Zenlike Immaturity: iCarly Week: Miranda Cosgrove's Music

Miranda never achieved the pop music success of other teen stars such as Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. In fact, she didn't even best network-fellows Big Time Rush or the Victorious cast. But her music had a special quality to it. Her catalog over the years was an erratic hodgepodge of ever-shifting styles, completely unexpected from a corporate act presumably pushed into music just to bank off of her tween star power.

Her earliest material is ballsy, gruffly-produced, electric and hard rocking, like a mid-90s alt-y girlpop powerhouse ala Garbage. Her middle-work is more of a basic pop/rock outfit mixing typical rock instrumentation with pristine synth tracks, invoking comparisons to any number of early 21st Century pop singers like Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, Natalie Imbruglia, et. al. Her latter material pushes forward to the modern day with powerful EDM dance beats and spacey dance club lyrics. In all likelihood Miri's producers simply couldn't decide what direction they wanted her music to go in, but the resulting discography is a set of nuanced and varied pop gems, befitting the kind of smart selection I would expect from a pop visionary like Lady Gaga.

I had the pleasure of seeing Miranda's Dancing Crazy tour from front row center seats, and she put on a great show with a talented band. It's a shame her music never reached the noteriety of her Disney counterparts, because with iCarly gone we're unlikely to ever see her tour again. But thankfully we'll always have the studio work to jam with.

While pretty much all her stuff is excellent, and I could list a dozen A+ honorable mentions (Disgusting, Sayonara, Bam, et al!) I'll keep this short and sweet and list just the undeniable creme de la creme of her catalog. Here are the top five greatest Miranda Cosgrove songs.

Top 5 Miranda Cosgrove Should-Be Classics

#5 FYI (About You Now)

^ This deep cut from Miri's early period is girlish badass fun in the best way, with a pounding drum beat, snarky lyrics and a crunchy guitar behind a punchy synth. It's full of such genuine abandon it seems to capture the fun and fear inherent in young love.

#4 Beautiful Mess (Sparks Fly: Deluxe Edition)

^ With a late-90s chittering hip hop percussion track over cascading piano runs and moaning vocals, this gorgeously melodramatic ballad could have been a Destiny's Child outtake. It's one of the most beautiful and unique tracks in Miri's discography and it is just achingly cool.

#3 Headphones On (iCarly: Music From and Inspired By the Hit TV Show)

^ Here's the song that made me fall in love with Miranda's music in the first place. Featuring fucking ferocious guitar riffage throughout, Miri sings the praises of laziness and gives a big F-U to responsibility like a true grunger. It's catchy, it's fun, it reminds me of Tom Petty, and anyone who loves to dance around their room to their favorite song can relate to its message.

#2 Leave It All To Me [Billboard Remix] (iSoundtrack II)

^ This bouncing, dubstep-style baller of a club jam was the perfect finale to Miri's music career, appearing on her last release (the second iCarly soundtrack). It's only 3 minutes long, but unlike all the other banal "remixes," this is a legitimate dance song with real pulsating power. I still say Dancing Crazy is absolutely begging for an ethereal 8-minute Dave Aude dance mix, but I'm overjoyed that we actually received one serious Miranda Cosgrove dance remix before her time in music ran out.

#1 Face of Love (High Maintenance)

^ Face of Love is a genuinely brilliant pop song. Smooth and cool, catchy and unique. It's a perfect tune from its subtle, mysterious guitar riff, to its stuttering heart beat pulse, to its universal but vivid lyrics. It's such a cosmic jam it's worthy of ultra-hip indie pop dreamweaver Imogen Heap, and Miranda Cosgrove manages to pull of the gig with impressive competence.

Jen's Music

The illustrious Jennette McCurdy also attempted a music career during her time in iCarly. And while her country style doesn't appeal to me as much as Miranda's pop, the talent in Jennette's music is undeniable. She even wrote some of her own songs, and it's plain to see that she's one of the most technically proficient singers on Nick or Disney. Here are a couple of her better tracks.