Extreme Pop

[koganbot]

I posted this over on the rolling teenpop thread.

xhuxk was talking to me about Decibel magazine, which devotes itself to extreme metal, and after I got off the phone I got the idea that if you could designate some things "extreme metal" you should also be able to designate things "extreme pop."

So, my nominations for EXTREME POP would include:

Mariah Carey (esp. her 1991 peak) because she's just fuckin' extreme, and 'cause she squeaks.
Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming to Take Me Away" because it's extremely silly and irritating and because the flipside is the same song played backwards which causes people to shoot themselves in the head.
The Veronicas' "4ever" for its deliriously gorgeous harmonies.
Boney M for being guilelessly eclectic.
Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park," because someone left the cake out in the rain.
Lindsay Lohan's video for "Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)"
Johnny Ray
The Shangri-Las
Little Richard

You can figure out what's extreme about the last three. This list is just to get the concept going.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

do decibel cover extreme false metal?

[koganbot]

Well, xhuxk queried the editor about doing a column on not-so-extreme metal, and the editor told him, "xhuxk, we're about extreme metal."

But since extreme metal will not welcome extreme false metal, EXTREME POP WILL, hence:

Poison for the "I Want Action" video, which is extreme candy-colored transvestitism.
Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" for being extremely on MTV all summer long, 1988.
Hilary Duff's "Rock this World" and "Girl Can Rock," because they're there.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Some - not all - happy hardcore and eurodance cover versions. (will elaborate as to which when iTunes is open)

That faster, harder, popper mix of Whigfield's "Saturday Night" cis posted a while ago.

Lieutenant Pigeon - "Mouldy Old Dough"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"Saturday Night" in original mix is pop but perhaps not EXTREME POP, though it was ubiquitous pop with its special dance, so the extremity (as with the Eurobosh cover versions), comes when something that is already pop is made more so - faster, buzzier, more immediate - and has its non-pop elements (me being bored with it) stripped out.

"Mouldy Old Dough" - I'll elaborate more on this when Popular reaches 1972 but though the combination of primitive piano-hammering (by an old granny) and the gutteral mumblings of a horrible tramp does not sound particularly pop, it was No.1 for several weeks and certainly sounds like a limit being pushed - a particular kind of British pop jollity (the crowd gathering round the old joanna) turning stompy and aggressive.

[koganbot]

Thank you greatly for the elaboration.

Eloise-a

[(Anonymous)]

Formative-a influnce-a on-a, Mahhk-a,E-ah, Smiiith-a-? don-a

[koganbot]

Hey folks, give your reasons (e.g., "Doop, for extremely rhyming with Betty Boop"), seeing as I haven't heard most of what you batch listen to.

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

Courtney Loves Mono is both Extreme Pop and Extreme metal. It is the most impt song of the last at least half decade.

[koganbot]

The most extreme song on her album, however, is "Life Despite God." But I'm not sure if it's extreme rock or extreme what. Extreme Courtney. My favorite song on the album, but is it pop?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

agreed - I find 'Life Despite God' astonishing rather than listenable though, so maybe it's extreme avant-garde along the lines of, I dunno, Diamanda Galás? Certainly Courtney's vocals are on a similar level of intensity.

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't extreme pop be the sort of pop that alienates the dilletante by its agressive popness, if we're following the metal precedent? Like, say Roll Call by D&C, rather than someone like the Shangri Las, who leave doors open to fans of other genres?

[koganbot]

But lots of music becomes popular because it attracts the dilettante, means different things to different people, etc. "Pop" is a "genre" that welcomes crossovers.

New subcategory of "extreme pop": extreme crossover pop. "Hey Ya." "Since U Been Gone." "Who Let the Dogs Out." But "Pon de Replay" and "S.O.S." don't count - even though they've crossed extremely, they aren't extreme in doing so.

For a while in the late '80s, "crossover" was a quasi-generic name, more the name of a radio format than a music, but the music that was driving the crossover was what was variously known as "freestyle" or "Latin hip-hop" - Exposé and Company B and Cover Girls and Cynthia and Judy Torres - which I guess was heard as a middle ground betw. Bananarama and L.L. Cool J and so became the fulcrum that allowed the radio station (KMEL in San Francisco, for instance) to play both. But freestyle was really a new form of disco.

Extreme pseudo middle-ground pop.

"crossover "as quasi-generic

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, early (way pre-Revolta)disco seemed like a crossover time-space express, like on the Nicky Siano comp (see my "Siano The Times" in villagevoice.com archive)don

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

i think that it wouldnt have been the most extreme song on the album, if it wasnt for the amazing, strange video, that video for me is so important, because it bridges the witchy woman stevie nix/punk rock queen past with something "new".

i think that what is extreme about these people, is an awareness of their own artifice and their own realness, and how those depth bombs of concepts can be used in concordance... (so life despite god, while a masterpeice, is too earnest and not artifical enough, to be extreme)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My defn of extreme pop = pop to which my entire reaction is basically "what the fucking fuck????" and which makes me think that the performer is completely insane

Christina Aguilera - 'Make Over'

because it shamelessly lifts, note for note, the melody of the Sugababes' 'Overload', safe in the knowledge that no American will have heard it before. Then it proceeds to filter it through a completely insane mariachi/flamenco/hair metal/powerballad purée - the insistence of the castanets alone would put this into the extreme category, and that's before we consider the hysterical stabbing treated strings and Xtina's own bonkers, strung-out holler.

True Steppers ft Dane Bowers & Victoria Beckham - 'Out Of Your Mind'

as discussed recently on a Now poll

I don't know if Shakira is too self-consciously mad to be extreme, I think she is (the Outkast 'wacky' rule, though she is not as bad as them).

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I'm having a hard time with the concept, although I like Lex's definition. I remember having that reaction quite clearly when I first saw (or maybe it was heard) Gala. "Freed From Desire" was positively martial, her voice like a series of flat, shouted commands - it took me a while to decide whether she couldn't sing or didn't want to.

Perhaps if you were a club-goer, this was perfectly normal pop, but for me it seems absolutely surreal when I first heard it on the radio (and seeing the videos only reinforced the feeling, I remember wondering whether they were produced for some goth aerobics tape that we in Kyiv were oblivious to).

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Anything involving the Crazy Frog = extreme pop: because it pushes anyone who regards themself as an arbiter of 'taste' to gag on their cornflakes. Reading an article on world cup songs at the weekend, and none of the interviewees mentioned the CF effort, although it was mentioned in the lead-in to the piece: perhaps none of them had heard it but I prefer to think they couldn't bring themselves to stoop so low!

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Some Prince.

Not the "fuck" stuff (Sister, Darling Nikki), because that isn't particularly extreme for pop, I guess, not now, anyway, but the "headfuck" stuff eg. and esp. If I Was Your Girlfriend. Extreme because of the sonics, I guess, the tweaked voice(s), the Camille "backstory" the first 12 seconds or so with the strings, the sampled voice, the wedding march that becomes the slow crawl of the beat, the words, you know, I'm no writer, sorry...

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

"When You Were Mine" also. Sonically: mix between sparse drum machine soul and new wave yes yes which is weird for Prince, maybe, and the lyrics have new wave geekery ("you were...kinda sorta my best friend") which go all expansive when they sit next to IIWYG-style stuff like "I used to let you wear all my clothes" and "he was sleeping inbetween the two of us"...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

It's so hard for me to call these extreme, given that I grew up with them. That said, it took me ages to come around to "When Doves Cry," which I do remember thinking "This is not a SONG" for weeks, finding it unlistenable in a way that very few songs ever have been.

matt of coldcut's definition of a hook =

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

A STUPID NOISE TO GRAB YOUR HEAD

this x (more than n) = --> towards EP

where n = some number or something

My Definition of a Boombastic Pop Style

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

One possible definition: a pop song with instructions for its utter transformation, or its dissolution into chaos, tattooed on its arm. Signposts for this include hysteria, insanity, infantilism, nonsense, noise, convolutedness, overproduction, repetition, poetry, and prog. (Didn't the pre-Socratics argue that total, undifferentiated order is also a form of chaos?)

Re: My Definition of a Boombastic Pop Style

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, my examples: Pérez Prado and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

Cis suggested this morning that 'librarian' by Hefner might be "extreme indie" - asking the same all-or-nothing commitment to genre as extreme metal, by which logic extreme pop might be... Angels by Robbie Williams.

Extreme Lunch

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I dunno if anything can simultaneously be "indie" and "extreme" in this sense (as in "EXTREME POP") because indie as a social construct (not genre) signals a kind of acceptable, or maybe accepted, level of extremity. When an artist is kicked out of/not included in the indie category, like post-Matrix Liz Phair or Courtney Love, it's possible to become EXTREME POP.

This seems closely related to the "free lunch"...like the more free lunches a song has to offer, the more (potentially) EXTREME it is.

Daphne and Celeste are EXTREME POP because they don't give a fuck. Eminem (usually) isn't, because he says he doesn't give a fuck but actually does.

"Hypocrite" is EXTREME POP, "Billy S" isn't (I also don't think self-consciousness disallows EXTREME POP, "Hypocrite" counters that, although smug self-consciousness certainly does, "Billy S" supports that). M2M is EXTREME POP, Marion Raven and Marit Larsen are not (Marit is closer), because neither of them would stick a Bee Gees chorus in the middle of one of their songs without batting an eyelash. Maybe Marit would do something like this someday, but she'd bat one eyelash, i.e. wink.

I just realized that the Girl Authority version of "Hollaback Girl" is EXTREME POP and the original isn't. Hmmm

The A*Teens and Devo 2.0 are both EXTREME POP because they want it and they go get it, West End Girls aren't because they don't and they don't.

Aqua are EXTREME POP because they're Danish bimbos, Toy-Box because they're Danish dorks. Both know they're funny instead of thinking they're funny, which is why Daze and Ch!pz are not EXTREME POP.

Re: Extreme Lunch

[koganbot]

Hi Bedbug

Indie is extreme to the extent that it's extremely tepid; the more extreme it is the more tepid it feels, at any rate. I like the idea "accepted level of extremity"; would "required level of 'extremity'" be another way of putting it?

New quick definition of "extreme pop": "extreme music that isn't boring." But perhaps I need to come up with an auxiliary concept: "extreme semipop," to designate "music that has the potential to be popular because it isn't boring even if it isn't yet popular."

Missing comments from skillextric

[koganbot]

The missing comments upthread between freakytigger and my "Thank you for the elaboration" are these elaborations from skillextric:

skillextric
2006-06-04 06:52 pm

Doop
Barry Ryan's 'Eloise'

skillextric
2006-06-04 07:28 pm

Reasons:

Doop - marries the Charleston to the handbag, then turns the speed up to about one and three-quarters; lyrics appear to have been composed by asking vocalists to improvise free-associative riffs on the word 'doop', which results in them coming out with "doop-doop-dip-dippy-dee-doop-doo, doopy-doop, dippy-dee-dee-dee-doop-doo"; outward cutesiness hides song that, if you attempt to actually dance to it, will quite possibly result in your arms falling off inside the first ninety seconds; three minutes eight seconds long; idea of 'change of pace' consists of 'insert drum roll'.

Eloise - from 'the 1960's'; title consists of girl's name specifically chosen for purposes of rhyming; proceeds to exhaust more or less all of these rhyming possibilities by the end of the first verse; responds to this by taking to referring to girl as "Eloise-a"; phalanx of backing singers repeatedly bullied into submission; piano masquerading as harpsichord masquerading as theme tune to costume drama about highwaymen, possibly starring Richard Chamberlain; sounds like it should contain Biblical overtones, yet somehow doesn't; singer essentially spends entire song shouting, but attempts to disguise this by throwing in some random high notes which only succeed in making him sound A Bit Deranged, which is then confirmed by the bit where he starts screaming "MY ELOISE-A! MY ELOISE-A! I BREAK DOWN ON MY KNEES TA PLEEZE YA!"; five minutes long; contains overly-dramatic 'quiet bit' which is quite possibly the least understated part of the entire song; despite wide variety of obvious flaws, overwhelms with sheer brute charisma. Which really is not a very easy thing to do at all.

skillextric
2006-06-04 07:28 pm

Also, both these songs have got really fantastic trumpets.