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

[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!!