Vanessa Carlton "A Thousand Miles"

only reason i'm stooping low enuff to post on this subject is to point out that her tune sounds just like the 'hockey night in canada' theme song

The New York Post reports Vanessa Carlton was spotted locking lips with Third Eye Blind frontman Stephen Jenkins the other night at 60 Thompson. Jenkins apparently landed Vanessa by getting her one of J.T. Leroy's raccoon penis bone amulets as a gift. Should make for a spicey remainder of Vanessa's tour with 3EB and the Goo Goo Dolls.

I guess VC's a step up the Great Chain of Being from Nelly F though.

wasn't going to comment (as I haven't heard it) but having seen Hockey night in canada several times means I have a good idea what this ounds like. The news isn't good!

It's funny just to watch them scratch their heads.

I hate this but then it's a personal thing, this type of music is a pet hatred of mine anyway.

Regarding VC, I agree with B:Rad. The context here is pop music. In the context of pop music, it's not a bad little tune. Then again, I've got endless patience with pop music--I always buy into the hit radio promise that a wicked song will be coming up next, so I'd better pay attention.

Haven't heard the Nelly Furtado dancehall remixes, but I had to review her concert. She's a total teenbot, covering all the bases--"rock" guitar, "hip hop" DJ, "international" flair. Plus she dances like Jar Jar Binks. And she wrote a lamer song about flying than R Kelly and L Kravitz combined. (Funniest point in show: bored kid behind me flipping Nelly a different kind of "bird" when she sang her big hit).

I think though that the people who like "A Thousand Miles" will say it does do those things - a lot of it will depend on how emotionally invested you allow yourself to become in a song like this, and less to do with the specific song's strengths and weaknesses. I like it a lot, though I've heard it enough now that it has a "Kiss Me"-like level of ubiquity, where it's impossible to even register that it's playing in the background.

Re the whole "Vanessa, Melissa et. al. are the *same* as chart pop!" complaint, isn't it sort of a good thing? Even Avril's "Complicated", which I don't like a huge amount so far, sounds so much more crisp and bouncy and memorable than, say, an Alanis Morissette single.

Also, "Turn Out The Light" was a great single and also "nelly nelly nelly yo/on your radio"

I don't think the hardcore Billy Joel/Queen kids (musical theatre kids, not drama club Maura) would go for a straightahead verse-chorus-verse pop song like this, it's the prog-lite neoclassical bits that they dig. That is the last demographic anybody is marketing to anyway.

Her piano playing reminds me of Andy Pratt a bit...makes my heart leap in a way that is completely shameless and pure.

I do like the piano part of "A Thousand Miles," but it sounds very out of place with the rest of the song, which is like what you'd hear in the cold, fluorescent-lit bathroom of a Denny's, alongside "Still the One" and "This Kiss."

in my high school, they were the same. (straight play in the fall, musical in the winter, theatre-in-the-round in the spring.)

I love all the condescension to imaginary "townies," suburban teen girls etc...very Pitchfork. Sure, Carlton sounds like a middle class child prodigy who's been told she's a star since junior high, but so do every last one of the "natural soul" singers and nobody holds that against them. Let's compare official bios...

http://www.vanessacarlton.com/
http://aliciakeys.com/biography.html

Almost identical, except Keys grew up in Hell's Kitchen while Carlton just lived and worked there at 17. So I guess Carlton is less real than Keys but more real than Lauryn Hill, who was acting in "Sister Act 2" and applying to Columbia at that age. Bring on the Grammy!

1) "Soul-baring" is not "soul music." I was not comparing the two, nor comparing Carlton to any reputedly legitimate soul singers, nor making any claim to anybody's authenticity whatsoever. For the record, I find Alicia Keys every bit as dull as Carlton, and somewhat smug to boot (not "isn't she talented" but "aren't I talented?").

2) Carlton attended the Professional Children's School in NYC, which was the rich-kid's equivalent of LaGuardia (the High School of Performing Arts, where I was a student in the early '90s). I speak from years of experience hanging around kids like Carlton, and I kinda used to be one, so no I'm not condescending, I'm relating and empathizing. She's very much the archetype of the reared-by-stage-parents, rushing-off-from-lesson-to-lesson, studied-and-primped Star In The Making.

3) Am I fascinated by this archetype as a musical substratum or whatever? Sure. Do I like the music? Not really.

And Beth's voice isn't pop-affected like Carlton's is -- she's not even that folk-affected, come to think of it. She just sounds like herself.

Hahaha I just have nothing to say about the song itself: I suppose I enjoy it enough right up to the chorus, which blows through a bit too much for me to really get into it. Pleasant, though.

I don't really hear it.

Mainly it's just the way the piano figure connects up to a more "rock" bass-and-drums counterpoint -- with piano fills between the vocal phrases -- that reminds me of Suddenly Tammy.

That I do hear, although I think Sorrentino's playing is a bit more progressive (huge, complicated chord constructions) than Carlton's (those simplistic arpeggio figures).

No harm, no foul?

until it's "more than me" at which point you're just an uncritical fangirl, obv.

Her lyrics are crap, and I can't stand the cloying, come-hitherish glances she mawkishly throws at the camera in her vids. NEXT!

"IIIIII - LLLLLLLL - MMMMMMM / will be the death of me...."

and everybody putting everyone else down/all the dead bodies piled up in mounds

and when the conversation begins to flow/then i don't care anymore

and i guess that i just don't know/and i guess that i just don't know.

I like her voice as much as her piano actually.

i love this song

^^^^^^^

"White Houses" too.