Wonky Pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2277201,00.html

Guardian piece on the "Wonky Pop" tour (Alphabeat and some other people) making an assortment of points:

- Grass-roots pop is coming back
- A desire for pop stars to be individual eccentrics rather than production line stars
- Pop marketed to adults not kids
- Buyers and fans who grew up on Busted and who like performers writing their own material.
- An increased UK openness to European pop*

I get the impression the bulk of the community here are into this kind of thing, with some notable dissenters (of whom I might well be one). So what do we think - are thinks really looking up for pop?

*if you yourself are feeling open to European pop, go and VOTE in Europop 2008: France v Holland and Italy v Romania [/hype]

Comments

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

or we could talk about how they love lil' mama and t-pain and lil' wayne instead?

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i understand that better tho! and we've never talked about hadouken

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

what's there not to understand about hadouken being popular with the kidz? skins innit. hadouken are really really shit though. though i have seen the lead singer out and about more often than any other pop star and he is rather fit.

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

it was emma's job to watch skins in our house. i saw crystal castles on it once. which sort of fits in tho.

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i must remember to check out the crystal castles album - i didn't think i'd like them but when we were in tokyo we heard this great minimal-y stuff in shop (called the tokyo hipsters club, haha) and it turned out it was them. and then the shop played booka shade!

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

from what i've seen of them they are not great, but seem to actively cultivate quite a shambolic feel.

they are on SOUND a lot (which is where this old man sees this stuff) and their fans seem to be mostly school kids who go mental for it. i was struck by the extremeness. i might be reading too much into a tv show for kids tho :-/

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i dunno what sound is but it seems logical that there fans should be almost solely teenagers, to me. kids who watch skins and aspire to that kind of 'coolness'. doesn't seem that extreme! i'd be more surprised if they had a significant fanbase over university age.

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

the extremeness was in the reaction of the kids. there was one performance in the underage bit of the camden crawl where the crowd went rly mental.

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

well, at least hadouken have a semblance of ~energy~, which i doubt many others on that bill did! but kids do tend to go mental surely, it's just like a thousand girls screaming when chris brown appears on stage or something

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that Stuff The (Indie) Kids Like is getting quite noisy and shouty and random at the moment. (meaning: a higher proportion of white teens into music like the shouty random wing of things than has been the case for 15 years or so)

Re: i know, instead lets talk about

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

THEIR fans aagh