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

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

Busy right now but suffice to say [this is good].

I judge this...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

... very nicely done; seems very strong on one swift skim. Wish I'd been able to read it before completing MJ: there's a bit where I got lost in abstract generalised flail about repetition and invention, which you nailed nicely concretely.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I loved reading this - stylistically I love how you make a massive 3-page essay sound so concise! So readable and never a hint of tl;dr.

I have studiously avoided hearing anything other than the original "country" Taylor Swift songs and your description of the "pop mix" makes me glad for that :/ (btw, I recently heard the original country versions of a few Shania Twain singles for the first time - and really enjoyed them! The UK versions I appreciated as catchy pop but in practice they made me flinch a little.)

OTM re: the best tracks on Nelly F's Loose! I'd be willing to bet that "Say It Right" eventually proves her most enduring single, actually.

As per Twitter I love the Hilary Duff para: an unfortunate by-product of amazing production being a gateway into pop for people was that pop (and R&B and hip-hop) judgment was reduced to "cool sounds: y/n?" for too many.

Kind of a depressing conclusion! Pop needs to reinvent its relevance right now, and spearheading this is...Lady Gaga. Oh.

"blognoscenti"

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

100 Internet Points to that man!

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

It seems great, but one thing that struck me is that there is (micro/)blogging breaking down barriers and there is backroom wizards making their way to the front but there is no Kanye?

The thing about Lily Allen is that even though people think they know the Real Lily Allen and that the one in 'The Fear' isn't her, the response to a room of people being played it is still a room of people dancing (amusingly, this is also the response to being played Lady Gaga, up to the point that they realise what they're listening to).

Re: Justin and the BEP: I think he's kept his options open - what people will have seen him on this year, apart from the SuperSerious Dead and Gone (and the Madonna single, which I think everyone on the planet is willing to forget) is his work with The Lonely Planet. I don't know that a spot with the Black Eyed Peas would be such a surprise (though I may be saying that just because I'd really love to hear it)

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Really nice read and not as long as ppl made out (it doesn't seem as big as Eric H's mp3 social history thing which I also liked of course).

Annoying pedant moment: Lily Allen's famous Dad connection was surely as much a part of her success as the MySpacing, opinions4u etc.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

"But I think a really big element was that the early-00s attention paid to pop production meant even pop-friendly listeners cared more about how the music sounded than how it might feel."

You've caused much discomfort on the home front with this! A nagging concern of mine, most of the decade, is that I'm turning into a modern day equivalent of the seventies power pop critic -- albeit one who's never lost interest in the music of the present -- constantly on the lookout for the right sounds that thrill, failing (and at times not even necessarily feeling the desire) to make any better sense of it than that. I've more often than not felt strangely disassociated from the world most of the music I've loved this decade emerges from (incl. much of the attendant discussion around the music), and yet... I don't feel I love the music any less -- I've sure listened to some of it a lot -- though I do probably love it somewhat differently.

Anyway, excellent, sprawling piece... hard to absorb on a single spin.

[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.

sorry i've just been readng marcuse

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i don't care terribly much about "private life" -- it's not a guide social context anyway, because it all manifests in tweakable media, it's better to think of it as "part of the work", lady gaga style -- but really do care about sound: and choices made in respect of sound... in lots of ways i think this is the big nervous unspoken in what dave's calling the "pop-auteur critic" mode of discussion: it focuses on the interplay of voice and word, and treats the rest as inflection or colouring, backdrop basically

but it isn't just this for everyone, not at all: in fact, the quasi-autonomy of this "backdrop" realm seems as important to me as the "pure musicianship" autonomy of "proper" musicians, establishing a territory they can communicate without being bossed about and diagnosed and dissected by the verbally adept: a key to the pull of all music in the modern world is that those who are good with words, and thus a bit too cosy with the administrators and bureaucrats and legalists, don't get to boss it around, to pre-plan or second-guess it -- there's an unspoken comity between the semi-inarticulate listener and the semi-inarticulate drummer/guitarist/producer which cuts out the bloody preening singer and his/her smug pal the critic with his bloody all-purpose eloquence, just a for while, sometimes...