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

[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