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

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Off topic, I am pleased with the rise of the term "landfill indie".

I think "rather than" is overstressing it - the great thing about pop is that it can incorporate many different types of people as long as the records are good! Though that might be a minority opinion as well.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well the presentation of the article is a little "rather than", but I think this might be sub editing rather than the nuance the piece intended - obviously I agree that pop is a broad church.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

"They moved on to indie and emo, but have tired of the glut of Identikit indie-rock bands and have come back to what they know: pop artists who write their own songs and play their own instruments."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

*splutter*

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'd like Mr Petridis to clarify something: do Leon Jean-Marie's 'collaborations' with Dennis/Ronson/Bloodshy&Avant etc fall under this category as well? It's ok to write/play your own songs as long as you have enormous £££ producers under your belt? Or is that not 4Real enough? Obv I am in favour of £££ production as much as the next poptimist (I'm sure the 'identikit indie-rock' would sound MUCH BETTER with a bit of half-arsed knob twiddling from Xenomania over the top) but something about this murky conclusion of 'what ver kids want' stinks to high heaven.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Dreadful on every level is my first impression. I only know Alphabeat's records, and this IS JUST INDIE. Indie by another name, but still fuckin' INDIE.

retro-fitting of music and image, to hark back to earlier indie-ists (Belle & Sebastian) harking back to earlier indie-ists (Creation era) harking back to wierdly selective version of 60s. TICK

lame ideology of keeping it 'real'. TICK

undialectical opposition between faux-serious (indie) and faux-light (nu-nu-pop) music. TICK

inevitable dialectical hipster response to overground success of 'alternative' styles. TICK.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I may be overstating this but the baguette I just bought from sainsbury's is horrible and I didn't have any breakfast and I have a headache and generally grrrr...

[datura800.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't really see Popjustice being overly fussed whether or not the acts it promotes are 'manufactured' or write their own material. And rightly so. Once we go down the route of 'Alphabeat are great because they are a REAL BAND' then we're steering very close to horrific muso territory. I find Alphabeat completely uninspiring and they are no more or less pop than Bis were. That article seems to have a very narrow, specific definition of 'pop' and it's not one I agree with.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, Popjustice's answer sounds like it was in response to a pretty leading question.

I think there is creative grass-roots music being made drawing inspiration from pop (I am happy to call this music pop, or indie, or whatever anyone likes, though "indie pop" has unfortunate jangly connotations).

But Alphabeat seems a really really weird band to hang this grass-roots 'return of new pop' idea off. I don't care who writes their material - they're a jolly retro Europop outfit. I happen not to like them, others enjoy them, but there's nothing staggeringly creative about them.

I think the idea that comes in right at the end - the commercial rehabilitation of European pop - is a more interesting one and deserves a better article than this to talk about it.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I feel like a bit of an indieist saying 'argh that is NOT THE IDEA AT ALL' but ARGH THAT IS NOT THE IDEA AT ALL, somehow.

Well, it is, some of the idea. Some of the things said there make perfect sense but there's a sort of pervading sense that this "grassroots pop" is better than "proper" pop and it's just sort of... ugh. I should write something more coherent but all I can feel is this overwhelming sense of 'wrong' and dread that this kind of thing is going to become very all-pervading in the media. I don't know... I s'pose a lot of it doesn't differ that much from many things I'd say but there's something about it that puts my nose out of joint.

I think, actually, the article might be very likeable were it not for the mention of that PiL cover on the Alphabeat album and the fact they sound like utter dickheads talking about it. Meh. PiL were a fvcking pop band, you can't start saying punk's not pop these days when it very clearly has become such, even if it was once intimidating. It's like saying Megadeth are still edgy or something.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"the baguette I just bought from sainsbury's is horrible" = you desire your baguettes to be individual home-made feats rather than production-line sammiches

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

not to get too deep into this kind of fight all over again but "horrific muso territory" is a very poor place-marker term for the actual issue here: there is NO pro-muso faction in this fight, in the sense of activists arguing for an understanding of musicianship AS MUSICIANS UNDERSTAND IT (as opposed to "as old Q lags understand it"?)

(the two biggest pro-musos ever to take up battle on ILM were arf arf -- an articulate and interesting mid-school jazzer -- and geir hongro, who is and remains geir hongro, alone far out on his own wing of the war)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

little feats

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i have ~been~ in the cardiff barfly and no band which performs there can remotely be considered pop! here i apply the "what would mariah do?" rule.

obv i hate this whole trend, and the whole argument, and have hated it for a while, and it's the kind of thing which makes me not want to say "i like pop" b/c people will assume you're into this shit rather than good music.

i think i want to live in the usa. i really don't like europop.

i know, instead lets talk about

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

why the (real actual) kids (like actually at school still) absolutely LOVE hadouken. and why it sounds mostly like noise and shouting to everyone else. hurrah

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

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

hadouken don't sound like noise and shouting, they sound like sditch wankers trying to do grime and failing

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

[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 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

[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

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

THEIR fans aagh

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)

[koganbot]

Nuance? Um, are you being ironic? Piece seems to be clobbering us with "This, not that."

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I admit I hadn't re-read the piece, so I may just have been thinking of the Popjustice guy making the point that no, finding the next Britney or GA is hardly the point of this activity.

[koganbot]

They misspelled Keith Levene. (That, perhaps, can be blamed on a subeditor. The rest of this, not.)

I only got halfway through the piece. What's wrong with it seems pretty obvious. But I'm in the mood to be obvious so, um, well, it uses the term "identikit"!

[koganbot]

But the question being asked, I suppose, is, do the bands being extolled here deserve to be represented by such an article? On the basis of this article, I may never know, because I will try hard to avoid this sound, but my guess is that (1) I will not succeed in avoiding this sound, and (2) the answer will be "Yes, this fairly represents why these groups are terrible."

This is me being prejudiced, mind you.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I alway say that Busted are absolutely crucial to the redefinition of pop. I am happy that it's OK to like jolly music again, but at an ideological level it's terrible, as it's implanted this idea (that only songs written by the artist and involving guitars are worthy of success) in kids from a very young age. This is in total contrast to the music I grew up on, and I think it will lead to quite a close-minded new generation of music fans, who are incapable of seeing the value of music that doesn't fit this criteria. I think this affects middle class kids more than working class ones though, as the pressure to like good quality music is much stronger there, whereas with the working class the emphasis is more directly on being cool, without this mediator of supposed authenticity.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I went and I loved Alphabeat by far the most, but that's no surprise as I'm a big fan. I think their other songs are great - 10,000 Nights, Boyfriend, Touch Me Touching You... pure aceness!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I may take that as a challenge to write one - if anything is my area of expertise, that's it!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Can I just remind you for a Russia track too!

I think you'll quite like the Greek one you're up against. In fact I think you'll probably already know it!

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I remember!

Aha, does it involve a woman talking in an American accent by any chance? If so I'm screwed. Then again, are people allowed to vote for a song they already know? Cos I think people would know that one.