A half-formed thought

[meserach.livejournal.com]

So a big part of the story of 00s music was the 80s influence, which has reached some kind of a peak/avatar/godhead status with Lady GaGa I suppose.

SO the logic transition for the 2010s, whatever we end up calling them, is 90s retro, right? Presumably there should already be 90s retro stuff happening now, bubbling under the mainstream but ready to explode out over the course of the next decade.

New Britpop? Another grunge revival? A eurodance/rave-culture revival? Riotgrrl 2?

My thoughts here were prompted by the Blcak Eyed Peas's video for Imma Be/Rocking That Body, which at 10 minutes long and repetition-riffic seems to represent something of a transitional form between 80s-tinged electronica pop songs and dance epics. The BEP seems like a good cultural barometer at the moment.

Anyway uh /braindump, I clear floor now for cleverer people than me to say words.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Good point on revivalist vs drawing on - even when Gaga is doing actual pastiche, like "Sleepless", she's not coming across as 'reviving' anything in the way that the Zomby album was. But there's a lot of 1990s in the pool of material she's drawing on.

I heard a couple of singles last year and the year before where I very strongly thought, "OK, they're trying for a turn-of-the-00s Destiny's Child sound" (production-wise not so much vocal-wise - something about the hi-hats and the thin harpsichord-y sound DC had on some Writing's On The Wall tracks). Frustratingly I can't remember what they were - one of the Keri Hilson tracks? A teenpop thing? Argh.