"Backstreet Boys sue for $75 million, release from contract"

Some pop is o.k., like Peter Gabriel's stuff is ok, or some of the Beach Boy's stuff, or Sepultura, or DJ Shadow. That stuff's ok.

Oh, come on. You can't say those boy bands are really music, they're more like, I dunno, cartoons, or whatever the Mighty Morphin Power rangers were.

If only!!

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Alan

As opposed to "easily disposable and made by smaller corporations equals real music!"

When I listen to the Neptunes Remix of "The Call", which a) predates "Girlfriend" and thus N'Sync/Timberlake's urbanisation, and b) fucking rocks harder than anything N'Sync or Timberlake have yet done, I wonder what it would have been like if the BBs had been quicker off the bat and/or not so keen to take the adult-contemporary route. One of the minor meta-disappointments in the Neptunes' work with Britney and Justin et. al is how the singers have felt the need to urbanise their own performances. "The Call (Remix)" is great because you have these totally melodramatic pop vocals and a stomping dirty funk groove at the same time. The contrast is delicious, and surprising.

A) I'm not particularly sure where I brought up indie rock, or for that matter, *anything* that would consitute "real music". Pavlovian response, perhaps?

B) I was taking a piss out of the "cult of popism" (watch someone make a thread entitled that). Its pretty easy to do, obviously. Just don't go trying to objectify how its better (as you may have noticed, I didn't go about trying to objectify how its any "worse").

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Alan

I thought the original "The Call" was fairly banging too though.

Sterling I heart ILM too but surely this is gilding the lily just a bit :)

Common ILM Misconceptions: AKA shut up you stupid fuckers

In yer head, of course. Which is the point, I realize, but jeez, one absolutism for another solves zilch!

Yup. You can also disagree on the bounds that you might actually not like the music on the basis of (gasp) the music itself. For purists of any genre, this will piss them off. Just deal with it. You are not gonna convert every person on earth to agreeing with you on everything, nor will I.

However, neither was the point in my original post. I simply warned Helltime that he'd likely be flamed for not being believing in pop music's supposed "superiority". Somehow I got the brunt of that, while I never personally bashed pop at all. I just don't believe its the zenith of all musical evolution, dig?

"The rule of thumb for ILM is that if you don't have anything interesting to say, then don't say it at all."

Haha.....riiiiiiiight. I guess then this portion of the thread should end then.

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Alan

Helltime said pop wz like cartoons!! Which it is!! That's good!! Jeepers, keep up Alan.

I hope this encourages others to go to that thread but of course I haven't kept up with ILM this week so it may have many posts by now.

If they want to sing songs, why don't they write some songs to sing? And what about the people who write the songs that they sing, why don't those people just sing their own songs instead of selling them to a pop group. Maybe it's because the writers aren't very proud of what they do, I don't know. Maybe it's because the songwriters aren't very photogenic, and the biggest selling point for these songs is the fact that they're performed by guys who look like hair models, and maybe that's because the songs just aren't very good to begin with, and maybe that's because whoever's writing it isn't putting a lot of soul or balls into it, because he/she is just in it for the money.

And that's ok. These pop groups probably have a lot of fun doing what they do, and they certainly make a pretty good living at it. Professional Wrestlers probably have a lot of fun doing what they do, and they certainly make a pretty good living at it. Stock car racers probably have a lot of fun doing what they do, and they certainly make a pretty good living at it. Game show hosts probably have a lot of fun doing what they do, and they certainly make a pretty good living at it.

People should also be able to deal with criticism a bit better. Hey, guess what? Lots of people don't like N'Sync. Or Sun Ra. Or Sebadoh. Or Burzum. Or Aesop Rock. People snipe at bands all the time on this (and every other) forum. Not everyone can agree that any one artist is great. Such is life.

As for the Backstreet Boys, I don't care for them. Maybe if they all used vocoders and tried to be Daft Punk, I'd dig a single of their's. But they haven't. And what I've heard I'm apathetic to. Their music does nada for me, just as *insert random musical act* may do absolutely nothing for you. That doesn't mean you dislike the genre *random musical act* comes from.

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Alan

From my p.o.v. it's the listener who needs to 'mean'/'feel' the song, not the writer. Often the best way to get a listener to feel that is for the writer to feel it too and sing it themselves - but not invariably.

Alan - of course there's a middle ground. You just don't seem to believe 'we' are in it. There's a universe of difference between saying "Pop is the only music worth caring about" and arguing with someone who says the Backstreets aren't even music.

They don't talk about the music itself because they argue that how the music is made (the star-maker machinery behind the popular song) invalidates the music from the git-go. This sounds potentially like a wussing-out to me: howcum the closest thing on this thread to a bracing, negative critique of the music itself came from pop-fan Tim?

Some people on ILM are doth protesting too much and shit. Fine, you don't like pop. How novel! How dull.

I still think that sort of thinking (in reference to the elitist "popist" philosophy) is a sort of smug "I get more out of this than you so I'm superior" type attitude, and I dislike it. A lot. But as someone who likes Kylie Minogue's "Love at First Sight" (for a token example), I'm not about to down the whole thing.

I'm also quite familiar with your argument that you used with Helltime because (gasp) I myself have used it in the past (example: http://babble.danimation.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=49732#post49732 ). That example is not the most sterling defense of pop (I'm not a huge fan of the genre, clearly), but I'm more than willing to admit to its validity as art.

There. I think that's done now.

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Alan

Most of the bands I know formed because two guys knew each other and they put out an ad for a drummer, or they knew a guy who played bass, or whatever. The fact that you play an instrument doesn't necessarily equate to sharing a passion for music. When people say "at least they write songs" or "at least they can play their instruments," it always gives me hives. If the song is good, I honestly couldn't care less if the members aren't lifelong friends or people who share passion, or etc.

If everyone knows each other, sometimes that can be WORSE. I mean, look what happened to the Cowsills?

Good example of 2 guys (who knew each other, then got a backup band): Ween.

Ween kicks ass to the limit. And they play for like 6 hours during live shows. And they have plans for a diarrhea cannon to spray a fine mist of shit over the audience during their song "Poop Ship Destroyer".

i kind of lost track of what i was saying but. just because they say bad stuff about tortoise and like the neptunes doesn't make them popists! they're all listening to the fall! the fall for gosh sakes. i guess there might be some real elitist popists like that but it's not the dominant ideology. especially now!

okay.

about the backstreet boys. it's true that the backstreet boys r sux. the music is deadly serious even when it's upbeat. it's like a funeral. it's just too mechanical and studio-sounding. 'nsync defeated them for a reason. hidup mahathir. kerbau baik baik baik. pedas garam, panas garam. pedas johor bahru.

maybe on ilm not liking pop = the new liking pop.

Maybe you shouldn't, but it sure is fun.

I do spend more of my time listening to chart pop than any other single type of music, yeah, but that's if I define "chart pop" as "any act that gets in the charts", which is a whole lot broader than just boy bands obviously.