Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Lily Allen

Something I wrote about Lily a while back that I still feel strongly about:


I loved how Lily expressed herself through her music while she was growing up. She got signed when she was only 16, and she openly expresses not only through her music but in her interviews that she was, you know, going through extremely lost and hard times without embarrassment at all. I love how direct her lyrics are sometimes to her life experiences, she literally invites her fans in on her life and I think that’s a really hard thing to do when you’re an artist because of all the judgment you may face along the way. Granted, when she was growing up she was a bit of a party animal and she made some direct judgements at other artists and their work, however she expresses how much she has learned from that, again very openly and admittedly throughout her career. She is a wonderful expression of how young women ought to not be afraid of who they are while growing up. (Young) Women especially are all evidently faced with being judged on so many levels: about sex, about appearance, about drugs, about politics, about relationships, about education, the list goes on and on. I feel like Lily gives such a raw and real representation of someone who went through all of these things first hand: she went through sleeping around when she was younger, she went through the struggle of becoming possessed by material objects, she went through good and bad relationships, and she’s not afraid to express these things. She’s not afraid to show anger when shes angry, or sadness when shes sad, or happiness when she’s happy. She’s literally not scared to say “Yeah when I was 15 I held out flyers in a bikini on the street, it was bad,” but she also doesn't turn it into a sob story where she claims be a victim of her choices, and that I respect so much. Yeah, she’s not some virgin saint but she doesn’t really care, because in the end she still keeps a very level-headed, non-judgmental, and humble outlook on life and that’s great. She can still go in front of the camera looking great and confidently talk about her sex life, for instance, or what shes wearing, but not be entirely consumed by these things.

I also love how in her songs she sometimes tackles such serious topics like politics or what have you but then in the background you hear like these cheerful beats to create that sense of irony and contradiction.

Monday, March 4, 2013

french music and sailor moon

OK so this is probably really cheesy but my love for french music has rekindled this weekend on a road trip I took with my friends. My step-dad has this corny french CD (among many other corny European CDs) but I actually REALLY like it. I stole it from him back when I was a freshmen/sophomore in high school and listened to it every morning while getting ready for school, until he decided to take it back, and I haven't been able to find it or any of the songs online since, until I found it in his car this passed weekend. My friend Michelle was laughing at me and said if I heard the lyrics in English, I probably wouldn't like the songs as much. That might be true, but, in the mean time, I can't deny how cool these songs sound in french. I also probably really like them because I grew up to my mom throwing parties to this kind of music and her teaching me how to dance to it. The videos I found on youtube are really low budget and extremely bizarre, but some of the best things are, right?

My favorite on the CD is Milord by In-Grid
Non Randez Vous by Natasha St-Pier

In Tango by In-Grid is another one I like. Here's the original song:
THEN I found this cool remix with some Sailor Moon graphics. I'm not a huge fan of the Benassi remix, but I love Sailor Moon and this song so I thought it was still pretty cool. 
Taka Taka by Joe Dassin:
Tu Es Foutu by In-Grid

commonalities part 2

So, like I said in an earlier post, I've been thinking a lot about people's interests and what some of us may or may not have in common, and a few quotes popped into my head about the subject. I read an article on RookieMag a while back called What's Mine is Mine and something Tavi said in it really stuck out in my mind: 


 "I think one reason people of all ages get so territorial is that when they first were interested in more obscure things, they didn’t yet know anyone else who liked them, and it became kind of isolating. And then when they finally DO find other people who like the stuff they do, they want to invalidate those people’s reasons for liking it and claim that it’s not as deep or real. I realized that people aren’t just products of their tastes. We saw the same movie, but we each focused on different parts, and gave the same parts different meanings, etc. I have some friends who like stuff I hate, and I have met people I hated who had my exact same taste. I’d like to believe this stuff really matters—probably because so much of my life is just being obsessed with stuff—but in the end, people see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, so it all matters way less than we think." 

This quote from 500 Days of Summer also popped into my head: 

"Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate."