Cleverness In Pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Do you appreciate what I'm going to call 'cleverness' - wordplay, allusion, non-standard structures, etc. - in pop music? Is it something you look for? Who does it well?

Do you think there's an opposition between cleverness and directness (in emotional or physical impact)? Should pop be cleverer?

(Qn arising from today's Popular entry)

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The one problem with wordplay is that when it fails, my KILL EVERYONE alarm starts to go off. I will never let Aly and AJ off the hook for confusing sums and quotients. I blame the parents. (Parents just don't understand math. <--allusion)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure why you are so hung up on this one, Dave. I'm sure when I was at school we had "division sums" or that division problems were part of our "sums" lessons.

Perhaps it's different in the States. You do call maths 'math' over there after all ;)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(I like fixating on petty crap to justify making fun of Aly and AJ, I guess. We had lessons about the various names for the result of a given operation -- add/sum, divide/quotient, subtract/difference, multiply/product.)