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

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

It's Adorno sorta-kinda (but you have to work hard to dig this out of him)

[koganbot]

semi-inarticulate drummer

[koganbot]

Also, this is a different point that probably has nothing to do with the discussion, but any critic eventually if he's a sound guy he needs to put the sound into some sort of story - whether music theory or the sound in relation to the song or something. But can one isolate the sound in a way that rebels against the various stories? Here's the sound and it takes us out of the world, even the world of the melody and the rhythm and the rest of the song. (I doubt that this is possible, but perhaps there's a way to take the sound and put it into a story that seems to flabbergast anyone who is in the groove of the stories that are already there.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

it's back to my usual thing: the workings of the democracy of everything that's present -- the question isn't so much can you invent a parallel and distinct story for [element x] as what happens to the whole if you treat the story of [element x] as the dominant story, and the seemingly dominant story as minor incidents in it

my shorthand for this is manny farber/termite art/the funny little character actor you only see for a moment

democracy is of course a highly idealised tool of forensic analysis but so is the seignural aristocracy of auteurism: is this one wo/man's dream or the passage of a fellowship?

[koganbot]

"Democracy" seems the wrong word, because not every vote gets to count, and majority doesn't rule. I'd think the Farber-Kogan point would be that while you might have a dominant story, or several dominant stories, those stories don't govern the entire works, which have a potential infinity of associations and tangents, and the main stories aren't immutable, either, as they get pulled and shaped by the little critters nipping around.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the correct word is "harmolodic caucus" but it saves time if i point at this far-off distant thing which people think they understand in the hope that they will be somewhere near the thing i'm actually talking about (that they don't know the name of) when i need them to be :)

[koganbot]

But people won't understand, since "democracy" has too much of a goody-goody-pants connotation, as if we're making the music a better fairer place and the result is good etc. Like, saying that the solar system is a democracy because every asteroid has gravitational influence hardly seems right, and there's no reason we'd want the solar system to be a democracy anyway. What I said in one of my country critic ballots - "in general I like music that overspills its container, though for this to work well there has to be a good container in the first place" - doesn't translate into "democracy" (or "aristocracy" or any other form of making political decisions) in any way that makes sense.

[koganbot]

Speaking of sound stepping out of story - which is a story itself, so is impossible - what do you think of the lyrics to "Come Clean"? Tom's analysis stopped short at the chorus.

Let's go back
Back to the beginning
Back to when the earth, the sun, the stars all aligned
'Cause perfect didn't feel so perfect
Trying to fit a square into a circle
Was no life
I defy

[CHORUS:]
Let the rain fall down
And wake my dreams
Let it wash away
My sanity
'Cause I wanna feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I'm coming clean, I'm coming clean

I'm shedding
Shedding every color
Trying to find a pigment of truth
Beneath my skin
'Cause different
Doesn't feel so different
And going out is better
Than always staying in
Feel the wind

[CHORUS:]
Let the rain fall down
And wake my dreams
Let it wash away
My sanity
'Cause I wanna feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I'm coming clean, I'm coming clean
(rain fall down)
I'm coming clean
(rain fall down
rain fall down)
Let the rain fall
Let the rain fall
I'm coming clean

[CHORUS:]
Let the rain fall down
And wake my dreams
Let it wash away
My sanity
'Cause I wanna feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I'm coming clean,
I'm coming clean, I'm coming clean, let the rain fall, let the rain fall, let the rain fall, I'm coming clean

Let's go back
Back to the beginning...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was listening to this on the bus after reading Tom's essay this morning, and it struck me that Hilary's diffidence isn't a million miles from...Neil Tennant, of all people. It's glimpses here and there rather than actual parallels, but I can hear Tennant singing a number of these lyrics...which, I also realised today, is a not-so-veiled coming out narrative. (Change "going out" is "coming out" and it all makes sense. Plus, the whole digital-stutter leading to Hilary's voice being deliberately cut off after "I'm coming---".)