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]

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.