The Beauty of Pop and It's Ten Greatest Artists

To me, a great pop artist is like Shakespeare. He or she creates an entertaining artwork that, through it's pulp value, says something significant or explores a deeper human emotion. This significance may come from America's obsession with the artists, viva la Britney, or may come through a ten minute music video exploring consumer culture, viva la Gaga. Shakespeare wrote some thematic duds, sure, but the plots still rocked as much as a Bjorn Benny hook. For the next two weeks, I will be counting down the ten greatest pop artists who fulfill this criteria.

10.) OH BOY GEORGE WHY DID YOU BECOME A COKE HEAD? His career and his band's career may have spanned a little more than five years, but in this period George composed some of the most melancholy dance jams and radio ballads the eighties ever heard. Everyone has the friendship that ends like "Victims" and has wanted to avoid a breakup like Boy during "Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me?" These are more than #1 singles. They are bizzare and colorful depictions of Boy's tragic life set against the sounds of the club. He makes emo dancable. He makes breakups into sing-a-longs featured in Shrek. It takes more talent to simplify an event then transform it into an abstract concept album. Give a drag queen with dreads his dues.

Performance Art & Why Abba Rules

Marina Abramovic = Love EVERYONE LOOK HER UP!

I doubt anyone else read the NYT's performance art commentary, but it got me thinking about how all forms of art go in a circle. The Guggenheim conference made it sound like all other art forms are stark differences from each other when in reality every form is close to another. Think of it like this: painting is close to drawing which is similar to animation which is similar to film which is similar to photography which is dramatic like theatre theatre which is similar to performance art which is similar to sculpture which is similar to painting since it's the other earliest art form. Performance art is the missing link! The internet is blurring the mediums and some hate it, but to me it's awesome.

Everyone has been ragging on Abba all day long. HOW COULD A DISCO BAND BE INDUCTED INTO THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME!?!? BLASPHEMY! Golly gee, kiss my glittery ass. Abba defines great songwriting. No one writes a better structured song than Abba. They write as well as bloody Dylan! Why else would so many hard rock bands that became successful praise them? Pop speaks to the common man: it's repetition, the hooks, the melodies. They seep into our brain making the artists' expressions permanent. Rambling guitar strings do not.


I have very eclectic music taste believe it or not. I dig more than just disco and grunge. Just take a look at my ten favorite albums:

1.) Live Through This- Hole
2.) The Immaculate Collection- Madonna
3.) The Greatest- Cat Power
4.) Siamese Dream- Smashing Pumpkins
5.) Blackout- Britney Spears
6.) Extraordinary Machine- Fiona Apple
7.) Horses- Patti Smith
8.) Medulla- Bjork
9.) Album- Girls
10.) Bitte Orca- Dirty Projectors

There you have it: grunge, disco, electro, folk, piano, experimental, San Fran homeless pop, and Brooklyn's finest pretentious hipsters.

My favorite films list is just as strange:

1.) Sunset Blvd.
2.) Some Like It Hot
3.) Almost Famous
4.) T2: Judgement Day
5.) Me, You, and Everyone We Know
6.) All the classic Disney films
7.) Ed Wood
8.) Y Tu Mambien
9.) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
10.) X2: X-Men United

Probably the only list with Kung Fu, drag queens, X-Men, performance artists, James Cameron, and Simba.

When thinking about who influences my art, writing, and ideas the most, I also see an odd list. I want to base my career around the ideas of Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Cinno, Tennessee Williams, Perez, and the punk rockers. I want to work in all fields of art as a commercial storytelling genius who uses the internet and serves as a patron to musicians viva la Cinno meets CBGB. In other words, I've got a punk rock soul wrapped in sequins and bubble wrap rocking that contraposto pose.

Punk In My Heart.

If I told the average person I worship punk, they would probably laugh in my face. "A gay boy with an electro pop obsession loving the outlaws of the 70's? Hahahaha!" But let's get real. Punk is more than just torn up jeans and unwashed hair. Punk is the philosophy of fuck you in a blender full of piss and lyrical melodies. That's pretty effing homosexual. Any boy rocking a set of stilettos is flicking off every homophobic born again in the mid west. I recently read Rolling Stone's Kurt Cobain book, a collection of every article they published on the last rock God the earth may ever know. Jann and the other editors made punk sound like some sort of unstructured piece of musical feces when in reality Television, the Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, and Patty Smith wrote melodies as moving as the Beatles and hooks as catchy as Bloodyshy and Avant. It may seem that punk died with disco, but like disco, it's in all sorts of popular music. Britney shaving her head? That's fucking punk. Lady Gaga's reference to her dick in the "Telephone" video? That's mother fucking punk. Punk ain't dead, it's just now covered in spandex and electro beats. It's not about the poor hygiene. It's about the ethics, bitches.

Ten Reasons Why People Need to Stop Complaining About Sandra Bullock's Oscar

10.) She comes from an opera family and has been searching for a great role for two decades.

9.) She acts with a heart.

8.) You probably have not seen The Blind Side.

7.) She's 100% old school Hollywood. We need that in our indie saturated culture.

6.) When someone gets awarded, you should applause, not bitch and moan. She's dreamed of this for years. Why kill her moment with bitter tweets? It's called respect. I am sorry she starred in a blockbuster movie. Go ahead. Shoot me.

5.) Bad movies can have great performances in them. Ever heard of The Lovely Bones?

4.) It's okay for Meryl Streep to lose an Oscar race. I'm sure she'll get over it.

3.) If starring in Miss Congeniality makes her undeserving of winning an Oscar, should the academy strip Monique of her award since she hosted Flavor of Love: Charm School?

2.) Sandra is not the first actress in a "cheesy saccharine" movie to win best actress. Ever hear of Roman Holiday?

1.) The majority of people complaining about her win are relying on Entertainment Weekly reviews to make their opinions and haven't seen a single movie starring a best actress nominee. GO SEE THE ACTUAL MOVIE BEFORE YOU TWEET YOURSELF TO DEATH!

OH THE HORROR! REALITY TELEVISION IS NOW AN ACCEPTABLE CAREER!

According to Time Magazine, reality television is good for our culture and starring on one of these shows is a great career choice. Screw being the president, little girls! YOU NEED TO GET ON FLAVOR OF LOVE 4!!! Become president and they will just call you by your last name. Get on Flavor of Love and you might get called Pumpkin! I, like Time, believe reality television serves a purpose. In the wake of Survivor and CelebReality, scripted television entered its "golden age" because writers mocked the trashy genre. Simultaneously, Warhol's prophecies came to light... or so we thought. Heidi Montag's fame has seemed to gone from 15 minutes to 15,000 years. I love Warhol, trashy people, and scripted television, so I see reality TV as pop culture's savior from eternal sitcom boredom. Unfortunately, society has started to respect the folks on these shows. Rolling Stone now analyzes the importance of Jersey Shore and that Kate woman is getting a talk show. I love reality tv because it shows trashy outcasts acting fearlessly as themselves. I idolize these nut jobs because they ignore society and act like utter humans. They aren't afraid to spit in a face. Reality TV stars, at lease five years ago, were the same as Roman actors: disrespected, easy going, and themselves. They lived a scorn life while enjoying the freedom we all long to possess. The freedom to be ourselves. If we respect them, it's only a matter of time before old men in suits create lectures on New York and 8,000 wannabes kill each other to get into Yale's Lauren Conrad School of Professional Reality Catty Bitches. Pretentious jerks already ruined rock & roll. God, don't let them ruin Vh1.

Billy Corgan FINALLY Writes Another Good Song GO DOWNLOAD IT AT SMASHINGPUMPKINS.COM NOW!

While most middle schoolers in 2004 idolized Hillary Duff and Fifty Cent, I spend my nights worshiping to to stadium art metal pop of the Smashing Pumpkins a.k.a. Billy Corgan. Whereas Axl Rose and Courtney Love piss me off when they claim to "reunite" their band by surrounding themselves with five new musicians, I am fine with Corgan's new Smashing Pumpkins. D'Arcy and James Iha were a mere backing band for the art pop maestro. Of all the alt rockers, Corgan was and always will be the most ambitious and hit or miss. He only writes great and horrid songs. This bald goth man has never heard of mediocrity. Even when he falls flat on his ass, Corgan creates interestingly grand works of art. He is a true artist but reached his peak fifteen years ago. Even The Beatles could not follow up such an epic album like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Adore was destined to disappoint us. On his next two studio efforts, nasty record labels destroyed his epic vision by forcing the great Corgan to be subtle and radiofriendly. Zeitgeist was okay and Machina sucked bald balls. Only the online release Machina II matched Gish and Siameis Dreams. With Corgan's new free 40+ song album, he has returned to greatness conceptually and thematically. He will release one song from the album each month. "Widow Wake My Mind," the second release, has a great refrain, great sound, and best of all, returns to that great Pumpkins atmosphere. 2010 is the return of 90's rock and Corgan has arrived with epic plans that may change the industry or fail beautifully. Either way, it sounds great!