Sasha-Frere Jones goes to England, or "Yeah, mate, dance pop."

I also disagree with most of the rest of the article.

frere-jones is one of those guys i always disagree with coz he makes everything so SIMPLE.

a much more logical explanation is that he doesn't like slow stuff.

of course that makes even less of an article.

mainly what frustrates me is the very surfacey level he treats voice, when its the key componant he focuses on.

Like between Mariah and Beyonce and Brandy and Braxton and Blige there are MILES of difference, as there are between all the foax he cites, but instead of exploring that, or even PROVING that meliasma = bad, he just generalizes the fuck out of things.

Also ignoring, for example, jamaican influence in the U.S.

And then there's a necessary distinction between 'melisma = bad' and 'BAD melisma = REALLY REALLY bad.'

And yeah, he's generalizing to make a point, but in this case (not always with him, but pretty often) it's a point worth making. And it stands up when you press down on it.

And yeah, the US is way too US to recognize Jamaican influence enough for it to amount to what its seems like over there.

The melisma thing is just one really small piece of the puzzle. (Okay, I do agree with him, I only like Destiny's Child until they start bleating). In a lot of respects UKG is very similar to speeded up R'n'B (in R'n'B's sugary pop incarnation). If you look at the early speed garage scene a lot of the stuff getting played involved bootlegs using accapellas from Whitney Houston, Sisquo, Mariah etc. So I think basing his arguement purely on melisma is far too simplistic.

However there is something there. The general tone seems to be one of 'well they look quite us and speak the same language, but my, oh my, they've got their own culture'. He's managed to patronise and develop a fetish at the same time.

The Jamacian question:
A group like Misteeq will feel more kinship with the Jamacian music their parents listened to than with Destiny's Child, a group who look, but don't sound like them. (Even in image Misteeq have a tougher, less uniform look, as opposed to DC who are, really, a sexed-up version of the Supremes.)

I have points in there, but I'm not expressing myself ver y clearly today.

I think Sterling's right except: why isn't there a clearer structural division in US r&b between the sort of work that calls for melisma (which is a deeper gospel issue) and the sort that doesn't (i.e. dance-pop: Janet, Brandy, Aaliyah)? The fact that these two actually-quite-different things blend so heavily across one another is where the problem comes in, because you get tracks that are functionally the latter and yet have heavy melisma shot through under the actual hook, or swelling up at the end -- and there is nothing I hate more than a nice clean hook that's ruined by really turgid flippery behind it.

The most enjoyable use of melisma I've heard in the past year is actually Xtina's "Silent Night," which is nothing but melisma to an extent so ridiculous that you can easily forget you're listening to "Silent Night." I wish that sort of thing could stand as a U.S. post-gospel heavy-soul lineage, distinct from well-scrubbed pop tracks (just as, say, heavy/shouty rock can stand somewhat distinct from pop-vocal rock).

(the album's not even that good)

(also, i said to nancy last night "i bet he wrote this piece ages ago and got it paired up when chuck ran the garage rap piece." this is the way these things work, apparently.)

Which Ui song has that line that goes something like "All you want to do is fuck and rollerskate"? It's been bugging me lately.

(Maybe it wasn't you guys to begin with. Apologies if that's the case.)

has this finally changed in the last year or so? where was sasha doing his drinking?

also on the jamaica-thing i do agree the way in which it's had an impact has been totally different in the states, but its been there especially in hip-hop although it hasn't crossed to pop as much. and you also have mc/singers in the states equiv to ms. dynamite -- lauryn hill only one among them -- haha ja rule doesn't use melisma!

Also TS: sugababes' "Stronger" vs. Britney's "stronger" vs. Xtina's "beautiful"

yeah? certainly i see the correlation re adroitness but otherwise - really?

i find it all very tenuous, this publove utopia, and as a lineage idea is sweet but incredibly vague and capricious. pubs are entirely irrelevant these days to most kids. well, i dunno maybe not the libertines et al, and ok the streets but as interesting as he is, he is interpretative more than originative. more pertinent perhaps is the rise of the dj bar, a real mash up involving at least some of the casual ambiance of the pub but with the crucial attraction of girls and dancing!! thus the music is forced to keep the ladies happy whilst foregrounding a certain populist immediacy, there's yr disco adroitness come to think of it. more tenuous? at the disco/bar you have to look good otherwise what's the point? lessons of the neptunes!! perhaps a greater influence yet than timbaland, perhaps not in sonix but in spirit. it's aspirational, it's what you could be. even with the streets and that celebrated roots manuva line the pub remains a stagnation, a routine, acceptance of grim reality. "i'm healthy. i'm working out in the pub" roots knew it wasn't a funny joke you know

I'm not Sasha (and apparently not Chris Lombardi), but I can tell you the song is "Butterfly Who" from the Sidelong album.

i find it all very tenuous, this publove utopia, and as a lineage idea is sweet but incredibly vague and capricious. [...] more pertinent perhaps is the rise of the dj bar, a real mash up involving at least some of the casual ambiance of the pub but with the crucial attraction of girls and dancing!! thus the music is forced to keep the ladies happy whilst foregrounding a certain populist immediacy, there's yr disco adroitness come to think of it. more tenuous? at the disco/bar you have to look good otherwise what's the point?

I once characterized the FT aesthetic as "pub pop", partly because of it's discursive, anti-romantic and non-judgemental approach, but partly because it's the blokeiest pro-pop position evah! Historically, popism has always had a camp or queer element as it paradoxically celebrates DANCING! over cerebral musing, POSING! over sincerity, GLAMOUR! over dressing-down SPECTACLE! over depth etc etc. I think Tom E's genius lies in having claimed pop for a bunch of boozy blokes sitting around a pub jukebox :)

im not sure how glamour is an apology for pop though?

So you get a situation where some journos can say "Daft Punk are fabulous because they're French and pretend to be robots and swipe from the 80s" and other journos can say "Daft Punk are shit because they're French and pretend to be robots and swipe from the 80s", and both those journos are agreeing on what the Main Thing about DP is, they're not saying "Daft Punk are great because "Digital Love" is the most beautiful love song this decade" for instance.

You also get a situation where things like Romo could happen - the need to make great pop diverted into and stymied by this really restricted set of dressing-up codes - it wasn't so much that glamour was an apology but that it had become the safest way of being/doing/liking pop. Romo was fine but there was this sense of "People are making boring rock music by following rules, we will follow the rules of what opposes boring rock music".

And of course nobody really knew or cared about Romo but this is the other point - glamour/style/spectacle applies less and less to much of the pop that's actually in the charts, and I get the feeling Jerry (for instance) doesn't like this at all - but maybe what's to blame are the pretty narrow definitions of 'glamour' that pop-ism in the Morley sense ended up embracing. (eg pro-posing/image pop-ism should be as much into Candy Ravers as it is electroclash but it plainly isn't)

It's less that (though I do miss all those things!) as a kind of New Pop wit that I miss, and think can't really happen again. I don't think there will ever be any more Pet Shop Boys/ZTTs or even Pulp's in the British pop charts.

I miss that stuff too - it's part of why I like The Streets so much, actually. I think British pop doesn't care about words any more (I'm sure ages back I started a thread on "The Strange Death Of Lyrical England"). Back in the new pop era there was a conviction that words were important even if you couldn't do them well - so you got the wonderful nonsense of Duran Duran, say, which I miss almost as much as more acute songwriters.

(Possible exception - Busted! Though this is hardly in the mode you mourn)

the pop idol thing is a perfect vehicle for the kind of "literate subversion" i think jerry is talking abt: tatu is i think the first potential break with light entertainment tastefulness/safeness in the recent "manufactured" phenom (if you exclude the osbourne thing) => the scale and speed of its breakthrough creates a space for largescale producer-level auteurism-experimentalism (remains to be seen who is quick and clever enough to follow it up)

Just seen mark's post. He may be right! (though I think tAtU are problematic [as I said on their thread]... and I think Horn is very over-rated as a producer:) )

S Trife: hip hop ilx
Julio: improv ilx
Ronan: baby ilx
Jess: emo ilx
Gareth: fascist ilx

I love you Mary.