The History Of Pop Part 30 aka In this new frame of mind a thousand flowers could bloom

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Now 30, like 1995, starts slow but then explodes into full-on dance mania as high street clubbing meets pop and a flood of great, blink-and-you-miss-them hits follow. Handbagmania! In amongst the dance tunes we have dadpop, Britpop, a bit of r'n'b and a sprinkling of trip-hop. It's a big poll with some big questions: have at it.

One of the big questions is - what's going to win Now 29? Kylie and Shampoo were tied on 34 votes each, just ahead of Whigfield and Corona, so there's a straight choice to be made here. Meanwhile Oasis highpoints clustered around Cigs and Boose, Live Forever and Supersonic: Wasis make the first of several reapparances on today's poll.

1995 - what were are we thinking?


[Poll #686986]

Comments

[cis.livejournal.com]

Mmm, 'deserve' is the wrong word to use, it's more that I don't think of them as of-the-period in the same way (I liked both at the time, and now; I disliked 'sour times' tho) - I dislike the consensus forming around them the same way I disliked the sense that it was forming around Bjork in a previous Now poll; exposing the indie beneath the skin if you like - rather than consensus on the Great Pop Hits it's on the communal successful-and-still-credible. I wish we were coming up with data that didn't expose us so thoroughly as having this particular canon! Like here, when the Now29 poll comes down to 'confide in me' vs 'thouble' - a Kylie song beloved of indieists versus what boils down to a novelty record - Shampoo looks to be winning, and I think I at least voted for it because that's a vote for fun and for silly pop against canonical credible pop, not particularly because I think it's better than the other.

But then I can't see data without wanting to tweak it, it's a very bad habit of mine.

Dude, 'don't give me your life' would so be better on the dance floor than 'u sure do'! 'don't stop (wiggle wiggle)' even better, of course, and 'set you free' is stone cold bona fide classic and a dancefloor MONSTER, defeating all. I think the Poptimism floor test wouldn't suit your tastes at all. :(

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I think people are usually honest in these things which seems good even if that means the 'right' tracks don't always win i.e. good stuff not ticked simply because people never knew it or don't remember well enough etc. - it's a big factor.

As mentioned before there's another dilemma in the 'loved/hated it at the time but not now' thing. often i judge tracks too much on how i felt about them at the time - this probably counts as dishonesty if the view has changed (e.g. from annoyance to indifference), argh

this is my ongoing problem. i could just decide that Shampoo or N-Trance is great but NO - it feels like a betrayal! lame! but it is easier with other similar tracks...these are often ones i came round to over the ensuing tracks, independently of POPTIMIST GOADING ;)

generally it seems that most people here stick to their guns with one foot in the past (nothing wrong with nostalgia) and the critical view gets pushed aside. I do think 'Trouble', 'Set You Free', 'U Sure Do' etc. are great pop but i'm not evidently not judging them on that basis here...which is probably WRONG, but does make things interesting re people's prejudices.

But I ticked Shampoo over Kylie in the tie-breaker, deciding to judge on consensus idea of which one is most fun. Go figure.

You are right about Poptimism floor test vs my personal taste of course! but I don't think there'd be any real difference in reaction to Strike/Alex Party/Outhere Brothers really - they're prob. all on the same tier.

[cis.livejournal.com]

They are honest! That's why we end up with such indie-skewed results! DAMMIT PEOPLE, LIE MORE: ACT POP, TOM IS WATCHING! The not remembering factor is huge - I'm sure there's a load of things which are amazing but completely slip my mind, I find on these I can never decide on the worst track because I only remember the ones that I think are good, or maybe I think they're good because I can remember them. I can never work out whether to go with my thoughts at the time or now, either; I usually settle for an uneasy compromise or ticking everything i ever liked at some point ever. I'm quite proud of my ticking 'love me for a reason' - recognising that I did like it, i have evidence of my liking it, even if within the year i'd be mocking someone in my class for liking boyzone; and I do like it still, or perhaps like it again, or perhaps admitting that I once liked it and with reason mean that I've no reason not to like it now. But I don't seem to have the same problem with admitting to liking things I once hated (hello, uk garage!).

I have to be very careful of my susceptibility to peer pressure on these things. ^^;;

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

the not remembering factor is fine right now because i owned and played to death nows 23-33, so if i don't remember it, it CAN'T have been good.

most of my ticks are current-taste ticks, though sometimes i will remember that i loved a certain song and tick it despite a) not particularly caring about it now or b) even remembering much of it now (eg 2wo 3hirds)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i'm actually really enjoying the bjork/massive attack/portishead consensus, and didn't expect it at all. primarily because this was the music i RILLY RILLY loved at the time, but which everyone at school thought was weird and didn't 'get' - except what they liked was 'indie', so i always saw this as non-indie - and it is gratifying to see that yes, lots of people love it! also the trip-hop dudes are only really canonical in the same tokenistic sense that eg public enemy is canonical - the two obligatory non-guitar records in any given top 100 list, but never seen as any sort of aesthetic ideal to aim for over four boys + guitars.

if 'set u free' wasn't present here, and it really is the biggest monster ever, i'd be totally repping for portishead to win!

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

the other thing is if there's a consensus thing along the lines of 'yes all the pop dance/handbag/ravey stuff is automatically GRATE' that risks undermining the individual qualities of each track in that vein. it would be equally (ok, MORE) annoying if people were doing this with all the Britpop! but my pickiness has always been based on purist/rockist criteria rather than honestly judging them as justified crowd pleasing anthems with ultra-catchy hooks or whatever.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

every time someone votes for a britpop song, somewhere a handbag house diva dies :(

i find that the collective attitude towards the bosh stuff is incredibly severe - there's either MASSIVE CONSENSUS (eg the last corona, the two 2 unlimited songs wot won) or the song gets, like, 5 votes because no one remembers it (eg this corona, the other 2 unlimited songs). there's very little genre consensus anywhere in the now polls actually - except possibly the pre-lilith women like lisa loeb, sophie b hawkins, scarlet, who always get almost exactly the same no of votes each time from prob the exact same people, and inevitably place bang in the middle with 50%.

[cis.livejournal.com]

See, I think of all that tokenistic canon stuff as being indie! Tokenistic it may be but it's central to the indie canon, more so than is a lot of actual 'indie' music - indie at this point, for me, boils down to 'what was in vox', and the first issue of vox I can remember owning had interviews with Radiohead, Bjork, REM-- conveniently I think it was a year rundown of 1995 or something? So it gave me a sense of the terrain that I never really lost, and portishead etc were definitely definitely treated as part of the in-group of bands one was supposed to recognise, not an external-but-known factor as was e.g. Goldie, or indeed... I think Ice Cube was interviewed in that issue or one soon after? And you knew he was from outside, there was a certain archness or distance or something to the tone, beyond the obvious things like his being a) a rap artist b) black.

You know, kind of unrelatedly, I never really had to deal with the set 'boys who liked oasis' beyond, like, my brother-- anyway I liked Oasis! My first ever gig was Paul Weller! Who am I trying to kid etc etc etc. I was aware of the concepts 'boys who liked ugly kid joe' and 'boys who liked rage against the machine', that was where I could sense that sort of testosterone-normative attitude (about which I was very very ambivalent); after a while my brother and I divided on blur-v-oasis lines, slightly girly-vs-laddish, but-- there were as many posters of Liam Gallagher as of Damon Albarn in Just 17, you know?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

ah i never read vox! (or indeed any music mag growing up, really.)

i will admit that i totally, totally privilege music which smacks of 'sonic innovation' (ugh what a phrase) - most of my enrapturement with portishead, bjork etc at the time was sonic, like wtf are these amazing sounds i have never heard them before. and this has consistently carried over into my taste! timbaland-r&b, trendy dahnce and so on. oasis et al were the total antithesis of this hence super-hatred.

i can't believe l gallacunt got in j17. i am appalled.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

He was quite the sexpot!

This subthread has been really interesting. I will reply in a new post!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

he looked like an ape!

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

but despite this you didn't get into drum&bass/techstep no? of course it was often quite far from Pop (more than Portishead etc.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i didn't have as much access to it - i heard and liked the little which got into the charts, and really enjoyed goldie's album, but this was pre-internet and i was a teenager in rural somerset: no access to the scene itself (ie the clubs) and no real way to hear the music.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

ha ha. i liked both Ugly Kid Joe and Rage at one point. had a very weird US rock phase between 93-94 that wasn't particularly discerning because it all felt vaguely new. i absolutely hated House & Garage at that point but the whole thing shifted radically again a year later.

this in turn re-inforces the absurdity of the Blur v Oasis thing. i didn't know anybody who hated one but loved the other. it was just a matter of which one you preferred slightly. unless you hated both, and i knew a few who did.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

We're also coming up with other data via the 'best song' question:

6: Portishead - Glory Box

4: East 17 - Stay Another Day
Kenny Dope presents Teh Bucketheads - The Bomb (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)
N Trance - Set You Free

3: Scarlet - Independent Love Song
Massive Attack ft Tracy Thorn - Protection

and it's just noise from there on.

Also also there's obviously a massive canonicalization effect on the songs which are great but you have to reminded which ones they are. Songs you heard in (indie) clubs = you could ask your friends at the time. Songs you heard on the radio, not so much.