The History Of Pop Part 36 aka So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

AROOOO! AROOOO! GOTH ALERT! Yes, it's Now: The Placebo Years, or Now: 1997 as you might otherwise call it. I remember this as a deeply fallow time for pop but then I was living back at my parents' house, working sub-minimum wage (OK there was no minimum wage back then) and listening to EARLY MANICS records. Oh to be 23 again (not in a grillion years). Other new faces include Mansun, Sash and the Chemical Brothers. And TEH FIRST EVER INTERWEB NUMBER ONE. Well, it was if you were reading USENET.

Now 35 saw the Spice Girls triumph at the second time of asking, "Say You'll Be There" beating Pulp into a close-ish second, with Suede, the Pet Shop Boys and Undiesworld tying for third. It also saw a sudden dip in the number of people voting, probably because they were all on holiday, or because the late-90s were rub. But they weren't really, where they? Were they??!!


[Poll #708236]


VOTE ME GOOD!

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also it matters a lot what the radio - the big local stations you hear in shops etc. - is playing. In 1997 they wouldn't have been playing much pop and certainly not obscure ones, when they had the Verve etc. to occupy them. What people forget about the Spice Girls is how much they stood out - there was nobody else around like them so they cleaned up a latent pop market: (something similar could happen later this year, or next year, if the right formula was hit on).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha that brand republic thing :(

(the right formula I think would be a Spicesque 'from-nowhere' emergence: I think the reaction against 'manufactured pop' which led us to this wasteland of Bluntian acoustica and Britpop redux was v much triggered by the rash of Pop Idol programmes, cf oft-repeated assertion that "they don't produce artists with PROPER, LONG careers" despite it being patently not true!)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i am kneejerk pro most of these kinds of thing but simply wasn't paying attention at the time -- ie didn't have a social world to bounce engagement off

(ps what are your sparesonic youth LPs: can i have em?)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Er I am not sure - Dirty is the one I really like, there was a new one last year which I listened to once and can't remember if I liked, and I own but have never listened to Goo and possibly some others.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oh bah i have all those -- murray street is nice

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

when I get home I must dig them out - I keep meaning to go through them but I burnt a load off my ex-housemate when I left Cardiff and the thought of ploughing through 4-5 Sonic Youth albums was a bit daunting.