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| Clever Girl... >> Music >> Genre Theory I find it terribly amusing that so many people love retro and despise Top 40, especially considering that retro is the Top 40 of the past. More specificially, retro is the pop Top 40 of the past. So when we go out and dance to retro we aren't dancing to The Doors, The Stones, The Beatles, or any other of that credible music, are we? No - we're dancing to Abba. The Beach Boys, and countless one hit wonders. Our children will not be dancing to Radiohead - they will be dancing to Britney Spears, the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys, etc, etc... Take, for example, Kylie Minogue. We all remember the Kylie of the 80s, I'm sure. I'm listening to I Should Be So Lucky right now, actually. It was my favourite song when I was 5. I'm willing to bet everyone over the age of 14 cringed when it came on the radio. And yet... when I sheepishly informed Andrew Yip that I'd downloaded that song he said something along the lines of "That's a cool song!" Somehow time transforms what was once tacky into kitsch. Perhaps this is because when we look into the past we expect it to be more simple, less progressive... we can appreciate it for the catchy melodies and beats - we don't have to be cool anymore. Because it's retro. And retro is cool in an 'uncool', kitsch way. |
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However, might the same criteria be applied to modern pop music? Might we be able to find the same enjoyment and even a slight amount of truth in a Britney Spears song? I believe this is so. Listening to I Should Be So Lucky, I heard the line: "My heart is close to breaking - And I can't keep on faking - The fantasy that you'll be mine - I'm dreaming...", and I thought to myself, "that's rather sad". By the same token, is not the line "I must confess that my loneliness is killing me now, don't you know I still believe that you will be here..." rather sad? Once again, I would say "why yes, it is". Even if you were to denounce these lyrics as bad or "trashy" or "trite" or whatever, who here doesn't love Hey Mickey? Or My Sharona? Or Leader Of The Pack? Hmmm... well... "Hey Mickey you're so fine You're so fine you blow my mind Hey Mickey" "I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind My my my my my oo!" "My folks were always putting me down They said that he came from the wrong side of town They told me he was bad But I knew he was sad I'm sorry I hurt you The leader of the pack" Not exactly deep, huh? You might then go on to argue that in the past pop music was more 'real', or simply better musically. To quote Abigail of 'The Crucible', "Oh posh!" Granted, some popular music was meaningful, but the same could be said for the pop music today. There have always been svengalis or songwriters who effectively wrote the entire top 40 - be it Phil Spector, Stannard & Rowebottom, or Max Martin. Does it really make a difference? I'm guessing not. It's not rocket science - it's merely the expression of basic human emotion to a beat. Let's face it - in 30 years time our children will go out clubbing, come home and say "hey Mum/Dad - that Baby One More Time is one funky-ass tune!" If they're particularly 'cool' they might talk of its "novelty value", but it's just pop. There to be enjoyed, not scrutinised. Certainly, some pop music is better than others. Even within the future "kitsch", some is better than others. Who Let The Dogs Out stands out as one example of a song I hope I never find any novelty value in. Please do not interpret this as a pseudo-intellectual defense of teenybopper tastes. I merely defend what is in need of defending. If Deepti was complaining about how music shouldn't have meaning (and I wasn't doing an essay like I was last time), I would jump in with a spirited defense of deep and meaningful music. But that's hardly required at the moment. back more genre theory |