Avril.

[mkilly]

This is basically everything that I hate, in forty-six seconds. Can I get a holla back?

[Plat]

SPONGEBOB.. SQUAREPANTS.. SPONGEBOB.. SQUAREPANTS

Wow. Guess there are some things Butch Walker can't even fix.

Butch puts on an awesome live show. I was hoping he'd teach Avril a thing or two about emotion and drama.

[roymond]

I've never seen or read anything Spongebob, but I figured it was a little past the Bob The Builder phase. And I don't think we can depend on Avril being that mature an artist to come up with anything in particular. I am impressed that she writes and performs her own stuff, but this is, like, a gig.

[erik]

I am impressed that she writes and performs her own stuff, but this is, like, a gig.

She writes her own stuff in the sense that she writes some of the words to the completed music that gets provided to her.

[roymond]

I am impressed that she writes and performs her own stuff, but this is, like, a gig.

She writes her own stuff in the sense that she writes some of the words to the completed music that gets provided to her.

I read otherwise but I'll certainly not be surprised.

[erik]

There is not a single song on either of her two albums that is credited to her alone; every song is also credited to a producer or songwriter. Writing the words alone is enough to get a co-songwriting credit. I haven't seen any interviews where she talks about the process that she takes to come up with the music for her songs, it's usually more about the vague general process of "songwriting" which tends to focus alot on the lyrical aspect of the songs.

[jack]

This is basically everything that I hate, in forty-six seconds. Can I get a holla back?

hm. sounds 100 times better than anything i've ever heard from you.

[roymond]

There is not a single song on either of her two albums that is credited to her alone; every song is also credited to a producer or songwriter. Writing the words alone is enough to get a co-songwriting credit. I haven't seen any interviews where she talks about the process that she takes to come up with the music for her songs, it's usually more about the vague general process of "songwriting" which tends to focus alot on the lyrical aspect of the songs.

I'm sure Ira Gershwin would have a thing or two to say...

Oh, yes, Avril IS comparable to Ira Gershwin. OK, not. Anyway. Whatever. She has a career. I'm surprised you've studied the album notes so closely...

[mkilly]

This is basically everything that I hate, in forty-six seconds. Can I get a holla back?

hm. sounds 100 times better than anything i've ever heard from you.

I'm an amateur musician, Jack. I've never had singing lessons, I've never recorded in a studio. Avril's probably a better singer and guitarist and subjectively a better poet, maybe. Basically what you're saying is, because I'm not good at making music, I'm in no place to say whether music is good or bad. I disagree.

[JonPorobil]

There's actually a lot of dispute over who did how much on most of Avril's songs. She insists, of course, that she writes almsot all of it, and the producers offer minor changes, and the producers usually claim the converse.

Personally, though, I don't see anything wrong with her performing the Spongebob theme. I mean, at least she's reaching out to the right audience now. I don't have to enjoy the music for it to do its job, right?

[erik]

I'm sure Ira Gershwin would have a thing or two to say...

Oh, yes, Avril IS comparable to Ira Gershwin. OK, not. Anyway. Whatever. She has a career. I'm surprised you've studied the album notes so closely...

Yeah, I'm not trying to belittle her for not writing every piece of every song that's on her album; I could care less about that. It's just that when other big names use people to "co-write" songs with, they cop to it. Like, um... Alanis and Sheryl Crow. I seen both of them give props to the songwriters that they work with, and I think that's a classy move.

I didn't really study the album notes, I just looked her up on allmusic when I first heard that she wrote all the songs on her first album, and then just a little while ago to check on her second album.

[jack]

This is basically everything that I hate, in forty-six seconds. Can I get a holla back?

hm. sounds 100 times better than anything i've ever heard from you.

truth and disclaimer part....... Basically what you're saying is, because I'm not good at making music, I'm in no place to say whether music is good or bad. I disagree.

hm. must have missed where i said that. i'm just poking fun at you marcus. it's obvious someone thinks avril has some talent or dare i say it....marketability, or she wouldn't be where she is. there's thousands of avril wannabes ready to step up and fill her place.

when other artists are just bent on dissing other artists work because they are somehow successful (whether they deserve it or not), it just smells of sour grapes to me. avril's not the first talent-challenged celebrity and she certainly won't be the last. at least i'm confident that avril can kick that jiggy-assed ashlee simpson's ass.

[erik]

For me, it's not really a case of "sour grapes". I have not convinced myself that there is something wrong with her music simply because I am jealous of her success. I just do not like her music (with the exception of Sk8er Boi), regardless of her success.

[jack]

For me, it's not really a case of "sour grapes". I have not convinced myself that there is something wrong with her music simply because I am jealous of her success. I just do not like her music (with the exception of Sk8er Boi), regardless of her success.

yeah, well you weren't the one who started this thread-rant so i wouldn't say in your case it was sour grapes.

i got no beef with people having opinions or expressing them. i just thought it was funny that marcus (of all people) was criticizing her music. sure it's his right but it's also my right to think it's funny.

[Adam!]

I've never understood the whole "Avril commands some kind of authenticity that other pop stars don't" thing. She got picked up by a talent scout at a Shania Twain sing along contest. Spears claims she writes her songs, but nobody freaks out, yet when Avril does critics jump all over her.

(From here)

"Scott Spock, one of The Matrix's three producers, chatted with MTV News about how they first met with Avril Lavigne and came up with 'Complicated'. "[Arista Records] had an artist who had been signed for a year and nothing was working. She was on the verge of getting dropped," Spock recalled. "She came over and we played her some stuff in the Faith Hill vein and she said, 'I don't wanna do that, I wanna rock!' She played us a CD of this screaming punk rock, 'I hate you'-type stuff. We said, 'Come back tomorrow and we'll go over some stuff.' She left and the three of us knew exactly what she wanted, a pop song with a rock edge. We wrote 'Complicated' that day." That claim seems to be a blow to Avril's credibility, who Rolling Stone, "When I wrote ['Complicated'], I was feeling what the song talks about -- that there are tons of people in the world who are fake, who are two-faced." And when I ask her how long it took her to write that song, she says simply, "Maybe two hours," without equivocation. "Songwriting is like that for me," she adds, with a snap of her fingers. "Someone can say, 'Go write a song,' and I can do it. I can write a song a day."


When I do an ablum a day I'm going to make sure I get a team of producers to make all the music for me. Man, it's gonna be so easy.

[Adam!]

This is basically everything that I hate, in forty-six seconds. Can I get a holla back?

hm. sounds 100 times better than anything i've ever heard from you.

Sorry Jack, but Theophilus Monk's The Spirit World is better than this.

[jb]

I think most of us wouldn't have a problem except that she seems to be taking more credit than she's due, and lots of people are giving it to her. That chafes my inner songwriter's sense of right and wrong, so I would lean towards the "criticizing Avril" camp.

You'll see a lot of the American Idol people talking up how many of the songs on their albums they wrote. As if they need to be embarrassed by singing other people's songs.

But I guess to thrive in a particular vein, you do need to be seen as someone who writes your own stuff. There's a stigma against pop-rockers who don't have anything of their own to say. Or aren't able to write songs as well as their producers and so aren't allowed to voice their own message. Rock n' roll is traditionally a genre where people who may not have the most stellar chops in the world have gone in order to communicate their own vision or message. If they wanted to sing other people's songs, they used to stick to jazz (Norah Jones, Harry Connick Jr. for example) or country (Shania Twain among many), or adult-oriented balladeering stuff (Celine Dion, anybody singing Dianne Warren songs).

Now that there's so much money in pop and rock and R&B, you've got lots of hit-makers floating around in the studio, and lots of music execs looking for pretty faces to prop up with those hit songs. It's less of a personal medium for the artists whose faces grace the album covers and more like the soft pop of the 70's-- a way to sell lots of albums with sentimental (and I consider stuff like Sk8er Boi to be sentimental) and universalist lyrics rather than an individual's point of view and message.

[jack]

i don't know. i agree with what you say JB. i just think most people that are angry or bitter or resentful over the commercial success of "artists" like avril, or britney, or christina, (or madonna for that matter) are just jealous of the success they achieved. i doubt ani difranco is jealous of madonna or britney. she's identified a niche audience that loves and worships her. it's fairly small but she's true to it and they are true to her. i wish more artists approached it similarly and instead of alter (or prostitute) one's music to achieve mainstream success, they could just find their niche and be happy with it. it worked fairly well for arguably the most successful band of all time. the grateful dead.

just my humble o.

[Adam!]

From an article on Hyperreality in today's media

"A [by definition] less obvious issue is hyperreality in today’s music
videos. An example that everyone who follows popular music seems to have
an opinion on is Canadian singer Avril Lavigne. Her music videos present
her convincingly as the lead singer/songwriter of a five member rock
band. Personal biases aside, I was surprising to learn how the songs in
Lavigne‘s videos have been created. Arista Records, the label she was
signed to shortly after winning a Shania Twain sing-a-like contest,
contracted a team of three music producers called, fittingly, The Matrix
to write and record music and lyrics for several songs on Lavigne’s
debut album. After the songs were recorded she was aloud to make changes
to the lyrics. Finally they recorded her voice and dubbed it into the
finished songs. Music videos can create a hyperreality in which she is
the creative force behind a five member rock band, a distortion of the
fact that she has effectively been commissioned to add vocals and a
marketable image to other people’s songs.

This particular example of hyperreality in music videos is important
because she is convincingly* presented as a lone singer/songwriter among
a sea of ‘manufactured’ performing artists. To dip into a few oxymorons,
this ‘fictitious’ reality is designed to sell her as the ‘real deal’: an
authentic fake.'

[jack]

[roymond]

Well, after much considerastion, I've decided its time to come clean. I don't write my own material. Yes, I know this comes as a shock to many of you, but rest assured that Roymond does write some lyrics. Someone can say "write a song" and I just write them. In fact that's pretty much how it happens. Someone hands me a title, perhaps puts it on a webpage, and I write the words, or some words. As for the music, well clearly there's a warehouse of people composing and producing it for me. Or for someone else, but I happened to be closest at the time. What I really want to do is record stuff like Yanni, but with vocals. Sorry, hope I didn't disappoint anyone. I'm the one on the left.

[Denyer]

I doubt anyone would care if 50 Cent talked about writing his songs.