Avril Lavigne

[Valiant]

I thought music was just music. You know a collection of sounds that can effect people on different levels. Personally I don't care how it comes to be made and I tend to find people who examine this side of the equation as a basis for criticism to be very repetitive, tedious and quite quite anal.

You have reminded me of this article from the Sunday Times last week...

August 08, 2004

Music: And so I face the vinyl curtain

Will MP3s kill the record shop? Let’s hope so — music shouldn’t be about snobbery, says Tom Cox

It’s hard to say how many hours I’ve wasted in record shops in my late teens and twenties, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that I’ve spent much more time fondling albums than I have listening to them. Rather scarily, I’m far from alone in this. It’s what we vinyl and CD junkies do instinctively. We don’t have woolly mammoths to hunt, so we forage for music instead. The only real difference is that we can’t eat it, and it’s smaller and easier to sneak into the domicile when our girlfriends aren’t looking.

For years, no musty backstreet store was well hidden enough for me and my tribe, no pile of dog-eared psychedelia or country rock high enough. But now, with the iTunes revolution gathering pace, that’s all going to change. More quickly than we might have thought possible, our dimly lit hang-outs are beginning to disappear. Soon, it’s quite possible that their more mainstream cousins will follow, or at least change drastically in nature. I should feel sad about this, probably, but what I feel, really, is refreshed: a bit like Kim and Aggie have hosted a special edition of How Clean Is Your House? in my head.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love the look and feel of a 33rpm record, and can just about see the aesthetic point of a CD. Yet when it comes to the places that sell them, I can quite happily wash my hands and stride boldly into a more sanitary, practical, friendly future. For the best part of my life I’ve given record shops the larger part of my time and disposable income. In exchange for this, record shops have given me a large amount of listening pleasure, but they have also given me disagreements with girlfriends, passive musical snobbery and social discomfort, not to mention achy fingers (could they pack those second-hand racks any tighter?).

By buying music via iTunes — or even from Amazon — I can keep the listening pleasure and rid myself of its unsavoury by-products. The downside? I no longer have a collection of musical artefacts in my house to impress some nebulous figure in my future who doesn’t really exist. I think I can live with that.

For too long, men like me (and let’s face it, we are mostly talking about men here — women are generally far more sensible about record shopping) have hidden behind racks of soul, new wave, disco and classic rock, substituting taste for personality, insouciant grunting noises for conversation. The masterstroke of iTunes is that it forces us out of our completist ghetto and makes music what it should be: something in the air to delight in, not oil your ego with. No longer will we pretend that Lola versus Powerman by the Kinks is a great album in its entirety; instead we’ll buy the only three tracks we ever really listened to. It seems a lot healthier. Take a whole pseudo-classic album into the shower? Not me. Now I can burn and go.

Look at the average record shop. How many people do you see in there looking happy? Two maybe, out of, say, 30, if you’re lucky, and this is only because they are the only ones who haven’t had their musical taste insulted by the surly sales assistant. Shortly, when they put their copy of 5ive’s Greatest Hits on the counter, only to be mock-ignored by a couple of men with pioneering facial hair engaged in a tremendously important conversation that seems to consist solely of the repetition of the word “safe”, they’ll be just as furious as everyone else. iTunes, with its emphasis on songs over albums and sounds over materials, simultaneously keeps us childlike and teaches us to grow up in the best way possible. Record shops perform the exact opposite function, dragging us down into a swamp of retarded, elitist, socially inept maleness.

I have a friend who once worked a trial period in one of London’s best-known second-hand record shops, but never heard from his potential employers again.

Flummoxed, he asked one of his more approachable former colleagues where he’d gone wrong. “You turned the Tom Waits tape over in the machine,” he said, entirely straight-faced. “That’s the rule: nobody flips the Waits tape.”

Buy a sandwich from a delicatessen, and the sales assistant doesn’t evaluate your entire personality based on the precise type of cooked meat you’ve chosen as your filling, but in most record shops acquisitive actions are subject to the most intense scrutiny. When someone claims that the internet is an “intimidating” place to find music, clearly they have never endured the indignity of asking a techno fascist to point them in the direction of the remastered version of Barclay James Harvest’s debut album.

I’ve formed some powerful friendships through my love of record shopping. I’ve also formed some absolutely preposterous ones, which, in the cold light of day, when there isn’t a copy of the third Rare Earth album in a 12yd radius, all too quickly display their flaws. Overall, the record shop — a place where dispatching a cursory “please” or “thank you” can make you feel as pathetically uncool as a teenager who has turned up to his first football match and made the mistake of enthusing girlishly about David Beckham’s dress sense — is a social environment I can do without. Sure, I’ll miss the the thrill of the hunt, but do I really need corporeal objects to give my love of music definition? Does it really matter, in the overall scheme of things? Who, you have to ask yourself, in the end, is watching?

I love the moniker techno fascist!

[MW_Jimmy]

The death of the album would not be a good thing though. Not at all.

Oh, and I always sneak in a pop single into my purchases when buying stuff and see if I get a reaction.

[DarhkFox]

i think a fair few songs are pretty good. Track 1,3 and 6 are all very good songs in my opinion. The others i have not really heard enough of.

[Major Britten]

Sorry but her new album is just fucking shit and I hate Avril Lavigne with a passion. My girlfriend is a big fan of the ugly bitch and everytime we are driving in the car out comes the avril CD. I must of heard the album at least 20 times by now and now whenever I hear a song by her I get a headache, hell my girlfriend even sings the fucking songs in karioke. There is NO VARIETY in the songs, EVERY song is about how bad boys are and how difficult her life is, do I give a flying fuck!? The structure of every song is the same; a few words of how bad her life is/what arseholes men are and then a shouty chorus, then repeat this pattern until the song is over.

Avril Lavigne = Fucking ugly bitch that coudnt sing anything original to save her life

[rylee]

Well done and thanks to all the Avril haters on here. She can't possibly earn any respect for the below average rubbish her record company peddles to the brainless - and all those who have any interest in her 'career' should really go and discover some talented artists and give them a bit of deserved support. I have nothing but ridicule for those who even bother to be assaulted by her souless trash.

Unfortunately I had the great displeasure to have to listen to some of her live 'singing' on the radio the other day - fuckin' useless without the studio trickery she was. I developed a headache. She's a puppet. rant over.

[Gique]

so, to put it in a nutshell, levigne is a talentless, souless, spotty little cow whose songs aren't worth the paper her writers wrote them on.

it has nothing to do with "music snobbery" , nothing like some "hi fidelity" fantasy you (or the newspaper writer you quoted) have of people that are able to identify shit music when they hear it, and nothing to do with "techno fascism" whatever the fuck that is..

she is SHIT.

she has NO TALENT.

she has NO SOUL.

she is INTERCHANGEABLE.

she will do WHATEVER THE LABEL TELLS HER.

[Omega_Blade]

My girlfriend is a big fan of the ugly bitch and everytime we are driving in the car out comes the avril CD. I must of heard the album at least 20 times by now and now whenever I hear a song by her I get a headache, hell my girlfriend even sings the fucking songs in karioke. There is NO VARIETY in the songs, EVERY song is about how bad boys are and how difficult her life is, do I give a flying fuck!? The structure of every song is the same; a few words of how bad her life is/what arseholes men are and then a shouty chorus, then repeat this pattern until the song is over.

Prehaps you should consider dumping your girlfriend then.

[Transient Curse]

.

[Major Britten]

I'm astonished at the reactions here. I think it's incredibly sad that people can get so worked up and vicious over something which is so much a part of modern media, pop music. This isn't a campaign, music is music and wether you like it or not to attempt to crucify one of the exponents of it is absurd, if you don't like it change the channel.

Fair enough, do you find all the people that say they want to give her one equally sad and absurd?

[Darragh]

So you lads get Gemma Hayes ober there too? Has Night On My Side been released over there?

She's absolutely fan-blimmin-tastic. Night On My Side is a superb album, on all counts. Back Of My Hand is the best track on there, and that's saying a lot. Track it down.

[Nifta]

she is SHIT.

she has NO TALENT.

she has NO SOUL.

she is INTERCHANGEABLE.

she will do WHATEVER THE LABEL TELLS HER.

You would though, wouldn't you?

[Gique]

ew!

you can pick up a spotty teenage mosher anywhere... chuck on a korn teeshirt, get her a couple of alcopops and a happy meal and youre fucking made.