well as for themselves, Hendricks and Moss were on fire, bouncing off each other, their eyelines so exact and locked in, their mutually translucent skin making every other face on the show look like a mask, and so on. Related bouquets: the precision camera-work and editing captured everything with minimal fuss; the lighting people performed their usual miracle of making an ostensibly fluorescent-lit, totally interior room seem realistically lit yet still warm and flattering to faces and complexions; shrewdly chosen costumes - Joan in black and Peggy in dark-gray - made them business-like and adult; and thank god for cigarettes. (Cigarettes are so so good for visuals and acting, pointing scenes. I mean, just look at the images above.)
The upshot: in some respects, and regardless of what Matt Weiner wants or thinks or plans, Mad Men is Peggy and Joan's show now. And if it isn't? Well, we'd pay money to watch a post-Mad Men, rise and rise of Olsen Holloway in the '70s show.
Jan. 2011 update: Fabulous interview with Elizabeth Moss here.
Mad Men Season 4, Ep. 9 ('The Beautiful Girls') was extraordinary. While remaining true to a set of characters, it meditated on the overlapping destinies of 5-6 micro-generations of women. Apparently, Sondheim's Follies, which opens and closes with the number 'Beautiful Girls', is an important reference. Will have to check that out now.
At any rate, the episode climaxed with a remarkable series of Resnais-meets-Demy, female tableaux, anchored by the amazing facial acting of Christina Hendricks. Just, wow.
I don't pretend to know what to think of the final image of Peggy, white-gloved (like Betty), smiling. She's less touched by Sally Draper and Miss Blankenship than the others of course, but evidently there's a lot more going on than that. Peggy looks the best pulled-together she ever has in that final shot. On the one hand, she looks like she's off to the Country (white privilege) Club, which, given the racial themes of the ep., would be somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, her hat/bonnet is halo-like, and the light that flares up off the closing elevator doors creates angels' wings for her. A Catholic icon or an astronaut like Blankenship? I dunno, but either way this is impressively suggestive cinematography.
And is Mad Men secretly, actually Peggy's memoir/novelistic reconstruction of her time with Don Draper (written when, say, she's herself an '80s, eminence grise of the ad. world)? Probably not, but that possibility, among others, was certainly opened by the end of this extraordinary, gut-twisting, brain-bursting episode. For some reason too, the end of the ep. made me think of (is soundtracked internally for me by) this piece by Olafur Arnalds:
One flaw with the ep.? Megan (Jessica Pare) half swallows her lines before and after Sally's heart-breaking 'No, it's not'. Of course, Megan is supposed to be a little awkward, unformed, not especially poised, possibly vaguely promoted above her abilities because of her looks (although I don't quite get those beyond her impressive, but somewhat generically runway model-ish height and figure), etc.. So her verbal clumsiness is arguably a feature of and not a problem with Pare's performance. Still, the near-('80s Valley-girl-to-early-Anne-Hathaway) lack of enunciation, the speaking from the back of her mouth and in scattered sentence fragments grates. It makes Megan (and Pare) stick out like a proverbial sore thumb on Mad Men. The end of ep. 4.10, indicating a wider role for Megan on the show therefore currently looks to me like a mistake, even setting aside the dread that a Don-Megan 'ship inspires. Update October 5: The end of ep. 4.11 confirms that Mad Men has indeed made one of its occasional blunders (comparable to some about Betty last season), this time with Megan. Having been quite inarticulate and apparently unsophisticated up until this point, Megan is now quickly and implausibly revealed as a college grad., as super-calculating and worldly, and as, in fact, pretty much just a plot device to heighten Don's damage-done-already to Faye. Having Faye breach her Chinese wall at Don's suggestion was enough: it's a fateful self-betrayal by Faye that was well set up over a couple of eps. The additional element with Don and Megan then and there is insane, soap-erific overkill. And, realistically, that they actually have sex brings to a head that the show has gone to the well of spontaneous, causal sex too often. It's become a crutch for the writers at this point. Don going out for a bite with Megan and having a good time (i.e., her surprising us and him with her depths, etc.) would still have been unnecessary heightening for Don's situation with Faye, but it would at least have satisfied basic believability. Badly done Mr Weiner. Badly done Erin Levy (the official, sole author of ep. 4.11).
According to this blog post, women in popular music are sexistly scored according to something like the rule/policy that we can graphically represent by the territory under the following frontier:
I have a lot of other problems with the blog-posting, i.e., setting aside whether the rule allegation is correct, but in fact, I believe its frontier/rule allegation isn't correct, as any even half-way serious (albeit speculative) scatter-plotting would have shown. All your Kate Bush's and Siouxsie's and Aimee Mann's are in the top right quadrant of the graph. Probably Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Roisin Murphy, Chrissie Hynde, Feist, Jenny Lewis, Natasha Khan, and many others are there too. And super-talents with somewhat quirky looks from Tracey Thorn to Bjork to PJ Harvey to (Dresden Dolls') Amanda Palmer, to Carey and Tracyanne Camera Obscura to Tegan and Sara to Angel Deradoorian (all of whom I personally find very attractive - these are geek-goddesses at the very least) are hardly unheard of. Even if enough SOBs score them low on looks though, they've got talent points to burn and should still be, by consensus, above the frontier in the top left quadrant of the graph.
Of course, saying all this has involved us looking beyond our target blogger's principal focus: the true bubble-gum pop market. I agree that that arena is perhaps the most brutally superficial, 'looks first' market of all. Looking like Justin Timberlake or Gwen Stefani or Posh Spice or Rihanna (plus lots of luck) can get you initial success in that marketplace. But sustaining that success normally means proving that you've got real talent after all. Showing that you're more than just a pretty face or a slinky mover is, in most cases, almost like starting all over again. Not 1 in 20 tween-/teen-courting pop-stars gets over that hump, and then goes on to have a substantial, expanding career. That appears to be appropriate, and controlling for (oscillating through the decades) skew by sex in the bubble-gum pop market, I'd need to see serious evidence that that very difficult next step works in any especially sexist way. My own sense is that Justin Timberlake, David Cassidy, every New Kid on the Block, and so on, faced at least as much skepticism and vague resentment as Beyonce, Britney, the post-Spice Girls, and so on did. Getting off the brainless/talentless bimbo track - 'No, really, my looks got me in the door, but I can really play/sing etc., I'm Elton John, I'm Streisand, I'm Agnetha....' - after you've won the bimbo lottery isn't easy for anyone.
In my view, then, rather than allege spurious rules, it would be better just to look at plausible scatter-plots of both male and female popular musicians (i.e., on the same looks/talent axes). Plots we could agree on (supposing consensus about looks and talents scores could be found) might in fact be rather different for male and female stars. I'd guess, for example, that we'd find/agree that there are few, if any truly homely female stars. A sexist factor in culture at large - a double standard about looks that actors/television presenters/news-readers etc. have long complained about - could and probably does apply in pop music too. But what do the talent score distributions for the sexes in music look like after we control for looks scores? Roughly the same? Do they at least have similar means? Is either distribution skewed, and if so how exactly? What are the variances? Studying this would appear to be an interesting project, unlike some others.
