Editor’s note: What follows is no less than the third column that Popdose writer Jon Cummings has attempted to wring out of a single interview last fall with former Letters to Cleo vocalist Kay Hanley. The first one, a Popdose Interview, was quite nice, really; the second, however – a treatise on the band’s participation in the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You – began to betray diminishing returns. (The SOB even snuck a backhanded reference to Hanley into a column about Miley Cyrus a couple weeks back.) And now comes this essay, about which the less said in advance the better. Please rest assured, gentle readers, that Mr. Cummings has been put on notice – and that if the words “Kay” and “Hanley” appear in succession in one more of his columns during this calendar year, his status will be downgraded to something no more elevated than, say, “Cardinal Mahoney of Cool.” Without further ado:
Usually a film soundtrack becomes a big seller for one of two reasons: because the disc features music that played an indelible role in a hit movie, or because it includes one or more hit singles. But then there’s the curious case of Josie and the Pussycats, a 2001 film whose box office totaled just $14 million and which featured no charting songs, yet whose soundtrack reached Number 16 on the Billboard album chart and sold well over half a million copies.
So, what could possibly explain this anomaly, this rupture in the cinema-soundtrack continuum? Was it baby-boomer nostalgia at the prospect of hearing once more the theme from the animated Josie series of the early 1970s? Doubt it. Did the film’s trailer for some reason send viewers running for the record store rather than the movie theater? Probably not, but decide for yourself: (more…)
But 10 Things was much more than a showcase for Ledger and Julia Stiles, the co-star who also used the film as a springboard to greater fame and fortune. For all the contrivances of its Shakespearean plot, the film is among the most sensible and believable of the teen genre, full of warm and funny performances from a terrific supporting cast. Grown-ups Larry Miller and Alison Janney get some of the best moments, happily – particularly Miller as an Ob-Gyn so paranoid about his daughters dating that he forces them to “wear the [empathy] belly around the living room” before they leave the house. “Kissing? That’s what you think happens [at the prom]? I’ve got news for you. Kissing isn’t what keeps me up to my elbows in placenta all day long.”
“It’s like riding a bike!” Kay Hanley exclaimed last Saturday night, acknowledging the audience’s raucous response to her reunion with Letters to Cleo at the Roxy in West Hollywood. Eight years had passed since the band’s breakup, yet – with the benefit of just three days of rehearsals in an L.A. warehouse – Hanley and her mates managed to pull together an almost impossibly tight performance as they resurrected their power-pop sound of the ’90s.