Pop, Genre, Change & Boundary-Busting

Tom Ewing posted this on his blog:

"Here’s the news: if you only enjoy pop music that breaks pop’s boundaries, you are not really a pop fan.
“
- Popjustice (so I assume it’s Peter Robinson writing it).

You could substitute any kind of music, not just pop, of course.

I find this a very interesting idea. I don’t know if I agree with it, and when I say that I don’t mean “I know I disagree with it but am expressing that more genteelly”, I mean, I really don’t know if he’s right.

He’s more right about some other kinds of music. The rest of his post - about the demise of minor-league girl group Girls Can’t Catch - puts this in the context of pop as a “community” with a “fabric”. This is arguably true of some other kinds of music - if a hip-hop fan was to say this of hip-hop, or a dance music fan, I’d see completely where they were coming from: it’s the kind of thing Alex Macpherson talks about a lot.

But I wonder if the reason pop has, or seems to have, this kind of community, is because Popjustice and his readers have willed one into being. Good, 7-out-of-10 pop records like the Girls Can’t Catch ones have always failed commercially (while equally good ones succeed) and the people who made them have been hung up to dry, and this seems to me a symptom of the fact that there isn’t a pop “community” in any real sense. Except maybe now there is, because one has coalesced around Popjustice, and blogs inspired by Popjustice which go along with his general approach. So we’re left with the question of whether “pop’s boundaries” are the ones established by that community?

More on this perhaps when I haven’t got a train to catch.

(The other thrust of the post, about the silliness of interweb hate bandwagons, I’m entirely onside with!)

(via tomewing)

So instead of more-indie-than-thou we now have more-pop-than-thou? Ugh! This is exactly what I was talking about a while back when I mentioned someone (can’t recall who now, sorry) chastising people who like Annie and such as requiring “an indie story” in order to swallow pop. Where does this posturing end? Only the most clichéd, formulaic, uninteresting music is pop enough for the ultimate poptimists? I may as well go download “Hey, Soul Sister” and then cut my ears off.

(via rocketsandrayguns)

That would be the unsympathetic interpretation - and to make it you pretty much have to ignore the word “ONLY” in the quote :)

The sympathetic one is “if you think this thing has value, why do you want it to change?”.

And my answer would be “because its value is change”. This is where my kind of ‘poptimism’ differs from Popjustice, I think. I like pop as an abstract quality: a mix of immediacy and a desire to communicate and reach out. I don’t really care about it - or even think of it - as a scene. I get the feeling that Peter Robinson does (though obviously he loves it as a quality too!).

Which isn’t an unsympathetic position. The Lexish argument I referred to with regard to hip-hop goes: critics are interested in records which break genre boundaries. But the records which break genre boundaries are made possible by the ones that don’t - not just in a ‘without evil how can we know good’ sense, but because they’re generally nurtured by the same scene and community. And ignoring very good records which don’t have ambitions other than to serve a particular scene or community very well is doing that scene a disservice.

And what I’m saying is that this only makes sense for pop if pop has a scene/community. So the question is: does it?

^^^^ Let's talk about this

I part agree with the argument "people who only want stuff that busts boundaries are silly", but not, I think, quite in the way I think popjustice means it.

The problem with people who want boundaries to be busted isn't the wanting, but that the "boundary" is usually so badly defined. People who really get into a genre start to recognise that boundaries are everywhere, internal as well as external to the genre, and that a record which strikes some casual observer as generic may be busting a boundary that the casual observer isn't even aware of.

But generally speaking I think all musical enjoyment is about some sort of transgression or confounding of expectation, and never purely about getting what you already knew you wanted.

well the history of popjustice is all about erecting (narrower and narrower) boundaries of what Pop is (complete with dumb capital letter) innit? and more pertinently, what pop is NOT (you know what goes here - scary black music).

the way in which the internet has enabled the formation of communities (especially those that spill over from being virtual communities to real scenes) that wouldn't otherwise have existed is pretty interesting though (not just the popjustice-esque one).

Okay but lex leave aside your reasoned hatred of popjustic for a minute - isn't tom's point kinda correct that you'd probably take a similar stance vis a vis R&B, say?

What do Girls Can't Catch sound like? There's a world of difference between "not breaking boundaries" and sounding three years out of date, and I feel that Popjustice have been trying to prop up 2005-era electropop for way too long.

I mean, I think even Lex would roll his eyes a bit if a hot new rnb singer turned up with an album that sounded like it was full of Neptunes beats from 2004.

^^^ I think this is the problem with popjustice's argument. You can't turn the suspicion of pro-boundary-breaking into a cast-iron defence of any sub-prime genre product - you still have to mount a defence of what the music does well.

But the underlying proposition isn't actually wrong, or at least not entirely.

And I don't want to talk about popjustice really.

But generally speaking I think all musical enjoyment is about some sort of transgression or confounding of expectation, and never purely about getting what you already knew you wanted.

― Tim F, Monday, July 19, 2010 4:13 AM Bookmark

I kinda take issue with this. Enjoyment derives not strictly from subversion of expectation, but in the varying ways expectations are subverted, but also fulfilled in varying proportions.

Yes I agree, that's why I said "never purely" - every fulfillment of expectation also changes the expectation slightly.

I need a word other than 'varying'.

Good, 7-out-of-10 pop records like the Girls Can’t Catch ones

also, the girls can't catch records are not "good, 7/10" records, they're pretty dreadful

What do Girls Can't Catch sound like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmmDHv1Q6SE

Crap, honestly.

The issue is that this style of capital P pop doesn't really serve any real world community*. You go to a mainstream high street nightclub and you're going to hear Kylie and Lady Gaga in there with R&B and hip-hop and The Killers and yer 70s and 80s anthems - that strikes me as the real world audience for pop, and pop as defined by Popjustice is just one small part of that.

Whereas it's perfectly possible to go to a club that plays only R&B, or only hip-hop, or only techno, or only UK funky, or whatever. But the only clubs that self-define as pop and only play pop-as-featuring-girls-over-disco-synths are relatively small affairs run by recovering indie kids from the internet, from what I can see.

*The exception to this is obviously the Disney-led teenpop world but that has little to do with clubs for obvious reasons.

And R&B is a particularly special case in that it's a genre in which most of the biggest hits revolve around subtle twists to a formula rather than throwing the formula out of the window.

if you don't enjoy pop music for the reasons I enjoy pop music, you are not really a pop fan.

the weird thing is that popjustice was always pretty down on US teenpop - when it acknowledged those artists it was usually to slag them off for being american and clean-cut and therefore boring. taylor swift seems to be as verboten on the popjustice forum as lil wayne.

yes, but let's move away from popjustice's specific jones for a second, surely there is pop that belongs in a community (though not a Community-of-Pop) that is great without being boundary-busting... Is belonging to a community the key issue here? It seems to me that it gives music a very narrow set of opportunities for success if the options are either busting boundaries or nurturing communities.

I'm interested, I guess, not in why popjustice is wrong specifically, but whether this argument is right at all, where and how.

And R&B is a particularly special case in that it's a genre in which most of the biggest hits revolve around subtle twists to a formula rather than throwing the formula out of the window.

is R&B really that unique in this regard? It would seem to me to be pretty standard for genres across the board...

What I'm trying to get at as well is that the question the way Tim's framing it doesn't quite work for me because every genre has a different relationship with its own boundaries and the acceptable ways of breaking them.

It doesn't strike me as possible to talk about boundaries in dancehall (which throws an endless stream of sounds and novelties into a relatively rigid rhythmic framework) as country (which has a much more limited sonic palette but is more expansive in terms of tempo and mood).

It doesn't strike me as possible to talk about boundaries in dancehall (which throws an endless stream of sounds and novelties into a relatively rigid rhythmic framework) as country (which has a much more limited sonic palette but is more expansive in terms of tempo and mood).

I wouldn't insist that genres are all rigid and fluid in exactly the same way. But all genres are made up of more and less flexible parts.

I picked those two examples because a) being "generic" doesn't seem to bother fans of either genre much and b) the dilettante-friendly hits are as likely to be completely generic as they are to be a total curveball, possibly more so.

I think that in part that's because the typical notion of "generic" (and you're right to use scare quotes) is too blunt an instrument cleanly to separate between what is interesting and uninteresting in a given song, especially in genres as wide and varied as R&B and country (it's less obviously useless in the context of, say, a narrowly defined dance sub-genre).

I guess at heart the questions I want to ask are:

1) When do we know that a record isn't busting any boundaries whatsoever, and how do we know it?

2) If such a record is (or can still be) good, how/why?

Cor, thanks Tim. (I would come in and contribute to this but I'm doing the next P4K column on it)

I think Popjustice has made a slightly dishonest defence here, I've listened to that Girls Can't Catch song and it's generic with no scare quotes in all the worst possible ways - the song, the arrangement AND the performance.

The performance is the most important in this argument - most genre boundaries are a lot wider than Popjustice is implying in this particular defence. I've never listened to the Sugababes or Lady Gaga and thought they were stretching any genre boundaries (even if people say they are).

There's a lot of room for maneuvre within any genre. A great performer can make even the most generic of material work - my criticism of eg Ciara has always been that she's great when her songs are strong enough but her presence is too translucent to get a firm grip on the more generic songs she gets given, which is probably why she's never made it to the A-List.

i can't fathom why anyone would bother with something like girls can't catch - which based on that clip are a total snooze - when they could be mainlining the hard stuff. talking about pop addicts. not, you know, the general population. examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT5mn9FKG_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfKGgGQCuqI&feature=fvw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuk3WLJQ3Es&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTjZeb0jCHQ

but maybe that's just me.

is spice girls nostalgia that strong in the u.k.?

i guess it would be like someone here buying any new kinda backstreet boys-esque cd they could find. i'm sure those people exist.

(personally, my wistfulness for the 90's is pretty much nil. but i'm old.)

namie gets the best remixes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_WtiWtjFs&feature=related

i love that remix so much! the original what a feeling is cool too though. for people who don't want to bust stuff.

That AI/Namie track is o_0 amazing. You got me googling for more of this.

namie has been around since the 90's, but she's been amazing ever since she went gangsta.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ltHj-HJqY8&feature=related

yikes, sorry, tim! i'll go away now...

Well, it is kinda on topic, because this is the kind of genre-busting that I find really interesting, but I suppose it is essentially just a combination of the quintessential pop of two different cultures, and the cross polination has yielded something amazing, but still very much within the confines of pop. But J-Pop is such a weird and wonderful hybrid to start with that the cross pollination is bound to throw up something interesting.

Are we talking about "pop music" as an entity distinct and separate from "top 40 chart music"? If so, what is that entity? What are its boundaries and what is its genesis? "Pop music" as people know it now strikes me as an entirely different animal from what it was back when the term was first coined; I doubt very seriously that anyone on this thread is really thinking Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart or Berlin when they talk about "pop music".

Never read Popjustice, but the description of it fencing its genre ever-more-tightly-in makes it sound hideous. Pop to me has to be defined by popularity, maybe accessibility, and nothing more - would go further and posit that a genre which defines itself by reference to something internal is doomed to ossify into irrelevance.

a record which strikes some casual observer as generic may be busting a boundary that the casual observer isn't even aware of

This is a great observation I think - my recurring puzzlement at seeing Taylor Swift up there in the end-of-years has got to be down to this, else you're all just plain wrong.

Never read Popjustice, but the description of it fencing its genre ever-more-tightly-in makes it sound hideous.

You got that right.

It just seems silly to me to attempt to ascribe boundaries to a genre that, by its current definition, doesn't have any boundaries, so this whole conversation seems to be an attempt to create discourse about a unicorn.

I doubt very seriously that anyone on this thread is really thinking Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart or Berlin when they talk about "pop music".

lol, honestly this was the first thing that crossed my mind when I started reading this read. This, and then I thought, I wonder why he isn't championing Barbara Streisand?

thread*

It just seems silly to me to attempt to ascribe boundaries to a genre that, by its current definition, doesn't have any boundaries, so this whole conversation seems to be an attempt to create discourse about a unicorn.

Yes but you might want to create discourse about a unicorn if there were a lot of horses you wanted to keep out of your enclosure, and the only way you could stop them coming in was to put a sign up saying 'Unicorns Only' and then suddenly start pretending that your favourite horses were unicorns.

It is abundantly clear that Girls Can't Catch are a donkey pretending to be a unicorn.

lol we are not doing a good job of not making this about Popjustice

xpost -- Not so much My Pretty Pony as My Pretty A...well, anyway.

fwiw, I think the opening quote has as much to do with social stuff as it does with the actual music. it seems like there's this line being drawn around taste (hate to do it, but in the music taste + signaling sense, ie: Karl Schuessler, or Erving Goffman) where there's a concern that the meanings of your taste (your specific social groupings, what you think that music says about you, or about the people you share it with) are being expanded to no longer include that taste. the plea seems to be a very basic one; if you like this music because of what it says about you, if you keep trying to subvert what that says aren't you trying to subvert who you are? That seems to be the fret around Annie + her indie narrative, if pop music can also be indie music then how can you be a "pop" fan with all the correct assumptions and categories that includes. I don't think it's actually about whether music should or shouldn't be inventive.

I think, given the history of music in the 20th and 21st Century, it's a bit silly to pretend that "Pop" as distinct from "popular chart music" does not exist as a genre, kind of in the same ways that "Rock" and "Dance" also exist as genres. Even though someone like Radiohead have almost nothing in common with Gene Vincent, most of us would agree that they're both bands within the genre of "Rock". I think that it is possible to do a similar sort of thing with "Pop" as a huge over-genre. But perhaps not as narrow as the OP (popjustice? not Tim F) implies.

MB, what do the Backstreet Boys have to do with Cher?

They are both Pop. Duh.

Powerpop hasn't broken any boundaries since the mid 60s (providing The Beatles and Beach Boys were powerpop back then) and never will. :)

BUT ANYWAY I AM VERY CONSCIOUSLY MOVING THIS DEBATE ON because what Tim is asking isn't "does pop exist as a genre" it's more "don't we ALL want genre boundaries to be broken all the time in one way or another?" which is a much more interesting question.

I think the discourse around The Love Below has significantly polluted this debate because it becomes all about "these critical dilettantes who don't understand my music are trying to change it into somethine different without listening to the rest of it" when the reality is less emotive. Tim bringing up tightly delineated dance genres is a central point here because a genre like, say, minimal techno is all about DJs carefully placing transcendent records in the context of much more "generic" records - sets that are all anthems don't really work, you need the filler in there to build up to the anthems.

It's the anthems that everyone will remember on the way home and will buy in the shops and still play in years to come and yeah they do transcend the genre but they are absolutely part and parcel of it at the same time. They're just better at what they do.

What I'm getting at is that being distinctive and being 'genre music' aren't mutually exclusive at all and maybe it takes a music like minimal techno with hardly any racial or sexual connotations to illustrate that?

Basically, the pop term in its most narrow sense doesn't only exlude so-called "black" genres such as R&B, funk or disco. It also excludes "white" genres such as rock, metal and punk.

it's more "don't we ALL want genre boundaries to be broken all the time in one way or another?" which is a much more interesting question.

I don't even get this question tho. We want music that is enjoyable to listen to. Sometimes that music breaks a genre trope and sometimes it transgresses a trope that we didn't even realize was one until we heard the song. And sometimes it's just doing what it does really really well. Who goes into listening to a song afraid that it's going to be too trangressive musically? An insane person.

popular pop pop music has always stolen from every genre forever from day one. that's where the boundary-busting comes in. that's what makes it so much fun sometimes. but a good pop song will always be a good pop song whether you are talking gershwin or mariah so there is that too. and sometimes you get both. or one. or the other! it can be all things...it can be nothing.

Accepting that genres exist still leaves an issue around how individual genres are defined, and I think part of the problem here is that genre terms are used subtly differently by people within a scene and those who we could call observers. And this difference in perception is what makes the idea of transcending or busting genres a bit wobbly and useless. Because the people on the inside see everything within the narrative of the scene, and the people on the outside are only defining their own boundaries to be broken - the two discourses don't really speak sense to each other at all.

Sometimes boundary busting is exactly what makes a pop song great, other times, a pop song is great exactly because it doesn't bust any boundaries and stick safely to the formula you know and love.

Also, what music fan decides whether they like music based on how inventive it is? Like, those of us who think about music a lot might be thrilled by something that's really subversive, or really pushes a genre in a new direction, but I don't feel like most music fans interact with music that way. They like what they like, and maybe something really new comes along, and maybe that year the listener is in a new place in their life where they're more receptive for that sort of sound, and so a new twist on the genre can take hold. But like, this "only enjoying pop music that breaks pop's boundaries," versus, I guess, "liking pop music that breaks pop's boundaries and that just reifies the boundaries" dichotomy doesn't sound right.

― Mordy, Monday, July 19, 2010 11:47 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, I think if you look at, say, the pop hits that get into the upper reaches of the Pazz & Jop singles poll and the terms those songs get praised on, if often is on grounds of breaking boundaries, standing out from the pack, not being like all the other top 10 chart hits that critics don't single out. and that's probably the kind of impulse the original Popjustice post was reacting against, even if they framed it in terms that are extremist and borderline nonsensical.

Not to mention that I thought one of the great Popist triumphs was reconfiguring music so that the ephemeral + momentary pleasure was as valued in music -- isn't trying to erect rigid genre boundaries around popular music just taking notions of canonization and reapplying them to the genre instead of actually celebrating what people like in that genre?

part of the problem here is that genre terms are used subtly differently by people within a scene and those who we could call observers.

The most purist members of the scene will often react with hostility against any kind of boundary breaking (and surely, that goes for melodic pop purists as well)

i mean let's not forget that this board and a lot of other places have declared "Hey Ya!" to be basically the best song of the past decade (xpost)

xxpost

That's what I was getting at upthread - the idea of celebrating the novelty is as Poptimistic as ideas come.

BUT ANYWAY I AM VERY CONSCIOUSLY MOVING THIS DEBATE ON because what Tim is asking isn't "does pop exist as a genre" it's more "don't we ALL want genre boundaries to be broken all the time in one way or another?" which is a much more interesting question.

My answer to this is "No."

For example, I don't want R&B or rock singers singing established opera or oratorio works if they can't do so in classical style. It doesn't work for me and that's just one example. For every instance of something I love that could be constituted as genre-busting, there's another instance of genre execution I find equally thrilling. Big Boi's album is like my favorite hip-hop album of the year, not because it is really gonzo out there and charts new ground but because due to release fiascos and Big Boi's own intrinsic style, it's a somewhat reactionary throwback to the headspace where hip-hop was at the beginning of the decade. I liked hip-hop a lot more then than I do now, ergo something in that conservative (for the genre) vein is going to appeal to me.

frinstance, stephen foster, one of the first big american pop stars stole from EVERYONE. africa, ireland, england, didn't matter to him. a good tune was a good tune. and its been like that ever since. everywhere. except in england where they only steal from the spice girls.

For example, I don't want R&B or rock singers singing established opera or oratorio works if they can't do so in classical style.

Yeah, can we call time on Opera singers doing pop tunes as well please? It's horrible.

lol you are making Renee Fleming cry

which is okay, because she made the rest of us cry with her "rock" album

btw, genre purists are insane. it's some weird OCD thing.

I don't like Fans much, and I'm often annoyed by gatekeeper-y types too, but in the end that's cos me and them are getting different things out of the music. The madness as far as I can see is in pondering why my values aren't their values and so on, or why we mentally catalogue music, maybe even hear it differently. The answer to that is sort of simple and sort of unfathomably unarguable at the same time.

btw have you guys heard Sebastian Bach sing stuff from Jekyll and Hyde? like, at parts he's a little thin/flat but at other times it's like... o_O dood for real? wau

""Here’s the news: if you only enjoy pop music that breaks pop’s boundaries, you are not really a pop fan."

Here's the problem: who gives a fuck whether I'm "really" a genre x "fan"? Am I not allowed to listen to records any more? Do I have to get a face tattoo so tru fans can avoid me? The question doesn't alter how I hear music or how other fans hear it, or what it is, or what genres we can ascribe it to. The question in the end is some bollocks about authentically listening and it remains, as ever, a nonsense question.

Would pay to hear Sebastian Bach sing "Saucy Jack" btw

I saw Sebastian Bach perform in Jekyll and Hyde. Worst Broadway I ever saw in my life.

Also, can we talk about that "here's the news" bit? Like he's coming down from the mountain to tell some big secret to the world? "Psst. If u disagree with me u are outside the tent. Pass it on."

(xp) hahaha

I'm listening to a Youtube of him in concert and half the time he sounds terrible and the other half I'm basically like "I AM NOT WORTHY"

Also, what music fan decides whether they like music based on how inventive it is?

Yeah, Tim's second question struck me as very odd. Not like I think he can't come up with answers, but I'm still not sure why he even asked the question. Expressiveness (as vague as that is) would be one key answer. Providing a certain type of feeling one looks for in a certain genre. Simply doing really well what a particular genre does.

And, Mordy, I like your emphasis on how the vicissitudes of an individual's life might make them temporarily more receptive to something new.

I think critics emphasize boundary breaking, innovation and the like at least partly because it's easier to talk about than a lot of other things music does which may be more essential to most of us, but which don't lend themselves to description and analysis.

The whole discussion is irrelevant because Janelle Monae has redefined music.

hahaha

You misspelled 'refudiated'

What does refudiated mean???

oh lol, apparently totally missed this Palin thing

For example, I don't want R&B or rock singers singing established opera or oratorio works if they can't do so in classical style.

But isn't this more about changing completely from one genre to another rather than adding elements from another genre.

I am sure what you mention would sound corny, but adding elements from opera would typically be more something like the operatic vocal style in heavy metal, like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" or (to use an example from the other genre you mention) the "Rapsody" album with the Warren G single adding elements from "Prince Igor" (not sung by him!) and similar collaborations. Genre bending is more about adding strange elements rather than completely moving over to the other genre.

""Here’s the news: if you only enjoy pop music that breaks pop’s boundaries, you are not really a pop fan."

There are certainly styles that do have a purist approach in that matter. For instance, I guess there was a strong purist reaction the first time some bluesman went away from the 12 bar blues and maybe even added another chord besides the three usual ones.

R&B star Kat Deluna (remember her) is a trained opera singer.

"Melodic popular music that couldn't be defined as rock, R&B, funk, prog, hip-hop nor disco". Or, in other words, Charles Mingus.

Yeah, Tim's second question struck me as very odd. Not like I think he can't come up with answers, but I'm still not sure why he even asked the question. Expressiveness (as vague as that is) would be one key answer. Providing a certain type of feeling one looks for in a certain genre. Simply doing really well what a particular genre does.

Tom's post suggest that this needs to happen in the context of a "community". Is this wrong?

Matt, thanks for raising minimal techno here, as I think it is relevant - at least for the purpose of dragging us away from Girls Can't Catch long enough to talk about the underlying issues. I think of all dance music sets as a combination of rulemaking and rulebreaking. And I think I would define "rulebreaking", for the purpose of this conversation, much more broadly than it seems to have been defined here.

I think it's very rare that I see a review, say, which says "this music does nothing which would ever ever surprise you and is absolutely essential."

I see lots of reviews which say something like "although this might appear to be a straightforward genre exercise, if you listen carefully you will notice (a), (b) and (c), all of which make this music interesting, worthy of your time and attention, and subtly distinct."

Even Dan in trying to explain why he likes Big Boi's album as generic ends up talking about what makes it different to the other hip hop he hears. Sometimes a "trad move" is in itself busting a genre's internal boundary. Not in a particularly trailblazing, break-down-the-Berlin-Wall kinda way, but it's doing something that he could only fully articulate that he wanted after he heard the album.

Lex and I once had a conversation where we tried to name a "generic" female R&B singer, and couldn't, excepting maybe Ashanti, and even with Ashanti I like her songs only when the combination of music, vocals, production and song still somehow surprise me. Not in a "woah, this is future R&B!" kinda way, but in a "this ends up sounding like its own thing" kinda way.

And I think the hypothetical defenders of Girls Can't Catch (I haven't listened to them) would end up trying to find some way to claim that Girls Can't Catch articulate or configure something distinct which outsiders can't see.

(I started this thread because I read Tom's post right after listening to Jessica Simpson's "I Think I'm In Love With You", which I love, and wondering about its status as "generic pop")

Just to clarify, I was not calling Big Boi's album generic; I was calling it conservative. It's the same reason why I liked Q-Tip's solo album.

I'm not sure "generic" as a descriptor is applicable to music that anyone actually likes because inherent in the term is the idea that it is formless and interchangeable with something else and I can't fathom anonymity as a trait people are interested in as far as their music consumption is concerned.

The question posed by this thread is really only germane to non-classical music.

i think "generic" absolutely can be likable, and often is. to me, commercial pop music seems to be a somewhat delicate balancing act that toes that undefinable (and often personal) line ("boundary"?) between the familiar and foreign. and while the records i end up liking the most are often the ones that have to coax/win me over from my initial impression that they're so unusual (sometimes to the point of annoyance or even irritation), i do also find an undeniable appeal in the more familiar side. it's the sort of music that's so completely inoffensive and so completely fulfills the unspoken norms of its time and that only innovates enough to give it something of a unique identity -- examples today include dr. luke's more tolerable recent productions ("party in the u.s.a." for instance -- a completely generic record that i nonetheless love).

i think defining any pop music "scene" is as difficult as it is to define a "boundary" for pop music. a pop record that's very strange and jarring to me might be to someone else an annoying throwback or ripoff of some other style that i'm not aware of. and it often is. but the fact that these records strike anyone as unique at all does have to do with the fact that there are so many enjoyable but inconsequential ("generic") records out there that people en masse make their background music as they turn on the radio on the way to work, go to the public pool, etc. etc. public space is the scene for pop music, if you can even call it that.

Actually, looking for the generic example of various genres (act or song) might justify a thread of its own. :)

"But J-Pop is such a weird and wonderful hybrid"

hybrid of what, exactly? it kind of sounds to me the same everywhere the way black metal does not respect cultural borders (though i'm sure enthusiasts could school me on geographical tendencies)

I was gonna post something, but then my thoughts turned messy and I suspect the discussion's run away from me a bit - so I put them here instead so they can be nice and out of the way, though if anyone wants a read, they're more than welcome.

I had a bunch to say on this which I've since forgotten, but I will say this: you know the type of listener Popjustice is sorta conjuring/strawmanning here? I think often this (alleged) mentality uses terms like "busts the boundaries of the genre," or suggests it's about the formal, musical qualities of the genre, when it's really describing something else -- maybe a matter of mood, or personality, or manner, or self-presentation. All of those are things that can be boundaries, and totally bustable, but they're somewhat distinct from being musically progressive, and should maybe be talked about differently? (One good example would be all the early-00s backpacker hip-hop that was really conservative/nostalgic but got praised as boundary-stretching because its mood and manner were different; I think some people here might say something similar about some Robyn fans, though I might disagree.)

The difference between the two things is that talking like the music stretches rigid formal boundaries makes a claim that something's fresh and inventive and progressive (always a safe claim in a music argument), whereas saying it just has a mood or personality you like is a less bold claim -- one that might involve admitting you're not big on the genre's dominant mood/personality and just like the bits that speak your emotional language. And of course that's frowned upon -- it makes you the person Popjustice is treating as a bad thing, a bad interloper -- but as has been said here, maybe it's a reasonable thing to just declare honestly and work forward from? This is my huge suspicion here, that what's being discussed isn't formal boundaries but sort of ... personal and emotional ones. (Like e.g. I know when I've talked to the Lex about his genre preferences he doesn't talk about formal qualities of the music, he talks about self-presentation, things like vigor and confidence!)

I think this is right nabisco.

"Clued up" genre devotess also are more likely to talk about the informal (i.e. uncodified) qualities of music because these are the parts of music which are most likely to be reconfigured within (as opposed to across) the boundaries of genre - like, there's a variety of ways to play chess while abiding by the rules. a/k/a strategies.

I guess from my perspective there's no hard and fast distinction between rigid formal boundaries and informal/personal/emotional boundaries, which is why this issue interests me. It seems to me that a genre-sceptic (as in someone who is sceptical of a particular genre rather than of the concept of genre) is more likely to "hear" formal qualities and boundaries than informal ones - rather than distinguish between two R&B singers' use of melisma to talk about which one is more expressive or affecting, they might simply register the presence or absence of melisma and make a decision regarding how they feel about melisma per se. But this distinction is more a matter of paying attention more or less closely (and a matter of familiarity) than it is a fundamentally different way of approaching the music in question.

When Tom says (in effect) "the difference between popjustice-pop and R&B is that the former doesn't have a real community", in context he's making the limited claim that listeners to pop don't "owe" the community of pop anything in particular because it's not a real community - tribal allegiance, or the more reasonable awareness that individually great records are reliant on the health of the scene as a whole, doesn't really work with pop, which in and of itself is pretty ruthless and impersonal w/r/t its own self-definition.

Does the presence/absence of a community also make a difference in terms of the perception of qualities in music? Maybe the presence of a community provides a real index for understanding and contextualising informal qualities. Does this song work on the dancefloor? Is it a singalong anthem? In general: is there any way that I can measure the success (or, at least, impact) of the music's informal qualities outside of myself?

Without getting all pipecockian, my sense is that the difference a community makes here is that it provides "unwritten rules" for the success of otherwise of the music, and these rules apply to the informal qualities as well as to the formal ones.

Whereas "Pop", which does not have a real community to generate unwritten rules, can only have written rules imposed on it by people try to fix and freeze its form - manifestos and ideologies w/r/t what pop is or isn't (like popjustice's manifestos). So "playing by the rules" in pop has less meaning because that subtle interplay between conformity and risk doesn't have that same sense of secret transgression that it would in the context of a scene-as-community... Because, when used in its broader sense, "this is pop" is always an after-the-fact designation, there are no boundaries to transgress beyond the more amorphous (and some senses meaningless or at least question-begging) boundary of "what can be popular in this style".

Maybe the presence of a community provides a real index for understanding and contextualising informal qualities. Does this song work on the dancefloor? Is it a singalong anthem?

I am pretty sure the pop manager/pop label boss asks him self, upon hearing a pop song he is presented with: "Will this sell bucketloads and give me a lot of $$$$$$$$?"

:)

bizarre to think of there being pop purism. unless youre talking about pop purism as preserving or returning to 'pure pop' as in those parameters and criteria we associate with 'classic' or 'pure' pop songs. of which i cant think of many around at the moment to be honest. but pop has always been about being absorbant and bringing in new sounds/ideas into itself so they can come out in a perfect pop aesthetic free of the difficult stuff that prevented them being pop i thought. so this is a weird concept.

or maybe this is just a death to disco style 'keep pop white!' campaign.

The Pitchfork column I wrote about all this - I went back after the first draft, looked at this thread and put some new bits in (including the Matt DC quote) so thanks to you all for inspiration!

I think people are mistaken if they take the original (PJ) quote as an attempt at defining or limiting the definition of pop in any way. Great Pitchfork column, by the way, hugely enjoyed it.

Agreed, nice stuff. One thing I haven't exactly seen touched on yet (which, Tom, I think you do a great job of highlighting in general!) is that pop as a genre is sort of special insofar as it's tied by definition to pop-ular culture outside of music and that membership in "pop" is to some extent determined retroactively. If something hits #1 and doesn't really stringently adhere to the codes of a recognized genre (like, I dunno, a 1930s folk recording sneaking into the charts based on a movie soundtrack or something), it basically becomes "pop," if not immediately then certainly later as we survey the "pop landscape" of the year in question. I think this underlies the whole "hip hop IS the new pop music" thing, but it also means that "pop" by nature incorporates and responds to all kinds of crap that has very little to do with genre - Burger King ads, disaster charity, the movies, etc. And all that stuff is changing constantly, and again, I think it's only in hindsight that it becomes clear that the pop culture/music of 2010 had this certain character/quality, and it's going to be totally remote from the pop culture/music of 2000 or 1960.

So it's a lot harder to point to a single canon of fundamentalist pop records than of fundamentalist rock records, and it's a much harder thing to define as a genre. I mean, Geir for example probably has a list of the essential "pop" recordings, but they would be unrecognizable as canonical to someone born in 1980 or 1990, with a very different (and perhaps more typically fuzzy) idea of what "pop" means. So the whole idea of breaking the genre's boundaries is a bit hard to pin down because the boundaries actually are very very hazy for everybody involved. (IOW, pop may not in fact be a "genre.")

Apologies if this is really well-worn territory, BTW - - it's early in the day and also I sort of missed the originary poptimist/justice/freakytrigger/ILX debates that presumably hashed all this stuff out at the turn of the millenium...

Wow, sorry, that was REALLY all over the map, even for me. Carry on, folks.