Bigmouths Strike Again: Starlet Slags American Bands Edition
An American actress would like it to be known she listens to music and she has an opinion: American songwriters ain't what they used to be.
[She] reminisces about the music she listened to as a child, from the likes of Guns 'N Roses to the soundtrack of musical Les Miserables, but admits she isn't a fan of the artists which dominate today's charts. She says, "It's harder to find great music these days. We have Amy Winehouse now, I guess and Bono (of U2). But still our biggest bands back home are crap ... We don't have a Bob Dylan; where are all the great writers? We don't have enough new great talent. We just don't have the inspirational songs that pop out."Guess the thespian, take the jump.
(via Contact)
Posted at 10:02 AM in Bigmouths Strike Again
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Who is that? It looks like Kirsten Dunst but the rack's (deceptively?) too big...
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...and I suppose razorlight counts as real music? guffaw!
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Nice edit, 'gum. Why is she name-checking Amy Winehouse and Bono? I'd take Razorlight over both of those.
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The Les Miz soundtrack! Can music ever hope to achieve such heights again?
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she's right. no matter how many times i keep spinning guns n roses or les miz, i just can't keep shaking this feeling that no one today is making ANY good music. AT ALL! NOT ONE SOUL! have you heard that new damon albarn? CRAP! BLARG BLARG BLARG BLARG BLARG ZOINK!
wtf?
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...It's a shame Bob Dylan died so young. D:
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yeah i was gonna say, dylan is still alive, hun.
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Way to shit on all the cool kids from the Trip-Spidey soundtrack, KD.
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Why yes music today sucks and Elizabethtown is right up there with Citizen cane let's face mainstream art in ouir culture sucks don't think your crappy movies are exempt either if you poke a stick at one form take a close look at your own.
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Once again, these feelings of disappointment would never have darkened Kiki's doorway if she'd just listened to The Kinks from the start.
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wow, this is too easy...drunkst is like shootin fish in a barrel
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Bono? Really?
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I hate when people say shit like this. No matter what year it is or was, if you think "there is no good music these days" then you aren't looking in the right place. For staters, anything "dominating the charts" probably sucks. Milli Vanilli and Paula Abdul dominated the charts in 1988, that doesn't mean nobody was making compelling music that year (Steve Earle "Copperhead Road", Dinosaur Jr. "Bug", Morrissey "Viva Hate", Pixies "Surfer Rosa", Fugazi's debut EP, etc, etc, etc.) People that say that nonsense are hipster scum.
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in no way to i mean to defend drunkst, but that's how this will play. she's been spending time in the UK (Razorlight!) and thing is, shit that tops the charts there is Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs, etc etc. sure, so does disposable pop and junky hip hop, but spending some time in England will make you wonder about US charts.
anyway, the rest of what she said (and her examples) are complete bullshit, so please everybody don't hate me.
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The same UK that had that Crazy Frog ringtone at the top of it's charts for weeks on end? That one? Wow, point taken!
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"The Les Miz soundtrack! Can music ever hope to achieve such heights again?"
Posted by: the management at April 24, 2007 10:30 AM
maybe if they bring cats back...
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She's right...where are the great writers? Name 'em.
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Isn't her boyfriend the original writer of "It's Not Over" by DAUGHTRY? Now there's a songwriter.
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@ Adam -- true. crap manages its way to the top everywhere, but you have to admit their charts are generally more friendly to the bands we like.
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Heaven forbid that anyone other than bloggers and anonymous blog commenters have any opinions on music!
Oh no! What is the world coming to?
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Coward, it's not that she has an opinion. It's that she's retarded.
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Amy Winehouse? Hah. What a joke.
As for amazing writers nowadays, we have Elliott Smith (he may be gone, but he's posthumously still releasing records). And of course WILL SHEFF. Okkervil River is more talented than many bands out there today, yet get no recognition (besides from Lou Reed). Lessee.. We have the Mountain Goats. Bright Eyes, even. Sufjan Stevens.. the Decemberists.
She's just too lazy to dig deeper than MTV.
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the "bigmouths strike again" thing is referring to the comments, right?
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Anyone who cites musical theatre of any sort- especially post-Rogers & Hart musicals, as being "classic" loses their credibility right away with me.
Although, I think there's truth to what she says. but she probably isn't digging very hard.
the best songwriters not from the 60s today are:
Robert Pollard
Stephin Merrit
Stuart Murdoch
approximately.
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Post rogers-hart musicals? Seriously? There are PLENTY of classic post r&hart musicals.
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She's right, you know. Even if she does creep me out, sometimes. Music, as a whole, sucks these days.
And she never said that Dylan is dead. Just that we don't have any new "Dylans" in our modern music world.
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i think she meant "where's the bob dylan of our generation?" to which i reply: the bob dylan of our generation is... bob dylan?
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craig damn finn
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american charts may be in shit state, and everyone's free to want a dylan, but there's already been a dylan when he was needed. it's an entirely futile expectation/desire: to want a dylan of our times. because these times are not of A DYLAN, they belong to non-dylans.
sufjan stevens may be a dork (and we love dorks), but thank god for him, because dylan, dylan, dylan would be extremely boring. and. america has NEVER had Beirut and the Books before. having them is more exciting than having this mythical dylan figure who's failed to show up, apaprently. and bono is terrible, any winehouse hardly as exciting as the books.
these nostalgic definitions of heroic songwriting and musicianship are extremely boring and misguided. i'm much happier listening to: YACHT, devotchka, even clap your hands, even regina spektor at least from the days of demos, joanna newsom!
and if she wants some sober music, i'm listening to the new paul duncan right now, and it sounds very good.
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i've got an anthem for our generation. it goes like this:
WE want all that stuff, ALL that stuff that costs too much! WE want all that stuff, ALL that stuff that costs too much!
that's YACHT for you. dylan would've never written that. because he's still alive, yes, and he didn't write that. he wrote about alicia keys instead.
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There will never be another Bob Dylan because the culture of music has changed. There's no way that an artist can maintain both critical and popular appeal in a world with the internet, where everyone can find their own favorite band without input from anyone else. Dunst just wants an artist that is both critically acclaimed and popular so she doesn't have to risk liking music that her friends don't like.
Maybe.
Word on the Craig Finn.
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I suppose this is Kirsten's time to fall from grace, having been a media darling up to now. Spidey 3 has a soundtrack featuring some indie bands and she's slagging the 'music of today'. Spidey 3 will have young kids clamoring for tickets (paid for by parents, of cuss!) and KD goes on record about how much she loves, loves, loves the mowie-wowie...
I suppose it was bound to happen. Every young starlet seems required to have a season where her brain takes a vacation but the mouth's still on the job.
And she's originally from New Jersey, so what else is new.
DwD
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for all those saying that bob dylan is the current bob dylan i think you've forgotten a certain mr conor oberst
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there's Amy Winehouse, I guess
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Brooklyn, she likes good music. She was right behind me at the Sufjan Stevens concert in LA.
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(begin rant)
did any of you actually fucking read what she said?
"'It's harder to find great music these days.'"
She "admits she isn't a fan of the artists which dominate today's charts."
"'[O]ur biggest rock bands back home are crap...'"
and yet, all these responses are all "fuck you! I like The Hold Steady! The Books! The Mountain Goats!" do you guys realize how SMALL those bands are? the VAST majority of the country has never even heard of these people. you guys are trying to act smarter and cooler than Kirsten Dunst, but you're trying to equate Craig Finn and Bob Dylan. hell, even equating Craig Finn and Bono is dumb. (and Amy Winehouse is a chart-topper somewhere, you know.)
last thing: IT'S OKAY to like Amy Winehouse, fuckers. it won't make you less indie.
(end rant)
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It's okay to like Amy Winehouse UNLESS she throws up on you at the Bowery Ballroom, apologizes, asks you if you'd like to... to... to... and on the fourth "to" barfs on you again.
DwD
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haha. I like her even more now.
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Going off of what Tyler said,a vast majority of the public doesn't have any idea who most of the bands heralded as great songwriters here are. I mean, I'm trying to get friends of mine around where I live to go to a FREE Hold Steady show and pretty much none of them know who they are, or even want to go just because it's free. As far as they're concerned it's just a bunch of nobodies from down the street.
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we don't have enough great talent, but she's pictured hanging out with har mar superstar in matching tanktops.
it's out there if you look for it, honey.
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oh! i agree with tyler
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Charlie, where you at?
There's great new talent, of course, but she's right, it is harder to find. Obvs, anyone who reads the Gum has done some digging, but most people either don't care as much as we do, or are satisfied with the top 40.
I used to listen to a radio show where they'd announce the Brit top ten every week, and yeah, it was much cooler than ours.
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This girl is a douche from doucheville. Why does she waste her time going to gigs then? Furthermore, why would someone disappointed with the current state of music go out with JOHNNY BORREL?
Jamie T is my Bob Dylan.
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Rufus Wainwright, Joseph Arthur, Ed Harcourt, Josh Ritter, Ryan Adams, M. Ward etc
Yeah....absolutely NO good talent these days.
Fuck sake, love, don't rely on the charts to present it to ya!
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Okay, so I'll include Rogers & Hammerstein, too. And mostly because a lot of the Rogers/Hart/Hammerstein stuff went on to be jazz standards. But isn't it just common knowledge that musicals are fucking awful? Hey, I was IN musicals when I was a kid, and I knew they were awful then, and I was in some of the tolerable ones (South Pacific, My Fair Lady). It's just a shitty art form, inherently. Can't we all admit that?
Am I being too dogmatic?
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