TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2010 MUSIC QUICK SPINS
Various Artists SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK
The recent spate of hipster-studded “Twilight” soundtracks were like the indie-rock equivalent of Happy Meals — tasty but overly
commercialized product-placement opportunities that everyone involved will feel vaguely guilty about later. Maybe it’s because its titular character is a bassist in a rock-and-roll band, but the soundtrack to the graphic-novel-turned-possible-summer-blockbuster, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” feels less strained, more like a naturally occurring, straightforward thing than something bought and paid for. Set in Toronto, “Scott Pilgrim” is dominated by Canucks. The late all-girl pop band Plumtree (the Donnas of their day) contributes the cheery circa-’98 track “Scott Pilgrim” (which birthed the hero, or at least his name); Metric delivers a fuzzy, spunky “Black Sheep.” Beachwood Sparks do a slight, lovely cover of Sade’s
“By Your Side”; Black Lips turn in a spirited “O Katrina!” (appealingly under-composed garage rock being an ongoing theme); the Rolling Stones (“Under My Thumb”) also show up, for some reason. Songs for Crash and the Boys were composed, with
atypical elan, by Broken Social Scene. Their 13-second “I’m So Sad, So Very, Very, Sad”may be the most concise BSS song in existence. Beck composed (but does not sing, though he shows up alone on other tracks) songs for Pilgrim’s band, Sex Bob-Omb, which are uniformly clattery and brief and un-Beck-like. The highlight: “Garbage Truck.”Unless Bob Dylan is planning something similar, it’s the only song about a lovesick sanitation vehicle you’ll ever need.
—Allison Stewart Recommended tracks: Recommended tracks: “Black Sheep” (Metric), “Threshold” (Sex Bob-Omb) “Gone in September,” “Bow Chicka Wow Wow” Recommended tracks: “Draggin’ the River,” “Who Are You When I’m Not Lookin’ ”
Mike Posner 31 MINUTES TO TAKEOFF
Blake Shelton ALL ABOUT TONIGHT
Oh, the folly of youth. Mike Posner has been positioned as a wunderkind craftsman who wrote his first bona-fide hit, the slithery R&B-pop single “Cooler Than Me,” while a student
at Duke University. He graduated in the spring with a dual degree in sociology and business, and his debut represents a clever fusion of those disciplines. He succeeds by acting like a census taker, identifying and then synthesizing what people want. But too often he simply acts his age. The album, “31 Minutes to Takeoff,” features bitter and falsely modest songs about love lost and gained. And also sex. The sound is a sneakily involving slab of Plasticine blue-eyed soul — think Hall & Oates & Timberlake — with synths that dart and then explode like firecrackers. Posner has a thin, ragged, almost hissing voice, but he’s made some savvy decisions here, including the recruitment of producers such as the now-inescapable house-pop king Benny Blanco, the Smeezingtons and the Bird and the Bee’s Greg Kurstin. Still, he is emotionally unseasoned. On “Cheated,” he sings, “I should have cheated on
you / I was everything you wanted and more / nobody told me I was dating a — ” Posner’s voice whirls out before finishing the insult, but the intention is clear. This sort of petulant revenge fantasy — before the bridge hits, Posner calls out his ex by name — is raw and honest, but also ugly and hard to listen to. How quickly a wunderkind outgrows expectation.
— Sean Fennessey
Blake Shelton’s second six-song EP of the year offers much the same mix of rowdy stomps and reflective ballads as its unapologetically down-home predecessor, “Hillbilly Bone.” The carpe diem-themed title
track is straight-ahead Southern rock; so is the Dobro-laced “Draggin’ the River,” a Lynyrd Skynyrd-inspired duet with Shelton’s fiance, Miranda Lambert. “Got a Little Country,” a neo-rockabilly boogie, features nimble jazz- and funk-inflected guitar. Each of these up-tempo numbers is lively and amusing, due as much to Shelton’s affable, self-deprecating persona as to Scott Hendricks’s punchy, uncluttered production. Where the record really shines, though, is on the ballads, each of which reveals a depth of sensitivity rarely heard from the latter-day, Outlaw-identified male singers working on Nashville’s Music Row. “Pain is growing like a vine, strangled in my heart / When I think the worst is over, that’s right when it starts,” Shelton pines on “Suffocating,” a lovelorn weeper steeped in heaving strains of steel guitar. Even better is the album’s second single, an atmospheric ballad that opens with Shelton putting his lover on a pedestal, only to realize that there’s a lot more to the woman than such two-dimensional treatment might suggest. “My, oh my, you’re so good lookin’,” he muses to himself, “but who are you when I’m not lookin’?” A nod to the ’70s heyday of Waylon and Willie, when
Outlaws were more complex than macho cartoons, Shelton’s latest “six pak” harks back to a time when Nashville rebels could be rowdy and real at the same time.
—Bill Friskics-Warren
KLMNO
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THE CLASSICAL BEAT Post critic Anne Midgette offers her take on the classical music world at voices.
washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat.
CLICK TRACK For more pop music news, reviews and features, visit ClickTrack, The Post’s pop music blog at
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SINGLES FILE A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind
C3
NAM Y. HUH/ASSOCIATED PRESS “RAIN” MAN: Soundgarden redux.
Soundgarden: “Black Rain” Originally recorded for “Badmotorfinger,” this supremely sludgy outtake chilled in the vault until now, biding its time until the in- evitable greatest hits package/grudging re- union show. Frightened Rabbit: “Son C” Scotland’s mopiest/awesomest indie pop band returns with a not-unhappy song about death. Taylor Swift: “Mine” On this maiden single from her October disc, “Speak Now,” Swift cribs from every hit she’s ever had — and remains adorable. Yeasayer: “O.N.E.” (Teen Daze remix) Yeasayer’s already much-tweaked hit gets electro-fied, courtesy of Canadian bedroom savant Teen Daze. André 3000: “I Do” It’s not the Dre of our dreams, but consider- ing the unicorn-like rarity of new material from the OutKast rapper, this tagged, low- quality leak from Limelight Exclusives’ up- coming mix tape is better than nothing. — Allison Stewart
Celebs as pols: Often, the script gets rewritten
celebrities from C1
want to be doing in politics?” (Eastwood’s résumé for the job included co-starring with an orangutan in “Every Which Way But Loose” and “Any Which Way You Can,” while Reagan, before he was governor of California and president, shared billing with a chimpanzee in “Bedtime for Bonzo.”) Jean, 40, has been answering
that question in different ways since he officially announced his campaign for the presidency late last week in Port-au-Prince. “Some will question my lack of political experience,” the Hai- tian-born artist admitted right up front, in a column in the Wall Street Journal. “I will tell them that being a nontraditional can- didate is one of my greatest ad- vantages.” Jean, who moved to the United States at age 9, has a point: Lack of experience plus fame often equals a winning combination. “A famous outsider candidate is in the best of all possible worlds because people are un- happy with the status quo and they see the celebrity as a white knight who can move things for- ward,” says Darrell M. West, a vice president at the Brookings Institution and co-author of “Ce- lebrity Politics,” published in 2002. Jean will have to pass a
“threshold of seriousness,” West says, but if he is like most celeb- rity candidates, that will not be as hard as it might seem. “If you have money, media and
message, you’re going to do very well,” he says. “Celebrities have a lot of experience with each of those.” Jean’s message includes plans to boost security, international aid, job creation, education and, depending on the interview, ag- riculture. He says he will use his international celebrity to globe- trot and jawbone international donors to fulfill their promises to Haiti.
Winning is not guaranteed —
for example, Norman Mailer lost his 1969 Democratic primary race for mayor of New York, nov- elist Mario Vargas Llosa got panned by voters in his 1990 race for president of Peru and Shirley Temple Black (R) failed to win a California congressional seat in 1967. But “celebrity politi- cians have a strong track record in terms of winning elections,” West says. In what might be called the
Sonny Bono effect, legislatures around the world feature fa- mous faces embarked on second or third acts. Bono (R) was elect- ed to Congress from California in 1994 and died in a ski accident
during his second term; his wid- ow, Mary, succeeded him. Glen- da Jackson, winner of two Os- cars (“A Touch of Class”), is a British member of Parliament. Imran Khan, the great cricket hero of Pakistan, served in that country’s legislature from 2002 to 2007. And celebrated Japa- nese judo champ Ryoko Tani was just elected to a seat in the House of Councilors. However, once elected, they
sometimes disappoint. Look at the low poll numbers of Califor- nia Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Minnesota Gov. Jes- se Ventura as one indicator that the box office quickly became restless, West says. After Election Day, “it’s the old
Robert Redford line in ‘The Can- didate’: ‘Oh my God, I won. Now what?’ ” agrees Grandy, who af- ter four terms in Congress is now co-host of the Grandy Group morning program on WMAL Ra- dio in Washington. “It’s not a question of why Wyclef wants to be president of Haiti. It’s what he can do if he becomes president of Haiti. . . . The only advantage he’d have is if he closed the coun- try down and re-opened it as a concert venue.” For the successful celebrity candidate and office-holder, the relationship between celebrity and voter must be transformed: First the voter is fascinated with the celebrity, then the celebrity has to demonstrate he is at least as interested in the voter. Sometimes the transforma- tion is so complete that the ce- lebrity’s old identity is almost completely shed for the new one. The late Jack Kemp’s time quar- terbacking for his beloved Buffa- lo Bills eventually seemed like a fable that had little to do with the snowy-haired supply-side flat-tax intellectual. George Murphy, the 1930s and
’40s movie musical song-and- dance man, was a pioneer of Senate celebrity, elected in 1964. Satirist Tom Lehrer gleefully greeted this new species, the senator entertainer, in song:
Oh gee, it’s great
At last we’ve got a senator who can
Really sing and dance! Murphy, a Republican from
Connecticut, did not dance around the Senate and lasted just one term — defeated by a ce- lebrity once-removed, the son of boxer Gene Tunney. Al Franken, the junior senator from Minnesota, ran so hard from his former life as a commit- ted liberal funnyman that after he was elected last year, he ap- peared to overcorrect and be- come too dour. Lately, he has al-
lowed glints of humor to leak out. Fred Thompson has had the most porous border between his celebrity and political identities. The former Republican senator from Tennessee and presidential candidate seemed like the same character, whether the stage was the Senate floor, a presidential debate or the district attorney’s office on “Law & Order.” Among this year’s aspirants for the upper chamber is Linda McMahon (R) in Connecticut, wealthy co-founder of fanatical- ly popular World Wrestling En- tertainment. The master of inspiring and
fulfilling all these separate audi- ences, of course, was Ronald Reagan. “There’s an assumption that
entertainers aren’t politically so- phisticated, aren’t intelligent,” says Craig Shirley, author of two books on Reagan’s campaigns, including last year’s “Rendez- vous With Destiny.” “Reagan nev- er made the mistake of running away from his previous career.” Instead Reagan would joke about his celluloid record. When there was a question of whether stations should be allowed to show his old movies without giv- ing other candidates equal time, according to Shirley, Reagan quipped: “I made some movies that if they were put on the air, I’d demand equal time!” In Haiti, where already the campaign trail has turned bumpy, Jean may need reserves of good humor and wit. Former Fugees band mate Pras Michel says he is supporting another ce- lebrity in the race, a local one, Haitian musician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly. Questions also are being raised about the opera- tions of Jean’s charity, Yele Haiti, from which he said he is resign- ing, and his personal income tax returns. And Jean still must con- vince Haitian election author- ities that he has met the require- ment of residency there for the last five years. Meanwhile some lyrics he once penned are coming back with a strange new spin. The chorus of “If I Was President” is:
If I was president I’d get elected on Friday Assassinated on Saturday Buried on Sunday Then go back to work on Monday.
Jean laughs off this refrain about a fictional, truth-telling president. “The lyrics don’t haunt me at all,” he told CBS last week, “because I’m sure before I become president I’ll have a re- mix of the same song!”
montgomery@washpost.com
Controversial song features abuse
Eminem and Rihanna’s duet raises questions about domestic violence
by Jocelyn Noveck
new york — It is hard to forget the haunting photo that leaked out early last year: Pop star Ri- hanna, her elegant face bruised and battered after a violent as- sault by her then-boyfriend, R&B singer Chris Brown. Now, she’s appearing in some- thing else shocking, though fic- tional: Rapper Eminem’s chart- topping “Love the Way You Lie,” a song and video that graphically detail a physically abusive rela- tionship.
The debate has begun: Is the song a treatise against (or apology for) domestic violence or an irre- sponsible glorification of it? Or, is it something uncomfortable in between? And how to explain the role of Rihanna, who has said that she aims to help young people learn the lessons of her ordeal? One thing is not in question:
The song is a hit, sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart. And well before the edgy video debuted Thursday, the lyrics were enough to get attention. “Just gonna stand there and
watch me burn,” Rihanna sings repeatedly, to a catchy tune. “But that’s all right, because I like the way it hurts.” Eminem makes it clear what
the fire imagery’s about. “If she ever tries to [expletive] leave me again,” he raps late in the song, “I’ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.” In between, there’s talk of love being wonderful, until it isn’t. Suddenly there’s pushing, pulling, clawing, biting: “Throw ’em down, pin ’em. So lost in the mo- ments when you’re in ’em.” The girl, depicted in the video
by actress Megan Fox, tries to leave. The guy, played by actor Dominic Monaghan, promises it won’t happen again. But then he admits he’s lying: “I apologize, even though I know it’s lies.” Rihanna wasn’t available for comment on the song, her pub- licist said. But the 22-year-old singer, who last year won a Glam- our Woman of the Year award, partly for her stand on domestic violence, has been quoted saying the song “was something that needed to be done and the way [Eminem] did it was so clever. He pretty much just broke down the cycle of domestic violence.” Eminem, known for his turbu- lent relationship with ex-wife Kim Mathers — in his song, “Kim,” he fantasized about mur- dering her — has said that he en- listed Rihanna because she was the perfect person to pull the song off.
But can it be a teaching tool?
That depends on the context in which young people see and hear it, says Marjorie Gilberg, exec-
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HEATED DEBATE: One critic says that Eminem and Rihanna’s duet glorifies abusive relationships.
utive director of Break the Cycle, which works to end teen violence. “The danger is that pop culture defines our social norms,” Gilberg says. “We don’t want the message of this song to be that this kind of relationship is acceptable. So this song has to be viewed in the con- text of real information from adults, like parents and teachers.” In the song, Eminem sings: “But your temper’s just as bad as mine is / You’re the same as me.” And the video shows the couple hitting each other. “That’s a classic line of an abu-
sive man,” says Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organi- zation for Women. “You’re as bad as me, so it’s okay. The fact is, it’s only 2-year-olds and violent men who use violence to get what they want.” O’Neill thinks Rihanna is trying to make a contribution to fighting domestic violence — it’s just that in this song, she’s un- wittingly glorifying it. “She’s narrating the story, and
she’s not judging it,” O’Neill says. “And so she may not intend to be glorifying it, but she is.” —Associated Press
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