Poptimists Tracks Of 2008 PART ONE

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

THE MAIN EVENT! These are #s 50-42 of the Top 50 as voted for by you (there's a tie at #40 so we'll see those tomorrow). Thanks to the miracle of embedding disabled by request you'll have to investigate some of these away from the comforting womb of LJ - sorry, it's The Man's fault.

50. BRITNEY SPEARS - "Womanizer"

Something of a fall from grace for poptimists favourite Britney: the nudie video to her song about a machine that makes women can be found here.

49. BLACKOUT CREW - "Put A Donk On It"

A lesson we can all learn.

47=. THE VERONICAS - "Untouched"

Imperious, desperate teenpop.

47=. DAVEIGH CHASE - "The Happiest Girl In The Whole USA"

Something of a surprise entry, this isn't a single or even released track, it's a performance from TV drama Big Love, which I had never heard of. I will leave it to its nominators to explain the context (tho you can get the gist on Wikipedia)

45=. PUSSYCAT DOLLS - "When I Grow Up"

Embedding disabled on all PCDs' videos, here is this one.

45=. BLACK KIDS - "I'm Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You"

It strikes me that Universal are shooting themselves in the foot a bit by refusing to make the video from nindie pan-flashers Black Kids embeddable! Hear its jaunty retro-jangle here.

44. PUSSYCAT DOLLS - "I Hate This Part"

Them again! Beating its fellow Pussycat track by a whisker - here the girls get a bit more sensitive.

43. IDA MARIA - "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked"

A scratchy vid that takes me back to the halcyon days of Mambo Taxi etc. Not much talked about on Poptimists, it seems to me.

42. PALEFACE ft KYLA - "Do You Mind (Crazy Couzinz Remix)"

For whatever reason, funky house hasn't caught the poptimist imagination the way bassline did last year (though actually I think only T2 showed up in last year's poll). I like Kyla, she has an honest face.

Check back tomorrow for #40-31!

Comments

Re: Reasons this poptimist has not warmed to Funky House:

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes this is exactly it - I'm not in the habit of putting dubstep youtubes on poptimists because...it's dubstep. But I genuinely thought that the vocal hooks, catchiness, good vibes etc would make poptimists fall as hard for UK funky as...well, everyone else I know who knows what it is! It seems tailor-made for pop audiences.

Trackiness - don't think this is a problem, it's more apparent at actual club nights - most of the big anthems have pretty obvious choruses and so on
Resistance to Latin music - didn't realise this was a long-term British problem? I thought it was reasonably popular here!
Resistance to "smooth" "classiness" - yes, I'm beginning to be aware that poptimists don't go for this at all, but...why? I can't think why these are bad things. And it seems to be more the FT old-skool poptimists who are anti-smoothness too.

Re: latin

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

my observation over the years has been that a) it ALWAYS has a certain constutiuecy, and b) it NEVER crosses over (or "goes clear" as my old ninjatune pal matt used to say; at some point there's a weird resistance

what's strange is that ts aplies to ANY form of music you could reasonably call latin (inc.the stuff that gets danced to in "come dancing" back in the day and celebrity TV dance-competitions now

"smoothness" maybe has a similar -- though distinct -- uk arc of success/resistance? (relating to a white idea of what black music should be?) (as if the words "adult"and "pop" were intrinsically opposed?)

Re: latin

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think "the Latin" is one of the more enduring 'others' for British culture - we never had an Empire in South America, we were never conquered by Spain or Portugal, there's never been a big wave of Hispanic immigrants to the UK. The image of sophistication mixed with a certain untrustworthiness has remained the same for 200-300 years. So I wonder if Latin is too rootedly exotic to assimilate in a way that other musics haven't been - a combination of "such sophistication is not for the likes of us" and "such sophistication is inherently to be suspected".

Re: latin

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there's always been a vague Latinate presence in the charts, though - even Daddy Yankee had a top 5 hit a few years ago, and that was entirely in Spanish. Though maybe there's a disproportion of novelty holiday records that I'm thinking of. And er every small town seems to have a salsa dance class?

White people seem to want black music to have a certain level of vulgarity (but not too much) - the criticism levelled at a lot of consciously classy/classily conscious neo-soul artists is that they're not as "fun" as commercial r&b and hip-hop (though when the commercial stuff gets too vulgar, suddenly r&b and hip-hop are just too sleazy and Bad Examples and so on!).

Re: latin

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes the salsa thing is omnipresent -- when i as home at dad's one of the carers was talkin to my sister about a salsa class she was goin to in some TINY ULTRA-RURAL SHROPSHIRE TOWN, i nearly blurted out my ubersobbish metropolitan scorn for the quality of the lessons, but luckily bit my tongue in time

for some reason the latin thing is wide in brit pop culture but not "deep" -- it seems utterly to pervade a layer of leisure-time and leisure-type functional music without ever reaching "up" or "down", as it were, into neighbouring layers (i sourly think some of this is a general brit ineptness with rhythm that isn't in foursquare marchtime; that's to say, plenty of brits have an ear for this, but the ear has never been allowed cultural expression of sustenance in brit culture)

(i'm not really explaining this very well)

Re: latin

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

No you are, I get you (and agree) - "wide but not deep" was what my post was trying to get to. The lack of Hispanic influence in British culture is only noticeable b/c it's globalised itself so effectively though, right? And b/c it's not as exotic as say Russian culture - Brits have holidayed in Spain for time immemorial, obv US culture has a huge Hispanic streak. So yeah, that explains the wide-but-not-deep thing.

Which actually makes me more convinced that it's not an issue which puts people off UK funky - which isn't a Hispanic scene, and its vague Latin feel fits precisely into the general British wide-not-deep schematic. It's about as genuinely Latin as Geri Halliwell's Spanish single (though er a bit better).

Re: latin

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think it's subtler and stranger than this -- the tranche that seems subliminally allergic is reacting against an IDEA of latin rather than something they have knowledge of (so it can encompass stuff which the cognoscenti don't consider latin)

(tbh this ties into my burgeoning theory of the british love-hate/fascination-fear for musicality as a whole -- i need to sit down and work this out too)

Re: latin

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh please do - I often find myself kneejerk-shouting "why can't people just do things PROPERLY" about British pop/culture; the tendency to wallow in deliberate crapness (and the uglier flipside of that, tall-poppy syndrome, cutting people down who seek to rise up) is near the top of my "reasons to emigrate to the US" list.

Re: latin

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

My latest theory as foundation for this is: UK was traditionally and generally more receptive to American musical invention than anyone else because there's no language barrier. Also the UK was in a position where the lure of becoming more like the USA was desirable than for any other country in Europe (special relationship and all that). This results in many great and indeed, crucially, inimitable responses but you are never really going to beat people at their own game. SO better to remix that, fuse it with your own ideas and influences from elsewhere. Other countries 'caught up' and overtook in certain ways but there are other factors to explain a decline in art, media and consumer standards here too.

Obv it also depends on what is meant by 'properly'. Some people would insist there is a 'proper' way to make rock n' roll, we read this tedious line about proper pop meaning Girls Aloud when it used to mean Take That and before them something else again. Radiohead are surely doing their thing 'properly' etc.

Re: latin

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Finding yrself kneejerk-shouting about doing things properly IS British culture :)

Re: latin

[koganbot]

This isn't a direct comment on what's been said here, but Latin music has had a hidden presence in a huge amount of modern "Anglo-American" pop music - for instance, "Louie Louie," "Like A Rolling Stone," "Wild Thing," all based on a quick run up and down the I-IV-V (or Vm) that was standard as a fill in Cuban music (and probably in other Latin music; Dylan has said that the chorus to "Like A Rolling Stone" was taken from "La Bamba," which was a Mexican folk song that was already 250 years old [according to Wiki, anyway] before Richie Valens got to it). The Pete Hammond Mix of Alphabeat's "Boyfriend" draws on freestyle (a.k.a. "Latin hip-hop"); as did a few New Order hits (though I don't remember their names). Most of this music doesn't announce itself as "Latin," however.

Also, I wonder if 2-step (in the country music sense, but perhaps also in the underground garage sense) owes its presence in modern music to northern Mexico/southern Texas polka stylings that have been ongoing since the mid-nineteenth century.

(I hope someone who knows more about this than I drops in on this thread.)

Re: Reasons this poptimist has not warmed to Funky House:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think the classiness issue needs unpicking in its own thread really! But as starters - the reflex against classiness might be rooted in one or more of the following reactions:

- "This is a put-on"
- "This is NOT ENOUGH of a put-on" (i.e. something like Roxy Music gets a pass, classiness-wise)
- "This is cultural cringe (Brits trying to be American sophisticates)"
- "I am a scruffy unclassy dude what has this to do with me?"
- General discomfort with things Mick Hucknall might be imagined liking. (the key to 'classiness'' is CLASS!)

I dunno if it's a particular tic of the old-skool FT crowd though.

Re: Reasons this poptimist has not warmed to Funky House:

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hmm yes I think its own thread would be a good idea (will leave you to start it as and when). There also seems to be a bit of kneejerk reaction against music which takes itself seriously (and making a bit of an ill-advised jump to "this is po-faced and humourless"), or which places a premium on some form of emotional honesty (which yes a thousand indie students "meaning it, man", but this can be a good thing). Fearing Hucknallisms seems a bit ass-backwards though.

Re: Reasons this poptimist has not warmed to Funky House:

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

Actually thinking abt it I think there are really strong class dimensions to my own poptimist distaste for that kind of 'classiness' in pop music; I associate it v.strongly with gucci bags & designer jeans etc etc - being honest I think it is that I am v.uncomfortable with the way it sets up an alternate class system that I am not near the top of!

Re: Reasons this poptimist has not warmed to Funky House:

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I'd welcome such a thread with open arms (never mind that at the ends of those arms are some massive GUNS).