When Bjork hits the top ten, then we can talk about weird. Most of the idol pop & hip hop that fills the current charts makes me feel like I’ve jumped back a generation (“you call that music?”). Nothing against Gwen Stefani but I can not believe that one artist could be responsible for two of the most annoying songs ever, “Rich Girl” and “Hollabeck Girl.” On the same album no less. Yikes, maybe the top ten really is getting weird.
Recent Dylan and even recent Tom Waits releases have fallen into the realm of weird too.
Well, her album Medulla came close, hitting number 14 on the Billboard 200. (Verspertine also cleared the Top 20, peaking at 19).
None of her singles cleared the Top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100, but several have topped the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and made the Top 5 of the Modern Rock tracks.
Pop music straddles all music genres and most certainly can be applied to hip hop and R&B acts. Let’s pick an obvious popular rap act: MC Hammer. There’s no way I can think about a song like “U Can’t Touch This” and not consider it pop. It was popular, hooky, and structured like a typical pop song. It’s pop.
I agree, as usual, with you, puly - with one exception: for Milkshake (which I love, too), I hear the white-noise generator-synthy sound of…Cars by Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army. Listen - I bet you’ll hear it, too. Applied in a different way, but definitely a similar sound.
I think the breakdown of normal “singles - album - radio” distribution and the ambiguous situation regarding what the New Way to Get Music over the Internet is going to be has put us where we are at. iTunes? Napster? Rhapsody? Combined with easy DIY ways to mix music and the rules have all been broken - anyone can write anything, and make it available to everyone. We seem to be feasting on an infinite variety and are trying all things. It is could, but unsettling and can lead to a ton of crap out there.
I love the fact that there is so much variety - giving people more control is leading to them voting with their downloads, so songs no one would have taken a chance on are getting popular and producers are taking more risks.
Also, as listeners trust producers, the producers stretch out and the listeners follow.
Part of me misses the constraints of rules - I love a well-written, 3-minute rock song (and many pop songs, too) - having those limitations forces innovation.
The real question is: as the new music landscape evolves, what limitations will surface that will: a) lead to listeners to group around a smaller handful of music sources - either due to listener trust of the source or the power of big business to control distribution channels; and b) how will those limitations influence the creativity of the artists and what new music forms will results.
