The Decade In Pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My enormous Pitchfork piece on "The Decade In Pop" is up: http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7703-the-decade-in-pop/

Spotify playlist to go with it here: http://open.spotify.com/user/freakytrigger/playlist/6cudPLlniOyOrpX5M5Dnnz

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

'Course there's nothing mutually exclusive about great sounds and great ideas. The-Dream has great sounds AND great ideas, and they feed each other. But I guess the difference between a #1 and #2 type is that they're translating sounds into ideas, putting sonic revelations on the same footing as conceptually interesting facets of a song -- performance, lyrics, feeling. So they're part of what I'd call the "type-2" conversation, a full intellectualization of what may start as visceral enjoyment. Simply tracking evolutions and following the sonic trends doesn't necessarily pass the threshold into type-2 conversations, though often it can, and often it does; this is just something I've noticed in the nature of pop conversation, I guess.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The #2 type is translating sounds into ideas, I mean. And see above, where 1 and 2 feel more like "modes" than actual attainable stances or ideologies -- we can tend toward 1 more than 2, but can't actually separate the two? Something like that. (I think that #1 strikes me more as the aesthete's appreciation and #2 strikes me more as the intellectual's appreciation; both have something to offer but many tend toward one while incorporating ideas of the other?)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

"Nothing mutually exclusive about great sounds and great ideas" - true, but what I'm saying is I, the listener, has (for reasons I can't grasp) brought to bear an exclusiveness on these intertwining streams (awkwardly worded... sorry). Not entirely, of course, that would be impossible (of course I think about what some songs are saying even as I think I'm just tapping along to their beats). But when I think of some of the key pop figures of the decade -- Beyonce, Britney, Justin, and I'm going to add Paris because I think she is key based on the wars that erupted -- they mostly functioned for me as vessels. I don't expect to care about what Beyonce is like in her personal life, but I don't think I even care that much about Beyonce within her own music. And yet -- I totally love a few Beyonce songs!

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Actually, weirdly enough, Paris is one of the few pop stars (or would-be pop stars) of the decade I did become emotionally invested in for a time. In part it was because I felt I was pushed there.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, Beyonce is actually a tough example, as is Justin. Generally I don't think Beyonce is particularly deserving of persona investment, and almost casts herself as an aesthete, despite the sometimes intensely personal nature of her songs. I'm not sure what it is about her (or Justin), but she seems to actively discourage that kind of investment, even as she's become a kind of figurehead for personal investment! But then I feel the same way about Avril, and it's almost exclusively because of Avril. (Paris is a tricky one; I made the "vessel" argument, but I've come around to how coherent her persona on the album actually is. But that's not really what the conversation was all about, for the most part, that was a more meta convo.)

I was surprised at analyzing "Single Ladies" with sixth graders this summer. When we did a straight lyrical reading, like prose, it was clear that the story in the song was not the story in our heads when we listened to the song. And yet I don't think that the story that's literally happening is quite right -- regardless of how accurate it is to paint the specific story, it's not what I would really say "Single Ladies" is about. Though I do think the literal reading does nicely knock down weirdly shrill arguments about what the song is said to "represent," but those arguments are dumb because they're dumb, not because of the ambiguity of the song. (The problem with those arguments is that they claim to take the lyrics at face value without understanding what the face value actually is; my argument is that the face value isn't the real value, is kind of a "side" value, but this still wouldn't lead to speculation on the "real argument" or the effect it might have on hypothetical listeners.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"persona investment" isn't a typo. I've devoted a lot of personal investment to trying to figure Beyonce out, but it hasn't really worked so well for whatever reason. I'm still somewhat baffled by her.

[koganbot]

Could you elaborate? E.g., what is the story line on paper, what's the storyline in our heads when we listen, how is the first not quite right, what are the shrill arguments, etc.?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, the storyline on paper is, literally:

Beyonce is in club. Ex-boyfriend sees her. She sees him. She walks up to Random Guy, and starts dancing with him. She looks back at Ex-boyfriend and taunts him: "if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it."

Pertinent details: She's been in a relationship with him for "three long years," has gone through agony after the break-up ("cried my tears") and now is getting some payback in the club.

The loose interpretation of it fails in both directions, which are too extreme: one side says it's about "celebrating singledom," is directed primarily at "all the single ladies" (in the audience). The other side says it reinforces traditional marriage, means that marriage is the only logical end to a relationship, forces heteronormative blah blah.

The reason these are both "shrill" responses is that they miss the personal complexity of Beyonce's situation. She thought she was with a guy she might spend the rest of her life with, and he couldn't commit. Now she wants to move on, but she can't quite -- she still wants to hurt him. She's using her new boy as a prop to get back at HIM. He still has power over her. This is clearer in the bridge:

"Here's a man that makes me then takes me and delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond. Pull me into your arms, tell me I'm the one you own. If you don't you'll be alone, and like a ghost I'll be gone."

There's problematic language in there, "one you own," but she's essentially saying -- commit to me or I'll leave you. Just like I left that guy. And anyway, it's unclear to whom she's referring in the bridge; is she expressing her old feelings for her ex-boyfriend? Talking to the stranger, imagining the possibilities of where they could go? Either way she's projecting the previous relationship onto this one -- I wanted more, he didn't, we split; I don't want it to happen again, not least because it's a waste of my time, since I have a destiny to be with someone.

Anyway, the idea that this is just about being single is crazy, but the idea that it reinforces a narrow view of marriage is an overread, I think, or basic projection. Why shouldn't Beyonce want to find a soulmate? And how does this mean that she thinks it's appropriate for all women? Why shouldn't she be upset when the guy with whom she wants to settle down turns out not to want to settle down with her? She's hurt, but it also appears that she ended the relationship, because she doesn't want to spend three more long years with someone who doesn't give her what she wants.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

But the story in the song, I think, is more celebratory than this seems. "Got gloss on my lips, Man on my hips, got me tighter in my Dereon jeans." There is a sort of "me and my girls out at the club" feeling to it, which seems to be somewhat at odds with how specific the narrative is. It's a song that does generalize, as a dance anthem and by privileging that put-down as a sort of mantra for other women ("all my single ladies [repeat after me]") but the lyrics themselves aren't particularly generic, and nothing about the general thrust of the song, or the feeling of the song, can totally undo what she's actually saying, which is complicated.

[koganbot]

Thank you for this.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

I need to read this thread, and Tom's essay, and other posts linked to from here much more closely (and probably won't have time to do say today, and by the time I do, as usual, this discussion will be gone and forgotten), but just from my skimming this morning (and probably my misinterpretation of what's being said), what's bugging me even more than the sounds vs. ideas dichotomy (as if sounds aren't connected to ideas -- honestly, I have no idea on which side of that dichotomy I'd land, if
I even bought the dichotomy, which I don't) as this apparent equation of "ideas" with "personas." But I'm totally Rorschaching here, right? Nobody is really saying that, to infer ideas and thoughts from individual songs, you have to rely on how those songs work in conjunction with said artists' entire body of work (or worse, their "real life") are they? I mean, sure there have always been some artists who seem to convey an overall personality in their larger output or on such-and-such album (always have been, and not just in "pop" however that's being defined this week -- it's not the like the '00s are different than any other decade in that respect), and once in a while (once in a very very very great while, in my own mind, but I'm weird), what I read happens in celebrities' lives might impact how I feel about some particular song they do (more often, I just tend to ignore those lives because I've got more interesting things to pay attention to), but it's seems really limiting to somehow pretend looking for a "larger persona" a requirement for appreciating pop (or any other) music. But nobody's actually saying that, and I'm just being paranoid they are, right? Whew!

Though I do have to say that, on one cursory reading (and I could be way off here), the one part of Tom's essay that I found the most problematic was the Lady Gaga part, since it seemed (as do almost all Gaga criticisms I've seen) way more attuned to how she apparently presents herself outside her music than to the music itself (thus the claim - -which Tom seems to admit is a frequent fallback for people who don't like certain pop, but for some reason he doesn't fully explain in this instance the fallback is right -- that her music is somehow incidental to the rest of the package, but there's no specifics (at least none I noticed) about what's supposed to make her music so bad or uninteresting backing the claim up. (Maybe I'm just cranky here because, as far as I can tell, her album stands up to albums by just about any of the other '00s pop artists he's named in the piece. And even if you don't like it, that doesn't mean it's not an interesting failure. But again, I need to read closer.)

As for the "neat sounds" thing, I have to admit that I've often been annoyed by a tendency for criticism of '00s pop songs to fall back on lauding "innovative production techniques" with disregard for whether a song works as, like, a song. In other words, if the production sounds somehow "new" (not "dated", usually from a dance or hip-hip perspective), all other sins are forgiven. But again, this is probably just my curmudgeony selective misreading, right?

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

(Excuse grammatical incoherence/incomprehensibily of the above; I was typing really fast and didn't have time to proofread. But if there are any parts you're really have trouble translating, feel free to ask and I will do my best to edit and/or untangle.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

As for the "neat sounds" thing, I have to admit that I've often been annoyed by a tendency for criticism of '00s pop songs to fall back on lauding "innovative production techniques" with disregard for whether a song works as, like, a song.

Well, this is as close as I can get to how this idea of "Strand 1" or "sounds more so than ideas" (I want to be clear that I think the two are inextricable, but you can have both a poor grasp of the whole song and a good idea of specific production techniques OR a good grasp of conceptual ideas, as in reading a lyrics sheet, say, and a poor understanding of how things sound) actually looks like in practice. It pretends that production techniques are an end unto themselves, not a context for the whole song. The "ideas" bit is really just a way of saying that there are more holistic ways of looking at songs. Sometimes this involves following people over the course of the rest of their work (I think that some artists certainly make more sense when you follow the rest of their work) and for some it doesn't -- like, I still like that stupid Filly song "Sweat (Drip Drop)" even though she's completely blank and I don't expect to hear another note from her either again.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess what I find confusing (and I bet I'm not the first person to point that out), is that even those critics who tend to rely almost exclusively on critiquing production techniques and ignoring everything else are responding to ideas, because, uh, production techniques are ideas in and of themselves (or the results of ideas, whatever.) So maybe I'm just arguing semantics.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

A good point. Maybe I could put it something more like "sounds" versus "stories," though even then it doesn't seem quite right. I guess I was just trying to recognize what Tom, I think rightly, sees as a split, and define it more precisely. But the problem is that it's a subtler split than any "this versus this" version of it might suggest. There does seem to be some kind of rift between production-centric and more holistic criticism of pop in this decade, though. I don't know if it's any different than any other decade, but it's still an issue.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well, the version of it I was telling is that the emphasis on production emerged as a tactic and that, like many tactics, it had a degree of blowback.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think you're that far off - I find it very hard to pin down why I don't respond to Lady Gaga's tracks with any great enthusiasm, given that I like the look, I like the genre, etc. It might very well be that I'm projecting blankness onto the music because of the offhanded way she sometimes performs 'being a pop star', her references to Warhol etc.

In the context of the piece, my not liking Lady Gaga isn't that important though - I'd be saying the same things about her performance of stardom, being her fan etc. if I liked her, I'd just have replaced the handwaving about boring music with handwaving about good music.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"vessels" - OK, maybe you didn't care about Beyoncé's personal life (I don't think many people get to care, she's so intensely private), but surely you don't mean this in the "it could be anyone else" sense? One of the most important critical strides I've made in the past decade is, contra the received wisdom that all pop stars are blank slates and empty vessels and fucking robots, to distinguish between the minor players who could genuinely be anyone, not that this is necessarily a bad thing (Danity Kane, Rachel Stevens); and those who bring something individual to bear on their music (everyone you listed; Cassie, Ciara etc).

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

"Vessels" is probably a bad way to put it -- talk about damning the stuff with faint praise, etc. I need to think this through some more. Beyonce is obviously a singular figure in a way Rachel Stevens isn't, but though I can only think of one Rachel song I think is pretty good (and love at least a couple Beyoncé songs, and have some affection for almost ALL of her singles), the truth is, my own ears -- at least re: r&b and teen-pop -- have definitely tended toward the anonymous-could-be-anyone side of the divide. I'm not sure why. (Unlike you, however, I would put Cassie in the latter camp. And "U & Me" is a serious contender for my single of the decade. I also don't hear much in the way of distinguished voices in Girls Aloud, Danity Kane, or Sugababes, but I like how their voices work in their music just fine.)

I did say in my first post btw that I was kind of troubled about all this!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Also, caring about the internal narrative and emotions of the song and the man/woman singing it != caring about the personal life of the performer. They actually intertwine very rarely for me: when artists like Mary J Blige or Tori Amos trade heavily on their own personal experience, or with a special case like Blackout. But with, say, Ciara's "Promise": I've no idea if Ciara Harris herself has ever felt those emotions to a specific person, or if so who he was. But within the song the deeply felt, intimately rendered tenderness and devotion of Ciara, the narrator, are totally key to it.