That's his co-blogger? I thought his co-blogger was another J.
It's remarkable whom SF/J feels capable of scornfully dismissing. I mean, isn't he supposed to be a great opponent of rockism?
It's fine to like pop music as long as women don't like it, I think is the thrust.
1 is correct. That is my TV writing partner. A wee error.
Play the game! Someone do Kraftwerk.
One hazards that "don't know how to pirate music," though as facile as anything S. "[insert link to discredited thing(s) about the racism of that guy from the M/agnetic F/ields and/or the famous 'indie-rock whitey will not and cannot dance' article in the NYer]" F.-J. has ever run through his old Victrola, is distinguishable from "worry that they can't screw attractive women" and/or "would prefer to hear a persuasive third-party report."
One wonders what selling to a demographic that's currently electorally important has to do with having a long career in music, especially since the moms who are middle-aged in twenty years probably will know how to use whatever future piracy tools are then available.
One also wonders whether Kraftwerk can be done with the plausibility of the one for the Stones.
Shorter Flippanter: This whole post is a banned analogy.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean, Flip, but I'm pretty sure that "be the change you want to see in the world" is my response to it.
3: Their career is likely to be long, because they are unexpectedly appealing to the demographic that will transform American popular music for decades to come: Bronx party DJs who know well how to pirate and are looking to turn it into an art.
I guess that doesn't qualify as "condescending."
Anthony Braxton's career is likely to be long, because he is selling to the demographic whose tastes eventually set the standard for popular culture generally: young white urban intellectual men who want to be young black urban intellectual men.
Unfogged commenting began
Under President 43
(Which was rather late for me)
Between the start of the analogy ban
And Lady Gaga's first CD.
See, 9 might be accurate as an explanation of Kraftwerk's actual longevity, but it's not anything anyone could antecedently have offered as a reason for their likely longevity.
S/F-J sure does reliably irritate the hell out of me. It's a gift.
Yann Tiersen's career is likely to be long, because he is selling to a demographic that will only increase in size as music education in this country continues to wither into nothingness: people who think that musical sophistication consists of arpeggios played on instruments capable of sounding more than one note at a time.
Mind you, they think that de re, not de dicto.
10: I'm pretty sure Toni Braxton's first name is not Anthony.
8: Crudely, "can't" is a pretty blithe state of being, which I'd suggest is one reason for SF-J's disdain;* the mothers described are beyond hip and un-hip. In contrast, to "worry" and to "prefer" are symptomatic of the state of mind of people who, like SF-J, very much care about, inter alia, whether they are hip or un-hip.
* He was pretty I-guess-the-sales-figures-mean-I-have-to-write-about-this dreary about Norah Jones, too, if I recall correctly.
I am curious whether any of the questions around mother-daughter pop enjoyment have come up for any of the Unfoggeparentiat. E.g.
I imagine my daughter dancing in front of her mirror, memorizing the choreography from the latest video, telling her friends that she loves the new Death Cab for Cutie but secretly knowing all the lyrics to She Wolf. She is only three, and she already requests Lady Gaga. What personas, what versions of sex and power will be on offer when she is a teenager?
One time, thisblueangel's daughter, 2, requested the Gaga song "with the doggies" and I was the only person in the house who knew it was "Poker Face". Nonplussing for the parents, who had been enforcing a loose screen ban, and weren't sure how their wee one knew Gaga's oeuvre better than they.
questions around mother-daughter pop enjoyment
It is permissible for both mother and daughter to enjoy pop, but not in the same way, and certainly not at the same time.
18: "I don't give a crap about whales so go and hug a tree...."
I like my music like I like my coffee: Starbucked.
* He was pretty I-guess-the-sales-figures-mean-I-have-to-write-about-this dreary about Norah Jones, too, if I recall correctly.
I have to confess to having some sympathy for SFJ. Not to defend this particular column, which is terrible, but to say that I see the lazy thinking and writing as a symptom of the fact that he just doesn't like the music, and I'm inclined to agree with him on that one.
Yes, it would be better if he had written a better piece, yes it would be better if we, as readers, didn't have to suffer because he was obligated to write about popular music that he doesn't like, but I don't think the essay is representative of his work.
That is all.
I would add that the linked rebuttal is a much smarter pieces of writing, and smarter about pop music, than the SFJ essay, and worth reading.
I still find it difficult, personally, to have a great deal of affection for the music of Lady Gaga/Beyonce/Adele (who does, I think, have the potential to be great), and wish that pop music could offer something better.
I see the lazy thinking and writing as a symptom of the fact that he just doesn't like the music....
That sounds right to me, though I am not a regular consumer of pop music, hence not in the best position to evaluate: SF-J seems to give more energy to music that he does like and feels others ought to like as well. Sometimes, of course, that goes a bit awry, as I referenced above:
* This college-newspaper-quality sentence lames the whole passage, but Slate's never paid much attention to style.
I find it sort of strange to complain that the very most popular music in America isn't personally appealing to you and that you feel the need to try harder to extract enjoyment from it. Really? We're all desperately trying to "fit in" nowadays?
I like some current pop songs, and will dance to Katy Perry bullshit (not that awful "I Kissed a Girl" thing, but "Teenage Dream" and "California Gurls" are booty-shakers). I'm not going to choose to listen to her in my spare time, or study to become the Kind of Person who likes popular things. I think the last time I did that was in kindergarten when I lied and said pink and purple were my favorite colors.
That isn't a response to the OP or linked post, which is very good. I just do feel like since I came to grad school, I started encountering a sort of competition among brilliant, weird people to talk as much as possible about the dumbest possible shit.
I find it sort of strange to complain that the very most popular music in America isn't personally appealing to you
It's fun to feel included in what's popular. It's also perversely enjoyable to feel righteously estranged from what's popular. But the presence of a large body of stuff in the air that people are using to soundtrack their lives but that doesn't have much of an effect on you can be a bit dreary.
a sort of competition among brilliant, weird people to talk as much as possible about the dumbest possible shit
Thank you for the new mouseover.
Too self-congratulatory—we don't go in for that stuff here.
My ex-bf's ex-wife's sister is a really good example of what I'm talking about. She was raised by a poet and a painter in upper-crustiest Boston, went to private schools every day of her life, went to an Ivy-League school, and now makes a big show of smoking pot all day, eating McDonald's, watching tons of TV, exclusively listening to bad pop music, only dating guys who just got out of prison. Her story about all this is that it's, like, super-racist to read or not smoke pot because, you know, black people don't read and all they do is smoke pot?
I.e., some of the most irritating racists I've ever met are the kind of people who think it's "racist" not to enjoy shit, because they think African-American culture is "realer" and exclusively about shit. It's totally ignorant of the black intellectual tradition in this country, or the history of black music, or food or whatever.
28 gets maybe why identification with culture or counterculture as an identity might feel this or that way. But ffs, doesn't anyone actually like the things they listen to *more* than they like being the kind of person who listens to it?
I sometimes wish pop music were better in the case of a song I hate getting blared through my window by someone doing a slow summer cruise in a car. But that's more irritation about them being rude than about not liking Taio Cruz.
One more thought. having been critical of Adele* recently I was trying to think about whether there were any significant recent pop hits that I own and like.
The best that I could come up with were one P!nk album that I'm quite fond of, and that I'm coming around to thinking that Amy Winehouse's Back To Black really is quite good.
Which makes me think, in the context of this post, that I wouldn't think that either of those albums would look good if you tried to extrapolate cultural commentary or trends from them, I just think they work musically. Which makes me think that the sort of cultural criticism that SFJ is indulging in is somewhat suspicious to begin with, and I'm particularly inclined to think that it's easy to get in trouble trying to write about the cultural significance of music that you don't like -- that's a tough place to try to start from.
I'd also have to say that I'm pretty comfortable not putting in any effort to try to enjoy currently popular music.
* I still challenge anybody who wants to describe 21 as "impeccably sung" to listen to 1:24-1:43 of this song and still say that. Not good, in my opinion (but, I concede, the slower parts of the song are well sung).
It's fun to feel included in what's popular. It's also perversely enjoyable to feel righteously estranged from what's popular. But the presence of a large body of stuff in the air that people are using to soundtrack their lives but that doesn't have much of an effect on you can be a bit dreary.
"What's popular" is the lowest common denominator, right? It's not something that even the heavy consumers of what's popular are expected to be passionate about.
Like AWB I find pretentious people who say things like "There's a man who never gets his due as a brilliant director of actors, and that man is Michael Bay" to be among the more irritating pretentious people.
Like AWB I find pretentious people who say things like "There's a man who never gets his due as a brilliant director of actors, and that man is Michael Bay" to be among the more irritating pretentious people.
I really need to step up my game. "Terence Malick is a poet of humanity's loss of itself, [ex-girlfriend's name]! Nothing is less boring than the recovery of radiant meaning in the midst of quotidian suffering!" just isn't cutting it anymore.
36: Holy shit. Really? Who does that?
In the theater where I saw Tree of Life, the crowd was 50% people who REALLY HATE silence, so they filled it with their hilarious MST3Kish comments for all of our benefit. An eel on the screen? "Oh my God, look, sushi! Ha!" The white family going to the black part of town for barbecue while the children take note of the nature of segregation? "Oh my God, you want to go for barbecue later? That looks rilly good!" Etc.
It's my least favorite Malick movie, but it was still pretty pleasurable, or would have been if a meteor had struck the seats behind me. Bave rates it 3rd on the Malick scale. My beef with it was that the idea that it's soooooo hard to be a man, to raise a man, to grow to be a man, to be a man with memories, to be an artistic man, to be a sexual man, etc. and how great it is when women facilitate all these difficulties for you without complaining, is ground that has been pretty well trod.
But it wasn't boring.
Yes, trite! It wanted to rescue the sentimentality of extremely familiar images from the bin of triteness, but it's a hard thing to do.
37: Well, it's not like I talk like that all the time.
38-9: I haven't seen it yet! Don't spoil it for me!*
* Does it start with a man of wistful, poetic mien imprisoned aboard a ship anchored off a strange and unknown shore?
42.1: Ha, no I meant the asking for your money back because this movie was sorta weird?
35: Speaking of Michael Bay, Bad Boys II is on HBO: (i) Peter Stormare plays some sort of Latin American, (ii) Michael Shannon plays a KKK drug-dealer, (iii) Will Smith, Ferrari-driving cop, wears a suit not many shades removed from International Klein Blue, and (iv) Martin Lawrence is the absolute worst. Christ.
There is a lot of decent pop music around at the moment, there always is. But, also as always, there's a lot of crap, too. It's almost trite to point it out but most 'golden ages' of pop music are only golden because we are selecting the best of what was around with the benefit of hindsight. I do think that the last couple of years haven't been particularly great based on my own personal taste, but there's still a lot of decent stuff around.
26: I find it sort of strange to complain that the very most popular music in America isn't personally appealing to you and that you feel the need to try harder to extract enjoyment from it. Really? We're all desperately trying to "fit in" nowadays?
I'm having trouble following this: is it a response to NickS's 24.last?
I agree with 47 in all particulars. I like Adele OK, and I am strongly in favor of music that males money.
Nonetheless, what the hell, we can't call soccer moms lame anymore? If anything is lame, it is soccer moms, and I am strongly committed to preserving the category "lame" which is necessary for rock and roll to survive.
If soccer moms are lame, and I question this assessment, because many of the ones I have seen are apparently able to get around just fine without the aid of cane or crutch, then it is because they were lame before they began taking their children to soccer practice. If we're positing some sort of very average suburban white woman, around 45 years of age, who is middle-class enough that she's got time outside of work to ferry little Kaiden and Raleigh around to their various activities, then guess what, she is probably not the person who was hanging around sleazy after-hours clubs on the Lower East Side in 1986, eagerly anticipating which obscure white-label track the house DJ was going to drop next. It should be noted that S F/J is not this person either, and Jess/ca Hopper is MOST DEFINITELY not this person. Those individuals being exactly the type of craven scenester jackasses who want to establish your rock bona fides immediately so that they can front like they were at whatever show was just a bit cooler than the one you saw. "Dude, you didn't catch that one? It was epic, yo."
44:Speaking of Michael Shannon, I turned off this arty noirish indie last night with MS in the lead as a P.I. with a drinking problem because I just could not stand to watch the alcohol consumption and the portrayal of a functional drunk as the heroic lead. It sickened and offended me.
I almost posted my current playlist to indicate how very little interest I have with keeping up with fashionable pop, or analyzing it.
49: I am strongly in favor of music that males money.
Oh, heck.
Why?
Steak and cars don't buy themselves.
Because my paycheck depends, in some relatively small part, on it doing so? Also, I do think that the long tradition of American pop music, which is at bottom a commercial enterprise, is one of the great things in world history. I didn't say I *only* am in favor of music that makes money, but god forbid we live in a world without commercial music.
Why?
Maybe because music that makes money might lead to musicians making money?
54.1 is clearly not a good enough reason.
god forbid we live in a world without commercial music.
If this just means that there should be vehicles for the dissemination of music, sure. A lot rides on what we mean by "commercial," though. It's no secret that commercially successful music doesn't just magically become successful: it's pressed upon the listening public through every kind of advertising contortion, whereby people are encouraged to listen to this, while that isn't given airplay and/or is slighted in various ways. That is not a public service.
I just noted this from 54: I do think that the long tradition of American pop music, which is at bottom a commercial enterprise
True, that.
But aren't you in favor of books making money, in part because you're paycheck depends on it?
59: No. Not just any books that are pressed upon the public. I don't sell new books, anyway; I'm not involved in the publishing industry. I've said that I have no objection to channels for dissemination of creative products; I do object to the now very active shaping of what's available for the public to consume.
I read the NYer piece until I got sick of it. Aren't the unhip middle aged moms the ones who use iTunes? I have no idea how to pirate music and that is where I would buy any music that I wanted to buy.
Not entirely OT, if the T comprises early-middle-aged exhausted frustration with pop culture: I wonder whether I am at fault for not particularly enjoying Louie C.K. or, by extension, Louie on FX. I know I shouldn't roll my eyes when I see Patton Oswalt's name in a podcast description, but I often do. I found that Black Angus routine funny, I swear. Is it only bad people who think blogs could stand to flood the zone a bit less w/r/t NBC sitcoms?
I'm a monster.
Regardless, I just learned who Adele was like two weeks ago, but I really like the one song I've heard.
63: Wait till you hear it approximately 1,003,456 times more. Then you'll hate it. (The other day two of the stations on my presets on the car's radio had started the song within 5 seconds of each other. It was kind of impressive.)
Moby, you're ahead of me. I didn't evenknow who Adele was until I read this post. (I still don't, actually.)
64: I'm unlikely to be over exposed quickly. 90% of my music listening is when I drive by myself, so we're talking an less than an hour a week. (Granted, I have heard Adele every time I started the car last week and that is kind of creepy when you think of it.)
I still don't know who Adele is either. Maybe I should avoid clicking any links for a while to keep it that way.
You can't avoid her that easily. She's right behind you.
There was a somewhat alarmist sounding report not too long ago that women over thirty pirate books more than previously thought. The link was paywalled so I didn't read it.
The last Twilight book only sold eight hundred copies. The rest were photocopies made at parties where the women hired shirtless, pale men to collate the chapters.
Wait till you hear it approximately 1,003,456 times more. Then you'll hate it.
Hasn't happened to me so far. Then again, I don't get sick of some songs, no matter how many times I listen to them. ("Moneygrabber" by Fitz and the Tantrums is another one that's currently getting a lot of play.)
I'm a musician who recently got fairly close to making a good bit of money for it. It turns out, contract negotiations are really super-duper fun.
Kreayshawn (of "Gucci Gucci" fame) is, apparently, not a "raging lesbian"--but she is an "occasional lesbian." She's mainly against labels, though.
76;: 'S awful funny how the one person with a smash pop hit that draws all the ire is a working-class queer Jewish woman. Convenient, even.
That said, if she was in NYC talking to media vultures t'other day, instead of defending libraries in Oakland with Anticut, she's no companera of mine, yet. Save the libraries/Destroy capitalism!
Were I giving advice to an 18yo me coming up as an aspiring musician right now, I'd suggest getting a viral video on YouTube, à la Pomplamoose. That seems a good way to secure a good negotiating position at the bargaining table, which is sort of sad.
Touring as a nobody is for suckers.
"Anticut" is so much better a name than "U.S. Uncut."
The ratio of the historical importance of contribution of American popular music versus American computer industry to humanity is 1/100,000, so everyone in the computer industry should get to pirate as much music as they want.
81 seems, erm, somewhat contentious.
I know 81 is just a joke, but the computer industry would have developed just fine even if the US had never gotten involved. Colossus was British, Zuse was German, 'Baby' was built in Manchester, EDSAC, and so on. And the first commercial computers were all British: Ferranti Mk 1, Lyons LEO. Then, later, there were lots of personal computers built outside the US.
Not knocking the US computer industry, but the world would still have had a functioning computer industry, either way.
Her story about all this is that it's, like, super-racist to read or not smoke pot because, you know, black people don't read and all they do is smoke pot?
Lock her in a room with Coates for ten minutes and take bets on who walks out.
10. wins the thread. Not least because it would appear to have this journalist of whom I had not previously heard done up like a Christmas goose.
Adele is fucking awesome. I notice the journalist of whom I had not previously heard seems unaware that she also writes these songs which are competing with early Lennon/McCartney for public attention. I don't especially like what she does, but to pretend she isn't superlatively good at every aspect of it is simply to declare your own ignorance.
but the world would still have had a functioning computer industry, either way.
After all, there's only a market for five, maybe six, computers.
re: 84.last
She also does so while singed to a small UK independent label, refusing to play festivals or certain arena shows, and only touring and promoting on her own terms. She'd pretty much be text book 'indie' if it wasn't for the fact that she's phenomenally successful.
FWIW, there's a couple of her songs I like -- 'Rollin' in the Deep' reminds me of various late 60s soul covers of 'British invasion' songs, for example -- and quite a few more where I think, 'meh'. But fair play to her.
FWIW, there's a couple of her songs I like
Oh, sure, but I can't see myself going to Starbucks and buying albums of it.
re: 87
Yeah, me neither. But I'm not exactly in the mainstream of musical taste. I just can't work up much ire at that taste, either. Not that I don't have plenty of musical ire to dish out, but it's directed at other targets.
My default position is always that RIGHT NOW is pop's golden age. Right now - -as of this morning so far -- I am listening to Alois Haba, Os Mutantes, Diddy, Pulp and the Radiophonic Workshop. Of the four invoked in the OP: all are ace.
89: So you're twelve? Perpetually, if I read you right.
90: I try to be me! But sometimes fail.
Proof: Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is awesomely cool.
81: Actually, the inverse of that is true (granted American pop music had a seventy-year head start), so musicians should get to pirate as many computers as they want.
If anything is lame, it is soccer moms
Don't worry Heebie, you are a mom who plays soccer. Halford only meant that moms whose kids play soccer are lame. So be sure the HPs take up hockey.
Sadly, it is too late for Molly and me. We have both dropped Joey off at soccer practice at one point or another, and are thus doomed to be lame. Embarrassing, even.
69 is awesome.
(Both as a generality, and the specific comment.)
I've never heard of Adele either.
(Though, having now researched her with pure power of my brain: good pipes, no auto-tune, nice neo-soul vibe, apparently not bulimic... I don't see what's not to like. Hell of a lot better than Lady Gaga. Go soccer moms.)
I only heard of Adele a couple of weeks ago, and really liked the one song I listened to, though I can't really remember it now. I went looking for it on YouTube but nothing I saw seemed to match. As the only radio I listen to is sports talk and the (totally awesome) Worcester community radio station, I'm unlikely to hear much more of her. That said, she seems to me to be a perfectly respectable example of the sort of British pop/soul singer that gets up the charts every few years or so (probably more frequently in the UK). Without actually going back and listening to the records, I was immediately reminded of the young Alison Moyet. That is not meant as a real comparison, just how I felt at the moment (and it wasn't a bad thing).
The above was written to give me an excuse to note that anyone who wants to really gorge on great female pop should immediately get their hands on a copy of One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds, Lost and Found. It is utterly fantastic. OK, disc four has a dead spot in the middle, but even it has a lot of superlative material. "Girl group" is defined liberally for the purposes of this set, which avoids many of the big names and most obvious songs associated with the genre in the 1960s. So, so good. And the box it comes in is shaped like a hat box.
My own current listening is heavy on Catherine Irwin, including the song she did with the Unholy Trio. Then there's the latter's own version of "Bring the Noise", which I think I've listened to about 100 times over the past couple of weeks. What a brother know indeed.
That is not meant as a real comparison, just how I felt at the moment (and it wasn't a bad thing).
But not a bad comparison, in fact.
anyone who wants to really gorge on great female pop should immediately get their hands on
Now we are talking. 1000 years of music from 120 countries with one decade of perfection in breadth, depth and universal genius (1960s) so why are we listening to anything else? A mere selection of Chess, Stax, Bluenote fills my playlist.
why are we listening to anything else?
Because lots of other things are good also!
I found this utterly charming and I'm not even a soccer mom (and don't drink coffee!). The first and third songs are from her new album.
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/133687905/adele-tiny-desk-concert
100: We should only be listening to Gregorian chant and recordings of muezzins, actually.
Hmm, bob would have turned 12 in about ...
I kind of assume Bob is about my age, so he'd have turned 12 in 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP.
The year I turned twelve, Ace of Base's "The Sign" charted at number one, a prescient marker, no doubt, of my generation's forthcoming achievements in semiotics.
Aged 12, bob watched magneto ascending the grassy knoll...
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/133687905/adele-tiny-desk-concert
That is very charming.
A lot rides on what we mean by "commercial," though. It's no secret that commercially successful music doesn't just magically become successful: it's pressed upon the listening public through every kind of advertising contortion, whereby people are encouraged to listen to this, while that isn't given airplay and/or is slighted in various ways.
Clear Channel may be evil, but I don't think you can hold that against the musicians. I don't particularly like the sound of hyper "radio-friendly" music, but I don't think there's anything wrong musicians wanting to be successful.
More than that I'd say that musicians do learn something as they go through the process of building an audience and there's a certain sort of pop music which can only be made by people who have had the experience of success, some of which is quite interesting.
one decade of perfection in breadth, depth and universal genius (1960s) so why are we listening to anything else?
I've been thinking about the relevance of pop music. I'm on record as saying that I don't follow contemporary music and that if I find something good that's new to me I don't care if it just came out or if it's twenty years old. Despite that, however, I think there is a value to pop music as a cultural history.
It doesn't bother me that I have no idea what's currently popular on the radio but it does bother me that if you asked me to create a mix of 90s music, that I don't know where I'd begin.
It is a little odd to me that I've listened to enough pop music from the 70s and 80s that I start to hear connections and patterns, and have some historical sense about what was going on in pop music at that time, but that I don't have that fluency with music from the 90s, let alone anything after 2000. I do feel like I'm missing something in that I'm not taking advantage of something which can be an easy entry point to having a sense of cultural history.
90: Man, I tried to make (to myself) a case for pop culture having been at its best when I was twelve, and I just couldn't do it. I just reviewed the top singles for my twelve-year: Bay City Rollers? The Bee-Gees? "Silly Love Songs" (Wings), "Play that Funky Music" (Wild Cherry, uh, who?). I remember almost all of those songs, but still.
Hmm, if I had to pick one year, it looks like I think music peaked when I was three.
108: I don't think you can hold that against the musicians
I intended at first to say: Oh, no, of course I don't.
On the other hand.
I understand the hesitation. Some musicians are more than just complicit. But still . . . I don't really think it's their fault.
98.last: JL, I loved Freakwater but am only meh on Cut Yourself a Switch. What better album should I listen to?
This is pretty fraught stuff: we do talk about people being 'sell-outs', and about the music being sacrificed for the sake of dictated parameters (everything from length of song to the necessity of a "hook" to presentation, esp. on the part of female performers).
If you're a truly ambitious pop musician, you may feel your hands are tied to an extraordinary degree; if you're lucky, on some definition of luck, you can find spaces within what's dictated in which you can work. There's a lot of weird, and difficult, stuff about the difference between being principally a musician and being principally a performer (or performance).
But talking like this probably makes it sound like things are a lot worse than they are -- a Chicken Little "the sky is falling!" routine -- and making pronouncements from the outside looking in always looks a bit obnoxious.
Good performers are performers that can adapt to, utilise and build on constraints -- their own limitations, the obstacles presented to them by circumstance (the script, the props, this season's "thing", record label cowardice, the semi-random format requirements of the technology or media outlet) -- and at any given moment there are always pop performers able to take and use the "dictated parameters" to turn expectations inside out. Less common, maybe, are performers who are able to sustain this ability across more than one season of seemingly arbitrarily shifting parameters; though these exist too, now as before. Even Calvinball has a hall of fame...
Man, I tried to make (to myself) a case for pop culture having been at its best when I was twelve, and I just couldn't do it.
OTOH, 1988 is clearly top flight. Before you all even think you have a better year you should know that '88 includes Welcome To the Jungle, Pour Some Sugar on Me, and...wait for it...Never Gonna Give You Up.
|?
Sex Pistols Are Biopolitical! ...long and abstract. A mere taste:
Grossberg concludes that "rock is a deterritorializing machine that defines a politics of everyday life." Adopting the notion of "everyday life" from the situationist Henri Lefebvre (which is, Grossberg notes, "a kind of disciplinization" in Foucault's term and "a politics of territorialization" in Deleuze and Guattari's terms), he observes that the politics of rock is "defined by its identification of the stability of everyday life with boredom" and then "draws or produces 'lines of flight' which transform the boredom of the repetition of everyday life into the energizing possibilities of fun." So, when he declares that "all rock can do is change the rhythms of everyday life," he means:In this context it is important to begin by admitting the obvious and painful truth that rock rarely challenges the political and economic institutions of society (and when it does, it is usually either marginal, utopian, or hypocritical). It does not even challenge or attempt to negate the political and economic conditions of everyday life. It remains largely within the privileged space of everyday life, although it often imagines its romanticized other -- its image of alienated rebellion, its black musical sources -- as living outside everyday life.
|>
108: I don't think there's anything wrong musicians wanting to be successful.
Maybe not in some pure thought kinda way, but in the current mode of production, I think there's a lot wrong with musicians wanting to be "successful". More so than with many professions, there's a huge gap between the people at the top of the field and everybody else. The economic conditions that produce those disparities are intrinsic to why so much popular music is so lousy. Now, you may say that there is a whole range of musicians who have some greater or lesser degree of success that is well short of superstardom. But with the exception of some people with good union gigs, you're talking about a lot of people who live very precarious lives. I can't count the number of fliers I've seen over the years for benefit shows for some popular, steady-working local musician who's had a brush with cancer or a car accident or something and is in danger of losing everything.
That doesn't even get into all my objections to spectacular society. Hmph. Successful! Hmph.
Getting a bit of the "when you're 12" stuff from Black Swan Green which follows a kid who is 13 in 1982 and has ample references to the popular culture of the time (not in a sappy nostalgic way, however). Strikes me as not a bad time to be that age in England pop culture-wise if you get even a bit below the veneer of the "most popular".
116: 1988 sure did love George Michael. What ever happened to him?
1968 doesn't look bad. The mood seems to have changed by 1970.
The general year-by-year list I'm going from is here.
"the obvious and painful truth" -- which is true of all art ever, and it's not what art's there for. College twits wallowing in polysyllabic buyer's remorse for naively assuming they could consume themselves into political credit when younger.
120.2: But some of what I believed happened during that time was that there became more FM outlets and other channels which led to the Top 100 stuff becoming more "pop-y". Not saying there were not big changes during that time, but I do not think the general direction of culture is represented well in the trajectory of top 100 music over that time period.
120.1: Drugs and public restrooms, I think.
The UK top ten doesn't exactly track the US top ten, but a quick glance at the last two years of American #1s didn't make me wince: that's a pretty good strike-rate.
I do find Katy Perry a bit of a trial: obviously I am 12 with curious gaps.
118: I don't think the stratification argument works as a criticism of particular artists who happen on financial success. I agree that a system which rewards a few stars lavishly and leaves everyone else unable to make a living is unfair. (I teach college. I work in a system like that, too.) But in this case, the problem with the system is not created or perpetuated by the musicians who benefit from it. It was created by the major record labels who saw it as a good business model in the days before the internet.
It is also worth noting that the star-system is pretty much going away. I read an interview with the guy from Touch and Go records who mentioned that post-internet, the number of million selling albums is way down, while the number of records that sell over 10,000 is way up.
122: Maybe so. That's what I'm curious about. I speculate that one might be able to see emerging trends from these lists, not necessarily in the culture at large, at least at first, but in the nature of dissemination and advertising (which, you know, the culture then absorbs and reflects).
When did female solo artists become more ascendant? Have to do some spot checking of various years. When was Madonna?
When did female solo artists become more ascendant?
Definitely by 1990.
Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" enjoyed a notable 4-week run in that year, which is pretty amazing, but an aberration.
125: it seems like it was created by teh limited attention span of the public, who can't care about 100+ artists, so media focuses on the ones people know.
The one hopeful thing was lower music profits->less marketing-> no more music stars once u2 dies.
Anyway, part of the music industry is giving huge amounts of money to some stars so they can consume huge amounts of coke, buy planes, and fuck groupies. music made by people bar tending or temping is better than rock star music, but they don't provide the celebrity entertainment.
"Not knocking the US computer industry, but the world would still have had a functioning computer industry, either way."
and ARM is british too.
My friend Tom is doing a song-by-song blog study of UK #1s here">http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/">here: which also looks a bit at changes in dissemination and advertising. He's only got to 1992 though.
bah. here: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular
I'm sort of waiting for the book publishing industry to get ruined by authors doing their editing by offering beta copies of their books to fans who will do some proofing.
Returning to the OP however briefly: I do have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the prevalence and ascendance of female solo artists who present very sexually. I can't speak about Adele, about whom I'd never heard until this thread. But Beyonce annoys me in this regard, and she's obviously not the only one who apparently feels the need to look like a sexbot. That people are encouraged to think she's just fucking awesome! and then defend her (and, presumably, her presentation) is dispiriting.
There is a lot of various-waves-of-feminism stuff going on here, obviously, and I wouldn't want to be a sourpuss second waver. But seriously. First, stop calling it "girl" power. Second, stop selling sex quite so crassly.
re: 135
Adele doesn't present sexually at all. Her thing is much like Alison Moyet's thing alluded to above. Stand still in a shapeless black outfit, sing.
http://zeldalily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Adele.jpg
http://www.okeartist.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Adele-Singer-Picture.jpg
On a related note here is an interesting blog post in which two friends who were in High School in 1995, go back and listen to Jagged Little Pill in its entirety and comment on each of the songs.
I have no conclusions to draw, but it seems relevant.
Second, stop selling sex quite so crassly
They should be subtle, like the indie women of the 90s.
1982 doesn't look so bad. I'm trying to remember when Geneva got its first top 40ish station. I think it was 1983, when France allowed private radio stations and one set up shop in France voisine, much to the annoyance of the Swiss authorities. I can't remember when the Swiss finally allowed private stations. There was one rockish Swiss public station which at the time I found annoying for its relative lack of top 40 type music.
Further to 137, I adore the first sentence in the first comment:
I'm having trouble thinking of this as anyone's high school album. Sorry. It's so obviously a college girl's album.
Somehow that just really conveys they way in which people have have strong personal associations with smash-hit pop music.
The pop music industry has been one rare area where using sex to sell has been almost as prevalent for marketing men to straight women (or mostly girls) as the reverse.
I find the whole 'music was best when you were 12' thing a bit hard to believe. I was 12 in 1984/85. While there was music made that year that I still listen to, I'd guess it's vastly outnumbered in my listening by music made just in the past year. Or music made in more or less any random year chosen between 1938 and 1958.
139: I'm not a big fan of 1982. I really hated "Eye of the Tiger."
First, stop calling it "girl" power. Second, stop selling sex quite so crassly.
Having paid to see Spice World in a theater,* whenever I have since heard "girl power," I have thought of Bob Hoskins.
* At the behest of the Ex. Not by myself! She loved the Spice Girls. Don't judge me.
Don't judge me.
Okay. So that was a good relationship, was it?
113: Cut Yourself a Switch is what I've been listening to, so I'm not really sure what to recommend. I don't think she has any other solo records, and Freakwater hasn't been too active themselves lately. I really like most of Cut, with the exception of the ill-advised closing cover of "You Belong to Me".
Of course, what everyone should be listening to is One Kiss Can Lead To Another, like I said. It is really unbelievable. "Egyptian Shumba" may be the greatest song ever recorded.
re: 143
Peak period Benny Goodman, Hot Club of France, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Christian [with Goodman], Count Basie, etc etc.
Swing had gotten really good, and the instrumental soloists were really pushing at what was possible in improvisation. I listen to a fair bit of mid-to-late-30s swing and jazz. Definitely more than I listen to 80s music, I'd guess.
Was "Eye of the Tiger" intended as camp, the way that all those other songs that are used as sports anthems (stuff by Queen and Gary Glitter) were camp?
Beyonce is headlining the last day at Glastonbury right now -- maybe I should liveblog it.
I'm actually a bit in shock how near-flawlessly great I thought that was. I think Bouncy enjoyed it too. Not sure that Tricky seized the moment though.
Adele == Joss Stone?
154: I remember being quite "meh, was TLC last nanosecond or something?" until I heard Destiny's Child do the Leeds Fest live. Whoops.
149 - I guess I miss the dynamics of the Bean/Irwin duets. (Getting them to do "Little Black Train", which they clearly hadn't rehearsed in years, at a show circa 200-ish was a real treat.) There are a couple gems on Cut Yourself a Switch -- "Hex", notably, and "My Old Unlucky Home" -- but I almost never want to listen to the whole thing straight through.
re: 152
It was excellent, but there were really direct lifts in the staging from late 80s/early 90s Prince [Sign o' the Times/Alphabet Street tour vids]. Right down to the horn and keys vamps used between tunes and while she spoke.
151: I'd lay odds that Queen and Gary Glitter weren't intended as "camp," either. Wherein lies their beauty. There's a palpable cowardice in always having to hide behind "irony" or "camp" or "kitsch" lest one be caught expressing an honest-to-God emotion.
135.1: The overlap between female pop artists and glorified burlesque dancers at this point is very heavy. Katy Perry is essentially a burlesque performer with some autotuned vocals thrown in (which is a shame in her case, as I know for a fact she has real musical talent -- she's just sensed which way the wind blows in terms of actually making money).
Re: 160
Actually I think both of those had consciously camp elements more or less from day 1. Doesn't mean they weren't sincere about what they did, or being 'ironic'. But having fun with and consciously sending up some of the more pompous rock tropes? Yeah.
162: Elements, shades, overtones I'll certainly buy. Those are all fine and dandy, and quite different from "intending" the song as camp tout court.
Is there a difference between being ironic and being "ironic"?
164: Being "ironic" is when you intend your irony to be ironically non-ironic. You know, it's like rain on your wedding day.
Actually I think Queen's project -- and achievement -- was slathering everything in the signifiers of camp, from FMarc's mannerisms to BMay's sound to their fergoodnissakes band-name, and actually NOT being camp. Except maybe the Flash Gordon themesong.
FMarc = FMerc. Time for bed.
There's a palpable cowardice in always having to hide behind "irony" or "camp" or "kitsch" lest one be caught expressing an honest-to-God emotion.
God, yes. Agreed with NattarGtamm that Queen certainly weren't trying to be ironic.
In any event, if our current culture ever gets over its fear of sincerity, it'll be a happy day.
Not many people are willing to say that it's cowardly to hide behind irony.
I think camp can be both an approach to appreciating an object or an approach to creating a work, though too much of the latter intention turns into cheese.
I think camp can be both an approach to appreciating an object
I don't get it. One appreciates the object campily? Isn't camp necessarily a behavior? So -- I suppose a behavior can constitute an appreciation ... of an object? Or phenomenon. Help?
Isn't camp necessarily a behavior?
Not at all.
1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.
Here's Sontag's version of what I was waving at with Camp as an approach to creation:
Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful. The perfection of Trouble in Paradise and The Maltese Falcon, among the greatest Camp movies ever made, comes from the effortless smooth way in which tone is maintained. This is not so with such famous would-be Camp films of the fifties as All About Eve and Beat the Devil. These more recent movies have their fine moments, but the first is so slick and the second so hysterical; they want so badly to be campy that they're continually losing the beat.
Well, I still don't get the distinction k-sky is making in 169. I gather that "appreciation" is intended to signal respect.
Oh sorry. Hadn't seen your comments before posting.
I'm kind of fascinated by her list of examples of camp, excuse me, Camp.
Jesus! I'd been about to say that I supposed she was going to call the whole of Art Nouveau Camp, and lo, she does. Which, maybe.
Interesting article, by the way.
Why is Beyonce covering the Kings of Leon, of all bands?
Because she can. Because it makes her seem serious? I don't know.
Sontag has basically killed the category of Camp for me.
No one has ever been made to seem serious than they otherwise would have seemed by singing Kings of Leon songs.
Oh, I thought the Kings of Leon wasn't half bad; but it's been a while since I've heard them. Probably a lot in the performance itself.
I was just throwing that out there. Beyonce is no Susan Sontag, I tell you what!
174: The Big Sleep is immeasurably more camp than The Maltese Falcon.
Also, didn't John Waters kill camp Hemingway dead when he defined it for Marge Simpson?
Beyonce is no Susan Sontag, I tell you what!
I SELL SONTAG AND SONTAG ACCESSORIES.
Sontag has basically killed the category of Camp for me.
And yet she invented it! What a puzzle.
She says it goes back to the 18th century -- as a thing -- though more clear in the 19th. She is identifying, not inventing, this thing. But it's a tortured identification.
Sorry, but that piece really has made me irritable.
156: I'd add a few more to the list for stand-out tracks on that record, but so it goes. I hope everyone listened to that version of "Bring the Noise" I linked to anyway.
In any event, if our current culture ever gets over its fear of sincerity, it'll be a happy day.
Having seen Tree of Life and reaaaaaally not appreciated it, I'll have to disagree with you here.
Also, I fucking love "Eye of the Tiger". Always have.
At the time, I didn't know about all the other amazing music that came out in 1982 (I guess "Let The Music Play" was 1983, but still) but damn, what a year. Somewhere floating around there's a "top dance hits of 1982" DJ mix that's just so amazing.
But Beyonce annoys me in this regard, and she's obviously not the only one who apparently feels the need to look like a sexbot. That people are encouraged to think she's just fucking awesome! and then defend her (and, presumably, her presentation) is dispiriting.
Okay, reading the thread backwards here and descending into the madness that is tonight's parsimon.
I personally like Beyonce because she has great producers.
All I know of Tree of Life is the NYRB review I read. I dunno. It sounds ponderous.
The last film I can remember seeing that I'd be willing to describe in anything like those terms was Synecdoche, NY.
In any case, I doubt we should take Tree of Life as representative of earnestness.
In any case, I doubt we should take Tree of Life as representative of earnestness.
That goes against what reviewers who like it have been saying, but I'm sure you're right. And I dunno, I've only like, actually seen it.
The reviewers are saying that being earnest entails being like Tree of Life?
We're talking at cross-purposes. The film may be earnest in its way, but I don't think we can or should condemn all earnestness because of it, that's all.
There are so many reasons to condemn all earnestness, is I think the point. We mustn't limit ourselves. Reach! Fly! Achieve!
There's a church outside San Antonio called the Tree of Life Church, and they've totally crammed in ".org" where there isn't space for it, and it always makes me laugh, and reminds me of "FREE OSCAR! dot com."
The ".org" is crammed into the sign out front, for the record. Where there isn't space for it.
Intention isn't everything. Tolstoy set out to write a morality play with Anna Karenina.
I quite liked Tree of Life despite rolling my eyes at the last 15 minutes. OK, and at the gratuitous dinosaurs. Slow wordless cinematography is hard to do well, and the 2/3 of the film that succeeded is a treasure. My wife walked out on it, though.
I had no intention of seeing it until you said "gratuitous dinosaurs." That's kind of alluring.
The following film is rated R for strong language, brief trilobites, and gratuitous dinosaurs.
Have you seen Cave of Forgotten Dreams? It has gratuitous albino crocodiles.
gratuitous dinosaurs
I prefer movies with the subtlest of dinosaur species, the Doyouthinkhesaurus.
I have to read True Grit for book club. Am I going to hate it?
You should read the original book with Wayne and Hepburn.
On googling further reflection, Hepburn was in the sequel, not True Grit.
I'm enjoying the very beginning, so far.
"In a hole in the ground there lived a dissolute U.S. Marshall."
I have to read True Grit for book club. Am I going to hate it?
No!
Actually I think Queen's project -- and achievement -- was slathering everything in the signifiers of camp, from FMarc's mannerisms to BMay's sound to their fergoodnissakes band-name, and actually NOT being camp
I think this is a good description. I agree that they weren't being ironic.
Obligatory link: Dirk Nowitzki singing "We Are The Champions" badly.
Link just for the heck of it: Pink performing "Bohemian Rhapsody" surprisingly well.
Final Queen related link: I am amused to know that Queen was huge in Russia.
After the Beatles, they are the second biggest band in this country, with Freddie Mercury considered a demi-god and innumerable legions of diehard Queen fanatics flashing their Freddie T-shirts on every bus stop. The classic rock radiowaves are flooded with Queen hits, and their records are being sold on every corner with no one buying because everybody already has a full collection. And I don't even count the innumerable 'Mercury clubs', 'Queen fan meetings' and miriads of Russian websites devoted to the band.
Also I want to say something more about Alanis Morissette, but I'm still not sure that I have an easy conclusion to draw. I thought of her because 118 reminded me of the way in which she is referenced in Everything I'm Cracked Up To Be (which I picked up because of a mention on unfogged) as managing to completely fill up the cultural space available for ascerbic young female singer-songwriters.
I would say that she's a good example of why it's tempting to write about pop music from the perspective of, "what it says about our culture." There must be something interesting to say about how it is that Jagged Little Pill was so phenomenally well suited to its moment. At the same time, trying to remember back to her moment, fifteen years ago, it seems clear that you shouldn't read too much into people's preferences for one pop musician over another.
While I believe that the success of Alanis did imply something about the state of the culture in 1995, it's hard to see that it offered any predictive value.
Finally I want to note that the original post could have been titled, "Every Generation Throws a Hero Up The Pop Charts"
This thread is way too dominated by les Anglo Saxons and their hegemony over world culture, so a few non Anglo hits from me, age 12.
Poland:
Republika Biala Flaga ('White Flag', about everybody giving up, 1982, 'nuff said. Not my favorite Republika, that would be 'Moja Krew' with the great BBC video, but I like it)
Maanam - O! Nie rób tyle hałasu (Don't make such a fuss, great fuck you break up song by an awesome Polish eighties band, extra spice that the lead singer/co-songwriter had broken up with the lead guitarist/co-songwriter)
Perfekt-Autobiografia (giving up on hope, again, this was 1982. Song sort of sucks, but anybody into Polish pop who was born between 1960-1980 will have a soft spot for it, and plenty of fond memories of drunkenly belting it out towards the end of every party)
Francais:
Indochine-L'Avanturier Ok, fond memories of this one and other Indochines, maybe the age twelve thing makes sense on an emotiional level overriding later taste development.
Jean-Jacques Goldman- Quand la musique est bonne (Ok, definitely something to this age 12 theory)
208 - Masters of Atlantis and Dog of the South are both super funny, so I doubt you'll hate True Grit.
This thread is interesting. I used to not listen to music at all, but in the past couple of years I've started to. Part of that was beginning to listen to the radio while driving, which has given me a certain fondness for the popular hits of 2009 or so, and another part was discovering Pandora, which gave me a way of not being totally limited by the options available on typical radio stations but also of not having to choose songs to listen to myself.
Over the course of all this I've realized that the main thing that kept me from listening to music before was a fear of being judged. When I was in high school it seemed like absolutely everyone asked me what sort of music I listened to as a way of trying to figure out how to categorize me, and I was sufficiently upset with that that I hit upon the idea of just not listening to music at all as a way of avoiding categorization. It would confuse the hell out of people, of course, but to me that was preferable to being pigeonholed.
More closely related to this thread specifically, I've come to like rather silly pop hits quite a bit, mostly because of the associations they have (with places I've driven through while listening to them, etc.). The way I see it, virtually everything about my life serves to isolate me from other people, and music offers an opportunity to finally connect with people on some level. To me, at least, that generally trumps any inherent qualities of the music itself. I have some songs I prefer to others, of course, and there are some general patterns in my tastes, and Pandora is a convenient way to try to take advantage of that and to discover new music I might like. The idea of searching out obscure music is not very appealing to me, though, regardless of how much I might like that music.
The way I see it, virtually everything about my life serves to isolate me from other people, and music offers an opportunity to finally connect with people on some level.
Be warned, teo, it was seeing the way music allowed people to form connections with each other, way back in 1998 or 1999 or whenever it was, that led me to stop being someone who didn't listen to music and start listening to it and forming opinions and stuff.
Be careful, Teo. You may be setting yourself up to form connections with thirteen year old girls.
Obligatory link: Dirk Nowitzki singing "We Are The Champions" badly.
Wow. You're not kidding.
You may be setting yourself up to form connections with thirteen year old girls.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
215: L'Avonturier is objectively cool -- how many songs about a Belgian pulp hero do you know?
142: I turned twelve in '86 and what was number one closest to my birthday was MC Miker G & Deejay Sven's Holiday rap which, well, yeah -- white Dutch people attempting to rap in English is almost always not a good idea.
223.1: I know a couple but I'm sure that you will be so please that I don't name any of them.
I've never seen music as a way to connect to anybody. It seems to me that such a musical connecting requires either the going to festivals or the discussing music on- or off-line with others. The worst music is better than a discussion, any discussion on any music.
Uk no. 1s when I was 12 - Renee & Renato - 'Save Your Love' and Phil Collins "You Can't Hurry Love".
U.S. - Men at Work , 'Down Under' (actually, I like that one).
It works for "the golden age of science fiction is twelve", though - there was some great stuff out that year though I didn't read most of it until later.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/05/hugo-nominees-1984
Strike hard! against Anglo-Saxon popination: Les Rita Mitsouko.
Oh, and Jesus Christ. Jimmy Nail "Ain't No Doubt". The birthday one isn't quite so bad.
Hmm, no. 1 on my 12th birthday was 'A Town Called Malice'. Could be worse.
WTF. Idiot. That was my 10th birthday [must have been thinking about the 82 mix]. On 12th it was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 'Relax'.
re: 230
Yeah. It's not bad. I heard 'The Power of Love' on the radio a while back [FGTH, not Jennifer Rush] and it still sounded pretty epic.
Wait, what? How are the The Big Sleep and the The Maltese Falcon camp?
I usually take 'Sontag is utterly full of shit' as a sufficient explanation.
Yes, she's a bit of a nitwit when it comes to popular culture, how it works and why it matters. If I wasn't trying to write a PhD proposal today I would be schooling everyone in no-quotes irony also.
Also: I have ten thousand spoons.
TBH, I haven't read her on 'Camp', but I have read 'Illness as Metaphor', and 'On Photography' and while it was so long ago I doubt I can remember much about why I disliked either, I do remember strongly that I did. Although, to be fair, bits of 'Illness as Metaphor' were interesting.
AUSTIN, TX--According to Generation X sources, the recent attack on America may have rendered cynicism and irony permanently obsolete. "Remember the day after the attack, when all the senators were singing 'God Bless America,' arm-in-arm?" asked Dave Holt, 29. "Normally, I'd make some sarcastic wisecrack about something like that. But this time, I was deeply moved." Added Holt: "This earnestness can't last forever. Can it?"
OT: I just saw a pigeon clothesline itself on a power line. It was kind of funny but not laugh out loud funny.
If it had been wearing a top hat, now that would have been funny.
It spiraled down on one wing and stood in the road until a car came. Then it flew off, all wobbly.
Then I felt like maybe Gary Larson saw a similar scene and put it to use.
My 12th year includes Vanilla Ice, Nelson, NKOTB, Roxete, Taylor Dayne, and a special 12th birthday shout out to Michael Bolton. I think that's some of the worst music I've lived through.
So I've started using 8tracks for online listening.
If anyone would like these tracks, I can post a downloadable version somewhere.
242. In principle that sounds like a good idea. The site at that link threw me a trojan warning, however, which is malware whether there's actually a trojan in there or not. So I went no further.
MC Miker G & Deejay Sven's Holiday rap
I'm pretty sure that Dutch rap by MC Miker G is going to trump everyone else's worst music.
I have "Amanda" by Boston and "Hip to be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News in my list, which are indisputably two of the worst songs ever. The Bangles show up, though, and I still think they're pretty great.
I'm pretty sure that Dutch rap by MC Miker G is going to trump everyone else's worst music.
I don't know, this and this were both everywhere when I was 13.
Apparently Adele complains about her taxes being too high? I'm afraid this means I hate her.
My 12th year doesn't really land that hard for me -- especially when compared to my tenth year. Almost every single song on that list feels like a crush to me. Even the ones that don't -- say, "Ghostbusters" -- are far more memorable than the equivalent dross of other years.
I identified the year by thinking of the song that most feels like a crush feels to me: "I Would Die 4 U." It's not on that list, but it came out that year, and there are two other songs from Purple Rain listed there. I've written elsewhere about the enduring power of "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" for me -- it shows up at the beginning of 1985, right after "I Want To Know What Love Is", which has a similar place for me. My first kiss was summer 1985, so it all makes a great deal of sense. (Though not why I would be so over 1986.)
re: 246
That is pretty shit, yeah.
Almost every single song on that list feels like a crush to me.
Even "Wake me up before you go-go"?
Even. I remember faking the jitterbug with my cute stepcousin to that song at her mom's wedding to my uncle.
My twelveyear was perhaps actually and seriously one of the best ever in American popular music. Fine Young Cannibals, Madonna, Prince, Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, and the Bangles.
All I have to say about this 'when I was twelve' thing.
Apparently Adele complains about her taxes being too high? I'm afraid this means I hate her.
Cough George Harrison cough Keith Richards cough Led Zeppelin cough a bunch of other Brit musicians and bands cough.
As it turns out, that year had a bunch of my favorite musicians releasing albums that were good but not their best work. But a notable year for the sheer quantity and range of interesting music.
256: I mean, really.
I use the NHS, I can't use public transport any more, doing what I do, I went to state school . . . ! Trains are always late, most state schools are shit, and I've gotta give you like 4 million quid, are you 'avin a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from 19, I was ready to go 'n' buy a gun and randomly open fire.
Shouldn't she mean, "I don't use the NHS"?
