SONG OF THE DAY
“The Stoop” – Little Jackie (The Stoop, S-Curve Records, 2008). Written by Imani Coppola, Mike Mangini and Adam Pallin.
INTERESTING FACTS (from wikipedia)
– The song appears in the 2009 movie The Final Destination, an episode of 90210 and in New York Goes To Hollywood when Little Jackie asked for Tiffany Pollard’s help (New York) to record backing vocals.
– Little Jackie is not a woman [as I had thought] but is an American band consisting of Imani Coppola and Adam Pallin. They derive their band name from the 1989 hit song “Little Jackie Wants to Be a Star” by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. Imani Coppola is a singer-songwriter and violinist.
– The Stoop is their studio debut album.
– The New York Times praised the songwriting as “modern and quick-tongued” with “insouciant, articulate takes on relationships in various stages of disaster”.
– Associated Press indicated that the music was “contemporary and classic”, with a “funky Motown vibe mixed with hip-hop beats.” [Sounds like something I would like, doesn’t it?]
MY TAKE
Again and again, I am grateful for Canadian radio. This time, it’s CBC Radio 2 (again), there in my hour of need to introduce me to something I can’t hear on U.S. channels. Ed Love’s show on WDET is, thankfully, still around and still introducing new jazz artists onto the scene, and the NPR’s cover a lot of new artists and cross-genres, but pretty much everything else is genre-bound crap—top 40 crap, the same 30 classic rock songs over and over again, dentist music a.k.a. easy listening, moldy oldies, and truly uninspired rap and r’n’b. There’s so much good music out there in all of those genres that never makes it to the air, and it frustrates me. I gave up on radio entirely for about 7 years, with my dad keeping me up-to-date on Ed Love and NPR artists, and my Paste magazine subscription supplementing nicely. Thankfully, Canadian radio has brought me back to life. I know the music industry is out there being amazing and producing incredible work, but why is KCRW and the like the only place to find it? Does the plethora of Top 40 radio stations really indicate what the American people want to hear? Because if that is true, then I am from now on really sad and disillusioned.
Imani Coppola gave up on the music industry’s abilities too, but is back in the form of Little Jackie because ” ‘genre-bending acts’ like Gnarls Barkley have enabled her to return to the music industry”. It’s a damn shame that the life and times of major studio labels has been disastrous for the past few years, and that people aren’t buying music anymore, but look where that’s gotten us: in an era of artistic independence. Now artists start their own label if they’re dissatisfied with the major label system. Case in point: Ani DiFranco. Second case in point: Nellie McKay, who prints her albums on recycled cardboard and uses 100% vegan inks. That kind of stuff couldn’t work in a major label-driven music world. These economic hardships of the past decade in music have only made independent labels sprout like crazy. Plus, people are turning to myspace and youtube to advertise and advocate for themselves, and getting their songs picked for national commercial campaigns and t.v. soundtracks where financial successes start happening. I’d love to see this kind of progression continue, and to see genre-avoiding, neo-sound artists like Little Jacky happen more and more. Musicians can’t all gets rich and famous like Mariah Carey, but in the new system they can make a living, earn fans and continue to produce music. And isn’t that the real goal?
VIDEOS OF THE DAY
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