Two acts is a coincidence, three is a SCENE!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

So...

Gwen Stefani
Robyn
Fannypack
Annie maybe??

sure there must be others* - acts making pop music with i) a fair degree of autonomy, ii) a confident consciousness of it BEING pop music rather than s'thing more 'authentic', iii) an immersion in / borrowing from 'street-level' genres. And the examples I can think of are all women, which may or may not be significant too.

This strikes me as

- a good thing! (cos I like them all)
- an interzone between the 'pro-pop' and 'hipster' fields
- a potential way to talk about MIA which both sidesteps and explains the boring disdain for her from Certain Quarters. (NB I still don't like MIA, but I like the MIA-hate arguments less.)

*OK the moves all come from Madonna, but Gwen is maybe more important because after No Doubt she COULD have gone 'serious' for the solo career and went in the exact opposite and much more fruitful direction.

Comments

Re: Dissenting voice.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I really know what you mean by poppist!! The Stefani album and the Robyn album were made to be chart-toppers, in specific territories, and successfully. (Robyn went straight to no. 1 in Sweden I think). Fannypack surely don't think they will be a big-seller? Stefani was a big major label investment (and a risk, given slightly chancey track record of No Doubt in the random radio hit / movie spin-off world, and Gwen's guest appearance cred only) so I feel tries to cover all bases. It's an odd combination of pulling out all the stops but also taking some kind of chance, since I can't think of an immediately comparable album although there may be analogies for particular tracks. Robyn (if I'm reading it right) is a singer-breaks-free album, with trusted production team, so the risks are on her money, not a big record company's. I like the idea (i.e. my fantasy) that this stuff is not the exception but the norm in Sweden, though, so this particular combination seems a bit less haphazard and more chart-tastic (in a way it couldn't be here, I think -- something would jar with the rest of the radio 1 playlist wouldn't it, some Scando-pop sensibility that doesn't match the English pop palate?). And I think of Fannypack as boho swengali pop, one eye on the hipsters they slag off, the other on their record collections.

So I guess I think of the Fannypack feel as closer to pop-ist in the FT sense; i.e. emerging from a hipster-type ghetto as pop advocacy; Robyn as an attempt at a mature artist album in a more (euro-)pop-ist context; Gwen S. as the real oddity, but I suppose really just a calculated gamble (hence spread of styles) on what might sound right in 2005 -- and backed with massive marketing too hedge bet.

So pop-ism in the eye of the beholder / ear of the listener; i.e. we reconfigure them to hear the junction points. But my guess would be that the rationales behind the pop-sound of each record is totally distinct, so a curious contingency, no phenomenon.

*Maybe* there's something in the 'authenticity' all played out (but only in the mainstream, clearly alive and kicking in ALL the big scenes / genres (rock, hip-hop), but maybe that's because it's what they thrive on.) Actually trance -- i.e. my happy hardcore theory -- may be the only British genre that treads the kitsch line so closely.

Re: Dissenting voice.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

In the ear of the listener, yeah! "We reconfigure them to hear the judgement points": This is the Eddyist not the Lamacq definition of a 'scene', a critical deployment that is useful for breaking up and moving on debates (and also for hopefully-liberating card-shuffling in home listening). And if it turns out not to be useful, destroy it.

in other words it's about "Konichiwa Bitches" being a good card in the MIA arguments (where "arguments" = abstruse trading-card games).

Re: Dissenting voice.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I think I'm into the Eddyist game up to a point: I can definitely see it's value as anti-rockism, since it breaks up 'natural' genre; and it works best when the reconfiguration makes a glorious absurd sense (and a not so absurd sense, since most of the genres are saturated in the same pop memes anyway). Which I just don't see in this case -- looks too much like Lemacqism. (i.e. criticism as identifying trends of the day; isn't Eddyism more about reconfiguring criticism away from public-voice-of-authority to geek-busting anarchy (i.e. away from keeping up with the times, to seeing pop as huge sprawling anachronistic chaos)?).

Re: Dissenting voice.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah the Eddyism on display in the history book is very much pan-chronistic, cos it's a history book! But on ILM, say, he's more contemporary in his mix-and-matching.

(And I think you can use Lamacqist genres, even macro-genres, in an Eddyist way.)