sugarhigh.abstractdynamics.orgjane dark's sugarhigh!

-- April 26, 2010 on the born free video, m.i.a. Kick-Ass , by Peter Watkins. -- January 09, 2010 top 25 songs of 2009 in a single entry 25) "Where I Stood," Missy Higgins. And so Chick-Alt, spun off from the Modern Rock radio format to accommodate first chick-alt performers (Alanis, Tori, Sarah) and then an an imagined audience of alt-chick consumers, has come to this: an imitation of Anna Nalick imitating Leona Naess imitating lesser Liz Phair divided by Miss McLachlan. Which is still okay with us, still better than Kate Nash, but really: at what point does the arc of decay call for another Joni Mitchell? Soon, we hope. Soon. 24) "Know Your Enemy," Green Day. If your favorite Green Day song is "Warning," you may just like this one. If you thought that Green Day's politics was ever something other than Capital D Democratic, you will perhaps feel betrayed by the posturing � which is not simply empty but can't even be bothered to pretend to radicality, and is in fact indicative of the same corporate humanism that is the default mode of the pop marketplace. Which is to say, this band could be your president. Remember Dookie ? Remember the public option? 23) "Blue Jeans and a Rosary," Kid Rock. Best Elton John song in a couple decades. Full title: "Guess That's Why They Call it the Blue Jeans and a Rosary." 22) "Pony," Far. Gin-u- ine kleine nachtmusik . 21) "American Ride," Toby Keith. Truth be told, we will look back one day in the not-too-distant future and see that Toby Keith stands astride this decade like good ol' colossus, from 2000's "How Do You Like Me Now" and "Country Comes to Town" all the way through this song. We count at least 14 good singles in that span, none of them better than "I Love This Bar" except maybe for "Get Drunk and Be Somebody" or "As Good as I Once Was"; populist drinking songs that Garth Brooks abandoned offer Toby at his bestest. But of course the spiritual core of the oeuvre is the Njal's-Saga-in-a-Ford-truck revenge fantasies � "Beer for My Horses," "The Angry American," etc � to which this song serves as a sort of coda or explanation, laying out the amusement park thrill of riding our high-spirited roller coaster of contempt and hubris, charged with the promise of imminent and justified violence. The genius of this song is to persuade you, via deploying the substitute word as an off-rhyme to open the chorus, to hear the punchline as "I love this American Right, gotta love this American Right." Alt title: "Minority Report." 20) "Boom Boom Pow," Black Eyed Peas. While we wait around for another Fergie album (and, along with M.I.A. and Robyn, Fergie is the only album sugarhigh! would actually wait for, given the fact that Lil Wayne makes sure you don't have to wait around for an album ), we are more or less satisfied with her sixteen here, "I'm so three-thousand-and-eight, you so two-thousand-and-late" etc; meanwhile, we admit that supreme nitwit will.i.am is far less annoying on the jock of Cybotron as passed through nineties techno than he is on the campaign trail, and manages to come up with a very pleasing kick drum sound, dry as styrofoam and twice as heavy. 19) "Sometime Around Midnight," Airborne Toxic Event. Best band named after something in a DeLillo novel? Certainly the best pocket opera of the year, as if we could burn off all of our adolescent sentiment in five shameless minutes. If only. 18) "Outside My Window," Sarah Buxton. Such a nice melody we still don't know the words. 17) "Already Gone," Sugarland. Still not the Dixie Chicks. Still better than everybody else. 16) "Paparazzi," Lady Gaga. The Madonna comparisons are hysteria pure and simple, about as sensible as insisting that Ne-Yo is the new Michael Jackson; our friend Lady has scarcely, um, diverted the course of global culture. At the level of social performance it's more like Sigue Sigue Sputnik does Paris Hilton, a meta-riff on fame as the ironic outcome of wanting above all to be famous. Or one could narrate Gaga as a successful version of Princess Superstar, who was too scrapey and off-axis to take "Bad Babysitter" or "Jam for the Ladies" to the peaks they deserved (are you aware that Princess S has an album called Now Is the Winter of Our Discotheque ? You totally should be). Or we could narrate Ms. Germanotta as a much-superior substitute for Katy Perry in the single slot set aside for white pop princesses with retarded-huge hooks, a high school theatre geek vibe writ massive, and media-machined sexual quirks. But none of these is quite right as formal comparisons go. "Eyeliner and cigarettes...this photo of us don't have a price...loving you is cherry pie." It could almost be a Duran Duran song. In fact, it could almost be "Rio": "Cherry ice cream smile...I've seen you on the beach and I've seen you on TV, two of a billion stars, it means so much to me." Funny, that. Funny because the form of the classic Gaga song, "Poker Face" or "Paparazzi" or whatever, is entirely Duran Duran: the way-underplayed verse featuring a tensely constricted affect spooled inside a set of changes anchored by minor chords (and/or sevenths), and then the obliterating major lift, basement to the heavens, pouring all the hooks into the chorus to which the song will eventually give itself entirely. That Gaga periodically dresses like Barbarella only adds to the pool of affinities � but what's finally most interesting is the way that both Gaga and Duran Duran are obsessed with looking and being looked at, with the fraught overlap between the erotic glance and celebrity, and how it carries a promise of violence, how that violence is always part of "pop" even when � especially when � it is disavowed, which is of course exactly what "Paparazzi" is about, as is the entirety of The Fame. Alt album title: Girl On Film. 15) "Solitary Thinkin'," Lee Ann Womack. Aside from the fact of being a remarkable vocalist, Womack is distinguished for how briskly (in the relatively slow time of the genre) she has run the official country life cycle of classic sounding debut, pop crossover, lost audience, return to roots. (Okay, Dolly's already done the whole cycle twice, but she's special). To see the authority of this steel cycle, let's look at the semi-official listings. Here's wikipedia's breakdown of Lee Ann : Music career * 2.1 Country music stardom: 1997 � 1999 * 2.2 Pop crossover success & career decline: 2000 � 2004 * 2.3 There's More Where That Came From & hiatus: 2005 � 2007 * 2.4 Return to music: 2008 � present Now, just for the sake of comparison, here's the other LeAnn : Music career * 2.1 1996: Blue * 2.2 1997�2001: Pop crossover * 2.3 2002�2004: Popularity decline * 2.4 2005�2007: Return to country * 2.5 2008-Present Notice how Miss Rimes spends seven full years on crossover/decline, while Womack limits it to five? But what's rarest about Womack is how thoroughly she's pulled it off (the jury's still out on Rimes); she'll never hit as pure as "The Fool" again, but Call Me Crazy (released in 2008) is likely her best album. This song is rifted with beautifully-observed moments, as when she calls her ex and just listens to it ring � "a lonesome serenade." This, however, isn't even the album's best song. Hell, it isn't even its best song about hanging out at a bar at closing time and calling your ex. 14) "White Liar," Miranda Lambert. Adjacent to Womack, this comes from another disc, Revolution , that would make the sugarhigh! album charts if such a thing existed � a welcome return from the sophomore disappointment of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, albeit still suffering from an incoherent production scheme or lack thereof. The standout track is non-single "Love Song" (which along with the album's title suggests there was some unspoken contest about generic and clich�d titles), but this song manages to concretize all the album's inconsistencies into a forward-driving tension held together by the invention of the title, and ending with a slick swap of angry for exultant. 13) "Ze...