Frank Kogan

John Storm Roberts

edcasual@earthlink.net — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:57:06 GMT

Luc writes:

Sharing this with you-all because I don't know anybody else who would appreciate it. I bought my local newspaper this morning (the Kingston Freeman, which I look at three or four times a year), and opened it to find an obituary for John Storm Roberts, aged 73, who lived in my town although I never met him. He wrote two books of variable quality (Black Music of Two Worlds and The Latin Tinge), but more importantly for 20 years ran Original Music of Tivoli, which got me (and a lot of other people) really really excited about African music, country by country, in what were effectively a series of mix tapes. (Did he ever actually acquire the rights to the material? Dunno.) In the early '80s in NYC you could find Fela and King Sunny Ade and some soukous and township jive compilations, but Roberts brought out tarabu and Kenyan dry guitar and that postwar period when Congolese music went Cuban, and much more besides. It was manna. So I take off my hat to him.

I'll add that while The Latin Tinge was too much a list - and the update left out freestyle altogether - it was a list that changed my perception of where a lot of America's music comes from ("America" meaning the United States, in a bit of unconscious chauvinism I grew up in without noticing). Three-chord rock, for instance, plays progressions that I now think of as coming up from Mexico and the Caribbean. And the Bo Diddley rhythm is a cousin to the Cuban clave. And then there's the quite well-known impact on jazz and swing and reggae and raggaeton and country. Still, when the U.S. thinks of "Latin" music there's still a sense of exotica, as something irreparably foreign.

Koganbot feeds on Tumblr and Twitter

edcasual@earthlink.net — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:17:09 GMT

Right. Don't get excited*, I'm not actually on Tumblr or Twitter, I'm merely linking my livejournal there (a link and first couple of lines on Tumblr, title and link on Twitter).

http://koganbot.tumblr.com

http://twitter.com/koganbot

*Dear Mr. Koganbot,

You have a skewed idea of what gets people excited.

Sincerely,

A Friend

My dental floss is at Disney World

edcasual@earthlink.net — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:52:40 GMT

I changed planes in Baltimore, but my bags chose to continue to Orlando.

Decade's End IV: Now It's Procyon

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:27:27 GMT

More people have told me their stories of the decade's music (for others, see here and here and here):

--"Rap, rap, and rap."
--"The Thong Song"
--"No more need for euphemisms"
--"International music is more accessible than ever before. One of my favorite songs is in Urdu, and I've listened to it so many times I can practically sing the Urdu."
--"Country becoming rock."

Poetry in November 2009

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:45:19 GMT

Very bad poem here.

Another Holiday In America

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:24:10 GMT

This week's Top 40 newbies feature Taylor Swift twice, once on John Mayer's "Half Of My Heart" ("Haven't heard it," said Tom half-heartedly)(nor did Frank) and once on Boys Like Girls' "Two Is Better Than One" (I've heard it once and pronounced it whiny emo-pop, far inferior to Taylor's brilliant, whiny princess pop, but will require myself to give it a second chance). Only other newcomer is Leona Lewis's "Happy," which didn't make me happy a couple weeks ago over on poptimists but it too will get another shot, when the next Billboard comes out and I'm on a computer where I can hear music.

In other chart news, Glee Cast do several things that don't hit the Top 40, Chris Brown's "Crawl" doesn't crawl up the charts (and won't crawl anywhere near my eardrums in the near future if I can help it*), and Sounds Of The Season: A Taylor Swift Holiday Collection from 2008 re-enters the album chart at #20.

*No, I don't have a policy of never again listening to Chris Brown, but I inadvertently saw the lyrics to "Crawl" including the following consecutive stanzas and my jaw dropped, aghast:

Why did I change the pace
Hearts were never meant to race
Always felt the need for space
And now I can't reach your face

So where are you standing now
Are you in the crowd of my voice
Love can't you see my hand
Lend me one more chance
We can still have it all

Talk about clueless. Utterly clueless. "I can't reach your face." "Can't you see my hand." Beyond the galaxy of clueless into a whole other universe of cluelessness.

Teen study finds that gullibility increases with age

edcasual@earthlink.net — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:22:59 GMT

Taylor Swift in "Tim McGraw," which she released at age sixteen but that refers back to a conversation that occurred when she was thirteen:

You said the way my blue eyes shined
Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
I said, "That's a lie"

Taylor Swift in "Fifteen":

'Cause when you're fifteen
And somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them

Decade's End III: This Time It's Alpha Centauri

edcasual@earthlink.net — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:41:38 GMT

People keep adding interesting answers to my Decade's End question, if you want to go back and look. In the meantime I've gotten another response via email, which I'm putting into the comments. The question is:

What do you think the story of the decade in music is? Or what was the story of the decade in music for you? I said "Just list one" last time, but I've kind of added a second question here in adding that "for you" bit, haven't I? So if you answered one of them last time ("what the story is") and the other ("what the story is for me" ["me" being you]) is different, you're invited to answer the second one here in the comments. (And you can comment on the last comments in these comments if you want, lj's "use-by" date being so frustratingly quick.)

Pop Aesthetics of 1750

edcasual@earthlink.net — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:04:34 GMT

OK, here I am at the UConn library, raring to do some last-minute research

dubdobdee says here:

It travels because, however newly named, it's one of the golden oldies in aesthetics — the phenomenon of the Sublime, that combo frisson of awe, fright, satisfaction and pleasure, which stopped being avant garde about a quarter of a millennium ago, round about the time Edmund Burke said, "A clear idea is another name for a little idea", while all around edgy folks swooned before the immensity or violence or dreadfulness of chasms, volcanoes, stormclouds and shadows; and Hugh Walpole — on a forests-and-mountains walking tour in the Alps — got to see his beloved pet poodle being gobbled up by a wolf.

All right, clearly if I am to understand the decade in pop, I will need someone to tell me in what essay, book, or broadside I can find various people - Edmund Burke, Hugh Walpole, ~~Kara Dioguardi,~~, not to mention whoever wrote the idea when it was still avant garde - putting forth the theory of the Romantic Sublime. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy is rather taciturn on the subject.

Decade's End II: This Time It's Serious

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:31:13 GMT

All right, if all goes well I'm writing a decade's end music essay for the LVW, though this endeavor will have a breath-taking finish given that, for some reason, Las Vegas ends its decade on December 4 rather than December 31, which means my drop-dead deadline is probably the 1st, if not earlier. And I'm going to be on planes for part of the time between now and then. And I have something else due on the 2nd.

One thing I want is for the essay to allude to the multitude of such essays that my essay could have been but isn't. So you can help me by posting in the comments what you think the story of the decade in music is. Just list one.

In situations like this I wish I did Twitter. If those Twitterers among you wish to ask the question and paste in the answers here, please do.

My Singles Jukebox ballot 2009

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:48:50 GMT

My first year-end ballot for 2009, though the only tracks that are eligible were the ones reviewed by the Singles Jukebox collective, and the 17 highest-rated by Jukeboxers aren't eligible,* since they've already qualified for the year-end tournament. This ballot is, in effect, my nominations list for the tournament. I've got three alternate nominees in case any of the not-yet-reviewed "amnesty" tracks on my list reach the top 17.

(I'd hoped to get a chance to listen to the tracks on Lex's list, not all of which I'd heard the first time, but other commitments intervened.)

Plenty more I liked that didn't make my list. Wished I'd had room for Morandi, to be in solidarity with Chuck on that one. (It was creamed by most Jukebox raters.)

1. Shystie f. DJ Deekline "New Style"
2. The Black Eyed Peas "Boom Boom Pow"
3. Love And Theft "Runaway"
4. The Lonely Island "I'm On A Boat"
5. Das Racist "Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell (Wallpaper Mix)"
6. Timberlee f. Tosh "Heels"
7. Girls Aloud "Untouchable"
8. Depeche Mode "Wrong"
9. Asher Roth "I Love College"
10. Tempa T "Next Hype"
11. Jeremih "I'mma Star"
12. Demi Lovato "Don't Forget"
13. Emiliana Torrini "Jungle Drum"
14. Eve & Benga "Me N My"
15. Britney Spears "3"
16. The Saturdays "Forever Is Over"
17. Lady Gaga "Paparazzi"
18. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"
19. Lily Allen "22"
20. Three 6 Mafia f. Webbie "Lil Freak"

21. Eva Simons "Silly Boy"
22. Maino f. T-Pain "All The Above"
23. Professor Green f. Chynaman & C.O.R.E. "Upper Clapton Dance"

(Oh, and I still owe Kat my explanation for why I consider "I Love College" quite good, but I'm too swamped at the moment.)

*I'd have definitely listed Ne-Yo's "Part Of The List" and Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" if they hadn't made the top 17. Might also have gone for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Heads Will Roll" and Medina's "Kun For Mig."

We have the most amazing track and title, get over here now!

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:25:49 GMT

girlboymusic contributes new Kara-John-Ashlee anecdote here.

The 2004 campaign begins

edcasual@earthlink.net — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:57:31 GMT

I'm going away for a week on Monday, with partial computer access (but no sound), so I'll start the rah-rah now:

Here are some very good tracks from 2004 that I won't be able to nominate for the poptimists Best Of 2004 poll, since I've already got another ten picked out. (By the way, Ashlee's "La La" peaked in Britain in early 2005, so you can feel free to nominate other songs that you love that begin with L, though none of these do.)

No Lay - "Unorthodox Daughter"
Crime Mob - "Knuck If You Buck"
Method Man - "What's Happenin"
Jim Jones f. Juelz Santana and Cam'ron - "Crunk Muzik"
Big & Rich - "Real World"
Big & Rich - "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)"
M.I.A. - "Galang"
Skye Sweetnam - "Hypocrite"
Skye Sweetnam - "Tangled Up In Me"
Ying Yang Twins f. Trick Daddy - "What's Happnin'"
Kelly Clarkson - "Hear Me"
Kelly Clarkson - "Addicted"
Miss B - "Bottle Action"
Toby Keith - "Whiskey Girl"
Ashlee Simpson - "Autobiography"
The Hold Steady - "Positive Jam"
Montgomery Gentry - "Gone"

EDIT: Lex, have you ever heard Miss B (or Ms. B, according to the video) "Bottle Action"? I embed it down in the comments.

User demand is lacking

edcasual@earthlink.net — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:49:49 GMT

Has anyone ever asked the livejournal people why they don't have a "new comments"/"updated thread" feature? Nested threads and the lack of an update/new comments feature are the two problems that make lj a worse format than ilX for ongoing discussion.

Of course, if people want a discussion they'll have one, and I'm here basically because discussion falters and founders on ilX. But it falters and founders everywhere, to some extent (and the average comment thread on ilX is vastly better than the average comment thread on the Web as a whole). Back to my original question, an answer might well be, "Because there isn't enough user demand for such feature."

Speaking of discussion, yesterday the convo about Rihanna lyrics migrated here ("Fire Bomb") and here ("Te Amo") (EDIT: and over to Dave's Tumblr, and somehow I missed Erika a few days ago here, with pre-revisionist Dave on the comment thread). And Chuck and I added lotsa new content to poptimists' artist shoutouts thread (with Chuck grumbling about how the convos there are already over before he gets a chance to contribute to them).

Meanwhile over on Tumblr, Maura writes (in regard to chillwave/beach-pop/wavegaze, a music genre, apparently, though if everything runs true to form I'll not hear any of it until no one's making it anymore, but anyway I'm linking Maura's post not for the music wave but for its relevance to dropped discussions):

Maybe this is another thing about the appeal of this particular music to people who write online — it's in some ways a reflection? People on all sides are trying to muddle through their creative impulses with tools that allow for instant publishing/dissemination, and by extension the impulse to get something out overtakes the impulse to make something "right" in whatever abstract sense.

And Tom adds:

I think that's very likely it. (talking about "chillwave"). "Perfect is the enemy of done" and all that - a big current in internet thought.

And I'll add that "news" is the enemy of discussion, which is a different point. "Perfect is the enemy of done" can encourage discussion, if the attitude is "let's throw our ideas forth for the general convo to modify and elaborate on rather than trying to perfect 'em first, alone." Whereas "let's jump to what's new and what's hot" only encourages discussion if there are already good ongoing convos that can add in the new topic. If not, the jumping is just more reason to avoid follow through. (In old media, rock journalism, and journalism in general, always veered towards news superseding follow-through, so why should the Web be different? Not a rhetorical question, since maybe the Web will evolve to something different, but journalism was the way it was at least partly owing to customer demand (customers being advertisers as well as readers, of course).

EDIT: Kuhnian content on comment thread.

Another Year In America November 19, 2009

edcasual@earthlink.net — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:57:24 GMT

Lady Antebellum's excellently mushy "Need You Now" jumps to #5 (also is collectively rated the 21st best single reviewed on the Jukebox this year, and is currently #41 for the year on the koganbox, which draws from a larger sample than do the other two charts). Meanwhile, as predicted here last week, "Russian Roulette" takes a dip (to 16), though I've also pegged it to hang on for a while.

Glee Cast f. Chris Colfer and Lea Michele "Defying Gravity": I have no idea how this song works in its Broadway home of Wicked, which I'd not heard of until 30 minutes ago, but standing alone it's just "strike forth on your own" platitudes, with a soaring sing-song for uplift. (I can imagine that a sympathetic account of the Wicked Witch Of The West might give such aspirational lyrics some contextual complication - perhaps Elphaba would have been better off had she not aspired - but that's still no excuse for platitudes.) Ironically, this is by far the best Glee performance to chart, with a rockish pop arrangement that I like more than the original's because it treats "Defying Gravity" as a song rather than a showstopper. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Kenny Chesney f. Dave Matthews "I'm Alive": Subdued, even grudging, gratitude list for being alive, it gets beauty from its hesitation. Done even better by Willie Nelson, this version nonetheless is a respite amidst the usual pop roar. TICK.

Miranda Lambert "White Liar": Her new album isn't reaching me yet. I can see how carrying on her crazy-woman alter ego might have turned the role into shtick, so reducing herself to realistically normal, and her madness to mere anger, is probably a necessity. It's still disappointing, like Eminem's abandoning Slim. I do like this track, though, the way her righteousness twists itself malignantly at the end into tit-for-tat vengeance, which stops her from being altogether right, but also stops her from feeling wronged. Smart woman. TICK.

Reba McEntire "Consider Me Gone": "What you're not saying is coming in loud and clear." The situation is analyzed but not felt ("How 'bout a strong shot of honesty/Don't you owe that to me?"), which is a reason for the protagonist to abandon it, but is also a defect in the song. Reba's enunciation is precise, but it doesn't feel like precisely anything on this one. NO TICK.

Iko Iko in a metal tragedy

edcasual@earthlink.net — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:41:48 GMT

OK, the latest Rihanna discussion that people frustratingly put under flock regards the second line in verse two of "Fire Bomb." Candidates are:

"Like the way that I'm at a tragedy"
"Microwave and a metal tragedy"*
"I echo within a metal tragedy"

My heart says "microwave" but my mind says "I echo," though the issue is hardly settled, and a third-party candidate may well carry the day.

*Leads to discussion of late-evening college entertainment consisting of different objects experimentally placed within microwave oven (some reliably characterized as "it's beautiful and it's blue").

EDIT: "Microwaving a metal tragedy" seems to be the - excellent - consensus, now. Or perhaps "Microwaving the metal tragedy." See here, especially weasel_seeker's suggestion that we add a dash:

Seems cold but baby no it doesn't have to be / Microwaving the metal - tragedy"

More Rihanna

edcasual@earthlink.net — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:34:07 GMT

Something I stuck over on an flocked comment thread and that didn't make it into my Jukebox blurb for "Wait Your Turn":

POST ONE: Yeah, that's where I am with Rated R, haven't really broken it down to tracks; in my blurb I made a preliminary attempt to describe what's going on with the grain of her voice, how she uses it. (The football metaphors in "Wait" make me shrug in weariness, but the charred-ember hardness of her voice makes "the wait is ovah" chant overwhelming, as are the thick twists she gives words when she puts on her island accent.)

POST TWO: OK, listening some more, I'm struck with how gently lilting the second half of the verse ["sometimes it takes a thousand tries" etc.]* could have been if her voice hadn't been burning holes in it. I like the solid mass of "Russian Roulette," but I'm glad the album has these half-non-massive moments too.

*I don't want to call it the chorus, even though that's where it sits in the song structure, since the chant is what really acts as the refrain, even if the chant doesn't have a fixed spot in the song structure.

Another Year In America November 12, 2009

edcasual@earthlink.net — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:46:02 GMT

"Russian Roulette" entered the chart two weeks ago at 100, rose last week to an unpromising 75, then this week on the heels of a publicity blitz that included Rihanna's 20/20 interview it jumps to 9. We'll see if it sticks; it doesn't match anything else on the chart, in subject matter or severity. My guess is it holds on for a bit, maybe falling a little then hanging around as people get used to it.

Rihanna "Russian Roulette": She gets a gigantic TICK as a human being for the soul-searching and depth of character she showed a week ago on TV, but this song is still almost laughably overdramatic - which isn't to say that I don't feel the drama every time. And I like its massive slowness and its stubborn literalness. TICK.

Justin Bieber "Favorite Girl": Good singer, mediocre song. I know, I said that last time he charted too. But I like the way he doesn't clobber the beat with his emphases and the way he's got an easy legato and subtle pulses. Now if they could give him a decent tune... BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Jay Sean f. Sean Paul & Lil Jon "Do You Remember": I sampled little bits of Jay Sean's back catalogue to find a mildly pleasant, poor man's Justin Timberlake. To call him a cut-rate Timberlake now would vastly overestimate the distinctiveness of his singing. And the pale prettiness of this is even paler and less pretty than the pale prettiness of his last, and I hated that too. NO TICK.

Jesse McCartney "Body Language": Now this boy singer at least puts out, albeit on a boring track that pretties him up unnecessarily with AutoTune, which I suppose is on its way to being the international language of limp sugar pop. NO TICK.

Taylor Swift "Fifteen": Lots of this is obvious and wide-eyed, just as it intends; the events and insights are normal enough, less varied and restless than her real fifteen was, I'm sure (I can't imagine that anyone who is fifteen has no thoughts about, e.g., global warming and one's place in the cosmos not just in the sight of boys) but there's art in when and how Taylor places her observations. "You're gonna be here for the next four years" has the right mixture of anticipation and fear. Lots of joy in this, the whoosh when she sings "He's got a car and you feel like you're flying." But the line that everyone remembers, me included, what the whole song seems unable not to be leading us to, is "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind" - though what actually catches me in the throat is the next line, "We both cried," one girl's heartbreak directly transmitted to another. TICK.

Luke Bryan "Do I": Four easily resolved chords at the start, but the lyrics are uneasy, a man lost in marriage and wondering if he's still enough. The words need more specificity and the music needs more surprise, and Bryan's voice seems too strong for the sentiment, but maybe the slight incongruity works OK. BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Birdman f. Drake & Lil Wayne "Money To Blow": Drake uses AutoTune for roughness, his voice pushing against the beats, pulling me in for once, a bragging song that sounds dogged and weary. Birdman is slower and more tired than I think is intended, and the lethargy extends to Wayne, who's surprisingly superfluous; no one's trying to sound spent, but it helps this track that they do. TICK.

Nudge

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:55:59 GMT

Look, will someone PLEASE review "Need You Now" over on the Jukebox; it's been sitting on five reviews for days and unless it gets one more review it doesn't go up.

OK, what's with the size 10 thing?

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:50:44 GMT

Good discussion of Rihanna over on Lex's lj; dull discussion of Rihanna over at ilX, though I like where some dude says, "the knowledge that Ester Dean wrote an Esmee Denters song is just extra insurance on the guarantee that I will never remember which is which."

Explicates its moments, which are therefore characterized by this opposition

edcasual@earthlink.net — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:35:30 GMT

Meme from catsgomiaow

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.

• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth line.
• Post that line AS YOUR SUBJECT LINE. AND POST these instructions in a cut-tag to this status....
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book...
[EDIT: I cut and pasted these instructions (obv., since I'd have taken care to tell you not to dig for the most ludicrous title); I have no idea what the phrase "to this status" means.]

It's from Hegel: Texts and Commentary translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann. I am also wearing a T-shirt, given to me by my friend John Wójtowicz, that says, "It's a Hegelian thing. You wouldn't understand." (OK, that's a fib, but John did once state his intention of creating such a T-shirt.)

I haven't actually gotten to page 56.

But while we're on the subject (so to speak), you would do me a favor by explaining this passage to me:

The living substance is, further, that being which is in truth subject or - to say the same thing in other words - which is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of positing itself, or the mediation between a self and its development into something different. As subject, it is pure, simple negativity and thus bifurcation of the simple, that which produces its own double and opposition, a process that again negates this indifferent diversity and its opposite: only this sameness which reconstitutes itself, or the reflection into itself in being different - not an original unity as such, or an immediate unity as such - is the true. The true is its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its aim and thus has it for its beginning - that which is actual only through its execution and end.

'00s to be chewed over

edcasual@earthlink.net — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:36:57 GMT

Supposing I were to write a Decade's End essay, what would you like it to be about?

The correct answer is "Taylor Swift," of course, but you should make other suggestions as well.

Folk Photography

edcasual@earthlink.net — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:55:30 GMT

New Luc book, mostly pictures.

The text—a mere 25 pages; won't take you long even with today's reduced attention span—represents the boiling down of thirty years' thinking on the subject, and comprises a miniature theory of photography as a bonus. The pictures, 122 of 'em, display the United States (and Canada and Mexico to a smaller extent) of a century ago in all its messiness, sprawl, disaster, homely comfort, hard labor, pageantry, violence, optimism, piety, ignorance, hubris, imaginative flight, orderliness, grandeur, chaos, and pastoral quiet. If it were a movie it would be three weeks long and you'd still hate to leave your seat. The pictures are distant and immediate, beautiful and crude, and each one tells a story and leaves a mystery.

(I originally hypothesized that what Luc blogged about "Zion City" was fiction, since he often writes little imaginative bits there that ring true as fact. But I checked Wikipedia, and what he wrote did indeed occur.)

Rihanna 2

edcasual@earthlink.net — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:52:26 GMT

Another thought, maybe a strange comparison in that the connection is just that the two of them were interviewed on TV, but...

Consider, when she was faced with the most important interview of her life, how much more thought Rihanna gave to who she was and what she was about, and what her responsibilities as a public figure were, than Sarah Palin did when she was faced with the most important interview of her life thirteen-and-a-half months ago.

Rihanna interviewed by Diane Sawyer on 20/20

edcasual@earthlink.net — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:49:03 GMT

I presume most of you saw this (and I don't know how long this YouTube rip will stay up), but someone's posted the full interview. [EDIT: That link is down, but for now, at least, the interview is at these links on the 20/20 Website: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.] Crucial passages:

I fell in love with that person. That's embarrassing. That's embarrassing that that's the type of person that I fell in love with, so far in love, so unconditional that I went back. It's humiliating to see your face like that. It's humiliating to say that this happened, to accept that.

. . .

At night I wouldn't go to sleep because I was too afraid it [her father beating her mom] would happen... He broke her nose one time but she would never go to the hospital. Domestic violence is not something that people want anyone to know. I always said to myself "I'm never going to date somebody like my dad. Never." I always said that.

. . .

You want this thing to go away. This is a memory you don't want to have ever again. So the minute the physical wounds go away you put it in the back of your head and start lying to yourself, subconsciously... Initially you start thinking "What could I possibly have said to make him hit me and do this?" Like, you replay that in your head, and eventually you're like, "No. Stop. Stop." I just - I didn't talk about it to anyone. To no one... If I feel this depressed, then what is he going though? Again, lying to yourself: "I had to protect him." The whole world hates him now. His fans, his career. I just wanted to let him know, "Don't do anything stupid."

Of course - and she talks about this - there's a commercial incentive for her to explain why she initially went back to Chris and then to repudiate the going back; but this interview seems credible. Psychologically true. There's a moment where - for the first time - she's watching one of Chris's televised apologies, and she says that it seems like he's reading off a teleprompter. That felt very real, her saying this - so presumably she knows that the health of her psyche demands that she forgo any such canned bullshit herself.

I'd say Rihanna's the key figure in pop music for the last three years; the two before this one, anyway. And deservedly so, given the quality of the music and the way she delivers it. I've never felt a strong sense of her, either as a person or a persona, even though I've been consistently moved by the character of the songs. I wouldn't say I know how talented she is: her burnt, not-particularly flexible vocals manage to work on a whole slew of different material, from light to dark, I'm not sure why. I feel dumb or even wrong saying that all this - her getting beaten, this interview, etc. - has humanized her music for me, but it has.