Why you shouldn't hate on Valley girls, + Ke$ha: "Take it Off" and "We R Who We R"

I've been fascinated with Ke$ha ever since her debut album dropped in January 2010. She was even one of the first artists I featured on this blog in March 2011. My interest is logical: after all, I'm a 24-year-old girl from the Midwest whose taste was formed under the influence of the Spice Girls and the boy bands of the 1990's, for whom dance music was not complete without some spoken sorta-rap. ("Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want!") From those beginnings, along with parallel interests in classic stylings of big band and rock and blues and so forth, a small piece of my heart has remained true to what American dance music has morphed into: the rap-infused club beats of artists like Katy Perry and Rihanna and Chris Brown and Ke$ha, artists who are popular thanks to a wide demographic, from the Spice Girl-influenced twenty-somethings to the tweens for whom Ke$ha (hailing from both Los Angeles and Nashville) is the spiciest girl they know. It's worth noting that the future music movers and shakers, the people who will buy pop albums in 10 years, are currently 10- and 11-year-olds like my little cousins who know all the words to Justin Bieber songs.

In fact, despite our stubborn ways, each successive generation's music and vocal taste has had a profound effect on society. For example, an article in today's New York Times discusses how young women set trends in our linguistic evolution. The clearest example is the Valley Girl inflection -- you know, like, when you uptalk? and all of your thoughts are, like, in the form of a question and punctuated with, like, these space fillers that help you dominate the conversation and manipulate others into thinking that, like, they have to do what you say? The article also describes a phenomenon called "vocal fry," which is best encapsulated by pop musicians like Britney Spears and -- you guessed it -- Ke$ha.

Here's a demonstration of vocal fry from a guy who I'm guessing wants you to buy books and lessons from  him so you can learn how to sing. We'll take the free example, though:

As he mentions, vocal fry is a gravelly sound found at the bottom of your range -- the growl of a blues singer or a pop star whose range may need some buffering on the bottom. Speaking of which, has anyone done a study of the average vocal range of Britney Spears' albums? It seems to me she was hitting sing-songy notes back when she was a teenager, but her subsequent six albums have gotten a lot more guttural and alto-range. ("You want a piece of me?") I assume it's due to her transition from young, aspiring singer to all-out performer, complete with dance moves and snakes, leaving less time for singing.

Britney Spears in her infamous 2001 VMA performance with the snake.

Say what you will about Britney Spears or her singing talent, but the woman knows how to put on a show.

So, I argue, does Ke$ha -- except praise to heaven, she actually sings when she performs live. (Everyone remember Britney's 2007 "Gimme More" VMA debacle?) Ke$ha, instead of sacrificing singing, sacrifices the all-out dancing, leaving it to a team of blond-mulleted dancers while she and two back-up singers hit all the right notes. Let me repeat: The three of them execute harmonies, live, on dance tracks. This is in itself noteworthy, especially given that the recent Grammy "tribute to dance" featuring Chris Brown, David Guetta, Lil' Wayne, Deadmau5, and the Foo Fighters made it seem as though dance music is a studio-only production. The electronica, rock, and rap elements were performed live, but Chris Brown and David Guetta lip-synched their poptastic dance pieces so they could also perform some poptastic dance moves. I like dance moves, but the Grammy performance was a distressing indicator that popular dance music is more about the dance than the music, that singing doesn't seem to be a priority to the genre anymore. Dance music is thus discounted as a legitimate genre the way that romance novels are tossed aside by literary critics: the bad ones make everyone look bad.

But back Ke$ha, who does sing. In the video at the top of the post, which is from the 2010 American Music Awards, the singer -- who turns 25 this Thursday -- lets her freak flag fly, beginning the song in a disc jockey pod of some sort, wearing illuminated goggles. She's joined by two dancers wielding microphones and blond mullets, who retreat to stationary mic stands as the "100% dancers" take the stage behind Ke$ha. She sheds a layer of clothing and proceeds to sing, dance, and smash a guitar on stage. It feels a bit contrived; the guitar is presented by a back-up singer and Ke$ha strums it for a minute before holding it up to reveal "HATE" crossed out on the back. Eh, that's cool, but I've seen her actually play guitar, and she undersold it here for the sake of the gimmick. But the gimmick works as confetti falls and it's Ke$ha smash time, including a possibly accidental swipe against a dancer. The sparks literally fly, the song ends, and the singer stares down the audience until their ovation turns into a standing one. She smiles. Mission accomplished.

Cheer for me. Now.

I like Ke$ha because she actually sings, she writes all of her own music, and as a member of my generation (she's eight days older than me), she seems comfortable with who she is and what she presents to the world. She put green lipstick on her male dancers, ripped tights on everyone, and she mixed leopard print with what appears to be a leotard made of mirrors. Her voice seems to emerge already autotuned, and she throws in gasps and piques that are conversationally familiar to anyone born after 1980, particularly anyone who has spent time in a sorority. Often these vocal stylings are interpreted as vapid, but as linguistics professor Carmen Fought told the New York Times, "If women do something like uptalk or vocal fry, it’s immediately interpreted as insecure, emotional or even stupid...The truth is this: Young women take linguistic features and use them as power tools for building relationships." Hmmm, go on?

Times reporter Douglas Quenqua continues: "The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation." So while you were making fun of Valley Girls, they were latching onto the dregs of your language skills, burrowing in and changing the way you think about language. Linguist Mark Liberman says that not only are women are half a generation ahead of men on the vocal soundscape, but it rubs off: his 2003 study of 12,000 phone conversations found that more men than women use the word "like" superfluously in conversation. He also (predictably) found that young people use it more often than older people, but the line has grown fuzzier as informal conversation has shifted to account for the tics of the younger generation.

Wear your colors proudly.

If all communication has a purpose, then these stylistic choices do too. Vocal fry, the creaky voice effect, was notably used by British men as far back as the 1960's to denote "superior social standing." Women use uptick to manipulate and lower their voices to sound more authoritative. And sometimes, the article notes, women use vocal fry to communicate boredom or disinterest -- emotions that Ke$ha will happily make you forget about for four and a half minutes while she stages a performance that demands you sit down and watch, so as not to miss anything good. Say what you will about Ke$ha, but like Britney, she knows how to put on a show. And unlike most of her dance music contemporaries, Ke$ha doesn't value the show above the music. And if record sales are any indication, we're listening.