90s "pop" music

Belle and Sebastian anyone ??

^ I love that. Interestingly, I almost certainly would have posted that myself by tomorrow.

Another favourite of a certain ilk from the time (Britpop, art rock, chamber pop). Thought I posted this already, but I don\t see it (mind you, I have been awake for more than 48 hours).

It's from Pulp's This is Hardcore from 1998.

the Verves first album "A Storm in Heaven" is abpretty rare treat in sound exploration, with exploration of soundscapes, a Velvet Underground/Krautrock/Floydian feel. Made before post rock were a thing, it incorpirate early post-rock sounds. Oppestitr to Talk Talk and Radiohead they become less experimental on later albums.

Edited by Icarium - April 19 2020 at 03:15

So, following past discussion, I will attempt to define pop music in various ways (hadn't put enough effort into that before) since I don't hold to any one definition and to me it is a very nebulous thing. It can mean different things. Note: I am no musicologist and am hardly an authority on the matter, but that never stops me from having opinions and trying. I have done research into this, not as deeply as I would have liked, and shared related thoughts and inferences, plus some "unfunny humour" as I am wont to do (now there's an oxmoron, but then I am something of an oxy moron, oxy meaning sharp, and a moron being dull-witted, which presents its own oxymoronic qualities)

First off, I wrote that this is about pop genres and poppy music, so I should define poppy.

Poppy: a flower, that thing worn on Remembrance Day that may poke you with that needle if you're not careful, or having pop-like qualities (GED - Greg's Egregious Dictionary)

Poppy, poppish, popesque, or popsiquescent if one prefers, or even popalicious.

Clearly to understand the notion of poppy, one must understand conceptions of pop music. There is overlap here:

1. Any music that is popular at a given time and has popular appeal (antonym: unpopular music). Mainstream music.*

* Note that some art pop artists, progressive pop artists, experimental pop artists,or avant pop artists (all can be conflated) sought to deconstruct pop music, to marry the popular with the esoteric, to elevate pop from its lowly roots to a serious art-form, or to create a dialectic between the low art and high art, a sort of conversation and synthesis of two worlds. Some of it is a celebration of the low, some of it is a commentary on the low arts and popular culture. Some is very conceptual. Some artists tried to buck the trends, played with genre bending, form and structure, and even set itself up against the mainstream and the industrial nature of pop manufacture, one might say Pop in Oppsition (PIO/ Avant Pop). Some pop music is more complex than others. There is music deemed pop that not only is not commercially successful but has limited commercial appeal. I will discuss some of these pop sub categories after this list, and talk more about that so-called pop music that might be seen as antithetical to pop.

2. Any music that is simple, has a strong beat, is catchy and is easy for the plebs to digest (antonyms: academic music, esoteric music).

3. Music that is designed to be quickly consumed, shallow, the fast food of music, and is ideal for certain radio formats (antonym: radio unfriendly deep gourmet but indigestible music).*

*Note: some pop is much more timeless, I'd say, than others, and can be deeply emotionally resonant and is more likely to be returned to again and again, and has achieved a classic status (others a cult status).

4. All music that has had popular appeal, including rock, punk, folk music, crooner music, jazzy music, New Wave, BootyWave etc. (antonym: non-popular unappealing music such as Hairy Booty Puddle).

5. Music distinct from rock and jazz that has a softer quality, is catchy and usually follows the verse, chorus, bridge structure (antonym: loud 'n heavy duty jazzcore brutal metal).

6. A modern music phenomenon with verse, chorus structure designed for the charts that is simple and included things such as soul and types of R&B (antonym: stone age rock on skull bonking, although that could provide the beat, hmm...).

7. Any music which is easily accessible to the listener (antonym: music that has been safely locked away).

8: To quote from ExittheLemming "short(er) musical forms* accessible by the widest possible audience with verse/chorus and middle eight structures, repeated 'hooks' at climactic points, consistent cyclic rhythms, craftsmanship rather than artistry, simple lyrical themes..." (antonym: EntertheLemming).

9. Justin Bieber's Baby, Baby, Baby Ooh" and that kind of crap. (antonym: Justin Bieber and that kind of good).

10. A diverse set of styles that fall under a pop banner, this includes art pop, sophisto pop, avant pop, chamber pop, baroque pop, lounge pop, jazz pop, pop-rock, pop-punk, bubbblesgum pop, psychedelic pop, pop electronica, experimental pop, sunshine pop, Arabic pop, K-pop, J-pop, Britpop, Raga pop, progressive pop, singer-songwriter and many, many more (antonym: a non-diverse,non-set of non-styles that fall under a non-pop banner).

11. All of the above and more (antonym: none of the above and less).

What these subcategories are thought to have in common is that they all draw on types of popular music and, generally, have accessible qualities . Some will hybridise with other genres, but still have a pop feel or keep popular music components, but the structure may be changed and experimented with.

Take Avant Pop and Experimental Pop for instance:

Avant Pop is considered to be music that is forward-thinking, innovative, and experimental. It is said to balance an avant garde approach or avant garde approaches with stylistic elements from popular music. It may hybridise avant garde and academic music styles with popular music styles. Commonly it can still be catchy while being different. Bands like Kraftwerk, Can, and Tangerine Dream have all been linked to avant pop, as have bands/artists such as Henry Cow, Slapp Happy, After Dinner, Electric Storm, and Laurie Anderson. So have Scott Walker, David Sylvian, Kate Bush, Nico, and Bjork. The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" is considered an example of avant pop for how it incorporated musique concrete techniques, Indian elements, and avant garde techniques into a pop composition.

Art Pop is loosely defined,and can include a huge amount of music deemed artistic. It overlaps with avant pop and various other classifications. It has been defined as any pop style that deliberately aspires to the formal values of classical music and poetry. It is commonly linked to post-modernism and is said to be a breakdown of the boundaries between both high and low culture, and it plays with signs and signifiers, and so do memes (I still like LOL Cats).*

Note: Art is sometimes considered in contrast to industry, so art pop may not be as commercial, but much that is considered art pop was very commercially successful. Like pop itself, art pop has various connotations and parameterisations (those parameters being amorphous). I try not to box myself (that might give me a black eye) into what are essentially fuzzy boxes (boxes with no clear edges or boundaries, some that I might call hyperboxes, like tesseracts, get it?). Sometimes art is just a term used by snobs to elevate music they like,I might say. Wait,I just did say that. Art can be in the eye of the beholder and beheraer, but in some contexts art is held to be in contrast to industry (I wrote a paper called the Art of the Industry for Sociology about film, and spent much time talking about so-called Art House film. Mostly it was about ideology). Art Pop can be subversive, deconstructing pop conventions, and melding with other forms of music (notably that which is considered to be high-brow art music, or esoterica).

Progressive Pop is music that tries to break with the pop genre's standard formula. It can be likened to progressive rock that tried to break free of the constraints of the rock canon. Progressive pop may have extended instrumentation, break from traditional verse/chorus expectations bring in non-pop influences but still have an underlying pop aesthetic,or pop qualities. Unlike much pop, harmony, simple though pop harmonies ten to be, commonly is not its backing structure. It is generally more complex than other forms of pop, long songs are common, and some might call much of it progressive rock lite -- a crossover between the world of progressive rock and certain pop formats.

Experimental Pop can be difficult to categorise within traditional musical boundaries. It commonly pushes elements of existing popular forms into other forms, or new forms, to create something new and different (a hybridisation of forms), It often will utilise experimental music techniques such as those of musique concrete or incorporate unusual sounds into the music such as the sound of a fat man eating pork chops, or a baby sliding around the floor in a bacon diaper. It can experiment with form, sound, and technique.*

* I would place music such as Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" under this label.

Some pop can and will play with form a lot and draw on various genre inspirations while still having popular music qualities. Not all pop must be popular, some just draws on popular music styles, and can be musically related to pop genres. It can be sound, a structure, an approach, all three of those,and a measure of popularity. It can incorporate various styles,,and sometimes, I would say, you just have to experience it and related music. It can cover a huge amount of music. It is sometimes defined by what it is not, for instance, "It's not Academic Music", but it can aspire to academic music and draw on academic music. It is what it is, it is what it is not, and some might say that both statements can be true.

It can be a very amorphous label that can mean different things to different people and mean different things at different times. Some might say, it's silly to deal with all these labels, and we should just be talking about "music". Some will not associate some music with pop that others label pop, to which I would then ask, "How then would you classify and describe the music?" "What sorts of music would you relate it to?" "What do you think influenced it?"

With pop music having so many connotations, imagine how much music could be considered poppy/ poppish, popesque, popsiquescent?   For the purposes of this topic, I would say if you would describe the music as poppy, or of a pop genre, then it fits. I wanted to focus on certain styles of music that get associated with pop, but defining that is very open to interpretation. This why I put pop in quotes in the title and spoke of the amorphous qualities of both pop as genre classifications and in regards to poppy music. Pop is a mainstream music classification, refers to popular music, and has genre implications. There are those that draw on generic pop and play with the conventions and will not have mainstream success, some will. Experimental pop can still be catchy and accessible. Much of my favourite pop is playful.

Of course there are many other possible definitions I didn't add and there's much more to say. That said, I hope that clears things up a bit, or it may muddy things even more. Pop is like a box of chocolates, some is sickly sweet, some is bitter, and a lot might leave a bad taste in the mouth -- rather like soda pop. I would hate liver-flavored carbonated drinks. Pop is commonly catchy, but then so is the Corona Virus. I hear certain poppy music qualities that make me think pop when others might think, "That ain't what I call pop." I hold multiple conceptions of pop music, but pop to me is something of a feeling to the music, often that is associated with the singing, but some music I easily lump in under the pop umbrella that is completely instrumental. There are structural considerations and various associations to be made. I don't deeply intellectualise it (as may be all too apparent with this little essay). I associate it with other music that I think of as pop. It is a very associative process, and that's how I tend to think about music under the Prog Umbrella generally -- ProgUm and PopUm I coined such things as. Those catchy verses for me are often a sign, but there's more than that. It need not be simple, some pop music can be very emotionally resonant, it can be deep, much is hardly disposable and does stand the test of time and receives reputable critical acclaim, both at the time and decades later. Sometimes it's just plain fun for me, but some of it really does move me, and not just move my booty.

Note: I have edited this to add more thoughts. Feel free to critique and add to it. I know it could be much better. I spent hours on it, and I hope it's somewhat worthy of comment and consideration. It would be improved with citations and quotes. I'll add it to the first post, since if those goes on many pages it may be more neglected. Many coming into topics also refer to the opening post to get a clearer picture of what a topic is about and this I would have liked to have prepared for my opening post to set the stage more and open up more conversation.

Edited by Logan - April 19 2020 at 13:33

Logan wrote: I guess I didn't address that in my follow-up post to Cristi, or related issues in my initial response to him well enough to follow. My point has been that these terms can have different usages. My point would be that Garth Brooks could have been considered an avant-country artist (I don't know his music well but that doesn't matter) if he was considered forward-thinking, innovative (my following experimental music sentence was also meant to be taken as referring back to that sentence) under that definition, which parallels what I've been trying to say about Pop music, that it can be defined in different ways. Pop can be a nebulous term, it can cover a huge amount of ground or relatively little depending upon the person/parameters, and just because I may use it one way (it doesn't only mean one thing to me), and use examples that he doesn't consider to be Pop, does not mean that his usage is necessarily wrong. The usage and parameters can vary. I definitely was not implying that pop music does NOT denote popular, I was trying to say across posts that it can have different usages. That extrapolation is antithetical to the points I've been trying to make, and would be the wrong inference taking into account what I have written across various posts in this topic. I recognise that all of the music in PA could be considered pop (I brought that up on the last page as I recall). It's not how I;m using it for the purposes of this topic, but I did tell others to define and parameterise it as they see fit. So what I've been trying to tell Christi from when he first brought up "Some of the choices here I do not see as "pop". Therefore I officially declare I do not know what pop music is" (I know he was kind of joking) is that Pop can mean different things and have different parameters. In my initial post, this is what I was addressing with, "So what is some pop or poppy music that you like from the 90s? Of course that can cover a huge amount of music. Use your own discretion to define what are amorphous parameters when it comes to pop genres and poppy music." Avant Pop is a label that is used by some whether one likes it or not, I listed many in an earlier post. "There are many subgenres of pop, which includes art pop, jazz pop, pop-rock, avant pop, baroque pop, pop-pop, chamber pop, soda pop, chanson, Arabic pop, adult contemporary, pimple pop, bubblegum pop, folk pop, pop punk, jangle [pop], dadaist pop, neoclassical pop, gangster pop, singer-songwriter pop, lounge pop, synthpop, dream pop, vanilla pop, lollipop", some more serious than others, just seeing if close attention was being paid to my response, or actually I was just being absurd with a few of those. By the way, Avant-Pop is not a oxymoron as I see it or use the term, because the two are not opposites, unlike, say, regressive progressive rock or unpopular popular music. And I am confident that it does not necessarily present a contradiction. I expect I may have muddied the waters more. Sorry for the repetition. I have been doing too much of the talking in that exchange (I lack concision), which doesn't make for the best of discussions. I should have asked some questions back, like "How do you define and categories Pop?" But I tend to follow at least half of the Prisoner axiom "Questions are a burden to others." I'd make a terrible interviewer, but I don't like interviews, I like dialectic.

^ Ugh, such long-winded flatulence again.

I forgot to mention two of my earliest exposure to The Cardigans (I really do love such stuff). I like lots of Indie Pop, and have long loved much loungey music:





Lot of what I consider pop as a genre, or poppy, had to do with a certian catchiness (epsecially true of things like Bubblegum pop), but other cant be very different, and some haunting.



This Anna Calvi Byrne, not from the 90s, from the last decade, I also consider to be pop (I love it):



With Air, this was a bona fide pop hit:





Edited by Logan - April 18 2020 at 18:49

Logan wrote: Cristi wrote: ^ isn't avant-pop an oxymoron?  I don't think so, most certainly not necessarily.   Avant means forward-thinking, innovative, advancing, progressive, and pop can be all of those things. There is a category of pop called experimental pop, as well as progressive pop. Now unpopular popular music is an oxymoron, but not all music that is considered to be pop under a wider usage is actually popular. It can be funny when retro bands get called Progressive Rock (i.e. regressive progressive rock), but we don't always take the progressive literally anymore, or treat the progressive in an adjectival sense. It's much the same with pop music. It can describe styles of music, certain mainstream qualities to the music, and can be described by what it is not. Described against other types of music.... Pop can encompass a huge amount of music depending upon one's usage. A lot of Avant-Prog isn't truly avant-garde, a lot of progressive rock isn't truly progressive, and a lot of what can be considered to be pop isn't truly popular.

rogerthat wrote: What do we call something like Kate Bush's Sat On Your Lap?  Avant-pop seems like a good slot.  Much of that album (The Dreaming) as such.

Sure, or experimental progressive art pop, and I count Slapp Happy and Art Bears as having made Avant Pop music, and a a fair amount of Japanese music such as After Dinner, music by Charming Hostess.

What do we call something like Kate Bush's Sat On Your Lap?  Avant-pop seems like a good slot.  Much of that album (The Dreaming) as such.