Wednesday, July 15, 2009
generational terror, pt 3
Here we have some more fine purveyors of autotuned emo bullshit, Breathe Carolina. This is pretty much straight-forward modern pop, but sung by tattooed pretty boys who occasionally scream. When did screamed vocals become acceptable in pop music, I wonder? I know that at many times in my life, after (misguidedly) attempting to get my friends into metal, I was met with the response "I just don't like hearing people screaming like that".
Both of those videos are of the same band. When I started this week's feature, I thought the most remarkable cross-pollination occurring in the emo scene was influence from hip-hop, but now I'm starting to think its super-gay techno music (I'm not using that term in a pejorative sense, btw). That kind of switch, from macho chest-thumping metalcore to flamboyantly dancey techno-pop, in an effort to gain more traction among today's youth, is pretty puzzling to me. This next guy, too.
BrokeNCYDE opened for this guy on his "I'm So Fierce" tour in 2008. He also has toured with Warped Tour. ??? I don't really know what to say about this. I mean I guess its cool that the kids are down with ultra-homo pop but what does it mean when a flaming caricature of homosexuality (Jeffree Star) shares a stage with a suburban appropriation/caricature of urban black masculinity (BrokeNCYDE)?
Alright, one last video. This song in a minor radio hit on the local alternative station right now, and these guys are on this year's Warped Tour. Again, there's a weird balance of flamboyance and masculine posturing:
"Tongues always pressed to your cheeks,
While my tongue is on the inside of some other girls teeth,
Tell your boyfriend if he says hes got beef,
That I'm a vegetarian and I ain't fucking scared of him."
I give up! I give up trying to understand this shit.
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yeah trying to understand the intent of these musicians seems really hard, they just seem like they are ready to sell out at any cost and would love to just be superstars, it reeks of opportunism. I also think in a weird way they probably feel they are just continuing the line of glam rock in their look, definately not in the music, but all the elements in the music are things that definately take from every quick money making music scheme. such as: autotune, emo, fashion, the nu metal style breakdowns, shitty rave techno and hip hop. then it all gets mixed down into some god awful mess, kind of like when you mix too many colors and the result is an awful brown or drab green.
ReplyDeletealso of note, all this shit kind of just reminds me of what mindless self indulgence were always joking about in their music but it does feel genuine which is just downright hilarious.
also you might want to consider doing a piece on discovery(the keyboardist of vampire weekend and the singer of ra ra riot) because it has a lot of similar qualities to this music yet it is being widely accepted in the indie music world.
Yeah, the continuation of glam thing occurred to me, specifically the stories about how the New York Dolls were actually super-macho assholes behind the make-up. But this stuff goes further than glam, I think. The combination of looking and acting really femme, mixed with the message of "we will date rape you", just baffles me completely.
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