So I picked up A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic! at the Disco and it struck me as good, and slightly more pop than the stuff I’ve been listening to lately. Thing is, I couldn’t pin down why it sounded pop: the singing and the music weren’t too different from a lot of more hardcore bands, and the lyrics aren’t the standard music-business-is-a-big-party or songs about scoring and love ballads.
Then I discovered that they did share some elements with other pop songs, but all of them seem to be odd coming from pop music:
- Disdain for what the “critics” say. Even the Monkees did this, and they are the definition of Pop. I think it comes from protesting too much: punk doesn’t have to prove it’s independent.
- Breaking the fourth wall by referring to the Chorus or the Verse in the lyrics. I have no idea why this is a pop convention, but it goes way back to music that sings about “this song.”
- Segues, movements, whatever. We’ve had several threads about what you should call a song changing into a seemingly totally different song in the same track, but there was no consensus on the name. Anyway, this seems to be more emo-pop specific, in fact it seems that nearly every band I consider emo-pop does it in at least one song. The only other pop examples I can think of at the moment are Hey Jude and Blackwater, but I can’t think of many examples* from bands such as The Promise Ring or Park.
*I was going to say “none,” but then realized that the second best song of all time, Best Looking Boys by The Promise Ring, does this.