This is the thread for talking about pop.
So can someone tell me why Girls Aloud’s “Singapore” was left off Chemistry? I think it’s brilliant, one of their most moving songs. The chorus! “Dark streets only suffocate me now/you’re off to singapore/heart aches, God it nearly breaks each hour/I’m waiting for your call.” The sigh on “God” is quite amazing.
pop contains too much sugar! don’t drink this shite!
Having to do a review of Girls Aloud’s and Sugababes’ best-ofs has made me obsess with the latter’s “Ace Reject” all over again, even though (of course) it’s not actually on the Sugababes album, having never been made a single. I’ve ultimately decided that songs like that and “Situation’s Heavy” are the group’s strongest suit—they could easily make an entire career out of performing Xenomania-penned quasi-ballad pop.
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.
Re. “Singapore”; presumably they decided it was too close in mood and subject matter to “No Regrets” to work in the context of the album, though I think “Singapore” the better song.
Who’s Sally Shapiro then?
Sally Shapiro is a Swedish pop singer who sings over icy bittersweet italo-disco. I started a thread about her over on Real ILM. The two tracks I’ve heard, I’ll Be By Your Side and I Know are fantastic. You’re unlikely to be overwhelmed by the force of her personality, but her vocals suit the shimmery backing very well.
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 was really struck by ‘singapore’ when i first heard it too—it’s a lot more fragile than ‘no regrets’ though. there’s a ‘cambodia’ comparison in there too...i get the impression of not war but work though, singapore as business & banking hub, boyfriend prioritising his career over the narrator.
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.
More of a mini-album—seven songs and two remixes. Marcello I’m not sure if you’ll love Sally or not, could go either way. People will compare her to Annie, but I’d say the closest reference point is Saint Etienne at their iciest and danciest—“Shower Scene”, “Pale Movie” etc. With hints of Dubstar (also at their iciest and danciest duh). But the reference point I’m trying to remember is still much much closer.
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.
oh yeah, tim, you’ll be pleased to know that i’ve FINALLY got into i am me! this happened after a Hole Reminiscence Month when i listened to little besides ‘celebrity skin’, ‘malibu’, ‘plump’ and ‘doll parts’; then i realised that i should be listening to ashlee with my courtney love ears, not my lindsay lohan ears. and...it’s really fucking great! about the only track i don’t like is ‘LOVE’, which is...jarring. the missy remix is also awful but at least it’s so awful it’s kind of funny.
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.
Yes I agree that the muscularity of “Something Kinda Ooh” works briliantly. I think they should have included another ballad though perhaps. “Money” is like Xenomania’s discards pile, although I find something curiously compelling about that.
I’m glad you like I Am Me now Lex. How great is “Eyes Wide Open”?
ashlee as furious AVENGING ANGEL! it’s towering, she sounds so powerful (as well as wracked) on it. i love the title track so much too, and also ‘coming back for more’.
shall we talk about ciara and gwen stefani here too?
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.
Do you have “Kicking and Screaming” on the UK version of I Am Me?
I have downloaded the Ciara album but haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. Looking forward to it.
Have we discussed the Missy Elliot remix of Ashlee’s “L.O.V.E.” on old ILM? And have we discussed the remix on top of that that gives it these Marilyn Manson-type drums?
yeah, ‘kicking and screaming’ is terrific. it made me think that i should probably do a compilation of awesome pop bonus tracks (also to be included—‘moodring’ by mya, ‘hands on me’ and ‘i can be that woman’ by christina milian, ‘before the goodbye’ by britney...)
‘hollaback girl’ drums surely dom?
i mean you may be right, i have listened to it once and don’t intend to listen to it again.
I suppose “Hollaback Girl” + echo = “The Beautiful People”, so maybe.
other pop i have been listening to recently:
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.
Has anyone heard the new All Saints album?
Better than the reviews would indicate, but not world-beatingly brilliant.
I do love hearing those glacial harmonies again though.
I couldn’t even like the new all saints single, though I was so so ready to, I’d been in a ‘all saints were greater than I remember’ phase just before—but the backing vocals were so vaudeville and false-feeling (in a tacked-on kind of way), they distracted me every time I tried to listen. And I don’t like ‘i think we’re alone now’ either! The pop love is escaping me at the moment.
i read about Sally Shapiro this morning on this thread, and then a few hours later this drops into my inbox :
“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:
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:
2012 is going to be the year of white people who got famous doing youtube versions of “look at me now,” isn’t it
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
<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.)
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.
(sorry that’s about as POP as I get)
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
#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.