Pop has been SO BAD recently, that I...

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

...have been listening to Neil Young.

Does anyone have a more shameful confession?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I recall one byebyepride dissing me when I invoked the communal experience claim on an FT Sugababes article. I think he was probably right. Networking/myspace/youtube/profile sites etc. have surely replaced the communal for an ever-increasing segment of pop's core audience.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

i.e. EVERYONE is indie now! (There's no more pop but no more indie-as-opposite-of-pop either)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

yay, I was right!

I don't think it's about communal experience so much as an orientation towards public dissemination. i.e. by the mere fact of being released, a record becomes 'pop' (and hence even if a song is still in the mind of its writer it is always already pop) but some records choose to close this openness down, while others celebrate it. Just as no record could appeal to everyone (because of social divisions marked out in cultural forms, and the dialectic whereby popularity provokes little local antagonisms into forming), there can be no such thing as 'pure' pop (horrible horrible indie expression); and yes, everyone is indie because they pick and choose -- they are not lazy in dubdobdee's sense. (Except possibly people who listen to local commercial radio.) Best 'pop' radio station = Smash Hits on digital, but I am totally indie when I listen to it!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

That communal experience claim is one which has really stuck with me! I wouldn't claim it's an essential for great pop but it's a really great feeling.

It's less the communality of it than the effort involved which repels me - maybe if I had home internet I wouldn't feel this as much. I suspect dubdobdee was totally otm when he made his laziness claim last week - though I think eg dancing all night isn't effort at all.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think for poptimists of a certain age (over 20 probably) the desire for a vanished communal can be pretty strong (it's constantly a devil on my shoulder writing Popular, for instance). This is also what motivates 60s nostalgia too though.

Maybe the new paradigm is

pop - sharing knowledge
indie - guarding knowledge

i.e. it's in yr attitude to networking and finding things.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

But surely even indieists share knowledge with each other, rare b-sides and all of that malarkey.

I don't know how accurate my intuitive paradigm of "pop = when listening you imagine that the best setting for Song X is with other people, indie = when listening you imagine that the best setting for Song X is in your bedroom" is.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's the "with each other" that's the clincher though - also I guess there's a pop and an un-pop way of treating people who have arrived late to the knowledge. (Though in this sense maybe NOBODY is 'pop' - I guess there's always a lot of jealousy and hierarchy among fans of big teenypop bands as to who is the biggest fan, who's more of a fan etc)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

to be fair, i think this has evolved along with the emo-isation of indie

thebopkids esp.will (rightly) note existence of a actual real live danbcing till dawn community who believed that what constituted indie in (say) 1984 was the same as and would again soon be pop's idea of pop

and koganbot will (rightly) note that modern pop exists because of the eruption into the mainstream of of all manner of small-label R&B (50s defn)

[cis.livejournal.com]

I don't think this intuitive paradigm is right at all - or at least it isn't right if we're using your man-in-street defs of pop and indie! For one, there's the gig, which is often assumed among indie-ists as being the best setting for song X, which is a lot about communal experience. Indie for indie-discos isn't for sitting in yr bedroom but for hanging out and dancing with yr mates.

Also people seriously INDIE EVANGELISM, it is strong and it is there, the difference I think is that indie sharing of musical knowledge etc is more hierarchical - the granting of information, the educating of others in what is the 'right' music, the recognition of other gatekeeper types by certain codewords and handshakes - whereas pop sharing of musical fu is more a dissemination, more taken for granted, somehow more egalitarian.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Really good discussion that I missed here. :(

I am somewhat surprised that no one has voiced the way I think about these things. The "communality" and the "effort" aspects are important, but what makes something "pop" for me is some kind of intrinsic quality that makes something memorable and approachable -- the best pop must, by definition, be ubiquitous, because everyone who hears it immediately likes it, e.g., this is why 'Dragostea Din Tei' must be a really great song. How else could it come out of nowhere and become popular in so many places, despite being in a completely unintelligible language?