S&D: Sophistipop

Does The Dream Academy count as sophistipop? If so, search "Life in a Northern Town."

The Caetano reference sort of confuses things (and the TT ref as well). If we're talking about English music of the early-mid '80s with pretensions to a (real or imagined) pre-rock sophistication then OK, but if we're simply talking about alleged "sophisticated" music then that's a big big can of worms.

And those particular records by Talk Talk and Veloso, I think, fit any definition perfectly. I say OPEN that can of worms, or Diet of Wurms! Throw the definition open: Phil Spector producing Ike & Tina Turner! Love's Forever Changes (well, not all of it)! "Kiss" and "Christopher Tracy's Parade" and "Sometimes it Snows in April"! "Eleanor" freakin' "Rigby"!

Or just forget it and let's go with some Haircut 100.

Not an assumption of mine. Just that the title "Sophistipop" as it seems to have been defined by this thread implied a very narrow range of musics. I wasn't making any claims to what or wasn't sophisticated. (In this narrow context sophistication has more to do with a range of arrangement tics/signifiers and the pretentions of the musicians than in any particular breadth of achievement.)

But if you want to broaden the definition that's fine; as I noted above, it confuses things, not necessarily for the worse.

I submit that the most sophisticated-sounding pop music ever (as well as being the clear stylistic parent to Scritti Politti/ABC/Pre-fab Sprout) was made by the Zombies and the Who and the Kinks and Love from 1963-1968, and that THAT would be the true honest recommendation to A. Nairn on a roots tip. Who else fits the Johnny Bravo suit of sophistication?

I guess the Kinks threw on the odd harpsichord by the time of 67's Something Else

Honour the timbre!

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the concept of "sophistication" is more about the sound/structure/smoothness of a song, an album. Burt Bachrach? Stan Getz? Joao Gilberto? OR Pete fuckin' Townshend?

--Neudonym, just trying to keep a thread alive in a cold world

Prefab Sprout - 'Jordan: the Comeback'... sophisto-pop taken to new levels with this eclectic, sublime concept album.

Obviously Scritti Politti, Blue Nile and others who have been mentioned...
Louis Philippe definitely... though it's a kind of Bacharach-Brian Wilson combination of influences.

Also, another great band that may be hard to find, but who are really great if you managed to get hold of their records, is Danish band Gangway.

I would say most truly sophisticated pop is English. But Steely Dan were Americans, and they would definitely fit in, as they were both clearly more pop than rock and heavily sophisticated.

oh, and Prefab Sprout, ABC, Aztec Camera, Blue Nile, and Scritti Politti all had some okey doke songs. I'll search for sure "Look Of Love," "Oblivious," "Over The Hillside" and something off "Something To Remember" for each band respectively.

Though for how I hear it, sophistipop was purely british and '80s, I guess how I'll be thinking of it is as a subset of new wave.

Sylvian solo, The Blue Nile and late-period Talk Talk are all partly the same genre, I would say.

(had anyone been listening to "laughing gnome"-era bowie, then he'd fit in too. of course, no-one gave a fuck about him during the sixties. though young americans and station to station are the ur-sophistipop albums, no?

alfred thank you for that article. all of this stuff is so good, and awaiting its moment of reappraisal

having listened to billy mackenzie/associates all day yesterday, i would like to think they should be added to this thread ?

so, who's going to start adding synth brass sections/backing singers/kitchen sink production to their spiky electro sounds in 2010 then ?

[
my eldest sons best friends name is danny wilson.
at his fathers 40th a few weeks ago, marys prayer came on party stereo, so i asked of course if the band was the reason for the name choice.
response : "never heard this before until today, it's just on a random 80s compilation i downloaded off itunes"
]

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:11379

does the la band "teen inc" fit into the sophisti-pop indie reappropriation i am hoping for? there's def. a shit ton of slap bass on their records.

sophistipop was purely british and '80s

Would Breakfast Club's "Right on Track" fall under the sophistipop umbrella? That would make them the token US player, I suppose.

feel like that has a little too much "grit" (as it were) for sophistipop, although i love that song.

this is a tremendous genre and i hope that one day it gets a box set with copious liner notes.

Double's "Captain of Her Heart" definitely needs to be in the sophistipop canon, so they'd be the Swiss entry.

but if breakfast club count for u.s.-sophistipop we have to include ebn-ozn too.

This is the only sophisti-pop dedicated thread I can find. Anyway, the only real mention I can find of Shabason, Krgovich & Harris's Philadelphia is on Craig D's 2020 EOY list and that's a travesty because it's really lovely. Very much the ambient end of sophisti-pop but hangs together beautifully as an album.

https://shabasonkrgovichharris.bandcamp.com/album/philadelphia

While, as noted above, I'm indeed on the record as a big fan of last year's Philadelphia, I'd also recommend that sophistipop fans on this particular thread check out Krgovich's solo album from 2017 (his whole discography is consistently good and recommended as a whole, though, IMO), esp this "Wild Horses"-channeling doozy of a song (Dave Longstreth/Dirty Projectors fans should also find lots to love in his work):

https://nicholaskrgovich.bandcamp.com/track/the-world-tonight

Great recommendation, Chinaski and Craig - loved Philadelphia and snapped it up on Bandcamp. "I Don't See the Moon" is such a striking song. Need to check out Krgovich's solo work

I could never quite put my finger on what the hell Faith No More's 'Evidence' was supposed to be but I think I just realized that it's this.

Patton and some of the others were big Sade fans

(In the scheme of things not a big deal but probably noteworthy that FNM were talking about Sade in 1989)

I always wondered if they'd been listening to Ghetto Heaven (skip to 1:07):

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

Was reminded today of this weird-ass song that (if I'm remembering correctly) signalled the end of the New Kids' imperial phase, and I hear a trace of sophistipop in the delivery of the chorus. Of course, the whole song is a Frankenstein's monster of influences--"Penny Lane," definitely; Roxette's "Joyride" possibly--but I kind of love that this influence managed to seep into the premier boy band of the Poppy Bush Interzone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTo3N73hpPg

Ooooh -- I'm here for this defense!

"Joyride" was released about nine months later, no?

Hmm, probably. I didn't check my dates. Either way, I'm oddly fascinated by this song (and don't otherwise care about NKOTB one way or the other).

Appalling and undeserved victory lap/nostalgia both then and now.

I'll accept that the chorus is a better ABBA pastiche than the verse is a Beatles pastiche.

bets new kids song.

i would take all BETS on it being the BEST new kids song.

It's okay at best, dunno about "appalling," which suggests a Hague-worthy crime. "Appalling" is "I'll Be Loving You Forever" or "Hangin' Tough."

I guess I'm tougher on them when they're trying to be "ambitious".

The lyrics are dreadful, I’ll give you that.

Is that a quotation of "Eleanor Rigby" at 0:39? #onethread

Aiming for the Beatles, falling a great distance short of "Say You, Say Me".

they had an awesome dream

Appalling and undeserved victory lap/nostalgia both then and now.

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, August 24, 2022 10:08 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think about this song all the time for that very reason. It is hilarious to me that they recorded a reflective autobiographical paean to their storied history and wild success...and it's basically just about their previous hit album which was released like a year and a half earlier.

I wish every band's New Jersey included a song like this, tbrr.

I wish the NKOTOB's "Tonight" were included on Bon Jovi's New Jersey tbh

It's okay at best, dunno about "appalling," which suggests a Hague-worthy crime

I dunno, I liked his work with PSB and New Order

Jokes aside, I never knew this song existed. It is weird to hear

wow this song is insane. it's not good but it is fascinating

i don't think sophisti-pop is the right word though, it's all bizarre 60s psych-pop pastiche, totally different vibe

Weird vibes. Felt like a Bad Lip Reading song edited together from clips of different New Kids videos. But no, they actually learned choreography on (asbestos-filled?) sets with rain machines to lip-sync to this song. This is crazy. I feel like I'm going to come down with a fever. Thank you.

Also, Alfred take back what you said about I'll Be Loving You (Forever)

Agree with ufo, it's more "Sowing the Seeds of Love" than "Advice for the Young at Heart". I'd only call the latter sophisti-pop

yeah that's a good comparison

I wish every band's New Jersey included a song like this, tbrr.

― Beautiful Bean Footage Fetishist (Old Lunch)

Well this came to mind, which also falls into the category of, "Song from a boy band's followup to a major album, where someone involved was clearly listening to Sgt. Pepper's":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zwKKXE18MM

I'm also in the defence of "Tonight", more so the censored Adidas shirt.

B-b-BUT Take That's "Shine" is far better

Also I figured out ages ago that Jordan Knight being on the song makes him possibly the first person born after the 60s to do a late 60s Pepper pop whatever pastiche. I can't think of another until Betty Boo's Let Me Take You There in 92.

Here's one from 1991: "A Funny Place (The World Is)" by Mitsou (born 1970):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzLN5hcA3Dk

Written by the much-older Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats fame, the secret bridge between Mitsou and Voivod.

This is new to me but what a good'un. I was expecting something more like Dear Jessie (which I really like too).

This is the only sophisti-pop dedicated thread I can find. Anyway, the only real mention I can find of Shabason, Krgovich & Harris's Philadelphia is on Craig D's 2020 EOY list and that's a travesty because it's really lovely. Very much the ambient end of sophisti-pop but hangs together beautifully as an album.

https://shabasonkrgovichharris.bandcamp.com/album/philadelphia

New one, "At Scaramouche", is great too. Particularly enjoying "In the Middle of the Day"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcT_Q0t2rU

https://shabasonandkrgovich.bandcamp.com/

https://i.imgur.com/eeBuRM1.png

pretty tempted to eat At Scaramouche

I ended up really loving that Mitsou song btw. Some inflections of Dowling Poole/Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld in there imo

the Shabason & Krgovich hits so many of the right buttons for me...prefab sprout / destroyer / ECM / some very Hisaishi-like city pop synth tones. so much goodness both in the production and songwriting.

2022 tracks poll turned me onto TOPS ("Perfected Steps" from their EP that year). Must be some fans out there? Maybe there should be a thread. Anyway huge sophistipop vibes. They're back with an album now and it is amazing. They're talking about it being a darker sound, and bits of it are satisfyingly spooky, but they really just seem to be expanding their sound in all directions and it's excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6fD5zdct94

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuHtHin7Gl4
this might be their most fun song yet?