Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Beth Ditto – I Wrote the Book

To be fair, we like it more than we liked Darius Rucker going country…



[Video][Website]
[5.44]

Jonathan Bogart: There’s not a lot in pop that I want more than for Beth Ditto to be a massive star; unfortunately, this determinedly retro house anthem, sounding like something Madonna — or, worse, Kylie — would have left on the cutting room floor in 1997, isn’t going to be it. It’s not just that I miss the abrasiveness of the Gossip (though a hard-edged dubstep remix might go a long way towards appeasing me) — I miss their velocity. Ditto’s remarkable gospel-punk voice requires a much more urgent setting than this burbling midtempo blah.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: In an indie context, she sounded an exceptional vocal talent; in a dancier context, her voice sounds less special. This is pleasant enough squelchy indie-dance, but the song doesn’t offer much opportunity for her to stretch.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Once upon a time, the idea of a former alleged garage punk making such a blatant Eurodance move would’ve hit me as daring and exciting. But I guess Ditto has been moving in that direction for a while now, even if I never much heard the soul influence people seemed to claim for her, and to be honest she never struck me as all that intriguing a garage punk to begin with. Her Eurodance move is…okay.
[5]

Jer Fairall: At least Gaga had the good sense to rip off one of Madonna’s most beloved hits, rather than an Erotica or Bedtime Stories filler track.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Classic Disco, Amazing Beats, Beautiful Sound. Lyrics of severity that refuses to betray heart break. Done.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: The sort of chilled beats I could ignore at the start of a night out.
[3]

Ian Mathers: I like early Madonna, I like the Gossip, I can barely stand this. Too busy? Her voice sounds wrong? I genuinely don’t know. It’s like some mysterious, unknowable Bermuda Triangle of pop music.
[4]

Alfred Soto: She should know about “good intentions” — her career’s been an avatar for them. I don’t hear any taint of “empowerment” or “consciousness-raising” in this low-key thumper, just a voice that flirts with interesting thanks to sudden falsetto swoops and a modest talent for riding the sequencer line like an early nineties diva. I still don’t believe she inhabits her lyrics: she’s more apt to compose a screed that’s well-received by the Woman’s Center of a mid-level public university. And her audience is more apt to remember it over “I Wrote the Book.”
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Beth Ditto in The Gossip is to Beth Ditto solo as a human is to her own ice sculpture. It’s breathtaking how much you can crystallize someone, but you can only half-see her face in the glass. Seconds later, it all melts away.
[6]

5 Responses to “Beth Ditto – I Wrote the Book”

  1. Damn, Katherine, stop writing better blurbs than the rest of us. (Or, y’know, continue. Please.)

  2. Seconded.

  3. In today’s episode of The Singles Jukebox, Beth Ditto gets penalized for not being as good a subhuman coaxial-veined glossy sculpture as Britney Spears.

  4. That’s really not what I meant at all (and if you’re getting at what I suspect you’re getting at, that’s definitely not what I meant.) The songs are going for two different things — Beth Ditto this glossy, shiny ’90s dance-pop with nothing wrong with it per se, but with no trace whatsoever of Beth Ditto; Britney, something else entirely (sorry for being vague).

  5. Has Beth Ditto ever been as good an anything as Britney Spears?