'Token' likes - what's it all about?

Sugababes' stretching towards alternative-land has nothing to do with anything 'real' about their performance, it's just that the marketeers have CHOSEN to push them at a slightly cooler crowd, so the indie scenesters are fooled by PR into thinking what they want us to think. Like Missy Elliott, Macy Gray and even All Saints before them, we're just hoovering chopped-out press release eloquence.

I saw a Sugababes actual live TV thing (that late-night R&B version of Later with - I think - Trevor Nelson) and although the song was nice they couldn't sing any better than the other pop acts. They were just dressed slightly hipper. IT'S ALL MARKETING.

So: artists end up with the tag 'token' because we're tricked into thinking they're cooler than their conteporaries, buy their product and realise - slightly sheepish - that it's the only R&B/jazz/ folk album in our pitiful collections.

I think the effects of marketing are really overestimated here. I like loads of pop records, but I particularly like the Sugababes, I think, because of two qualities. 1) There's this all-pervading melancholy on the lp, esp on 'Run for Cover'. Wistful sadness in big upbeat pop records= always great (see also: PSBs, Steps 'Deeper Shade of Blue' etc). 2 They look so awkward on telly, their dance routines never come off, they look a bit embarrassed about everything (especially Siobhan who has the haughtiness of a young Eleanor Bron). Sulky teenage girl disruption of the seamless flow of SMTV choreography-fascism.

Now, of course, sadness and awkwardness are also key elements in any indie child's lexicon of value (at least they were when I was an indie child), so this could explain some of the appeal. I don't think either have been particularly drilled into the 'babes as part of their covert assault on non-pop fans. I think they really are like that.

Re: tokenism in general. It often strikes me as plain snobbery, genre- insiders wanting to protect their territory from outsiders and keep it 'real' away from the seductions/temptations of crossover success. I think a lot of the time, so-called token records are tangibly better than anything else in their host genre. Eg: Nirvana from grunge, Portishead from 'trip-hop' or whatever, B&S from schmindie. Indeed, I think it's a sign of strength in a record, the extent to which in can grow out of a local community and create a complex public constituency. That's my definition of pop, anyway.

"so the indie scenesters are fooled by PR into thinking what they want us to think"

oh BOLLOCKS, okay, i wish i still had the IM conversation saved but the first time i heard 'overload,' it was because the mp3 thunked into my player's randomly generated playlist, and i started iming tom with 'what is this'es and 'this is amazing's etc. true i wouldn't have downloaded the song in the first place if it hadn't been for freaky trigger, but i had no idea what any of the members looked like until sometime earlier this month. so, please. sometimes, reactions to music do happen in an organic fashion, a la 'but the little girls understand.'

anyway missing from the 'tokenism' discussion is the simple fact of economics, both of time and money. most people have lives outside of the consumption of pop and therefore don't have time to delve deeply into any genre. this isn't meant to be an apology for those who might not 'get it,' just a statement of fact.

Well, maybe, but that's not the kind of crossover I was thinking of. And anyway, a remix isn't always done for marketing reasons, and even if it is it might still be great.

The idea that there's something wrong with 'token records' seems to me in some way insidiously related to people who woulda preferred it had Elvis remained a poor truck driver who cut a couple of country numbers and lived on in obscurity. It's a distrust of the mysteries of the chart marketplace (oops, I'm sounding like a PFI apologist!), what happens when popmajyck is no longer the hipter cred of a coterie of cognoscenti, but FALLS INTO THE WRONG HANDS, and everything - or nothing - is up for grabs.

Looking at my collection, it may well entirely consist of token records.

I haven't liked any other Sugababes songs except that one Overload. The indiepop production, combined with the slightly atonal, and therefore sonically *interesting* sound of young girls actually SINGING live in harmony- rather than being protooled and vocodered into place- made it fit in with my girlrock and dronepop sentiments. I still don't like most chartpop. That makes it not token but abberation.

"Oh - EXTRMNTR - that's just the token 'shit record' in your collection, man"

So what do you think it is about them that appeals to people who don't like much other chart pop? Do you go along with Stevie's "sadness and awkwardness vs. choreographed fascism" explanation?

Yeah, totally (along with others). But 'white college boy' hip hop is a whole can of worms that has the potential to completely overwhelm this thread. If I haven't aleady. I'll shut up for a bit.

Techno heads in the mean time will not consider Blue Lines a rock album, but will consider Lazer Guided Melodies (if they have taste) but will probably own Urban Hymns. A true NME album that ;)

HOWEVER! What gets my goat is a certain kind of tokenism - which I hereby label "aggressive tokenism". It's the kind used by critics to demonstrate that their rejection of a given area of music is *discerning* as opposed to arbitrary. Eg. "MJ Cole is the only garage artist worth mentioning because he injects a bit of soul and musicality into the otherwise facile, superficial genre." It's irrelevant that MJ Cole is actually really good (most of the time) because the judgement doesn't seem to be based on his quality so much as everyone else's lack thereof. A better example than Roni Size for jungle might actually be Squarepusher or Plug - the whole "this is intelligent drum & bass, not that stupid dancefloor crap" argument.

I think this sort of tokenism is different to the one Nick mentions. For example, the R&B example wouldn't be Destiny's Child, but Aaliyah's "Try Again". It's not liking only Bob Marley, it's liking Pole and then using him to *dismiss* Bob Marley. Instead of liking Miles Davis's "Kind Of Blue" exclusively, it's liking "Bitches Brew" exclusively. Of course people are free to choose one random figure or group and use them to dismiss a broad range of others, but when I come across it over and over again it strikes me as terribly one-dimensional and possibly indefensible.

In the case of the Sugababes it's "We like the Sugababes because they write their own songs (mostly), look bored and can't be arsed opening their mouths fully when they sing - hey, isn't that the three-tiered definition of indie?!? Scratch that, we *love* them! Not like all that other garbage pop! And that chick with the red hair is the most bangable chick since Rachel from Slowdive! Cor! Hey, I guess I do like pop after all - as long as you never play me any other pop WHATSOEVER."

Anyway...

Don't you sometimes find records from other genres that have grafted-on (or assimilated) characteristics (intentionally or not) from stuff you like just a poor copy of the 'genuine article'? The old 'why would I listen to X doing Y when I could just listen to Y' theory.

Erm... yes and no. Depends on how well it's integrated. If it is just a blatant copy or slap-on, it will irritate me, and I will just go listen to Y. But what I'm talking about is genuine hybrids, when two unrelated genres have been grafted together to produce something really unique.

Trying to think of an example...

Erm, Orbital. I don't like techno, or indeed, much dance music, but I have several "token" Orbital CDs in my collection, because they managed to fuse the bleepy dance aspects of techno with the psychedelic textures, lush phase-shifting and sound dynamics that I find so appealing about dronerock. I wouldn't rather listen to dronerock than Orbital (when I'm in the mood for Orbital) because Orbital manage to be something totally different to dronerock, while still having enough elements of what I like about dronerock to make them sonically appealing to me.

And that chick with the red hair is the most bangable chick since Rachel from Slowdive!

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Say what!?!

Sorry, proceed...

a) I should mention that I'm absolutely fine with the sort of thing Kate just mentioned (liking Orbital for the reasons just mentioned - we actually had a fiery discussion about this very thing and I quite rightly backed down totally), because she's being quite open about what things she looks for in music, rather than just slamming down a supposedly-objective "that's the way it is" value judgement.

b) neither the red-haired Sugababe nor Rachel from Slowdive are remotely bangable. This is clearly what the "enemy" would say.

I react badly to overexposure, especially when the same crap artists are namechecked in every stupid Top 100 Brainfarts list. (I'm a snob - I just can't accept Alice Cooper saying 1 minute worth of nothing in support of Sonic Youth or the MC5 when there's plenty of "important" stuff to be said.)

However, this severe exposure leads to artists becoming "token" artists, which is both a good thing & a bad thing. Becoming ubiquitous is great for an artist's popularity, but it doesn't really reflect well on the genre that they're representing. (For instance, while the Beatles are always associated as the token rock artist for a non-rock music fan, a group like the Stones would be more representative of what "rock" actually is.) Sometimes, this schism can unfairly bias a listener to other things, too - if it doesn't sound like this token artist, then it can't be good.

Rap tokens: Cypress Hill is the token artist for the more agressive sort of rock fan. I've found Tribe Called Quest in many collections, however, where the rock in said collection is more about chops and technical skill than riffing.

2. I think I agree with those who have said, Tokenism's OK, if it means liking a record from here, a record from there, etc (viz. Stevie T's definition of his own - fascinating and valuable - collection). One person's Tokenism = another person's valiant attempt to expand. (If I went out and bought a couple of jazz records after all that jazz debate, it would be kind of tokenistic - but it would also be vastly broad-minded and dangerous, by my standards.)

3. The claim that 'indie people like Sugababes' seems hard to substantiate. Like Tom E has already said: my experience is that certain people, eg. Tom E and Stevie T, like loads of crappy contemporary records from the charts. The S'babes are only one case of this - so not actually tokenistic at all.

4. The stuff that's being said about the S'babes being melancholy, exciting, bored, unusual, or whatever, strikes me as a load of garbage, just like the usual garbage that I am always reading about this stuff. To me they sound as bad as the other crap that Stevie T - bless him - is into. Possibly slightly worse - no, about as bad.

Of course, now I wouldn't be surprised to find "white college boys" getting down with the nasty nupe jams of DMX or Ja Rule. (It might be a different breed of college boy, though - beware of the backward baseball cap.)

ob: appetite for destruction = token metal record?