90s "pop" music

Yep, I like that and here's a good, popular one from David Byrne from 1997.



And of a different feel:



And I can't not post this, as this is the song that got me really exploring 90s pop.



And things like this that push the boundaries of art pop song length, but not really, cause it's also loungey Indietronica:



Edited by Logan - April 18 2020 at 04:00

Icarium wrote: There is the interesting sounds of trip-hop also mostly of 90s origin, Massive Attack, Portishead and more And the early post-rock Tortoise, Goodspeed My Black Emperor whom saw some widespread appeal.

Cristi wrote: Some of the choice here I do not see as "pop". Therefore I officially declare I do not know what pop music is.

Try to pop a balloon, record it, then sing about it.

Like I said in my original post, "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." This is fairly typical approach for me. I like that openness, and I like open sorts of questions that give people flexibility to approach things in their own way, and be creative thinkers in their own way.

So I meant by that that its really fuzzy, there are no defined boundaries. Amorphous meaning "without a clearly defined shape or form". But feel free to define those boundaries according to your perspective. I hasn't intended to get into deep epistemology here. I don't know anything with absolute certainty, but I'm more confident of some things than others.

It is very vague conception, it can cover a huge amount of ground and incorporate and crossover with many genres. It is something I have a particular feel for, but can't easily define. Others might have a different feel. To some they just think a sort of vanilla pop, and discount, say, various types of art pop. It's like Prog, sometimes you just feel something to be Prog, but not everyone can agree on the definition or boundaries. It's very diverse in styles. Some consider rock music to be pop music, and folk to be a kind of pop music. Poppy of course could cover a lot of what we have in PA, especially in categories such as Crossover.

I was hoping people wouldn't worry too much about how others view it, but come at this from their own perspective. It can be wide or much more limited.

For one thing, 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 punk, dadaist pop, neoclassical pop, gangster pop, singer-songwriter pop, lounge pop, synthpop, dream pop, vanilla pop, lollipop...

If there's something you like from the 90s that you think is pop, then I say go for it. This is quite the free-wheeling topic into 90s music.

EDIT: This might help. Here is the 90s pop chart at rateyourmusic: CLICK

Flaming Lips. that's one I like mentioned there. Just as prog covers much ground at PA, that chart covers a lot of ground. The more variety of pop styles one hears and the more familiar with such labels, and pop subcategories, the more I expect that conception would grow.

Edited by Logan - April 18 2020 at 05:47

^ Fun.

I counted Eels in the pop world. Indie-pop/ chamber pop/ singer-songwriter meets alternative rock.

I'm not interested in the really commercial vanilla pop music generally. I much prefer art pop, types of chamber pop, avant pop, kinds of psychedelic and folk pop, progressive pop and other types of pop. There is so much diversity when one explores beyond vanilla, banal, commercial pop (the typical chart topping hits)

I didn't know Hedningarna or Sorten Muld, but I'd count that music you posted as pop surely (pop of the folktronica/ trip hop ilk). I really liked that song you embedded the video for, thanks. :)

Edited by Logan - April 18 2020 at 07:24

Cristi wrote: Some of the choices here I do not see as "pop". Therefore I officially declare I do not know what pop music is.

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.

Cristi wrote: 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. like I said, I don't know what pop music is anymore.  then what is the difference between pop music and mainstream music?

I was trying to say before that pop can mean more than one thing. There is more than one definition and it can be a very nebulous concept.

There is not necessarily any difference between mainstream music and pop. The two can be synonymous. It depends on the usage. Mainstream is easier to define, since pop need not necessarily be mainstream but that which is more "out there" for instance adopts and adapts mainstream qualities in the music. I find certain qualities, such as verse/chorus structure in pop that I might not find in all mainstream music. For the way I think of it, not all pop is mainstream and not all mainstream music is pop, but there are different working definitions and parameters. You're not wrong to use the term in one way, just recognise that it can be used in different ways. Terms often have multiple definitions, and some can be very amorphous indeed.

EDIT: By the way, some define pop specifically by the structure of the songs: the verse, chorus, bridge structure and so will ague that, say, a particular long Prog song is really just an extended pop song because it follows that structure. What is pop to me is less rigorous, or systematic/ structured, and involves my pop music associations to a considerable extent (my sense of it is at least not so conscious and rigid as with others). But what sounds like pop to me, you might not associate with pop/ popular music.

Still thinking about this: I would suggest instead of thinking, "I don't know what pop music is anymore", think "I still know what pop has meant to me and it can continue to mean that, but I see that it can mean more than that to others even if I don't get understand it yet, or I never will". With an open-mind and exposure, and bit of research, you might get to understand how diverse it can be. You might stick with your parameters and that's fine. Like I said, it doesn't make you wrong, you are just working with different parameters. Being here here should hopefully be a learning experience and a means to grow for all of us. That's been one of the joys of being at this site, and having debates and discussions, it's opened up my world a bit and made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew. There is huge amount that I don't know about pop music or music generally, and I don't claim to be an authority on the subject. I've formulated ideas over many years, but those ideas are always subject to change when presented with new evidence or a compelling argument.... I'm no absolutist, and I am ultimately agnostic when it comes to all things.

Edited by Logan - April 18 2020 at 09:05

Pop music is anything and the variations of music that came out of Irvin Berlin / Cole Porter / George Gershwin and any bumps, scratches, stylings, drugs, antidotes and streams of thougths and ideals they have gatherd under their nails. If i got to summerise a theory

Some of it inspired by Howard Goodals documentaries.

Edited by Icarium - April 18 2020 at 09:03

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.

Edited by Logan - April 18 2020 at 10:43