pop

[beddoes]

Of all the major record forums I've found this is the one that understands pop best, I think.

Does anybody else out there feel that, curiously -despite your great love of so many different and more rarefied musics-, many of your most transcendent experiences of music transpired while listening to pop?

"Dancing Queen" through distant speakers when I rode a ferry to Alaska in 1988. It would have been amazing but not -somehow- as memorable or moving if I'd heard something less mainstream. It felt like discovering a seam of gold in the sidewalk.

[beddoes]

Or, I heard "Superstar" at the Portland airport after Sonia, my girlfriend of four years, left me. Devastating. I made a mess of myself.

[beddoes]

I guess I want an explanation.

[ginghamkitchen]

Of all the major record forums out there this is the one that understands pop best, I think.

Does anybody else out there feel that, curiously -despite your great love of so many different and more rarefied musics-, many of your most transcendent experiences of music transpired while listening to pop?

"Dancing Queen" through distant speakers when I rode a ferry to Alaska in 1988. It would have been amazing but not -somehow- as memorable or moving if I'd heard something less mainstream. It felt like discovering a seam of gold in the sidewalk.

Definitely - the best pop ('Dancing Queen', 'Be My Baby', The Shangri-Las) is like a shot of pure exhilaration for me - no matter how knowing or engineered it might be, there's something about three minutes of simple, songwriting genius and production that gets to me every time, often made all the more exciting by hearing it in odd contexts where you don't expect to hear good music - shops, weddings, taxis, etc. The really great stuff taps into your emotions as well as your central nervous system - one of the most evocative commercial art forms there is, I think.

Sometimes I think 'thats it, I'm just listening to jazz and classical from now on' then I start thinking about Smokey Robinson and think 'not just yet'...

[ginghamkitchen]

I guess I want an explanation.

Oh, I can't explain it. It's either made by people more sensitive and emotional than me or more manipulative and knowing - maybe both - but I can't express myself like that - I can't even feel like that unless prompted...

[beddoes]

Now that I think about it, I guess I'm also talking about one's DISCOVERY of pop. I was nineteen on that ferry to Alaska and listened mostly to industrial music, Beefheart and Nuggets/Pebbles stuff. "Dancing Queen" took me by surprise. For a few hours I felt weird. Am I gay?

[Col Wolfe]

ringtones are the new pop in the UK, Mark

[beddoes]

my girlfriend hates my ringtone, hook me up

[ginghamkitchen]

Now that I think about it, I guess I'm also talking about one's DISCOVERY of pop. I was nineteen on that ferry to Alaska and listened mostly to industrial music, Beefheart and Nuggets/Pebbles stuff. "Dancing Queen" took me by surprise. For a few hours I felt weird. Am I gay?

Everybody's gay when it comes to pop, except the dead and those that have to pretend all the time.

[john stapleton]

Everybody's gay when it comes to pop, except the dead and those that have to pretend all the time.

You forgot the old and jaded....

[ginghamkitchen]

You forgot the old and jaded....

I hope I'm never old and jaded to the extent that I can't marvel at a piece of perfectly constructed pop music and get a little emotional buzz from hearing it - but then I'm a bit of a soft touch, so maybe I'm more receptive to it.

[Striker]

when it's done right pop's a formula that's been honed to push your emotional buttons, you can try to deny it but you can't hold out forever.

[beddoes]

when it's done right pop's a formula that's been honed to push your emotional buttons, you can try to deny it but you can't hold out forever.

And why should you? We --most of us- enthusiastically embrace OTHER drugs.

[jakartajive]

Billie (piper).
Becuase we want to.

Perfection.

[Expiry2011]

For me its a question of context
When I was getting into music in the 80s I soon stopped listening to pop and tried more 'grown up' music
But somehow I still know all the word to the music on the radio
When I hear Slave to the Rhythm or Relax or Don't you Want Me it takes me back and as I'm older I can appreciate the music better rather than just the pleasure of listening
I'm always picking up 80s 12s in chazzas
But nowadays pop hardly registers with me unless the Mrs gets on it

[eric-adams]

Billie (piper).
Becuase we want to.

Perfection.

actually her song day and night is pretty good, when i first heard that i thought everyone else doing pop songs should just stop

[kestrel blazer]

The use of 'S.O.S.' by ABBA in the film 'Together', where they are all playing football in the snow is just perfect.

[SARGE]

ketamine is the new pop
i've watched muriels wedding about 50 times
the capitol of nebraska is lincoln
tonight i will have a joint.
end of

[pitch]

I didn't really listen to pop music until I was 14-15. No-one played it at home, and I don't recall experiencing it anywhere else (certainly no recollection) - except perhaps a bit of 'muzak' in shops..... I was totally into classical music until then.

I can't remember any bands, pop or otherwise, through the 70s, except the Wombles. In 1982 I discovered girls. This changed what the world was all about, and although classical music did define some of the higher 'romantic' emotions, it was pop that plucked the heart strings and seemed to make sense of a whole range of new feelings.

[babycart]

You used to be able to go to any phone box in the UK, dial a number and hear a pop hit for free. This service only applied to pop songs, the time and the Test Match scores.

If you were a punctual pre-teenage fan of Stevie Wonder and the MCC, it was very heaven.

[emperor tomato ketchup]

Noel Coward "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is"

[Ian Townsend]

Disco 45.

Early 70's pop paper. Loved it. Had all the words to the very latest pop hits in it.

I found some copies at a boot last year.

When I was in the first year of secondary school a teacher allowed us into the form room on a Tuesday to hear the latest chart run-down.

I've still got the A4 books with the charts meticulously written in....

Agree with Beddoes.... there are perfect moments when a pop song appears and just seems so 'right.'

[jakartajive]

I was on the tube coming home yesterday wth my iPod on, as you do, and Icicle Star Tree by Asylum Choir was followed by Blue-Green Eyes by The Sundownders. These have been two of my very favourite songs this last year or so, and - despite the day-glo neon trimmings and backwards touches, the scatter of lysergic dust and the period piece kitchen sink productions, both have incredible harmonies, killer hooks and choruses that make you want to sing along.

This is - and always has been - very important to me.

Growing up in the 70s, the ghosts of The Beatles loomed large, as my did my father's weird taste (lots of classical and Philip Glass, but also Abba, Simon and Garfunkel and ELO) and the fact we had Radio Two on in the house every morning as I got ready for school. From as soon as I can remember being aware of music in any kind of personal sense, pop - and more particularly SuperPop in the Nik Cohn sense of the word - penetrated my brain. I grew up with Blondie and Dexy's and The Jam and The Specials all getting top five hits on a regular basis.

Despite then spending most of the 80s listening to obscure 60s garage and R'n'B, I still retained a love of songs and choruses and bridges and craft and it's the same now with psych. I never really go too far into the 12-minute extreme noise end of things and, whilst I like jazz, I like it to have something apporaching a recognisable melody at least somewhere within it.

My poorly thought-out theory is something to do with pop being essentially populist as well as popular and thus loved by the masses because its immediate, direct, honest, memorable and sticks in the mind like a knife. Now, pop can also be trippy or clever or angry or articulate or just plain idiot dumb on top of that, but it has to be widely accessible. I've always loved the way, for example, football crowds are so quick to take contemporary pop songs and turn them into terrace chants and I still have fond memories of the mid-90s when, on returning from Indonesia, it was not uncommon for me to see paralytic groups of people standing on London street corners, their arms round each other, singing 'Wonderwall'. Pop faciliates this stupid, glorious coming together in a way that industrial noise terrorism never will.

Given this, I reman to this day slightly suspicious of people who rail against pop and who prefer the abstract and awkward over the hook-laden. I suspect that deep down, it's a form of emotional expression revealing the fact they are socially lacking and basically misanthropic.

Me? I dig everything.
Oh yes.

Now I'm off to give September Girls and Shake Some Action a rinse.

[BoneyVotel]

Of all the major record forums I've found this is the one that understands pop best, I think.

Gotta be Tizer for me, run a close second my American Cream Soda from the van that used to deliver.

Good pop is great, Motown for instance - The Four Tops - awesome pop

[Headless mermaid]

[Old School Tramp]

ketamine is the new pop
i've watched muriels wedding about 50 times
the capitol of nebraska is lincoln
tonight i will have a joint.
end of

Smack is the Nu Rave
I've watched the Rise & Fall Of Reginald Perrin twice
The Capitol of Faroe Islands Is Tórshavn
Tonight I will milk myself
end of

[medlar]

Smack is the Nu Rave
I've watched the Rise & Fall Of Reginald Perrin twice
The Capitol of Faroe Islands Is Tórshavn
Tonight I will milk myself
end of

Hopefully it's not pink anymore

[kenneth]

I grew up with pop and also my mum.
I love ELO

[Monobrow]

I like what I tend to call subversive pop' - great melodies but a bit wierd - would put 8 Miles high in this category, most stuff by the Beach Boys 1968-1975, Beta Band, Super Furry Animals...