Compare and contrast
posted by Elbo @ 8:58 AM
3 comments
The View From Fort Miley
Facing west at the end of the world.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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3 Comments:
This is the second recent post on your blog that begs the image of Joe Pernice in a little black dress, but I'm not going to go there...
As chance would have it, I was thinking about your comments on genre-bending music earlier today as I drove across the Bay Bridge. I decided I agreed with your view on Shania in theory, but not in practice. No matter how much I try to open up my narrow little musical mind, that song makes my skin crawl.
It's the same thing with these two videos. One of them is crammed with cheap if strong images that feel old after the first 10 seconds; the other is oblique, nuanced and mysterious right up to the end. One has the singer mugging with all kinds of fake expressions; the other a story that may or may not fit in with the lyrics, but add to the music. One I hope I'll never see again, the other I'll be watching a few more times.
Carrie Underwood crosses genres here - I'd put her at the corner of Hank Williams Jr. and the Aerosmith of the 90s - but there's nothing risky about it, and I find myself longing for either of those two instead of her. The Pernice Brothers are often compared (rightly or wrongly) to Jimmy Webb, and like him they are neither country nor pop, but use both to create something that sounds fresh and original, if familiar in style.
Watching those two videos is like going out to buy an audio book and finding two versions: One read by Arnold Schwarzenegger and the other by Morgan Freeman. One of them is going to be a lot more enjoyable, and for repeated listenings, than the other. They may cover the same terrain, but they are a world apart.
I don't disagree with a thing you've said. But you can't deny that they're (inadvertently, I guess) working with the same musical idea. I guess I'm asking, how can we celebrate Joe Pernice's melodicism without being willing to recognize the strength of the outsourced Underwood song's melody? They're two takes on the same bit of "pop" music, no matter what the prefix might be.
I have to say that I am strangely attracted to a certain aspect of the outsourcer's writing. There's no wasted motion there, and no word the rest of the song could do without. (Except, the whole thing's a waste....) Highly respectable, in a clinical sort of way.
I think we're basically agreeing, and I wish I had an answer to your question. I was trying to explain to someone today why this video cracks me up so much:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1290556070874354131
I stopped halfway through when I realized the more I explained it the less funny it was. I kind of feel the same way about this question. Another musician might take Underwood's song and do something interesting with it, but it's like she takes some fine raw material and makes cheap clothing out of it. Beyond that, I can't explain it any more.
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