BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO? DAMN
Michelle F. Kung ’03, the movies editor of this Arts section, predicts that ’NSync will break up after the release of their next album, tentatively titled Celebrity. Will this come true? Pretty please? What if I promised to be a very good person for the next decade?
SISTER HAVANA
There’s a whole crop of new albums coming out next Tuesday, including ones by Janet Jackson, the Bee Gees, the Manic Street Preachers and KRS-One. But the one to listen to is the American release of Tropical Brainstorm, by Kirsty MacColl, who was tragically killed by a speedboat in Mexico last December. I’ve been saving up for the moment to write about MacColl, if only to point out someone with great pop chops (Janet Jackson will do fine without me giving her any publicity, presumably. Sorry Miss Jackson). MacColl’s songs are catchy without being stupid—I would call them intelligent pop in the Sam Phillips/Aimee Mann mold, except she was a musician way before either of those artists (“They Don’t Know,” Tracey Ullman’s musical hit of the 80s, is a cover of a MacColl song, as is the Lemonheads’ B-side “He’s on the Beach”). While some press releases for the album have called her a folkie, it wouldn’t be right to lump the versatile MacColl into the cliche of the female folk singer-songwriter; Tropical Brainstorm is Latin-inspired, she’s written songs with Johnny Marr of the Smiths (and sang backup for them) and “They Don’t Know” is pure 60s girl group, a late-1970s recrystallization of the Brill Building sound. Worth checking out...
JOEY IS A PUNK
Joey Ramone passed away last Sunday from complications from lymphoma. As lead singer of the Ramones, he was a crucial part of the New York punk scene and part-inventor of lots of things punk, most notably the stripping of pop to its rawest elements: guitars, drums and four chords. And for all that we here at the Arts section salute him. Check out “I Wanna Be Sedated” or “Blitzkrieg Bop” —fast, cheap and out of control, these are songs that clock in and out in under three minutes, songs that should’ve been hit singles for a band that at its heart loved pop. Fled is that music—do I wake or do I sleep?
Jaded? Life’s mysteries seem faded?
E-mail dsng@fas or visit www.dsng.net.