Poptimists Poll 08 Ketchup*

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The results of the Poll so far:

ALBUM OF THE YEAR: Kanye West - 808s And Heartbreak
Runners Up: Santogold - Santogold; Scooter - Jumping All Over The World

MOST HORRIBLE POP THING: Katy Perry
Runners Up: Scouting For Girls; The charts being rubbish.

MOST INTERESTING POP THING: "Wearing My Rolex"
Runners Up: Katy Perry; Beyonce and Sasha Fierce; Autotune

VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Mariah Carey - "Touch My Body"
Runner Up: Blackout Crew - "Put A Donk On It"

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Madonna
Runners Up: Britney Spears; Morrissey

*sorry Mark!

At lunchtime tomorrow I'll close the leagueofpop@gmail.com inbox to Top 10 Tracks submissions, and then tomorrow evening I'll post the stragglers - those tracks which got more than one vote but didn't make the top 50. The main countdown will run all next 'working' week, and at the weekend the grand list of every single thing submitted will go up. Get your bitching fingers ready!

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

808s is so ridiculously far from being album of the year, jesus. (Not as far as Santogold or Scooter though.) Don't get what's especially "interesting" about 'Rolex' either.

You know, we (including myself) completely and inexplicably forgot about Ashlee's 'Outta My Head' video.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

(also if you actually have any thoughts/care any more, I would love to hear from the people who heard New Amerykah and didn't rate it - I still find it one of the momentous, defining albums of my lifetime, and it's still blowing me away every time I listen to it, and it's so rare that an album does that AND so many others seem to agree that I'm curious as to how it can underwhelm.)

[weasel-seeker.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I honestly thought that that would be the consensus pick, here of all places. I didn't even realize that Santi was really in the running...I like the album a lot but it's about 50/50 and more song-by-song fun than important or interesting. I never got beyond the singles for Scooter.

To be fair, this year there really doesn't seem to be much consensus in poptimist land. A New Year's Resolution perhaps, for us all to do a better job at making people aware of stuff we discover, and listening to other's discoveries?

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard it yet - I don't remember it being discussed much here at the time (maybe I wasn't paying attention) - but based on some of the comments around the poll, it's top of my January "list of things from last year I missed out on but am playing catch-up thanks to the polls".

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i'm interested in why people don't like it too but haven't been able to get beyond 'they fear jazz(funk)' so far. not that it's particularly jazzy but is probably seen as having similar off-putting hallmarks by many.

pete b told me it was probably his favourite album of last year too which surprised me (if only because he's never talking about his music likes online much).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I don't really hear all that much jazz in it (or indeed understand why "too jazzy" is a bad thing) - though maybe "they fear (current/neo) soul" might be in the right ball park; I got the feeling that New Amerykah took many people, who perhaps weren't hyped for new Badu material, by surprise (hence late pfork review). And this in turn surprised me, as I'd assumed that after Baduizm and Mama's Gun she was one of those artists that you would pay attention to. But I don't want to put words in the haterz' mouths!

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Funny, I'd assumed after *Baduizum* and *Mama's Gun* she was one of those artists you should avoid at all costs -- Nutritously prog spinach-soul with ambitions toward a certain kind of bohemian classiness I've never much cared about (not that certain artists with similar ambitions -- Teena Marie, for one -- haven't made me care regardless). And nothing I've heard from Badu's new album has suggested otherwise, though I'm not going to claim I gave it the attention it may well have so richly deserved (just like 29,000 other albums that came out this year, probably.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

What do you think of other artists in Erykah's milieu eg Angie Stone, Jill Scott, D'Angelo, Meshell Ndegéocello? I'd dispute "spinach-soul" (her music and lyrics are too rich for that), but not "bohemian classiness" (her specific brand of it, which is most palpable at her concerts, is something I do find attractive); but I've heard that criticism before, and applied to those other artists too.

But I'd suggest that what makes Badu even greater than them isn't her consciousness or her classiness, but her relatability ('Tyrone' (http://www.metrolyrics.com/tyrone-lyrics-erykah-badu.html), 'Next Lifetime', 'Cleva') and pinpoint emotional intelligence. (And kick-ass hooks: 'Penitentiary Philosophy', 'Danger' and 'Appletree' of her back catalogue in particular.) And I think her ambitions go way, way beyond neo-soul's usual smooth classiness.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

>What do you think of other artists in Erykah's milieu eg Angie Stone, Jill Scott, D'Angelo, Meshell Ndegéocello?<

Inasmuch as I've listened to their stuff, I'm not a fan. I didn't hate *Who Is Jill Scott* in 2000 (sounded pleasant in a smooth jazz sort of way, or at least some of it did), but I haven't haven't played it in years. Then again, I can't say I've made all that much an attempt to keep up with any of these artists (or India.Arie, Macy Gray, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, etc); seems to me they have a similar relationship to old soul that alt-country has to old country -- as in, they freeze it into a museum piece, draining out most of the life and energy and fun and warmth and hooks. All things being equal, the ones who seem less pretentious (Stone, Hill) are the ones who strike me as less hard to take, if that makes a difference. But again, it's not like I really pay *attention* to this stuff; I will totally concede than any of these artists might surprise me someday. (But then, so might any other artist.)

[koganbot]

Pious, sub-P-Funk mumbo jumbo without P-Funk's raw humor or the ability to really get off its ass and jam. Not that I'm a hater, by any means. Simply find it vague and cold in the center, like a lot of Funkadelic, for that matter.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'd pretty much dispute all those words (except the P-Funk ones cuz I've never heard them). From the back: 'The Cell' and 'Real Thang' are jams which definitely make me get off my ass. Two jams as good as that, you can go as slow as you like elsewhere. "Raw humor" - let's go to 'Real Thang' and its free-association righteousness again: "Got to balance your chakra, raise your octave to opera, zap! electrical shock ya", "your double helix gon' triple", "shatter glasses like Ella". And there's a lot of sardonic humour throughout the rest, directly in the lyrics and in the arrangements and samples, though I'll grant you that it's not one for belly laughs (she's given us plenty of those in the past).

"Pious" and "vague" are probably the adjectives I'd most object to. "Pious" implies either a) a reverence which isn't present in the album at all, or b) a certain amount of lecturing, which just isn't the feeling I take from her commentary - when she talks about her people, about society, there's a generosity and compassion there which "pious" would preclude. See the line "To my girls on prescription pills" in 'Soldier' - a pious singer would castigate them for their behaviour. Erykah just sings, warmly and understandingly, "I know how you feel". Which isn't surprising - 'Me' is followed immediately by 'My People', and she pretty much explicitly states that she is her people. She's not above her characters, and just cuz she's kicking people in the ass and sharing her wisdom doesn't mean she's not including herself in that. Actually, putting 'Me' so near the start of the album is a statement of her intent not to be pious.

As for "vague", I think it has some of the sharpest lyrics and most acute emotional/social intelligence I've ever heard in music, but it doesn't necessarily have answers - it doesn't put itself on that high a pedestal. Just one example (of many), I guess, would be 'The Cell' - the triple meaning inherent in its title alone, whereby literal DNA cells trap us in figurative cells which in turn can trap some in literal jail cells. And when she's not being sharp, she's doing pure poetry - "started with a line from old, ancient times / descendants of warlocks, witches with ill glitches / children of the matrix be hittin' them car switches / seen some virgin virgos hangin' out with venus bitches" is such evocative imagery it's like sensory overload. Or she's hitting the emotional sweet spot with accuracy - just an injection of extra soul here and there, "this ain't no time to kill" in 'Soldier', "cheque to cheque" in 'That Hump'.

And this is before we even get on to the music, the dense sonic thickets which reveal more and more with each listen.

[koganbot]

This is a great response (which means I need to listen more carefully, though the phrase "my people" tends to ring all my warning bells).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that she believes in "the people", or "her people", or "my people", is one of the things which makes the album great, and I'll just link to Rich at fourfour's elucidation of this (http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2008/03/affirmations-fo.html). And she doesn't explain or justify - as she says, "What am I talkin' 'bout? Everybody know what the song's about. They be trying to hide the history, but they know who we are."

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

"dense sonic thickets"??? i think you've been hanging around music writers too much ;)

i was listening for the first time to this yesterday, and it didn't grab me in the same way that the solange album did (also listened to for the first time yesterday), i do think that the "classy" "smooth" soul thing is somewhat of a stumbling block for me...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

hang on though surely solange is a million times more "classy" "smooth" soul than erykah!!!! half the album is straight-up minnie riperton pastiche, we even have an 'ode to marvin' in there! while otoh new amerykah is all radio static and patchwork samples and sudden stop-starts and references to genres all over the map and frightening backing vocals coming out of nowhere - it's hardly a smooth listen.

don't see what's wrong with "dense sonic thickets" either.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

s'a bit "sonic catheeeedrals of sound" reynoldsian to my mind is all...

solange has more different bits perhaps? so one song sounds like 60s soul, one sounds like 90s pop, one sounds like radiohead on an acid trip etcetc, whereas the badu all had similar sonic ticks in each track (i must admit to not having sat down and given it my entire attention, so this could be underplaying it) and no radiohead on acid.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"dense" = it is layered and kinda heavy and there is a lot there
"sonic" = it is sound
"thickets" = an analogy which fits how it hears to me, lots of unexpected and varied stuff going on which, when you push it aside, reveals even more stuff, and it all seems like it sort of grows organically. out of her mind! and it is all ALIVE obv.

idk the solange is pretty much ALL 60s soul until she goes off on her batshit tangents in the last two proper songs (which are actually the weakest bits of the album b/c she isn't the black bjork she wants to be, she's an eccentric, poutier minnie riperton) - whereas pretty much every erykah track ends up in a hugely different place to where it started, you're never able to tell what's coming next. 'me' starts off as the most neo-soul track on the album and ends with erykah singing in unison to an insane trumpet line; 'the cell' is a massively catchy funk jam which ends up in acappella girl group harmonies; 'twinkle' is full of terrifying voices and radio static; et cet. and no radiohead on acid = hurrah!!

[koganbot]

I'm still kicking myself for not nominating the extended version of the Beliy Plaschik video

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I actually switched my vote from Kanye to Scooter. It was partly a politics thing and partly a "I really like Scooter after all and damn it this whole album is pretty solid" thing.

I do like the audacity of Kanye's album, and get more of its songs stuck in my head than any of his since "College Dropout," which to be fair is the only Kanye album (aside from this one) that I actually like. It's also somewhat though not totally interesting to me that Kanye is just a complete and total ass on this album, and seems more honestly irredeemable as a personality than he does when he has this veneer of cool on his other stuff. He's a loser, for one thing, but also the kind of unpleasant loser who seems to, of his own doing, have no redeemable qualities whatsoever. Just an awful, spiteful guy. Though he's vying with Ne-Yo for "big jerk [as self-constructed persona] that I still kind of want to like."