The next pop star

I tend to put a lot of hype into certain things.  If you know me, you have probably had this happen to you.  I get excited about things and talk about them a little bit too much.  It gets to the point where people’s expectations are too high to appreciate the thing in the first place.  I don’t know why I do this.  Maybe I’m just too damn excited.

Anyways, I’m about to overhype someone:  Janelle Monae.  I think she is going to be the next big pop star.  Or maybe I should put it this way: I hope she is going to be the next big pop star.  I had my money on a few other people but I have retracted my bets; I think Monae is going to win it now. 

Lady Gaga was a contender for a long time.  She is a mighty talented singer, has a very weird aesthetic, and is assaulting social norms on a number of fronts.  I’m starting to think her music can’t carry this weight, though.  I found her newest album to be nothing more than a collection of clichéd throwbacks.  One critic summarized my feelings perfectly: “If Gaga had only spent as much time on pushing musical boundaries as she has social ones, “Born This Way” would have been a lot more successful.”  I get the feeling that Gaga wants to be a lingering name in the music world.  If this is true, why doesn’t her music back it up?  I think she needs to do something musically dangerous.  Or am I expecting too much from her? 

I still have a little faith in Ke$ha, believe it or not.  Did you just chuckle?  I thought so…and that is exactly her greatest weapon.  She is coy with her image.  It’s like the old rubber and glue playground saying:  you laugh at how ridiculous she is, but she is laughing right back at you for taking her seriously in the first place.  Ke$ha is making a bold statement about how seriously we should take her music, and by extension, pop music.  That’s why she has the opportunity to swoop in and surprise us all.  Even though most of her music is pretty disposable, I can hear fragments of good song writing.  I detect hints that suggest she has something up her sleeve.  I think she is a better song writer than she is letting on.  She has hinted at a future album that showcases her songwriting abilities to their fullest.  I’m still waiting for this album to come out so I don’t have to eat crow.  I figure if she doesn’t do it by her next album I’m giving up.

Adele also has some promise.  She doesn’t fit the mold of your typical pop star, yet her career is taking off at the speed of light.  Her sound is spectacular (voice-wise and song writing-wise) and her approach is honest and personal.  The thing that will hold her back is that like Gaga, I don’t think her music is incendiary enough.  It’s not anything revolutionary in terms of its message or musical ambition.  It is really good music, but it is music that already fits into a box constructed in another era.

That brings us to Janelle Monae.  On a first listen, here are some things you might think about her:

“Wow…she has a really good voice”

“This music is really catchy”

“I can relate to these lyrics pretty easily”

These are the baseline requirements for successful pop music.  These are also the things that kept me coming back to her.  And that’s when I started to notice some things.

Each song is in a wildly different style.  What you may not gather from a first listen is that it’s more than a pastiche.  She borrows from iconic sounds of the past, but then molds them into her own musical vision.  Diversifying yourself but maintaining your own “sound” is the mark of an extremely talented artist.  Along with her music, her voice is extremely flexible.  Listen to the scope of it: from a mellow jazz cabaret sound to a full blown Broadway climax, from slick hip-hop verses to straight ahead pop singing, and from an ornamented R&B style to a primeval punk rock scream.

There are some incredibly complex things going on beneath the surface of her music.  The part before the chorus to “Locked Inside” contains the following chord progression:  C#-F#-D-A-C-G (for you theory nuts out there, it really looks like this: C#sus.4, F#maj.7, Dmaj.7, Amaj.7, C, Gmaj.7).  You don’t see that sequence every day in pop music.  Listen to all the counter melodies running through the song “Neon Valley Street”.  At 1:55, I can distinctly hear 3 countermelodies going on at once: background vocals, a string section and a brass section.  Pretty intricate stuff.  In “Cold War”, listen to how the beat cleverly disintegrates at 0:48.  The same happens at 2:24; listen to how she uses her voice (it sounds improvised, btw) to propel the song over the top at 2:37.

Many of her songs are motivically linked.  She put some serious thought into laying out her songs.  Even after countless listens, I am still discovering bits of melodies here and there in each of her songs.  Some of the connections are very subtle and buried very deep.  Along with the lyrics, these motives give her music a consistent theme that builds steam from beginning to end.  It wouldn’t be far-fetched to see this music fleshed out into a musical theater production with a complex storyline and a diverse cast of characters.

Much of her music contains a universal, utopian theme that preaches love and acceptance.  But the way she tells her tale about love comes with a twist: her album “The ArchAndroid” chronicles the life of a sentient droid who falls in love with her master in the year 2719.  A quote from the liner notes of the album: “Cindi Mayweather is the mythic ArchAndroid, who has been sent to free the citizens of Metropolis from the Great Divide, a secret society which has been using time travel to suppress freedom and love throughout the ages”.  Yes, this is coming from the same artist who was nominated for a Grammy and performed on “Dancing with the Stars”.  Her cross-over appeal is very interesting indeed. 

Finally, look at some of her music videos.  And the way she dresses in that tuxedo outfit.  She certainly does not follow the crowd.  Her artistic vision is bold and provocative.  She is clearly making some strong political and social statements with her image.  I think this is exactly what we need in our next pop star.

When it comes down to it, she has a quality that made The Beatles the most enduring band in popular music history: a balance between immediacy and thoughtfulness.  Music wills you to either dance or think, but rarely can both be done at once.  Janelle Monae seems to have found the magic middle ground.  And this is only her first full length album that she has released.  You read that right:  ONLY ONE DAMN ALBUM and she is that good already.  Wow.  She has a long way to go (I hope).