Another Year In Pop: 3

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

TOP BBC SOUND OF 2008 Adele makes her bustin' chart debut this week though it's not enough to deny Basshunter. In other news: how bad a band name is Courteeners?

[Poll #1124829]

The amazing advent of SOUND OF 2008 Adele reminds me that I should collate the results of our thrilling SOUND OF 2008 poll. Where did Adele end up in the Chump League? See below the cut:


1. CONGRATULATIONS GLASVEGAS who win the prize with their comment "There's something really authentic about a lot of doo-wop and '50s rock 'n' roll."
2. MGMT - "The album does address many similar themes dealing mostly with current apocalyptic confusion and post-apocalyptic survivalism."
3. Duffy - "I'm just learning about my voice at the moment, what I can and can't do so it's a discovery about me."
4. Foals - "We make music that tries to be progressive in some small way - in whatever way you can still do now."
5. Santogold - "Nina Simone and Bad Brains are my two biggest vocal influences."
6. Vampire Weekend - "People would be less interested in us if we were doing something they had heard before."
7. The Ting Tings - "We write a track, we record it and within the first hour if we're not feeling it we erase it, it's gone."
8. Jo Lean And The Jang Jong Jing - "The goal is to have a nine-year-old girl and an 80-year-old man in a different country dancing at the same time."
9. Adele - "I don't think I have to be all glamorous and lose weight and stop smoking to be a good artist."
10. Black Kids - ""We definitely take something away from every era. I realised a while back that pop music's all about theft." (How did this come last??? - shocked Ed.)

Comments

[datura800.livejournal.com]

Joss Stone's unpopularity is pretty obviously down to her Americanisation and little else. She was perceived as pretty cool when she started out. I don't think appearance has anything to do with any fabricated 'Joss vs Adele' contest.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

seems that people are very hung up on authenticity. to sound american you have to actually be american...

[datura800.livejournal.com]

It was more the fact she started sounding American and adopting odd lovey dovey LA-isms. I'm not commenting on it at all, but it's the British public are notoriously unforgiving of people whom they perceive to be 'forgetting' their roots. And there is something of an inverted snobbery going on here - it seems odd to be making points about 'authenticity' when the fact that Adele is white and went to a stage school is being used against her, no?

[koganbot]

Change "British public" to "country audience" and "sounding American" to "crossing over to pop," and you've got a similar anxiety. Except the country audience hates itself. Assuming your analysis is correct, what is the cause of the British public's insecurity?

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I think that's conflating two entirely separate things. I could go on for days about the British audience reaction to British stars who go over to America and lose/erase their 'Britishness' (Lulu and Sheena Easton being other notable examples), but it's not really the point here. I was just saying that Joss Stone's unpopularity had sod all to do with her appearance.

[koganbot]

Well yes, I was changing the subject, but in fact I think there may be an analogy between Brits not liking performers erasing their Britishness and country fans not liking performere who erase their countryness.

What if Snoop Dogg were to go British? Do you think Americans would be upset?

I probably agree with you about Joss, but then I've barely paid her any attention.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

Americans may not be upset with that scenario, but they'd certainly take the piss, a la Madonna and her British accent. But the thing with Britain is that it's all tied up with class.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I am being notoriously unforgiving of the narrow-minded, parochial British public here!

(I mean, I think JS is a twit, but she was a twit before she started speaking in a weird accent, which could be due to the fact that she's based in the US now, and anyway if putting on weird accents which no real person has ever had is so bad then how to explain Kate Nash?)

[datura800.livejournal.com]

well as i said, i think it's about more than the accent. her entire personality was perceived to have changed. i really don't want to get into an argument about joss stone. i am not even advancing this opinion myself, i'm just observing why she's so hated in Britain now.