Sinister: Rock and pop?

[Stuart Gardiner]

On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, the duke of harringay wrote:

> > don't think it is possible to differentiate
> > between rock and pop (ie
> > popular) music. However I do think you can
> > differentiate between rock and
> > POP! (ie deliberately populist) music.
> 
> argh!  So now we also have a distinction between
> Pops!!  Phew... i'm not into it though.  Not at
> all.  I don't define Pop as being a shortened
> version of anything, be it 'popular' (where do you
> define the line between not popular and popular?
> is it in terms of 'sales', if so, what number?)
> nor 'populist' (by whose definition?  is this also
> tied to sales figures?  if B&S then go in to sell
> millions of record are they too 'populist'?).

What I meant by populist was people writing (and releasing) songs purely
because they know that it will sell. A couple of years ago there were
loads of boy bands doing just that; because Take That sold millions of
records in Britain, other people copied their formula (in some cases very
successfully). Whether they sold any records as a result is irrelevant -
the point is that that was their sole intention behind writing the song.
If B&S sell millions of records, that will not make them populist; but if
they did it by writing ropey ballads and going all-out for mass expoure
on the basis that it worked for the Spice Girls, then that would make
them populist. (Choirboy Belleandseb, bus driver Belleandseb, sporty
Belleandseb... can you imagine it?)

Where exactly one defines popular is always going to be arbitrary
(personally I'd have said getting on mainstream TV), but I don't think it
really matters; I don't have a problem with popular. But I do have a
problem with the unoriginality, naivity etc of being overtly populist,
something which thankfully noone could accuse B&S of.

> > That's why B&S would say they had
> > rock influences, because they have never written
> > music purely because they
> > think it will be popular (as people like the
> > Spice Girls or Wet Wet Wet
> > do); they write it because they like it, it does
> > something for them.
> 
> this is cruelly unfair on Spice Girls or Wet Wet
> Wet, because who are you to say that when they
> write or perform a song it is not also 'doing
> something for them'?  Or to the fans who embrace
> their noises and who also will tell you that the
> noise 'does something for them'?  Are you calling
> these people stupid simply because they don't like
> the same music as you do?  Dangerous ground...

I know I'm not in the best position to judge the motives behind the
writing of a song. But I distinctly remember an article in the Melody
Maker back in September in which some of Wet Wet Wet were saying that they
didn't even like their music much themselves, they made it because Marti
Pellow's voice sold lots of records using that kind of music. And I think
that sucks.

Stuart G

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