My Favorite Songs on My Favorite Show

They used LCD Soundsystem's "New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down" on tonight's episode of Gossip Girl, and it was perfect. As was almost everything else about the episode, especially when Rufus Humphrey, the father of the two poor Brooklyn kids who live in a giant loft in DUMBO, mentioned that Tanya Donnelly had asked his newly reunited 90s alt-rock band to join her on tour.  In my mind, it was implied that it was a Belly tour and not a solo tour. God, "Feed the Tree" is such a good song. 

Jesse Malin Hates the Pogues

I hate to waste my time complaining about all the things I don't like, rather than spreading the word about all the things I do like, but this afternoon, I got a promo of a new Jesse Malin record. I took out the record, a full-art version, and flipped it over looking to see which ridiculous, posed photos of himself he decided to include this time around (I wasn't disappointed, by the way -- there's one of him at a record store wearing a silly hat, looking sad and holding a record by Louis Prima and Keeley Smith), and I noticed that one of the tracks, #2, was "Me and Julio Down by the School Yard." Then I noticed "Walk on the Wild Side." And "Lady from Baltimore." And "You Can Make Him Like You."  A covers record, apparently, from a dude who, admittedly, has always had decent enough taste in records, but who's spent far too much time trying to be as cool as all of his favorite artists, always knowing deep down, I suspect and hope, that the difference between him and all the people he idolizes is that none of them had to try quite so hard.

Anyway, he also does "Fairytale of New York," by the Pogues, and it's driving me insane. Aside from his irritating delivery, where he switches between all sorts of different put-on voices, and his crazy pronunciation of the letter B, which -- I don't even know how to explain it -- sort of sounds like a noise one would make in hopes of getting an infant to laugh, and his insistence upon veering from the melody not quite enough to qualify as a complete re-working, but just enough so that his version could never possibly be enjoyed by anyone who likes the original (read: everyone), he also commits one of the cardinal sins of cover songs: Unless you're changing them to make a point (which is also ill-advised for the most part), do not fuck up the lyrics. 

A list of the lines Malin botches here:

"The rare old mountains do." 

Now, it's possible that I'm giving him even less credit than he deserves here by not capitalizing properly and by assuming a misunderstanding of context, but if you don't know that it's "mountain" -- singular, not plural -- then can I really assume you know that "The Rare Old Mountain Dew" is the name of a traditional Irish folk song? 

"This year's for you and me."

No, Jesse, it's not. It's for "me and you."

"Lying there almost dead on that drip in the bed."

This one doesn't seem like a big deal -- the correct line is "lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed" -- but it's indicative of Malin's intense inability to understand the natural rhythm of things, the subtlety language. "That drip in the bed," in addition to simply not sounding good, almost makes you think he's talking about a bed that had sprung a leak or something, and not about a person lying in bed on an IV. 

There's one other thing, too, which isn't strictly a botched lyric, but it's still infuriating. The Kristy MacColl parts are done by NYC songwriter Bree Sharp, who by and large does a pretty good job. But when she gets to the "You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy faggot" line, she giggles right before she says the word "faggot," as if she's worried people might think she actually hates gay people, rather than trusting her audience to understand that she's playing the part of a character who used a hurtful, loaded word to express sheer disgust with another character -- not as a harmless, ironic joke between two people, which is how Sharp's giggle makes me think she wants it to come off. She completely misses the point. 

If Malin thought the rest of the vocal take was good enough to justify leaving in all these mistakes, he was very, very wrong. 

I Watched the VMAs

Since, I believe, 1994, when Green Day and the Beastie Boys performed back to back on a revolving stage,  capping off their summer-long stint together on the Lollapalooza tour, I've been immensely dedicated to the VMAs, if not because they ever feature any artists I actually care about, or because they ever honor any of the artists I actually care about, then just because the show provides me with a concrete way of checking in with the younger side of popular culture. It's my job, obviously, to stay at least somewhat on top of this stuff all year long, and I try to, but no matter how many You Tube videos I watch, or how many music charts I read, I still always feel somewhat disconnected, as I think every right-thinking almost-30-year-old probably should. So the VMAs allow me to feel a little bit closer to things, and I appreciate it. 

Anyway, the 2008 VMAs were on last night, and these are some things I thought about them:

1) Rihanna hasn't had a decent single since "Umbrella," and while I can appreciate the tone of her voice, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's also quite thin and completely unremarkable. Also, her outfit sorta scared me. 

2) Katy Perry is a monster, and I despise her, but I don't quite understand why she didn't get a real performance instead of the crappy, commercial-interrupted one with DJ AM and Travis from Blink-182. 

3) Britney Spears looked so nervous that I actually almost felt bad for her. 

4) Pink's performance was embarrassing. Walking through the fake streets of the Paramount lot, she kept breaking things and lighting stuff on fire and pushing dudes down flights of stairs, I guess acting out the lyrics to the dreadful "So What," in which she assures her ex-boyfriend that she's angry enough about their breakup that she's going to get into a fight, presumably with an anonymous stranger, but not so angry that she's forgotten about her status as a rock star, if I'm not mistaken, she's going to use to get a table at a nice restaurant? Or maybe not. I don't know. At the end of her horribly acted little walk through the town, she wound up on stage, stripped off some big jacket, then jumped around with her ass hanging out. As the song was ending, she turned around and opened a button on her already mostly open shirt, making sure to reveal to everyone the tape she'd placed on her nipples. This is how you know you're dealing with a REAL bad girl, apparently... calculated nipple slips. 

4) Lil Wayne's pants were really, really low, and I was somewhat disappointed that in a live setting, his voice isn't nearly as raspy as it is on record. But he seemed to be enjoying himself, and I think I like him more now than I did yesterday, which was already quite a bit. 

5) Christina Aguilera was lip-syncing for most of her performance, which strikes me as a sort of a waste. Also, the dancing was uninspired and her outfit was truly, truly unfortunate for a bunch of reasons I do not feel comfortable talking about. 

6) Lots of people whose opinions I respect have said lots of nice things about Paramore over the past year or so, and I never quite understood. But last night, watching their performance of "Misery Business," I realized that lead-singer Hayley Williams is no joke. She's like an emo, female version of Mike Patton, which I mean less in an offensive, "for me to like something, I have to be able to compare it to an old, male, rock and roll example" kind of way, but more in an "I can't believe how many different voices she has" kind of way.

7) Jordin Sparks, in response to British comedian and the evening's host, Russel Brand's jokes about the Jonas Brothers' "promise rings," said, "It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut." Because if you have sex, you're a slut. Also worth noting: Sparks was the only person in the audience who didn't applaud when Russel Brand requested that Americans elect Obama. 

8) Kanye closed the show with a song on which he actually sings. It was fine, and his voice has some interesting qualities, but I can't be sure if I was hearing his actual voice or a vocoder. Which reminds me: everyone, please, please stop with the vocoder.