She's only "edgy" in the way that Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne include hard rock guitar riffs with heavy distortion during a chorus is "edgy" for a pop song. She's a nice girl; that's fine. But she's got nothing important to say—no matter how nice a message it may be—and her sound is nothing out of the ordinary that I haven't heard from any other pop outfit that's been in existence since the late 90's.
edited 20th Mar '11 4:29:51 PM by SeanMurrayI
As well as it may be, her music still isn't exactly something any of us haven't heard countless times already.
I mean, sure, she's generated a few pop hits with songs about having to compete with a rival lover for the affections of a man and such, but there has been songs like that since, like, when neanderthals first discovered that plucking the intestines of a slaughtered woolly mammoth can create rhythmic vibrations and differing sounds. Hell, Roxanne & the Minxes sang about it in "He's Gonna Be My Baby" in the late 1960's, as do countless other bands that are playing on those "oldies" radio stations that have slowly been mixing in disco and 80's dance pop hits into their rotations that you never ever listen to.
And like I said, her sound isn't anything different from anything we haven't heard played out already anywhere else. She came up with a sleek synthesized melody riff that got stuck in everyone's head for a month after the single dropped; that's great, but it's so much just a Flavor of the Month, and modern pop music market has been so supersaturated with those since Britney Spears and Courtney Miles were in their prime. And it's great to see another singer jump on the auto-tune bandwagon to add a little flair to some new tracks. I mean, I'm sure that's just what modern music needed: MORE auto-tuned vocals.
If anything, all she has going for her is her public image. She's a nice girl who set a new fashion trend for teenagers to buy into, and that's great. However, as a musician, she offers nothing of any originality that hasn't been done elsewhere already.
edited 20th Mar '11 5:27:07 PM by SeanMurrayI
Yeah, she can sing. Give her any song, and she can sing it well. But lots of other people can do that, too. What matters most is what she's singing and how she sings it, which doesn't set her apart much when modern pop music is overcrowded with so many girl singers that it's hard to distinguish a lot of them from the pack, and most of the time, the distinguishing usually comes down to the singer's look (which I still say is Ishikawa's most important asset).
On the whole though, if she has any acting chops, she might be able to make a name for herself in musical film or theater. I mean, she can sing and looks good, so she's already got two of the three vital necessities for a job like that.
edited 20th Mar '11 5:40:54 PM by SeanMurrayI
Oh, she can act. Before she became a solo singer, she was Gigi Van Tranh in the Japanese version of Miss Saigon.
Auto-Tune is actually not that bad if used well. However, there really aren't that many who do, hence why we find it all so evil. Personally, I blame it on Peter Goberner. Him and the dang Fenton Sisters make themselves sound like computers.
oh, that's why I need this binary mind // ⌘Oh, the Marind-Anim are far worse. They go the extra mile: instead of just using Auto-Tune, all the singing is done with a computer screen-reading voice doing spoken words. It's decent enough happy hardglitch, but the computer voice totally turns me off it. The few instrumental tracks Yngve and Axel have done are far better - if they really want some distorted spoken words, they should get Mikko Vuorinen to do some collaborations like Yngve did on his last 12".
Oh, and thanks for reminding me of the Fenton Sisters. "Sex in a Club Bathroom" will be in my head all day now.
edited 21st Mar '11 3:20:12 AM by YonTroper
^^Alright, if anyone mentions Yngve again, I'm gonna have to break character in this game of ours to release the
fucking fury.
Yeah, the American acoustic post-black metal scene sucks. Now, when you get Americans to play post-acoustic black metal, you get Warpchill, who are quite possibly even greater than Hellbrood (sorry, but the songwriting on Blood of the Vomitspawned was far too imitative of Spectral Souls for my taste). Their last album fuses their general post-acoustic black metal with dronegrind to surprising success: listen to "Chainwave of the Cadaverous" to see what I mean. Too bad Vaulthate's abandoning Warpchill for that upcoming neo-post-metal side project...
So how is Lady Gaga's murder trial coming along? She couldn't have seriously thought she could do that on stage in one of her concerts and get away with it.
At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

Though, for me, a savage son of a bitch filled with more Brooklyn Rage than Joe Pesci after someone calls him "short," I have to say that I hate "sweet and angelic" stuff, and I'm going to want to spit in it for being nothing but a giant boring, commercial sugar puffball.
But that's just my nature.
edited 20th Mar '11 4:23:16 PM by SeanMurrayI