Pop About Pop

Is that answer hyperbolic enough for you? Really I just wrote so that I could say it is SO COOL how you used the word 'shrill' in your question.

Excuse me, this was AFTER they were big in America? As a proud and unapologetic Queen fan since before I could even jazz-solo [= not true, obviously] , I suggest Mr Tarden has a second look at those early LP sleeves. (Tho actually I fancied the drummer most: and how often d'you get to say that. So classic.)

Sorry, Tom: the question is better than the answers are getting.

www.dur.ac.uk/j.w.davey

I feel the better songs about music are ones which relate to some wider problem. Music, after all, is really just a form of communication, and the state of music surely must reflect the people who made it and, more importantly, listen to it. The veneration of 'the album' as historical artefact has obscured this fact a little, putting product over process, but it's still as true as it ever was.

This is why I'm not sure I agree about rap music. Black music historically has been about call-and-response, where ideas are presented to an audience and the acceptance or rejection of these ideas is based on the size of the reaction to them. These ideas are usually limited to the progress or state of the community the speakers are addressing, which IS the hip-hop community as music has traditionally been one of the main methods of presenting new ideas.

This is why rap albums are usually the full length of a CD. I don't believe hip-hop artists are interested in creating the best album ever or a perfectly formed album; their intention is to communicate about as many topics as possible and wait for the response from the people who listen.

This is true for blues, jazz, soul, funk and hip-hop. The only big exception I can think of right now is Motown, which was specifically marketed to whites. Whatever, saying hip-hop is inward-looking suggests that all music should address everyone in the world; I would consider hip-hop's community spirit to be one of its major strengths, even if I'm not really part of that community.

case-studies:

Motown: black management, black artists, based in a big racially mixed (but ghetto-ised) city.

Stax: black artist (mostly), white management (mostly), in a small racially mixed, divided city with v.signif and influential bohemian = unsegregated [kinda with future] local community of musicians and music-lovers.

Def Jam: famously white-and-black management team (Rubin and Simmons), deliberate rock-and-rap rosta (Public Enemy and Slayer) .

I can't speak confidently on M or XTC, but from the few times I've heard N'Sync's addition to the canon, I'd have to say the song is more about themselves than the state of the industry: those lines before the chorus about the "car I drive or the ice around my neck" not mattering because "it's all about respect". They're not celebrating pop music in and of itself; they're celebrating their contribution to pop music, & how they're going to keep on bringin' the melody to the people. Keeping it real, as it were. In that sense, it's not unlike 99% of hip-hop; in this light, Justin's cut-up beat-boxing @ the end of the track seems appropriate.

The other two songs Tom mentions might be of a poo-pooing nature; again, I can't say for sure. But what I do know is that most songs that attempt to made grand, sweeping statments about the state of (insert topic), like Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", make high school poetry sound good. In these cases, ignoring the lyrics is a necessity.

I'm all for musicians kvetching about the state of the music industry, though - Pavement, Superchunk, Lois, Ida & Tsunami (ah, the heyday of early '90's "indie rock") have penned some quality songs that address these topics (in various manners), albeit from the "indie" POV. Even then, though, it reflects on the "pop" life.

And, of course, there's Kurt's own personal admission:

Teenage angst has paid off well; Now I'm bored & old - Self-appointed judges judge More than they have sold...

Change the first two words in the 1st line to "bubblegum", and you could have Justin or Britney chewing on these words in a couple years' time.

Also, how does 'Walk This Way' qualify? It's not, lyrically, a song which comments about pop music, which was my interpretation of Tom's question, even if it was an important collaboration. Perhaps 'King Of Rock' is more appropriate?

Remember when you spilt Coke all over your blouse? Oh, how we laughed.

Robin: "Walk this Way" — no, it's more than that. Look, my line on music (on everything) is that influence is a dud word because ALL RECORDS ARE ALWAYS ABOUT OTHER RECORDS (and poems and paintings and movies). What's interesting is when records are ARGUMENTS with other records: samples are way for this to happen, cover versions another, parodies, sound-alikes... etc etc. (Hey, they call me the Harold Bloom of Billboard...)

OK: WtW is RunDMC saying to Aerosmith (in the lyric, but ALSO IN THE BODY OF THE MUSIC, beats, structure, what gets left out) we heard something in your idea that you didn't hear, and this is how you should actually have done it. Walk this way? NO! Walk THIS Way!! The argument is about the walk, but it's also IN the walk (and not just in the talk). And yes, it's an argument about how pop is, and how it should be. (Or "rock", as they chose to call it.)

Kings of Rock broaches this ground, obviously: but I think they needed 1: to face down a (oops, nearly said "dinosaur") an established canonic Great Beast, and 2: for it to be a somewhat forgotten, sidelined, overlooked, minor Great Beast — Bebe Buell and Liv Tyler notwithstanding — to be renovated and revivified. To prove, in fact, by said semi-miracle, that their newcomer reading of "rock" was truer and better and more powerful. (The relevant technical Bloomian terms being *Kenosis*, *Daemonization* and *Apophrades*, as you will by now have realised.)

I've never heard of this show until now...it just seems awesome and crazy such a thing ever existed, and just fucking surreal to see Morrissey and Phil Lynott competing against each other as game show contestants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma_6PezH3aA

Phil Lynott was a light entertainment regular for a while.

Surreal to see Morrissey restraining the urge to say something racist to Phil Lynott

Surreal to see Morrissey restraining the urge to say something racist to Phil Lynott

LMFAO