Since U Been Gone...

So Sanjaya finally got kicked off American Idol, and though it was inevitable, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. No, he couldn’t sing, and no contestant benefited so much from the “vote for the worst contestant" ideology. But he was also the only contestant who was remotely memorable. I haven’t watched AI regularly this year, it's been pretty boring. But when I do tune in, I usually say to myself, “I hope I didn’t miss Sanjaya.” The anticipation of the haircut, his strained but earnest singing and a withering Simon Cowell comment, that’s pretty much the only thing I looked forward to. Now that he’s gone, there’s no one else that really screams “must watch.” Melinda Doolittle’s the best singer, but I can't see her as a popular one. I don't think anyone this season is capable of anything more than a minor single that peakes at #54 on the Billboard chart or something like that.

That could be the ultimate failure of the current season of AI because the show has proven to be, in addition to be the ratings and advertising dollar monster, a powerful launching pad for major acts. Even Daughtry last season had star power even though he tried to retain rock cred, AI voters and like Fuel at the same time. Way back in the first season, when Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini stood on stage as the final two, no one would’ve thought either of them would sell more than a few thousand copies of a single and album riding the coat tail. They were amateurs who appeared on a TV show, not real musicians. And that was before a flop as terrible as “From Justin to Kelly.”

But lo and behold, Clarkson actually stuck around. She managed the tricky task of both maximizing her AI popularity while avoiding the dreaded “reality product” tag with a formula other AI grads used to launch their careers, produce monster singles. I didn’t think Clarkson had a lot of staying power, she was dull for a pop star and “A Moment Like This” was terrible. But she could sing, and as we later found out, she had a good ear for songs. I’ll admit I didn’t give Breakaway a fair listen at first. But damn if I haven’t sung along to “Since U Been Gone,” “Behind These Hazel Eyes” or any of the other songs in my car or a karaoke bar. They pulled off an act I thought was impossible; updated 80’s arena rock and made it relevant for today. In 2004 and 2005, Clarkson truly was the greatest singles artist on Earth

So one can only guess the palpable excitement I and a few others felt when her new single “Never Again” leaked. And it sounds like the quintessential sophomore-album song, indulgent and self-centered. I don’t know why so many pop artists feel like they have to produce the personal statement when afforded the chance, cuz a lot of them aren’t capable of it. I don’t know anyone who’ll get excited by the opening lyric, “I hope the ring you gave to her turns her finger green.” Even for a breakup song, that’s grade-school terrible. The big chorus, it’s just a long string of accusatory rants, except set to pop-metal guitars and a semi-catchy chorus. What’s really disappointing is that “Never Again” sticks to the exact same musical formula as all her other singles, and that just invites natural comparisons to those songs. She just crams as much angry poetry as she can into the same type of song. “Never Again” sounds like a messier, less coherent “Since U Been Gone” because that’s exactly what it is.

I read on some British music blog, I think it was Stylus, that Europeans produce better pop music because they’re not afraid of it’s inherent cheesiness while Americans feel like they have to be taken seriously eventually. Then the writer threw out Kylie Minogue, who was comfortable with “Lo-co-motion” and a career of nothing but modest pop singles until she honed her craft into “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” Meanwhile, Madonna stuck burning crosses into a video and just descended from their into “Evita” and what-not. Only when she re-embraced club culture (softly) with Ray of Light, then Music did her career see an uptick before she actually moved to London and adopted a fake accent. But Christina Aguilera made her big I'm-an-artist-so-I-can-release-a-double-album statement, Rihanna’s upcoming album is supposedly more mature and loaded with mid-tempo songs and it looks like Clarkson is attempting her serious artistic statement. It’s not like pop singers should never try, but “Never Again” just isn’t good enough. It’s too focused on being a cathartic release and not focused enough on being a good song. It's just one song though, hopefully she didn't forget to drop in some quality pop anthems in her upcoming album. But that album's title, My December, sounds an awful lot like a journal entry.

Download: Kelly Clarkson "Never Again"

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Disco Dance With You

I’m going to jump on a bandwagon that will surely be massive soon and state the following: Kathy Diamond’s Miss Diamond to You is awesome. It’s one of those dance records for people who don’t like dance music even though the production and beats are good enough for an all-out disco party. The album essentially crams 30 years worth of disco and house beats into each bass line and guitar riff, then smooths everything over into cool, detached lounge songs . But you can feel every bass note, synth , percussive hit, hand clap and guitar riff; the bottom literally drops out of every one so it hits you in the chest. It’s an album that’ll work with both the Morning Becomes Eclectic Sia-loving dullards, geeks who obsess over crates of 7” disco and house vinyls for 30-second breakbeats and club kids who get crazy anytime Daft Punk comes on the speakers. It’ll work for lazy summer afternoons, except you will probably dance a couple of songs and ruin your nap.

Diamond, who's actually from Sheffield and can only be seen in one mysterious promo photo, has a pretty flat voice. There’s absolutely no warmth to it. But she’s capable of slinking around each rhythm section and bass line, staying out of the way while effectively using it as effective framing devices. Diamond is less the star than another effective part of the ambience. The album was produced by Maurice Fulton, the noted Baltimore house producer who’s one-half of Mu, the artsy-electro act who tries to add as many purposely annoying sounds into smug, fragmented pop songs. But his main objective with Diamond is to make the listeners feel like they're at Paradise Garage without actually going through the trouble of taking them there. There are no real club bangers, Diamond and Fulton aren’t interested in it. They’re more interested in chilling at the club, not dancing there.

Most people will compare this album to Sally Shapiro, another Euro electro chartreuse who totally deconstructed dance beats and then rebuilt it into a smooth pop record. And there's a lot of similarities to Lisa Stansfield, who had a couple of hits way back (as in 1990) with Euro-fied R&B songs. But I can’t help but compare Diamond to, of all songs, Maroon 5’s “Makes Me Wonder” because that's the song I hear the most on radio now. It’s not a fair comparison, Maroon 5 can’t come anywhere close to Fulton’s knowledge of, or making dance music. But they both try to co-op disco and funk into a smoother, shinier product. I’m not going to lie, I actually thought “Makes Me Wonder” was halfway decent when I first heard it. The song does swing a little, and the more denser and faster instrumentation masks whatever annoying quirks Adam Levine has. I always thought Levine works best in moderation, his fey falsetto can work to accentuate a song here or there. But three or four minutes of Levine is awfully cloying. But “Makes Me Wonder,” like Miss Diamond to You, just use the vocals as a frame to hang the beats on. And Levine’s better served that way.

But “Makes Me Wonder” got old for me fast because ultimately, it’s pretty boring. Where “Makes Me Wonder” differs from Diamond is how it approaches dance music itself. “Makes Me Wonder” makes sure the bass doesn’t drop too low, and it’s mixed in pretty tightly with some nondescript synth notes to defang it. It’s like whoever mixed that song is afraid of sounding too disco. They wanted the sound without actually sounding like it. So even though it kinda bounces a little, there's not enough actual energy to make it exciting. Miss Diamond to You, on the other hand, embraces disco and dance music and all that is good about it. It also wants to be boring in its own way, but the album also wants you to feel like dancing at some point. Again, it’s really not fair to compare Maroon 5 with Diamond and I don’t know what I accomplished with the comparison. And I should mention that Miss Diamond to You is only a $30 import right now and there's a good chance it'll never come to the States. But whatever, it's easily been the most enjoyable record I've heard this past week so I'll recommend it anyway.

Download: Kathy Diamond "Over"
Download: Maroon 5 "Makes Me Wonder"

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