I've begun to envy the 16-year-olds who get to live with and cry on the shoulders of Ashlee or Skye and not feel the least bit sleazy or bad about it. Teenpop is riding a creative wave right now, but that doesn't mean grown-ups should try and hang 10. In teenpop, the old suck the vitality, spontaneity, the sheer unselfconsciousness from the young. Grown men wait for their MySpace queries to be personally answered by jailbait like Brie Larson, or endlessly discussing, on internet forums and elsewhere, the personal lives of starlets too young to have their last names printed in public spaces. This is ugly stuff, even if there are a lot of smart critics trying to point these guys in at least the right musical directions.
And one could ask: Should a grown-man go out of his way to critically beat up on sensitive teenagers, even if said grown man has at least had the grace to avoid the music videos and other uncomfortable, potentially illegal forms of gawking? Even worse: Can we criticize kids for not being enough like kids without sounding like a bunch of sleazy pedophiles, even if we're talking about music and not sex?
Meg & Dia are the newest twin-poppers to turn 21 and 19, respectively, out in the hot and burning public eye, but they come bearing the best defense of all: They already sound depressingly old. Unlike recent records from bands such as Be Your Own Pet, who sound enticingly young and psyched about it, or the mostly-grown Joan Jett wannabies Damone, who sound accidentally young and psyched about it, Meg & Dia sound just plain adult; worse, they sound like they're as bored with being grown-up as the rest of us are. That's a far cry from Ashlee and her peers, who are constantly, inevitably, if accidentally, wearing their hearts on a very public sleeve. Meg & Dia at least had the right idea, naming their newest record Something Real. But the title feels like a lie.
Like Aly & AJ or the Veronicas or M2M before them, Meg & Dia are two siblings (or close-enoughs) who grew up playing music together. Unlike their contemporaries, they write songs about "the two ‘L's': love and literature." The younger one, Dia, sings, and the older one, Meg, writes the songs and plays them on her guitar. Goofy, nerdy kids like these starting bands this young should be ruling the world. Instead they're playing adult contemporary for the parents of their target audience.
For one thing, what's more grown up or boring than singing about books? Their lead single, "Monster", in addition to being alterna-guitared schlock, is apparently about something by Steinbeck; another song, "Indiana", is named after the novel by George Sand. And though the latter's not bad-- snakily melodic guitars segue, more than once, into Smashing Pumpkins "Today" guitars, and even breakdown into shredding, stuttering palm-muted guitars-- it's not nearly as assertive as you'd want it to be. Courtney Love might be the ideal model for these young angry women, but Dia tends to sing like she's doing karaoke, not getting things off her chest. And when she does manage to raise her voice, as on "Masterpiece", it's about not lost love but god: The chorus asks, "Aren't you glad that you're the one that made me?" Nothing wrong with god-- but face it, he's right up there with books when it comes to prurient interest. For youthful vigor, then, we're left with "Nineteen Stars", on which both of the sisters sing, and is a nice piece of bubblegrunge about wishing on stars for boys. But the track is an exception, not the rule.
So how creepy is it to wish they sounded younger? Most sensible people value teenpop not for the age of those who make it but for its pristine and easily consumable values: crisp production, sugary harmonies and Max Martin melodies, a sheer upbeat exhilaration. But it's no coincidence that kids make this kind of music more frequently than adults, Avril Lavigne excepted. They're just less bored than we are. So surely, lurking somewhere under the AOR balladry and platitudes are Meg & Dia. And it might even be admirable that they're trying to tackle something beyond the high school bullshit that Dia ended up missing anyway, after dropping out to join her sister's band. If only Something Real didn't sound like what teenpop usually doesn't-- shiny but without a hint of any kind of heart, young or otherwise.
