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

[zenith.livejournal.com]

I would also put Avenue D in this category although I'm sure plenty of people would disagree.

Some people have talked about a genre called 'fluxpop'. I don't think that's necessarily a bad term for it...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Is that related to Matt's joycore genre?

Dissenting voice.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I agree these acts have something in common -- beyond just sounding exciting and fresh to my jaded ears (partly because of the things they sound like, of course!) -- but please can we resist the indie-ist scene-making? ;-) Even as a joke?

I think the differences are more striking than the similarities between these three acts, to be honest. Gwen Stefani's album reeks of older woman playing a teenager (this is a high school album, and its immersed in 80s-stadium-po(m)p / bratpack-soundtrack sounds as much as it is in radioplay hip-hop); Fannypack actually manage the young women loud and proud bit, without sounding forced, which is a miracle, and in no small part responsible for the charm of the album, and I see their sound as an update on electro; Robyn is a young woman trying to sound older, and so mixes that pop-tech R&B sound with more conventional europop and guitar ballad vibe.

I think Robyn and Fannypack could be linked in not being afraid of teh europop -- and particularly in the way they borrow from the Swedish reggae sound -- but the Stefani material is much more studied, and perhaps a little less exuberant as a result.

And Annie? No way. She is totally an indie-ist idea of what 'proper' pop should be. Anyone who thought she was going to be a big pop star was blatantly on teh crack. If anything, she's running a mile from the kind of almost kitsch vibe which Fannypack and Robyn handle with some class.

Actually, I think kitsch is a good way of looking at this: they've managed to take whatever the thing about europop is which makes it sound naff to UK/US ears, and combine it with more 'authentic' genres without falling down the middle.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

I think the difference is that joycore is an aesthetic and fluxpop is a genre. Also, the term 'joycore' whilst 100% sinsurrr was also used frequently to wind certain people up, whilst I think fluxpop is more, um, serious. It's like: joycore was a term Matthew and then me and some other people started using, mostly on Barbelith, to talk about everything from 'Ignition (Remix)' to the New Pornographers. Fluxpop is a term that people started using to try and describe the kind of music that is often posted on Fluxblog (Matt may have used it first on mix CDs, I'm not sure of the chronology).

Pitchfork's Scott Plagenhoef used the term 'fluxpop' when talking about Annie at the end of 2004, and described it as "tracks with a pop sensibility and communicative, crossover potential that are nevertheless more often transferred via 0s and 1s than Hot 97s or Radio Ones" (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/2004/singles/index5.shtml). Maura Johnston does the same here (http://citypaper.net/articles/2004-12-30/music.shtml).

Re: Dissenting voice.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the Lamacq-ism.

I agree about the musical differences, what interests me is the positional similarities, the consciously 'poppist' approach.

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.)