Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

"Crazy In Love" was probably just the apex of Beyonce happening to have a huge huge impossible to ignore career, though. Even Pitchfork reviewed The Writing's On The Wall years before that!

I just can't see that particular song "introducing a lot of sounds into indie music," or into anything really, though. It's just an uptempo R&B song with driving percussion and horn blasts! There have been dozens of hit songs like that for decades!

That was also the same year as Justified which was making a lot of indie magazine's top ten lists and also 2003 was the year of Sound of the Underground which got a lot of cred on this side of the pond and Girls Aloud seemed to make their manufacturedness seem subversive, also Slave 4 U and Dirrty in the preceding two years meant that the three disney club members were getting all growed up and adult and it seemed to make pop this dirty tarnished thing for adults as well (also, pop wasn't just stealing producers from the hip hop world but also some of its music video imagery)

I just can't see that particular song "introducing a lot of sounds into indie music," or into anything really, though. It's just an uptempo R&B song with driving percussion and horn blasts! There have been dozens of hit songs like that for decades!

― cee-u-en-tee (some dude), Thursday, September 17, 2009 5:25 PM (51 seconds ago)

I just meant, that that moment of awareness kindof made it more acceptable to cop some moves from the mainstream

Yeah there was definitely some degree sea change right at that moment -- I'd loved the R&B-leaning songs on the last 'N Sync album and was really anticipating Justin's solo stuff, but when he showed up on the '02 VMA's doing "Like I Love You," all my college friends I was watching it with were kind of mocking him and snorting derisively; a year later I was at a party with most of the same people and we were all listening to Justified and loving it.

well i was snorting derisively because of his usher-urkel dance moves

in the context of where R&B had been prior to 2003, and why it had garnered critical plaudits for YEARS before that, "crazy in love" was not notable for its production at all: R&B had had so much written about how hyperfuturistic and cybermodern blah blah blah it all was, and smack in the middle of this comes this unashamedly retro blast which seemed more designed to imprint beyoncé's personality & pipes on the public. this is in contrast to songs like "addictive", "oops (oh my)", "what about us?" etc - obv i think truth hurts, tweet and brandy are all unique and distinctive artists in their own right, it was very easy for non-r&b fans to dismiss them as anono-divas (and certainly in the case of tweet and truth hurts, their career bore this out).

the way Justified was received as this proper album was funny especially as looking back now it seems really patchy.

Yeah I mean -- I felt embarrassed for the guy, it was not a very good debut performance for the song or his solo career. But I was rooting for him, my friends weren't. (xpost)

i loved all of justin's singles from the off, pretty much, but the moment i was completely won over was when this emerged:

http://i.rollingstone.com/assets/rs/11/3861/images/00316226_lg.jpg

i'm coming into this late... are we trying to pinpoint when indie kids started listening to pop music?

At the time, Saturday morning kids pop shows like CD:UK and Popworld suddenly became cool to like and responded by getting edgier.

xpost, yes

waaaaay xp on the folk rock thing: come on, it's not a stretch to say that those two bands at least were folk rock bands; but probably we're just quibbling about what counts as folk rock. A lot of even early Superchunk songs have acoustic parts. And lots of Dinosaur songs do too. And that's in addition to the point made above that their songs translated well to just plain acoustic arrangements. Like even in the early-ish days I think Superchunk regularly finished off with acoustic songs live (I remember them ending one show with Mac on drums and Laura on acoustic for a 10 minute folk rock jam, on the On the Mouth tour ).

I'm pretty sure I linked to this upthread, but
Pitchfork's P2k: The Decade in Music

I mean, i think serious record nerds ALWAYS have had a contrarian pop streak, and the real sea change is that google and file sharing make everyone think they're a record nerd.

Haha, I mean:
Was 2003 really the year that pop "broke"?

I remember that show Austin Stories in the 90s had a bit about one record nerd defending his love of the Spice Girls

I mean, i think serious record nerds ALWAYS have had a contrarian pop streak, and the real sea change is that google and file sharing make everyone think they're a record nerd.

totally agree with this

it probably started when that guy from the meat puppets bought the Jacksons' Triumph and blew Henry Rollins' mind

Like even in the early-ish days I think Superchunk regularly finished off with acoustic songs live (I remember them ending one show with Mac on drums and Laura on acoustic for a 10 minute folk rock jam, on the On the Mouth tour ).

weird. yeah i guess we have really different definitions of what folk rock is. i've never heard of them ending a show during that era w/acoustic guitars

And while THIS PARTICULAR batch of indieLOL pitchfuck strawmen may not of latched on to Backstreet Boys and LFO, as soon as Madonna's Mirwais shit, NSYNC's "Pop" Britney's "Toxic," Timbland/Neptunes, etc started sounding like weird Warp Records stuff by coincidence or design, I remember it not being that much of a stretch to hop on board. And that was way before 2003.

But that just may be a reflection of my previous statement

remember when filesharing took an arduous amount of time? I wonder if that also contributed, now everybody has obscure connoiseur pop taste "hello Echo, Cassie, Electrik Red"

one of my favorite parts of the Ewing essay is when he touches on how in the 90's stuff like Hanson and Quad City DJ's topped the Pazz & Jop singles poll, stuff that was just plain old popular pop music, and felt a lot less like it went through a rock-critic-friendly-pop filter than the singles polls since 2003.

everybody xpost

yeahhhhhh

http://myplay.com/files/video_stills/bsb_everybody.jpg

xp

I kinda think all guitar-based music is either folk rock or metal, so yeah, I think we probably have really different definitions of folk rock.

But even if we skip the folk rock bit: like, go with the Jesus Lizard or Tad or the Butthole Surfers: lots of the noisier indie in the early 90s was still pretty classic rock (I say folk rock) based and hence nice, as in friendly to your parents, not that far out. But when I listen to like Black Dice or Lightning Bolt there's something else going on, I guess more, uh, arty?

oh man i forgot how corey feldman this was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHbPZwP8RLg

go with the Jesus Lizard or Tad or the Butthole Surfers: lots of the noisier indie in the early 90s was still pretty classic rock (I say folk rock) based and hence nice, as in friendly to your parents, not that far out.

i think we have really different defintions of "parents" here--like i don't think any of this stuff would be well received by my parents!

Interesting that this was about the same time as bootlegs which wer also the product of filesharing getting ppl access to destiny's child a cappellas etc. meant that the credibility of pop and indie rubbed off on each other a little bit (I remember Kylie doing Can't get you out of my head as the New Order mashup at some awards show)

xp, my mam likes La Roux!

haha yeah probably re. parents: my parents were cool with anything save hip hop or r&b (for the reasons you'd expect, though they'd never own up to it), hence my comment earlier about race.

Chris Kirkpatrick - Reality TV star
Joey FatOne - Broadway, Dancing With The Stars
Lance Bass - Broadway, Dancing With The Stars
JC Chasez - ?!?!?!

he's a judge on randy jackson's dance crew

JC chasez was on a Basement Jaxx song in 2003

???? another vice???

Haha, weren't Ned and Dan united in 2003 by preferring JC Chasez over Justin Timberlake?

(Not to suggest that they weren't already united over many other things.)

I liked him on Dirty Pop way more

Justin had stupid cauliflower hair

Haha, weren't Ned and Dan united in 2003 by preferring JC Chasez over Justin Timberlake?

I still like JC's songs from that era more than Justin's.

presented without comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwB9ZwItz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6i0V9OWo0s

you missed one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQdYbkbFvA8

the hot 100 missed that one too

sometimes i wonder if might like those songs if i didn't know what dude looked like.

It's my fave, though, and that is pretty much what I care about.

i feel like he should be trying to sell me knock-off gold chains at a boardwalk stall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv-2XYOtgCg

always thought "shake it" was the pick of chasez' album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4F_lQ-W2cg

no way is justin not preferable though

i like to imagine that in 40 years JC partisans will be roaming the scorched earth, still muttering "Justin's overrated" and "it's pronounced sha-zay"