The Trouble with Pop

For a while, I’ve been wondering what the attraction of something being new is.

What is it that makes people in general place far more importance on something that is current, than something that is (for example) brilliant, but from ten years ago, even if it is something that people haven’t experience before?

The best I can come up with is that it might be because of the excitement of the shared experience. Because something is new, there’s more chance of everyone being exposed to it at once; hence, a shared experience.

If this is true, and our take that people are far less exposed to new stuff, will ‘newness’ decrease in its importance, I wonder?

Bonkers - Dizzee Rascal

I have one thing to say: what the f^ck?

what the what?

So I’m interested in how people find out about, well I was going to say ‘new’ but I really mean ‘new to them’ rather than ‘cutting edge crucial wicked nosebleed avant sound of the future’ music. Easiest thing to do is ask: how do I?

Now I’m a subscriber to emusic, erm, of quite longstanding… Feb 2006. They send me emails which I delete straightaway. Oh well. Here’s one: ‘This month’s best new music’. Should be hot stuff, eh readers?

Well, sort of. But the curious thing is, I’ve already heard of most of this - at a first take on it, most likely because I follow the same trends their tastemaker/gatekeeper crew does.

So what do they hype:

St Vincent - Actor. Nope, no idea, but I’ve seen this album artwork places (at a guess pitchfork, emusic itself) and it looks awful so I’ve deliberately ignored it.

Isis - Wavering Radiant. Yup, this is a band I got into in true old school fashion - a pal recommended them, I listened and bought (horror!) actual CDs by them. Well, one. And downloaded some. So, downloaded this a few weeks ago.

Nomo - Invisible Cities. Now I recognise this but largely because this emusic thing is a round-up and I saw it plugged on their blog 17 dots a couple of weeks ago. Listened to the samples on emusic and thought it didn’t sound my thing.

Akron/Family - whatever the title is. Seen this written up in a few places, and actually it sounds quite interesting so I probably will download it from emusic later in the month.

And of their quickies: New Ruins - no idea; Andrew Russo - ditto; Company Flow - a reissue by a band I was actually looking for in one of the few remaining record stores in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, downloaded from emusic when I ran a search there, and is now being reviewed as a reissue all over; Nigeria Rock Special blah blah I actually bought one of the CDs in this set last year because it was reviewed in the dead tree media.

So scores on the boards: emusic solidly hitting with the blog rock style, but then I suppose I think its blog rock because I read about it on emusic. Still seems pretty narrow, and nothing that wouldn’t have got props on ilx in ‘02. In which case, at least I’m not the only one stuck in a rut…

I first read that as “This is unfunky house”. New genre indeed.

That is completely amazing.

I should perhaps expand on the ‘getting old’ thing.

It’s generally held that getting old means you start listening to more middle-of-the-road stuff and losing touch with what is ‘new and vital’ (whether either of these are a problem on in fact a good thing, I’ll leave for another time).

It’s my feeling that this view comes from people my age, whose parents were part of the supposedly revolutionary generation of the 1960s, who started listening to ‘rubbish’ like Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac in their Sierras in the 1980s.

I don’t think this follows. I think the people listening to the apparently bad stuff in the 1980s were probably not the same people as those listening to the apparently vital stuff in the 1960s and I see no reason to believe that those who were really into music in the 1960s were not into good stuff in the 1980s.

For what it’s worth, when my dad was my age, he liked the Beastie Boys.

Number 1 Song In Heaven

Having just checked out what is the UK’s number 1, I find out it is a guy called “Tinchy Stryder”. I typed his name into Google - thought it was Titchy Stryder, and the autocomplete told me it was Titchy Strider.

Turns out it’s a great record, so I’ll check out Tinchy at some point, but there are a couple of problems. The first is not really an issue - the Internet says he’s grime, but this record wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1980s; however, this is a minor complaint. What makes me think more, is that I’ve definitely never heard it before.

This is sales-wise, the most popular record in the UK at the moment, but I’ve never heard it. What are sales like these days? Are they just loads lower? I mean, someone’s got to be number one, but it doesn’t mean it has to sell a lot. If I’d heard it, I might have even bought it, I mean I like it.

In equal parts, this upsets me and makes me happy. Something I loved as a kid (that this stuff seemed to matter) seems like it’s going or gone, but conversely that it means something different has to happen to give people their jollies, and change is what it’s all about.

Things I don’t think this is attributed to:

- I am getting old… Don’t see why. It’s not like I don’t still like music as much as I ever did… And my friends are all still into it

- That it still does matter, or that it never did matter… Can’t really present evidence and I know this is a statement that opens me up to all sorts of attacks, but whilst I would have argued against this in the past, I basically agree with it now: it doesn’t matter

I suppose I am pretending to not know why I think this is… I have some ideas, but they were posted elsewhere… Here they are repeated:

I think part of the ‘problem’ is the dilution/fragmentation, but it kind of goes further than the fact that nowadays there are many more TV and radio channels and you can choose your favourite, although this is undoubtedly part of the reason, as people aren’t as spoon fed as they were when there was one pop radio station and three or four pop programs a week on the television.

Some months ago, I woke up in the morning to Radio 6 and they were playing “I guess that’s why they call it the blues” by Elton John. It immediately had me thinking that in the summer of 1983, I heard that song everywhere I went - often several times a day. That year, I was in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, North Wales, Devon and France, and I heard it everywhere. You couldn’t get away from it. After that I noticed that I have absolutely no idea what’s in the charts at the moment, so then I asked people from work if they knew, which they didn’t, or even if they could hum a current popular tune (maybe they wouldn’t know its name - that would have been true at any time), but they couldn’t.

So I guess I started thinking that it’s not just that you as an individual get to choose your TV channel or radio station, but it also affects what you here when you go places. Computers and iPods are probably contributing even more to this. Most pubs I go into now have a computer controlling the music; presumably the favourite stuff of the bar staff, not a jukebox that you get fifty popular tunes of the day. I rarely hear popular music in shops - the last I remember was that Zutons song (Valerie?) somewhere and that’s probably a couple of years old. Recently, I heard Slade’s “Far Far Away” in Tesco! If I were working in a shop I would definitely plug in my iPod… Wouldn’t most people?

I talked this over with my friends who argued against me, and their main point was that I wasn’t looking in exactly the right places to find it. I couldn’t help thinking that they were arguing in favour of my position without realising it. In 1983, I didn’t need to go anywhere special; I didn’t need to ‘try’ or ‘look closer’, I just needed to wander around some places in a fairly random fashion. I think this is what made it ‘popular’.