i leave you alone for one day and look what travesties ensue

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Poptimists. We need to talk.

You really let me down yesterday.

Ciara’s ‘Goodies’ is a poptimist touchstone, and Miss Ciara Princess Harris a poptimist heroine on a par with Kelis, Britney, Xtina, Aaliyah, Rachel and Kylie. Yet you did not give her the respect she deserved as the first lady of crunk’n’b. To add insult to injury, she appears to have been beaten by both past-it Chemical Brothers and dreadful indie Killers.

I’m disappointed in you.

Explain yourselves please.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

As I said on the other thread - and I still think this is right - crunk was a bit of a dealbreaker. "Goodies" is great but it's harsher, cruder, more repetitive than the big pop'n'B hits of the early 00s.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm saying this based partly on the responses of pop fans/indie kids on the Poptimism/Club FT dancefloor. "Goodies" got decent reception when it was given a run-out but it was never a monster.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

But it's totally softened-up crunk, it doesn't have Lil Jon bellowing over it. I'm definitely curious as to why Lil Jon was never embraced as a producer/auteur like Timbaland and the Neptunes were...obviously his signature sound is different but it's in the same field, and with the other two losing ground around this time it should have been the ideal time for the crunk sound to step into the breach (fronted by Ciara, Brooke Valentine, Nivea et al).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Because his signature sound was shouting and thumping! Anyway he was embraced to some extent but the lure that hooked a lot of 'non-pop' listeners into pop (around the turn of the century) was "Listen to these amazing sophisticated productions". I'm not saying that Jon ISN'T sophisticated but the intricacies of what he does are harder to detect.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think his signature sound when it came to r&b (as opposed to hip-hop) was more "broken mobile phone noises" and "really really sparse grooves" and "squeaky ravey sounds" - ie not entirely dissimilar to Timbaland stuff! And people embraced 'Hollaback Girl' which is basically the epitome of shouting and thumping over sophistication.

I guess one possible conclusion is that the turn-of-century Golden Age may have hooked non-pop people into the pop of the time and also pop-as-genre, it hooked them into the r&b of the time but for some reason NOT r&b-as-genre.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think the post-soul singing style of R&B was always a sticking point.

Timbaland's productions may have used a similar palette but they were nearly always much less rough and aggressive.

I think Grime failed to cross-over for a similar reason - hostile-sounding music very rarely reaches a massive audience.