The evidence:

David Archuleta brought it to the finals.
Molten hot! Hot! Fire!

David's dad made him sing "You're The Voice," and on his own accord, he sang Chris Brown's "With You," unconsciously wiggling his ass.
Both more acceptable than Our Lady Peace.

Unlike his opponent, David Archuleta never revealed just how crappy a song "Baba O'Riley" is when it's stripped of its keyboard hook.

I'd blame Cook for his interpretation of "Billie Jean" as well, but really, that's Chris Cornell's fault.

David Archuleta is a wittle mouse who likes to pretend he's Vanessa Carlton.

Awwwww. Don't you just want to put him in a shoebox with a little blanket?

As the career of Daughtry proves, David Cook doesn't need the Idol crown to join all the other candy-ass yarlers who make me wish Eddie Vedder had suffered a lethal surfing accent soon after recording "Hunger Strike." (I don't want to imagine life without "Hunger Strike.") I've even caught myself referring to the sound as "Cook Rock" lately, reaffirming how easily he'd slipped into the tepid world of rock/adult contemporary crossover. Archuleta's magic is a more fragile thing, one that requires a royal handle in order that he may some day walk with cartoon animals. Yes, he may wind up a resentful queen like Clay Aiken. Perhaps his relationship with his father will send himself spiraling downward into chemicals and squalor. But when he sang "Smoky Mountain Memories" during Dolly Parton week, I watched the story of every child performer whose family depended on their modest talents brought to bittersweet life.

Not that I voted. (Just saying.)

American Idol 7 - David Cook - Baba O'Riley 05/06/08 [YouTube]
David Archuleta A Thousand Miles [YouTube]
David Archuleta - Smoky Mountain Memories - Top 9 [YouTube]

1. They are really fucking funny.

My god, did you watch that trailer for the movie? Maybe it hurt at the time, but after fifteen-plus years, that tragedy is comedy now if it wasn't the second it came out. If Dan didn't also have some kneejerk beef with Lester Bangs, he might have read a great piece in Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste named "Jim Morrison: Bozo Dionysus A Decade Later" that shows how it easy it was to find and enjoy the camp in the Doors, even while finding Morrison's sociopathic and self-adoring tendencies repugnant. And that was written in 1981, when it was probably a lot harder to ignore his lionization.

While classic rock hegemony has obviously survived in the Web 2.0 era (I mean, check out that comments section), the increase in differing voices and the rise of nostalgia for years well past the Summer Of Love make it hard for me to resent these dinosaurs the way I did back when there were only 57 channels (and nothing on). We're not forced to hear that nothing will ever beat the '60s anymore, so its easier to take the icons of the age at face value.

2. At face value, the Doors are really fucking funny.
So this pretty boy poet gets together with an organist he knows from film school. Soon they get a little bass-free band together that mixes supper club schmaltz and classic blues as if it's all the same trip. And while Jimbo's a wordsmith, he's not above singing a ditty by the guitarist that winds up being over six minutes long! And this is what they take to Ed Sullivan! Weirdos!

3. They wrote their share of groovy little tunes.
Get over (or surrender to) the idea that you're dealing with a prophet and it's pretty easy to get into stuff like "Break On Through" and "L.A. Woman." As ridiculous as organ-based bands can sound, the band could work up a dramatic backdrop for Morrison's shtick. Sez Bangs: "he took all the dread and fear and even explosions into seeming freedom of the Sixties and made them first seem even more bizarre, dangerous and apocalyptic than we already thought they were, then turned everything we were taking so seriously into a big joke mid-stream." That's actually kind of cool.

4. We're pretty quick to tolerate trippy '60s bullshit if the artists are "underappreciated."
Dan talks about not wanting to blame Arthur Lee for getting the Doors signed to Elektra. Arthur Lee? The guy who lived in bottles and pretended they were cans? The guy who dropped garage rock to sing over strings like Johnny Mathis about the snot on his pants? Can you imagine how much people would resent Love if they had a Doors-like cult behind them? Inversely, if you treat the Doors like just another bunch of sixties screwballs, there's a lot of gold in thar hills. Don't sleep on The Soft Parade just because Mom got there first.

5. They are really fucking funny.

Ha ha, Tom Jones.

Wayne's drastic improvement from his Cash Money days, coupled with the South's moment in the sun, ensured that narrative-hungry writers would annoint someone sub-Mason-Dixon as the new king of hip-hop. With Scarface and Andre 3000 falling back and half of UGK locked up, Wayne seemed like the best bet. In a way, his rise seemed tailor-made for the zeitgeist of this jangled Internet age, his songs blessed with a sense of ephemera that jibes with the notion of constant content fit to be devoured and forgotten ten minutes later. There are as many Wayne songs as there are blogs, and like the blogosphere, the quality is wildly uneven. For every show-stopping moment like "Cannon" or "Upgrade U," there are ten tracks filled with repetitive simile-laden boasts that Wayne's champions would like to call free-associative genius, but really just prove that it is somehow possible to be both the hardest working man in hip-hop and incredibly lazy at the same time.

Given the chance to appear on Graduation and American Gangster, two rap albums from 2007 that were good enough to receive burn beyond the turn of the decade, Weezy whiffed—squandering the rare opportunity to broaden his fanbase beyond his key constituency of Southerners, 13-year olds, and white music critics with 180+ IQs, prestigious liberal arts degrees, and questionable taste in hip-hop. Wayne apologists scoffed that their hero had already had so many great moments that year, but his detractors sagely pointed out that anyone purporting to be the best rapper alive shouldn't suck this much on both of the year's big-ticket rap records.

That's perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Wayne question: only two opinions seem to exist, both of which are wrong. (Wayne is neither savior nor Satan. What he is a talented rapper with absolutely no concept of quality control.) The first swallows his hyperbole and concludes that he is the greatest rapper alive, a prolific, infallible genius who operates in a Bizarro galaxy heretofore reserved for such king weirdos as Mike Tyson, Cam'ron, and Kim Jung-Il. The other labels him complete garbage, a walking, talking, Baby-kissing plague on humanity responsible for SARS, Ebola, and the assassinations of both Kennedys.^** Ultimately, what this yields is bad criticism, with his admirers refusing to acknowledge his myriad atrocious moments and his "haters" never conceding an inch, with both teams waiting for the "classic" album that will either confirm his place in the pantheon or halt the critical love train.

The notion of needing to drop a classic album seems slightly antiquated, but in fact it isn't. While short stories, short films, and single MP3s obviously have their merits, no amount of postmodernist revision will ever alter the fact that the novel, the feature film, and the album will remain the standard-bearers of art. (Sorry.) Lil Wayne has not dropped a classic album, though if you lopped 20 minutes off Carter II, you could arguably state your case. Logically, Carter III would be make-or-break time, the chance for Wayne to either shut up the peanut gallery^*** or leave the heads of the hype machine with a whole lot of omelet on their face. Neither of these two things will probably happen.

While it remains to be seen what exactly would convert Wayne's naysayers, it is certain that no matter how bad Carter III is, some corners of the critical community will stop at nothing to convince you of its greatness. In particular, no two critics have been more strident in their homerism than Tom Breihan, of the Village Voice and Pitchfork and Marc Hogan, the main writer of Pitchfork's Forkcast. ReadBreihan's love letter to "Lollipop," a song that he himself manages to call

a blatant sellout-move capitulation to everything lame in today's pop-music world: gallingly obvious central lyrical sex-as-candy analogy, T-Pain-esque layered-up autotuned vocals, simplistic snap-music drum-pattern, hushed trancey synth-whooshes playing something that sounds suspiciously like the melody to Flo Rida's "Low," no rapping whatsoever and... screaming butt-rock guitar solos.

Forget the fact that "Lollipop" does have rapping, however terrible it may be; forget the fact that Breihan somehow manages to compare "Lollipop" to Earth Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove," a piece of spin that would make James Carville smile. The review concludes by telling us that we should "celebrate the fact that Lil Wayne has made his "Candy Shop" without compromising his inner weirdness."

In fact, there is nothing weird about "Lollipop," a song that feels more cynically calculating than almost anything released in 2008. It's lyrical content is a clumsy homework assignment from 50 Cent's School Of How To Write Songs For 14-Year-Old Girls With Tacky Sex Metaphors For Hooks. (In particular, "Shorty Want a Thug/Bottles in the Club/Shorty Need a Hug" makes Benzino look like Arthur Rimbaud.) Meanwhile, it completely style-jacks T-Pain, a guy who stole every one of his ideas from Roger Troutman, never mind Snoop Dogg's "Sensual Seduction." Hell, even the "Lollipop" video is corny, a glitzy, formulaic romp through Las Vegas that feels suspiciously like a cliched combo of the videos for 112's "Only You" and 2Pac's "How Do U Want It."

Incidentally, there is one defense for "Lollipop": It's a big, absolutely retarded pop song that you enjoy dancing to at clubs. This is its sole intent. As rap music, it's garbage; as pop, it's middle-of-the-road filler fit to be played until Labor Day and not a moment later. What it isn't is "sly, heady... melodrama," as Breihan puts it, or a "savvy pop move," as Hogan calls it. What Snoop did was a "savvy pop move," the sort of desperate sellout look that artists need to do when there's nothing left in the well; "the greatest rapper alive" shouldn't have to resort to singles you can Xerox (no Hillary Clinton).

If "Lollipop" is a shameless, poorly executed, but well-thought out play for the charts, "A Millie" is the opposite, a half-baked and sloppy street single with Wayne once again in mixtape mode, stringing together simile after simile for five and a half minutes of banal shit-talking. Of course, there are a few clever lyrical turns. "I don't owe you like two vowels" is as good as anything Lupe Fiasco has written, but like Weezy's entire discography, "A Millie" is maddeningly inconsistent. Its beat is a hiccuping, overly repetitive, minimalist mess that sounds like it could only have been selected by someone under the influence of too much drank and drugs. Meanwhile, Wayne attempts to mask his empty-calorie lyrics by relying on his now-familiar grab-bag of vocal tics, forcing syllables to stretch that shouldn't stretch, modulating his voice without purpose, everything strictly for schtick and effect. At one point, he even boasts that "none of this shit is written down," but that goes without saying. After all, any rapper who writes a lyric as lazy as "we pop 'em like Redenbacher" deserves his MC pass revoked. (Can we all admit that Jay and Big's claims that they never wrote down lyrics have caused more harm than any trivia tidbit in music history?)

But Hogan dismisses anyone with a gripe: "haters are already foaming at the mouth... the rest of us know better than to rush the flow." God forbid, anyone gets between Hogan and Wayne's uh..."flow." "A Millie" is just mediocre, a boiler mix-tape track that would be met with yawns were it released by Papoose, most frustrating than is the one-sided nature of its criticism, with its arrogant tone and nebulous taunts at "haters." Flip through the Pitchfork archives, and you'll be hard-pressed to find inasmuch as a negative word about Wayne, with the one universally loathed Wayne record, Like Father Like Son, weirdly never getting a review despite its single, "Stuntin' Like My Daddy," receiving a glowing, four-star review from Breihan.

Granted, Wayne's detractors are notoriously venomous and often misguided, but their anger partly stems from a critical vogue that refuses to praise anything that isn't crack rap and/or nakedly commercial. In the past six months, hip-hop has seen strong output from a new generation of rappers—Jay Electronica, Wale, The Knux, Pacific Division, Blu and Clean Guns—yet not one of these worthy artists has gotten their own post on the Forkcast or Status Ain't Hood, despite obviously needing the exposure a whole lot more than the platinum-plus "Young Money Millionaire." It remains to be seen whether Carter III will be the masterpiece capable of validating the slavish Wayne worship that has taken place over the past few years. But what is certain is that judging from the reviews of its first two singles, you'll be hearing the praises of its unmistakable brilliance.

Besides, no matter what, it can't be worse than Mike Jones or Paul Wall.

^* On another note, if "Loungin" is not the most quintessential mid-'90s rap video, than what is?
^** Though if one were to judge Wayne strictly off his appearance—which is not unlike that of a drank and pills-addled Whoopi Goldberg—SARS seems like a reasonable guess.
^***Likely filled with fans of Peanut Butter Wolf.

Is there anything about your pop stardom period — of slick international hits like "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)" and "Absolute" — which you recall with affection?

No, not at all. I remember it with great discomfort. It felt so wrong. It was something I'd wanted to try in an ironic way. There was no way I could buy honestly and earnestly into the whole pop thing, because I knew too much about pop, as it were. I wasn't naïve. And yet in another way, I was. I'd thought it'd be fun to explore and play with, both musically and politically. To see what happens when you're in Black Rock New York or Warners offices in LA...to go to the heart of things and see what it's like.

And I just HATED it. I felt uneasy 24 hours a day. I felt a complete phony. It really got to me. There was an irrational emotional response to the whole business of being...looked at. And made to do silly, bullshit things on television, to be a little performing thing. I don't ever remember thinking "well done," not even quietly to myself. So I stopped making music altogether, for a long time. Now as I get less uptight about things generally, sure, it's nice when Timbaland says he used to listen to it, and I have fond memories of meeting Miles Davis. But back then a little bit of me died every time I did some TV rubbish...

What kind of "TV rubbish" could fill Gartside which such horror 20 years after the fact? Well, thanks to YouTube we don't have to guess:

Okay, it is pretty embarrassing watching three white guys in white socks and bad haircuts talk about how the British just aren't funky enough. But can you imagine Justin Timberlake explaining how his album sleeve was inspired by a Marcel Duchamp-designed, banned Vogue cover where the surrealist wrapped a hunk meat in cloth? Yeah, us neither.

Q&A: Scritti Politti [eMusic]
Scritti Politti Interview [YouTube]

^* Yes, we were at different shows. We're not that bad.

OK so I'm pretty sure it's not just my time-zone-related confusion that makes something seem off about the clip. It's way long, it combines the spoken-word/written-on-a-card aesthetics of earlier videos in a confusing way, and the two-headed aspect of is simultaneously working my nerves and reducing my sympathy level. Sweetie! focus! Your clip only has 87 comments in the past two days, which is no way to capitalize on your newfound YouTube fame.

Ashlee Simpson is a crackwhore [YouTube]

fruitsbasketRULES (12 hours ago)
ahahaha WOW there are so many things wrong with this video.

First, I could barely read what you wrote. Only 7 year olds write like that, so you can't possibly be 13. Why are you writing anyways? To hide your ugly little head and to hide your lisp? Laaame.

Totally getting a Heathers vibe from this comment. Also: Anyone want to bet that she really excelled in penmanship back in her elementary-school years?

But wait, she had more to say!

fruitsbasketRULES (12 hours ago)
CONTINUED

Second, that first video wasn't a joke. To quote you, "I'm getting pretty motherfucking pissed, about you pissy-ass preps and you fucking little ten year olds". Does that really sound like a joking tone to you?

You are probably the most foul-mouthed 13 year old I've ever heard. IT DOESN'T MAKE YOU LOOK COOL

And yet, and yet! fruitsbasketRULES is only adding to the fire by subscribing to ADiehardFOBFan's videos. It's like... she's almost waiting to hate! Isn't that just contributing to the problem? Maybe she secretly likes the profanity, since she can't use it in her everyday life? I don't know about you, but I see the makings of a crazy teenage buddy comedy right here! It'll be like You've Got Mail, only all the product placement will be Disney-engineered and Tom Hanks will make a cameo as a well-meaning dad who gives his daughter one too many electronics!

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Jonas Brothers suck [YouTube]

ok.
1. you have no fuking life whatsoever.
2.wanting nick to die from diabetes is the WORST thing anyone can say toward anyone. thats just horrible. He didnt do anything wrong to get it, it happens and hes living with it and making it easier for people who have it to cope with it knowing NOT every celebrity is perfect.
3. if you think the jonas brothers' music sucks and you think the background music you put on here is good, you seriously need a hearing aid. The Jonas Brothers actually sing their songs,not scream into the microphone and call it music.
4. The mosh pits probably turn into a riot because want to die after hearing that so called music.
5. its called a backup band for a reason there are 3 people in the backup band not just the drummer and they get their credit.
6. Thier hair is fine. Just because it isnt spiked or have fades in it doesnt mean its bad.
7.STOP FUCKING HATING ON NICK.
8. They all play instruments, not just guitars. Nick can play guitar, drums, and piano/keyboard. Kevin can play guitar. Joseph plays the tambourine and keyboard and guitar.
9. yeah they have 10 year old fans, but they have older ones too. the age range of fans differs for every celebrity, just because jonas fans are more upfront about it doesnt mean anything.
10. jonas fans dont think we're tuff or mean or whatever you were tryin to portray in that picture of what we "think" we look like.
11. the fans or think they are just "hawt" as you put it, arent really fans of the music they just like their face, cant say i blame them, but there is wayy much more to them then their looks.
12. the childish comments come from the young fans who havent yet learned to be a sick asshole.
13. How can you say they dont have talent. Nicholas Jonas was on broadway when he was fucking 6 years old. explain that.
14. while you're explaining things to me, explain how they look like girls?
15. no jonas concert breaks into a mosh pit so i have no clue what you're saying. the closest thing to a mosh pit may be when they are trying to reach the front because they have jumped down in front of the crowd.
16.if you hate them so much stop talking about and live your own life. stop obsessing over them
17. send me hate mail whatever i really dont care. you dont understand how much the jonas brothers do for their fans because they actually care, they didnt jus come out of no where and go platinum (which they did). they worked there way to the top, so they are actually appreciative of what they have
18. what other group/band/singer do you know of that makes youtube videos for their fans, responds back on myspace, does meet and greets whenever possible, sells tickets at a reasonably low price so everyone can get a show? No one does because no one else cares, they know what its like to be on the bottom and what its like to be on the top.

OK, it's not exactly Luther's 95 Theses, but I am hoping for a follow-up video in which this clip's auteur lays out just what, exactly, makes the brothers Jonas look like girls. Or, barring that, maybe some remedial English lessons for everyone?

The Jonas Brothers suck [YouTube]

By this point, we've seen the gamut of responses to OiNK's demise, and though there were a few thoughtful and well-reasoned responses (DJ Rupture's, for example), the majority of the responses seem to be rote parroting of old standbys ("LABELS ARE GREEDY AND EVIL!" "ARTISTS SHOULDN'T EXPECT TO BE PAID!").

I don't want to try to argue against those old tropes, as much as I love banging my head against an immovable brick wall; I just want to point out another facet of this whole "OiNK Shutdown" situation. I concede that while file-sharing has (obviously!) contributed to the music industry's woes in the past 10 years, we shouldn't underestimate the toll that's been taken by the fragmentation of consumers' time and money. It's a very bad assumption, in my opinion, to think that the shutdown of OiNK (or even the complete dismantling of file-trading) can/will work as a panacea for the industry's current woes.

I don't believe that 2000 downloads of an album on Oink equates to 2000 lost sales of an album—it simply equates to 2000 people hearing the album that otherwise wouldn't have done. (I'm generalizing, but you get my point.) Now that OiNK is gone, most of those kids are not suddenly going to go out and drop $15 for that new John Vanderslice CD because now that's the only way they can get it—they're just going to go without it. And that doesn't seem like it benefits anyone.

I mean, which is better? Selling 1000 CDs and having 1000 people hear your music, or selling 1000 CDs, but having 3000 people hear your music? To the accountant, it doesn't matter; the bottom line remains "1000 CDs sold." But what about to the artist, or, for that matter, to anyone who has an interest in that artist's career in the long term (manager, label, booking agent... the list goes on)? I'm not saying that OiNK, or other free P2P, is the way to do things—hell, I don't know what the answer actually is. But what I do know is that if the industry actually thinks that banishment of P2P will suddenly rid them of all their problems, and that suddenly, the sales figures will just go back to the "pre-P2P '90s glory days," I think they're in for a rude awakening.

Sales aren't bad because kids are "getting for free" something that they would otherwise be paying for. Sales are bad because "free" is the only way many kids are willing to get it anymore.The people who are going to pay for the music are the ones who are already paying for it; they're the people who show up in those sales charts every week. Don't expect that the membership of OiNK is now suddenly going to start showing up in those numbers, because it's not going to happen. The problem isn't just access to product, it's interest in product.

It's been said many, many times, and it sounds very simple, but the fact is there are just a lot more things for people to invest their time in these days. I recognize, of course, that money is a hugely important factor in this discussion, but maybe there's something that's even more valuable than money these days, and that's being able to keep and hold peoples' attention, getting them to invest some of their limited time in your art/artist/release/etc. That way, at least you've still got them interested in the music, on the whole, and ideally, maybe some kind of financial compensation will shake out of that somehow, somewhere, down the line.

The saddest part? I fear that the aggressive dismantling of these P2P communities will ultimately just have the effect of making the kids become even less interested in music, and they'll just devote more of their time to other stuff—games, YouTube, whatever the hell it is they do with their cellphones all day long.