Youthography Playlist

My company often gets asked about music. I won't bother with explaining MySpace to anyone - I'll save that for the book - but a lot of our clients simply don't understand how critical music is, how much it permeates youth culture, and how it is being marketed and distributed through the internet. Seriously. So we've started a monthly thing called the Youthography Playlist, an e-mail we send out with links to free music. It looks like this, this month.

Introducing Playlist, Youthography’s newest monthly offering which features high rotation music we think are important indicators of contemporary youth culture. At the end of each month look for our list of popular songs to give you a snapshot of this. This month we saw UK band Hot Chip invade Canada and passed along Natalie Portman’s gangsta rap video to all our friends. We hope you enjoy these as much as we do.

Due to the timeliness of these articles, some of these links will expire quickly. We therefore recommend accessing them immediately before they disappear!

Youthography’s Top Picks for March 2006

A Day In The Life - Natalie Portman, Chris Parnell & Andy Samberg - SNL Digital Short
The popularity of Saturday Night Live’s Digital Short segment reached a new high with the viral dissemination of Natalie Portman’s gangsta rap when she hosted the show on March 4. Homemade rips of video were so popular on youtube.com that NBC demanded it be removed only to appear on the NBC.com website exclusively.
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So Sick - Ne-Yo - My Own Words - Island Def Jam
Ne-Yo’s album In My Own Words is the year’s biggest debut so far selling 301,000 copies in its first week. Many are crediting this to a move made by Ne-Yo’s label Island Def Jam that surprised the record industry, which essentially was withholding his first single “So Sick” from iTunes until the album was released. On top of the first week boom, 120,000 singles have been purchased online since release.
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Hard Out Here For a Pimp - Djay f/Shug - Hustle & Flow Original Movie Soundtrack - Atlantic
While the Best Music win by Hustle & Flow for the song “Hard Out Here for a Pimp” was truly the best part of the 78th Academy Awards, it was also an important moment in television history. The performance of “Hard Out Here for a Pimp” by Three 6 Mafia and Hustle & Flow actress Taraji Henson marked the first hip hop performance at the Oscars. In 2002, Eminem declined the invitation to perform “Lose Yourself” for the movie 8 Mile.
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You Have Killed Me – Morrissey - Ringleader of the Tormentors - EMI
Indie acts and flavours-of-the-month flocked to Austin Texas this month to be part of SXSW (South By SouthWest) Music Festival and one of the most talked about shows was the grumpster of all alt-rock, Morrissey who played a BBC-sponsored show to promote his album Ringleader of the Tormentors due out April 4. If Morrissey’s appearance isn’t a sign that this festival has become big shit, we don’t know what is.
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Also Playing
Tell Me When to Go - E-40 - My Ghetto Report Card - BME
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Over and Over - Hot Chip - Coming On Strong - EMI
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Temperature - Sean Paul - The Trinity - Atlantic
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S.O.S. – Rihanna - A Girl Like Me - Def Jam
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Move Along - All-American Rejects - Move Along - Interscope
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Everyone’s a Winner - Meligrove Band - Planets Conspire - V2
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I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor - The Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not - Domino Records
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Oh la la - Goldfrapp – Supernature - Mute
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Gold Lion - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones - Interscope
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Media was the Message

Today, I was apart of a panel at the Canadian Media Directors' Council annual conference. George Stroumboulopoulos was moderating, and there were four of us on stage. It was fun: any time I get to speak to a room full of people and dispel the myth of convergence (for young people, media wasn't divergent in the first place) is going to be a good time.

What wasn't so great was the luncheon keynote. These people have a difficult time, putting on a conference: 800 or so media buyers and planners in the audience can be a difficult group to please. I was sitting at the head table (ooh, fancy) but it was a bit awkward: there were twenty of us stretched across the stage, which meant we were a big line of people on display. Would that I had a photo. Oh, and they served chicken. What will conference attendees eat when Avian Flu hits?

But the real kicker was the lunch keynote by Pierre-Karl Péladeau, C.E.O. of Quebecor. This guy is a legend, and his company owns half of everything: newspapers, televsion stations, printing presses, ISPs, whatever (they print the Spanish phone book, for God's sake, and invented American Idol/Survivor hybrid Star Académie, which was the most successful televion show in Québec in a decade). The thing is, I think most of us there were sort of...underwhelmed...by Mr. Péladeau's speech. It's not that he wrote it himself, or that there were any issues with his delivery, or his pedigree, or his brain, but I think his speechwriter missed the boat. There was nothing particularly forward-thinking or controversial; nothing that is going to change the way anyone in the room goes about their business. I wanted to hear about the future, about risks, and about something new. Instead, we got safe. Where's Hugo Powell screaming "fire all the handlers" when you need him?

Bored with Brands

Quoted in an article today that ran in a bunch of CanWest papers, on young people and whether or not they are bored with brands. You'll be surprised that I said, "no."

New!

Welcome to maxvaliquette.com. It's new - in that I've taken all the info from my previous Friendster blog and moved it over. For the next little while, this is also where I'll be working on the book that I am trying to co-author. More to follow. But thanks for showing up.

And I promise to fix the problems with the sidebar.

Next Episode...

I'm hosting a youth issues talk show on TVOntario, called VoxTalk. Next episode will be a special on dating double standards - the idea that, for teenagers, there exists a different set of rules for guys than for girls. Anyone have any examples or any ideas? It's a subject that has been done before, but remember, if you're in your teens, it feels fresh to you, since you're just getting into that phase of your life.

I've had some people tell me that girls are still way more dating crazy than boys; that girls still mature more quickly than boys and will date older guys (but older teen girls never, ever date younger guys); and some seem to think that it's actually a lot easier for girls, since the boys still have to do all the work (although there are two counter opinions to this: is isn't really any easier to wait for a guy to ask you out, and girls are more likely to take the reins these days. Not certain I agree with that last one.)

The big phenomenon that we are noticing is the group date - this generation of teenagers are far more likely to go to a movie or something as a pack of six or eight or 10, and within that larger group there could be a few potential couples or full-fledged relationships. Meaning that even dating has become a group activity. It's safer, often, and potentially easier, in that you have friends to hang with if things aren't going so well or you need some support. I don't know: for me, the last thing I would have wanted is for any of my friends to see me struggling in front of anyone I was into. Oh, no, wait, that still happens all the time.

Les Nuits Digitales

All that they do on Saturday Night Live now is make rap parody digital shorts, with Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell. Or that's what it feels like. Following the amazing success of "Lazy Sunday," (affectionately known as "The Chronic-What!-cles of Narnia") they've shot a new one, starring Natalie Portman as the world's most hardcore Harvard-educated twenty-something Jewish girl. A category of one, but still, you want to be on top no matter what the game, right?

It's on YouTube - I've just given a link to the search results since rebroadcasting this infringes on copyright laws, and the folks at YouTube will be forced to take individual links down as they find them.

Amazingly, NBC will actually rebroadcast this on-line, for free. Or they probably will - they did it with the aforementioned "Sunday" clip, by allowing a free download on iTunes. Really smart. We talk about viral marketing all the time, and this is exactly how it works: take a good product and make it easier for people to spread the word to other people who care about their recommendations. For the five of you who are reading this, you'll probably link over right now, if you haven't already seen it. "Lazy Sunday" was downloaded millions of times - that's not an exaggeration - and some of those people will no doubt tune in to SNL some week, or buy "The Best of SNL Digital Shorts" when the DVD inevitably comes out, or PVR (ooh, look at me not being brand-specific) the next prime-time special. It's great, cost-effective marketing.
Inevitably, this is part of a larger explosion of broadband (which allows us to watch streaming video without stopping or waiting too long); digital comedy and reality (the cheapest form of video content to make, since our standards of what is acceptable production quality are lowest for something that makes us laugh or something that is real); and see-and-forward-first, the tastemaker culture equivalent of suck and blow. We can see videos on-line; we want to; and we want to be the first to tell our friends about it, too. "Did you see that last night?" has become replaced by "You didn't, but you can see it now, because I was cool enough to find out about it." Whether it's the autistic kid hitting all those three pointers or Portman hitting Parnell with a chair, if you haven't seen it yet, you will. Because someone will tell you about it.

Promise to Tell

Have you seen Postsecret?

Some weeks it's better than others, but it's worthwhile to take a look. These little moments of pop spirituality, as fueled by the Net, are so interesting. Is this real? Does that matter? When I look at these sorts of things I sometimes feel like Wes Bentley in "American Beauty" - as ridiculous as that sounds - looking at that plastic bag blowing in the wind. Gripped by what seems to be such an elemental and human sort of expression in such a mundane form. It just makes me feel strangely connected and warm, like looking out at the ocean and thinking about the people on the other side who are looking back at you.

An update: I was part of a technology roundtable this past week with a magazine editor who called things like Postsecret pseudo-interactivity - evidence of the shallowness of new media, more than anything else. He may well be right - and many of these postcards may be fake - but I just can't help it. I want to believe. Next up, look for me to start sending money to some guy in Nigeria who has a massive fortune coming to him but needs some cash to acquire it.

On Kanye West

You know, I've heard that song about a hundred times now and I've got to say: yeah, I think he is saying she's a Gold Digger.

Mashed.

Watching the Grammys has become an exercise in endurance - like watching an entire season of 24 in a weekend, only substitute "boring" for "tense". In the absence of any real moments of thrilling music the producers have settled for a series of "surprising" collaborations and mash-ups. This concept - marrying two or more seemingly disparate songs - is an interesting one, or at least it was when it was relevant three years ago. Now it just seems sort of tired. When it works, it can be great - Mary J. Blige and U2 were fun to watch together, only because Mary sings like she actually cares and is apparently in danger of having an apoplexy at any moment. But even this wasn't a true mash-up - Mary and the lads already recorded this song for her latest album, and it's essentially a duet, not a mash-up. Both performers are singing the same song. But the spirit is the same: we're seeing an R&B diva perform with the world's most successful bar band, and that's supposed to generate an "I can't believe they did that" sort of thrill.

This year,the show was missing anything genuinely exciting. Last year, at least, Joss Stone got to stand around barefoot while Melissa Etheridge returned to the public eye after a battle with the Cancer, bald and proud. It was a good moment, because of the sheer surprise of it, and the home experience was heightened by the reaction of the audience of industry-types thrilled that their girl was back and rocking. It's cliched, yes, but you really could feel it.

On the other hand, I don't think Joss Stone actually records music any more, I think she just gets plugged into awards shows to duet with yet another unlikely collaborator. And that's what happened at this year's Grammys - artist after artist were trudged out to perform together, and the result was one big collective "what-ever". It's why all the kids were watching American Idol instead. Not even the spectacle of watching Madonna, the alpha-cougar herself, perform with cartoon band Gorrilaz was enough to get them to switch channels. There's no surprise in any of this to match the thrill of discovering the world's next William Hung.

So that's the thing: no one is blown away by seeing two "contrary" artists together any more, because it's no longer revolutionary. Not because all the artists are doing it - although they are - but because all the listeners are doing it. There was a thrill to Run-DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk this Way" all those years ago because people who listed to rap in the early 80s didn't listen to hard rock, and rockers hated hip-hop, too. As a listener of one genre, you discovered something you liked in the other, and the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

Now, though, everyone listens to everything (or "everything except for country," which is something I hear a lot in my work). We mash songs up all the time - every time we flip the radio from one genre to another (or let a mix station do that for us); or when we press "shuffle" on our iPods and let the technology do it for us. We all listen to all sorts of music and we all listen to it in whatever order we, or a randomizer, dictates. At the MTV Video Music Awards in 1997, there was still some thrill watching Sting pop out of the floor - quite literally- to duet with the then-still-named Puff Daddy on the latter's tribute "I'll be Missing You," which sampled the former's "Every Breath You Take." It was shocking - ohmigawd, is Sting actually there? - because no one who listened to Sting's music listened to Puffy's, and vice versa. If anything, there was something almost illicit about Puff's extended sample, because it was bound to piss off the Police purists. Not so anymore: hear a good hook or chorus in a rock song, and you can all but expect it will be the foundation of a rap track in the future. Hip-hop superstar Nelly duets with country superstar Tim McGraw, and neither lose credibility as their collaboration tops the charts. Run DMC actually had to crash through a wall to make it into Aerosmith's video - now, artists hold the door open for each other.

There was one neat mash-up moment, though. Jay-Z and Linkin Park were performing one of their previously pasted-together tracks - something from their Collision Course album, which I believe was designed to make the boys in Linkin Park seem even less street than they actually are. In the middle of it all, Linkin - or Park, one of them - launched into a few bars of "Yesterday," and who should waltz out but the world's least hip grandfather, Paul McCartney. The whole thing would have been somewhat pointless, had it not been for Jay-Z. Jigga was outfitted in a white suit with a John Lennon t-shirt on underneath, and when McCartney looked Jay-Z's way, you could see his eyes glance down at the shirt and stop for a moment. Lennon, dead for 25 years, still managed to be a cooler stage presence than McCartney: Jay-Z's endorsement of the one Beatle over the other made that a reality. I swear, in that moment, at least Sir Paul was surprised, and for a second, the Grammys were exciting.

Can Britney and Jacko take parenting classes together?

Seriously. Everyone's favourite deep-fried Pop Tart was photographed driving with her son in her lap. Now, apprarently this is a big no-no, because it's hard to hold on to the little critter when you've got a twinkie in one hand and are busy taking K-Fed's mitt off your boob with the other.

I love Britney and the world's best-paid sperm donor. You get the feeling that if she could poke two holes in the bottom of her SUV and pedal it with her feet, she would.

Friendstercrush (tm).

Has anyone else come up with a name for this?

You know, you're surfing through Friendster or some other...umm..space...and you read a profile and think to yourself, "whoa, I could date that person." Or, you know, you can insert a different verb into that last sentence.

Actually, you can't. Sites like FacePic are already being used for hook-ups, that's not what I mean. I mean learning enough about someone that you think you should maybe date them. Sure, everywhere from Lavalife to Fast Cupid and every other personals site lets you look at someone and read their description. That's been around since the beginning of the World Wide Net.

What makes this different than a personals site is that you can get to know someone through their friends. I think a Friendstercrush (tm) (annoyed yet?) is different, because you get a pretty vivid picture of someone's life just by looking at how much of it they've thrown on a website. Blogs, multiple photos, testimonials by and to friends, groups they belong to, shout-outs and posts, even what their friends look like - these are all things that take it a little farther than a personal ad ever could. I'm not really a personal ad guy, mind you - but I came pretty close to asking someone out who I have three degrees of separation from.

But, you know, then I figured it was one too many degrees. I mean, the Friendstercrush (you know) may be new, but there still has to be some sense of etiquette. We're not animals, you know.

We need more Lindsay Lohan.

Actually, we need Lindsay Lohan to eat more. But if that happened, we'd have more Lindsay Lohan, so same diff.

If you read past the title, you're either a fourteen year-old girl or someone who is busy suppressing righteous outrage borne of my suggestion that there is some kind of a double-L shortage. Let's assume, though, that either way you're going to pay attention to the rest of what I say. It's why I wake up in the morning, after all - I do love me the attention.

I had to do a radio show last night. I say "had to do it" because I am just stupid enough to book myself into a radio show in the middle of the Super Bowl - you know, the biggest sporting event of the year, one of the biggest shared pop cultural moments, the evening in which all sorts of new commercials are premiered, and a big gathering with a bunch of friends - all things that I hate, obviously. So I trundle my miserable ass up to Yonge and St Clair where I am greeted by the lovely Dr. Karyn Gordon, who had asked me to join her on her call-in show. CFRB 1010: not just the home of misinformed Sun readers (ooh, redundant), it's also a place for niche talk shows like hers, called "Bridging the Gap". Helping parents to connect with teens, and all that.
I had asked Laurie Mah, who works with me, for any issues that I should bring to the table - things that we are seeing with young girls, specifically, since that is one of her areas of expertise. Here's what Laurie had to say:
"Something interesting that i experienced in a focus group on eating/ health... these young girls seemed to be oddly 'proud' of knowing about diets and stuff. they seemed to brag about not eating lunch, not having money to eat anything all day. I was hoping that in this day of DOVE beauty campaigns, that we would be moving towards broader views of beauty and greater acceptance of one's own looks. is there something we can derive from this? was this just one set of vain girls from Toronto, fronting?"
Now, sure, Laurie says things like "fronting," but that doesn't mean she's wrong. What the hell is happening? Shouldn't even our most conspicuous consumers be loving Lululemon, dazzled by Dove and harping over Healthy Choices? And shouldn't there be some sort of button on your computer that automatically deletes alliteration like that?

So if we're living in the age of healthy branding, why are so many young girls too thin (and don't get me started on why so many young girls and boys are too large)? The truth of the matter is that celebrity is more important than ever because we are giving it more importance than ever. And the younger one is, the more one looks to cues from the outside world as to how to act, how to look, what to buy and how to be. That is a natural part of the journey to self-definition - we amalgamate all sort of outside influences and turn ourselves into a sum that is (hopefully) more than the parts of all that.

For girls, celebrity equals lifestyle - now, more than ever. It's why there are so many successful celebrity 'brands' aimed at young women. MaryKateandAshley, the indestructible Hilary Duff - they would have simply been actresses (generous, I know) or actress-singers (doubly generous, I know) in the past, with commiserate merchandise, bearing their likenesses. Now, they are clothing lines and accessories. You used to want to wear your favourites on your t-shirt or hang them on your wall - now, you want to wear what they wear and hang what they hang.
Which gets me back to Lindsay. Aside from inspiring millions of teenage girls to drive really badly, she can also inspire them to be really, really thin. And when hotties like Kate Winslet are considered overweight - really - my liberal white male guilt gets all fired up. Who the hell is going to start sending some positive body messages to young girls in a way that resonates as much as starring in a goddamn Herbie movie? And how terrifying is that last sentence?
This isn't something that I think about all that often - my deep love of Veronica Mars notwithstanding, I'm not a teenage girl. I'm also not one of those guys who took Gender Studies courses to meet girls, so if any of this appears self-serving, it's really just that I work in the pop culture industry. I'm not trying to curry anyone's favour. But I meet a lot of young people over the course of my work. For me, there is nothing as impressive as meeting a 16- or 17-year-old girl who has all of her shit together (at that age, sorry, they really do mature more quickly than boys). I speak to these girls and there is this amazing feeling of possibility. It's awesome. Speaking to someone and knowing that they are going to well, and that the people they choose to bring into their circle will be enriched, as well. Conversely - and this might be transference from my own experiences - I just think internalised disappointment with one's self is just about the worst, especially when it's driven by such ridiculous external messages.

The next step, I guess, is to see if a Raven or an America Ferrara can cross over. Or maybe for one of them to eat Mary-Kate. That's a win-win, I think.