Is there such a thing as a "bad imitation of pop"?

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Earlier on ILBB (oddly enough):

liz phair isn't really pop, per se. more like a bad imitation of it.
-- hstencil (hstenc!...), October 21st, 2005 3:34 PM. (hstencil) (later) (link)

Is there such a thing, though? I mean, I can imagine a "bad imitation" of metal being an attempt at metal that doesn't rock enough, is too watered down or something. But how is a "bad imitation of pop" different from pop itself? Or what does it mean to say something fails at being pop? (This isn't strictly about Liz Phair, btw, although I'm also curious about how she fits into this.)

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:50 (nineteen years ago)

Well, hstencil knows everything about music becuase he's a DJ (which means he plays other people's records at a party, so therefore he's important) so whatever he says is good enough for me.

― Furry Guy, Friday, 21 October 2005 19:52 (nineteen years ago)

annie

― strongo hulkington's ghost (dubplatestyle), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

mia

― strongo hulkington's ghost (dubplatestyle), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

Explain.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:57 (nineteen years ago)

Does "hooklessness" factor into this?

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:57 (nineteen years ago)

british people like them.

― strongo hulkington's ghost (dubplatestyle), Friday, 21 October 2005 19:57 (nineteen years ago)

I think as far as Phair goes the accusation would be that pop really isn't where her instincts are. This is kinda one of the weird effects of people holding out indie records as being things that someone decided would be adventurous of unusual; if early Liz Phair was unusual, it was less because she calculated that and more because her songwriting seemed to just come out that way. So calling her an "imitation" of pop is maybe a specific kinda thing -- the idea would be that her natural songwriting voice is somewhere else, and she's trying (unconvincingly) to funnel her efforts into some other format.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:01 (nineteen years ago)

But how is a "bad imitation of pop" different from pop itself?

The phrase makes sense to me if the music sounds like pop on the surface without actually being catchy or popular.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

jaymc, get one sense of humor pls.

also, yeah, hiring the matrix then not really justifying the expense because your record doesn't sell as avril's = close enough, imo.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

I can't answer this question (though I suspect the answer is "no"), but I would like to discuss my sneaking suspicion that the only people who care about Liz Phair are rock critics, and they only care because she easily epitomizes certain trends at certain times.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, Jess, I don't really trust British taste in pop, either.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

wk otm. also, n/a otm.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

jaymc, get one sense of humor pls.

Wha?

Sorry to quote you out of context, but I actually thought your off-handed comment was interesting and worthy of examining further! It's not about you, dude.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:04 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, music fans have never cared about trends.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

I mean, I guess there are two ways you can use this description. If I call something "a bad imitation of metal," I could mean either of these:

(a) That some people who just plain aren't naturally metal have decided, for reasons of their own, to try to be metal, and they're not convincing enough to make it seem like anything other than an imitation -- this is the insulting version.

(b) That people have made something that isn't metal but kinda pretends to be metal. Which can kinda be a positive description -- e.g. there are certain T.Raumschmiere tracks that are kinda "fake metal" in an interesting, purposeful way.

This is kinda the difference between dressing up a dog in a miniskirt and trying to pimp it out on the corner (version A) and just dressing up a dog in a miniskirt because it's cute and/or funny (version B).

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

you're right it's not about me, jaymc! it's about you taking things way literally as usual. but that's cool, perhaps this thread will go to more interesting places than just another discussion of lame ol' liz phair.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:07 (nineteen years ago)

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying she's an easy symbol for a lot of trends = writers love her.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:07 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, I think you might be able to say that someone like Ariel Pink or Guided By Voices is a bad imitation of pop in a positive way.
xpost

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:08 (nineteen years ago)

Actually there are T.Raumschmiere tracks on either side of that particular A/B divide. But so anyway I don't see why that'd be different from "pop" as a genre (rather than just "the charts").

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:08 (nineteen years ago)

Walter I once saw Peter Murphy say something like that about indie -- that it's all about people trying to make pop and basically failing, but failing in really interesting ways. (This has maybe slightly ceased to be true ever since he said it, but there are indie pockets where I think it's totally true.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:09 (nineteen years ago)

(xxxp) That makes a good deal of sense, Nabisco, but I think mostly because the term "metal" is already fairly circumscribed and thus there are certain things that need to happen for a song to become read as "metal" and it's easy to see how a song can fail to live up to those requirements.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:10 (nineteen years ago)

Liz Phair is certainly a prime example. Even if you don't know the back-story (abandoning indie cred by recruiting Avril Lavigne's "Matrix" songwriters to help make-her-over), her more recent records sound just too forced. Her voice doesn't have the sickly cotton-candy slick patina required for dingbat whistle-headed replicant pop.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:12 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe the problem is that it's less clear what "pop" means, esp. if we get into the whole pop-in-the-marketplace vs. pop-as-a-specific-sound semantic debate.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:12 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think there can be an "imitation" of pop at all, because "pop" has no integrity: anything can be pop simply by aspiring to be pop. There are no tenets, no sociological guidelines, no set look.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:15 (nineteen years ago)

I think that's what I was getting at.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:16 (nineteen years ago)

Liz Phair is certainly a prime example. Even if you don't know the back-story (abandoning indie cred by recruiting Avril Lavigne's "Matrix" songwriters to help make-her-over), her more recent records sound just too forced. Her voice doesn't have the sickly cotton-candy slick patina required for dingbat whistle-headed replicant pop.

So, this makes it bad pop. But how does it make it an imitation of pop?

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:18 (nineteen years ago)

Like if you posit that GBV is a "bad imitation of pop," that only makes sense if your notion of "pop" is circumscribed enough that it doesn't already include bands like GBV.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:18 (nineteen years ago)

An "imitation" implies some kind of meta context, but "pop" is so broad and already incorporates so much irony and self-awareness that I'm not sure you can do meta-pop.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:19 (nineteen years ago)

Walter I once saw Peter Murphy say something like that about indie -- that it's all about people trying to make pop and basically failing, but failing in really interesting ways.

Actually I think you see the opposite effect as well which is a bad imitation of indie -- bands doing dull, rote imitations of Pavement or whoever but it's supposed to be more interesting because they are into the whole indie label DIY scene. To me that's similar to saying that something is a bad imitation of pop.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:20 (nineteen years ago)

Basically the "imitation" just implies some kind of lack of authenticity, so the real question is "Is there such a thing as inauthentic pop?"

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:22 (nineteen years ago)

(No, there isn't.)

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:23 (nineteen years ago)

Great thread! Let's see, an imitation of pop must be done within a genre outside of pop. Yet whenever "X" genre sounds like pop we just call it pop-X ("X" could be rock for instance). I guess this is because most of the time we think of pop as something you can add to a particular style, it's always miscible.

The closest thing I can think of as an imitation of pop is something like Stephin Merrit/Magnetic Fields. Except it's not bad at all.

― daavid (daavid), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:23 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think there can be an "imitation" of pop at all, because "pop" has no integrity: anything can be pop simply by aspiring to be pop. There are no tenets, no sociological guidelines, no set look.

Well, it's supposed to be popular isn't it? I think it's fair to say that pop aspires to make you dance, rock the party, break your heart, turn you on, etc. and do so in a way that affects millions of people. And then at any given time there are stylistic elements that signal "current pop song." So if an artist borrows those stylistic elements but doesn't have a real feeling for what drives the music that is actually on the charts then it could be said to be an imitation of pop.

Like if you posit that GBV is a "bad imitation of pop," that only makes sense if your notion of "pop" is circumscribed enough that it doesn't already include bands like GBV.

I don't see it as a continuum exactly but as two distinct definitions of pop. There's the broad definition which would be any music that does not fall into the classical tradition. I think the phrase "bad imitation of pop" implies the narrower definition which is based on whatever kind of sound is popular at any given time (or has been in the past). So no, I can't consider GBV pop in that second sense.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:26 (nineteen years ago)

I think this question deliberately confuses two definitions of pop. When someone says Phair is a "bad imitation of pop," they mean that she is badly imitating a specific sound associated with a certain style of pop music. Pop itself can obviously mean something vast and broad and all-encompassing (wank, wank, wank), but I don't think hstencil meant that definition.

Mountains, molehills, yawn, it's almost the weekend!

― marc h. (marc h.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:27 (nineteen years ago)

"Imitation of pop" implies that there's a larger consciousness at work - that the artist in question has actively decided to make "poppy" music. The flipside of this belief is the belief that "pure" pop artists (let's say, Kelly Clarkson) have become who they are without ever thinking about it, because it would simply never occur to them to make any other kind of music but pop.

― pdf (Phil Freeman), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:27 (nineteen years ago)

"Pop" = "popular" is an overliteral definition, it hasn't meant "popular" in a literal sense in like 30 years, if it ever did to start with.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:28 (nineteen years ago)

Eppy's classic post on the classification of pop might be helpful here.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:28 (nineteen years ago)

If authenticity = sincerity, Stephin Merritt had a great line: "Sincerity has no more place in music than it does in cooking."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:28 (nineteen years ago)

"Imitation of pop" implies that there's a larger consciousness at work - that the artist in question has actively decided to make "poppy" music.

I also disagree with this; I think that since pop is not really based on any concept of authenticity, consciousness of desire to create pop music doesn't equal an imitation.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:30 (nineteen years ago)

Vitamin C! of course i really love vitamin c, but nonetheless. Also, some of Mel C's solo album, which I also love.

there should be more bad imitation pop. not fake-fake or real-fake but fake-fake-fake (fake your body).

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:31 (nineteen years ago)

My personal definition of pop: Music whose ultimate goal is catchiness. It's a very broad definition.

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:31 (nineteen years ago)

also everytime i read "eppy's typology of pop" i keep seeing at as "an etiology of pop" which could be even more interesting!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:31 (nineteen years ago)

for my tastes, stuff like Ween or maybe They Might Be Giants or Guided by Voices might fall into this category. I mean they seem to try so hard to be pop and yet to be above it or something. 10cc from back in the '70s kinda makes me feel that way too. Teenage Fanclub. Supergrass, those kind of groups. they seem either too relaxed about it, too tense on the other hand, plus I just don't think they're any good. Liz Phair's new album, as much as I've been able to listen to it, is dishwater. for that matter, that new Big Star album is pretty much a bad imitation of pop, or of themselves, like what exactly is it that these people believe in? which isn't about sincerity, it's about belief in yourself and your audience--a different thing altogether, in my view.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:37 (nineteen years ago)

I think the word "imitation" needs to be defined as well. Some people are automatically reading the real-vs-fake dichotomy into the statement but couldn't imitation also be a simple description of the artist's process? An artist can admit that she consciously imitated another artist (an imitation) without having to bring any discussion of authenticity into the picture.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:45 (nineteen years ago)

But how do you imitate a whole genre?

― n/a (Nick A.), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:47 (nineteen years ago)

You can imitate the genre's processes. If you're saying that the statement "bad imitation of x" never makes any sense then I think that's a defensible POV but the idea that metal is able to be imitated while pop isn't (as in the original question) doesn't make sense to me.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 21 October 2005 20:54 (nineteen years ago)

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 21 October 2005 21:09 (nineteen years ago)

when's your next dj gig? Isn't that what every single one of your ILM threads leads directly into these days?

― furry guy, Friday, 21 October 2005 21:13 (nineteen years ago)

Any pop record is a bad imitation if you happen to dislike it.

Pop works, for me at least, when I effortlessly and despite myself fall for a track... whether that be Tiga, Frogs, Ween, Kylie, Mudhoney, Franz Ferdinand et al.

When it is a bad imitation I couldn't care if it's one of the above or some other musical hero/villain

My most recent conquest after resisting was Artic Monkeys - pure pop!

― sonicred (sonicred), Friday, 21 October 2005 21:38 (nineteen years ago)

PWEI

― Matt Carlson (mattsoncarlhew), Friday, 21 October 2005 22:19 (nineteen years ago)

Momus?

― acb (acb), Monday, 24 October 2005 08:02 (nineteen years ago)

seven months pass...

Does this make "pop" the opposite of a Superword then?

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 5 June 2006 22:06 (nineteen years ago)

No, 'cause there can be all sorts of stuff that aspires to being "pop" but falls short in someone's opinion: e.g., Marshall Crenshaw, Elvis Costello, the Replacements, "Pop" by *NSync... (And don't say that these people didn't fall short. I will keep changing what I mean by "pop" so as to make them fall short.) And there can be stuff that doesn't aspire to being pop but gets called "pop" and falls short in someone's opinion. Death Cab for Cutie, maybe, 'cept maybe they do aspire to pop. It doesn't matter, really. All you need is for one person to call something "pop" and someone else to say "it falls short."

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 20:40 (nineteen years ago)

ILM especially has treated "pop" as a superword.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 20:46 (nineteen years ago)

I guess "opposite" was probably overstating it, but I do see "pop" as different from the Superwords like "punk" and "metal" you talk about in Real Punks Don't Wear Black, in that I don't see people being protective of the word in the same way.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 20:48 (nineteen years ago)

Mike Patton's "Peeping Tom"

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 20:50 (nineteen years ago)

Dunno but Liz Phair certainly doesn't make pop.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 6 June 2006 21:03 (nineteen years ago)

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