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

I'm curious...

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

...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'.

Re: I'm curious...

[koganbot]

You're on the money. For instance, the fact that the Ciara album samples "It Takes Two" and references "S.U.P.E.R.S.O.N.I.C" doesn't mean that she's going '80s but rather that r&b has fully absorbed the hip-hop strategy, which is that you pilfer everything. Back in my Drunken Tiger review I'd said that the basic hip-hop aesthetic is that "Less is more, and more is more too," which means that you can build a track around a real simple element, and then pile everything in atop this element. But that goes back to disco, too. One thing I'm noticing is that over the last decade hip-hop, especially through crunk, has been using sonics from the Euroromantic orchestral palette. But his doesn't mean that hip-hop is going back to the 19th century, but rather that Lil Jon et al. listened to the music on suspense-film soundtracks. (Which isn't necessarily to say that he doesn't listen to Euroromantic composers. But even if he studies them assiduously, that doesn't make his music a throwback to late 19th and early 20th century Europe. I mean, I study Macaulay's sentence forms, but my writing style belongs to the present. At least I think it does. Maybe people are just too polite to go up to me and say, "Oh, Frank, you're so 1840s!")

Re: I'm curious...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i picked 1992 having seen the YOUTH frugging wildly to songs of their school disco years at that young person's rave i went to.