SO MANY ALARM BELLS

By Circe -
I know a lot of people like Ke$ha. I kind of understand that; I don't personally like her really big hits at all, but they seem to be good examples of whatever they are.

Pertinent video: "TiK ToK"

It bothers me that people seem to think she's original. She really isn't. She's not writing anything that other people haven't written about before her, and most of her musical structure is either pretty standard electropop or new wave ballad. You don't need to make original music to make good music, and the fact that people think you do irks me about as much as the fact that people have such short memories that this doesn't remind them of anything:

"Your Love Is My Drug"

She's also a good performer, if by "good" you mean "capable of hitting notes and creating pretty much the same spectacle live as she does on video". 

Saturday Night Live, "TiK ToK":

But there is something about her music which really doesn't sit well with me at all. Yeah, faux-drunken whore, yeah, assumed character for the public, yeah, yeah -- but I don't think she's faking very much. She comes off as excruciatingly self-absorbed -- and indeed, this interview with Ryan Seacrest sheds quite a bit of light on that:

Her mother being a punk musician kind of explains some of the hard-edged efforts to deliberately piss other people off. Does "We R Who We R" make anyone else vaguely uncomfortable? It's not just "We want to have a party and sticks-in-the-mud are not invited," it's got this air of "I've got mine, fuck you!" and "I don't really care if I trample all over your life to live mine."

Other things in that interview just set off so many screaming red-light alarms I don't even know where to begin. She doesn't want to know who her father is in case he's "a loser"? Her mother had a baby just because she wanted a baby and doesn't even know who her father is? Some dude calls up saying 'hey I might be your dad' and she moves in with him? Then decides he's too much of a loser to be her dad anyway and goes to live in her grandfather's car? Sneaking into Prince's house totally didn't sound that crazy in her head?

Either this woman is the very personification of "crazy bitch" or she is a troll of the highest order. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near her.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

By Circe -
About a week ago, I crewed a show at the studio theater for a non-profit outfit up from New York. The guys who run it are friends of our executive artistic director, and they come up two or three times a year. I like them; I dealt with them a bunch when I was at the box office, because when you're the most experienced person they have around they hand you all of the EAD's friends, and I have an unofficial standing request to work their shows even when I'm not the only crew who is both in town and not drowning in finals. One of the guys, as it turns out, is laid up with an injury right now, so the other one had to fly solo, on top of performing in the show. I ran into him coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as soon as he saw me he just lit up like, oh, it's you!  How are you are you working are you going to be my box office again! I told him I'd swapped over to doing tech and he asked if I was disappointed that I didn't get to dress up anymore. I
Read more

The mystery of "Himmmm"

By Circe -
[Note: This entry has been edited from its original publication. See here for explanation.] The gossip blogs are alight today with the breaking news that some dude who leaves a lot of comments at a site called Crazy Days And Nights  under the screen name "Himmmm" is "really" Robert Downey, Jr. Nobody has any proof, of course, and there has been no comment from RDJ -- possibly because the story is too new, possibly because it's true and he'd rather not have to lie, possibly because it's not true and he thinks it's too funny for words. Normally, I just laugh at these things, because really, who the fuck cares beyond the entertainment value? But one of the more interesting things about "Himmmm" is that he seems to have made it a point to go after people who have done Really Bad Things. He's most famous for popping in and letting other commenters play 20 Questions about who's being talked about in the most recent blind item, and  c
Read more

WARNING! Sweeping generalizations inside!

By Circe -
Captain Awkward -- who is one of my new favorite people, by the by -- has apparently been getting a lot of flack from her post about creepiness and how not to engage in it . I say flack specifically because it's not necessarily all directed at her personally, but when you're in the middle of a field of anti-aircraft guns all firing in random directions, you're likely to get some shrapnel in your hide whether anyone is aiming at you or not. One of the running arguments down in the comments (in her blog, in other blogs, on reddit, on the astral plane, etc.) is about whether it makes a difference whether someone is painfully socially awkward, has Asperger's or an autism spectrum disorder, or is just a boundary-free creepy fucker, whether these things are comorbid a lot, and what to do about it. I think it's really damn easy to tell the difference between them, myself. I suspect it's because I do tact about like a Panzer tank does ballet. The people who seem to
Read more