New Pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If you haven't voted in the Poptimists demographic survey, please do!

It makes interesting reading (FOR ME!) so far - we have a couple of years clearly in front as far as pan-generational excitement goes, and the agegroup distribution patterns are intriguing too - more detail on all this when I've got more votes in. The agegroup distribution is shaping up as expected - the majority of Poptimists (about 2/3) are in their twenties, with a handful under and a chunk over.

Something which does interest me in terms of the results - very few votes so far* for the early 80s, 80-83, the years of New Pop. New Pop has been repeatedly invoked - often by people who wouldn't consider themselves 'poptimists' I grant you - as a kind of pop ideal. Certainly as far as this - hugely unrepresentative - community goes, though, the number of people who remember it as exciting is dwindling. To recall New Pop as a critical moment you need to be 35 or more, I'd guess - even to remember it clearly as a pop moment you'd need to have hit 30. At some point New Pop is going to shift from being a beacon of inspiration to a stick to beat the kids with - perhaps that point has already passed...?

*(it's v.unscientific of me to mention this as there may now be a spike).

Comments

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I remember the tracks and artists that comprised new pop being around, but being born in 1975 wasn't at all aware of its newness. It was just pop. I suppose a kind of new pop as default setting theory could be used to explain some of my deep rooted pop preferences, though I can't think of any supporting examples off the top of my head.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

so what yr saying tom is "community needs more old giffers"?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When I say "beat the kids" I probably more accurately mean "beat current pop".

[thenipper.livejournal.com]

I have been using it as a stick to beat young'uns with for some time now!

[cis.livejournal.com]

Greg and I were talking bout New Pop the other day! We decided it was the last time that indie people had tried to make pop records and actually made pop, rather than trying to make pop and still coming up with indie.

I like New Pop well enough I suppose, but I think of it as simultaneously being pop and not-pop, it's somehow disqualified from being er 'real pop'. I don't know whether this is because I was born in the early eighties so it had already passed into a series of canons before I could start thinking about it? The first time I came across ABC, Culture Club, etc was in the pages on Q magazine, after all. It's kind of... acceptable, credible, in a way that e.g. the Bay City Rollers or whatever aren't.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i am so ignorant. i have never heard of this era's name of which you speak. however it was great.</oldgiffer>

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

1. New Pop didn't exist o/s the pages of NME.

2. I tentatively considered mentioning 1981 as one of my 3 years, but then I remembered being very annoyed by a lot of what actually got in the charts that year. For every 1x "Tainted Love", "Favourite Shirts" "Prince Charming" or "Don't You Want Me" (not to mention all the great pop that wasn't yet ready to cross over from Peel-land: Pigbag, Grandmaster Flash, Altered Images) there seemed to be 10x "Birdie Song", Shakey, Julio Iglesias and Stars on 45-type medley records. (Checking everyhit.com I find this to be Not Actually True, but that's how it felt at the time.)

Age isn't everything

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Do not discount the influence of the Older Sibling on one's pop makeup! Were it not for graciousviv a) playing me all her rekkids as soon as she bought them b) leaving behind said rekkids upon departure from nest I would not have half the pop knollidge I do now. PEPSI AND SHIRLEY WHO etc.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

My gran dressing me up as Adam Ant was the closest I got to the new pop.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

But belatedly discovering that era of pop (ie when I wasn't five) made me realise I loved pop as well as indie in the first place!