A kung fu fighter in a disco

The problem here is "with commercial impact in mind" - Bodies Without Organs and Robyn have a fairly big commercial impact in Scandinavia. They know what the Swedish market likes! Are they pop there but not elsewhere? (I've had this conversation with Dr Thomson)

I like big synths and campiness, though I don't think my tastes in pop are remotely fixed to those.

I was thinking yesterday - in the context of Tokio Hotel vs Go Team -that what I want from pop is generally a bit of vulgarity.

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com

I view pop as a FIELD OF CONTEST -- in which sonic fetish-objects, wielded as they were moralistic battle-winning technologies of affect. twist in the hand and engulf and transform the warrior, or -- thick with the rust of a thousand triumphant campaigns -- fall to crestfallen dust as they are hefted aloft

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"synth-based, very gay (large elements of androgyny and burlesque), very white (a deliberate move away from turn-of-the-century r&b-influenced pop eg Britney, Xtina), and Swedish for preference"

STRAW MAN.

There has been an unusual amount of good Swedish pop lately but that doesn't mean people think of pop as being Swedish Lex!

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Yeah I gathered that Robyn was "big" over there too - I think my argument isn't so much that they're not pop as they're not the embodiment of pop. I like big synths and campness too but I also like a bit of EDGE with them - BWO et al are all people who seem to think that PSB were great because of the synths rather than because of the words.

What I like for is basically bangingness (or a really soppy ballad).

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I think the peculiarity of the Swedish market is important here too. Here you have a small country whose main claim to musical fame is producing one of the most enormously successful pop groups ever (also one of the 'whitest' probly), and crucially that pop group evolved out of quite respected chart-veteral folkies. This is surely at the root of Sweden's image (external, maybe internal) as a country that Takes Pop Seriously.

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I have seen SEVERAL people go ON AND BLOODY ON about Sweden recently, often while referring to dreadful limp synthpop!

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It's not totally a straw man. There's an MP3 blog called Sounds Of Sweden (not AFAIK run by a swede), Popjustice makes an ironic joke of its sweden-fetishism, and so on.

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boyofbadgers.livejournal.com

Who are these SEVERAL PEOPLE, because I haven't been reading them?

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thenipper.livejournal.com

I have evidently missed Annie's "harder electro edge"!

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Oh sure, but just because most people in 2003 were talking about crunk when they were talking about hip-hop didn't mean they thought all hip-hop was crunk.

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I thought the PSBs were great because of both and both contribute equally to their magnificence.

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RacistJustice for one!

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thenipper.livejournal.com

Also, for the talk of pop being genre-blind, voracious appetite, Lex is the first to say that -eg- Franz's "Take me out" can't be Good Pop because it has guitars on it! It seems to me it's much more pop than the dull new The Knife album.

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the-roofdog.livejournal.com

You probably know better than me, but I wz under the impression that Bodies w/o Organs had made very little impact in their native land, their two biggest markets are Russia and the UK. Which probably backs up Lex's point, tbh.

*sniff*

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Also it would appear that Bodies Without Organs are the weak link following the might of Army Of Lovers (but then again just the one great great track or what?) and Alcazar (just the four or five great great tracks or what?) and they are surely both 'bloodier' than BWO.

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boyofbadgers.livejournal.com

Oh. Them. *shrug*

I honestly don't pay any attention to them anymore.

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Oh sure, but most people also seem to think that pop is pretty dismal right now, so it makes a certain amount of sense that they're going farther afield and/or narrower.

I'm with you as to pop's wide net, of course, and I've really been enjoying all the girl-group pop-rock we've been getting, but I can also see how people might not be talking much about R&B-inflected pop in a time when they don't think there's much good R&B-inflected pop around.

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But just what is it that makes 'Take Me Out' closer to Perfect Pop than 'Silent Shout', if that is the case? I'm not convinced this is worth trying to explain mind you. I like both songs anyway.

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it's not Good Pop because it's BAD POP!

Annie comes across as being slightly less cutesy than eg Robyn, and when she DJs she plays quite banging songs.

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I mean, I'd love more stuff to listen to, so if you have any Britney-style pop hanging around we haven't heard, bring that shit out...

(And remind me not to start all my comments with "Oh sure")

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Yes, I probably agree, but BWO...missed half out.

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I don't think r&b is in a particularly bad state at the moment! Rihanna, Ciara, Amerie, Brooke Valentine...I'm not sure why these people, despite making poppy chart-friendly dancefloor-friendly commercially successful music, are Not Pop whereas Robyn, who makes Imbruglia-lite acoustic ballads which don't even get properly released outside her native country, is somehow the Embodiment Of Pop.

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You see here's the problem I have - who exactly is claiming Ciara, Rhianna etc as Not Pop?

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Well this is where the somewhat nebulous 'online pro-pop community' rears its head - but basically there are people who are avowed Fans Of Pop and we know who and where they are (RacistJustice message board for one) and they are very definite that it is Pop which they like...and they, by and large, reject Ciara, Rihanna etc.

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com

where is the love for SOUNDS OF NORWAY!!

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lj ate a long comment on the poptimism version of this thread, but here is an abbreviation:

pop is not what you listen to, but how you listen.

i.e. fanboys with ljs enthusing about Robyn = indie.

hearing Robyn on radio 1 = pop.

And I totally think that Robyn in Sweden = pop, in UK = indie.

(at the moment, she could become pop in UK (unlikely) or stop being pop in either place)

This means that pop cannot be used as shorthand for 'good' because the c***ing arctic monkeys have obviously released a pop album. (and a lot of 'pop' at the moment, has the sonic ingredients of 'indie' (if by that you mean guitars played by chin-stroking post-punk gubbling tw*nts).

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And the whole 'gay synth' = pop argument is programmed into the most indie thing ever i.e. 'Romo'.

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yes I wondered on the other thread whether pop was an ethos of listening or of creating - I think it's people who want it to be the latter who get excited about the stylisation of eg BWO, but really it is the former? Oddly the most stylised music I like is heavily styled indie - The Kills, YYYs, Interpol - because it seems to contradict their indie-ness.

btw I have ONLY JUST worked out who you are! duh.

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i don't know, i sort of agree but i still hear 'Crash And Burn Girl' or 'Be Mine' and just immediately think 'wow what a great pop song'.

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I have never quite bought the lj fanboys = indie argument, not because I am not a fanboy or not indie, but because I think it needs its own term, it's too different from the communities surrounding indie, which tend to be quite strongly based in gigging and actually making music. (OK you could argue that clubbing and remixing replace this I suppose).

I think things like 'pro-pop blogs' and nights like Poptimism and so on - and here! - are like artificial pop micro-climates, like a botanic garden or a zoo, in which a huge amount of effort is expended to create an environment friendly to 'pop' which is largely cut off from whatever is declining or thriving out in the wider musical ecosystem.

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"it's not Good Pop because it's BAD POP!"

but hooooow whyyyyyy?

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and also consider the idea that 'Take Me Out' = Bad Pop but 'Take Me Out (Daft Punk mix)' = Good Pop

but really, how DO you rationalise and reason that?

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but do you have Gorillaz in this zoo?

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braisedbywolves.livejournal.com

His rationale for it last night was "all records are basically sh1t, and just fodder for remixes".

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Fair call: 'indie' is my shorthand for 'intensive and analytical' as opposed to 'intensive and obsessional' (teen listening) and 'open and unreflective' (pop) (but obviously pop listening IS reflective, but just in different ways), as soon as pop = unreflective it becomes a non-achievable ideal or limit case, which perhaps isn't a bad thing. i.e. everything is pop, there is no pop, only more-or-less pop ways of listening to things. 'indie' in the male teen bonding and snarling at girls who don't love them sense is actually much more 'pop' than lj analysis, but I call lj fandom 'indie' 'cos I don't want it thinking it's achieved 'pop'.

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I shine my bushel under a light.

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I think I stand by that.

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This is a totally sustainable attitude but not necc. a 'pop' one historically.

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The idea of differentiating yourself from ~~your older sister~~ the pop mainstream via noisy guitars and squalling vocals is a pop mainstream idea.

He Who Explains Himself In Bits And Pieces

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what about R&B men Lex? which blingin' geezers are you feeling, if any?

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poptasticuk.livejournal.com

As quite possibly the most pop obsessed person on the planet, I have to respond to this. Pop to me is pretty much synonymous with happiness - it's almost Platonic, to me pop is like "the good" and every song's closeness to "the good" is determined by how poppy it is, how happy it sounds. If you think BWO are wimpy, you must be listening to the wrong songs. Listen to Sunshine In The Rain or Conquering America - does that not sound like pure sparkling happiness to you? For me pop is:

- extravagant & OTT
- uplifting in sound & usually message

It doesn't matter which instruments are used to reach this result, although obviously some instruments (such as synths as you mentioned) make it easier than others. Of course there are some great sad, slow songs which could be called pop, but these tend to have other pop qualities in such a huge way that makes up for what they lack.

Pop is certainly not about fitting into what's currently popular, because that would make Arctic Monkeys more pop than Annie, which they're obviously not - they're more popULAR. The word "pop" may have been derived from "popular", but it's become something quite separate, yet many people still can't separate the two.

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hmm...Usher, definitely. There is a boy called Chris Brown who has a bubblecrunk song I saw on the TV in a shop which I liked? And I liked that Bobby Valentino song from last year.

R&B has v much traditionally been the feminine music to hip hop's masculine music though.

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martinskidmore.livejournal.com

I am of the opinion that Chris Brown needs to get Mike Jones in for a guest verse, and we will force Cabbage and Steady Mike into a karaoke kover version.

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martinskidmore.livejournal.com

Well I was just listening to Baby Huey's cover of A Change Is Gonna Come. It's insanely extravagant and OTT - his screaming fucking terrified me the first time I hear it, and I still adjust the volume whenever it starts. Its message is plainly uplifting, and his version is punchier and bouncier than many, so it's kind of uplifting in sound too. But there is no way in the world it's a pop record, nor has anyone ever tried to claim it is. There isn't a good definition of pop, I think - all of them have exceptions, mostly lots of important ones. And I'm very distrustful of anything that ties it (or any other genre term) to judgements of quality. There's good and bad pop like there is good and bad indie - if you start to claim otherwise you drift into hopeless circular arguments.

I do think pop has ALWAYS been about fitting in with what's popular. That's not all there is to it, but it's what has meant there has been pop for so long, and yet Girls Aloud sound nothing like Frank Sinatra.

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poptasticuk.livejournal.com

I've never heard that song so I can't comment. My criteria for pop was rather rushed and not supposed to be definitive. What I was trying to say is that there must be criteria for pop, it just isn't a specific sound, and my suggestion is that it's to do with how the music makes you feel. The fact that you knew your song wasn't pop shows that there is such a thing as pop as a genre and therefore it must have criteria for what belongs to it or not.

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V interesting - I have toyed with equating 'poppy' to 'happy' myself but as you point out ballads are a bit of a stumbling block: what are their 'other pop qualities'? What makes a Will Young or Sugababes acoustic ballad pop, but a Jose Gonzalez or Sufjan Stevens one indie? And then there are people like Coldplay who both pop people and indie people would like to reject and push into the other category. As far as I can see the only possible answer is that Will Young and Sugababes are people who usually make unarguably pop songs.

Also - there are many non-ballad pop songs which sound ostensibly happy but in fact are about quite depressing subjects: much of the Emma Bunton solo album, a lot of Annie's songs come to that. But then maybe what makes them pop is their ability to have some sort of uplift - whooshing synths or whatever - despite the darker lyrics.

Extravagant and uplifting is interesting because they're things I usually associate with dance music, stuff like really blissful microhouse - that Gabriel Ananda track I mentioned the other day for example. My idea of poppy happiness is more...I don't really know how to describe it as it is the morning, but it's the difference between dancing to Jamelia's 'Superstar' and Madonna's 'Hung Up'. Or indeed the difference between 'What You Waiting For?' and 'What You Waiting For? (Jacques Lu Cont remix)'.

I don't know which BWO songs I've heard, but the World Cup one reminded me of what I don't like about them - it really isn't so much the synths (which I just find a bit unimaginative) as the vocals, which aren't...muscular or distinctive enough.

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