I may yet do a proper Grammy recap post (Raising Sand, really?), but probably not. I didn't even watch this year's ceremonies. I probably could have found them down here in Buenos Aires, but you know, life's too short sometimes. Especially when you can catch all the good bits later on youtube anyway. I am definitely amused by the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow introduced Radiohead (or, at least, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood--didn't see Ed, Colin, or Phil) and the USC Marching Band. I especially liked it when Paltrow called Radiohead incredibly influential. Essentially the subtext of her statement was: "Radiohead is so cool that I married the singer of a band who desperately wants to be Radiohead (or U2)."
And why don't pop artists play with marching bands more often, anyway? Is it just me or is it way awesome everytime these collobarations happen (see also "Jesus Walks" from Dave Chappelle's Block Party).
There's some discussion over at Slate about M.I.A. and her fashion choices. The headline is "What Should a Hugely Pregnant Sexpot Pop Star Wear, Anyway?" And, I'm sorry. Maybe I was out of the room for this (or out of the country, one), but when did M.I.A. become a "sexpot"? Cath and I saw her this past (northern hemisphere) summer in Philly and had an interesting conversation about how she represents a very interesting kind of stage performance for a female performer in which sexuality (at least as conventionally thought of) is about the 7th or 8th most important element in her performance. If that. (In case this matters, by my calculation she was about a month pregnant at the time of the concert.) The people at Slate bat around the term jolie-laide, but I'm not even convinced that applies to M.I.A. I'd buy that for Missy Elliot, maybe. But M.I.A., no. Is it sexist to insist that sex is a big part of every female pop performer's image/persona/success. Or is just naive to assume that it isn't? And how do issues of South Asian orientalism work in here, too? They did get the "hugely pregnant" part of the headline right, though. That part is pretty inarguable.
I'm also not terribly convinced by people calling M.I.A. a rapper and leaving it at that. Clearly rap is one element in the bag for her. But so are about a million other things that I'm not even close to understanding (nor are most of the people who write popular press articles, it seems). I will repeat my call for someone smarter and with more time than I to write something about M.I.A. and break it down for the rest of us.
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All right, so I'm giving away one of my dirtiest secrets. On a blog. Brilliant, sarah. But honestly, how many people, besides you, John, really read these comments?
I'm sure you didn't see it. But I watched the movie 'Twilight' (it was for research purposes, I swear: I'm looking for things to do with my students as the school year winds down), and "15 Step" is the song they use for the end credits sequence. I looked, and, yet again, Radiohead has given a song for the end credits of a film, but refused its going onto the soundtrack. But that's beside the point. What the fuck is this song doing on the end credits of 'Twilight'?!?
So I'll admit to having to look up the movie "Twilight" on wikipedia to know what you were talking about. I was in Argentina when it came out, so I didn't really hear about it there. Or actually, I sort of did. I'm remembering now reading the Argentinian version of "Rolling Stone" that had a movie review titled "Fin de semana del vampiro." Rolling Stone in Argentina has articles that are written originally in Spanish by Argentine writers and articles from the U.S. magazine translated into Spanish, with occasional hilarious results. Anyway, I think this was a review by Peter Travers or something. And I remember laughing, thinking that they must have just done a literal translation of his review, because "Vampire Weekend" is sort of clever in English, riffing off the name of the popular band, but "Fin de semana del vampiro" doesn't mean anything in Spanish, and it's likely that most Argentine readers of Rolling Stone don't know who Vampire Weekend is. So they wouldn't get the reference, even if they did translate it to English. But I didn't actually read the review, so I had never really learned anything about this movie.
But I have no idea why Radiohead wouldn't put their song on the soundtrack. Previously, you could probably blame it on some sort marketing decision by EMI, but since they don't have a record company anymore, who knows? They probably should have put "15 Step" on the soundtrack, though, since it apparently sold a bunch of copies. It might have been good exposure for them. But perhaps times have changed for them since "Romeo and Juliet," eh?
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