jane dark's sugarhigh!

And she moved through the phair

The Alanis and Avril albums are adjacent in my CD changer, and I don't always notice when one disc slps into the other. I care less than a little about either of them, which surprises me somewhat. But I have become faintly obsessed with trying to distinguish which one I like less, because of how eloquently the two records beg some eternal questions about records.

There's not a single good song on Under My Skin (there's a chance I might eventually like "Freak Out," buried down at #11, but not a particularly good chance). The songs are relatively unvariegated, have almost-impressively unmemorable lyrics (I had thought I might count how many songs depend on the word "yeah" for their communicative grace, but really, I had to separate out my recycling), and that annoying Rockman chorus w/ lite distortion on half the vocals just screams "come with me, yeah, under the shadow of this vague morass. Yeah."

So-Called Chaos has at least one fine song, "Eight Easy Steps." The lyrics are her usual overburdened Other Help Manual, but the melody and the grind, the rhythmic shifts, why, it might as well be 1995 again, yeah, yeah. On the other hand, the bad songs -- and this is sort of an achievement -- make Avril's bad songs seem utterly forgivable. They are intolerable.

I feel this, truly proclaimed, will help the curbing of this tendency
I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily

The question isn't, exactly, "How hideous are the lyrics?" In more generous form, the inquiry might be phrased "How good would the music have to be to save those lyrics?" To which the answer must be, well, it would have to be Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones 1982 good, maybe it would probably have to be Joni Mitchell 1972 good, or at least Lennon-McCartney 1966 good. As it happens, the music is about Liz Phair-The Matrix 2003 good, which is to say, the words would then have to be Alice Notley 1988 good, and I think we have reason to suspect from the sample above that they are not.

1) Body Language, Kylie Minogue
2) Here For The Party, Gretchen Wilson
3) Uh Huh Her, PJ Harvey
4) Under My Skin, Avril Lavigne
5) So-Called Chaos, Alanis Morissette

Posted by jane at June 14, 2004 10:19 AM | TrackBack