What qualities do you look for in a pop star?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Obviously musical/singing ability is required (well, most of the time) but what else?

- Eccentricity?
- Frivolousness?
- Dancing ability?
- Number of white towels in their rider?
- Appearing on Saturday morning kids' telly/Christmas specials?

Phrasing the question slightly differently: What makes you think an artist is 'pop'?

Comments

[mackromackro.livejournal.com]

An artist is pop if you can know of or listen to an artist without going out of your way to do so, because the exposure is all around you.

pop = shorthand for "popular"

It would be more fun to talk about all the magic qualities, but "popular" is what it really comes down to, doesn't it?

None of the above qualities really describe say The Shins or Modest Mouse or Snow Patrol, who are all rather plain in many ways, but are nonetheless "pop" in ways not too different than Kanye or Britney or whatnot. (Different markets sure, but we're talkin' numbers here!)

you're missing the point i think

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

you're focusing on "pop" and not "star." it's fairly easy to make a case for those artists as "pop" (i think, only know Snow Patrol really) but it's much more difficult to call any of them "stars."

Re: you're missing the point i think

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

But are both popularity and star quality equally important? The fact that one is more measurable than the other may make it less exciting, but like mackromackro says, exposure is key to an artist's success and without it there's rarely room to develop a star persona. (This is where you give lots of examples to prove me wrong!)

Re: you're missing the point i think

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

But what is "star quality"? I mean, I think I agree that star quality as I perceive it is impt to me, but so often I see people only take into account zaniness, wackiness, colourful clothes, funny quotes and so on as being "star quality". I think star quality can be subtle, eg I think Cassie has more of it than Mika, though possibly I am the only person who thinks this.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting point - if you have to actively seek out an artist (crate-digging or interwebs or whatever) rather than passively hearing it by accident does that make them inherently indie (or at least, non-pop)? When does a particular channel move from passive to active? If I turn on Hits!TV and it's that rather sub-par Foals song then there is no-one to blame but myself. Yet I didn't intentionally want to hear it. I resent them more for not being Girls Aloud than I would by investigatively clicking on their Youtube video.

[koganbot]

Well, one of Xgau's ideas when he created the term "semipopular" was that you had people with all the attributes of stardom except fame (Xgau had other ideas about semipopular too, not all of which were consistent with this one; but then, there doesn't have to be a single consistend attribute to "semipopular," or "popular," or "stardom"). He called Iggy Pop "semipopular," and Iggy was the perfect example, because Iggy was acting like a rock star, which means as a performer he was reaching out to and against his listeners, reaching out to unknown audiences, making them take him on as a performer, trying to turn the audience into performers themselves. So he's not just addressing/reflecting people like himself.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

M.I.A.!

Actually I just want all pop stars to be able to pull off photos like this one of Mariah:



CHAMPAGNE. In the SNOW. That is BEYOND FIERCE.

[koganbot]

Interestingly, Mariah's "offstage" behavior has nothing to do with why I think of her as a star. It's really the voice, what it does - in my book I compared it to a horse out for its gallop - that is her crucial star attribute. I'd probably say the same thing about Courtney Love. It's the content of their music that made them stars for me. But that doesn't mean that all good music makes stars of the people it features. Again, JoJo is a good singer who to me is not a star, since I don't feel an adventure in her singing to which I can affix the name "JoJo." This doesn't mean that there's no adventure in her music, just that this adventure doesn't focus itself on a character called "JoJo."