Maybe I’ve got my history mixed-up, but “cool kids” weren’t allowed to like regular-old pop music until 2002, maybe 2003. Keep in mind who I’m talking about here. Not “the kids who sit at the cool kids lunch table,” they listen to pop, because they’re the cool kids. I’m not talking about “the kids who smoked Camels behind the gymnasium during lunch period” either; they listened to heavy metal and goth rock. I’m talking about “the cool kids.” Maybe you were one, maybe you weren’t,* but you at least know who I’m talking about. They didn’t listen to pop, they listened to all that other weird shit. They just had to know about the pop music; that was the end of their obligations.

And then around 2002, 2003** or so, Annie comes out with “Chewing Gum,” and all of a sudden the cool kids have a why-didn’t-she-go-double-diamond pop star to listen to, I mean legitimately listen to. She’s so good! And intensely hot, and Norwegian, which is on a whole ‘nother level entirely. It’s pop. Perfectly cut gemstones of mainstream electronic pop music, just like Lady Gaga does now, and Beyonce before her, and X-Tina and Britney and Mariah before the rest of them, all the way on back to Madonna. Annie could have been the next Madonna, by which I mean the current Lady Gaga, by which I mean the reigning international queen of pop. It’s a job you only get to hold for twelve to eighteen months, and only one woman can credibly have it at a given time, and Annie should have had a turn. I guess it didn’t work out like that; the evidence is that I’m explaining all this to you right now. If you really are on top of the world, you don’t need to explain that to anyone.

So anyway. That’s Annie for you; the cool-kids delegate at the United Nations General Assembly of Mainstream Pop Music.*** She’s got a new album out and it’s super-hot, sleek electropop, the kind of stuff that should, in a good and just world, be playing on American radio ad nauseum until you’re just sick of it. If Target knew what they were doing they’d use these songs to sell dish soap and apple juice. Pop is designed for a specific purpose; to be popular by appealing to something very simple and animal deep inside your brain. And, you know, maybe that’s why she’s the pop artist that appeals to the cool kids: we love her all the more because she never really quite blew up the way she should have.

Annie – “I Don’t Like Your Band”
Annie – “My Love Is Better”

* I wasn’t. Sorry, haters.
** I didn’t bother looking it up. Does it even matter when it was? Shit. You look it up.
*** ???

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