Pop! What is it good for?

Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
BBC4, 10pm tonight.
At 50 years of age, (Paul) Morley is just about as old as pop music itself and in this film he argues that pop has played a central role in the culture of the nation over the past half century. In the post-empire era, pop music has helped give the world a sense of Britain and Britain a sense of itself.

Featuring artists and fellow pop obsessives as diverse as poet Simon Armitage and contemporary girl group The Sugababes, and national treasures like pop artist Peter Blake and Suggs from Madness, this film explores and celebrates the beauty and mystery of the pop single.

From Adam Faith's What Do You Want in the 1950s to Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head in the 'noughties', it reveals how complex, rewarding and varied the three minute pop song can be and how a nation fell in love with the form.
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Could be interesting.

There's a season of related stuff on at random intervals over the next month or so, including some potentially quite good stuff. They're showing Gimme Shelter and Cracked Actor, and the Pop Britannia series (cf all the other X Britannias) may or may not turn out to be good depending on how well it resists rockism. There's some godawful looking stuff too, though. http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/pop/season/
 
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DRMHCP

Well-known member
Isn't this all very rockist anyway...rock may have been around for around 50 years (and hopefully on its last legs) but Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Glen Miller, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin etc etc were obviously pop too and around 60, 70 and more years ago...
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
elgato said:
i thought this was very disappointing, embarassingly poor for the most part!
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It mostly just seemed very rushed - PM seemed to have some interesting stuff to say - or at least, stuff that it would be interesting to have said in a 'serious' music programme on TV - but had to garble it or leave it undeveloped to rush off and talk to some dubiously relevant guest. Because, y'know, it'd be impossible to have a TV programme where someone just tells us about stuff and we listen because they know about it and are interesting, we have to see a parade of different people and locations and suchlike to keep us interested...
 
E

elgato

I just dont know
oh wait maybe we're talking about different things? sorry i was foolish to assume! given that theres a whole season :rolleyes: the thing i saw went through various elements in song... melody, arrangement etc, i found it really mundane, a really boring way to think about what makes pop appealing
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Ah, right, yeah. This was Paul Morley talking about why Pop is important to him and why he thinks it's important to people generally via talking about his personal six greatest pop songs. And not really getting it across very clearly...
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
first programme was alright, trying to be a bit novel and clever with the presentation and offhandedness of it but never seemed to really get to the crux of the topic or even what paul morley REALLY thought about the topic (im not sure he has much to say about anything anymore). might as well have been a 'paul morleys life through singles' documentary. and there were far too few records discussed. there were some good, unusual (as in not the standard canonical fodder) choices though, but would have been nice to explore some of the issues/methods a bit more (the chat with the kylie songwriter didnt tell me as much as i hoped). and that dissection of this charming man was IMO totally crap and despite what morley said, actually DID ruin the mystery of the song a bit for me! still, i did enjoy it as it was a bit more of a personal journey through the pop song, even if it did feel a bit insubstantial by the end.

the programme last night with the classical guy was a bit more promising, but the lyrics segment was pathetic (why do all these docus end up going on about such and such being 'very british'? that is NOT the matter at hand!) and weve seen that sort of thing done better in the past few years - its almost corny now in fact, for music TV to be trying to break the pop song in formal terms at this stage. the bit where he was praising wyclef was funny though. i had no idea 911 was such a great pop song or that wyclef was such a good singer lol.

i still liked watching both though, esp the first one, just cos its nice to see music TV progs that arent about talent shows or shit indie bands. bbc 4 seems to be doing alright in this area, those brazilian docus werent bad either.

overall though, i thought both these progs seemed a bit out of date or out of touch almost -theres other things that can be talked about w/r/t to modern music, these seemed to be celebrating things that arent really what pop music is about anymore. im not sure if there will still BE or if there still IS pop music as we knew/know it, just cos although we have well-written pop-indie songs (or 'consensus rock'), that consensus+forward momentum=pop way of doing things isnt really there anymore. not in the uk anyway (i dont know what the US charts are like). the singles market is radically different to what it used to be too - why not a programme about that?

so, pop 'what is it good for'? not tv documentaries.
(haha, couldnt resist).
 
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Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I was quite impressed by the second part of Pop Britannia - it managed to avoid turning into yet another 'weren't the sixties great' cliche fest by focusing more on the managers and producers - Brian Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham, Mickie Most, Don Arden etc - and on the pop aspect of the bands rather than the rock aspect, and then more or less skipping 'serious rock' and prog and Led Zep to get on to T Rex and Slade and proper pop songs again.

It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the series turns out - there are at least a couple more cliche-traps to fall into and the story gets rather more complicated and multithreaded post 1980, but they've been doing well so far.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
watching the discussion panel about the 70s on bbc 4 now. nice to see stevie wonder getting his due by the guy in the middle. the host saying his early 70s albums were 'pretty good' was a total understatement though. quite enjoying this so far - stayed away from the 60s one as i thought it would probably lapse into cliche, but wished i saw it now.
 
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