What is the sound of now?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

In yesterday's conversation about Pizzicato Five and pop, Cis drew a kind of distinction between pop which obeys current sonic rules and pop which refuses to (apols if my precis loses a lot of subtlety).

This interested me and got me thinking what the current rules of pop might be - not just in terms of sound, but attitude, look, emotional content, trends, etc.

What characterises late 00s pop? What is happening now which wouldn't or couldn't have happened before? What will allow a kid in ten years time to identify music from now? (in the way that a music fan who had never heard records or seen pictures of Suzi Quatro, or A Flock Of Seagulls, or Ned's Atomic Dustbin might be able to put them in place and time)

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Actually these last two questions are asking potentially very different things?

What is happening now which wouldn't or couldn't have happened before? = what is special about nowpop?

What will allow a kid in ten years time to identify music from now? = what is generic about nowpop?

The answers to i. often become limit cases of the answers to ii.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> What is happening now which wouldn't or couldn't have happened before? = what is special about nowpop?

Hardly anything that couldn't have been done ten years ago (or thirty years ago as regards the guitar band plague). What has changed is the accessibility - there are no boundary pushers but LOADS more boundary huggers with cheap production software/guitar pedals.

However when you look at different genres instead of the general pop sphere, things get more specific. UK dance music is currently all about the electro vworp noise (eg Groove Armada/Bodyrox/Calvin Harris) that isn't exactly new but has never been this widespread. RnB's current schtick is Timbaland-emulation & minimal beats (again, not new but now omnipresent). Indie bands are apparently all about being comedy buskers with less emphasis on the hard guitar noises & more focus on 'real life lyrics'. Oh god, I hope our generation's calling card won't be that...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Is pop any more accessible than it was 20, 25 years ago? Yes, the technology is more advanced than it was then but I think the technological barriers to making pop were effectively dismantled long ago.

Perhaps you're saying that technology in the 00s is enslaving (encouraging homogeneity) rather than liberating...? But I'm not even sure that argument really flies.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> Is pop any more accessible than it was 20, 25 years ago?

Probably not technologically, no. Thinking about this post made me all depressed about the State Of Things Today so my response wasn't massively well thought out, I admit...

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

aren't we all about the fragmenting and tribes of pop these days? so each tribe has its 'in vogue' sounds

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

this is true but there are generally also shared "mise en scene" similarities about how the overall sound is spaced and layered and contained and stratified and striated -- these are usually much less evident until things have moved on en masse

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

one thing i like is that out of the post-bootlegs thing there are more cases/it is more acceptable for pop stars to not so much sample a song but use it's key characteristics be they the chord sequences, bassline or simple guitar hook as the backbone for a whole new song e.g. Jamelia's 'Beware Of The Dog', Sugababes 'Whatever Makes You Happy', Rihanna's 'Shut Up And Drive'. i think it's become more blatant thus more acceptable thus more blatant thus...

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Hello Mutya

was george michael singing over the top of flawless, mere weeks after flawless peaked (quite low?), part of this, or was that a weird one off thing?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

(They were three years apart, dude - The Ones peaked at 7, George at 8)

No worse than Hucknall ripping off The Goodmen in the space of 8 months for 'Fairground'.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

(ok everyhit is working again - it was two years between Give It Up & Fairground, apols)

[(Anonymous)]

'Fairground' is a good example of it happening years ago yeah - altho the 'Give It Up' sample is really just a drum loop the Goodmen surely sampled from something else anyway.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it was sampled from 'Fanfarra' by Sergio Mendez. That didn't chart though.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

ooh that was me btw

i want to hear 'Fanfarra' now

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i'd settle for hearing the goodmen, i think i may still have the 12"...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'mere weeks after flawless peaked'

weren't they several years apart? perhaps The Ones one was re-released because they knew whaty GM was up to.

i think it counts anyway yes. Michael used samples before (Shoot The Dog, Fastlove) but this went beyond that as forming the actual basis of his track.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

jebus but my memory is shit :-(

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

do you think that's the actually result of bootlegs or of P.Diddy's wholesale recycling/theft of Kashmir and Every Breath You Take?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I doubt it's entirely a result of those - they were commercially successful but much maligned for doing that kind of thing - something changed sensibilities in the meantime and I don't think it was Diddy.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

those of you in your thirties may remember (at least one) wave or new female singer-songwriters - i remember thinging at the time that they were part of the defining sound of the moment, but from today's perspective, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when that era was - either because we were wrong about it being the zeitgeist, or because it's such a generic zeitgeist that it isn't pinpointable.

i mention all this because i think to some degree we are in a similar period now - the keane/coldplay/arctic monkeys/lily allen/the streets axis that seems to dominate the waves at the moment is probably not very permanent

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

That's a hell of a wide axis!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

No wider than Germany-Italy-Japan, dude.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

are you saying that the charts have been overrun by fascists?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

ha - better joke = 'axis of evil'!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

but you've really got the two poles, i think, that sort of "real (white) street experience" on one hand and then the sort of trad/mope rock. the only outliers are those urban artists essentially driven by superstar producers, but to me they seem more like a series of peaks rather than a "scene" e.g., i was quite surprised a a couple of months ago to realize that Diddy was still making records!

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

you should see Diddy's new fragrance TV ads. they're so ridiculously cliched, but perhaps this is good - hard to tell. the fragrance probably smells better than his last album.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

diddy's last album is really really good!

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

well then imagine how good the fragrance must be! perhaps i will buy it.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

so much of my favourite music at the moment is by solo female singer-songwriters or ones working with one male (producer) or fronted by same e.g. Feist, The Bird And The Bee, Cortney Tidwell, Jenny Wilson, er..maybe Psapp, Ellen Allien and MIA count too.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

trip-hop redux!!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

and ellen IS a producer, she needs no man

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i know, altho she tends to work with a techier guy e.g. Holger Zilske

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

all techno people collaborate but ellen really is big bosswoman - she's more responsible for them than they are for her!

we saw her at the m_nus rave yesterday, like, totally fucked off her face.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

1995

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

How answerable are these questions (less about concerning trends than some specific characteristic)? Is it possible to answer these while we're inhabit the time we're talking about?

I constantly think about these re: classical music - I can tell how the sounds are changing from the 50s to 60s to 70s up to the late 80s, but I think this stops at around the early 90s. I have some ideas but...nothing concrete.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

is that a musique concrète joke? ;)

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's possible to define what, now, is either distinctive or generic, because we are still living in it (depends on where you draw the line and close the group, right?). Thus, we don't know what will be the aspects which lots of artists successful enough to pique the general consciousness will adopt, and what will fall by the wayside.

Sorry for quotidian response! If we were talking about nowpop as being only-just-thenpop (say post-millenial, 2000-05 or summat), it would be easier but also entirely difficult, I suspect.

But if pushed to give an answer, I suppose: a gradual but strong shift away from the idea of the instrument(s) defining the genre, and a preference for categorising through content (lyrics and what I would think of as musical 'reference', poss the wrong term but I'm tired)?