2. Glenn, I don’t agree when you say that Tom’s argument is that ‘the usual critical questions are irrelevant to pop’: he seems to me to be saying one route of criticism – a direct link between artist named on cover and content on record - is foxed by the way this pop is produced and consumed. I can’t see him saying any other of the ‘usual’ critical questions (whatever they may be) aren’t relevant. This may be my poor reading of the article.
3. Glenn: I've known so many people with fabulous art-critical abilities and terrible critical ability as far as their own lives or the lives of others are concerned. You may argue that thinking about what you [/I /they] are listening to is a start, better than nothing, but I could equally argue it's a stopping point, ‘soma’ of a sort for too many, and not very 'socially encouraging' at all.
4. Glenn (again, sorry!) I understand that you engage intellectually and emotionally with the records you mention above (I've no desire to argue about them, or your enjoyment of them which is your own business and of course completely valid... and very eloquently put, if I may say so). I don't, however, buy that those records treat you any differently than they treat me, or anyone else. We might react very differently, but then it sounds to me as though we would react very differently to Destiny's Child, or Elephant Man, or Sizzla. If (say) Mark Kozalek were to leave me cold and Destiny's Child were to move me to thought and / or motion, then should I still believe that MK's record was made *as if I were a critical individual* while DC's wasn't?
― Tim, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
- Yes, by "the usual critical questions" I meant the ones that assume there's an author responsible, "usual" used in the same way Tom says "most criticism of the teenpop boom". You're right that eliminating the author doesn't eliminate all critical approaches, but a) it sure undermines a lot of them, and b) some of the ones that are left, like musical innovation or independent lyrical invention, aren't often machine pop's strong points. Except for a point about "physical onomatopaeia" that sounded intriguing but I couldn't follow it, I don't see where Tom, or anybody else here, has offered what I would call a "critical approach" to machine pop, other than "I just like it" or "It's more exciting this way", which I think are equivalent. How, other than just comparing how happy we say these songs make us, can we talk about non-autonomous-author, non- self-defeatingly-self-reflective machine-pop? What are the valid questions to ask about "...Baby One More Time"? I don't mean this rhetorically; what are, in your opinion, the valid questions to ask about it?
- I agree that exaggerated critical abilities don't necessarily correlate to any other life skill. Nor do extreme math skills, massive historical knowledge or much of anything else. But you've got to learn to think by thinking about something. And music's advantage over math and history is that if you learn to think about music you implicitly learn that thinking isn't something you just do in school. If you think thinking about music is more likely to turn people into socially-maladjusted geeks, then well, that was exactly the point of soma in Brave New World, wasn't it, discouraging people from developing unbalancing passions?
- The point about how music treats its listeners is a bit slippery, I grant you. But I think there's something important there, closely related to the rest of this discussion, about whether art is primarily aiming for ubiquity or primarily trying to communicate something. But I'm an admitted elitist. To me dumbed-down culture like "...Baby One More Time" and Bay/Bruckheimer films and prime-time sitcoms are insulting, and the fact that so many people seem to enjoy them is no excuse at all.
And one other point, because I'm wearying of circling around and around on these:
- It's hard for me to credit an account of pop's death that doesn't address its birth. Tom says pop has had a short, glorious life, but as far as I can tell pop in the last four years hasn't been notably different from pop in the decades before that. Weren't the Village People, Shawn Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Paula Abdul, Mariah Carey, En Vogue, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, at least, just as much "pop" as anything today? What about all those Holland/Dozier/Holland Supremes songs? Seems to me that if pop survived Diana Ross going solo and Alanis graduating from _Alanis_ to _Jagged Little Pill_, a little NSync petulance is hardly going to be its death.
― glenn mcdonald, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I mean, literally. Go here to see other people discussing this same article (reprinted on another site)in some sort of parallel universe:
http://www. plastic.com/music/01/06/25/1517209.shtml
― masonic boom, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
2. I agree with Mark S that we cannot so easily be sure re. what is 'critical engagement'. I don't think that Glenn M, or Mark S, or Ally garance, or DJ Martian, or Ned Raggett, or whoever, are all pursuing the same grand project as me (or, for all I know, each other). I don't imagine that those people would be at all happy to be grouped with me, either. I imagine that they'd be appalled and horrified. That's to say: posting sometimes to ILM doesn't mean you're part of a group besides People On ILM.
3. To be Zenotic (??!): this phrase 'the autonomous author' is now getting a lot of unquestioned currency, like we are all sure what we mean by it. It's strange, because I always used to think that *no* author was 'autonomous'.
― the pinefox, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
[Also: "Zenotic Method", neologized from Socratic Method and Zeno's paradox (in which you can never get more than halfway to anywhere).]
― mark s, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Josh, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Why do I like it? What is it doing to and for me, and my enjoyment of everything else?
This is no different than for non-machine-pop.
That sounds like a criticism - but I don't think it should be: because one of the jobs of a critic might, possibly, be to 'invent their object' in such a way. If so, it might be that Tom E was doing that job very well (he does lots of critical jobs well, I have often suggested).
But I don't know whether to think that there has been a 'recent run' distinct from anything else, or not. On the one hand, I would like to say, Yes - there are all those records that I hate, all conveniently bundled up in that recent run. On the other hand, I am not sure that I could draw a convincing line between that run and earlier records that I hate.
"Seems to me pop's been just like this for at least 40 years."
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Patrick, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Some - possibly Tom - might argue that the British version of pop these last few years (Spice Girls, Steps, S Club 7, Hear'say etc.) should also be included, for monolithic coverage alone, but I've always allocated it a different place in my brain.
As for "second-guessing" - I meant pop second-guessing itself for the purpose of critical validation. N'Sync (and now Britney, apparently) drafting in BT to make their music more appealling to the non-pop masses was almost a foregone conclusion the moment people started to (for the umpteenth time) realise that there was something in pop music for people other than teenage girls. Second guessing for the purpose of mass commercial success I have no problem with - it's pop's job.
As for "thrilling futuristic music coupled with a sense of indestructible self-confidence and inevitability", how does this not describe, say, "Funkytown", "Crush on You" or "Gonna Make You Sweat"?
What I think defines the music we're talking about is that for the first time in a while a futurist musical approach was explicitly associated with pop in and of itself - not the pop end of another genre. By drawing disparate examples from all over the shop, you can quite rightly demonstrate that the ideas circulating were hardly new, but that doesn't disprove the novelty of this sort of thing as a movement. Otherwise by the same token we could say that Britpop is stylistically indistinguishable from any other dominant stage in British music, simply because other bands in a similar mould had existed for thirty years prior.
― Tim, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Diff. between Bay City Rollers and N'SYNC: Rollers are in a slightly different tradition, along with the Monkees. They are presented as a 'rock band' with defined instrumental roles. So the do-they don't- they play their instruments / actually *do* anything becomes part of the presentation. This is a totally interesting pop model but it hardly surfaces today and when it does - BBMak, Dimestars - nobody seems to want it. It feels slightly out of date I suppose.
Difference between early 60s girl-group pop and N'SYNC: not much except I wonder in terms of presentation....was artistic autonomy even an issue in pop, pre-Beatles and Dylan? (Pre-criticism, in fact).
(Of course there are massive massive sonic differences between NSYNC and all of the above, which should not be discarded)
But sonics aside these are nuances rather than actual differences. Pop continues. As Josh has suggested, "dead" in the article is rhetorical exaggeration (and intentional too). So what I'm saying - so far - is that this particular machine pop moment is coming to an end. When did it start? (I'm not sure this is relevant, but it's been asked.) Musically I can't think of anything pre NKOTB which combines mechanised music with a singer-dancer focus. The rash of hits I mentioned at the start of the article weren't intended to mean 'the start of machine pop', but were flagged up as the point at which machine pop started to be aesthetically interesting to me, i.e. when I realised I liked it. The public seemed to agree, since those hits also helped start the recent period of complete commercial dominance for the style.
And yes, none of this is new. I mention this even, at the end. If you can find it, take a look at Nik Cohn's Awopbopaloobopawopbamboom for an early sixties perspective on what he calls 'Superpop'.
― Tom, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Surely not being pop is Daft Punk's only salvation: If their music sounds like that because it's just them talking to themselves in their private language, then fair enough, but if they're shovelling on the irony in an attempt to shift units, then they should be dragged from their cars and beaten. This doesn't apply to other artists: just Daft Punk.
Mitch: "There's nothing wrong with Radiohead making a record about their last record, while pop most certainly shouldn't."
This also has the problem that it fails the Backstreet's Back test.
Wow. Have none of you ever sat down and talked with people who don't "get" music, but still buy a lot? They do exist, (hence the success of Travis, hohoho) and they're very scary.
Also, my respect for Tom (already very high) goes up several notches due to the news that he also contributes to Barbelith. Also fascinating to see the difference in slant that they immediately pick up and run with.
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
2. Where does all this stuff about 'futurism' come from? The only pop futurism (roughly speaking - ie. not in strict avant-garde terms) that I can think of = Bowie (Starman, Ziggy and what have you) and his New Romantic scions.
3. Seems disingenuous of Tom E to say, 'This Movement of mine has ended - but I don't care when it began'. If you want to persuade us that there has been a Movement, then offering some temporal parameters would help (perhaps you do do this. I'm not saying that you never do, or never would do).
4. Andrew F: don't know what you mean re. people who don't 'get' music. Most people on this forum probably think that I don't 'get' music. If people are buying lots of records, then - even though I almost certainly won't like most of them - I think that they can claim to 'get' that particular thing.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― gareth, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Patrick, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
And of course there are extra twists in the loop. Sex awareness is one: any star with minor nous (and a thick skin?) can DIRECTLY access fan-fantasies abt him/her from safe lurker distance. We already KNOW this feedback loop has nourished and smartened a signif level of cult TV (Buffy/Xena/Star Trek blah blah): some of the core guys in THAT highly author-blurred collective ARE surfing their equivs of ILM. Popstars caused a power-tremor: the conventional routes of power shaken by K.Marsh's brilliant all- in-one-throw gamble, over the heads of studio-programmers, to the the SYMPATHIES of the MASS AUDIENCE...: then factor in Lara Croftism/hentai-idoru/porn-as-the-new-goth tendencies, where's the Madonna of this major car-smash of zeitgeist shifts? (Structurally this just = the 70s: yes, if you construct yrself a critical position which allows you to overlook-ignore-dismiss alkl the big things that are actually happening)
Finally: and this (I believe) is at the heart, what I (v.obscurely) have been calling PROG. This combines the sense of a need for progression (a highly stimulated, media-savvy-yet-unformed-naive audience growing up and demanding more; demanding what they THINK they've been promise) with the sheer density of (as yet unanchored) NOISE now packed into the ordinary signal. Competitive differentiation required a remarkable compactness of features w/o direct translateability: they seem like surface tweaks, but they soon become the core of the identity (what you reach for when the top-level message begins somewhat to alienate you). A ENORMOUS amount of unpoliced techy mind and cleverness (and reaction to intra-corporate boredom re the top- level message, also) is poured into these: it's there ready to explode, just as prog did in the 70s out of the mass of psych-pop (which was also noise and gimmick-rich, and starved of clear signal: disco and 80s masspop were — in different ways — far cleaner and smoother). One of the things that happens to records is that they are PLAYED AND REPLAYED VERY OFTEN, very far from the source: in which repetition, the readymades they all share lose force, while the tics swarm and mass and dissipate and reform and ATTACK! (Attack = this silly jerks' melodramatic presentation of a "mindless" generation suddenly pouring their expressive intent — a complex conflicted collusion between audiences and audience-focus-lightning rods = stars — into everything in the music which isn't already tied down.)
[To reduce it to a simplistic kremlinology of corporations: 60s/70s, corps in turmoil, central control-strategy-clarity lost; 80s/90s, corps in new-tech heavy-ass consolidation; 2000+ corps again in turmoil, central csc lost again...]
Or maybe we'll be really lucky and the new Joni Mitchell will emerge...
― mark s, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Your prog idea I need re-readings to get (or clarifications, heh heh heh) - but would a problem here not be the sheer expense of producing the packed-signal pop artefacts, which kind of limits their use outside the corporate control structure...? Or have I not understood?
Or maybe I should call my-definition 'pop' something like Absolute Pop to acknowledge the existence of a fuzzier and more nebulous category which exists in the grey zone between it and, say, Cat Power ;)
Many tumble in, but few return to the sunlit lands...
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Cyndi Lauper is no Madonna, but back in the day people would have said she was. And soforth.
― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
But still, it's quite weird the way people are so used to the idea of appreciating and getting excited over this stuff, that now even though now they are totally being slapped in the face with it's fakery (POPSTARS!) they still go through the motions of traditional "artist" fandom. I mean, shouldn't the reaction have been a NEW one? Isn't this a mass confusion? Isn't a mass disillusionment logically to follow? Should be interesting...
― Kim, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
However, Tom Ewing proclaiming The Death of Pop all sounds a bit Build Em Up, Knock Em Down to me.
― The Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
On reflection, I think it's becoming clearer that Stevie T was right in what he said, above, and that 'The Death of Pop' is an embarrassingly bad title, which is not really redeemed by talk of 'deliberate hyperbole', 'provocation', 'irony', etc. As ever, though, this is to cast no slur on the talented geezer Ewing himself, even though I think I am realizing I find his whole take on all this a mixture of the incomprehensible and (when comprehensible) unacceptable.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Sunday, 15 September 2002 15:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 15 September 2002 19:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 15 September 2002 19:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 15 September 2002 21:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 15 September 2002 21:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
Partway through [Frank's] book, in the chapter discussing "Superwords", I get quoted, a quote from this odd piece, which I've not dared read since I wrote it. My reluctance was based around my never finishing it - I never wrote the subsequent parts, and after a couple of weeks I'd forgotten what was meant to be in them. I was also afraid I'd read it again and think it was wrong - which I now do, but it's not wrong in any terrible or humiliating way so I don't know why I was so fussed.
The 'death of pop' piece sits as one of my most grievous examples of that Kogan bugbear, not following through ideas. I'm never sure how seriously I take this - I think a lot of ideas are un-follow-through-able, or rather than if you try to follow them through you get ground down and tired, so it's better to just spray them out and see if anyone else can do anything with them. This was always a guiding notion behind ILM, which I actually started half-based on a description I'd read of a Frank Kogan zine (its other parent was the "Question of the Month" box on 80s Marvel editorial pages). But maybe when I say "better" I simply mean "more fun" or "lazier".
This actually ties in a bit with what I was talking about in the Death of Pop piece. The bit I like most in the piece now is the section near the end about stage magic and pop existing in the same precarious showbiz state. In stage magic, pretending that it's all for real (i.e. that you actually possess supernatural powers) is seen as vulgar or a cheat; showing the wires is also frowned upon. A magic performance, in other words, is an idea that refuses - or cannot survive - a follow-through. Somewhere in the tangle of the article I'm suggesting a similar thing about manufactured pop.
Except stage magic is - or used to be, I don't know enough about how it works these days - a stable form where this refusal is built-in and understood by performers and to an extent by audience. Pop is unstable, judging by the continual movement of its performers towards perceived autonomy and credibility (which very rarely translates to achieved cred). The 'death of pop' I was getting worked up about four years ago is always with us, a constant career trajectory. So the question is: why? And also - to paraphrase a question Frank Kogan asks a great deal - what do the performers gain by that? What does the industry gain? What do we listeners gain?Tom | 12.15.05
OK there is a pretty simple answer to "why" to do with people growing out of whatever pop stars they first get into and the idea/received wisdom that the pop needs to 'grow up' with them. But this feels a bit simplistic and I think there's more to it.)Tom | 12.15.05 - 11:06 am | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, stage magic has *some* instability in it -- it wouldn't be culture if it didn't have at least have a smidgen, but it's especially obvious in the more "post-modern" magicians like Penn & Teller, who sin against the Magician's Oath and actually explain some of the hoarier tricks to their audience.Michael Daddino | 12.15.05 - 1:01 pm | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, one thing I'd want to question or test is whether the "pop" impulse precedes the "self improvement"/"grow up" impulse or can be separated from it; that is, one shouldn't simply assume that we start fun and grow into seriousness. (E.g., maybe Max Martin grew from heavy metal to Cheiron.)
(And of course, thanks for the compliment.)Frank Kogan | 12.15.05 - 1:04 pm | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Simon Frith's Performing Rites he says that pop, folk, and art aren't three different areas of culture but rather three discourses that tend to run at once in all areas of culture. And my thought when I first read Death of Pop Pt. 1 is that the oversimplification comes from assuming that when you're in "pop" you're playing by pop rules, as opposed to rock rules or art rules or whatever: whereas I see each performer and each performance setting up its own rules (albeit as a continuation or variation on what that performer or genre has done before). E.g., it's understood that Montgomery Gentry aren't claiming "this really happened" when they talk about the girl who leaves the narrator to go out west and partake of the hip-hop mess and then comes back because she really prefers down-home Montgomery (neither Montgomery nor Gentry wrote those lyrics, even), but it's also understood that Montgomery Gentry stand by the values and attitudes in the song, making the song very much part of their autobiography. And in "Tough All Over" you don't assume that Gary Allan is singing about an actual breakup of his ("Well, I hope you're not hurtin'/On the other side of town") whereas on "Just Got Back From Hell" everyone who knows the backstory knows he is claiming this really is autobiography (backstory mentioned briefly in CD booklet: "Angela Herzberg was a beautiful wife and an awesome Mom. We miss her very much. Maggie, Dallas, Tanna, Ty, Stormy, Cole and Gary. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call 1-800-SUICIDE or go to the National Mental Health Association at www.nmha.org for imformation") - yet that backstory also affects what you feel when you listen to him sing, "Life size dominoes/One falls after another/Things are tough all over" back on that breakup song he didn't write. I don't know if you'd call this magic, but there's an intensity that hangs like a ghost over the whole album.Frank Kogan | 12.15.05 - 1:44 pm | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One problem with the original piece is that you talk about "...Baby One More Time" and "Bills, Bills, Bills" as if they were the same phenomenon, making your contention that no one differentiated the pop images inexplicable. "Bills, Bills, Bills" was self-consciously challenging, jazz-tinged r&b with supposedly sophisticated lyrics on the subject of romance and finance, a theme in popular black music that goes at least back to Bessie Smith. And the song got massive play on the hip-hop/r&b stations. The two followup singles crossed big onto the fledgeling Radio Disney, but there was no need to change style after that to get adult "cred," since Destiny's Child had the cred already. The interesting career trajectory is Pink's, since she followed as the freaky-white-girl takeoff on Destiny's Child, with similar words and music, same airplay, and just as much cred with everybody except herself. Her rebellion was to demand that on record she get to be the messed-up late adolescent that she perceived herself to be, and she jumped to rock to do it, getting even bigger on Radio Disney as a consequence. Now, this can be considered personal and artistic growth, but in image it's a move from "adult sophistication" to "teen agony." Which is why "growing up" is too simple a formulation (which doesn't make it altogether wrong).Frank Kogan | 12.16.05 - 9:31 am | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah that's definitely one of the things that struck me as wrong about the original piece, the strange running together of various things under the banner of 'pop', "Bills Bills Bills" really standing out. I think I was reacting a lot more to the discourse about pop on the blogosphere-as-was and ILM-as-was than to the actual similarities between Destiny's Child and Britney. There was a moment when all that seemed like part of 'pop' to me.Tom | 12.16.05 - 10:01 am | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, they were all part of pop. It's just that pop doesn't have a single set of rules. And a question to ask might be isn't pop also part of the life of r&b and rock? Or maybe even the afterlife of r&b and rock? Whole hunks of Real Punk are about rock's refusal to follow through. What is the afterlife of rock? In relation to the ongoing evolution of a genre, maybe Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen lead to Lindsay Lohan, maybe Kim Gordon and Courtney Love lead to Ashlee Simpson. Of course Ashlee's story is that she's triumphed over her adolescent self-hatred, which leaves her the question of what to do next, now that that story's been told - though she's still telling it: recently revealed to Cosmopolitan that at age eleven she'd been an anorexic, which makes her TV-movie-of-the-week more than romantic-punk-hero. "My parents stepped in and made me eat."
I don't mean that movie-of-the-week designation snidely: I've known alcoholics and addicts who've told me it was a lot harder to admit to others that they were also bulimic. The torment is certainly real.
I can't say that Dylan, Lou, Iggy, Johnny, or Axl ever figured out how to grow their music up once they stopped flaunting how fucked-up they were.Frank Kogan | 12.16.05 - 11:57 am | #
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (The posted excerpts I've seen from Ashlee's Cosmo interview also contain these tidbits: "I think I have good curves, and they're womanly," and "I have amazing boobs. I do, I know it. They're not too big, not too small. They're just perfect.")Frank Kogan | 12.16.05 - 12:01 pm | #
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 15:43 (eighteen years ago) link
Tom, was this your premise? Some of your comments here don't seem to be endorsing this. Anyway, this is what my comments are meant to challenge. In specific instances you can differentiate between pop and something else, just as you can differentiate between salsa and something else, etc. It doesn't follow that there has to be a general rule as to how to differentiate (you might differentiate differently in different circumstances). And what I really really really do not buy is that overall pop and rock play by different rules. Each performer and performance and context and interaction creates its own rules (albeit as a takeoff on previous performances etc.), but I don't see a general "We're in pop so we don't do autonomy, or at least we do it in 'pop' ways," or a "We're in rock, so this is how we do autonomy." Audiences hold performers and artists responsible for what they do, whether the context is pop or rock, and usually it's the front person who takes the heat no matter who or what else contributed to the performance or the artwork. Singers get held responsible for what they sing, DJs for what they play, dancers for how they dance.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 23 January 2006 16:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 18:39 (eighteen years ago) link