tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93751132024-03-08T00:55:51.016+00:00PopTextUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger158125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-44919397574037421352009-09-15T10:04:00.002+01:002009-09-15T10:05:17.010+01:00Do you know the popularity rules?<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mQoRm5vUoRI&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mQoRm5vUoRI&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-41220996214762581082008-04-08T06:48:00.003+01:002008-04-08T07:07:23.690+01:00The EndYes, I'm done. Here at least. Poptext is migrating to a shiny new home over at <a href="http://poptext.wordpress.com"></a>wordpress, and expanding to include general pop culture stuff, YA author-i-ness, life & more. I figured I wouldn't clutter up your rss feeds, but if you want to come along and update your bookmarks, do!<br /><br />I've copied the archives over, but I'll be leaving them up here too. Poptext.org will automatically redirect, as will abbymcdonald.com (once I get my web guru to decode, that is).<br /><br />It's been grand. Really, it has. When I read back over the past few years, it amazes me how much this blog expanded my world and what excellent people it brought into my life. I started writing alone in my dorm room, trying to distract myself from college, and wound up finding a career, of sorts. I've been published and paid. I've travelled to new and wonderful places across the world, meeting folks I wouldn't know without these musings, and I've found a love for music I never knew I could possess. See, I don't play any instruments, I can't even read music, and those who have experienced the wonder of my kareoke know that I can barely carry a tune. But delving into songs, picking the threads and chords apart, I discovered that it doesn't matter at all. I can feel music, and I can try to find the words to tell you about it, and that's as much as anyone should need. <br /><br />But it's time for some shift in direction. I've just set up in a snowy new city, I have a book coming out next year, vast amounts of pop media to consume, and I think it's time to bring more of myself and my world into poptext. I hope you'll come along, but if you don't, then thank you. A deep, heart-felt, sincere thank you.<br /><br /><a href="http://poptext.wordpress.com"> PopText's new home</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-41893990465143619912008-04-06T03:27:00.001+01:002008-04-06T03:29:27.468+01:00Something..<a href="http://poptext.muxtape.com">poptext.muxtape.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-78698665867313273782008-01-19T22:46:00.001+00:002008-01-19T23:30:32.478+00:00PopText 2007 (Part Two)<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/carina.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/carina.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Stolen Car – Carina Round<br /><br />“<i>Temptation—I give up the fight tonight. My body is an open mouth</i>.”<br /><br />Carina came true for me this year, taking her raw ache and crafting it into something controlled and beautiful. That’s not to say she’s stripped away any of the wild insistence, that discordant surge, no, that still rattles and cries full of furious lust. But here, at last, she’s reined back; tugging every messy impulse into some semblance of structure. And oh, how radiant she is for it: hot sun flooding the tiny room instead of dispersing into a distant horizon.<br /><br />It’s no secret that I adore a shape to things; arcs swooping, neatly-built narratives—melodies are wasted in chaos, less than the sum of their parts for all the confusion, the debris. I remember watching Carina perform ‘Into My Blood’ to an empty room, what seems like a lifetime ago. She took that tiny stage, took us all and unleashed her fury, slamming bitter shards of stardust into our lungs; cutting us from the inside. But as much as I was enchanted, I never listened to the song again: it was too harsh, too <i>difficult</i> to set loose on my already-bloody heart—a taste of destruction, a dangerous path.<br /><br />But here she is again; still aching, still messy, still full of everything I edge around, only this time pulled tight and fierce and all the more tempting for it. <i>You treated my body like a stolen car</i>. And we feel it. Dark roads, heart-kick speed, recklessness setting our synapses alight. The music is muddy and midnight hoarse, but above all else, it’s immersed in need—the entire album shivers with longing, those harsh chords kept under guard and let free only once you’re swooning, too far gone.<br /><br /><i>Desire. </i><br /><br />Whisper it on the outward breath, and feel the space it leaves.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-40292245370961185952007-12-26T23:32:00.000+00:002008-01-19T22:45:59.070+00:00PopText 2007 aka All the Songs I Haven’t Posted Yet (Part One)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/okkervil%2briver.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/okkervil%2briver.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I don’t really do lists. I find all that ranking and quantifying to be a) generally something men seem concerned with and b) impossible. I mean, to say that I adored x song over y by z amount isn’t how I consume anything, let alone art. So, instead of a bumper End O’ Year list, here’s the collection of songs; maybe I put them on mixes for my friends, maybe I yelled them loud over the sound of the freeway, maybe I felt them hard. <br /><br />Maybe you will too.<br /><br />1. Okkervil River - Unless it’s Kicks<br /><br />“<i>What gives this mess some grace unless it's kicks, man? Unless it’s fictions, unless it's sweat or it's songs?</i>”<br /><br />I could simply reprint the lyrics to this very song to describe it, the way <i> that heavenly song punches right through my mind and just hums through my blood</i>; but as somebody who strives for nothing more than to scratch my words into another’s mind for just a few brief moments, that wouldn’t do it justice. See, I spent this year writing, which makes it no difference to most other years, but what happened this time around was that I got to be a Writer. It shouldn’t matter, but the external validation getting paid provides is something real, something that lets me keep my posture a little straighter when asked, inevitably, ‘So are you published?’ This song is not just meta in the outside-in way we know so well—detached, observational—but meta in the way it delves into the murky world of what it means to create for somebody else’s consumption; the delicate line between your heart on the page (or verse, or canvas) and those lines spilling from somebody’s lips. I’ll always remember the first time I heard my own words quoted back to me: a strange burn of satisfaction edged with the metallic discomfort of knowing I was no longer in a vacuum, that those words didn’t belong to me anymore. <br /><br />Will Scheff nails a lot of things here, from the relentless drive to create, to the uneasy reality that exists one step past that creation, and he does it all with a melody that takes flight behind my ribcage, every damn time. It’s easy to say that something soars, but even that word doesn’t quite cage the lift and flutter as drums and riff and voice weave higher and wind into something perfect. We always have that safety net, you see, time and again. “At least it’s material” we say, and wait for the next thing to become real, but this song manages to craft reality out of the mere act of creation, and that, my friends, is what this year was to me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-54222179910266382242007-08-20T21:27:00.000+01:002007-08-20T21:32:56.764+01:00Aly & Aj - Potential Break-up Song<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bqpA5Acc8-c"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bqpA5Acc8-c" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object> <br /><br />“This is the potential break-up song/ our album needs just one.”<br /><br />The latest addition to my pop arsenal: a weapon for the conversion cause. Understand, it’s not that my tastes don’t span the depths of the Dixie Chicks back-catalogue and scale the dizzy heights of the Hold Steady, but I’ve got an agenda to push, and Okkervil River won’t cut it on my mixes (glorious as they well may be). No, sometimes I’m out to win over indie hearts and minds, and that means the big guns—the songs that will tempt even the most devoted ones away from their solemn guitars and towards the shiny pop light. I need gateway tracks, and god, does this deliver.<br /><br />Effervescence is in short supply right now, what with Rihanna’s painstakingly precise beats and hellogoodbye’s careful sincerity, but Aly & AJ somehow muster utter effortlessness in every breezy line. The sisters have thankfully jettisoned that earnest Christian rock phase, now we get delightfully shallow MTV movies, blonde poses and oh, what a song! As irreverent as it is irresistible, this is an ice-cream dream: gone in an instant, leaving only the fleeting memory of a breathy chorus, that lala-ed melody, a faint Spice Girls aftertaste. So the vocoders may be heavy, the lyrics light—you know by now that I care not. <br /><br />Another pop convert singing my tune is another battle won.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-89706825385820618502007-08-12T01:11:00.001+01:002007-08-12T01:14:48.497+01:00This Aint A Scene, It's A Goddamn Marketplace<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/clandestine_petewentz.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/clandestine_petewentz.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Emo takes the mall-kids, American parents wring hands in fear.<br /><br />This month’s J14 magazine features nine pictures of Pete Wentz. On the cover and in side-bars; slotted between High School Musical 2 previews and cute back-to-school make-up tips, the Fall Out Boy bassist is the latest tween dream heartthrob—skinny denim and all. For a publication whose target audience maxes out at thirteen, a full-page feature on guyliner and the hotties who wear it (Brendan Urie! Gerard Way!) isn’t just a way to fill space in their super summer issue, it’s a declaration of emo’s transformation. What once was the soundtrack to sincere guitar-strumming boys, and then loner disaffection has been reinvented yet again as a merch-orientated, socially networked, mainstream phenomenon—with Wentz as the ultimate poster-boy....<br /><br /><a href="http://collectedvoices.blogspot.com/2007/08/this-aint-scene-its-goddamn-marketplace.html">For more, read my article on the new Collected Voices blog.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-364670022813699402007-08-01T20:46:00.000+01:002007-08-01T21:07:00.394+01:00The Thermals - Pillar of Salt<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/The_Thermals_-_flag-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/The_Thermals_-_flag-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I went West. Like so many before me, and so many after, I packed up a bag and headed out to find something more than this complacency, more than this lull of contentment. Sometimes you make your plans, but sometimes you just snap—running before you can change your mind or think about the dozen ways this could fall apart, because there’s a chance it might not. Just a chance. <br /><br />So I went West, to lily-edged lakes and quaint clapboard coastline, to sparkling cityscapes and sound. To skeezy loft dance-parties and hot friendship and possibility; cocktails, ice cream, slow-rolled movie nights. To a book deal. <br /><br />I’m back (for now), but you can hear it, can’t you? The buoyant melody yelled on a 2am highway, that crashing rhythm refusing to drop below eighty. Skidding faster, a flash in your veins. This song is a tale of running, taking everything precious and making it out while you’re still alive. It may only be your heart winding down, but if it’s all you’ve got, it’s enough.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-38355465068981770612007-06-16T13:46:00.000+01:002007-07-27T07:15:04.431+01:00More otherness<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/high-school-musical.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/high-school-musical.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />My latest artistDIRECT column is up for you, <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/news/article/0,,4175802,00.html" target="_blank">The Kids Are All Right</a>: a discussion of tweenpop and all its synergistic wonder. I also interviewed the lovely <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/news/article/0,,4175788,00.html" target="_blank">Tiffany</a> (Yes, THAT Tiffany) and <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/news/article/0,,4167085,00.html" target="_blank">Elizabeth Cook</a>, plus there are reviews of <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4070371,00.html#review" target="_blank">Big N Rich</a>, <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4000598,00.html#review" target="_blank">Fair to Midland</a> and <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,3997860,00.html#review" target="_blank">Gretchen Wilson</a>. Enjoy!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-27226136030331288172007-05-23T02:15:00.000+01:002007-07-27T07:16:39.680+01:00Elsewhere...<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/alanis.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/alanis.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />More artistDIRECT work for you, including reviews of <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4025592,00.html#review" target="_blank">Miranda Lambert</a>, <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4035188,00.html" target="_blank">Elizabeth Cook</a> and <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4100652,00.html#review" target="_blank">Maroon 5</a>, plus my very first <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/news/article/0,,4145558,00.html" target="_blank">pop column</a> in which I ruminate on American Idol, Alanis Morisette and the art of the cover song.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-80241399412826569052007-04-11T18:18:00.000+01:002007-07-27T07:17:17.277+01:00Robyn Interview!<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/robyn.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/robyn.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/news/article/0,,4096759,00.html">"I want the melodies, I want the bittersweet."</a><br /><br />A couple of weeks ago I met the utterly adorable Robyn for tea and talk about taking control, anti-pop attitudes, and the science of great songwriting - full interview on ARTISTdirect.com. <br /><br />Also there you can find my reviews of <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4089378,00.html">the album</a>, <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,3981776,00.html">Joss Stone</a> and <a href="http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4017038,00.html">the Fratellis</a> - plus more cool musicy things.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-44125261834384762672007-03-19T23:14:00.000+00:002007-07-27T07:17:45.445+01:00Sia - Breathe Me (Four Tet remix)<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/sia.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/sia.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />This isn’t a passing phase. It’s not the footless tights you better laugh over one day, sugar-sweet alcopops and gingerbread lattes – set forever in a Perspex memory bubble: distinct, defined and wholly of that time. No, this something still in motion; a song that coils around your spine, lightly scratching at the back of your chest with dull nails and a low, insistent percussion. This is a constant, the even intake of breath until despite yourself, your pulse quickens and you wait for something – anything – to claw deeper. But nothing comes. There is no kick, no grab to satisfy that shiver; instead the wounded vocal just winds onwards until you have no choice but to exhale and sink into the slow rhythm, resigned to the itch that lingers, just behind your ribs. <br /><br />The original version’s piano refrain is too pretty for me. It is sweet, complete – it softens the need in her voice and that desperate restlessness into something simple. Crescendo, conclusion. Mylo fills the sound, Ulrich Schnauss pulls the fibres apart into mere whispers, but this, this remix is infused with something closer to the light self-loathing of vulnerability. Lipstick smeared into a pale reflection, that careful machinery inside you paused for just a second. When all that you are is all that there is; and oh, how you wish it was something easy and pure.<br /><br />A beat, a melody, a steady helplessness – hypnotic in its repetition, yet somehow a comfort all the same. No, this is not a passing phase, and so you sink into it all over again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-563943370402456702007-03-15T18:33:00.000+00:002007-07-27T07:18:52.548+01:00Robyn - With Every Heartbeat<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/vid1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/vid1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />It struck me one day, doodling idle post ideas in the back of an economics lecture. Station concourses and high school back steps; half-hearted phone calls and holiday apartments – the places and faces change, but a break-up is always the same. Love, you see, is a zero-sum game.<br /><br />No matter how mutual it claims to be, regardless of the amicable smiles that get beamed about, somebody always loses. Somebody always hurts the most. Somebody always wins.<br /><br />And. It. hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat.<br /><br />Robyn knows she’s lost. Even her opening chords are laced with melancholy, the lines are dragged and dog-tired, stretched with the kind of weary resignation that only echoes when you’re close to collapse. And so it goes. One smile dimmer, one voice not quite so full of relief; we’ve all been there, either side, every side. We’ve all flicked our eyes away for safer ground, picked that public spot for minimal damage. We’ve all dug angry half-moons in our palms to keep back those tears, held ourselves together with nothing more than the simple intake of breath and a few silent prayers. <br /><br />And oh, how we know this final refrain. Every strained syllable forced from her lips is short with desperate self-control. Half a gasp, the jaw clenched, yet still she clings to the pained string melody; kept afloat by the bubbling synth waves. <br /><br />And. It. hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-65956724739999589602007-03-11T19:19:00.000+00:002007-07-27T07:20:21.475+01:00Damone - What We Came Here For<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/DAMONE%202.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/DAMONE%202.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Shuffle doesn’t usually pay out, but, oh, this time it did. My knees were cramped, my mind was cranky – six hours stuffed into the bus with nothing but old playlists and new ARCs and then, and then…<br /><br />Boston swooped into view the moment those thrum-ta-tum beats shuddered through me. Chords thick with fanfare, the city lights dangling over my highway trail, and that sweet voice spiralling away into the night over a looping, decisive riff. A <b>moment </b> in action: the flick and writhe of something twisting into life. Possibilities hissing as I stepped into the dry, air-con terminal.<br /><br />We thought we were so damn cool.<br /><br />Youth and irresponsibility and pained self-righteousness, bound up in a vocal and strung along over sound that doesn’t sit back, confined to the airwaves, but <i>exists</i>. Thick and tangible around you; reeking of smoke and damp and beer and sweat. Sound from a time when drama and power chords set out to shake the stadium; sound sliced and shined and mixed and thrown into the loop with a hair-toss and reckless simplicity. <br /><br />I could tell you about the production niche, so glaringly modern. I could tell you about 80’s hair-rock legacies, about Meatloaf, about Max Martin. I could diagram the outline this song makes as it punches through the page, or attempt to graph the thunder of beats and chorus chanting.<br /><br />But all I’ve got is those few days, half a year ago. Neon lights, bright on the horizon; suburban streets, a borrowed car and new friendship cluttering the dashboard. Sherman’s, soul music, apple trees and bad teen movies. Half a world away.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-85984433813006318622007-03-04T00:55:00.000+00:002007-07-27T07:20:53.854+01:00Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/070425_avrilnin.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/070425_avrilnin.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />Don’t be fooled. This song may try and trick you into thinking it’s a harmless cherry popsicle – all spring quickstep double-handclaps, dripping sweet sugar rush – but those jubilant cheerleader hi-kicks are only a distraction from the ice shards that will hit your poor, tender brains in oh, five, four, three…<br /><br />Then you get it. Don’t you? That while you were off, merrily chanting your hey!heys and your you!yous with a flip and a bounce and a daffodil shimmy – the sky clear, the world green & lush & full of spirit fingers – <i>they</i> were taken. Snatched away into the arms of someone with shinier hair that fell sighing of scenes and cigarettes, who made mixtapes with hand-scrawled playlists and read all the Jonathan books you hurled across the room in defeat. Someone who, <i>most importantly</i>, made ohso sure the world knew they were damn precious in a way you could never dare. <br /><br />And they were humming this song as they did so.<br /><br />Sure, when your rage is gasping for air and you’ve shattered those ice shards, you’ll have to admit that <i>they</i> weren’t so much snatched as gently led astray, but shh! that won’t make you hate the taste of cherry any less, or shy away from ‘Bring It On’ reruns forever more. <br /><br /><br />…<br /><br />This is probably just a holding pattern. I’ll be experimenting with layout, and content, and life. Although, as you’ve guessed, my word means nothing and this same post and this same layout may well be here in six months.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1158089815078750852006-09-12T20:31:00.001+01:002006-09-22T01:24:18.296+01:00Do Dirt with me<a href="http://myspace-578.vo.llnwd.net/01017/87/51/1017831578_l.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px;" src="http://myspace-578.vo.llnwd.net/01017/87/51/1017831578_l.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Hosted By: Do Dirt deejays<br />When: Thursday Sep 14, 2006<br />9pm - 3am<br />A mere:£3 entry<br />Where: Ditch Bar<br />145 Shoreditch High Street<br />London<br />Description:<br />Mucky pop. Rude raps. Sleazy rock. Filthy electro.<br /><br />(Play on player)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1156628033622915472006-08-26T22:25:00.000+01:002007-07-27T07:24:43.723+01:00I think we're on to something/ Your taste, it mirrors mine.<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/rosie6.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/rosie6.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I burned out. <br /><br />It happens, pulling together hopefully meaningful blurbs week after week. Listening to songs on repeat play to tease out that beat, those melodies. Somewhere down the line it shifted from ‘let me hear this’ to ‘what can I say about this?’. The critic’s circle of self-referential doom: linking to my own old posts, feeling trapped in a relationship with the audience’s expectations. Don’t post too confessional. Don’t post too pop. Impossible to create in a vacuum anymore, it was all hit stats and linking quotes. Bigger, better, but above all, new!<br /><br />You could see it, to read my early work – back when I had stories to tell and the songs were the medium, my vehicle. No hosting or mp3s, but those posts had a freshness, an innocence to them, before I hurtled into the meta-community. When I was a writer first, not a blogger worried about being left behind by the new kids and their shiny obscure indie profiles. Press blurbs sure, but that was what the people wanted – a MySpace link and a free tune.<br /><br />So I stopped.<br /><br />Listening to music as a listener is so wonderfully different to listening as a critic. You aren’t searching for words, comparisons. You don’t care who produced a track, whom else they’ve worked their magic for. Industry positioning doesn’t matter so much, or whether it is the one strong track on an otherwise weak album. Inherent in criticism is finding some kind of perspective with which to judge – a standard to hold a work up to. We do it as listeners too, but the standards seem to be different. There’s a beautiful naïveté in engaging with music without the critical faculties; listening with a different part of the mind, or maybe the heart. Turning off coherent thought until even a complete sentence is redundant for the experience, let alone five hundred words on so-and-sos place within the Canadian collective scene or grime resurgence. <br /><br />But having said that, there are stories to tell. Stories about songs, and the way a particular arrangement of chords can cause our hearts to swell and break, or force our feet to move. Stories about moments, about people, about a place in the cultural fabric of our lives. <br /><br />I took some time and I listened. I danced and sang and let myself feel music again. And now I’ve got a few more stories for you. It’ll be different this time: no stat counters, no mp3s, no rhyme nor reason to what I end up writing. It could be snark, it could be soul. Maybe I’m wasting the chance to turn PopText into the Gawker of the music world, to give myself a platform. But I’m a writer, not a blogger, and I want to stay this way.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1152790705947091392006-07-13T12:35:00.001+01:002006-07-13T12:38:26.066+01:00Coming Soon....Me. Back. With PopTextable joy and musical musings.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1151687908050204982006-06-30T18:11:00.000+01:002006-10-26T09:35:15.656+01:00Do Dirt Setlist - 29/6Pink – U + Ur Hand<br />Temposhark ft. Imogen Heap – Not That Big (Metronomy Remix)<br />JC Chasez – A.D.I.D.A.S<br />Jordan Knight – Give It To You<br />Pussycat Dolls - Flirt<br />Charlotte Church – Crazy Chick (Kardinal Beats Remix)<br />Nelly Furtado ft. Pharell – No Hay Igual<br />Jentina – French Kisses<br />Billie – Day and Night (Stargate Mix)<br />Missy Elliot ft Ciara – Lose Control (Jaques Lu Cont Remix)<br />Gwen Stefani – Bubble Pop Electric<br />Holly Valance – State of Mind<br />Lillix – Sweet Temptation<br />Girls Aloud – Models<br />Rogue Traders – Way to Go<br />Ashlee Simpson – Get Nasty <br />Morningwood – Nth Degree<br />Rachel Stevens – Some Girls<br />Deep Dish – FlashdanceUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1147596115447196852006-05-14T09:40:00.000+01:002006-05-16T20:38:31.630+01:00Making My DJ Debut<a href="http://myspace-088.vo.llnwd.net/00720/88/04/720574088_l.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px;" src="http://myspace-088.vo.llnwd.net/00720/88/04/720574088_l.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Suedey/dodirtflyerbacksmall2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px;" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Suedey/dodirtflyerbacksmall2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Can you guess which tracks will be my plays?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1146478325270033712006-05-01T11:07:00.000+01:002007-07-27T07:24:03.686+01:00Ashley Parker Angel - Let U Go/ Marion Raven - End of Me<a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/ashleypa.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/ashleypa.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Public/AshleyParkerAngel-LetUGo.mp3" TARGET="_blank"> “It’s not the first time/ And you know it/ Don't you now?”<br /></a> <br /><br />So, paradigm shifts. A generation whose formative experiences are so different in context and content that their basically held beliefs depart from the preceding generation’s in a crucial (and often unexpected) way, directly altering the norms of the system they inherit.<br /><br />Or, why kids who bopped to Britney are now teens ‘n’ twentysomethings devouring the Kelly, long after their ‘legitimate’ pop consumption and natural fallout-emo-indie identity shift would predict.<br /><br />A: Max Martin.<br /><br />Because occasionally we get a Pied Piper, weaving production and writing skills in such a way as to heave the boundaries of the pop sound back another frontier. And then come the shockwaves, not so much a copy-paste bandwagon as a personal quest to brand the aural landscape; to dig that flag into the dusty ground and proclaim ownership of something we’re more used to being anonymous, transient. <br /><br />‘Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)’ through ‘I Want It That Way’; ‘Tearing Up My Heart’ through ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’; ‘Show Me Love’; ‘Baby (One More Time)’ through ‘Stronger’.<br /><br />You may not have liked it, but you knew it. Same sound, everywhere. Pop values reshaped. Bar raised. And, most importantly, the taste for precision production was carved into the kids’ consciousness. A thirst for that verse/bridge/chorus/verse/chorus repeat blueprint of world domination. A chorus that <i> mattered</i> - for dancing and drowning and jubilant cries, not an excuse for some ego-trip guitar solo auto-eroticism. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/marion.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://www.abbymcdonald.com/poptext%20images/marion.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Public/MarionRaven-EndOfMe.mp3" TARGET="_blank">“This is not a mistake/ It’s the dawn of a new day.”</a> <br /><br />So considering everything that came before, it’s no surprise we’re back with our old dealer, Mr Martin, begging for the good stuff. Only this time there’s a twist. <br /><br />Riffs and drums and leap of intensity. A sound that gleefully dances on the razorblade edge of the shock!horror <i>credible</i> borderline because the acts may be styled former TV-stars with dubious 00’s pop credentials; they may not have written or played or toured the underbelly but what does that count for anymore when the indie kid spends an hour crafting his side-swipe hair and the emo boyz loose sleep over the statement of their goddamn trucker hats?<br /><br />When you’ve got the bloody valentines failing to craft a compelling spectacle with their MySpace journal self-destruction, and people calling for a panic in their discos over a little overindulgent eyeliner application, isn’t there something to be said for the old-school? When beats were pumping on the stereo <b> in the studio</b>, because they’ve got the perfectionist vision to re-record and program until it’s this crisp and frenetic? Where a riff has something to prove, because if it doesn’t ignite your blood then they’ll just toss it for a different sample?<br /><br />‘Since U Been Gone’ through ‘I Just Want U to Know’ through ‘4Eva’: the new paradigm demands more from the angst-pop-rock that cluttered the airways. We want it new and improved! Shiny! Irresistible! So now we have Ashley (with only his ruffled blonde fringe and the disquieting perfection of chord structures keeping this song away from fall-out-emo status). The surge, the fall, the relentless enthusiasm that whirls you into drama. And Marion, stealing Kelly’s beats but raising her Robyn’s cello use, until we get anger vibrating with clarity; those bridge notes a shiver-still moment of haunting poignancy.<br /><br />This, my friends, is pop evolving another blissful level. Darwinism on your airwaves.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1145825722954315432006-04-23T21:49:00.000+01:002006-10-26T09:34:47.530+01:00EpicOr, <a href="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=2301" TARGET="_blank">'Why Dom Passantino is one of the best music writers around (despite the fact you probably think he's an utter twunt)'</a><br /><br />I don't often pimp people, but this is worth it.<br />Seriously.<br /><br />(And yes, I haven't been around. Finals doom. And to be honest, music journalism burnout.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1142502737333615502006-03-16T09:49:00.000+00:002006-03-16T09:52:17.373+00:00While Perpetua is away......<a href="http://fluxblog.org" TARGET="_blank">Poptext shall play!</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1141079988975320602006-02-27T22:37:00.000+00:002006-02-27T22:39:49.023+00:00Reverie Sound Revue - Rip the Universe<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Pictures/rsr.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Pictures/rsr.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />“As curious as it seems/ I still smile while enjoying the scene.” <br /><br />Standing on the Place de la Concorde in late January is a seventeen year-old girl, wrapped inadequately against the Parisian chill. She’s wearing a black leather pencil skirt and new kitten heels. Her lips are red, her hands are tight fists in her pockets, and her jaw is clenched to keep from crying. <br /><br />By her side is another girl – a girl she considered a friend until barely half an hour ago, when her tongue unwound with alcohol. Looking back, she’ll recognize that the chasm opened up earlier that night; the moment a man with stubble that tickled her ear looked past one to the other, but then, in the moment, the change seemed swift and sudden. <br /><br />Because the other girl is telling her precisely where her numerous faults lie. She is both too much, and not enough, in every possible way.<br /><br />The girl in her new shoes doesn’t yet know that angry words reveal more about the speaker than the recipient, and that this early morning will be significant only on a flickering screen somewhere in the future. She hasn’t even heard this song, but it’s for her nonetheless. It holds the quiet calm of equilibrium; the place where each new strike can be absorbed without shaking, every blow shrugged away as the distinct episodes that they are. Reverie is the right word – a drift of wistful regret; the lilt of chords; scattering cymbal. Rise and falls reined in to a steady frequency.<br /><br />But this girl is still unsteady, and so up the Champs Elysees she walks, past the dignified iron gates of foreign diplomats, past the bare winter trees strewn with stars, past the lone couples insulated against the winds with nothing but intimacy. And all the time, the diatribe beside her continues.<br /><br /><i>Not enough. Never enough. Always too much.</i><br /><br />Don’t worry about her. She’ll be just fine. Already a contrary voice is whispering in her head, reminding her that maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s them. Maybe this is always more about them. See how she smothers a rebellious smile as the blonde drips with false sympathy? <br /><br />She’ll be just fine.<br /><br /><a href="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Public/ReverieSoundRevue-Rip.mp3" TARGET="_blank">Download</a> <br />The rest of the material from the now-defunct band is available for free download at a <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/indie/rsr/" TARGET="_blank">fansite</a>, or to buy from <a href=”http://www.newmusiccanada.com/genres/artist.cfm?Band_Id=10760” TARGET=”_blank”>New Music Canada</a><br />If you aren’t yet swayed, try <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Public/ReverieSoundRevue-Cascade.mp3" TARGET="_blank">Cascade</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9375113.post-1139833044842428932006-02-13T12:12:00.000+00:002006-10-31T04:31:39.123+00:00Nelly Furtado - Maneater<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Pictures/nellyfurtado.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Pictures/nellyfurtado.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />“She’s a maneater/ Make you work hard/ Make you spend hard/ Make you want all/ All her love.”<br /><br />What’s this? I cry, falling on the shiny, new aural package as if I can’t quite believe it’s not a mirage sent to taunt my pop-starved mind. Is the drought over? Is there a new track worth talking about for its own sake and not the various hi-jinx of tabloid thrum? Say it’s so!<br /><br />Hyperbole is necessary, you have to understand. How long I’ve waited for something to break the tedium; month after month of old playlists, good pop – old pop – until even a blur of Robyn and the Veronicas and JC Chasez and OKGo and the TeenPeople Hollywood spreads start to loose their sparkling lustre. And now, just when I was loosing all faith in the pop gods, here they offer something to inspire and excite, to get me pulled into the simple arrangement and wonder at that perfect construction. Bless you, Nelly! Be praised, Timbaland!<br /><br />Because hell,<a href=http://homepage.mac.com/abbymcdonald/.Public/NellyFurtado-Maneater.mp3 TARGET=”_blank”>this is worth some attention</a>. From the opening vocal harmony, heralding with ominous subtlety then suddenly exploding into vivid petrol technicolour with that drive of synth, it’s <i>something</i>. Nelly’s voice turning on that knife edge into sleazy scrawl, so the chorus of fuller sound and purer notes is unexpected but a perfect fit. Tumbling harmonies layered into a melody with it’s own force, more carefully constructed, delicate even, with that same bubble of beats and occasional cymbal burst, but new electro stardust dropping in – just a touch, the neon sprinkle pulling you from an opposite direction to the low baritone hum so you rise and fall with the breath of the main pitch. <br /><br />And back to that basic synth drive, because it’s the gravity around which all else revolves. Inexorable force of beat and bass, dirtied and low so her vocals drift just a fraction above the gutter. Seamless to the end.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com123