Poptimists Review of 2006: Genre Of The Year

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What was the sound of 2006? That's what we're asking in the second of our end of year polls, discussing the genre of the year. Contenders - drawn from your nominations - include...

Teenpop: Teen confessional and pop narrative (a la High School Musical) drove the genre on in '06 - more teen than ever.
R&B: From Bouncy's hi-gloss dramas through Ciara and Justin's takes on the Prince legacy to Cassie's minimal precision.
Electro: Still the sound of the clubs in 06 (like I'd know) and with big high street traction too.
Emo: The comment box's friend and the parent's foe - whatever it is, it's selling.
Nu Rave: A shot in the arm for indie or a lame NME concoction? 2006's most enigmatic genre.

(A special note: I didn't put "POP" in cos it's all pop, innit. I went for Teenpop as a more specific option, and one picked by as many people.)

[Poll #891678]

You can still vote in yesterday's poll - and still nominate in the remaining 8 categories. Final results collated in the new year!

Tomorrow I'm at home, with YouTube access, which means it's a good day to do the Video Of the Year poll.

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I was tempted to tick emo but I think 2006, despite most electro releases I've been listening to having come out in 2005, was when electro really got thought about- it's even been the rise of emotronica with Panic! At The Disco and other scamps with keyboards running around all over the place. R'n'b's current electronic angle is also interesting and a lot of the minimalist leanings in other genres this year are, I think, borrowed from electro. (Cassie springs instantly to mind here but there's also the rise of Gym Class Heroes, who are quite stripped back in a lot of places and with Bloc Party cropping up again, minimalist indie is flitting around a bit)

Emotronica may actually be the sound of 2006, to be honest. I feel like I should have ticked emo still, because nearly everything I've said also applies to emo and it's hard to conceive of being able to look back on 2006 without thinking of Gerard Way and his Chemical Romances (or lack thereof- get back on the drugs, boy!) who can, by no stretch of the imagination, be called 'minimal.' They are a bit electronic occasionally.

Maybe 2006 was actually something of a restoration of glam, now I think about it. Well, this was inconclusive.

[koganbot]

R'n'b's current electronic angle is also interesting

Indeed! But I'd say that this derives from the Dirty South and Miami bass and dancehall. Of course, Southern hip-hop has always had way more interplay with club music than Northern hip-hop has, so the South's current commercial dominance just means that more people are aware of the electronics, not that it's new. But its use in a big way in r&b may be relatively new. Or maybe not. I'll have to think.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about US geographical genres but I was thinking the northern stuff has had a bit of an electronic injection, with Timbaland's current work relying a lot on synths and stuff? I dunno, maybe he is Southern.

I was trying to think of a way to articulate the fact I feel this says something about the rise of the south in US sociological whatsits overall, what with the current Republican politics seeming to accuse the North of not being American but I think that's probably just some kind of horribly flawed observation caused by not being from/living in the US.

[koganbot]

Well, the southern hip-hoppers are probably voting Democratic anyway. Timbaland is from the South - both he and the Neptunes are from Virginia Beach - though he's his own distinct thing, not considered Dirty South. But my point is that this electronic stuff has been part of hip-hop from 1977 on - from whenever Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash first started paying attention to Kraftwerk. So it isn't as if Cassie and Timbo et al. are borrowing from something external called "electro." Odd thing is that though Bambaataa is from NYC, and Arthur Baker is from Boston, when their "Planet Rock" hit (1982), its main influence on the north was in NY freestyle (dance acts like Shannon and C-Bank) not hip-hop, whereas it was Southern hip-hop (and Miami freestyle) that embraced the record.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I was more trying to say that the current r'n'b sounds fit into the umbrella genre of electro, as I see it, than say that they're especially influenced by it. Obviously everything trails back to the invention of the keyboard etc. but I'm more thinking about the pan-genre use of electronic instruments. I dunno, I find it interesting that r'n'b, a genre that's (in the UK, anyway) had its difficulties in the last few years gains something of a renaissance by using electronic instruments and stuff when electro had seemed to be on the plunge pre-Confessions On A Dancefloor. At least, that's my perception of it... I dunno.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Did r&b ever plunge OR stop using electro sounds though? Maybe because it was so ubiquitous 1999-2002 that it seemed like a plunge (and yeah the Rich Harrison retro production was responsible for its two biggest moments since) but - if we take as read that the turn-of-century Golden Age of r&b was predominantly electro - since 2003 there's been:

- 'Yeah' by Usher
- All the Ciara singles
- All the other crunk'n'b (Mariah Carey's comeback, Teairra Marí, Cassie, Brooke Valentine)
- 'Lose My Breath' by Destiny's Child
- 'Baby Boy' and 'Naughty Girl' by Beyoncé; 'Touch' by Amerie
- the Scott Storch shiny production style used by 50 Cent, Pussycat Dolls et al
- a host of riddim-based dancehall knock-offs (Rihanna, Nina Sky, Lumidee et al)
- 'Lose Control' by Missy & Ciara

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Electro in r&b and hip-hop seems to come from a totally, totally different place to European electro though - I guess 80s electro like Afrika Bambaataa ties it together but I don't know much about that. But even when 00s r&b sounds not dissimilar to 00s electro, it's not nearly as informed by house and techno - which of course are the foundations for The Knife, Annie, Rachel Stevens et al. All of which is tied up with the hip-hop = macho, dance = gay thing as well. But even 'Me & U', which could totally feature on a minimal house mix without sounding out of place, seems to share that sound by accident more than design.

Also is electro r&b really such a recent development? I mean, this is what Timbaland was pioneering ten years ago, yes?

[koganbot]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, and Timbo derives from dancehall and Miami bass and Dr. Dre, so this goes way way back into the mists of time.