Ashlee Simpson is the very definition of mediocrity. Somehow injected into the pop-culture consciousness like those microchips in The Manchurian Candidate, retrofitted to our memories so that it's impossible to recall when she, you know, actually rose to popularity, Ashlee is the pop-music version of a placebo: Her songs aren't real music, but we'll digest them like we think they are. It's not so much that we heard "Pieces of Me" constantly all summer; it's that once we started hearing it, we seemed unable to recall a time when we had not been hearing it.
And it's not so bad, really: It's the kind of song you'll leave on the radio when you're too lazy to change the station. That's the power of Ashlee's music: No one hates her as much as they do her shrill, dim older sister Jessica, but no one, even the million-plus people who've made her album Number One on the Billboard charts for three of its four weeks of release, likes her as much as someone they actually like. "Pieces of Me" rocks without rocking, is catchy without sticking in your mind, is likeable without requiring you to like it. It's the perfect song for the empty void of summer.
Deep in the sweaty butt end of another Vegas summer, we're reminded that the season's fabled charm is really about a bogus past—the way it evokes a SoCal sunniness most of us never lived. So it makes sense that my summer was, musically speaking, bracketed by ersatz retro. First came the fresh-squeezed Duran Duran of the Killers' "All These Things that I Have Done." OK, yes, I'm a sucker for reminders of my Angel Flight years, but what really lodged this in my CD player was the lovely moment midway through, when the simulated New Wave steps aside for the simulated old: I'm talking faux gospel, brother. In stirring harmony, the Killers repeat a motto for this season of our discontent—"I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier"—until the damn thing soars. That was still ringing in my ears when I heard Scissor Sisters' "Take Your Mama Out." This bouncy, piano-driven ode to coming out sounds like a lost track from Elton John's glory years, parts of it sung in a falsetto that finally answers the question, What would Barry Gibb sound like with testicles? It's got exuberance to spare, enough to carry me to October or the end of summer, whichever comes first.
This song feels bubbly and giddy, like an innocent crush. Plus, it's light, poppy and a favorite of green ogres. "Accidentally in Love" by Counting Crows, which is also on the soundtrack for Shrek 2, is inescapable and contagious. It's full of summertime delights like blue skies, sunlight, shimmery love and strawberry ice cream. The Counting Crows have always been good for summer listening, and were pretty popular back when I was in high school—when summertime actually meant vacation. So most of their songs, to me, come with light and breezy baggage.
The ideal summer song has several attributes. It has to be lighthearted. After all, no one wants to be driving with the top down, headed for the lake, listening to a tune about how our society is evil and responsible for all the ills of the world. (OK, maybe Goth kids, but they don't drive with the top down.) It must be insanely popular, so there's no escaping it. I'm talking "Macarena"-level popularity, to the point that it drives any other thought from your head. It requires some sort of dance or moves attached to it, again like the "Macarena," because summer is about nothing if not shimmying, gamboling and cavorting. And clapping. Clapping certainly counts. And it absotively needs to be something that can be sung along to, even after several beers around the fire. Only one song in recent memory fits that bill, only one tune has seized the hearts and souls of a nation, only one melody proved to be unlodgeable from our craniums. OutKast's "Hey Ya."
Why did they have to release it so damned early?
The Von Bondies' "C'mon C'mon" came out well before summer started, but it's been my household's soundtrack all season long, even though I don't own the record and don't think I've even heard the song on the radio, and I was too lazy to download it.
It's a majestic, hit-you-in-the-mouth-and-bloody-you-up-Jack-White-style anthem that's impossibly rousing. I'm reminded of the song's power every time I turn on HBO on Demand and hear it in the background and realize that the channel's original programming isn't just about great entertainment or even great art. It's also about being ready to throw down at any moment, being willing to stake your beliefs and your creations against anybody else's, anytime. Isn't that what America itself was founded on?
Has there ever been a song that's gotten you more fired up to see men fight fires like they do on that Denis Leary show that wisely chose "C'Mon C'Mon" as its theme music? And yet, every time Jason Stollheimer and Marcie Bolan's defiant voices pinball off each other, I also want to burn something down, or at least BBQ. I don't have a car anymore, but I know that this is a perfect song for speeding down interstates, whether you're on a quest for rustic road food or the Swarovski store at the outlet mall. It transcends class and race and culture and, most important in rock 'n' roll, age. Stollheimer insists that things were better when we were young, but this song makes the case that things are pretty good now too.
Maybe a year ago, pop music critic David Menconi, my friend and former Carolina colleague, alerted me to the Polyphonic Spree. But it wasn't until he sent me a copy of his report from South By Southwest earlier this year that I was moved to buy The Beginning Stages of ... The Polyphonic Spree. Then I realized for the first time that I'd been struck by what I'll call pre-opting, the commercial use of a song I enjoy before I've had a chance to hear it independently. Volkswagen liked "Light & Day/Reach for the Sun" first, apparently. But that couldn't keep it from becoming a summer anthem. Nor the infectious high spirits of the robed-cult-meets-Up-With-People ensemble. Maybe in time I'll find them cloying, but this summer I couldn't help following the day and reaching for the sun.
Oh, those summer nights, when a bad boy like John Travolta can get his rocks off with the girl next door, Olivia Newton-John. Of course, country legend Loretta Lynn knows that it takes a bit more liquor if you are romancing a boy who is a few decades younger than you, like that Detroit hipster Jack White: "Well, sloe gin fizz works mighty fast/ when you drink it by the pitcher and not by the glass." Loretta Lynn and Jack White may not be Harold and Maude, but their chemistry on the duet "Portland Oregon" is every bit as eerie as an evening out with Mary Kay Letourneau. I sure feel like a voyeur listening to it. Of course, there are no felonies being committed here when these consenting adults start the romance, and it is with over a minute of feedback and slide guitar as foreplay. "Well, Portland, Oregon, and sloe gin fizz/ if that ain't love than tell me what is? I lost my heart, it didn't take no time. But that ain't all. I lost my mind in Oregon." Tell me more, tell me more.
The chorus starts, "These are my confessions," and I must confess to initially not giving a fat, flying, Philadelphia f--k about some 25-year-old former protégé of P.Diddy, platinum-out-the-box, historic-first-week-sales-producing, Michael Jackson-idolizing, ex-lover of my onetime dream girl Chili (of TLC) fessing up—to Chili, according to rumor—to impregnating a "chick on the side," i.e., a your average, everyday, garden-variety groupie. I didn't give a damn. More Chili for me. Only I did care.
See, the bad thing about reading that section in Esquire where women reveal 10 things men don't know about them isn't that it adds to more items for us to forget, no, it's in learning how women view us. For instance: All men, no matter how knight-in-shining-armor-ish, are suspected infidels. Usher's horny ass confirmed it—smooth move, Ex-Lax—making for nervous boyfriends from Malibu to Maine. His "Confessions Part II" played on the radio 25 hours a day, eight days a week, as if scorned women across the nation conspired in some twisted form of payola to guilt out the truth. It took about 1,000 listens—and multiple conversations with the missus—to be able to appreciate Usher's musicality, to say nothing of his forthright honesty, which I will say nothing positive about. Hey, I'm a suspect, right?