Yet Another Year In Pop: 48

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Peter Kay and chums climb up to the number one spot; double entry for Su-Bo; absent-minded moderator finally remembers to include ancient re-entry in poll three weeks late.

[Poll #1492336]

Nominations for the 2004 poll close at 5pm on Thursday. Please comment with your nominations on the original post, not this one!

Comments

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually listened to the Mariah one, but I feel I should check it on some kind of principle...

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

"Russian Roulette" is a song of the year - so, so brilliant - and both the Rihanna and Mariah albums are things of wonder. Whoever botched the UK release/marketing of the latter (#23???!!!!) ought to be sacked and blacklisted from the industry. Amazing, amazing record.

Whereas SuBo - I just don't get it. I'm probably the last person on Earth to have heard her voice and it does nothing for me (or anything particularly against me) at all; Elaine Paige has been doing this sort of thing for decades. Completely unremarkable. Why the 410K album sales? Once again great music is kept out of the upper echelons of the chart by people who don't like music buying music, and - in SuBo's case - buying it not so much because they like her, but because they want A Good Story.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I don't mind Boyle's version of "Wild Horses". She's obviously heard the Sundays' version (it's on Blind) - a lot of the vocal mimics the way Harriet Wheeler sang it. Boyle is no Wheeler (let alone a Paige) and her version doesn't bear close scrutiny, true. But, you know, I'll give her a bit of credit for choosing this song at all as the lead single - probably over the objections of the record label. I never want to hear the album, but the eclectic track list makes me smile at least.

Mariah's Foreigner cover is amazing. I can't stand the original, but now I see what other people see in the song.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

Unlike most people in the UK (because I wasn't in the UK then), I knew and liked Don't Stop Believin' (no 'g') back in the day – we had the Escape album on cassette, in fact. While I can still sort of hear its charms, up until the guitar solo, I'm still not happy about Britain's belated adoption of AOR. It's better than that awful Chicago song that I kept hearing at parties where everything else was microhouse or some such.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Heaven is a funky moose!

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

I hate "Don't Stop Believin'," "g" or no "g." Always hated it, always will hate it. I'll probably hate it a lot more when the X-Factor final comes and the song dominates the Xmas chart. In 1982 (it was a hit here - and only a very minor one - a year after the States) it represented everything that New Pop stood against, everything it was meant to supplant and destroy. Reaganrock personified (or robotified?) and a pox on all its houses.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Although I was a bit young to feel this way in 1982, I understand and sympathise. But ultimately it's just a stance, and I couldn't give a stuff if Hitler himself had crawled out of hell to perform the guitar solo - Don't Stop Believin' is a magnificent slice of pop with interesting construction, killer melody and a confident, uplifting performance.

I expect any X-Factor spawned cover will be as horrible as last year's Hallelujah, though I may be wrong.

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

No it isn't a stance, it's life and death, or the difference between life and death, and this pile of recidivist, gangrenous, goatfucking goulash should have been gouged at genesis. It is anti-pop and Pol Pot should crawl out of hell to stop it. Killer melody? Everyone who likes it or worse pretends to like it should be killed, quite frankly. Or made to watch reruns of That Antony Cotton Thing, which is a far worse option.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I agree in one respect - anyone who pretends to like anything is a twat. But what may well have seemed one way at the time is altered by perspective. People who have come to know it from a recent interest in this kind of thing, or through Glee, or even through X-Factor, will have a lot of trouble finding anything anti-pop about it. Despite what you think, this is pop: in what way is it not?

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

It is rock pretending to be pop. Lumpen in construct, contrived in dynamics, portentous rather than pretentious. Furthermore, perspectives can be altered deliberately to suit desired demographic reaches. Hence Duran Duran, uniformly regarded in their time as a joke (especially by the girls who screamed at them), are now painted as the heroes of the era rather than the thieving costermongers they actually were, whereas the likes of ABC and the Associates are now mostly forgotten, ignored or patronised.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

With regards to Duran Duran, it's certainly possible to be both a joke and important. They are funny and they are brilliant (though not the heroes to me that ABC are). Theft? Well, I don't mind if the end result is Planet Earth or Hungry Like the Wolf.

I'm also unsure how something pretending to be pop is a bad thing, or somehow makes it not pop. It's got melody, you can sing along to it, it's less than four minutes long... That's a pop song, whichever way you look at it.

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

Duran Duran were certainly a joke and possibly the least important pop group ever. They were about as funny as Peter Sutcliffe and as brilliant as Dubai World. "Planet Earth" and "Hungry Like The Wolf"? Robin Trower doing the twist to Tin Drum, morelike.

"Don't Stop Believin'" is not pop in the same way that Duran and the Thompson Twins and Nik Kershaw were not pop (and in the same way that the Mary Chain and Run-DMC and Todd Terry were pop, despite not having as many, or in some cases any, "hits"). Or in the way that Edmund Wilson was pop and HS Chamberlain wasn't. It's never been just about melody or singalong or timespan.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Duran/Thompson Twins/Kershaw not pop? Outrageous.

JAMC, Run DMC and Todd Terry are obviously pop. So are Cher, Bon Jovi, Heart, Whistesnake and a dozen other soft-rock, power-chord hit-machines who I don't mostly give a shit about.

You might not like them - tough crap. Being good is not a pre-requisite for being pop.

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

Not outrageous, but a fact.

Cher, Bon Jovi and Heart are pop, Whitesnake are rock.

Pop is about sex, mischief and danger, rock about stolidity, barrenness and acceptance of things as they are. So, for instance, Dizzee Rascal is pop whereas Taio Cruz is arguably rock. It's about ways of living, seeing and hearing.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I can buy that as an ideology, even if I don't really agree.

But Don't Stop Believin' is about sex and danger and NOT accepting things as they are.

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

Thing is, wee Steve Perry's about as sexy as Hughie Green. And I have the feeling that "not accepting things as they are" in 1981 American terms meant "no more socialism" and so the song functions as a shorthand for "escape" into Reaganism, i.e. "freedom" interpreted as "freedom from" rather than "freedom to."

[martinv.livejournal.com]

Tuesday lunchtimes are dead without a 2000s poll to fill in. DEAD.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Sorry dude - werk is hella busy right now :(