SIMON REYNOLDS DISCUSSES CURRENT DANCE MUSIC IN TODAY'S NY TIMES

Yeah, and if he wasn't so myopic in his little culture bubble, he probably would've made that clear to his American audience reading it in an American newspaper.

hip hop is much much bigger than techno or house music in europe too. let´s not think anything else. I think many of you americans have a warped idea of how popular dance music is in europe. yes, it is more popular than in the us but that doesnt mean much.

true he does...excerpt: in recent years it may have been beaten on the shake-your-booty front by dancehall and Southern rap.

But he doesn't recognize it as being a part of the "dance" genre. Instead he says it's something to be absorbed by dance culture, like rock, to inject it with some newfound vitality.

exactly my beef with the whole thrust of the article. i mean, why not examine what moves americans rather than why french house never shook booty in midtown like it was supposed to?

This is definitely true for me, but it's mostly from what I've read in Euro publications over the years.

Simon R is of course saying they once were big (in the States) and wonders why there's a disinterest now. That said, I always thought the Prodigy's album wasn't really all that successful. Could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

Isn't he also CLEAR about what he's discussing: the big four (dance acts)? *sigh*

Because he chose to examine why French house never shook booty in midtown like it was supposed to. Maybe next time he'll write an article about what moves Americans.

Objecting to why it was "supposed to" is another matter altogether ... Reynolds seems to consider it nearly axiomatic, i.e. he starts by assuming (without argument) that it "should" have broken big, and then tries to figure out why it didn't.

Yeah, about what I thought. Metal may not be the specific vehicle but the aesthetic is being carried through. ;-)

That said, I always thought the Prodigy's album wasn't really all that successful. Could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

The Fat of the Land? Debuted at number one here.

Some big news for you: Hip-hop and pop are big in Europe too.

Hey, I'm tired of Reynolds and his entire schtick. He really needs to give up the rave ghost. But the critiques in this thread are pedantic bitch-assery of the highest order.

well no, you sure can't fill any football stadiums with hiphop over here. Fairly routine for trance/hard techno.

I am sure if Simon pitched this themed article at a specialist publication - then a more longer, detailed and substantial effort would have been actioned.

So? I'm not sure what that has to do w/ hip-hop's club domination in the united states.

well maybe a broad readership isn't interested in music that isn't selling? not that sales should be the only factor in coverage, but given the NYT's increasingly populist bent in the "pop music" section (that's right, music is segregated into "pop" and "classical" again, bye bye clinton nineties), it's just surprising.

Even more oddly, others have been looking to rock music for reinvigoration.

why is this odd?

why is it odd that Norman Cook, formerly a bassist in a rock band (albeit a sorta pansyish one) would listen to or be inspired by rock music!

Point being: If hip-hop/pop big in Europe too, harder to see them as a unique factor holding back dance/electronic in the US. Especially in the case of pop!

I agree with Perpetua's explanation.

It seems a bit strange to ignore that the biggest reason why Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, and The Prodigy all had fluke success in the US around the same time was cos major labels and the media in the US had convinced itself that it was the Next Big Thing

*That's* why a broad readership might be interested. The music was pushed as the Next Big Thing (which a broad musically-curious readership might remember), and now nobody cares about it. There's your article.

but the point of the article is that dance music is barely alive in america. it's not. it's his rather narrowly defined notion dance music that's dead.

This is true, although not about the Spice Girls--they were more or less concurrent to the big beat explosion, and had their biggest impact before Fat of the Land went to #1. But nu-metal is a much better example--it's pretty much what people were looking for in big-beat, except more rock, so easier to reconcile. And as Scottpl recently pointed out in his Always Outnumbered review, it often really wasn't that far off from nu-metal. You put, say, Linkin Park's "Faint" and Prodigy's "Firestarter" up against each other, and there's really not too much distinguishing the two.

No, the point is that *particular styles* of dance music is barely alive in America. Against, I think there's confusion because the phrase "dance music" means different things to Americans and Europeans.

or aphex twin's "come to daddy."

e.g on BBC Music
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/

Dance
House, Trance, Techno

Urban
Hip hop, R'n'B, Garage, Ragga

But yeah, nu-metal is more important since electronica was being marketed to modern rock radio and alt-rock fans.

this was the NeoCons side-project, alongside the slandering of CLinton

and 'dance' as a term for certain genres and subgenres of music is just as hopeless as the terms pop, rock, indie, urban etc. - but i'm still surprised people feel the need to bring up the 'why is it called dance music when we can dance to Britney/rock music as well?' thing again...in 2005!

Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy both had some huge hits, but I would say that the success of Daft Punk really was only a modest success (which probably set them up to a better long term career, cos they aren't stuck with that nostalgia vibe. Well, that and DP just being way better in general.)

4th paragraph:
In the new millennium, the mainstream profile of dance music dipped alarmingly. This downturn occurred on both sides of the Atlantic, but it was particularly precipitous in America

"dance music" = House, Trance, Techno

(as stated in DJ Martian's post above)

Yeah, it really does have a lot to do with how they were trying to shoehorn this stuff into rock stations, it alienated the core demo of rock stations.