poptimists | Canon to the left of them

Yesterday's Now poll spawned an interesting subthread w/Lex, Cis and Stevem discussing the emergent 'Poptimist canon' coming out of these Now votes, esp. with reference to trip-hop, and the pendulum swing between the Big Hit eurodance singles which get a ton of votes and the lesser-known ones which suddenly get zero votes.

The trip-hop thing doesn't entirely surprise me because there was a point at which EVERYBODY I knew liked Portishead (and then totally forgot about them by the time the second alb came out), but then I'm a good 5 years older than the people who were discussing it and they were quite a student-friendly band in many ways. I have been a little surprised by the shape of the Now winners, because I simply didn't think there was THAT much affection for big 90s dance-pop hits - again this is an age thing, they were so despised by a lot of people I knew at the time.

The weird skew on europop though is simply down to most of the voters not really thinking of Culture Beat, Corona etc as more than one-hit wonders, for whatever reason I think a lot of people aren't motivated to check out other tracks by someone who did a massive dancepop hit they loved.

I remember saying to Mark S in the pub a few weeks back that it'll be interesting to see at what point the canon really starts breaking down, when the nostalgia effect wears off. I'm not totally sure I can articulate what I mean by that though.

Not about NOW Polls:

The Official List Of Things "Teenage Life" By Daz Sampson Has Reminded Tom Of

Pink Floyd - "Another Brick In The Wall Part 2"
Coolio - "Gangsta's Paradise"
ARSE Weapons - "Hey World"
Denim - "It Fell Off The Back Of A Lorry"

It's ONE WEEK to the pop quiz!