Friday, April 06, 2007

Isn't It Ironic -or- Another Way To Be A Canadian Pop Star

If you haven't watched it yet, you probably should. It's at the bottom of the post.

With that out of the way, what did you think? Is this too stupid for words? Are you dumbfounded, or do you just not care?

Personally, I don't really know why Pitchfork and Idolator both posted this (Idolator posted about it twice). Alanis Morissette hasn't been a culturally viable artist in any real sense in like, what 8 years or so. I assumed she just moved back to wherever it is in Canada she came from and, whatever, had a family of kids or something. Actually, I still kind of assume that. Which means that this video doesn't represent anything other than a former pop star, who, objectively, you know, still has some talent to use, trying to have some fun.

So there couldn't have been a push for wide distribution on this thing. It seems more like a sex tape to me - something she and her friends did for kicks that "leaked" into the wider world through some strange series of events. It doesn't seem like a music video, it seems like a video. Just a video. Like a home video, only better produced. It doesn't fit in anywhere, with anything. I mean, if I hadn't seen Blades of Glory last weekend I probably would have forgotten about this song completely until I watched this video, which would have really been a good thing. It's not a parody, per se, it's a cover, sort of. But, I mean Jesus.

The more I think about this the more confusing it is. Why is it funny? Why do I care about it at all?

The only conclusion I can come to is that this is the first time I've ever liked Alanis Morissette. I hated her when she came out, and then, when it was no longer necessary to hate her I pretty much forgot about her. But this is just too stupid, careless and balls to the wind brave to ignore. Somewhere along the way Alanis learned how to not give a fuck, which is kind of inspiring. Imagine if people like Alanis did this sort of thing all the time. Like, we'd have, like, Mark McGrath singing James Blunt and making a hilarious video where he's on a beach playing volleyball or something, instead of trying hold on to the thing pathetic thread of celebrity by hosting and America's Pussycat Dolls Sexhouse Sex Show and Anonymous Celebrity News Magazine on TV. Which would be, I think we can all agree, a much more interesting and productive career move.

The record industry is getting smaller. Within 10 years we won't have big budget videos, we won't have big budget tours, we won't have big budget money things in general. Videos are gonna have to look like this, production values are necessarily going to need to change, and hopefully the Black Eyed Peas will all have been wounded in such ways that they can no longer make music (Fergie goes deaf, William gets put in an iron lung, and that other guy gets his foot stepped on and then goes off and cries til he's hoarse and becomes a priest). People are maybe gonna have to take a lesson from Alanis and stop taking themselves so damn seriously.

Moves like releasing this video can be taken in so many wrong ways. It's not punk rock, it's not Weird Al, it's not pretentious, and, I hope, it's not an attempt at reinvention. It's just a song she recorded at home in half an hour and a video she made with some skeezy friends over a weekend that got posted on the internet. It's what you would do on the weekends if you were cooler than you were. It's just a document of someone trying to have fun.

Fuck! That's what Pop Music SHOULD be! Am I wrong?





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2 Comments:

At Mon Apr 09, 08:04:00 PM, Blogger Sam the Fiction Writer said...

I kind of hope she's used all of her money to raise a comfortable Canadian family, and that she uses her free time for low-key, morally righteous artistic pursuits like mocking the Black Eyed Peas. Isn't that sort of the perfect life?

p.s. Doug the comment you made on my story made no sense. Is your mom reading my blog? And what does Adsense/adwords mean?

 
At Wed Apr 11, 11:10:00 PM, Blogger Doug said...

oh. Adsense is the ads I at least thought I saw on your blog. I'm not seeing them anymore. Maybe they were only switched on for a minute. I swear I'm not crazy.

My mom reads your blog.

 

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