rock around the Christmas Tree.

It’s Saturday; have fun, be safe!

XOXO

The past couple days I’ve been on this hunt for anything that sounds like Toto or contains generic oriental themes. I managed to dig up a couple great tracks. Lyrical content(and cadence for that matter) doesn’t exactly push the envelope, but these jams are catchy as hell, and these melodies are fucking golden.

MP3: “Cambodia” – Kim Wilde

Kim Wilde, Brit pop music singer

The Sounds are a band from Sweden whose sound is rooted in a mix of punk rock and 80s pop, with driving guitars/bass, danceable beats and catchy keyboard lines and vocals. I can definitely hear the influence of The Cars (driving guitars, catchy keyboards…), along with Blondie and Kim Wilde.

Maja Ivarsson, photo from AfterEllen.com

Deborah Harry, photo from allposters.com

The band totally looks like they could be from the 80s and the singer, Maja Ivarsson reminded me of Deborah Harry of Blondie, then I heard her sing. When the vocals kicked in I thought of British singer Kim Wilde right away. I will admit that the title of this tune, “Living In America” reminded me of “Kids In America” by Kim Wilde right off the bat, but I think she really sounds like her… a lot. So for fun, here is “Living In America,” released in 2002 by The Sounds and “Kids In America” from Kim Wilde, originally released in 1981.

Kim Wilde

Looking out a dirty old window
Down below the cars in the
City go rushing by
I sit here alone
And I wonder why

Friday night and everyones moving
I can fell the heat
But its shooting
Heading down
I search for the beat in this dirty town

Down town the young ones are going
Down town the young ones are growing

We’re the kids in america
We’re the kids in america

Everybody live for the music-go-round

Bright lights the music gets faster
Look boy, dont check on your watch
Not another glance
Im not leaving now, honey not a chance

Hot-shot, give me no problems
Much later baby youll be saying never mind
You know life is cruel, life is never kind

Kind hearts dont make a new story
Kind hearts dont grab any glory

Come closer, honey thats better
Got to get a brand new experience
Feeling right
Oh dont try to stop baby
Hold me tight

Outside a new day is dawning
Outside sububias sprawling everywhere
I dont want to go baby
New york to east california
Theres a new wave coming I warn you

We’re the kids
We’re the kids
We’re the kids in america…

© Tous droits réservés

Cover of Persepolis (Pantheon, 2007); image courtesy of shelflove.wordpress.com

When I saw the film version of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, it was a pretty rad time to be a feminist moviegoer. In the last month of 2007 and the first month of 2008, this movie came out, along with Juno and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Having just completed a girls’ studies course, I was ecstatic that three different movies, each from a different country, were released with complex, resilient protagonists who were girls and young women.

Two of these movies earned Oscar nominations a few months later. Juno won Best Screenplay. Persepolis was nominated for Best Animated Feature, but unfortunately lost to Ratatouille. 4 Months, which documents the harrowing day of one college student trying to procure an illegal abortion for her roommate during the last years of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s in Romania, won the Palme D’Or at Cannes earlier in 2007, but failed to receive any nominations. For some reason. Perhaps it escaped nomination as a technicality, but I don’t understand why no one, particularly writer-director Cristian Mungiu or lead actress Anamaria Marinca, got any Academy recognition. Perhaps because it lacked the allegorical importance of No Country For Old Men or There Will Be Blood and cut to very real (and tremendously gendered) issues facing real people in the real world, many of whom reside in developing nations. 

But it is really no matter. No Country, There Will Be Blood, Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There were but more examples of what a very fine time this particular two-month period was for movies. But 4 Months was easily my favorite movie of that year. The movie whose source material will be the focus of this post was a very close second.

Having seen the movie upon its U.S. release, some context has changed considerably upon revisiting Satrapi’s autobiography about coming of age inside and outside of Iran from the late 70s to the early 90s, a time period where the country witnessed the fall of the Shah (aided by the United States), the swift and crushing oppression of its citizens by Islamic extremists, a devastating eight-year war with Iraq, and the neighboring country’s launch of the Persian Gulf War. In late 2007, we were still living under the Bush Administration, so the country’s positioning as part of the ”axis of evil” was in my mind, but being pretty ignorant about the country’s political history and our involvement with it past the Iran-Contra Affair, Bush’s branding of the country read more as a promise that the United States were, in fact, going to try and spread democracy by force to all of the Middle East, snatching up its real or imagined WMDs and drain its oil resources in the process. And I knew about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and was disgusted by his views on the Holocaust and heartened by the student protests around his adminstration, but was not yet aware of just what a dangerous despot he is.     

This was, of course, before this year’s highly controversial presidential election, which Ahmadinejad “won” by a suspiciously high margain over rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, an Independent reformist. At the time, what seemed more present in our minds in the states was what Twitter was doing to help cover and contextualize the civic protests and how quickly mainstream broadcast news was going to incorporate the still-emergent micro-blogging site’s Tweets into their 24-hour cycle, regardless of how accurate they were. 

As a result, I was a little jaded by the “Twitter users coverage of the Iran election is going to change news reporting” angle many seemed to be taking and instead wanted to know more about how the election was fraudulent, why certain people (specifically journalists, protesters, students, and politicians) were being arrested, what the stakes were, who was doing a good job covering this news story, and, most importantly, what circumstances led to the current iteration of Iran. Remembering that local branches of Barnes & Noble were donating proceeds to the Paramount upon purchase last weekend, shilling out my money to the big box chain for the sake of preserving a historical movie theater seemed as a good an opportunity to buy the book that may provide answers.

And, I’ll be honest. Reading the book left me with more questions than anything else (a similar feeling came over me when reading Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, two books whose timelines stretch past the 70s-90s, but contain a considerable overlap in terms of time with Persepolis, focusing on what was going on with ordinary people in Afghanistan, another contentious Middle Eastern country that borders Iran). It was hard not to check some ugly American tendencies I have toward Islamic traditions — particularly toward its views on marriage, sexuality, gender politics, and dress. At the same time, I was incredulous of how pro-West rhetoric and ideology, alongside our smuggled trinkets of popular culture, could possibly reform a nation, or at least save a person.

Luckily, Satrapi is skeptical of both and, like me and other feminists from all over the world, has a lot to negotiate. She grapples with these issues head-on. She argues with teachers against the physical restrictions and societal double standards that come with the hijab and the burka (sidenote: I know that Faegheh Shirazi, who teaches Middle Eastern Studies at UT and rejects traditional Islamic dress, has written and taught courses on gender and clothing in the Middle East, but any other suggestions for further reading are welcome). She watches her female peers grow up to only want marriage and children, in large part because these are the only things their nation’s leaders believe define their worth. Particularly poignant for this co-habitator, she regrets getting married to a man named Reza because they could not legally live together (or even walk the street) without proof of marriage, dissolving the marriage and leaving for France.

Marjane and friends reject the hijab; image courtesy of rand.org

Satrapi is a smart rebel who reads constantly, thinks clearly, and never backs down from an argument. She yells at authority figures who bully her or deny that there are any political prisoners in Iran after learning about the loss of her grandfather, who was son and prime minister to the ousted king (a tie that Satrapi suggests is not uncommon).

College student Satrapi damns the man; image courtesy of butterfliesandbears.wordpress.com

Luckily for Satrapi, she gets through all of this with the love and support of her politically aware and resistant parents, their friends, and one rad paternal grandma. Not so luckily, she also knows and meets lots of folks who suffered for speaking up, speaking out, or just living in the wrong house during an aerial bombing. Something tells me that many Iranians could recount similar tales of horror.

Satrapi also learns that the ways of the West are not always ideal, either. While a pre-pubescent in Iran, she hangs Iron Maiden posters on her wall her parents smuggle from a vacation in Turkey when the government lifted border restrictions. She defiantly walks around her neighborhood, blaring Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” from her Walkman while sporting a Michael Jackson pin. But noting that their daughter’s rebelliousness is hardly a phase and that escalating conflict with Iraq could mean the imprisonment or death of their mouthy teen, her parents send her to live with a friend of her mother’s in Vienna.

Still from the film; image courtesy of whatsontv.co.uk

Satrapi finishes high school, barely scraping by as she finds odd jobs, dates dumb boys, takes a lot of drugs, and runs into authority figures who want her to tow the line and behave. She also falls in with a group of radical misfits who dabble with nihilism, Marxism, hair dye, and punk. While Satrapi initially finds a home with these punks and new wave kids, she soon discovers their privilege has made them cowardly, pretentious, self-righteous, entitled, and lazy. Her outsider status also makes her cool, her Austrian peers clearly jealous by what she has seen and experienced without really processing the weight of it between drags off their joints and skims through their copies of the Marx-Engels Reader in their well-appointed bedrooms. It’s small wonder that, when Satrapi finally returns home to Iran after she finishes high school homeless and afflicted with bronchitis, she washes off a punk stencil from her bedroom wall. And while she’s sad that her mother gave away her cassette tapes, she probably wasn’t going to listen to them anyway. She would’ve kept the Kim Wilde tape, however.

So, ultimately, I do feel this revisit of Persepolis helped clarify my feelings about the state of Iran. It also left me with several questions and a need to know more. Ultimately, though, it left me with the sense of universality that exists between people, especially tough, smart women and girls, while at the same time recognizing the particularities that inform their realities. And continues to inform them. Back in June, Satrapi spoke out against the election results with filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalba. Something tells me that her grandmother, who passed away shortly after Satrapi moved to France at the close of the book, would be proud.

Quality time with grandma; image courtesy of rwor.org

Am I the only one really disturbed by the dancing baby/Beyonce clips floating around? I meeeeeaaan …

It’s like the brilliant part in Mean Girls when Regina George’s little sister is in front of the TV getting her like 5-year-old flash on while watching Girls Gone Wild. This really isn’t that cute, it’s scary. My parents used to tape me dancing to (a clothed) Rod Stewart at this age and look how I turned out. Also I can assure you they weren’t yelling “let’s see that booty” in the background. You know what though, I guess those songs were pretty racy too … Passion, Do Ya Think I’m Sexy … ok what is wrong with parents?! It’s a slippery slope from here young lady so someone put a shirt on that baby if she’s aiming for a ring!

Excellent remake, one of my fav songs!!

Kim Wilde – You Keep Me Hangin’ On

..it started Wednesday with bus to Stockholm where we checked in to our hotel and went to see Chris perform at Debaser Slussen..
Up at 02.55, mayhem! and load-in at tv4 where we did the morning show with Love child and Run to you.. then line check and rod at “kåken” (restaurant “1900″).. tired,.. and most of the band tried to get some sleep afterwards but I raged on and played some refreshing tennis with Pär, followed by a quick lunch..
Later on that evening, celebrating the release of Fibes oh Fibes album 1987 we fired off some songs at “kåken” with a special guest appearance by Kim Wilde on Run to you.. What a roar! What a night!

..down to das Gbg for another release gig at “Parken”, lots of friends there. Sounded great (thanks Andy!) Had to take it easy thou, with the beer, considering the drive back to Stockholm 7am the following morning.

“Sommarkrysset” tv4 with Kim and run to you, followed by a night on town, followed by a power shower-sleep-extravaganza?!?!?!

A bit tired after last night we played once more at Gröna Lund, this time on “Mix Megapol Day”. Once more Love child and Run to you with Kim. Then me and Edvinsson left Fräckestan and went back to Käckestan… over and out

Kim Wilde, ‘Kids in America’ (Original Video)

Marketed as a “tribute to her influences”, you would think that this 1995 album would be a tribute to traditional artists and traditional songs, because that’s the way Reba marketed “her kind of country” in the mid-eighties. Alas, no, and the traditionalists hoping that Reba would return to the style of neo-traditionalism that had brought her so much success from 1984 to 1987, would again be disappointed. This was McEntire’s most pop-sounding album yet, and if it weren’t for the select covers of “Talking In Your Sleep” by Crystal Gayle, “I Won’t Mention It Again” by Ray Price, and “Starting Over Again” by Dolly Parton (all of which are among those artists’ most pop-leaning songs), you probably wouldn’t have guessed it was a country album at all. While most of her previous post-1988 material had shown a steady drift towards mainstream pop, it was with this album Reba left the country genre all together. Thankfully, she were to return a year later with the countrier What If It’s You that featured a more stripped-down production, and a much fresher song selection.

Starting Over was also to be her least successful album with country radio in over a decade, and her first album since 1989 that wasn’t to be certified multi-platinum by the RIAA. The highest peaking single on the country charts was the #9 hit “Ring On Her Finger, Time On Her Hands”; a previous top five hit for Lee Greenwood. The other singles were “On My Own” with Trisha Yearwood, Linda Davis and Martina McBride, and “Starting Over Again”, which peaked at #20 and #19 respectively. There was a fourth single released, but this one to the Hot Dance Club Songs chart, and this one was more successful than all of the country singles with its peak position of #2 on that chart; a record for a country female until LeAnn Rimes broke that record when “What I Cannot Change” became a #1 hit in 2009.

The album opens with “Talking In Your Sleep”, which despite it’s full orchestra backing, is one of the more sparsely produced songs on the album. Reba is also more vocally restrained here, but that’s not really saying much, since the rest of the album is pretty much one big showboat of Reba’s vocal chops. Nevertheless, it works, and damn well too. While she does oversing on much of the album, no one’s ever been able to “get away” with it like Reba does on this album. She’s still well within her comfort-zone on all of the songs, unlike a certain other female hit-maker; she’s simply going at “full throttle” throughout the album, which could be a disastrous choice if the most songs were of the kind that requires restraint. The excessive vocal acrobatics on “Five Hundred Miles Away From Home” has the potential to grate on you at times, but it’s not enough to make her version unlistenable or even bad; it’s just something that could be improved.

The finer moments of the album include the lead single “Ring On Her Finger, Time On Her Hands”, a song about infidelity. While Greenwood’s version sets out to create sympathy for the woman by having the man explain the situation, and admitting that he’s a big part of the reason she cheated; Reba has a much more difficult job: to make the listeners feel sorry for her when she’s the one who’s cheated. In the hands of a lesser vocalist, it might’ve come off as a desperate rant only created so that the woman could defend her honor, Reba makes you genuinely feel sorry for her and the situation she’s in. Her vocal gets angrier and angrier as the song progresses, and some of those notes towards the end show that Carrie Underwood ain’t got nothing on Reba when it comes to pure vocal power. It’s truly a magnificent composition, and one of Reba’s best singles.

“Starting Over Again” also sounds mighty fine in the hands of Reba despite being very different from the stunning original by Dolly Parton. Whereas Parton chose to explore the sadness and vulnerable side about one’s parents splitting up; Reba chose to infuse the song with the other common feeling in such a situation: anger. While Parton’s interpretation of this Donna  Summer is slightly more convincing than Reba’s, her version isn’t far behind, and is also one of the best tracks on the album. Other standout moments include “Please Come To Boston” and her torchy version of Ray Price’ “I Won’t Mention It Again”.

There are a few misses on the album, though; most notably “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”, which is a horrible song regardless of whether it’s in the hands of Reba, The Supremes or Kim Wilde.  ”You’re No Good” lacks the sass and spunk of the original, and comes off as slightly mediocre. “On My Own” is one of Reba’s least-liked songs, but I find it to be just fine. I understand how people might find it somewhat underwhelming, seeing as it came from who is widely considered to be three of country’s finest vocalist, and Linda Davis. It serves its purpose just fine , which in my opinion is to be poppy ear candy. The killer sax on the track is also a real plus. It has no business being on this album though, being an R&B song from 1986, it couldn’t possibly be a track that’s influenced Reba’s music, which is what this album is supposed to be about. The same can be said for the Crystal Gayle track, but it’s slightly more believable seeing as Reba’s early output could be somewhat reminiscent of Gayle’s own music.

The album ends with “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”; another ballad that’s given the torch treatment. It works fine, and is a nice way to sum the album up being the pop standard that it is. All in all, Starting Over isn’t Reba’s finest moment, but it does feature some of her best vocals, and shows that when she gets a decent song to sing, she really can sing the heck out of it.

Grade: A-

You can buy Starting Over on Amazon, and listen to it on Last.fm.

Voici des musiques que j’écoutais quand j’avais … 20 ans!
Rigolo de redécouvrir cela … 

(une musique que j’aimais bien … quand j’étais …. jeune ….)
The bangles

Mister mister (noter comment la batterie rentre en retard)

Un énorme tube qu’on entend encore parfois (Come on Eileen):

Come on Eileen by The hit crew

Buggles

Phil collins que certains connaissent déjà

Kim Wilde

Retiendrez vous les vôtres (amours de jeunesse) ?

papa

(melodia, filmarea sau cântăreaţa, sau toate trei)

“När snön gick bort, och det blev sommar, breddes ett eldsken över Dalälven, som bred och mörk forsade under hängbjörkarna”

01. Kim Wilde – Never trust a stranger
02. The Jacksons – Torture
03. Echo & The Bunnymen – Bring on the dancing horses
04. Kate Bush – Wow
05. A flock of seagulls – Space age love song
06. Donna Summer – Cold love
07. Johan Kinde – Valona
08. Scott Walker – Rawhide
09. Modern English – A viable commercial
10. Dusty Springfield – Nothing has been proved
11. St. Christopher – All of a tremble

Random Access
“The Next Wave
of Modern Rock”

June 23, 2009

Communicate – The B-52’s – Bouncing Off The Satellites
Telecommunication – A Flock of Seagulls – 20 Classics Of The 80’s
Telephone Line – Electric Light Orchestra – Greatest Hits
6060-842 – The B-52’s – The B-52’s
867-5309/Jenny – Tommy Tutone - Just Can’t Get Enough: New Wave Hits Of The 80’s, Vol. 5
Call Me – Blondie – Best Of Blondie
-
Video Killed the Radio Star – Tainted Love – Live Bait
Hey Mr DJ – They Might Be Gients – Then
DJ – David Bowie – ChangesTwo
The Last DJ – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – The Last DJ
Around the Dial – The Kinks – Give the People What They Want (Remastered)
Mexican Radio - Wall Of Voodoo -  New Wave Hits Of The ’80’s: Just Can’t Get Enouh
Pop Muzik – M – New Wave Hits Of The ’80s, Vol.2gh, Vol. 8
Bubble Pop Electric – Gwen Stefani Feat. Johnny Vulture – Love. Angel. Music. Baby
–
(This Song’s Just) Six Words Long – Weird Al Yankovic – Even Worse
Got My Mind Set On You – George Harrison - Cloud Nine
Number Three – They Might Be Giants – Then
Another Step (Closer To You) – Kim Wilde – The Singles Collection 1981-1993
A Little Of You – Eurythmics – Revenge
Look Good In Blue – Blondie – Essential: Picture This Live
Union City Blue – Blondie – Eat To The Beat [Bonus Tracks]
-
Precious Time – Pat Benatar – Extended Versions: The Encore Collection
Prime Time [Re Styles Vocals] – The Tubes - T.R.A.S.H.: Tubes Rarities And Smash Hits
Sign Of The Times – The Belle Stars – New Wave Hits of the 80″s Vol 6
Man Out Of Time - Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Best Of
Falling For the First Time – Barenaked Ladies - Maroon
Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper - Twelve Deadly Cyns…And Then Some
Love Me Two Times – Doors – Best Of The Doors

It’s hot today.

It was hot yesterday.

And the forecast calls for this heat wave to persist for the next week.

Though Paloma and I have central air in our tree house suite, a glimpse at the unit’s guts when it was being repaired last summer leads me to believe that it has been built from surplus bi-plane parts manufactured in the ‘30s.

The fact that I am marinating on the couch leads me to question its structural integrity and cooling prowess.

The stifling heat makes thinking an effort. Each time I begin to follow a tangent to write about, it becomes a mirage and, if it doesn’t become a mirage, it’s an oasis far enough in the cranial distance that it doesn’t seem to be worth it.

And, given the events of the past week in Iran, time that would have been spent pondering nonsense has been devoted to following the history in the making.

Summer definitely had a lot more cachet as a kid.

So, I thought I’d pull up a Billboard chart from this week in 1982. Music was a relatively new obsession for me, Clear Channel was years away from homogenizing Top 40 radio and a heatwave simply meant more time at the pool.

Some of the songs I was hearing at the pool and in other places as summer arrived in 1982…

Human League – Don’t You Want Me
from Dare

Had I had interest in music a few years earlier, either disco or punk might have been the “new” sound that my friends and I would have adopted as our own. I’m grateful that, instead, New Wave and synthesizer bands from the UK turned out to be our find.

Human League’s Don’t You Want Me had to have been one of the first songs by a synth band I heard and I was hooked. My friend Chris spent the next year or so focused on collecting every single, 12″ inch single, EP, remix, and whatever else he could acquire by the Sheffield band. Personally, aside from a few tracks, my devotion to the band was uncommited.

Toto – Rosanna
from Toto IV

I have no qualms in acknowledging that I own most of Toto’s albums up through the mid-’80s and I rarely hit skip when one of their songs pops up on shuffle.

Rosanna was a constant on the radio during the summer of ‘82 – all summer long – and I don’t think I ever tired of it. It’s still as joyously infectious more than twenty five years later.

J. Geils Band – Angel In Blue
from Freeze Frame

Although I was fairly lukewarm about the song Centerfold, I’d gotten a copy of J. Geils Band’s Freeze Frame as a gift and most of the rest of the album I loved. I don’t think any of us knew that the band had actually been around for more than a decade and was known to music fans as America’s answer to The Rolling Stones (I, at that time, certainly didn’t).

Although it wasn’t nearly as big as Centerfold or Freeze Frame’s title track, Angel In Blue – a wistful ode to a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with the obligatory heart of gold – was a favorite then and, like that waitress, it hasn’t aged a bit.

Kim Wilde – Kids In America
from Kim Wilde

We didn’t know much about Kim Wilde when she arrived with the New Wave bubblegum of her song Kids In America. She was a comely blonde and I imagine that’s all we needed to know.

But we did love the song. It bounded along. It had a chanted chorus. It was about kids in America and we happened to be kids in America.

It had it all.

Album cover to the Clueless soundtrack

Recently, I got in a fight with my partner over a minor bit of dialogue from Amy Heckerling’s 1995 movie Clueless. Please don’t question who was right on this. I was a pre-teen girl in 1995. At one point, I could recite the entire thing. I’m sure, if given a cue here and there, I could do it again at 25.

Not suggesting, of course, that if you were a pre-teen girl in 1995, you have to hold Clueless close to your heart. As a matter of fact, I resisted seeing it until it was out on video for almost a year. We had cable at home when the movie came out, and MTV advertised it all the time. I also remember reading Seventeen and other teen magazines, and it ran stuff on it a lot (though I seem to remember Seventeen actually giving a less-than-laudatory review, criticizing its unrealistic use of hyperbolic slang and schoolgirl chic).

Adding to this, when I originally saw promotional stuff for Clueless, I didn’t see me in it. Cher and Dionne were ultra-feminine and super-rich (if also good-intentioned). Several of the popular girls in my seventh grade class would emulate their look and attitude (some, perhaps instinctively, bringing in a bit of Heathers-style bitchiness). I remember this one girl actually tried to give my friend Jerusha, a Pentecostal who had to wear ankle-length dresses and skirts, a makeover because she had “total Tai potential.” Ugh. I just checked out.

BTW, my seventh grade style was Tai pre-makeover. Minus the drugs, of course. One time a girl in P.E. offered to snort Lucas Limon with me and I ran away in fear.

For readers of the blog, perhaps you can guess my entrance into the movie. Yes, you got it. The soundtrack (which, for those who are curious, was released on Capitol — the movie was a Paramount picture). I couldn’t find a lot of scenes online, but for a sense of sound and image, check out this fan-made video, underscored by The Muffs’ cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America,” which opens the movie.

I actually never owned the soundtrack. My friend Brandi had it, so I borrowed it from her. The closest I got was my VHS copy of the movie, which contained the music video for Supergrass’s “Alright.”

Maybe I can snag a copy at Cheapo Discs. Because man oh man, is the soundtrack ever a treasure trove of the era. With plenty of alternative musical artists — Radiohead, The Beastie Boys, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Coolio, General Public, Smoking Popes — it’s at once a document to a small period just after Cobain left us and virtually anything could get a pass on MTV or mainstream radio (Beck, for example), as well as evidence for just how important a soundtrack is in selling a movie. Remember how Cher doesn’t want Tai to burn the cassette to Coolio’s “Rollin’ With My Homies” — I always read this as sly product placement.

And lest we forget, the soundtrack is teeming with female artists. Jill Sobule, Salt-N-Pepa, Luscious Jackson, The Cranberries, The Muffs, and a just-about-to-break No Doubt (with a song about girlhood oppression from a woman who does not consider herself to be a feminist). They’re all here.

That the movie is underscored by music by female artists who are, if not all feminist, certainly embrace a pro-woman agenda should not be overlooked, especially in popular music’s larger sociohistorical context. Riot grrrl broke, the kinderwhore look had been made runway-ready, and The Spice Girls happened the following year. But Jill Sobule was singing about kissing girls and MTV played the single’s very post-modern, post-structural, super-campy music video all the time. Beavis and Butthead were also completely dumb about it (intentionally? as a commentary?).

Of course, working within the mainstream is tricky. Just look at the music video for Luscious Jackson’s “Here,” made specifically for the movie. It’s an exercise in compromise. On the one hand, we’ve got a tough group of Noo Yawk broads (one of whom is a lesbian) playing their gig in the middle of a skating rink during a roller derby meet. On the other hand, the derby girls are super-femme and the rink projects images from the movie. Sigh. Perhaps it begs the question “alternative to what?”

The inclusion of artists like No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani may suggest a post-feminist agenda, and the Luscious Jackson music video may hint at age-old tensions between underground and mainstream. However, I think that, in the context of the movie, a song like Jill Sobule’s “Supermodel” being used during Tai’s make-over scene (which I wish I could pull up, but can’t — cue the movie!) is winking at the performativeness and learnedness of becoming feminine, which I think at least suggests that the movie’s politics may lean toward its writer-director and actually align with more of a third-wave feminist perspective on gender politics.

Unfortunately, despite the movie’s success, it hasn’t always been easy for Amy Heckerling. Sadly, 2007’s I Could Never Be Your Woman, a May-December romance starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd that some argued was more explicitly feminist, went straight to DVD. In the “Whatever!” DVD edition of Clueless, Heckerling even discusses how hard it was to get the movie greenlit because there were three female leads and no leading male character. It wasn’t until producer Scott Rudin became interested in the picture that the studios got into a bidding war and Paramount picked it up (after having originally turned it down).

It makes cultural moments like Clueless, as compromised as some may think it to be, a proud declaration of girl. With its soundtrack, it at least suggests the possibility of turning “girl” into “grrrl.”

Needed something to get me pumping tonight. This motivates me.