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...

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.