The Historiography of Pop Part 9 aka TEH FINAL

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Right, after 72 polls and a squidillion votes it's come down to this. In one corner the Pet Shop Boys, in the other Pulp.

I would do pictures of them but we all know what they look like.

[Poll #806433]

Please answer both questions!

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

By which I mean, "Yr vote is only valid if you answer both questions". :)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

ooh, hark at you ;)

man this is hard...

One more chance to keep you satisfied

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

obviously if PSB win, I will claim that it was my blurb wot won it.

[dansette.livejournal.com]

I forgot to say I also voted PSBs because the video for Always on My Mind doesn't star Sadie Frost.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

anyone finding this an easy choice should re-examine their idea of poptimism

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I found it an easy choice, but only because one of these is my 2nd favourite single by my 2nd favourite band ever, and the other is my 4th favourite single by my 40th favourite band ever.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

one of the songs is genius pop pinnacle. the other is ok-ish 7/10 second-rate indie bobbins which has long worn thin (and isn't even that band's best song). NO CHOICE.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

It was an incredibly easy choice, and it has nothing to do with indie vs pop or anything like that. I'm tired of hearing Common People, but I don't think I will ever get sick of Always On My Mind.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

are people saying 'Common People' is 7/10 for Indie pop, or just 7/10 as a song in general?

cos I do think it is 10/10 in both respects. but i am very, very bored of it (bored of AOMM but not quite as much), if not quite talking about it, yet (sorry Ricky T!).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"The Lex" != "People".

If it had got to No.1 it would get at least an 8 in Popular, probably more.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Thing is, it's not like voting against it will stop people talking about it either.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

There were so many GREAT songs in the poll... how the hell did these two make it to the final?

Voted for PSB out of hatred for Jarvis and his Pulps. But seriously, how? Why? What is wrong with you, O Poptimism Faithful?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

everytime you tick out of hate, somewhere a poptimism fairy dies

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I guess you have to have been there to get this worked up (negatively, anyway) about Pulp. Admittedly I'm a bit tired of "Common People" but I love Jarvis, and always will I think, whereas PSBs I only appreciate somewhat abstractedly. And "Always on My Mind" especially so.

In any case, as more of us should be saying: This final should've been something more like "Can't Get You Out of My Head" vs. "...Baby One More Time."

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

awesomewells: The intro is the most joyout 'OMG MUST RUSH TO DANCEFLOOR NOW!' moment in the history of pop

On reading this, I thought you'd recanted and voted Pulp! I definitely can't remember the intro to AOMM.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

another thing that can't tell them apart. they both have amazing, distinctive, euphoric sounds in the first .5 seconds.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

How is this possible?! Than enormous synth fanfare!

Common People isn't actually very danceable at all for the first couple of minutes.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Theory: There is such a thing as a great intro, and there is such a thing as a distinctive intro to a great song. These things serve the same purpose.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Cannot believe there is no BRITTERS in the final. Travesty, etc. She IS Poptimism.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

yes i would've been happy enough to see 'Toxic' win. it seems a shame to have nothing that recent in le grand finale.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I listened to all the final four at lunchtime and I've reached the conclusion that:

a) All The Things She Said is by MILES the most 'rock' of the semi-finalists, especially that self-consciously epic sweep that's at the same time a bit tense and portentous

b) As opposed to the self-consciously epic sweep of Always On My Mind which seems to want to do nothing but go up and up and up. It's also one of the best arranged synthpop records ever, the way the string stabs echo the chorus line, that high pitched noise right over the top just before Tennant sings "if I made you feel second best", the DRUM FILLS. Fuck it, this is the best record to have won any of the Now! polls and it deserves to win the whole thing.

[koganbot]

ATTSS is rather clumsy rock at that, a beat that pounds and plods (which rock needn't do), and the yearning moment of "this is not enough" is not enough to compensate. Also is worse than five or six tracks on the second t.A.T.u. alb.

[koganbot]

Though I ticked "Always On My Mind" in the semis, I think that the PSBs are disco dulled down so as to accommodate bohemian sensibilities and sidestep disco's outrageousness and glamour and intensity; alternately, they're Europop dulled down for people who can't take Europop's bread-and-butter immediacy and catchiness. In other words, PSB too PBS. (But to qualify this opinion, in general I think a little bit of PBS is better than no PBS, and I think a lot of disco and Europop may not be PBS enough, that at least some of it could gain energy from a smattering of social ambition; I just find PSB's ambitiousness too placid; I mean, sounds like R.E.M. Depeche Mode are better. [Pet Shop Boys are the R.E.M. of disco; Depeche Mode are the Simon & Garfunkel of disco.])

[koganbot]

Oh, and could someone who speaks British as a first language translate PBS into British, as I don't feel qualified to?

[koganbot]

Judging by the semis, the race will get closer as the day wears on (in fact is getting closer even as I type).

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Only three votes in it now!

I Never Thought Of Anyone Else But You

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Aside from the arrangement, what makes this version of AOMM my favourite is that it's starting from a position of strength, not weakness. Deep down Tennant knows he's going to be forgiven (and about halfway through the song, after the "Telllll me" part, it's not even 'deep down' any more, and the song is a shout of triumph more than an act of contrition). But Tennant is apologising anyway, because he's in love and so he wants to.

Re: I Never Thought Of Anyone Else But You

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Or "Because he's English and so he wants to."

Longer Why

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

My pet theory abt ballads is that the best ones have to be covers because there's always a moment when the fact that you know what's coming next becomes suddenly and shiningly secondary to the fact that it's STILL TRUE - the best example I can think of for this is 'There's nothing I confess/ Could make me love you less' in the Girls Aloud 'I'll Stand By You', it seems impossible and then true and heartbreaking and important. I totally agree with Tom that in AOMM "tellll me" is that moment only yeah, he knows and we know that it hasn't died, for better or worse...

Re: Longer Why

[cis.livejournal.com]

YES.

(but but but you see this is grammar, or theory, or long division, or the BREAK of a trance record, or the LEAP of a house one - the moment when logic and instinct suddenly coincide, when something you long suspected was true is confirmed, when something you've just heard turns out to be what you've always known, when objective and subjective truth meet like the kiss of two parabolas, when the world for just one blissful second WORKS)