Fluxblog 436: the origin of pop-as-genre
Plus new songs by Geese, girl_inc, Fievel Is Glauque, and Victoria Monét
The Origin Of Pop-As-Genre 1976-1996
[Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube]
This playlist lays out the story of how POP became a hybrid genre unto itself, distinct from its component parts in disco, rock, R&B, freestyle, house music, and hip-hop. The goal is to explain how by the time Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake arrived in the late 90s they were immediately understood as belonging to an established genre called POP, as opposed to being positioned as R&B acts. An extra bit of emphasis is placed on Madonna and Janet Jackson, who I see as the two most crucial artists in forming the modern conception of pop and pop stardom that became dominant in the 2010s with the ascent of artists like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift.
This playlist is very long, but is broken into five eras here so you can get a better sense of the implied narrative arc. The first section nods to the genre’s roots in disco but I don’t belabor the point as that moment is really a prelude to what starts in the early 80s as use of synthesizers and drum machines become increasingly common. As you move through this you can gradually hear the more “organic” qualities of rock and R&B get bred out of the sound as synthesizers and drum machines become defining elements of the POP aesthetic. I make some nods to R&B-based pop along the way but generally err on the side of leaving it out if it’s too R&B unless the song had a direct impact on the POP that came immediately in the wake of where this playlist cuts off. R&B has its own fascinating history of mutating with the times, and that’s a playlist for another day.
Between Giant Fires
Geese “Mysterious Love”
Cameron Winter sings like a guy totally in love with cool rock voices and is trying to inhabit as many of them as possible from moment to moment in any Geese song. Take “Mysterious Love” – from one line to another, he’s a little Mick Jagger, he’s a little Thurston Moore, he’s a little Lou Reed, he’s a little Jack White, he’s a tiny bit Tom Verlaine and Jarvis Cocker. He’s pulling from a lot of sources but the goal is emboding “cool rock guy,” a person with a lot of attitude who knows what’s up, who knows how to have a good time, who’s rarely predictable and is never uptight. He never sounds shy. You can tell Winter has a great sense of humor about what he’s doing, but also that he’s taking the job of rock and roll singer very seriously and pushing himself to his physical limits with absolute earnestness. This is the magic combination for rock music – fun and volatile and trashy and silly and flirty and thoroughly convinced of its own coolness.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Sick For What’s Clean
girl_irl “Bullseye”
“Bullseye” reminds me a bit of Tricky circa Pre-Millennium Tension and Angels With Dirty Faces, when he was trying to make his funk grooves as abrasive as possible to scare off anyone who liked the more overtly R&B qualities of Maxinquaye. But whereas his greatest stylistic trick was to double his breathy, muttered raps with the more soulful and angelic voice of Martina Topley-Bird, girl_irl embodies both his menace and Topley-Bird’s femme grace in her vocal on this song. The tone of the lyrics is kinda braggy and swaggy, but as much as she proclaims herself a goddess and roasts this other person she’s entangled with, the context seems messy and toxic enough that you question how she’s in this situationship if she’s so elevated and cool. But I think that’s a lot of the point, the idealized self-image punctured yet preserved.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Any Shape You Like Is Painted On The Night
Fievel Is Glauque “Dark Dancing”
“Dark Dancing” is a demo that Fievel Is Glauque decided to release as-is rather than fully flesh it out, and I think that was a wise decision in that this recording captures something I find distinct and interesting about them. That is, they write these sophisticated little songs steeped in jazz and mid-20th century adult-oriented pop but perform them very loose and off-the-cuff, which ends up highlighting their eccentricity and adding a touch of rawness and naivete that would typically be lost in a type of music dominated by slick professionals. There’s a twitchiness to their music too, particularly in Ma Clément’s vocal cadences. “Dark Dancing” has a lovely melody but the notes bunch up in odd ways, often moving a bit diagonal from where you think they’ll go. This approach could be abrasive, but for the most part it’s not, as Clément’s cool and calm voice makes every move seem totally rational.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Diamond Spinners In The Back
Victoria Monét “Cadillac (A Pimp’s Anthem)”
“Cadillac (A Pimp’s Anthem)” is essentially an answer record, with Victoria Monét claiming the classic pimp trope for women in a way that’s aspirational for some of the audience and affirming for the rest. This is a clever enough high concept, but the magic is in how effortlessly Monét fits into this mode, this mood, this whole motif. Her voice sounds great paired with that dank and slinky bass line, which is generic enough to indirectly reference a lot of funk and rap classics but to my ear is most directly evocative of Outkast’s “SpottieOttieDopalicious.” It’s sort of like musical cosplay but it really flatters everything about her voice and taste in melody, and it embraces fantasy enough that a line like “we women been winning since from the beginning of your whole life” rings true in this context even if in real life it’s kind of a… debatable notion.
Buy it from Amazon.
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• Evan Rytlewski interviewed Marnie Stern about her first album in a decade for Stereogum.
• Ninja Tune has decided to stop promoting Róisín Murphy’s new album in the wake of her revealing herself to be a TERF on Facebook. The label will also be donating all proceeds from album sales to organizations dedicated to combating transphobia. Good on them! I can’t get over the degree to which Murphy basically torched her career because she couldn’t shut up about this. Like, just on a self-preservation level how does a dance pop artist not understand they need LGBTQ people to have any sort of career?
• My friend Alan Hanson passed away this week. He was one of the funniest and most charismatic people I’ve ever known, and he was an exceptional writer. I recommend reading one of his recent projects, Take Surface Streets, in which he wrote about Los Angeles history through its geography. He had just published the first of a new “season” of posts, and sadly we’ll never get the rest.
