I am delighted, but not at all surprised, to hear that Japanese hip-hop is every bit as derivative and earnest as Japanese punk (and yes, I feel very comfortable generalizing from this one example).
That's from 1999. Presumably it's changed since then.
1,2: that guy can't be a man 'cause he doesn't use the same Pilot-brand pen as me. (Precise .5? Pshaw. Uniball micro, named after ogged's genitalia, is where it's at.)
Great, now everybody knows that "help Ben move" is a euphemism.
That's from 1999. Presumably it's changed since then.
Japanese pop is always already derivative and earnest. The link in 7 offers nothing to challenge this contention.
Japanese pop is always already derivative and earnest.
I've wondered about this, since it seems that every country's pop is AADE, but maybe it's that pop itself is AADE and we just notice when it's foreign (or many years after the fact, when it's American). Perhaps only Hurra Torpedo (linked here many times, but never enough) has managed to turn derivative and earnest on its ear.
Pop can't be AA derivative, at least not of other pop, which is generally what people mean, on pain of infinite regress We need to find the Prime Mover of Pop.
That Hurra Torpedo thing is awesome. But you know what else is pretty cool? The Pipettes.
10: I was thinking about that as I posted the last comment. To some extent, all pop is derivative, but it's the specific kind of derivative (hewing carefully close to the original models) and the specific quality of earnestness, heavily tinged with sentimentality, that seems to distinguish Japanese pop. The French pop I've heard, for example, has little musical merit of its own, but lacks the cutesy sentimentality -- call it the Hello-Kitty factor -- that seems to go over so well with Japanese audiences.
I will ponder this as I continue to work on painting my house, and report back.
Pop can be always already derivative of something that is, but not essentially, pop.
Phil Ford at Dial "M" has written about pop music occasionally (eg here).
We need to find the Prime Mover of Pop.
I'd honestly always assumed there was such a PMP.
It just occurred to me that Hurra Torpedo's shtick isn't all that different from Ruinzhatova's covers of "Trans-Europe Express" or "Sex Machine" (which is played in one channel while "Larks Tongues' in Aspic pt II" is played in the other).
26: The linked post is thoight-provoking. The opening line:
The aesthetic ideal of pop is the perfect realization of the expected pattern.
Seems right, but the subsequent explanation confuses me:
This means, (a), that pop is a classicizing aesthetic, not an innovating, modernizing one; and (b) pop is involved with common experience, i.e., those aspects of musical life held that we, as Americans, hold in common. ... You may hate "The Piano Man" and that theme from Titanic that Celine Dion sang, whatever it's called, but you still know it when you hear it.
This only makes sense if you have a very narrow definition of pop music. It makes perfect sense to say that any song that woiuld be sung on American Idol, by definition, exists within a broadly shared cultural experience, but does that generalize to "pop."
Could one really say of both The Pixies and Rufus Wainwright, for example, that anyone in the shared American culture would instantly recognize both of them? And could you say that either of them aren't pop?
Besides, if Pop isn't an innovating aesthetic than what does the word "innovating" mean? Pop obviously innovates within certain standards, it is always comprehensible on some level, but part of what it does it to make itself comprehensible.
Think about James Brown, for example, he changed the cultural landscape to make what he did part of the collective culture. There were other soul/funk performers before James Brown, but would anyone have called funk "pop" before him?
And could you say that either of them aren't pop?
Rufus Wainwright is pop, the Pixies are not. Accordingly, while every American wouldn't recognize Wainwright's songs in the sense of "Oh, that's Rufus!" they would certainly recognize what he was doing.
More importantly, what song is melody in "Grateful Days" stolen from? It's extremely familiar but I can't place it.
Ben, I really do not get the Pipettes, and others I know have also expressed admiration of them. Explain the attraction?
More importantly, what song is melody in "Grateful Days" stolen from? It's extremely familiar but I can't place it.
"Today", by the Smashing Punkins.
Ben, I really do not get the Pipettes, and others I know have also expressed admiration of them.
I dunno, I just like girl pop, I guess.
"Today", by the Smashing Punkins.
Aha. The last time I heard that melody was in a Girl Talk song, which is why I couldn't figure it out. Truly, Girl Talk is a blight on our culture.
That's ok, destroyer. From what I understand, the Smashing Pumpkins were (modulo Corgan's recent antics) before your time.
GT is a dude I know. I have no opinion on whether he is a blight, though. Sounds fine to me, pleasant enough stuff.
He's good for parties, although people unfamiliar are usually bewildered. Listen to a full album on your own, though, and when you to go sleep you'll have eighty samples unraveling in your head.
I should add that I've heard like two Pipettes songs.
I thought it was cliché, but largely true, that the prime mover in pop was black American music? R & B, soul, blues, jazz, hip-hop; it even applies to house music and techno. And the secondary mover was white British people trying to appropriate what the black American people were doing but missing slightly and coming up with someone else instead?
Something else instead, I mean.
Also, it seems that successful pop music can only be made regularly by Americans, Brits, French and Scandinavians.
30 is true. If American white guys try to appropriate black music it just sounds stupid. When Brits do it, they sound less stupid and also British, so they have a built-in excuse. UK and US music would be in a sad state without each other; it's a nice echo chamber we have going on here. We now have plenty of bands who want to be Muse want to be Nirvana who want to be Joy Division who want to be Iggy Pop.
32: And how do you explain Manu Chao?
re: 33
The operative word there was 'regularly' [and I'm deliberately exaggerating]. I can probably think of decent individual pop artists from lots of countries* but I think it's generally true that what we think of as 'pop' just isn't done as well or as often outside of the countries/regions I mentioned.
Obviously 'pop' is only one [large and sprawling] genre. I'm sure somewhere on a Portuguese web-site there are commentators chuckling at how other nations are really crap at making fado records.
* and I suppose I'm being disingenuous by ignoring Africa where Senegal, to take just one example, produces endless waves of great pop music.
Manu Chao is French and so not a counterexample to 32.
Brazilians make some kickass pop.
30 is wonderful, but I fear ttaM wasn't drunk enough when he posted it.
re: 37
I wasn't drunk at all, since I posted it about 9am (here).
re: 35
Yeah, good point. I always associate him with Spain.
I wasn't drunk at all, since I posted it about 9am (here).
"Since"?
Turkish psych is pretty awesome and poppy.
French is an absolutely great language for rap music.
"Since?" ?
'Not P, since X' being a perfectly idiomatic English way of expressing 'as it was the case that X, then it would be perfectly reasonable to suppose that Not P'.
40: Spanish is even better, since almost everything already rhymes.
41: I think it was the "perfectly reasonable" he was wondering about.
re: 43
Hmm. I may be Scottish but I'm not a (continual) drunk.