Pop Cliché: Advanced Level

OK, I laughed, Tarden, but this element in your contribution plainly doesn't fit the requirements. I have never heard ANYONE claim it.

I see that the computer thingy has made cliché into clichAc or something. And the system has gone all funny. But still -

Tarden's one is great. But I should maybe add that I exaggerated the aspect of novelty / being different in the kind of cliché I was after. I originally just meant the kind of stuff that people who are Knowledgeable About Music (people like you? Maybe even people like me) come out with all the time. Like, they give you their list of 30 greatest albums and say

"Of course, this list is only a snapshot... if you'd asked me on another day, you'd have got a completely different list, because my taste is dynamic and changes all the time".

"People shouldn't really divide music up into genres. There's good and bad in *all* genres, if you look hard enough".

Note that this kind of cliché is not necessarily *untrue*. It's just kind of predictable, though it wants to sound unpredictable.

(Any "old" act who have stumbled across drum machines/synths relatively late in life. The album I have in mind most is REM's "Up")

2. "A mash-up of Chicago deep-house, neo-Parisian funk and North London 2-step - sounds like the best garage party on your block"

(Basement Jaxx, really. I would just like to document my dislike of "mash-up" in this, or any context.)

3. "Following the worn, dusty trail of John Huston, Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos, they are chroniclers in search of the loneliness and truth at the heart of contemporary America's wide expanses"

(Allan Jones on just about anyone. Sorry, Allan)

I'd nominate a sentence that really annoyed me in a Rolling Stone review of Richard Thompson's 'Mock Tudor': 'He's so deft that his extraordinary originality seems utterly natural...' As if originality were something undecorous and unnatural that had to be covered up with a fig leaf -- or, indeed, a mock tudor beam.

"The hippy generation promised Free Love - but in fact the freedom was strictly For Men Only. Women were once again relegated to the status of childrearers and ornaments by men whose beads and long hair barely concealed the ultimately reactionary character of their so- called 'revolution'."

And I myself am most guilty of using this.

2. He / she must read some strange stuff - I don't know what half of it is. BUT he / she says it so well that I still get the point.

3. The end of the Air (?) one was on the money: a classic A-level cliché is indeed something like

"Don't be fooled into thinking that [clever ironic pastiche band] are simply mocking their predecessors. On the contrary, this is an act of homage, a labour of love that no-one who was not besotted with the originals could have produced."

(inspired wholly by the fact that I am currently listening to "Overnite")

Everything to do with electronic music = a cityscape. The musicians seem to firmly believe that too. If they're trying to be original, maybe the critic will say 'whereas electronic is usually associated with the city, this music evokes the peace of rural existence.' So lazy!
'This is one of their most ambitious projects so far' doesn't really fit your A-level formula but it's basically meaningless and annoying. Same with 'burst on to the music scene.' 'Soundtrack for images in your head,' jeepers creepers.

I don't know if that counts, but I think I've pulled the latter half of that cliche out of my derierre more than a hundred times. Usually in conversation. I use cliches to harangue people.

"Ironically, for all that its' stars have been predominantly white, the history of 20th century American music has been the history of African-American culture."

"Ironically, after the eighties' pre-occupation with big statements, some of the nineties' most unashamedly emotional music has been produced by auteurs who took pains to avoid articulating their feelings into words; the haunting ambience of the Aphex Twin and the graceful ebb and flow of Tortoise are but two of the more prominent examples of this new, instrumental approach to emotion."

"Ironically, from the very start punk preserved the excessive fashions of prog rock and glam by creating a new lexicon of stylistic fetish that held up the tattered, safety-pinned leather jacket as its standard. Ultimately, the very flashy excess that punk reacted to only cleared the stage for a new wave of glamorous artists, who decked themselves in fantastical costumes and produced vacuous, empty music, from Adam Ant to Duran Duran. Despite its initial, early success, the true spirit of punk was in fact forced underground, only to re-emerge radically with the supreme fashionlessness of Nirvana and other grunge bands."

"Ironically, it was McCartney who showed a greater empathy for, and interest in, the avant-garde, while Lennon was essentially an unreconstructed rock'n'roller."

>>> "Packaged revolution - the oldest game in the book, of course. But today's consumers are more savvy than ever before - they know how to play the game as well. And THIS TIME, they're winning."

It did bear repeating.

Advanced Pop Cliche:

"If a band's first album is your favorite, for any reason at all, you're mindlessly investing in the myth that youth and so-called 'integrity' are preferable to non-youth/non-'integrity', and based on my rather limited knowledge of your tastes (i.e. 'You like the first album by ____'), your enjoyment of said album must reflect your musical philosophy across the board, so here's a lecture to keep you busy."

NY Press, Jan 26-Feb 1, 2005, pg 9

"Given the eminently disposable nature of (dance/ house/d'n'b/techno/check all that apply), it's refreshing to hear an artist so dedicated to making an album that exists as its own entity. Big beats mixed with proper songs are on full display here - it's a musical journey you'll want to take again and again. The next level begins here."

"The Rolling Stones just ripped off [fill-in old bluesmen]. You should just listen to the original black blues artists."

Anyone who has actually heard any post '65 Stones knows better, but it's as if there were some idiotic memorandum sent to all second-tier college radio stations.

Well, I wanted to see if I'd got the basic concept down.
I'll try again tomorrow, when I'm sober.

Is that a shot at me or at Rolling Stone? Sorry, am drunk.

Ah, no worries. Thanks.

Will try my hand at this again when I can type longer sentences.

"Sly Stone, James Brown, Jay-Z -- all are incarnations of the legend of Stack-o-lee, the baddest mf on the block."

(dude, shuttup and just listen to the fucking great tunes the guy wrote BEFORE HE DIED.)

Sundar's is interesting.

Q was the original master of this thread.

Hand's contributions tickle.

Untoppable?