Kelly Clarkson - "Since U Been Gone"Pop, real pop, is practically dead in this country. Artists have to be sneaky and dress it up in a rock or hip-hop or R&B costume to get anywhere near radio these days. Ok, it is possible to ride the path trailblazed by Britney and find success as a Disney teen queen, though nowadays that entails feuding over Aaron Carter, releasing crap songs written by b-rate producers, and accepting that the music will have essentially zero cultural impact, serving solely as a means to promote multimedia celebrity status, so this doesn't really count. Or you can be Gwen Stefani, but again, she is very much an exception and certainly not the rule. Now surely this whole mess isn't the end of the world, but you know, variety=good, right?
As pop enthusiasts well know, "Since U Been Gone" marks the welcome return of one man hit factory Max Martin, who had seemingly been in deep hibernation for the past three years. The return though, wasn't quite THE RETURN, because times are different now and the likes of "Oops!...I Did It Again" and "Shape Of My Heart" no longer do it for people. In their stead, we have every-girl Kelly Clarkson flinging bitter reproaches at exes with angry session guitars in tow. Quite the sad trend now, enlisting guitars because people somehow see them as more "real", but, as explained above, that's what it takes these days. The story goes that Kelly was actually the one to suggest the change, not quite feeling the standard Swedish pop instrument workup. As much as I yearn for the glory days, it's easy to see that this was pretty savvy on her part. Few instruments can hurl the abuse like the good old guitar and that's exactly what's needed here to set the scene for some hardcore adolescent emotional fronting. The plan works, due mainly to Kelly's voice, which is well suited to express the controlled, targeted rage that the song demands. I find it hard to believe that any other contemporary singer could pull this off believably; most others that spring to mind either seem too sweet or have too weak of a voice. On to the song itself, it's vintage Martin: build and build, get to the chorus, reach the loftiest of heights, bust it up, repeat and enjoy the ride. This is of course what every songwriter tries to do, but as we know, nobody does it as well as those dirty Scandinavians. So at the end of the day, what we have here is the perfect combination of voice, style, and writing. Wool successfully pulled over the haters' eyes. Pop is back in America, people are lapping it up, and everything is again right with the world. (Choose to believe this reality as you may.)
