Lady Gaga, Pussycat Dolls and a Taxonomy of Vacuous Pop

Ha ha that category is supposed to be called "Vacuousness As Genre Tourism". Stuffed that pun up completely.

Matt is right but I think post "Groovejet" and esp. "Murder On The Dancefloor", Sophie was really playing it from both sides - much of her audience would have had no idea of (ahem) theaudience. This becomes murky though because she is still associated with class, but that's achieved through her accent, her precarious sexy-but-not-sexual visual image.

Lots of great stuff on the second SEB album, in a Daniel Bedingfield kind of way. Daniel's also hard to characterise.

Yes with Sophie the Blue Peter thing is vastly more important than theaudience, it's tied up with instant respectability more than class I think.

Doing this with male popstars hurts my head - I've been trying to work out where to put Craig David for about 5mins.

I like category #1 because issues of the vocalist's 'personality' wasn't/aren't particularly important - all that was required was their relative strength as singers. It really helped that this was backed up with robust and dynamic dance music - I mean the kind you don't tend to get now (with the empthasis having switched to minimalism and a subtlety of sorts) tho I suppose Booty Luv may qualify (e.g. you'll get instances were the singers are interviewed here and there, but yeah generally we don't care who they are?)

For category #3 I'd suggest (tho it's an old and maybe dated example) Jewel's 'Intuition' maybe. It works much better out of that context tho - presumably most examples would? Maybe Katy Perry overlaps here.

My setting out the above makes it seem like i'm singling out women as being vacuous in a way men are not. But the issue is more how everything is perceived "out there". This does work for male pop but in different ways. For one, men just do get away with a lot more - a male Avril Lavigne would never have been so vilified. But also men are less subject to the minute dissections of personality, physicality and fashion that seem to go with being a female pop star.

This is one reason why it's hard to place Craig David - as a persistent figure in UK pop he might become increasingly strained, but he's unlikely ever to fascinate or appall people.

Also the gay appreciation sub-category is obviously smaller and very different in its dynamic (ironically though male pop being "gay" is probably a good equivalent to female pop being "vacuous").

Ha Steve yes I thought of "Intuition" at the time!

Also - to some extent - Pink's "Stupid Girls", which is a more meta-example in that musically it's totally a reversion to pop while lyrically it rejects that option (albeit embracing it sarcastically in the chorus).

SEB is odd because you have all these associations of style and sophistication flung at you but the ceiling on this when framed against the music (usually pretty weak) is far too low. I think her enjoyment of disco-pop and being a pop star is genuine but it's not really enough. Annie has similar problems at times.

a male Avril Lavigne would never have been so vilified.

ha, but at the same time, not actally feasible at all? i mean Lil Chris is the closest i can think of...

Yes I think you're right. Actually "Murder On The Dancefloor" aside I'm not a massive fan of any of her discoid efforts. The album tracks I like are all the oddball moments e.g. "The Walls Keep Saying Your Name". Why this stuff reminds me of Bedingfield a bit (and Natasha Bedingfield also works as a reference point) is that it kind of fails (though interestingly and enjoyably at times) at being either categorisable production line pop or "art" in the generally accepted songwriterly sense.

"ha, but at the same time, not actally feasible at all?"

Yeah, that's the tension, I guess. In the same way that body image can work for and against female celebs more dramatically.

I was thinking more Good Charlotte actually. The same dynamic is there but it feels more muted, like people struggle to care so much that Good Charlotte make money off of popularizing modern rock moulds.

i think you explained Dannii's appeal, scant tho it is, well too. tracks produced to accommodate and play towards her limitations to the extent that maybe 'So Under Pressure' worked better with Dannii's voice than it would've with Kylie's. GA have this too but it's different when it's a group.

it took a long time for me to warm to Scherzinger personality-wise and it was all down to vocal stylings from 'Buttons' onwards ('Super Villain' still blatantly ace but don't think she made it her own if you know what I mean). will hear more new PCDs eventually.

It took "Buttons" for it to click with me too Steve. Perhaps because it's their most generic single and her most interesting performance, the gap between the two tendencies is unusually noticeable.

Great. Now how about you do something similar for male pop star/icon types, eh?

Or are men just not capable of being vacuous?

maybe we should talk more about how hot these women are like you do with male artists all the time

This is one reason why it's hard to place Craig David - as a persistent figure in UK pop he might become increasingly strained, but he's unlikely ever to fascinate or appall people.

― Tim F, Thursday, 23 October 2008 15:19 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Really don't think this works, it's hard (impossible) to think of a single pop performer more villified/mocked in the UK over the past decade than Craig David (Victoria Beckham? James Blunt? Mick Hucknall?)

None of those three got a melody maker cover sitting on the bog

I dunno NRQ, that absolute hatred of David doesn't bleed over to Australian/international music press so it's difficult for me to comment accurately perhaps. My sense was that he was "a joke", but the big difference to me is that ultimately there's not the same narrative of media cycles focusing on successful/unsuccessful plastic surgeries, weight ballooning, new "looks", etc.

All of which is there for, say, a Victoria Beckham. So while Craig David might be disliked as much as Victoria, it's a different kind of dislike. I think with a certain brand of female pop there's an almost uneasy feeling that these stars are not really human beings anymore. I don't think people tend to feel the same way about male pop stars, who often disliked (see James Blunt) for being boring more than anything else.

"Or are men just not capable of being vacuous?"

This is an excessively literal reading of what is being discussed here. Of course men are capable of being vacuous. Of course male pop is capable of being vacuous. But it's the very fact that female pop is disproportionately criticized as vacuous that makes all of this stuff interesting to think about - would we ever have cared as much about Justin Timberlake saying "we should just support the POTUS in whatever he does?" No, because, there's less of a pre-existing urge to pillory male pop stars for being stupid (as I note above, we're much more likely to pillory male pop stars for being effete/feminine).

The other big motivation for me to write all of this was to talk about the dynamic of gay appreciation of "vacuous" (female) pop. Whereas gay men tend to like male pop (vacuous or otherwise) in much the same way as the rest of the population, give or take a desire to have sex with the performer, which anyway they share in common with straight women, pop's primary audience.

Above and beyond all of that, I think the big thrust of what I'm saying is that what is dismissed as "vacuous" often isn't, or rather that what is going on is far more complicated.

I never got the sense that Craig David is particularly hated in the UK - what am I missing?

(before I answer, I'm Dom. You can tell I'm not NRQ because I mentioned an act that wasn't from the 90s)

craig david's image these days is pretty respectable lemar territory, insofar as he's thought about at all. and anyway he was never mocked for (pcd-style) vacuity, he was mocked because he did things like say his name on record and play up the smoove loverman image (ie fairly standard and inoffensive signifiers in black music, which for SOME REASON many white british people get rather annoyed by).

boy bands are traditionally dismissed as vacuous in similar ways to the female pop acts mentioned here, but there aren't any boy bands any more (except mcfly! who are indeed mocked and rightly so) so this doesn't really lead us anywhere. it took justin ages to get rid of that stigma, though. a great deal of the vacuity criticism is related to the perception of who the act's target audience is (which is often only tangentially related to what they sound like) - if they're known for having a female teen/tween fanbase (or indeed teh gays, haha) that tends to be enough for them to be labelled vacuous.

PCDs are an increasingly interesting case cuz of how massively, reliably commercially successful they are, with absolutely zero critical respectability (EXCEPT US). look at their singles! this sequence is actually astonishingly good, in termsof singles they have not put a foot wrong yet:

don't cha
stickwitu
beep
buttonz
i don't need a man
wait a minute
when i grow up
i hate this part

pcd singles are wallpaper to me but i have a weird (for me) affinity for them because i think they might be the last mega-successful pop group completely engineered by a label with a massive promo budget and stuff

unless you count kings of leon

it's weird that pcd have never had a US #1 after all that though

it is actually interesting to see how the boyband concept has changed in 10 years - the types you had in '98 don't seem to exist at all now, apart from the SAME big 3 in the UK, 2 of which were always aimed more at older market anyway.

What goes around comes around.

Sorry dom, that was a weird mix-up.

why is there seemingly less interest in male 3s, 4s and 5s in the US market? esp. on the R&B side. ten years ago you still had Blackstreet plus Dru Hill, 112 and a few others. it seemed a reasonably constant model until recent years - what changed?

reality tv?

if you mean Making The Band, maybe O-Town killed it but it's weird to think that their failure on it's own would put a stop to what seems a long-running tradition in the US or all male R&B pop groups.

OF all male R&B groups, that should be

The male R&B group model was still quite prominent even about five or six years ago - Jagged Edge, B2K etc.

I think it's less common for female groups too, now, PCD notwithstanding. Which other new groups have crashed through?

Perhaps the myspace-isation of pop has meant listeners expect a more "personal" relationship with their pop icons, which R&B groups struggle to provide, esp. since male R&B groups never placed the same emphasis on individual personality that the female groups did. Don't know about the rest of you but I struggle to name any members of the male groups unless they went solo.

making the band male group day26 had a #1 album but they couldn't be more inconsequential in the grand scheme if they tried

pretty ricky had some singles a few years back but their new jack single didn't do anything this summer

the trend towards solo artists in "commercial" genres like r&b and pop is interesting - i can't really think of an adequate explanation at all. it's fairly definite, to the extent that i can't imagine that format providing a breakthrough act right now. poor danity kane :(

they tried a new black boyband here this time last year with Ghostt (X-Factor rejects) - actually really liked their debut single but it was hard to see how they could succeed (also hard to reason why not tho, given the precedents (Another Level!)

but maybe there are a few bands like them on Channel U you'd never know about unless you watched that

is the development of solo artists seen as more worthwhile from a record company perspective? the boyband/girlgroup format implies a limited shelflife, whereas investing money in a solo act like chris brown, who is effectively a one-man boy band, can potentially pay off in a longer career?

im not sure if this has any traction or not but maybe male r&b groups died here because it just became to inexpensive and not profitable enough to employ 3 or 4 guys who are singing songs written by people who have to be paid and dancing in choreography devised by someone who had to be paid etc

it seems like all success here in the US in terms of male r&b is coming from a few minds- ne-yo, the-dream, t-pain, akon even timbaland- who write songs for other people as well as themselves. i'm not sure what the business side of that is but r&b from a male perspective is so so concentrated now (even female r&b too since ne-yo, t-pain and dream all write tons of songs for women). otherwise the big stars are like, usher and justin who are holdovers from the era of earlier this decade. chris brown seems to be the only mega star i can think of who only sings songs written for him.

you can see that there are a LOT more solo women doing well now compared to 10 years ago (people used to joke about the Brit Award for Best Female because of the lack of candidates but now, irrespective of how you feel about their music, there's so much more choice).

Sounds about right. Used to be a boyband was launched, main dude went solo (possibly as bands were in and solo acts weren't at the time? and maybe things have changed around). Now labels don't expect bands to last long enough so they just have a conveyor belt of solo acts from the likes of X-Factor and the like?
x-post

Certainly the times suit solo voices: it would be difficult to do an autotune track with a whole group (though in theory the result could be awesome), and solo singers can more easily make space for guest rappers in their songs.

Now I can't remember if Danity Kane use autotune at all. But the fact that they come across as so robotic (which would be a plus only for some listeners) is a good demonstration of the "dangers" of group format right now.

Interestingly, PCD songs are to all intents and purposes solo tracks with back-up singers. This may not simply be because most of the Dolls can't sing; perhaps it was just felt that this structure was easier to fit to chart-ready pop songs circa 2006-2008.

the boyband/girlgroup format implies a limited shelflife, whereas investing money in a solo act like chris brown, who is effectively a one-man boy band, can potentially pay off in a longer career?

also much easier (and cheaper) to manage only 1 person rather than 4

not that we should give much, if any, credit to the labels imo. t-pain and ne-yo have been two of the most bankable r&b minds of the past two or three years and t-pain was signed by akon after t-pain parodied "locked up" and i'm willing to bet ne-yo got a deal out of courtesy for writing hits but the label mad minimal expectations for his solo career

because it just became to inexpensive and not profitable enough to employ 3 or 4 guys who are singing songs written by people who have to be paid and dancing in choreography devised by someone who had to be paid etc

good point when taking into account the market decline (piracy + saturation)...altho the number of guitar-based quartets seems the same if not greater

um that should say too expensive btw

I don't want this to get into a pop vs rock rockist bands should write their own songs "debate". But when did pop groups stop writing their own songs? Cathy Dennis writes loads of songs as does betty boo, but their chart careers didn't last long really. Are labels too scared about their investments to allow pop stars to write like say Madonna did? Gary Barlow is the last one I can think of. (Does Ronan Keating write his songs?) I can't believe there aren't some talented people out there in the pop world that could write or produce their own stuff. (if any do exist please point them out as it's not a genre I'm an expert in obviously)

I can't believe there aren't some talented people out there in the pop world that could write or produce their own stuff. (if any do exist please point them out as it's not a genre I'm an expert in obviously)

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Thursday, October 23, 2008 6:00 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark

i mentioned these a few posts ago, but t-pain has basically written and produced every song that he's sung for himself or been featured on in the past 3 years. ne-yo and the-dream write a ton of songs for themselves and others, and though they don't produce most of them they have each have a reliable team to do the production. akon is the same as t-pain but he doesn't work at the same clip.

yeah i think the trend is actually towards pop stars writing more of their own material! and to let a lot of the songwriters out from behind the curtain as viable pop stars in their own right, like ne-yo.

Any British equivalents?

basshunter

Sugababes write many of their own iirc. All Saints did too.

All Saints is going back a bit!

from a rock perspective, there are no boyish guitar bands that are successful anymore on a massive scale like blink-182 was. panic at the disco fell the fuck off and fall out boy are in the process of doing the same on a huger stage, so right now majors have nickelback and american idol rockers or one offs like hinder and finger eleven. i'd say, contrary to what herman has proposed, pop/r&b are far far outpacing popular rock in terms of "writing their own hits"

only 2 years! xp

I love that term "Gagaist."

i'm pretty much obsessed with these gaga mind control articles

http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=2614

good lookin from this guy

http://vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/30761512.jpg

i think i kinda like "poker face" now. stuck in my head so much :/

it's never quite satisfactory when i listen though, her voice is so flat and that bluffing with my muffin rap needs to die forever

"bad romance" is MASSIVE

A Taxonomy of Vorpal Jabberwock

xpost

"Bad Romance" is great, and as I care about her less for no particular reason I become more comfortable with "Paparazzi" being just-plain-awesome.

Here Lex, I'm sure you'll just love Chris Daughtry's rendition, which gets rid of the "bluffin/muffin" bit, thus making it perfect and very enjoyable to listen to. Really. Go ahead. Click it and see for yourself.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/t90dFkM9acg&hl=en&fs=1&";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/t90dFkM9acg&hl=en&fs=1&"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Show formatting help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t90dFkM9acg

those articles are blowing my miiiind.

what are they about? i don't have the patience to read them.

paparazzi is still giving me chills.

i basically refuse to listen to any of her newer singles out of fear that i might like them

lol

that stuffed animal dress on her is fucking gorgeous

reminds me of an awesome outfit i saw in vogue last month, with a top made out of beautiful little stuffed leopards.

She's more competent as a songwriter than most people would like to admit, right? I kinda like that song she wrote for Michael Bolton.

i love those articles

References to mind control, to secret societies, to Baphomet and to Metropolis are too widespread to be coincidences or results of artistic expression. There is an obvious media campaign pushing these elements into pop culture. What should we do about it? MTV says: Just dance.

was it someone here who showed me this comparison between roisin and gaga? http://idolator.com/5263432/roisin-murphy-knows-that-lady-gagas-imitation-is-in-fact-flattery kinda funny

The truth is somehow both weirder and more mind-boggling mundane than I ever thought.

I'm gonna bump this thread and leave it for my SisX0r to read and be amused be.

Yesterday the news went around that Irish dance innovator Roisin Murphy had called out the steamroller that is Lady GaGa for ripping off her style

lol

I didn't know Roisin was into Riverdance.

you know if lady gaga hadn't become really famous straight off, then most of her songs and stuff would be lyrically really mad

lookin kinda annie lennox to me here

http://www.popjustice.com/images/stories/g/gagabadromvid10.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4KQksDXhjQ

awesome

yeah i have to say that now i'm over her going on abt being a pop-construct r whatever, I'm totally in love with her a little, just watching her do live performances on youtube and she really is one of those next level popstars, nothing amateurish but pure charisma and great vocals always. She is a fucking awesome piano player too.

still hate the fame but she has a great album in her at least

Way way cuter with that hair.

my sister claims that clip is "pre nosejob"

don't know if she still has it now, but she had quite a schnoz on her when she was first blowing up

i think she's kept it.

i would prolly like to hang out with your sister xp

yeah she's just talented and cool

kinda wish she'd go more jazzy on some songs these days, instead of all electro all the time

the impression these clips give me is that she's giving over to all the wrong impulses, she's totally over the top on all her conceptual bs while i wish she would be a bit more self indulgent with the crazy piano playing and actually awesome pipes. Really i just get the impression that she's sacrificing making the awesome music she wants to make at least a little bit in favour of maintaining some trashpop aesthetic that works with the r'n'ziggy thing she's tryna pull.

haha ramzi i think u would, she's a pretty scary girl, says them how she sees them

i think she just kinda likes it. and the fact that it still sounds interesting given all the crap she puts on top of it says at least something. you're right tho, her pipes need a little more room in her mixes. good voice.

ha i've been meaning to bump this thread for the past few days due to my inability to stop listening to the PCDs' 'i hate this part' but i still don't have anything else to say about tim's taxonomy yet

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 23, 2008 1:51 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"I Hate This Part" holds up really well, though I associate it specifically with fall 2008 and the falling-off-the-cliff start of the recession.

This thread is strongly carbon dated by the subsequent twists and turns in Lady Gaga's career.

ugh wow at all the "tranny" language and "ew she's ugly" type stuff in this thread's early days. not ILM's finest hour.