Pop music and I have a tenuous relationship. I have tried for years to be a better poptimist, letting myself get lost in the catchy singalongs and feel-good beats. But I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that most pop music is just vapid and corny.
But every once in a while, a pop singer will rise from the din of mass-produced hacks and sugar-coated copycats to create something truly special.
Michael Jackson was one of them. Lady Gaga is another. And now, we have Lorde.
After Hummingbird, Local Natives got busy. In 2013, they played a total of 188 shows, a figure that earned them the title of the hardest working band in the world from NME.
While the instrument-hopping arrangements on Hummingbird were born out of necessity (having lost their bassist an album earlier), after nearly 200 shows they became quite familiar in their skin.
So when they went to record its follow up, they weren’t afraid to push boundaries and adopt new sonic palettes. They knew what their voice sounded like.
Which is good news, because Sunlit Youth is a massive departure.
Yesterday, I told the story about how Imogen Heap turned me into a poptimist. And while that narrative informed much of the narrative for that post, this record actually deserves most of the credit for that.
Because if we’re going linearly (rather than alphabetically), the moment that shattered my aversion for all things pop was when I logged onto MySpace and listened to the featured track of the week: a mournful, vocoder-only ballad called “Hide and Seek.”
In the fall of 2005, I started my freshman year of college. I was a certified scene kid: I wore girl pants and band t-shirts, painted my nails black. Almost everything I listened to was guitar-based.
Then, I discovered this record (and its spiritual sequel, Imogen Heap’s Speak For Yourself).
And God as my witness, it made me a poptimist.
While Autobahn found Kraftwerk embracing a more robotik sound than their early largely-improvised avant-garde Krautrock, it still had a few fleshy bits sticking to its chrome exoskeleton.
Trans-Europe Express finds their cybernetic mutation nearly complete.
In the last few months, after decades of ignorance, I’ve developed a strange fascination with the pop duo Hall & Oates. Judging by their enduring (and excellent) singles that still dominate “Hits of Yesterday and Today” stations, I had expected their output to stick pretty close to the middle of the road.
I was wrong.
For a movement birthed out of the late 70s’ punk scene, it didn’t take long for new wave to become entirely married to pop.
For years, Daft Punk has shown the world glimpses of pop music’s future. Tracks like “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” or “Human After All” broke through the surface of pop consciousness like an elusive White Whale before diving back down into the depths.
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There’s always been a weird sort of relationship between the independent music scene and Top 40 pop. Often, indie often derides pop for lack of artistic integrity, separating itself from the cheap tricks of pop to make serious music. But there are other times where indie tries to beat pop at its own game, shoving even more hooks and dance hooks into three minutes, which always ends up dripping with irony.
Then, there’s CHVRCHES.
It is not difficult to argue that the Jackson 5 were a novelty act. But it’s almost impossible to dismiss them as a such. Sure, the lead single’s target audience doesn’t seem to be much older than Michael’s own twelve years, and yeah, all of their originals (four of the twelve tracks) were written by a Motown Records production team dubbed The Corporation (not very punk rock) that was tailor made to write songs for the Jackson 5, but I defy anyone to tell me that they weren’t some of the best performers the world has ever seen.