ASH, Kol Isha, and Boybands

[taffimai]

Listening to Music for Elevators (Anthony Stuart Head's CD), I've decided that incredibly sexy British men shouldn't be allowed to sing in French. Because, mmmmmmmmmmm, and I'm supposed to be working here.

Now, before I go any further, I want to issue a disclaimer lest anyone reading this were to decide to buy the CD, and then choose to blame me. The music is incredibly mediocre. ASH's fabulous voice is wasted on this project -- I love the man, but he is no songwriter.

Despite all this, I've got the damn thing on repeat in the CD player. So, I am forced to face the extent of my fixation on the man's singing. Friends of mine had been trying to pimp me into Buffy fandom for years before I succumbed. They don't know that what finally pushed me over the edge was seeing a rerun of "Where the Wild Things Are". (Of course, the concurrent discovery of the Wonders of Wesley provided an almost immediate distraction, but that's another discussion entirely.)

My current musical obsession brings to mind growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community, and being bound by the rules of Kol Isha. Kol Isha is a restriction on women singing in front of men because it is considered immodest, or, put more bluntly, arousing. (Before anyone asks, as in most of the Jewish laws concerning modesty, there are no similar restrictions on men. However, interestingly, the reason for this seeming double-standard is that men are considered to be far less able to control their desires than women.) This, growing up, always seemed to me to be one of the ultimately silly laws that I was being forced to adhere to. I remember thinking, "Come on, who is attracted to someone's voice?" [smile] How wrong I was!

All this leads me to wonder how much of the appeal of the boyband fandoms is in the actual music, as opposed to the sparkly-dancingness of the gentlemen involved. shinetheway? Anyone?

Comments

[wolfling]

They don't know that what finally pushed me over the edge was seeing a rerun of "Where the Wild Things Are".

Ah yes. One of my favourite eps of the show and a great deal of that is the scene in the coffehouse. I was already happily drooling over Giles, but then I saw WtWTA and discovered a whole new level of guh. My reaction was pretty much the same as Willow's in that scene. Man has a set of pipes on him.

In fact at least half my excitement when I first heard they were doing a musical Buffy episode was the fact that it meant Giles would sing some more!

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

In fact at least half my excitement when I first heard they were doing a musical Buffy episode was the fact that it meant Giles would sing some more!

Oh, I'm so glad to know that there are other GilesSingingAddicts out there! Can I tell you how happy I was when I found the link in the post? Downloadable GilesSinging!

[shinetheway.livejournal.com]

I could never have gotten into this fandom if I didn't love the music. I'm a pop girl, and I always have been--for ages my favorite music was Eighties pop and pop-rock, even pop-country like Shania Twain, and I just adopted nineties bubblegum pop as my new favorite when it showed up. I still buy way more pop albums than not, just because I enjoy the music.

And, to be honest, I love the sound of both BSB and nsync. Their voices, their harmonies--I loved them then, and I love them now. I bought Millenium by the Backstreet Boys--my first music purchase ever--when it came out in 1999, and I had the entire album memorized two years before I even knew their names, much less was slashing them. Nothing can cheer me up like Bye Bye Bye or I Want You Back or Drowning or Get Down, and every concert I've gone to has blown me away musically as well as in other ways.