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

Guess I'm gonna have to tell 'em that I got no cerebellum

[koganbot]

The Ramones own this category.

Should I take a chance on her?
One bullet in the cylinder

A line from the teen-yearning songbook, followed by a gag that takes its razor and reveals an unmendable tear in the teen universe. (A "tear" as in a "rip," though I suppose it can also be a broken teardrop, one that can't be repaired.)

The Kinks, Mothers, Beefheart, Alice Cooper, B-52s, Devo would all be relevant here.

Don't know if this is an example or a counterexample, but Margaret Berger's "Robot Song": seems as if it was conceived as a funny novelty for the pop market, "I'm in love with a robot," the lyrics a lampoon of all those teen songs that say "our parents/our world will not understand our love." Then of course you want to give it a pretty melody, but what happens, incredibly - well, maybe not incredibly, happens in Europop all the time - is that the melody isn't just pretty, it's insanely beautiful and poignant, several aches of beauty beyond "achingly beautiful." So the outer-space effects and robot blips are genuinely haunting, "You're the only one who makes me feel a thing" drifting into an unattainable distance, another place, another time, another world. Almost as moving as the Shangri-Las, the doomed love of "Out In The Streets" and "Leader Of The Pack."

Re: Guess I'm gonna have to tell 'em that I got no cerebellum

[koganbot]

Do the Village People count? (I was thinking of "Robot Song" as coded gay, and then "YMCA" and "In The Navy" popped into my head.)