poptimists | Poptimists Review of 2006: Genre Of The Year

Poptimists Review of 2006: Genre Of The Year

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.

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A qn for 2007 - what can mainstream emo and confessional teenpop learn from one another?

I think it has to be emo.

Although HSM was certainly a sensation, I personally had very little sense of this being an unusually big year in teen pop. The same goes for R&B, although I have to admit that I generally don't listen to R&B BECAUSE IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE (although our of a sense of obligation I try to check out whatever Lex says I should).

I only voted for electro under duress because I've listened to and enjoyed more of it in 2006 than any of the other genres but its not as prevalent as every other year since 2002.

RnB - as usual, liked a few tracks, liked the Big Tunes less than Big Tunes from other year, still can't see myself progressing beyond the dilettante stage sometime soon

Teenpop - there's not been enough of the good stuff in the UK charts for me to pay attention

Emo - Rubbish

Nu-Rave - Doesn't exist

how come we're not discussing the death of rap?

Unless you see Aly & A.J. as teen confessional - I think their music is very personal, but they're not playing the role of singer-songwriter taking you on their emotional and intellectual journey through relationships and poetry and stuff - teen confessional tanked this year. The mediocre Cheyenne Kimball had mediocre numbers on Radio Disney, though she did get a little play on Top 40. There's the promising Jordan Pruitt, but she's only had a couple singles and they didn't put up good numbers either, and it's not clear what direction she'll go. In the teenpop market, Ashlee's fading and Lindsay's nowhere. The new Avril got 12 Disney plays in its first week, and I don't see it rising far ('cause it's not very good). Right now Disney movie and TV tie-ins are the big thing: Hannah Montana and High School Musical stars, w/ Aly & A.J. maintaining their presence and a really interesting story - that I've failed to get any of you to pay attention to - being the non-Disney-contracted boy-rock-band Jonas Bros., whose cover of Busted's "Year 3000" has been the song that's most consistently challenged Hannah Montana at the top of the Disney charts over the last half of the year. And meanwhile, their album got perpetually delayed by Columbia, who then dropped the band shortly after the album was released.

for year to be nicked from i shd have sed = 1320!

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.

But where confessional might be breaking big is in country, where women influenced by Jewel and Sheryl are making their mark. My attention to country being sporadic and relatively recent, I don't know how long this has been going on (need to track down the first two Deana Carter albums, from the '90s). Stay tuned for the Wreckers and Taylor Swift (hitting big) and Ashley Monroe (struggling for airplay; "Satisfied" is by far the best of her two singles).

The Wreckers, if you don't know, are the duo Jessica Harp and Michelle Branch, both ex-teenpoppers; Michelle Branch's "Everywhere" from 2001 was the first big teenpop singer-songwriter hit and set the template for much of what was to follow from Avril and Ashlee and the like. The Wreckers' two hit singles are only so-so, but the album has some really nice personal-angst slush in the middle, with instrumentation and sound that's only nominally country, if even that. The Wreckers' sound is more interesting than their words, but Taylor's got great words, and she's a much smarter singer, has a smart sense of when to hold back. Also, her big hit is about looking back with bittersweet memories at an early love, a fairly common theme in country since Deana's "Strawberry Wine," but usually done by someone in her twenties or thirties, not by a sixteen-year-old. And there's an aggressive subtext: "When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think my favorite song," can mean "I hope you have warm memories of me," but also can mean "I hope I haunt you, fucker, the way you haunted me. Sincerely, your discarded girlfiend, Taylor."

...about people's reasons for picking the years they did in answer to Tom's question, unless they were mostly just joshing. I seem to have mindmelded with Frank, but I suspect we might have different reasons for giving our answers. Mine was partly perversity, partly a feeling that people don't actually spend much time going 'which bit of the past to plunder' since this seems like a bog-standard rock-crit approach rather than a way anyone actually makes music (although the two can mix), and partly a sense that whatever is happening this year in music, it's happening away from the spotlight, and there's maybe a whole load of things in incubation, ready to blow up bigger: also we're about due for some hybridity which isn't 'crossover'.

Power Metal was robbed :(

The Internet is killing music!

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Boys on one side, girls on the other

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Teen confessional tanked this year

bim bom bim bom bim bom bi-i-m, bim diddle diddle diddle diddle bom bim bom

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But where confessional might be breaking big...

I'm curious...

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