Why is Pop Good?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

So over here Tom and I were discussng Scott Wood's 2-step article in the Village Voice (Tom's messages at the top, and in the course of things Tom contrasted the Chuck Eddy view of pop and the Simon Reynolds view of pop (in the broadest sense of the word, ie. "populist" music)

The former is that pop is good because it pleases a larger amount of people than anything else. The latter is that pop is good because (and I'm extrapolating from Tom's quote here) it is less tied up in the individuality of the artist, forming "scenes" within which there is a healthy exchange of ideas, resulting in cool new sounds and styles. Pretty different reasonings, and both lead to a different conception of what pop is, or should be.

Now I reckon that a desire to understand pop music is pretty central to Freaky Trigger, so how we view it and define it is quite important. Tom reckons FT is a hybrid of the two views that are listed above, and while I know what I mean I wonder if it's as simple as that.

So I turn it over to you. What is good about pop? What should it aspire to? What differentiates a good pop song from a bad pop song? Your inspired thoughts go here...

PS. Blanket dismissals of the genre will be tolerated but ignored.

― Tim, Saturday, 3 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A good pop song is a tune you'll still be playing in 10 years. In my opinion the lyrics are extremely important. They can be sarcastic, silly (without being shallow), ironic or anything you like but they have to strike!

A bad pop song on the other hand is a shallow crappy verse-chorus- verse thing.

― Simone, Saturday, 3 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pop for me is almost impossible to define. I don't buy the "it's good because a lot of people like it" for a moment. Don't know exactly why, but it has to do something with the underlying definitions of what pop then has to be, which eventually will always be a lost utopian vision of pre-house music. Pop for me should encompass both "Knowing Me, knowing You" and "Dominator", both "Baby One More Time" and "Knights of the Jaguar". Thinking of those examples maybe ABBA and Britney Spears are pop-in-itself while Human Resource and DJ Rolando become-pop-through-populism? Maybe pop in dance music are those tracks that become anthems? I'm starting to suspect that the term pop has become worthless, a relic from the past.

― Omar, Saturday, 3 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think a genre called pop is a bit of a misnomer anyways, because what happens to popular music that falls out of fashion? Do we call it ex-pop? I agree, it's a bit outdated. Pop music these days is so broad that it's almost an "I'll know it when I see it" thing. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, pop is good if in taking its influences and molding them together as an interesting hybrid, it creates something new (ie. dubby bass lines + frenetic breakbeats = jungle) instead of a pastiche of cliches (a cappella harmonies + cribbed r'n'b backing tapes = boy bands). I mean, some people will say that anything that's popular is good pop music, but I'd say that playing to the lower common denominator is never worth celebrating.

― Dave M., Saturday, 3 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I really don't think it's possible to come up with a set of criteria to differentiate between good and bad pop. Obviously, the majority of good and bad pop is formulaic and most of the best pop songs adhere to the formula to a certain extent - but there are countless songs that adhere to the formula perfectly and still end up being bad.

Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera would not be happy to hear anyone say this, but I think the two of them do something that is very similar - yet why are Britney's songs far better?

It's not just in the writing - N'Sync and Backstreet Boys both have worked with the same songwriters but the latter are (at least in my opinion) far superior to the former on just about every level.

A song can be filled with hooks and delivered perfectly but can still fail to be great pop - yes Madonna, I'm talking about your last album here - and a song that initially seems unremarkable can with just one facet of its being jump out and grab you.

That's about all that I can say for definite: great pop music should grab you, hold your attention through the first listen but still offer something for subsequent listenings. But because there are numerous devices pop music uses and everyone has different tastes, there are no criteria for what makes pop good and bad.

― Edward Okulicz, Saturday, 3 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nina Hartley, pornstar and feminist lecture circuit star, sez of sex that, "it's your fantasy, and there's no right and no wrong. Whatever gets your motor running is cool" or something similar, and I think the same should be applied to Pop. Pop is good because it pleases me, and moves me. Tastes cannot be instilled through propaganda about what should be right -- and attempts to do so are harmful to people. Pop is good because it panders, and because it tries to please, and because it is not ashamed to do that. Pop is good because it talks to parts of us that we're embaressed about. And the conceptions (reynolds and eddy) end up being similar, because, as madonna sez, "Music/brings the people/together" and a rave massive is one sort of hive and an indie-club is another and a death-metal convention is another, and the horde of screaming fans outside of MTV's TRL studio are my favorite, and so, I think, what we're dealing with is ideally a democracy of tastes, and assembly line production which works because people aren't all that different, but an ideal which is distorted by the intervention of societal forms which place normative values on taste.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 5 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pop to me is private, communal, collective, personal, individual, modernist, anti-classicist. The last two are the only absolute factors, I think.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 5 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If I were in any way religious, I would get on my knees and thank God everyday for allowing the creation of something so fulfilling that's so easy to get hold of. And because it is an infinite source of pub arguments. I likes a good argument, I does.

― DG, Monday, 12 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

five months pass...

I'm half a year late on this thread (which ended up rather feeble) but I want to say that Chuck Eddy's view of pop is NOT "Pop is good because it pleases a larger amount of people than anything else." First, Chuck's doesn't think that all pop is good. Second, he thinks that good pop music is good because it's GOOD MUSIC. Excuse the tautology there, but come on, isn't it obvious? It may be that he likes one pop song for a reason that's different from why he likes another pop song. You know, just like you? And he's aware that not all popular songs are liked by the same people. And that not all people like the same song for the same reason. Um. I guess I can stop speaking for him now.

― Frank Kogan, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes and no. Eddy argues about, among other things, that beauty can be produced by someone out to scam a quick buck. Thus the DESIRE TO PLEASE is part of what makes it good. Also, that IF MANY PEOPLE LIKE SOMETHING, there is probably a reason. Now, beyond that, it does indeed get complicated.

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Who is Chuck Eddy? I thought I kind of knew, when I started reading this thread, and then the post by the admirable Frank Kogan made me realize that I hadn't a clue.

― the pinefox, Friday, 20 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Chuck Eddy is the music editor for the Village Voice.

― Mr. Mark Lerner, Friday, 20 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But that hardly explains it.

― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 22 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

From Chuck Eddy's 1991 Pazz & Jop ballot (favorite album Yvonne Chaka Chaka's Thank You Mr. DJ, favorite single Bananarama's "Long Train Running," favorite EP Pavement's Perfect Sound Forever): "And I'm not a fan or anything, but it really bugs me when people complain about Mariah Carey's 'lack of constraint.' Constraint is what is wrong with most pop singers lately. (And her sense of syncopation's better than Seal's or EMF's, too.)"

From Chuck Eddy's 1992 Pazz & Jop ballot (favorite album Dede Trake's Dede Trake, favorite single Loco Mia's "Loco Mia," favorite EP Mariah Carey's MTV Unplugged EP): "On the most depressed day of my year, one of the most depressed days of my life, the day the hacks at Harmony Books decided they didn't want to publish my second book (Pour 'Sugar Sugar' On Me: A Misguided Tour Through Rock History, which I'd spent a year on), the first record I played to help me cope was Mariah Carey's MTV Unplugged EP. She balanced my lithium somewhat, but mostly she reflected my rage a la '60s punk rock: 'Someday the one you gave away will be the only one you're wishing for/Boy you're gonna pay 'cause I'm the one that's keeping score.'"

Later on the same ballot: "This year, as always, many of my favorite records were made by women. Last year, six of the ten albums and seven of the ten singles I voted for were by women, but I never realized until Poobah Christgau (who voted for one lady's album and no singles!) worried in his P&J essay that pop females aren't getting enough respect. When Ann Powers passed through Philly last Spring I told her she seemed to have an extremely limited definition of 'women' - I asked how come she cites timid noise-skiffle shrinking violets like Barbara Manning and Juliana Hatfield as evidence that women 'haven't vanished from the pop scene,' but none of the recent women-fighting-phallagocentric-rock roundups praise Mariah Carey or Lorrie Morgan or Corina or Amy Grant (none of whom play guitar much, two of whom wear new wave haircuts anyway, and all of whom move plenty of product). If you're just another teacher's pet kissing Babes in Toyland's butts because they 'state their women's rights stance firmly and clearly,' exactly what 'paradigms' are you smashing? (Seems to me the only clear thing about Babes in Toyland is that they try too hard like any dumb boy band. You want feminist firmness and clarity, try Judy Torres selling her baptized soul to the devil to escape domestic abuse in "My Soul.")...

"I will now hereby demonstrate to Evelyn McDonnell that I am as humble as any rock critic without a penis: 'ALL THESE COMMENTS ARE ONLY MY OPINION. PLEASE DON'T THINK I'M TRYING TO PASS MYSELF OFF AS A MUSIC EXPERT.' Did I pass the audition?"

― Frank Kogan, Monday, 23 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Worth perhaps pointing out that I talked about "the Eddy tradition whereby pop is good because it pleases people" i.e. because they like it - I never mentioned the quantity of people it pleased, because that's irrelevant. Meanwhile, everyone on this board gets their worldviews reduced to a soundbite all the time - it's reductionist and silly but it's generally just a way of flagging the soundbite rather than a comment on the critic or their viewpoints.

― Tom, Friday, 27 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hey - thread idea: everyone has to put another poster's worldview into a soundbite.

― the pinefox, Friday, 27 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pop should give you a glorious indefinable rush, and move you. Whether it moves your ass, heart, guts, feet, brane, or bowels is irrelevant.

― Nick Southall, Friday, 27 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nick, I kind of agree with you, and certainly most of the pop I love the most does give me a glorious rush etc.

I'm stuck with the nagging doubt that pop can do other things too, though, and to pin it down to a glorious rush may be rather limiting.

On the other hand, if you're saying we should define pop as anything which gives us a glorious rush, and that we should Use Other Words Please for the other stuff (the effects-other-than-glorious-rush stuff) then I'm very much in sympathy with you.

― Tim, Friday, 27 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

fourteen years pass...

I heard that ILM hates pop music now. Is it true?

― ejemplo (crüt), Monday, 16 May 2016 17:26 (nine years ago)

Queen Bey heralded its death with Lemonade, the first installment of her Ring Cycle-esque quartet. We merely follow her decrees.

― JWoww Gilberto (man alive), Monday, 16 May 2016 17:32 (nine years ago)

Lemonade is not a pop album because i finally tried to listen to it on Youtube and it wasn't on Youtube.

― scott seward, Monday, 16 May 2016 17:47 (nine years ago)

re lemonade: if you don't mind british radio djs interjecting after every few songs with their thoughts, it starts at about the 1:02:00 mark. no commercials, at least.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0784yjc

― dc, Monday, 16 May 2016 18:19 (nine years ago)

In Britain, "lemonade" refers a carbonated lemon-lime beverage, something like Sprite; but carbonated beverages are known as fizzy drinks. In America, lemonade refers to an uncarbonated sweetened lemon drink, but carbonated sweetened beverages (like Sprite) are generically referred to as "pop." Ergo, lemonade both is and is not pop.

― A nationally known air show announcer/personality (tipsy mothra), Monday, 16 May 2016 18:59 (nine years ago)

carbonated beverages are known as fizzy drinks

Even more confusingly they're known as ginger in Scotland.

― Larry 'Leg' Smith (Tom D.), Monday, 16 May 2016 19:07 (nine years ago)

xp: Schroedinger's soft drink

― i like to trump and i am crazy (DJP), Monday, 16 May 2016 19:08 (nine years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.