BTW, I used to put The Knack on and listen to it, oh, two times in a row. It’s a great album from start to finish.
For some reason I can’t recall now, I had a prejudice against Lyndsey Buckingham. His solo material was very hit & miss. But over the years, I have come to appreciate his guitar work.
Ditto. When I saw the special The Winner Takes It All I was shocked to see the likes of Bono and Elvis Costello singing their praises. Yeah, their music was bublegummy, but what’s wrong with that? From a technical perspective, you’d be hard pressed to find better composers. I tend to lean towards technical perfection. ABBA easily falls in the same category as the Beatles and the Electric Light Orchestra when it comes to work in the studio.
When you have the likes of Britney and her electronically enhanced “singing”, you gain a greater appreciation of how Benny & Bjorn sculpted the ABBA sound.
I never understood the concept of guilty pleasures. When I like a group or album or song, I like it, and I do not feel guilty about it at all. I really don’t give a hoot what others say.
Semisonic. They were unfairly lumped in with Matchbox 20, Tonic, Third Eye Blind, and all of the other faceless, soundalike pop-rock acts of the late '90s. But any band that can write such winsome pop songs like “Never You Mind” and “Chemistry” - the latter would make the Beach Boys envious with its wordplay and its super-catchy chorus - deserves a better reputation.
It feels weird to defend a group, I’d normally never admit I still listen to, but - I’d nominate The Romantics for the cd In Heat. Granted Talking In Your Sleep and One In A Million aren’t the best songs, but oddly enough all the other songs on that cd are great. If you can get past the bad 80s/50s look and really listen, I think it’s difficult not to at least tap your feet. The opening harmonica and guitar on the first song Rock You Up, do just that. The rest of the songs follow suit. Why the overplayed What I Like About You caught on, and none of the others did, I’ll never understand.
raizok, Huevos Rancheros were a great band. Sure, I’d even consider them music snob-worthy in the sense that only a small number of (mostly) Canadians (Western ones, at that) have ever heard of them. Also worth checking out is Brent Cooper’s new band The Ramblin’ Ambassadors… which is pretty much along the same lines as Huevos, and Ritchie Rancheros’ new band The Surefires, which is more Rockabilly… but being from Alberta, you may already be all over that.
For my foray into addressing the OP, I will refer to a band I brought up in the other thread… The Sweet. In that thread, I was (mildly) taken to task for listing them as powerpop, and instead was told that they were more properly referred to as “glam”. I don’t necessarily consider these two genres to be mutually exclusive, but I do believe that The Sweet suffered from pandering to some of the styles of the times… especially where makeup and clothing are concerned. But then again the same could be said of Alice Cooper… another band that I wouldn’t initially consider to be “glam”. The Sweet also had problems being dismissed (by the English press, mostly) as “teeny bopper music”… not that there’s anything wrong with that. What I would suggest is for anyone to play Desolation Boulevard, and tell me that it’s not just a great piece of pop songwriting, period. It contains at least a couple of the best fun songs to come out of the '70’s… Fox On The Run and Ballroom Blitz, as well as the real underrated, Set Me Free (for further music snobery, I’ll point out that The Fastbacks did a great cover of this one). Desolation Boulevard, from beginning to end, makes me want to jump in my Trans-Am (Camero, Firebird), smoke a big reefer and head downtown on a Friday night. Glam?.. maybe. Poprock?.. I think so. Rock n Roll?.. HELL YEAH!
I am not sure how well known he is, but i would like to nominate Beethoven. Yea, so he is not that well known, but to me he was alright at what he did. Sure, N-Sync did it better, but he was the first to have pink hair and peircings on each knee. His producer also had many other achievments, like creating the theme to Killer Klowns from Outer Space to Men Without Hats. His record company, Virgin Records, is also a little unheard of Gem based out of Omaha.
It is music. Who is to say it is popular? If I listen to it, then chances are that my friends will listen to it, which in turn means I can only depend on strangers to clarify how pop it is. If you enjoy it, enjoy it, do not be an ass over it.
You are completely wrong. Silly Love Songs is pure confection. Judging by your posts in this thread, I think you will agree that Quality Music ™ doesn’t have to be epic or serious or really all that meaningful. If you hold that it should be about those things, that’s cool. But I don’t. To me, it’s all about the hooks. And this song is full of them. A little gooey? Sure. But can you show me a better bass line than the one under this song? The strings are magnificent.
As for the gooiness, the emotions in this song are as authentic as Alex Chilton singing about walking a girl home from school in Thirteen, or Eric Carmen singing about wanting to be by himself in All By Myself. I think McCartney takes an interesting and fresh tack on a common song theme.
I agree completely. Not all of his solo stuff is worth listening to. There’s something about his working with Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie that just brought out some inspired arrangements on his part. All the members of Fleetwood Mac are fine musicians, but I think it was a case of the sum being greater than its parts.
After reading this, I think it sounds more harsh than I meant it to. I meant to come across as mildly indignant, not like an ass. Sorry if I came across that way.
I’m not sure that Thirteen is an apt comparison here. It’s a song that seems sweet on the surface, but the sexual undercurrent gives it an underlying creepiness. That’s what makes it a great song. Actually, creepiness under a sweet exterior is what makes much of Big Star’s music especially interesting.
Attempting to stretch this point a little further…
This example about what made Big Star’s pop music so interesting is precisely why I find the type of pop in Silly Love Songs so objectionable. When a song’s only attribute is a cloying sweetness, I think it has to be excluded from the Quality Music category. What’s worse, McCartney is a musician clearly capable of better things…though evidence of this has been scarce in the past twenty years or so.
I’ll apologize in advance, but I think we music snobs are allowed things like this…
Fleetwood Mac just sucks. It’s safe, bland music for people who now listen to Dave Matthews in their mini-vans.
[MUSIC SNOB]
Anji off of Sounds of Silence isn’t a guitar duet, AFAIK, it’s a solo, and Simon didn’t write it. It is, from what I understand, a pretty classic finger-picker’s tune that Simon recorded. Art Garfunkel didn’t play guitar, he just sang.
Carry on.
[/MUSIC SNOB]
Faith no More We Care Alot, The Real Thing, and last but certainly not least Angeldust. Often overlooked and overshadowed by the Seattle wave,and here’s the snobby bit, of grunge which put “alternative” music on MTV in the early 90’s.
The Reverend Horton Heat. He’s been derided as a novelty act, but he’s a great act especially live.
Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True. A pretty good album after all. Sounds like a cross between old school hip hop and new wave. It doesn’t matter who sang it.
Pilot’s From the Album of the Same Name. Some people might know the song “Magic” from the Happy Gilmore soundtrack, but it was a big hit in the mid-'70s. Great musicianship, great melodies, totally whacked lyrics that sound like something written by an English-as-a-second-languager. Some of the band members were in an early incarnation of:
Bay City Rollers. They f*cking rock.
Donny & Marie Osmond. Their version of “Deep Purple” is transcendent.
Every Prefab Band Or Artist That Is Supposed To Suck According To The Received Wisdom: Monkees, Partridge Family, Fabian, etc.
No worries, Hugh Jass, I appreciate where you’re coming from. I agree with you on both the catchiness and greatness of the melodies and the bass line (love the bass line), but I really do agree with Ass for a Hat (“Hello, Ass for a Hat, meet Hugh Jass; Hugh Ass, meet Ass for a Hat” this is a funny world we live in), in terms of all the song really has going for it in terms of its intent and feel is cloying sweetness. That is what I have a problem with.
I think this is where good Music Snobs choose to disagree.
ZebraShaSha - consider me officially whooshed - you seem to be having fun with your post - so by all means, knock yourself out.
vl_mungo - I love Desolation Boulevard and play the 6-teens and Fox on the Run for my kids all the time - they love it.
Lots of other great posts - too many to comment on. Well except for maybe one - Live Better Electrically!, I will grant you the Monkees and the Partridge Family - both had the top songwriters and session players do their dirty work and the some of the big hits are really wonderful. But if you think I am going to support Milli Vanilli or Donnie and Marie - sorry, not gonna happen.
I just went back and realized I said basically the same thing in the other Power Pop post. :smack: I hate that.
I want to second (or is it third?) vl_mungo’s mention of The Sweet. I believe the only thing that stopped them from being really huge is that they were so willing to experiment that they made it difficult for critics and listeners to classify them handily. Take a song like Fox on the Run or Little Willy and compare it to Love Is Like Oxygen. Back in the 70s, I think we were less willing to let musicians cross genres.
And I will also support the mention of Donny Osmond. He has not always had good material to work with, but he is a singer, not a songwriter. I have heard him sing a capella, and almost fell over. His voice is very pure, very supple and very strong, with a great range. I think his image worked against him - as a kid, it made him cute, but as an adult it made people seek out flaws they could pick on. In truth, his vocal work is rarely criticized – it’s his personality that people seem to want to disparage.
I want to snobbify Adam and the Ants, too. There’s an energy in their work that other punk-pop-dance stuff of that era couldn’t touch. Their exploration of world music was ahead of its time, and the wordplay in most of the songs is clever and original. I understand they got loads of airplay in the UK, but in the States we only got a taste of what these guys were capable of, and most of that was on Adam’s “solo” albums (for accuracy’s sake, it should be noted that Marco, an original Ant, was also on Adam’s solo albums, which makes them not solos, in my world.) “Goody Two Shoes” and “Strip” were good songs, but they didn’t have the edge that the Ants’ earlier work did.
Gotta love the SDMB - where else could you go for a Music Snob challenge and get articulate arguments for Donny (Donnie?) Osmond? Would never have picked him out, but the whole point to this post is to learn and discuss…