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

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

ok of course i didn't mean it quite so literally. and i meant talking about 'the "death" of hiphop/rap' rly i suppose. the whole grammy nominations thing spawned a few articles, and there was some discussion end of last year i recall about its general decline in the way it dominates music culture esp in the us. jsl

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

There's been some talk over the fact that there hasn't been any monster selling rap albums, too - mind you there haven't been many monster selling ANYTHING albums.

[koganbot]

But hip-hop for so long was seen (at least by me) as the engine, the forward motion, of a whole hunk of modern music, and when r&b was really coming across as contemporary it was hitching itself to hip-hop. I don't know. That last statement is an exaggeration, and maybe Destiny's Child was considered as contemporary as anything. But now it feels as if to hit, hip-hop has to hitch itself to r&b. This doesn't mean that there are no interesting directions in hip-hop, just that hip-hop doesn't seem nearly as dominant. Another interesting trend is some material that's clearly r&b (JoJo, Rihanna) doing better on the Top 40 stations than on the hip-hop/r&b stations.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha I always thought of it in reverse - at least starting from the late 90s, when the Timbaland/Neptunes juggernaut (plus Shek'spere, Rodney Jerkins and so on) was primarily manifested in r&b hits rather than hip-hop hits - and at some point, maybe when crunk hit the mainstream, it switched, with virtually every r&b hit now featuring a guest rapper, with its themes leaning more towards the gangsta than ever before.