Songs and Production

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What draws you more into a track you enjoy? The song - the melody, words - or what's done to it - hooky noises, production tricks, disruptions? And where does the performance fit in?

This may seem like a really unsupportable binary but it's one which has a certain amount of traction in the word outside Poptimists and maybe even some within it.

For instance many reviews of the Britney album seem generally to be treating it as - for better or worse - a record which stands and falls on its production rather than the songs or performance (and are explicitly making that distinction). And the reason *I* like the Britney album I think is the way the production seems to be making war on the songs, never totally winning but never letting them get out unscathed either.

For another example of what I'm fumbling towards, look at the two latest Girls Aloud singles. "Call The Shots" and "Sexy! No No No..." seem to work in quite different ways - the former resting on its melody and 'songcraft', the latter on the impact of its production. (You may of course completely disagree).

I feel this entry is very clumsy - sorry - but I think there's a conversation worth having here!

Comments

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

The song/melody every time - although good production certainly doesn't hurt and can often add an extra depth or fascination to an already-good song. Production would never, EVER come first with me and it completely baffles me as to why everyone's banging on and on and ON about the *production* on the new Britney album (not that I've listened to it yet er sorry Kat). Hello people, are there any good TUNES on it? Or is she just reading from the phonebook in a monotone with some weird vocoder-thing going on?

This may be why I hate a lot of pop music - it's all about the production but it has no TUNE. Or it has ONE GREAT BIG SHINY SAMPLE and absolutely bog all else of note about it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

With Britney one reason I think the record has legs is that the balance is pretty much exactly right (for my tastes): on something like "Piece Of Me" you notice the vocoders and the pterodactyl screeches and the weird chainmail rhythm track first, then the fuck-you lyrics and then you suddenly realise you can't actually get the song out of your head at all.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I think there are tunes, definitely, but I still don't have a great sense of them yet. That said, I enjoyed "Get Naked" about 100X more this morning after listening to Mark's lead in to it on Lollards, than I did when just listening to the album.

blimey!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

--:D

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

dubdobdee the Jay-Z to GN(IHAP)'s 'Umbrella'

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

No tune + great production = focus grouped especially for me!