The History Of Pop Part 26 aka My life is a cage but onstage I'm free

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Now 26 stakes a claim for 1993 as BEST YEAR EVAR - a line-up packed with heavyweights and it's a sad quirk of fate that only one can qualify. Compare if you will Now 25, which "All That She Wants" won at a canter from New Order, and then a chasing pack of relatively low scorers (including though a disgracefully high mark for "Everybody Hurts" of all things!).

But this - this is a different matter! Post-Soviet gay disco! Jacko-tweaked R'n'B! Will Smith! Mr Raider! And a wealth of brilliant bit players like Stakka Bo and Apache Indian too. Which will be the winner? I'm hoping for a play-off frankly. The overall impression here is of a thriving, bustling, multifaceted and multicultural pop landscape, a chart happy to gobble the best from the UK, US and Europe, a rich pop ecosystem which it will be instructive to compare with the soon-coming "Britpop years"...


[Poll #678617]

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

How can anyone not like Bjork?! She's amazing! You are the first person I've met who doesn't like Bjork. Explain yourself!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Its her winsome gurgling preciousness, I think, that revolts me most.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

But she doesn't gurgle all that much! And when she does she usually counters it with some quite banging or out-there sounds. I've never thought of her as twee, ever.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I've never not thought of her as twee.

I've also never fought past her presence on the records to focus on the production and sounds, which I think are probably pretty good. I danced to a mix of "Army Of Me" once that was great but had v.little Bjork on it.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can understand people taking against her voice, it is a love-it-or-hate-it prospect, like Tom Waits as well, and Mariah Carey.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I don't like her much. First album OK in places, this single good, about 1/5th of the sugarcubes good. Rest varies between irritating and really irritating.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The Sugarcubes are OK cos of Einar, but their particular idea was much better realised by Aqua.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I REALLY DON'T LIKE LOBSTER!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Mentalism!

I thought she was one of those people, like Pet Shop Boys and Missy, who were just a universally acknowledged GOLD STANDARD of music!

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

No, sanity.

I don't think I've heard anything after her first album that's even remotely intrigued me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Not even Homogenic? With all those lovely lovely STRINGS? Not even the VITALIC REMIX of 'Who is It?'

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Nope.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

she was hit and miss with me for a while but in the end i came to really like all of Debut and most of the other stuff. Homogenic is amazing but maybe a bit too angry for me to really love as I really loved Bjork's happy pop stuff (Alarm Call was closest to this on Homogenic). i think she went a bit patchy again after that but she'll always come out with something remarkable ('Oceania' is awesome).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

'Oceania' is one of those two-favourite-artists-working-together moments you never believe will actually happen. Even when Bjork's patchy (Medúlla) she's patchy in an interesting way - I can't think of many other artists who've been so explicitly avant-garde (in image as well as sound) in the pop mainstream.

'Pluto' off of Homogenic is astonishingly hardcore angry but also hardcore banging: I must play it out one day.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I can't think of many other artists who've been so explicitly avant-garde (in image as well as sound) in the pop mainstream.

ARRRGHHH the playing of this card is also what annoys me about Bjork.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Snap.

Momus has used similar lines in the past re Bjork.