Another Cinderella Story and iCarly Shake Up The Tween Scene

In an age ruled by Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers, it's easy to forget that so much tween-pop thrives, as it always has in the Radio Disney era, well below the radar. A lot never even crosses over into Top 40 mass culture: Just ask Hope Partlow or Skye Sweetnam or Brie Larson or Jordan Pruitt or Meg & Dia or Sara Paxton or Sofia Loell or Rose Falcon (all of whom have released very-good-to-great music this decade) if you doubt me. So listening to the new soundtracks to the Nickelodeon TV series iCarly and the Warner Premiere direct-to-DVD release Another Cinderella Story, I'm tempted to tell you to remember the names Miranda Cosgrove and Selena Gomez. Then again, maybe you'll never hear them again.

The 14-year-old Miranda Cosgrove plays the title role in iCarly -- she's "Carly Shay, a teenager who lives with her twentysomething brother/guardian," a press release tells us, "and produces webcasts from a makeshift loft studio with pals." I've never seen the show, have no intention to, but Miranda goes a good two-for-four on the soundtrack: show theme "Leave It All to Me" is upbeat pop walking on sunshine, and "Headphones On," about how staying home bored behind closed doors listening to music can be a blast, is even better. And though the soundtrack is certainly no Darcy's Wild Life  -- 18 of 35 cuts are dialogue snippets that fly right past me, and hackish pop-R&B-to-pop-emo picks from nobodies like Boys Like Girls and Tiffany Evans do more or less the same, as do Miranda's other two songs -- that's no reason to write it off.

The Lil Mama/Avril Lavigne hop-on-pop version of "Girlfriend" was one of 2007's best singles, and Sean Kingston's sadsack-reggae "Beautiful Girls" is likewise undeniable in its own twerpy way, so why not own them as squeaky-cleaned "Nickelodeon Mixes"? There's something halfway Hooters-like about the hiccups in Good Charlotte's "I Don't Wanna Be in Love (Dance Floor Anthem)," and the Stunners' slightly electro-rappy update of Deniece Williams' 1984 "Let's Hear It for the Boy" introduces an underrated teenybop classic to a unsuspecting new generation. But the real prize (annoyingly available only as a "bonus track" on "Fan Pack" and Wal-Mart versions of the physical CD) is Backhouse Mike's "Take Me Back," which starts out as a catchier AC/DC song than anything by Airbourne, then switches gears into pure pop for Jonas people.

If iCarly shoots for Hannah Montana, Another Cinderella Story has its sights set on High School Musical. The plot apparently concerns a working class girl falling for the most popular boy in her school (Drew Seeley); the girl is Disney Channel Wizards of Waverly Place star Selena Gomez, who People dubbed "the next Miley Cyrus" in May, and who was born in Texas in 1992 (three years before that other Texan Selena's tragic murder). Selena G. and Drew's duet, "New Classic," is an energetic slice of "P.Y T."-referencing New-Jack revivalism that gains power in its grittier live version, and Selena on her own is cute in "Funky Cold Medina"-referencing partially-talked Paula Abdul-icious dance-pop-transforming-into-guitar-rock mode ("Tell Me Something I Don't Know") and more fun than Rihanna in Afro-Caribbean-syncopated weird-wide-world M.I.A. mode ("Bang a Drum"). Drew, for his part, does an okay fake-Justin-with-Latin-freestyle-embellishments ("Just That Girl," easily misheard as "just a bad girl"), and holds his own elsewhere.

The soundtrack's best tracks just might come from other people, though -- I'm still torn about Tiffany Giardina's "Hurry Up and Save Me," where overwhelmingly desperate emotion and over-the-top Flashdance disco-rock are undercut by, uh, the fact that lots of tween-pop in the wake of Kelly Clarkson sounds something like this. But I've got no doubts about "Don't Be Shy" by Small Change, Lil JJ and Chani -- roly-poly Quad City DJs/Tag Team-vintage early '90s post-bass/pre-crunk Florida-style rap with old-school group shouts. Heck, I even like Another Cinderella Story's incidental music -- in this context, the genteel dance-instruction rhythms of the Twins' Latinized "Valentine's Dance Tango" and John Paesano's ballet-pirouetting "Another Cinderella Suite" sound lovely. Selena Gomez may or may not wind up the next princess of pop. But either way, I'm impressed.

Comments

[vanessa]

i love your video