Palfrey's life

Yes, I know I have odd tastes in music. However, I usually like bands for particular reasons, in particular sub-genres, and if they want to stray they better be *good* at it damnit. Thus, we come to Avril Lavigne, and her latest album "Under My Skin". For those not aware of what this girl is, she's basically a horrifically poppy attempt at punky songs (think irritating little skateboarders being fed mass-produced junk and thinking it's "punk"). In most normal situations, I don't really care too much about silly arguments re: purism in musical genres, but this is a different matter.

So, she's poppy, candy-coated punk-ish. That was the first album "Let Go", which I actually quite liked despite my little rant here, mostly because it was just *fun*. Songs like "Sk8ter Boi" (which I should hate just for the name), I like because it's a good happy song. I have a variety of musical interests, some of which is depressing as hell, and some like this is happy and bouncy. Now we come to the new album. Someone high-up in whichever monolithic music corporation appears to have found some really good dope, 'cause on this new album they've let her write her own songs. Admittedly most of it appears to be collaborations, but even so. She's gone from saleable poppy songs, to crappy vaguely-depressed late teen bullshit. Now, if you're gonna perform the latter, I expect you to either be talented or to get the hell out of the way for better artists. She quite simply doesn't have the talent, and we get this crap coming out. I'd give more of a shit about this, but a) I downloaded the damn thing, so I'm just gonna delete it again, and b) the culling of those unable to survive the second-system effect is a Good Thing.

(Sidenote: For some reason the saying "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" came into my head while writing this)

MLP

• A tempting option for my next system


• xiombarg brings us the FCC Song


• From E2: "Nuclear environment" a.k.a US Army euphemism for "too damn close"