Keep On Moving

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Two things said by the Lex on the Poptimists chart thread:

"Gareth and I were talking last night about how a lot of the pro-pop people appear to have collectively decided that pop is a sonic genre rather than...anything and everything which cannibalises anything and everything else with an eye on the charts and sonic results all over the map, which is how I would want to define and approve of pop."

"I think my view of pop is the, the pure poppist view! the "pop-is-not-a-sound-but-an-ethos" argument which means that anything from Avril Lavigne to Stardust can be pop if it wants but that any attempt to define pop on strict sonic boundaries, or to make music based on these definitions (as many of these Swedes seem to do), is itself r*ck*sm or even worse INDIE"

Worth more discussion I reckons. Maybe we should ignore the whole qn of indie as I honestly think it's a side issue, and let's also try and leave rock1sm out of this until we know what it means, but yeah, is pop a sound or an ethos, or a sound that epitomises an ethos, or WHAT?

(If yr starving for actual YSI fun I will have some goodies for you tonight, including Bosh of the Week)

(Meanwhile for full on comments box madness scroll back to the Now 18 poll and look at the bottom - EEK)

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well not really no, the dancefloor is one way - a very good way - of inducing rushes of enthusiasm and excitement, but it's not the only way.

I think what differentiates good pop from bad or mediocre pop tends to be the element of surprise. "Well-crafted" is a potential enemy of pop not because craft or precision is at all bad but because it's the point where you recognise the template well enough to spot it

(on the other hand knowing the template = being less ready for the sudden exciting leap out of said template in a word or sound or moment)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to reconcile disliking the well-craftedness of BWO (and being unthrilled by Rachel's predictable 'So Good') for those reasons with my love of eg Amerie's 'Touch' and Beyonce's 'Baby Boy' precisely because of their formalism, their rigid adherence to a template.