Mondeo Pop

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The Beautiful South - Song For Whoever

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Wet Wet Wet - "Goodnight Girl"

queen - breakthrough

Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication

Mondeo Pop [Started by acrobat, last updated 1 minute ago] 5 new answers
I Killed Razorlight With My Big Fucking Dick [Started by AAARGH, last updated 2 minutes ago] 1 new answer

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Del Amitri - Nothing Ever Happens

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Deacon Blue - Real Gone Kid

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Oasis - Cast No Shadow

the dermot o'leary show on radio 2.

I'm not sure Mondeo Pop exists anymore. It's more about SUV-Core these days.

Zing zang zong aside, is Mondeo Pop the British Yacht Rock? This spreads from a conversation myself and less-published music writer acrobat had over MSN as to why America seems to love a good old fashioned critical reappraisal of bands (Steely Dan, Toto, Hall and Oates, Doobie Brothers), but nobody's turning up in the UK to go "Actually, Deacon Blue had a couple of really good songs, y'know?"

We've done that for most of our 80s pop though?

You mean "sophistopop"? Isn't that more American Anglophile critics than actual British ones?

Anyway, Keane - Everybody's Changing.

Are Steely Dan etc really in the Big American Canon like I dunno Bob Dylan or R.E.M. or Public Enemy are? Or is it more a niche "hipster" thing?

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Spandau Ballet - True

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Former Mondeo Pop favourite, fell out of Virgin Radio favour in recent years.

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Prefab Sprout - The King of Rock 'n Roll

Aztec Camera - Somewhere In My Heart (the point where indie and Mondeo Pop jacknife)

This thread is missing The Pinefox.

Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

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Fleetwood Mac - The Chain. And many others. This feels broader than yacht rock really.

I was thinking of this kind of stuff - a bit rockier but there's definitely a crossover:

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Disc: 1
1. Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
2. Bat Out Of Hell - Meatloaf
3. Born To Be Wild - Steppenwolf
4. Golden Earring - Radar Love
5. Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
6. More Than A Feeling - Boston
7. Jessica - Allman Brothers
8. Turn It On Again - Genesis (1)
9. Long Train Runnin' - Doobie Brothers
10. Don't Fear The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
11. Black Betty - Ram Jam
12. All Right Now - Free (1)
13. Highway Star - Deep Purple
14. Paranoid - Black Sabbath
15. Silver Machine - Hawkwind
16. Here I Go Again - Whitesnake
17. Gimme All Your Lovin' - ZZ Top
18. Ace Of Spades - Motorhead

Mondeo Pop is a little less J. Clarkson, and a little more C. Evans. Which reminds me, Texas were the kings of 90s Mondeo Pop.

hmm but it is just as much:

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Disc: 1
1. James Blunt - You’re Beautiful
2. Michael Bublé - Home
3. Daniel Bedingfield - If You’re Not The One
4. 10cc - I’m Not In Love
5. Damien Rice - Cannonball
6. Craig David - All The Way
7. Daniel Powter - Bad Day
8. Backstreet Boys - As Long As You Love Me
9. The Corrs - Breathless
10. Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer
11. Paul Weller - Wild Wood
12. Bangles - Eternal Flame
13. Linda Ronstadt feat. Aaron Neville - Don’t Know Much
14. LeAnn Rimes - How Do I Live
15. The Judds - Love Can Build A Bridge
16. DJ Sammy & Yanou Feat. Do - Heaven (Candlelight Mix)
17. Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
Disc: 2
1. Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl
2. The Isley Brothers - Summer Breeze
3. The Stranglers - Golden Brown
4. UB40 - Red Red Wine
5. Fleetwood Mac - Everywhere
6. Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun
7. Blondie - Denis
8. Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For A Star To Fall
9. Foreigner - I Want To Know What Love Is
10. The Cars - Drive
11. East 17 - Stay Another Day
12. Simply Red - Stars
13. The Bluebells - Young At Heart
14. Pretenders - Don’t Get Me Wrong
15. Aztec Camera - Somewhere In My Heart
16. Tears For Fears - Sowing The Seeds Of Love
17. A-ha - Take On Me
Disc: 3
1. Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
2. Otis Redding - (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay
3. Randy Crawford - One Day I’ll Fly Away
4. Gabrielle - Out Of Reach
5. Al Green - Let’s Stay Together
6. Beverley Craven - Promise Me
7. Atlantic Starr - Always
8. Dawn Penn - You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)
9. Bee Gees - You Win Again
10. Chaka Khan with Rufus - Ain’t Nobody
11. Chic - Le Freak
12. Sheryl Crow - Everyday Is A Winding Road
13. The B-52’s - Love Shack
14. Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time
15. Shakespears Sister - Stay
16. Andreas Johnson - Glorious

16. Andreas Johnson - Glorious

RIP

Wow. From the sublime to the ridiculous, and back again, half a dozen times per disc. xp.

I'd've loved to be a fly on the wall at the meeting where they were ironing out the concept for that album cover

I think Mondeo Pop is more of an aesthetic than ledge would have it. It's not always what Soto and co would call Sophisto-Pop but it is similar. I don't think Sade, who epitomizes Sophisto-pop is Mondeo Pop at all but The Beautiful South are the kings of Mondeo Pop and they are not Sophisto-pop. It is a style that takes inspiration from the hot indie sounds of a few years prior and makes it a bit classier.

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James - Sit Down '98

I think Heaton is quite an interesting character, and for a year or two in the mid-80s I was quite a fan of the Housemartins. I still quite like things like 'Flag Day' or 'Build' and I think he was a touching singer once upon a time. I suppose the bloozy Radio 2 sound of the BS is the sound of Heaton forgetting Marx and forgetting Jesus and forgetting Hope and discovering beer and boredom and bitterness. He seemed to despise everything about pop music and life, but somehow became incredibly successful from doing so. You would think this would make for an interesting tension in the music, but it doesn't seem to have done.

The Beautiful South vs Simply Red as a post-socialist, pre-Blairite battle for the suburban car stereo of Mondeo Man is a topic worthy of Robin Carmody, though.

-- Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, August 18, 2003 8:52 AM (4 years ago)
Defend The Indefensible: The Beautiful South

He was pretty good, that JtN geezer...

the mondeo was only launched in 1993 but the many of the quintessential mondeo pop tunes predate this. i did not realize that yacht rock was actually a tv show. if mondeo pop was a narrative based television progam the main protagonist would have to be paul heaton.

James - Sit Down '98

paved the way for schaffel

Isn't Mondeo Pop just chart indie with a mortgage?

Mondeo Pop Or Not:

Dubstar
Crowded House
The Lightning Seeds
Alisha's Attic
Badly Drawn Boy
Delays

Deacon Blue were named after a Steely Dan song, fyi, so there's your Yacht Rock/Mondeo Pop link.

Dubstar NO
Crowded House YES
The Lightning Seeds SOMETIMES
Alisha's Attic NO
Badly Drawn Boy SOMETIMES
Delays BIG NO

"Not So Manic Now" isn't Mondeo Pop? That song got rinsed on local radio back in the day.

So not Mondeo Pop. There are many factors. Local radio play is but one. I do not know all the factors.

The other factor is Soul. Mondeo Pop is not soul but must have a soul element, I think. Wet Wet Wet are overlooked but crucial. In fact Mondeo Pop is fundamentally anti-rockist, maybe not in a 1986 sense but certianly in a 1996 or 2006 sense.

Crowded House have a soul element? Someone ain't gonna like that

i was thinking about Wet Wet Wet the other day and how long it's been since they could NOT have happened...if that makes sense.

Dubstar = Micra Pop

I think you should think more about Wet Wet Wet, blueski.

Almost pinefoxian.

Today I came home from the supermarket and snapped the
radio on, and heard the opening of 'Wishing I Was Lucky'.
And I liked it - it must be my favourite of their
numbers; it has poise and dash; despite all the
gymnasium of the soul business, when those travelling
strings start to accompany Pellow halfway through an
early verse, they bear grace.

Crowded House are more Volvo or Audi (A4 not TT) than Mondeo surely, just feel the restrained quality of them.

Crowded House are a bit of a red herring because they're not British. Mondeo Pop is part of a clear era in British history where the concept of "the left" was being invented.

Paul Young's cover of 'Don't Dream It's Over' = ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

What "left" are you talking about, Dom?

The Style Council and Haircut 100 seem too early but still important. The journey of Weller is a good narrative. I don't think Weller could ever be Mondeo Pop. The Mondeo was only introduced in 1993, what model did it replace?

If blueski made that up it is very good. The bit about Wet Wet Wet.

The Mondeo was only introduced in 1993, what model did it replace?

the Sierra, for all you fly fellas

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4967664204

What "left" are you talking about, Dom?

Loose upper working/lower middle Labour voters. The Hornby generation.

Although Hornby himself would obviously detest the music here. See also Big Al Petridis's weekly "the businessman, in his suit-and-tie" rhetoric in Graun reviews.

Is Princess Diana Mondeo Pop?

Kanye: not Mondeo Pop
Rod Stewart: not Mondeo Pop
Lallen: not Mondeo Pop
Duran Duran: Maybe Mondeo Pop
Elton John: not Mondeo Pop
Joss Stone: not Mondeo Pop
Pharrell: not Mondeo Pop

Princess Di officially NOT MONDEO POP

I think Ordinary World by Duran Duran could be Mondeo Pop.

I'd agree with that.

Is "Sleeping Satellites" Mondeo Pop? Can women, other than the ones Paul Heaton gives blacks eyes to in drunken rages, be Mondeo Pop?

What about Morcheeba? Didn't they even do a Mondeo ad?

My line manager just came over to me. He asked "What are you listening to?". I said "Steely Dan". He said "Do you like Fleetwood Mac?".

If I was playing a Mondeo Pop set I think "Sleeping Satellite" would be in there. I'd like to suggest REM.

Pre-Zooropa, were U2 Mondeo Pop?

I don't think U2 have ever been Mondeo Pop. I am not sure about The Lightouse Family.

ledge, I don't think Morcheeba are Mondeo Pop, Micra Pop? Maybe?

I guess maybe U2 were bought by Mondeo Popists to feel a bit edgy (no pun etc) and REM to feel a bit alt-rock? Operative word 'guess'

Morcheeba = Ka Pop

That is possibly patronizing DJ Mencap. Though I realize my whole premise is, really. I'm not sure these people actually exist though. I wonder what people who make Mondeo Pop drive? Do Yacht Poppers drive Yachts?

Tanita Tikaram
Des'Ree
The Lighthouse Family must surely be.
Fairground Attraction
OCS
The Bluetones

It strikes me that I've never heard anything by Runrig.

Elephant in the room #2: The Waterboys

'have a nice day' by the stereophonics

"Traffic" by the Stereophonics, yes. "HAND", maybe not.

The Supernaturals?

OCS = dadrock, but then dads drive mondeos. Everything I think of is too early (Big Country?)

as i said earlier - everything that has been branded as mondeo pop gets airspace on the dreary dermot o'leary show.
i have had to endure the show in recent weeks, and damn, its painful.

Important distinction to be made: Cosworth Rock - Clarkson's vehicle and music of choice in the mid-late 90s.

Clarkson's taste in rock is actually a little closer to Yacht Rock than Mondeo Pop. Aren't his favourite band ever Air Supply?

Electronic
The Blow Monkeys
Hothouse Flowers
Talk Talk
The Wannadies (controversial suggestion)

The Wannadies were Mondeo Pop Jr

I think suggesting the likes of Ocean Colour Scene is rather off base. The one thing that is great about good Mondeo Pop is it's sprightliness, it has a bounce and jangle, a certain jouissance soerly lacking in its post Britpop equivilant.

if going before '93 doesn't damage cred: Red Box

lololl TALK TALK, i was gonna say...

It's like '93 is the apothesis. The music was waiting for the car.

Young At Heart by The Bluebells. I have long despised this song but it's very much key. It got to No 1 in '92 or '93 though was originally from the early '80s wasn't it?

Mondeo House

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It got to No 1 in '92 or '93 though was originally from the early '80s wasn't it?

yes but you're scuppered a bit by virtue of the song being re-released after use on an Volkswagen ad. Ford could only muster Brian May.

Runrig/Waterboys - mud spattered Landrover/4x4 pop with a pair of walking boots and OS maps in the trunk.

Someone needs to mention The Cranberries as well. The political conscience of Mondeo Pop.

Not sprightly enough. Too leaden.

the Crannies are a bit too pastoral

Annie Lennox solo obv.

remember on the Fast Show when Paul Whitehouse would interrupt performances by Level 42 and Julia Fordham to enquire whether anyone fancied a pint? totally MP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdj6hNUF8yc

World Party

Cardigans?

I am trying to review the Prinzhorn Dance School but can't stop listening to The Beautiful South. "You Keep It All" is just so breezy.

Debate for inclusion:

Teenage Fanclub
Aztec Camera stuff that isn't "Somewhere In My Heart"
M People
Julia Fordham (this said, I cannot remember a single thing about her)
"Breakfast At Tiffany's"
Charles & Eddie
Gabrielle
McAlmont & Butler

Teenage Fanclub

I thought about them but... too good. Not mainstream enough.

No Andreas Johnson, no credibility.

The Bluetones? Hmmm. Can Britpop ever really be Mondeo Pop? I'm not sure. Some Britpop song - yes, Britpop acts probably not, if you see what I mean. I think that is a very important distinction. For instance the back catalouge of Manic Street Preachers is on the whole not Mondeo Pop but a few songs of theirs are prime Mondeo Pop. I was thinking that Man Who era Travis are not Mondeo Pop but Invisible Band era Travis are Mondeo Pop. Which seems almost counter-intuitive.

The Mondeo is called Taurus in the US I believe.

Can we get a final ruling on Dodgy? Too pop, not enough Mondeo?

Y know "Good Enough" or even "In A Room" could make the cut, "Staying Out For The Summer" is just too Shine to make the cut. The trouble with this line is that we then have to include "Wake Up Boo", which is OK but then we get onto "Me and You Versus The World", Catatonia and that Tom Jones meets hot new indie bands album. Which is a very dangerous, very slippery slope.

So can we lay down some OFFICIAL TENETS for Mondeo Pop then?

1. Has to be aimed at an adult audience
2. Has to show some sort of maturity, ie: Genesis or Orson aren't Mondeo Pop, they were born aged 32.
3. Some concession to the non-mainstream , but on the other hand the music is specifically aimed at local radio

Space is VW Golf pop.

"Pulling Mussels from a Shell": Mondeo Pop
"Tempted": Mondeo Pop
"Cool for Cats": not Mondeo Pop
"Up The Junction": UP FOR DEBATE

Sidenote: "Up The Junction" probably has the worst lyrics of any top 10 single ever

Lotus Eaters 'First Picture Of You' = overqualified
Halo James 'Could've Told You So' = just the job

I think Squeeze are White Van Blues

I think we need to agree that "Mary's Prayer" is the greatest Mondeo Pop song ever.

Mike & The Mechanics 'Over My Shoulder' Y/N?

Squeeze's MOST Mondeo-ish song is probably 'Black Coffee In Bed'. Their best song is 'Goodbye Girl', which is not Mondeo.

harmonica solo = bit out there for MP

Consider Squeeze's 90s stuff tho - 'This Fucking Summer' etc.

Mike and the Mechanics probably _just_ sneak under the barrier, although they're a little too AOR I think. Dire Straits aren't Mondeo Pop, neither are Sting or anything like that.

Steve Harley wasn't Mondeo to start off with, but gravitated towards it alarmingly with age.

"If I say TEN-HAIL-MAR-EEZ, leave the light on in heaven"

Aztec Camera, Danny Wilson, Del Amitri, Deacon Blue: why is so much Mondeo Pop Scottish?

Wet Wet Wet. Belle and Sebastian could have been but never had the guts. Well they nearly did. But they sort of blew it. I think Squeeze and Steve Harley despite being car radio staples are not quite right. Too early, too rockin'.

More Offical Tennents
4. Can on occasions be slow, but Power Ballads are very rarely Mondeo Pop.
5. It's sprightly, it has the kind of bounce that gets you through the working day.

Wetx3 and B&S were not full blown Mondeo Pop, but "Goodnight Girl" and "Wrapped Up In Books" are. I don't make the rules.

I think the idea of Mondeo Pop being WORKPLACE MUSIC is a good one, it's not really got any life outside of the 9-5.

I'd kind of agree. It's morning show to drive time and all in between. But there's a lot that played between those times which isn't Mondeo Pop of course. I think The Feeling are kind of the nearest we have to true modern Mondeo Pop.

I'm really torn about Joshua Kaddison. He was a local radio stalwart but hardly fits the Mondeo Pop mould.

Wx3 were Mondeo Pop par-excellence maybe a bit lacking in the wry / indie side but you can't fuck with Sweet Little Mystery.

Wet Wet Wet were, perhaps like Dodgy, a Mondeo Pop band that were a little too singles-oriented.

At the end of the day, is Mondeo Pop indie grown-up? Like, you meet a girl, you settle down, you change your dress sense, drink less, but there's still that kinda youthful urge in you submerged under it all.

I think the idea of Mondeo Pop being WORKPLACE MUSIC is a good one, it's not really got any life outside of the 9-5.

It's the music that plays in the nearest pub to work, where you (reluctantly) join colleagues for a lunchtime/after work pint.

Nah Mondeo Pop is totaly singles or at least song based. I'm not talking b-sides I'm talking "King of Rock 'n Roll".

xp dom p

james blunt: so obvious he hasn't been singled out yet? or too downtempo?

I don't think Mondeo Pop exists anymore. It's subtle but the sort of cultural collapse that's going on at the moment, the way the NME, radio 1, local radio etc are all drawing into line with each other amkes these distinctions harder to draw. Blunt makes sense in that he is one of the few acts that are beyond the pale, has Paul Connolly in the London Lite done a "hipsters hate him but actually he's good" piece about him yet? But yeh too down tempo. Also I'm not sure Mondeo Pop can ever be played at funerals.

if James Blunt was played at one of my relative's funerals I would actually leave

If anyone comes close to capturing the Mondeo Pop aesthetic these days, surely it's people like Razorlight and The Hoosiers? Although, sadly, both bands are awful.

xp

xpost to Acrobat: You have a good point, though; pop's registers are being homogenised, hence the Radio One 40 Years shitness fiasco.

Alisha's Attic "I Am, I Feel" = Mondeo-driven-by-liberated-single-woman pop

Not sure about Razorlight; they're not quite innocent or sunny enough to be Mondeo pop. They're dirge-like.

Ronan Keating - at least the jauntier ones (Life Is A Rollercoaster, Lovin' Each Day), the rest is for the Grans

Alisha's Attic, like The Supernaturals, are borderline. A lot of this stuff was Virgin Radio playlist material back in 97, 98, although if we take that as a baseline then we have to say that "Scooby Snacks" is Mondeo Pop.

"Life Is A Rollercoaster" was written by dude from New Radicals: "You Get What You Give" is surely too bratty to be Mondeo Pop?

What about damien gray/david rice?

there must be some cross-pollination and overlap with Magic FM Mum Pop, of which Gabrielle's 'Sunshine' is the zenith

The Hoosiers? God, even the name is enough to put me off. Thank god I don't listen to daytime radio anymore. (I have unfortunately been subjected to Generator by The Holloways on more than one occasion though.)

many xposts, minor derail

for reference: CD80: Yuppie Pop!

David Gray I suppose so, but... Mondeo Pop is very male, I think? Especially the Beautiful South/Del Amitri axis it all revolves around. Women can like Mondeo Pop, they're just not... welcomed by it.

just reading the BS (as opposed to B&S) lyrics on the FB group has made reconsider Heaton's songwriting prowess :/

In an up or down direction?

xxpost: Yeah, hence why I tried to invent a new, female category for Alisha's Attic. There's something very faintly macho about Mondeo pop, the affirmation of successful aspirant working-male lifestyle, the pleasant sounds in the head of someone who's just bought his first, well, Mondeo, and is showing it off to his mates.

(thus, I can see why Rice and Gray are perhaps a bit too soft)

Oh I listened to 0898 for the first time in years the other day, some of the lyrics are awful, especially the anti monarchy one. Decided only Ol Red Eyes and Bell Bottomed Tear were worth saving - perhaps a little harsh.

In an up or down direction?

it's more that i knew he was 'good' in a certain sense but my feeling towards that is now a little warmer than it was. not that i'm actually going to pick up a copy of Carry On Up The Charts for £1.47 on Amazon marketplace or owt

Alisha's Attic aimed at teenagers/students more I thought. My First 2nd Hand Nova Pop.

'Independent Love Song' = probably too grandiose to be Micra Pop

Sophie B Hawkins, Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

My dad, whose taste is normally classical/alternative (he introduced me to Talk Talk, Mogwai and Yes for a start) loved "I Am, I Feel" when in his late-forties. I have not yet worked out an explanation for this.

Unless he's gone all Kogan on us... :-/

Of course, we could just cut to the chase and say 85% of UK chart pop since 1983.

Have you read the thread?

Yeah I know this is being made up as it goes along but even so!

I think Mondeo Pop is pretty specific!

"Meet Danny Wilson" is a great album even though it isn't even close to Aztec Camera at their best.

-- Geir Hongro, Monday, 3 September 2007 14:21 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

The G-Man notable by his absence in this thread.

Zoe, Sunshine on a Rainy Day? Too upbeat?

I feel like one hit wonders are a bit problematic cos this is an area of respectable and established artists whose albums you play in the car. Can't see people doing that with Zoe and New Radicals. There are always compilations I guess.

ALSO does Mondeo dude have an iPod and if so how does he go about playing songs on it in terms of order etc?

I WAS being specific. I didn't just conjure up "85%" out of nowhere, you know.

You will actually find that this proportion of UK chart hits will effortlessly augment one's passage in a Ford Mondeo or other "D" class vehicle (Renault Laguna, Peugeot 406 etc.)

Hmmm.

Mencap DING DING DING Ipod killed Mondeo Pop Lauren Laverne G2 blah blah. Do Petridis and his ilk still use the Mondeo Man line? From Urban Dictionary:

1. Mondeo man 4 up, 9 down

A typicaly average/boring British man who would steroetypicaly live in Kent, own a semi-detatched house, have a wife, two kids and a Ford Mondeo.

Freds gonna be a Mondeo man.

tags mondeo man boring british typical
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2. mondeo man 6 up, 3 down

Career driver, especially travelling salesman. From the large numbers of Ford Mondeos used as company cars.

If youre in the fast lane, stuck behind a van, doing 90 anyway, mondeo man will always tailgate you flashing his lights.

by oracle Aug 19, 2004 email it

I really don't see Mondeo Pop as album based at all, for me it's about certain songs I heard on the bus to school. Every day. And the weird realization that somehow I have ended up being conditioned to enjoy them.

Your school bus was a Mondeo?

(obligatory acknowledgement of lame gag e.g. "thanks I'm here all week")

Figuratively. If I'd said Bus Pop we'd be talking about something very different.

If you were driving a Mondeo to school, you would've been quite a precocious child.

Even during the Thatcher years.

If I'd said Bus Pop we'd be talking about something very different.

RIP The Lex

Sweet Little Mystery by Wx3 is sooooo good! Popped In! Souled Out! Ace!

Wx3 have so many completly forgotten singles thou, it's amazing. I wonder how many more are this good. I smell a POLL.

"My love has taken a tumble".

JIMMY NAIL! She's lyin'!

i figured Ain't No Doubt was too funky for MP. and 'Crocodile Dreams' or whatever it was too UK Trucker Pop.

'shoes'

If Jimmy Nail is "too funky" where does that leave Level 42?

Level 42 just "feel" right as a Mondeo Pop band, especially "It Runs In The Family" and "Lessons In Love".

Yacht Rock had "Regulate" and "Eye Know". Where are the great Mondeo Pop sampling hip-hop tracks?

The Avenue by Roll Deep is I guess the template but I'm pretty sure The Maisonettes aren't Mondeo Pop. When you've finished with your fantasy NME group (The Scene?) how about a UK Hip Hop act who trade simply on riding Kanye style ultra familiar Mondeo Pop samples.

'ain't do doubt' isn't too funky exactly but too rough-edged, production-wise, or even raucous.

same thing duh

not exactly.

Level 42 just "feel" right as a Mondeo Pop band, especially "It Runs In The Family"

what was the line, "back seat of the car / with joseph and emily"? haha ugh so mondeo

Level 42 just "feel" right as a Mondeo Pop band, especially "It Runs In The Family"

what was the line, "back seat of the car / with joseph and emily"? haha ugh so mondeo

It reminds me a lot of trips in our old Ford Sierra, so spiritual forebears then. Mark King is The Mondfather. Soz.

"I think Mondeo Pop is more of an aesthetic than ledge would have it. It's not always what Soto and co would call Sophisto-Pop but it is similar. I don't think Sade, who epitomizes Sophisto-pop is Mondeo Pop at all but The Beautiful South are the kings of Mondeo Pop and they are not Sophisto-pop. It is a style that takes inspiration from the hot indie sounds of a few years prior and makes it a bit classier."

Maybe the distinct quality of mondeo pop is a certain quality of humility, perhaps even self-deprecation - that's the slightly indie tinge at work. All this stuff feels almost self-conscious about its lack of ambition.

Sade's music seems indifferent to questions of pride/vanity/humility/self-deprecation.

Have we discussed the eligibility of Everything But The Girl yet?

Mondeo Jungle

That would be pretty much all of it from 1995 on.

Maybe the distinct quality of mondeo pop is a certain quality of humility, perhaps even self-deprecation - that's the slightly indie tinge at work. All this stuff feels almost self-conscious about its lack of ambition.

I think Tim has hit on something here. Apert from a sense of mslightly misguided nostalgia I think there is a definite sensibility uniting a lot of these bands. I'm not sure "lack of ambition" is quite right but it's clear that none of these groups wanted to U2 y know. There's something about all of them that sets them apart from rock / pop distinctions, on the whole they lack the brashness of pop but they also lack rock's iconaclastic, outsider streak. maybe they have more in common with folk , the idea of these bands being played on local radio possibly ties in here.

there is also a british class issue here. i think dom could elaborate on this better, maybe. i choose the word Mondeo cos this is actually a big trope of UK pop criticism, can you search by word on the nme or guardain music pages? i'd be intersted to see how often Mondeo has been used as a signifier....

wow

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Audio Bullys: Generation | Reviews | NME.COM
Add Audio Bullys to Your NME Artists. Go to Artist Page. 8 Issues of NME ... hands it is the soundtrack to Mondeo Man's midlife crisis: after he's stopped ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/audio-bullys/7812

Morcheeba : World Looking In | Reviews | NME.COM
... around" it's also "familiar as the soundtrack to the current Ford Mondeo ads". Really, the band would have to line up with prize-winning pumpkins on their ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/morcheeba/4242

Apartment | Reviews | NME.COM
Apartment ... This track is part of an Audi project, in which ... The song, meanwhile, is distinctly more Mondeo. Reviews (1) Sign in to add your comment. ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/8304

Moby | Reviews | NME.COM
You know them like you know the interior of your mid-range, fuel-injected Mondeo. ... They have seduced you into desiring all manner of modern ergonomic gadgetry. ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/3531.htm

The Beautiful South: London Brixton Academy | Reviews | NME.COM
Though they've rarely been beautiful, they still deserve to be treasured... unfamiliar material into such magnificent Mondeo Man anthems as 'You Keep It ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/beautiful-south/3684

NME.COM - Arctic Monkeys - A Scummy Man and Mardy Bums: The ultimate Arctic Monkeys Album Guide
Get music news, reviews, charts, tickets, newsletters, NME magazine, info on festivals, tours, clubs, concerts, rock, ... Ford Mondeo - Brand of aspirational ...
From: http://www.nme.com/arcticmonkeys/albumguide

NME.COM | Carling Weekend - Reading Backstage - Post details: Alex Zane stole my taxi and was nearly swindled by ...
Reading Festival ... After saying goodbye to Kate Nash and giving her my ... Har har Alex Zane, your theft meant you had to get to the site in a Ford Mondeo. ...
From: http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=77&p=2487&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Plays The Music Of REM | Reviews | NME.COM
Lovely, pass the boiled sweets, will you, darling. Oh look, Little Chef two ... The soundtrack to these Mondeo Miseries was inevitably one of the popular ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/royal-philharmonic-orchestra/1586

London W1 Embassy Rooms | Reviews | NME.COM
The Bhs rollneck sweater brigade are out in full force tonight. ... than Shania, Shelby's about to take Mondeo Man's world by storm, but on ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/1606.htm

Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster : Horse Of The Dog | Reviews | NME.COM
Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster : Horse Of The Dog ... the 'Disaster capturing the hearts of Mondeo-driving floating voters remain slim. ...
From: http://www.nme.com/reviews/6764.htm

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In praise of ... the Manic Street Preachers
Guardian, Friday May 4 2007
Leader
From Sylvia Plath to the Spanish civil war, the Manic Street Preachers embrace difficult themes not (just) to show off but because they have something to say. Twelve years after lyricist Richey Edwards vanished at the Severn bridge, his former bandmates continue their Reithian rock mission, releasing a new album - Send Away the Tigers - next week. In the Film & Music section (...)

(...) of one gig reported how the group packed Wembley Arena full of Mondeo drivers and then sent them home in T-shirts emblazoned with (...)

Manic Street Preachers
Guardian, Saturday December 11 2004
Alexis Petridis
The last few weeks have not been kind to the Manic Street Preachers. Lifeblood, their seventh album, was released to lukewarm reviews and sales. Despite a commercial AOR production, it somehow managed to enter the charts lower than 1994's The Holy Bible, an album described even by the sleevenotes of its recent reissue as "so bleak and horrid as to be unlistenable". Bringing (...)

(...) stand, the kind of balding, post-Edwards fans derided by critics as Mondeo drivers are queuing up to buy T-shirts bearing a quote (...)

Dido, Life for Rent
Guardian, Friday September 26 2003
Alexis Petridis
For about a decade now, music journalists and the record-buying public have been at odds. This is all Oasis's fault. In 1995, reviewers announced that their second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory, was nothing special. It went on to become the pivotal release of its era. Two years on, critics awarded its follow-up, Be Here Now, full marks. The public snapped up Be Here (...)

(...) it. Just as Gray's audience is supposed to be comprised of Mondeo-driving middle managers singing along on their way to Furniture Village, (...)

Morcheeba
Guardian Unlimited, Friday August 8 2003
Caroline Sullivan
If you had to be at a gig on the hottest day of the year so far, it might as well have been Morcheeba at Somerset House, a night out made in inertia heaven. With its riverside setting and airy courtyard, there can't be a venue in London that better complements the trio's music "that makes people fall asleep and crash their cars," as their own bassist put it on the sleeve of (...)

(...) their constituency. Many of the latter were reeled in by a Ford Mondeo ad featuring the dreamy World Looking In, which secured the (...)

Hold tight the massive
Guardian, Friday November 22 2002
Alexis Petridis
Ever since Simon Dee's first broadcast from the MV Caroline in 1964, pirate radio has played a crucial role in forming Britain's musical taste. Now the phenomenon is bigger than ever, the airwaves in the cities so crowded that the pirates are being pushed into the suburbs and the countryside. Alexis Petridis picks up the story in an Essex garage with a young man named Stealth . . (...)

(...) like an inspector from the DTI - he's even driving a Ford Mondeo." Finally, though, Stealth has agreed to drive us to the secret (...)

David Gray: A New Day at Midnight
Guardian, Friday October 18 2002
Alexis Petridis
When a record company advertises an album on television, it usually tells you one of two things. Either it is a disaster and they are desperately trying to gee-up sales, or else they are giving a final boost to a vast success, trying to galvanise the last few potential buyers. The TV ad for David Gray's White Ladder was the latter - and also summed up the nature of the (...)

(...) the jackpot. Immediately, people complain that your audience are all boring Ford Mondeo drivers, and that, by extension, you - the bohemian singer-songwriter guy! - (...)

I'm not sure all those examples are all quite right but I think the idea of the Mondeo Popper strawman is quite powerful. It symbolizes something that is anthema to many. This idea of POP fitting so comfortably into suburban life it being neutred of some revolutionary force it supposedly holds. I think I first got the whole idea of Mondeo as a pejroative from reading about the Manic Street Preachers, I was quite a fan once, for this band who symbolized revolution and such to be now embraced by the sort of people who had mortages and stuff was seen as like an ultimate affront or something. Some kind of defeat worse than going over the Severn bridge.

The class thing, Mondeo Pop is upper working, lower middle, suburban on the whole which runs contra to so much. It seems to reject working class definat "realness" of the Oasis sort and the ethos of the art school groups. Not Punk Rock, or something. But the thing is this stuff can not be made anymore, i don't think it really can. It's not just changing fashion, it's something deeper in the fabric of the country it's the stuff i've kinda run into the ground here:

Gentrification, "Coffee Table", the 90s, Broadsheets, False Consensus and "The New Punk Rock"

and here

The Great Moving Right Show II: The Kirsty and Phil Years

The modern equivilant of Mondeo Pop is somehow more "edgy" but a lot more middle class. G2 Pop innit. Yr Allens, yr Kaisers, yr Feelings etc The Mondeo Poppers often sounded like they learned their tricks playing pubs and clubs, their modern equivilants... don't.

Where is the spiritual heart of Mondeo Pop then, socio-geographically?

in yr banjo

Produced in the North? But Mondeo Man of Petridish world is surely Essex.

xp

Mark G. Stop.

Robert Palmer, Blue Nile.

electronic: mondeo pop for people who don't like mondeo pop.

I think there's something to be said about that... guys like Sreynolds who were scared and confused by Danny Wilson could find something in Electronic to calm them down, I think?

The Blue Nile transcend Mondeo Pop surely - although maybe not Peace At Last. But the first two albums are too widescreen. I think of a lot of these other bands as being more accomodating than that.

I think Blue Nile are perhaps... I dunno. They do seem like the "hard edge" of one side of Mondeo Pop, in the same way that Wet Wet Wet are the hard edge in the opposite direction (I don't want to say pop v indie here, because it isn't, but it's at least part of the same argument). I do wonder if perhaps there are less than 20 Mondeo Pop bands out there?

i wouldn't expect tim to drop rockist-tinged concepts like 'transcend'.

blue nile are maybe MP's leading edge. chronologically speaking. they come from the right place, geographically too.

Blue Nile, Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout... Mondeo Pop for fanzine writers?

Did they (Blue Nile) ever have a hit single? I don't think I've ever knowingly heard them.

NRQ: ha ha true. "transcend" may be the wrong word here. Anyway it implies that I don't like mondeo pop that much when actually I do like a lot of it - but The Blue Nile take a lot of mondeo pop elements and then make them so... intense... that they almost cease to be mondeo anymore.

More "transcend" in a pop sense though I think - like how "Sweet Like Chocolate" "transcends" "UK Garage". (okay I'll stop with the inverted commas now)

Three top 20 albums, no hit singles. I suppose being an album band defeats the "music for the working day" idiom of MP tho?

xp

Maybe and Robert Palmer is so not Mondeo Pop I don't think Sonic Youth would fuck with true Mondeo Pop. It's like Shania Twain is not Mondeo Pop but someone somewhere maybe listening to her whilst driving a Mondeo. Get me?

I think there's a massive Carmody style death of Liberal England thing lurking in the idea of Mondeo Pop. A lot of Mondeo Pop digs into soul and perhaps folk, a desire for erk AUTHENTICITY, which of course is why Grimey Simey had issues. Soul-cialists he calls them.

The Corrs and Texas are in a grey zone. NRQ mentioned KT Tunstall on the Mondeo Pop Facebook group then deleted it. Hmmm.

it's authenticity, but not of this kind:

"Well, I'm a lucky man
With fire in my hands

Happiness
Something in my own place
I'm standing naked
Smiling, I feel no disgrace
With who I am

Happiness
Coming and going
I watch you look at me
Watch my fever growing
I know just who I am"

which is what i meant by the verve needing to tone it down a bit.

it's more folky kind of authenticity. but not too much, if you get me.

What about Oasis then?

I do think that there is a certain smallness (or perhaps "containment" is the better word) to this stuff on a conscious stylistic level, such that when I say The Blue Nile go beyond it I'm not trying to be judgmental, just descriptive... A song like Wet Wet Wet's "Sweet Surrender" strikes me as deliberately pledging fidelity to a certain, quite conservative notion of songfulness. It reminds me of all those glowing descriptions of Crowded House's "tunesmithery" in Q Magazine back in the day. What is the implication of the phrase "tunesmith"? Craft over art? Tunes as honestly and humbly purposive and functional?

Also: let's talk about Fairground Attraction. Especially "It's Got To Be Perfect", which I adored back in the day.

The Blue Nile are the Mike & The Mechanics it's okay to like.

oasis -- and the verve -- were just too rough-hewn for this, sonically and lyrically. but maybe 'round our way' was approaching heaton. maybe. and what i was saying was, songs like 'sonnet' were taking the verve further towards MP. and naturally 'urban hymns' rang out of actual mondeos.

xpost

I mentioned Oasis cos 97 era Verve seems far more in a lineage with Oasis than say Prefab Sprout. 1997, Blair, Diana. Hedonism and sentiment finally overules Mondeo Pop streak of "Stay humble, stay low"?

yeah, fuck it. i'll buy.

But... The Man Who.

"The Man Who" is the album that killed Mondeo Pop.

I always thought that Fairground Attraction were more 2CV fodder - all that wilful rusticity crammed with a creak into a shiny new wicker picnic hamper full of shit spritzer and shoved on the backseat in a jam outside Maidenhead. I guess the Bluebells had a lot of this about them too. Also Carmel? Matt Bianco?

The folkish authenticity thing accommodates Eddie Reader's 'The Patience Of Angels' in addition 'The Second Summer Of Love', 'Young At Heart', 'Nothing Ever Happens'. I can sense tangible connections from this to Tunstall but the connections to the more urban/youthier sophistopop are harder to trace, and a far cry from something like Dave Stewart's 'Heart Of Stone'.

Matt Bianco were surely too *shiny* to be Mondeo Pop? Same reason, in a roundabout way, that Spandu Ballet and ABC aren't Mondeo Pop.

*Spandau

How did The Man Who kill Mondeo Pop... oh and then there's David Gray... I think it may have been at the scene but I don't think it was actually responsible.

xp

NickB probably right re 2CV. same things that keeps Hothouse Flowers not in this thing.

nickb's post is a thing to treasure.

Thing is you could NEVER have imagined Thatcher enjoying Mondeo Pop but there's Blair top 10 records of 1996 in that John Harris book and i is lamost 100% Mondeo Pop.

Travis were the point where Mondeo Pop made too great gains into both "pop" and "indie", they were on TOTP more, they were on Radio 1 more, they actively courted the NME and Melody Maker. It's wher ethe boundaries got broken up, which is why even if, say, Keane or Scouting for Girls wanted to make a Mondeo Pop album in this day and age they couldn't.

Keane and Scouting For Girls, The Feeling, Coldplay et al are all from a very different world. I don't see any of them writing anything so rooted if you see what I mean.

Lack of folk influence, surely? There's no humbleness.

Even when Mondeo Pop was smug (Heaton Heaton Heaton), it still meant it, maaaan. You can't say that about The Feeling.

For Lily Allen there is no such thing as society.

'the man who' isn't it. 'the man who' is profoundly post-1997. it and david gray and coldplay served perhaps a comparable audience to true school mondeo pop. but it's a galaxy away.

All I know is that after the release of "Driftwood", The Beautiful South never had another top 20 single.

why? it has the folkiness, the humility, the comunal thing, healy was always on the "we just making pop here tip. what's that song where he lays diss on wonderwall and devil's haircut? y know franny's 4real. still dunno quite where later period manics fit.

xp

and they are scottish...

it just feels wrong to me, chief.

mondeo pop is clever, but not too clever; a little sardonic sometimes but not mean. i probably read too much coldplay into travis, but they were too 'universal', not clever, never sardonic. no grit to them.

Maybe then tomorrow will be Monday
And whatever's in my eye should go away
But still the radio is playing all the usual
And what's a Wonderwall anway

AND

Travis - Slide Show Lyrics

Today is the day
For dancing and for singing
The birds in the trees and all
The bells are ringing
The sun is in the sky
Is bright as bright second light
Is bright oh god I hope I'm alright

Cause I'm gonna cry
Hold on, hold on
Slow down, slow down
You're out of touch
Out of touch
'Cause there is no design for life
There's no devil's haircut in my mind
There is not a wonderwall to climb
To climb or step around
But there is a slide show and it's so slow
Flashing through my mind

Today was the day
But only for the first time
Hold on, hold on
Slow down, slow down
You're out of touch
Out of touch

'Cause there is no design for life
There is no devil's haircut in your mind
There is not a wonderwall
To climb or step around
But there is a slidesshow and it's so slow
Flashing through my mind

Today was the day
But only for the first time
I hope it's not the last time

There is no devil's haircut in your mind

zing

Oh just saw the:
Today was the day

But only for the first time
Hold on, hold on
Slow down, slow down
You're out of touch
Out of touch

And realized I completely forgot the looming inspiration of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley.

wouldn't catch them in a mondeo, figuratively speaking.

When Travis debuted, didn't they get a lot of Radiohead comparisons?

turin brakes 'pain killer' is calling - will MP accept the charges?

Well, no Travis started as a post Britpop rock act, like Silversun or The Supernaturals.

xp

Someone's gonna mention Starsailor in a minute and then we're gonna be all "oh shi"

xp

i have no idea how travis got compared to radiohead, but that's what happened. based on 'high and dry' and um, er...

when Starsailor released 'Alcoholic' i fucking called it re Darkside Danny Wilson

Quitney: Godrich production, Healy aproximating that vocal styling, Radiohead being a bit closer to Mondeo Pop than anyone would care to admit.

We need Singstar: Mondeo Pop ASAP

Songsmithery in the modern world?

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51bpghLLQ8L._SS500_.jpg

Poor quitney Dr Morbius on one side Mondeo Mafia on the other. Stay strong buddy.

there are always going to be continuities, but that album represents a decisive shift from true-school mondeo.

the fray -- who?
coldplay -- no
razorlight -- rockist
the feeling -- no fucking way
the view -- uh?
the killers -- lol the killers
james morrison -- no, too 'heart on sleeve'
the kooks - lol the kooks
keane -- no, too sincere

i mean none of that lot have anything to do with the beautiful south.

and most of them are for traditional instrumentation and straightforward production, which T4F and prefab sprout were not.

i can almost hear 'Fill My Little World' as a Wet Wet Wet song tho - almost. maybe it's just the "riight up, riight up" bit.

Keane definitely like to stray into the blurry territory - Everything's Changing and Is It Any Wonder' esp. - the former could easily pass for late Tears For Fears altho I guess the latter is too U2/stadium. Beautiful South are an anomaly really, incomparable to anything else as pop 'force'.

re: the feeling. it's an attitude thing. it's about where they're from. it's about class.

i need to go back and listen to more, read up, research, perhaps.

Beautiful South are an anomaly really, incomparable to anything else as pop 'force'.

-- blueski, Thursday, September 13, 2007 8:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yeah, this is true also. they're not really very much like the others...

it's also an image thing re The Feeling. they really look American to me somehow.

kind of disagree about Razorlight as well if you actually listen to 'America' and 'Before I Fall To Pieces' from sonic pov.

remind me: 'Dakota' is too rawky right?

i think new order's 'republic' is mondeo, to follow up on the electronic reference.

Beautiful South are an anomaly really, incomparable to anything else as pop 'force'.

-- blueski, Thursday, September 13, 2007 8:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yeah, this is true also. they're not really very much like the others...

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 13 September 2007 20:49 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

There's no one like The Beautiful South? For a band so despised in certain quarters that seems kind of notable. Surely yr Prefabs are kinda similar, pleasant music with cutting lyrics? But sonically you may be onto something.

TBS = not aspirational? some sort of book-smart sophistication but very self-aware, earnest and NEVER pretentious

Is that perhaps a Northern thing? Anti-pretention, pro-folkishness, irrespective of intellectual output?

I am actually confused what Quitney and Stevey are getting at. Are TBS sonically different or different in tone? Listening to You Keep It All in, it's more retro, less folky perhaps? I'd like to hear some Grime MC's rap over that "Murder in '73" bit.

I do think Catatonia bear some comparison with the Beautiful South. Not just thematically, there's also the way they both draw on similar pseudo-sophisticated retro stuff to try and glam-up their otherwise pumice-stone-grey and dirty-bath-brown sounds and ends up as this ghastly Pernod and Horlicks concoction.

Pernod and Horlicks

KUDOS

'You Keep It All In' is bordering on 'Come Up And See Me' musically.

Which is / was also a local radio staple. This is the current playlist of a local radio station (Southern FM, the station that played the Mondeo Pop of my formative years)

Playlist

14.09.07

Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own

Avril Lavinge - When You're Gone

Enrique Iglesias - Do You Know?

Fergie - Big Girls Don't Cry

James Blunt - 1973

Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around

Kate Nash - Foundations

KT Tunstall - Hold On

Nelly Furtado - Say It Right

Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah

Rihanna - Shut Up & Drive

Robyn - With Every Heartbeat

Scouting For Girls - She's So Lovely

Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls

Sugababes - About You Now

The Fray - How To Save A Life

The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray

I bet they sneak in "The King of Rock 'n Roll" most days though. I hope they do.

Last ten songs Virgin Radio (where I learned Mondeo Pop as a youth) has played:

James Blunt
1973

Bryan Adams
Run to you

Amy Winehouse
Rehab

The Clash
Should I stay or should I go

Alanis Morissette
You oughta know

Philip Oakey and Georgio Moroder
Together In Electric Dreams

The Twang
Two lovers

The Dandy Warhols
Bohemian like you

The Fratellis
Chelsea dagger

Semisonic
Secret smile

We're not in Kansas anymore.

Semisonic and Bryan Adams! That's not Mondeo Pop but it's in the zone.

Semisonic more than BA, definitely. Maybe if CAKE had come from Hull or Oldham they could have been a great British Mondeo Pop act.

Is Heart 106.2 Mondeo Pop? I don't think so; it's something softer, something worse.

I don't think a radio station in of itself can be Mondeo Pop. I think Lynx Java may have been pretty Mondeo Pop at one point, not now though.

http://www.basenotes.net/images/photos/26121027.jpg

i just nominated Joe Jackson (post 1980?) as Mondeo Pop. evidence: steppin out on GTA soundtrack, playing piano for Suzanne Vega. also Different for Girls is on the Cold Feet soundtrack album.

yes?

Too new wave. I see where you're coming from, but he falls down around the same point that Squeeze do.

But... ah boy, let's just say this: The Cure had a Mondeo Pop period. "Fridays I'm In Love" especially.

I can't see the Blue Nile as MP, too angular, stark and downbeat, maybe if he's going through a divorce or his team have lost badly.

Prefab Sprout? The greatest hits album,yes. Any regular album, no.

Grand Theft Auto is Mondeo Pop??? I think my next invented genre will be either Nuts pop or Zoo pop.

xp

The Cure had a Mondeo Pop period. "Fridays I'm In Love" especially.

-- Dom Passantino, Friday, 14 September 2007 12:36 (2 days ago) Link

for a very, very long time this was the only cure song i knew. i had no idea why they and their fans dressed so badly, and was like 'waht is gothic?' i have no idea what their deal was, but that song is a local radio banger.

"Love Cats" as well.

What a shit idea for a thread this was.

-- paulhw, Monday, September 17, 2007 4:28 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

^ ban

Perhaps it is you that is shook

-- That mong guy that's shit, Friday, July 13, 2007 12:04 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

It's just ILE's new rolling balkanised thread for shut-in aspie rubes.

-- ledge, Wednesday, July 4, 2007 11:35 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

at 10:13am on September 18th, 2007
can scritti politti c. 'cupid & psyche' be recuperated from the dead hand of bawrin' post-punk/new-pop orthodoxy?
'the "word" girl' was a local radio banger, and 'small talk' is uber-mondeo. i could care less if ya boy gartside read some barthes.

at 1:40pm on September 18th, 2007
I never heard any Scritti till ILX. Actually that's not true, there was a song on a free Q CD from 1999. I was thinking about this. Wet Wet Wet was the band Green never had the guts to be. That's what I thought today as I listened to Sweet Little Mystery for about the 1000th time. I did buy a Stereolab album rather than Popped In Souled Out in Cash Converters at the weekend though.
Delete

at 2:22pm on September 18th, 2007
wiki says wet wet wet -- "the wets", perhaps -- take their name from the scritti politti song 'gettin, havin' and holdin'. ver scritz were the soulboy band (simon reynolds says) it's okay to like.
similarly i think tim finney is denying blue nile's mondeo credentials coz they too are sort of hooked up to the quasi-avant talk talk tradition.
Message - Report

at 10:54am
I don't think I've heard the Blue Nile. Tim is right. I think Mondeo Pop needs to be linked into some kind of erk world experience or something. I think if Scritti is Mondeo Pop then Madness could be considered. Well it Must Be Love, anyway. I think Mondeo Pop is not to be thought of in terms of bands. Like you were saying on ilx The Cure have one Mondeo Pop monster but are in no way a Mondeo Pop band.
Delete

I think Mondeo Pop is not to be thought of in terms of bands.

that's what i said when i was born, about all phoney genres.

a cursory reading of the later wittgenstein would have told you that

http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/11149

Mondeo Pop hits the mainstream.

I was just coming to mention that, did someone from here write that? (Wasn't Carrie Bradshaw one of Shampoo?)

Carrie Bradshaw: Sex In The City main character
John Bradshaw Layfield: pro-wrestling commentator

nice review! i've only heard 'she's so lovely' but that was enough.

I should note that it's not that I think The Blue Nile are too good to be mondeo-pop, just that there's something specific about the vibe i don't think they share, if i'm understanding it correctly. It starts to become diffuse otherwise, another name for MOR british pop-rock.

In the same way that I wouldn't describe post-"Sledgehammer" Peter Gabriel as mondeo-pop even if there are certain points of overlap.

jokes, bruv I worked for about 16 hours yesterday

xpost

Can any Scritti fans speak on the Wetx3/Scritti connection? Is it fair to say that if Green Gartside had any artistic integrity they would have sounded like Wet Wet Wet?

If you got that idea from what I said that's not what I meant really. Wx3 took their name from a Scrit song, thats all the connections I know. What I meant was more that Scritti were held back by "artistic integrity"...

Maybe worth talking about how Edywn Collins got from "Rip It Up" from "A Girl Like You". The greatest victory of Mondeo Pop?

'a girl like you' is britpop tho!

and 'The Magic Piper Of Love' is Big Beat

Freaky Trigger on the Mondeo Pop bandwagon! http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/pop/2007/09/the-freaky-trigger-top-100-tracks-of-all-time-no-52-joe-jackson-it%e2%80%99s-different-for-girls/
Random youtube commenter also on board
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBikNb5oEcU

Unfortunately I'm really dubious Joe Jackson is Mondeo Pop. Really, really dubious. Cos that would make The Police Mondeo Pop and that would be bad. Rip It Up might be.

Steppin' Out might be Mondeo Pop though.

Too new wave. Surely this is what discounts Squeeze (other than "Pulling Mussels") as well?

Man, I heard Dreams by Gabrielle at the weekend. So, so pure Mondeo Pop in a way say M People aren't. It's got the prettiness and the sort of, this is no slight, smallness. "I'm not making plans for tomorrow, just stay for tonight" consumate Mondeo Pop moment.

Has anyone mentioned that "The summer in city where the air is still, baby being born to the overkill" bit in Somewhere In My Heart by Aztec Camera is GREAT and reminds me oddly of Hash Pipe by Weezer. also "a vision of love wearing boxing gloves".

The new Mixmag or DJ calls Hard-Fi 'Xfm Mondeo music' or something along those lines.

Squeeze: perhaps their after '85 albums have some Mondeo Pop moments, but the first incarnation of the band were NEVER Mondeo Pop.

BTW, are there any other musical styles named by a car?

I was watching "top 100 forgotten gems of the 80s" on the hits the other day. The top 11 I thought was somewhat instructive:

11. Climie Fisher, Love Changes Everything
10. Tpau, Heart and Soul
9. Aztec Camera, Good Morning Britain
8. Alison Moyet, All Cried Out
7. Aha, The Sun Always Shines on TV
6. Abba, One of Us
5. Kim Carnes, Bette Davis Eyes
4. Feargal Sharkey, A Good Heart
3. Philip Bailey and Phil Collins, Easy Lover
2. Laura Branigan, Self Control
1. The Bee Gees, You Win Again

Ok not all MP by any means but some good candidates - Climie FIsher certainly, Aztec C of course, Tpau and Moyet in with a chance. Breathe, Hands to Heaven was up in the 80s or 90s - I always thought they were boyband-esque but the video looked more earnest than that. Anyway I think the idea that these songs are forgotten is telling, and not entirely mistaken.

I guess the Compilation is the natural medium of all Mondeo genres anyway.

-- Noodle Vague, Sunday, 14 October 2007 12:09 (57 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Familiarity is the key here. Most Mondeo-friendly acts don't have whole albums of familiar tracks, apart from Greatest Hits collections. Take the Lighthouse Family as an average representative. Nobody knows what the non-singles sound like on their records, not even the people who played on them. Mondeo Pop thrives on the singalong. Compilations, especially with the word "Drivetime" in the title, are king.

Compilations that come free with newspapers?

Not usually. Too genre-limited. Also the demographic for the Mail on Sunday is averaging at least 10 years too old to get behind Mondeo Pop.

Ah, I see. (just wondering, as I was in someone's place this weekend and those were the only music they owned...)

weird that the lighthouse family's long-player was called 'ocean's drive', after the location of numerous hits in the miami crack wars of the early 80s.

Most everything I said there was rong.

http://www.ukmix.org/images/reviews/2000/s_toploader.gif

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html#9167903617409285069

No answers, no solutions... just further-gloom-inducing inconclusions that all point towards to that bigger sense of impasse and social/cultural deadlock.

(Still at least it has inspired the best ILM thread in many, many a moon)

Posted by simon reynolds at 9:39 AM

kudos guys

Sounds like someone hasn't seen Results 1 - 10 of about 256 for gaydiohead. (0.28 seconds)

"kudos guys"

Ha ha you wish. This would surely be SR's top ten most hated "loonies getting loonier" thread.

Reynolds will come around to Danny Wilson in time.

Virgin Radio still has a lot of Deacon Blue on its daytime playlist

So is someone gonna compile the Mondeo Pop rough guide?

Also this thread has made me feel like listening to Dubstar (I used to drive a micra)!

Counting Crows. Mondeo, yes?

So is someone gonna compile the Mondeo Pop rough guide?

^^^My job for this evening

Public response: MEH.

Public response: Dom, you're one of those guys who whines that people are better/fitter/more networked/richer than you as if there is a vast metropolitan conspiracy against your sorry, provincial, undervalued arse. Your solution: the only way to become memorable is to be hateful. Public response: MEH. When they find you as a pensioner, freeze-dried to a chair three months after your lonely death, wearing a bathrobe and dried remnants of excreta, and with more unpublish/ed/able work than Colin Wilson to burn off, nobody who was here will be very surprised AT ALL.

"Hooray for middlebrow" says Simon Reynolds in "Bring the Noise". Is Mondeo Pop the logical conclusion of what he's desperately groping about for over the course of his writings, the spark he tries and fails to find in dancehall, rave, and grime?

His problems with homophobia in dancehall are similar to the problems Mondeo Pop fans have with the misogyny of the Beautiful South, but in the end we have to overlook these things to appreciate an overall beauty of product.

Birthplace of Mondeo Pop?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JJ7oGHwMTI

Fiction Factory.

has balearic stolen mondeo's thunder?

One of the songs on the new Paul Heaton album has a 60-second burst of what seems to be the big man's attempt at 'rave music', which I found to be one of the more upsetting things I've listened to in 2010 so far.

Were Microdisney Mondeo Pop y/n

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq_F0SKFHHo

related videos of the youtube page for 'Town to Town' by Microdisney:
Curiosity Killed the Cat- Down to Earth
The Commitments- Mustang Sally
New Order- True Faith
China Crisis- Wishful Thinking
Phil Lynott- Old Town

Feel like Car Share - specifically the episode that ended with "Oh Patti" - is, in a funny way, the apotheosis of Mondeo Pop.

Save Tonight is The Passenger if the vehicle in question was a, well