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

[tommymack.livejournal.com]

This is the first time I've become aware of this poll, which is fitting as it just about coincides with the time I became aware of pop music as a current, living, breathing thing. This was my first year of high school and Now 26 was the first Now I got (a copy of a copy of a copy, just about audible through the hiss). I remember particularly Go West blasting out of our car stereo on the way to school. I also remember Meatloaf's IWDATFL(BIWDT) being one of the first singles I ever bought (on vynil from Nantwich Woolies), Dave Cross saying Meatloaf was shit and giving me a copied tape of Nevermind (which I turned off after a couple of minutes, genuinely upset by Kurt Cobain's voice and the untamed brutality of the music - I had never heard punk or metal or much of anything before then - not to return to it it for about a year and a half, shortly before Cobain's untimely death.) It was, ironically, the Now... series that lead to decent pop and I parting company for several years, by introducing me to Blur and Oasis (and before that Primal Scream) a change in taste that saw me selling all my Meatloaf records (I got well into him for a few years) and Now...s and treading me down a blinkered and po-faced Dadrock path that I think many also walked for a few years and many still trudge along to this day.

I seem to have succumbed to nostalgia. It's all downhill from here...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The great thing about the Now polls is their inexorable forward march into the present.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

ha ha

"Go West" not Go West

[tommymack.livejournal.com]

It was the PSBs song, not the band that was blasting from our car stereo.

Re: "Go West" not Go West

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing "Go West" for the first time in a car with a future 2 Pints Of Lager writer. He thought it was fantastic, I thought they'd totally lost the plot, we had a big argument over this. He was right, though, and it's now one of my favourite PSB songs.

Re: "Go West" not Go West

[tommymack.livejournal.com]

It was the first Pet Shop Boys song I ever heard. I didn't know it was a cover. I was pretty disappointed (and still am a little bit) at the comparitive subtlelty of the rest of their output!

Re: "Go West" not Go West

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Bah, this song now has a comfortable lead. I mean, I like it 'n' all (quite a lot actually) but PSBs really should be banned from competing in Now! Polls, such is the unconditional love they seem to attract round here.

And NO FRIDAY CANON POLL about them please!!