I Love #1's - 1997

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

What ho, pop-pickers! Last week's jaunt back to 1954 was something of a non-starter, with only 12 voters having heard anything on the list! Secret Love, Such A Night and This Ole House all tied with a piffling 8 votes each, but our Doris was the overall victor in the tie-break box. This week we have something for everyone. The last death throes of Brit-rock, teenpop perfection, lots of songs about dead people and...Tubby Toast? It's 1997!

[Poll #824745]

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think this is one of the years I'm least looking forward to doing on P'lar. I don't love the shiny pop nearly as much as the 96 or 98 equivs, and I hate the dreary britrock even more!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

At least it's about half and half dreary/shiny. But when I wrote the blurb up the top it really did strike me how morbid this year was!

Professional WIDOW
I'll be missing BIGGIE
Candle in DIANA
Richard Ashcroft's MUM (or someone)
Lou Reed turning in his GRAVE (ok not quite)

[cis.livejournal.com]

My reaction to this year is barely even critical, I think? It's mostly just ("just") a really important year for me, personally, in terms of my relationship to music, a point at which I was experiencing everything. All this stuff I'd nowadays shrug off as schlock-sentimental or substandard or cynical or... whatever, that at the time was fresh and moving and more meaningful than anything else.

I secretly don't think of the dreary britrock as separate from pop, even!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean it wasn't really actually separate from pop.

Actually that's an interesting thought - the original move from Swinging London pop to late 60s rock was marked by a format shift to albums (and a radio format shift too!) which left the singles chart actually somewhat adrift (the period currently being covered on Popular) - maybe one of the things that made britrock SO irksome was its total refusal/inability to give up the pop infrastructure of radio/video airplay, appearances on TV shows etc.

[cis.livejournal.com]

And there was that weird thing where they still acted like they were Taking On The Man by appearing on TOTP and having number one records - they were still locked in the groove of the indie mindset, even the boorish beerish stuff. I think that's lasted, you know? Current irksome britrock stuff - yer Coldplays and whatevers - still does what's left of the singles-based promo trail, and still acts like it's surprising. ("britrock is teh art of pretend indie ethic" etc etc.)

Mind you I don't think I consider it irksome, anymore! I have come a complete 180 on this.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

this is why I refer to Oasis et al as indie!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Tell me more of yr love of SNOW PATROL!

[cis.livejournal.com]

I have not got that far yet but I am working on it! Amazingly sentimental stuff with string sections tacked on for ADDED EXTRA GRAVITAS is kind of amazing, though, how it pounds and chimes and soundtracks preview commercials for One Tree Hill with people sighing mopily!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I would agree but I wish they'd drop the singing style, LET JEFF BUCKLEY REST.

[cis.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that weedy overhigh straining that remembers how "jeff buckley never had any vocal training" but forgets the "however he was a singing genius" bit! I like to think of it as the beating, yearning, frailly fluttering heart of the stuff. (oddly enough one of the things that 180'd me on it was r'n'b use of the general eggy-sentimental sonics, but twinned with female voices that have such things as depth, ability to hold a tune, control of emotion, etc.)

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

This was a HUGE year for sales though - obviously Elton's as the biggest ever, but also Aqua, Teletubbies, Perfect Day & Puffie all sold over a million copies. If I recall correctly this was one of the biggest years for single sales ever, rivalled only by a couple at the end of the 70s.