Sandbox Pop Thread

In other pop news, the Sally Shapiro is sounding awesome on first listen, so shiny! It's reminding me intensely of something that I can't quite put my finger on, something from the early-to-mid nineties perhaps? It's something in Sally's fantastically generic sad vocals, I think.

Who's Sally Shapiro then?

I know what Tim's alluding to but I can't quite put my finger on it either. Anyway, is there an album out now?

i'd like to hear sally shapiro though i fear that i have built up something of a kneejerk prejudice against scandipop.

on a girls aloud note, 'something kinda ooooh' has REALLY grown on me - it reminds me of britney's 'stronger', a replication of a sound they've done a gazillion times which is actually a refinement of it into something sleeker and shinier and harder.

which is what sugababes aim for on 'easy' and fail completely at. amelle is actually the best thing about it! you can hear her "ooh my first proper sugaverse" excitement. but it's a rather limp song.

x-post yes "Something Kindah Oooh" is better than I first thought as well. The new chorus just towards the end is a total cherry on top (the bit that begins with "Shoulda known..."). The only problem is that there's something indefinably homogenous about it, "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Money" all together (indefinably because I don't know what it is, objectively they all sound different) - maybe it's the muscularity. I might change my mind about them though.

the muscularity of 'something kinda ooooh' is its main attraction i think - it's just so pulsating. 'i think we're alone now' is lots of fun. 'money' is bad though, a bit of a mess.

the ciara album has its own thread and it's as momentous and awe-inspiring as i've been expecting. it's basically ciara's Grand Artistic Statement and she completely lives up to her own ambition.

the gwen album has its moments but is perhaps not as crazy as it would like to be.

I have downloaded the Ciara album but haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. Looking forward to it.

'hollaback girl' drums surely dom?

the lindsay lohan album which is about a year old now. it's...a lot more serious than speak (which i ADORE), which wore its angst quite lightly (or danceably, anyway: cf 'rumours'). a little more personal (RAW) is very melodramatic, which means that when it all comes together it's both supremely ridiculous and very affecting, and when it doesn't, it casts around in vain somewhat.

the jamelia album is really not great. mediocre, cheap-sounding, safe. far too conscious that she's supposed to be a national treasure, queen of british pop or something.

I do love hearing those glacial harmonies again though.

"DISKOKAINE presents SALLY SHAPIRO album on cd/lp/mp3(i-tunes) out
14.12.06"

I am reviving this thread because Rihanna managed to release the most OH NOES-pandering song possible without including lots of marching band snares:

http://open.spotify.com/track/4Pvb6YfBSOmMZtBjskK73q

which one is it?

the only two i like on the album are "do ya thing" and "cockiness"

(don't have spotify)

lol, obviously it's "Cockiness"

I am currently obsessed with practically the entire album though; the only songs I am not totally feeling (now that I've heard them on decent speakers) are "You Da One" and "Farewell"

Pop moves into its decidedly grim post-Jessie J phase:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOorxvAVqb4

2012 is going to be the year of white people who got famous doing youtube versions of "look at me now," isn't it

so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCEV7ZSNFo

that karmin track is the kind of music that when its on even the lowest volume setting possibe its still really loud

xp it sounds like she took a fifth of whiskey and purposely poured it over her vocal chords immediately before singing

can't believe aaliyah is dead and instead we have this bullshit

<3 that this exists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG6RatujjW0

<i>can't believe aaliyah is dead and instead we have this bullshit</i>

Failing to see how Aaliyah still being alive would have prevented Kesha from doing an uber-emo Dylan cover.

haha how do you not get j0rdan's sense of humor after all this time

Depends on the day. I'm especially off my game on this particular day.

There's a video for Dub on the Track? Sweet.

Although the comments are, inevitably, depressing to read.

"i'm the kind of girl to put dub on the track" is still a CRINGE thing to say, but cher's verse is legit start-to-fin amazing, and tbh she pulls off even the most cringe moments on the album outside of the "swagger jagger" chorus. <3 the little snarling moppet.

interesting thing here - madonna's first vocal take for "music", complete with original lyrics (talking of cringe, thank christ the "do you want to mambo" bit was excised) and sarcastic asides... http://soundcloud.com/jp-rangoon/music-mirwais-studio-sessions

^^^^^^^^the most interesting thing about this, to me, is hearing what Madonna's voice actually *sounds* like, dry and unprocessed. (Though who knows how much pre compression it has on it.) Makes me feel somewhat better about vocal takes.

yeah that interested me too - though i wonder how much effort she was putting into it given that she knew it was only the first take

it has led me into a place where i am singing along to madonna's "american pie" and enjoying myself though :o

It's not the lack of effort - she gives it some on the bits she seems more sure of. (Unless she is actually writing the track as she goes along, which it does sound like in places.) It is, literally, what a pro pop vocal take sounds like, without reverb, step delay, chorus, phasing - let alone autotune or whatever else they throw at it to make it sit in the track.

Also, now listening to the released version, how much of it is double tracked (poor man's autotune.)

Any thoughts on this http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/dec/14/isolationist-british-pop?intcmp=ILCMUSTXT9385 ?

this is pretty weak

There are lots of things we'll accept Europeans, that undifferentiated mass encompassing everyone from Estonians to the Portuguese, are quite good at – cinema, sex, cheese-making, and so on, but pop music remains a sticking point for many.

think you could generalise reasonably that the same people who actively follow European cinema won't have a dismissive attitude towards Euro pop either unless they're sneery about pop in general...

and he doesn't actually offer examples of decent euro pop, only refers to the more mono (or pan) cultural guetta, afrojack and stan as if they're a on a (credible) par with most old italo and new beat "hits"

idk, i think 'lol French pop' is still a very common attitude in the UK - way more than 'lol French cinema ever would be. It's always frustrating to see articles in the press (including the Guardian, btw) starting off 'France may have a totally undistinguished history of pop....'. It seems to be a fairly common attitude to a number of other countries. Perhaps i spend more time than most people looking at the comments on Eurovision or on the few bits and pieces that break through into the UK media but 'wft does Germany know about pop?' or 'when did Italy produce a band as good as The Beatles' crop up fairly regularly.

There are links to Mylene Farmer, Yelle and Magic System in the text and, at the bottom, a link to two articles on German and Polish chart music.

New Christina Aguilera single next month, apparently. She's meant to be working with Max Martin.

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/20/rihanna-responds-to-slur-in-dutch-magazine/

well this is charming

i don't understand how it was possible for even a dutch magazine to do that! i haven't been able to find out what kind of magazine jackie is (ie whether dodgy racial stuff is in character for them etc).

amusingly, on the popjustice forum there are about 4 current mammoth rihanna threads on the go, filled with all conceivable minutiae about her current campaign, and yet no one has seen fit to mention this stuff yet.

idg Dutch attitudes towards people of African heritage. Not saying, of course, that every person in the Netherlands is bigoted, but this kind of thing seems to come up every year or two.

so has anyone seen the La's in their latest round of shows? Playing New York in March.

http://www.bowerypresents.com/event/84857/

(sorry that's about as POP as I get)

this song is still my shit

willow is the baddest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7AQ7No84Uc&ob=av2e

idg Dutch attitudes towards people of African heritage. Not saying, of course, that every person in the Netherlands is bigoted, but this kind of thing seems to come up every year or two.

or every Christmas, even

whoa

can't stop listening. it's so rainy & dark outside and this is perfect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2v1N2q0sxs&fmt=18#

That's fantastic.

oh my god that taylor song

she is the perfect person to do a dystopia lullaby

So hilarious that if she wasn't singing and this was just The Civil Wars by themselves, the poster of this track would've been run off the pop thread by an angry mob.