Originally conceived as a post on this thread here, but then it got unwieldy.
I’ve kind of been juggling this about in my head, with a whole bundle of bloody thoughts, but I’ve not got them in any kind of shape or order or anything (plus am mindful of ruddy disaster that was me parking a several thousand word caravan in the middle of yr taxonomy of vacuous pop thread). For the moment, songs that come to mind:
This is my favourite single of the past 10 years. There’s not really any surprises. It’s a country song, to all intents and purposes, Edwards kind-of berating, kind-of envying the one who got the fame while she toiled – all well worn ground. And it’s my favourite single of the past 10 years. I’m not sure I care about the lyrics (well, apart from a reference to Marrrrrdy Muck Sorely, which I think I sort of adore cos there’s no fucking reason it should mean anything to me, other than I recognise his name from some ice hockey game on the Mega Drive I was bloody awful at, and I could go further about how happy that makes me but not the point). I love the playing. I mean, it hits spots. I feel as though I know just what it’s doing, and simultaneously that renders me almost utterly incapable of articulating the reasons I love it.
Jason DeRulo has had three straight top 3 singles in the UK this year. I know that one of the tropes on the Jukebox (and, I believe, elsewhere) is to bundle him, Jay Sean, Iyaz and I think someone else together as one person, but the thing is that DeRulo looks like he might actually have legs, and I cannot latch onto a single distinguishing feature about the man. Given his breakthrough hit had a much more identifiable gimmick than Jay Sean or Iyaz, in that it seemed to entirely owe its success to the Imogen Heap sample, the fact his two subsequent singles have actually topped its success (over here at least) seems weird cos they’re just… I simply don’t get the appeal. Despite his almost utter lack of a unique selling point. Jason DeRulo’s everywhere at the moment. Why?
This… I dunno, it’s not dissimilar to the Kathleen Edwards thing, a beat-hitting type wotsit, but the number one-ness of it. I dunno. Something, I feel, clicks between me and the Shapeshifters. It’s a record that wants to agree with me without knowing the first thing about me. Like (and this is gonna sound fucking trite) it is putting itself out there through the medium of familiarity and hoping – needing – to click with the listener as an end result. Isn’t it? “Lola’s Theme” succeeds because of familiarity, because you know where you are and you’ve been there before and you like going there, and so do the Shapeshifters. It’s a gamble. I feel like, to like it in the precise way I do, there needs to be something similar in the listener, they have to feel it in the way I do otherwise anything nice I have to say about it doesn’t work. Which isn’t a helpful way of handling things.
And I fucking hate “Free” by Ultra Nate. I am not sure how this fits in, but I had a sudden urge to yell it out because I hate the genre of songs which is all “You are free to do what you want to do AND NOW YOU ARE GOING TO DO THIS BECAUSE I FUCKING SAY SO”. Into this genre, I would plonk:
Now… this feels unhelpful. Really unhelpful, because I bloody hate “Don’t Stop Moving”, because I don’t believe in it. This doesn’t feel like it wants the connection, it feels like it takes it for granted. It feels like it was written by cynics. It doesn’t feel alive. And yet I’m part of the problem. “Don’t Stop Moving” makes me feel like an utter fool because I not only do not love it but actively hate it, to the point that I basically think it’s evil. I feel like I’m getting off the point, but this song is a vulnerable point for me and I ought to talk about it elsewhere, maybe.
This might work better. I heard it on the radio in the car on the way back from a wedding at the weekend, none of that matters. The thing is, I heard this song, and it felt like every time the word “love” leaves Michael Bolton’s mouth, you could replace it with, say, Kim Jong-Il. Calpol. It made pop feel like the love industry. It felt exploitative, like love rendered through this lens was absolutely nothing. It felt black and bleak, not intentionally, not by design, but because (I feel the need to clumsily haul this back near some kind of point) it made everything feel so completely, utterly pointless. That’s all there is. Love is zilch. Pop is zilch. You really shouldn’t have bothered.
(to be continued)