This Is Pop (aka more albums I like that you might like too)
 

In being inspired by Lovissucide's thread (which it'd be cool if more people would reply too) and the uber-cool XTC tune of the same name, I've finally got something to keep me properly occupied around here again, which is never a bad thing ;) The jist of this is that pop music, as I'm sure we all know, doesn't consist solely of songs like this (and, frankly, thank god for that). Pop music comes in varying degrees, shapes and sizes, as you'll all see when I start getting some reviews up of nice, fairly accessible albums - albums one could call pop in some way shape or form then.

I'll get my first review done soon enough. If any of you guys have any you think would fit in with this thread, guest reviews are very welcome.

Anyway, I'll nip back in here with the first one in the near future...

edit - You'll find an index of all the albums covered at the top of page 4 of this thread.

Oh, and it goes without saying that there'll be plenty of mixtapes as this thread goes on. Something like one every five albums with two from each I'd think.

Excellent. Looking forward this.

Look forward to seeing what's come up with, no topping good pop music.

Will be great to read about some genuine Pop albums for a change. Good luck fella.

Cheers guys, I'll try not to disappoint ;)

Some of these will be more obviously pop than others, some less so, some just downright cheesy, but I'll get them all up here someday.

Provided I can get enough work done, I'll do the first one tomorrow.

To all concerned, sorry for the delay with properly starting this thread. Apart from being a bit busy, I've also thought of about 30 albums off the top of my head and can't decide which to start with. Definitely a fairly diverse list of albums I've got so far (more so than I first imagined), so it should at least be interesting reading. I'll get the first one up later tonight in any case.

Turns out I'm gonna be doing three albums per post, and a mixtape after each six. Here goes...


So, first up it's David Byrne's seventh bona fide studio album, presenting as it does a move away from the combinations of tub-thumpingly catchy Latin American vibes, noisy alternative rock and quirky pop tunes (which themselves would go out of their way to turn the rulebook upside-down) and move into a much more relaxed kind of artistic territory. Before I continue though, I think it's worth saying I'm a fairly big fan of David Byrne's work, be it solo, collaborative or with the Talking Heads, but one thing I have against his solo work is that, with a few exceptions, the handful of excellent songs on them aside, the rest of most of his albums kinda tail off into mediocrity. In other words, over the length of his discography as well as on a lot of his albums in themselves, he's a bit inconsistent for me.

I don't have either of his latest, collaborative efforts (we're not even counting those in that little statement of mine anyway) so I couldn't comment on those, but the exceptions to this rule are the Catherine Wheel, Rei Momo and, of course, this album, which finds Byrne in a much more relaxed musical mood, what with the mellow feel of the most part of the album, not to mention the fact that just about the whole album is guided by ambitious string arrangements. Although a few songs deviate from that norm, the majority of the musical theme is laid back, heavuily-orchestrated and propelled by a fantastic rhythm section, all of which provides a great foil for David Byrne's smooth-as voice and the cryptic lyrical rants therein. Despite a weaker moment or two, this one's a great little pop album, and easily the most accessible in David Byrne's solo recording career.


I won't claim to be a huge fan of the Pretenders myself. I don't really have a lot of their albums barring this one after all. What I do know is that lead singer and principle songwriter Chrissie Hynde not only worked in Malcolm McClaren and Viv Westwood's store on King's Road in London, but she also made a few pretty cool contributions to John Lydon's autobiography of the Sex Pistols. Goes without saying then that she started out in the thick of the London punk scene as it grew, what with rumour having it that she was also involved in early, embryonic versions of the Clash and the Damned back in the day too.

All the above matters little though aside from being a nice bit of trivia, as this album's about as far from the punk rock Hynde first moved into the British music industry with as you can get, let alone the new wave she and teh Pretenders first started recording. Well, maybe that's exagerrating a bit, as there are shades of the relentless energy of her musical origins in place on this album, but overall this latest effort of theirs focuses on three very different musical areas. Those are pop melodies (executed with gusto by Hynde's neat little voice), rockabilly and a few dashes of country rock (what with the odd hint of pedal steel you can hear on a few tracks) to spice things up. Basically, the hard-rock swagger of their early work has been substituted here for a head-bopping rockabilyl vibe, and it makes for a very unique and authentic-sounding pop album in itself (at least to this pair of ears anyway). It combines the moods of punk rock and rockabilly superbly to conjure a very American-sounding (for want of a better phrase) album, with the right kind of friendly vibe to make it as accessible as it is.


Given the amount of albums they've released over their 30-odd year career in tandem with an insane amount of lineup changes, it wouldn't be pushing the envelope that much to call the Television Personalities here a kind of anti-Fall, what with singer Dan Treacy being the only constant member throughout the band's entire career. On the other hand, maybe it would be, as if truth be told the Television Personalities sound nothing much like the Fall, but it's nice to draw analogies eh. Truthfully, this album's about a million miles from what the Fall were doing at the time, seeing as it delves into twee pop as opposed to, say, grainy lo-fi garage rock and balls-to-the-wall post-punk.

So, yeah, you're looking at a much more commercially-viable proposition with this one, seeing as I'm mentioning it in the context of this thread. The crux of the whole thing is the light-hearted and playful vibe that dominates the album stylistically and conceptually - it's basically nothing that's going to take itself too seriously then. There are much more downbeat moments like Diary Of a Young Man, but such moments are very scarce indeed, as the emphasis is on an early indie rock sound which is designed to make you smile more than simply be blown away by some of the most amazing music you've ever heard. In that sense, while they're not quite as funny a bunch as Half Man Half Biscuit, the Television Personalities do succeed in making a very convincing, very uplifting and stripped-down album, boasting both the rhythmic energy of early Joy Division and that cross between the melodic prowess and energy that the Buzzcocks had at their finest. Great stuff then.


So, yeah, more on the way whenever I feel like it. If anyone fancies an upload along the way, feel free to ask.

And here are a few more for ya. First mixtape coming soon...


Divinyls are one of a few bands you'll catch me mentioning here who started off from relatively rougher-edged, hard-rock beginnings who made a move as their career progressed into much more accessible pop territory. This here Sydney six-piece is another one of those kind of success stories, such to the extent that virtually everyone who hasn't been living under a waterfall's heard their uber-cool mega-hit I Touch Myself before (if not, watch the first Austin Powers movie again, as if its being one of the funniest movies ever isn't reason enough). As far as I know, they still tour without any plans for a comeback, making Underworld here their last album.

In essence, and for the sake of those who've never heard of this bunch before, what we're dealing with here is good old, unabashed pop music with a sharper, hard-rock edge - pop-rock when all's said and done, this album being among the finest of its sub-genre. In the faster, rougher-edged parts of this album Divinyls do sound a little like a prehistoric Yeah Yeah Yeahs, although with much more of a leaning towards melody. Plus I reckon Amphlett's a much better singer than Karen O but, then again, I'd be lying if I said I was a die-hard fan of the latter's anyway. Comparisons aside, throughout the length and depth of the album, we're simply presented with a load of absolute belters of tunes - nothing that challenging and definitely nothing to turn someone's musical world upside-down, but just an album's-worth of deliciously melodic pop-rockers to stick on when you're not really in the mood for listening to Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, Pere Ubu or whoever (at least that's how I feel about this). Plus, Amphlett's great vocals and trademark falsetto swoops make this one all the more special. Apologies in advance for the lame SQ on the below video clip...


And here lies the first of a few moves into electronic pop that the albums I've deemed appropos for this thread that we'll take. Saint Etienne, a name I'm sure a lot of us on these boards have already heard somewhere before (whether or not we were watching England get dumped out of France '98 on penalties there), as they're a band who aren't without their own extensive little back story, seeing as they've been kicking about the scene since well into the early 90s. Five albums after their heady entrance into the commercial music industry, they deliver us this, something of an artistic two-in-one package as this particular album saw Saint Etienne release a film of this same name, which provided their lucky customers with a narrative-based short movie that stemmed from all the nice, jazzed-up visual accompaniments for each song upon live performance. This little added quirk also gave the bunch a good opportunity to revive a certain standout feature of their earlier work, that being the presence of spoken-word interludes between songs (which in this case were taken from the accompanying film).

Slapping a dance-pop label on this album would be a gross over-simplification of the whole thing and would probably put a few of you off (with good reason), so I won't do it here. It'd hardly be justified if I did, as not only is the overall vibe of this album a little bit too chilled to be blared out at that party you were thinking of holding in your kitchen and inviting that bird you fancy to, but also there are plenty of live guitars which add to the atmosphere of the whole thing nicely, not to mention the stoned kind of vibe you get from some of the heavy basslines and pounding, robotic rhythms. To put all that into plain English for you, you may be familiar with female-fronted trip-hop bands like Lamb, Hooverphonic or whoever? Imagine all that, just waaaay more accessible. Trip-pop if you will, and where you can't say that you get a bunch of instrumentals that are just lively enough to keep your head nodding and just chilled enough not to get that little bit too rowdy for the album's overall mood. Another fine album then. The only dud is the pretty lame Soft Like Me, but what's perfect eh.


I've mentioned this album a few times lately, so I'll try not to keep this long. I did have this album for about four or five months before it properly clicked with me as the classic it is (not just in the 'oh, this album's nice' sense), and since that happened fairly recently, I guess I couldn't help it. Anyway, little bit of back-story before we get to the album itself, Scritti Politti (for those who've never heard of them) started out as one of the finest post-punk bands to emerge from the north of England (sunny old Leeds in this case), released some EPs of jagged, left-of-centre post-punk on Rough Trade, supported the likes of Joy Division and Gang Of Four on the live circuit before singer Green Gartside had a heart-attack at the age of 23, due to his dangerously-careless lifestyle. That prompted Scritti Politti to go down a slightly more accessible musical avenue with their first album proper; Songs To Remember (some of you may recall a nice, reggae-tinged song called the Sweetest Girl from off of it). Gartside had a vision of pop music though that his current backing band couldn't pursue with him so in short he sacked the lot of them (keeping the name), moved to New York to find the right kinds of musicians and recorded a very very accessible, very very successful album.

This album being, along with the Human League's Dare (and yes, I'll be getting to that one later), not only one of the most influential and defining pop albums of the 80s, but also one of the very best. As I say, I've mentioned it before so I'll keep it short here - where Phil Oakey and the Human League experimented with their vision of pop music by recording Dare entirely on synth, Green Gartside and his merry band of session musicians went about taking that idea further by recording live, funky basslines and guitar breaks over the top of it (the kind of music which was kicking about the New York clubs at the time, necessitating Gartside's move across the pond), all the while laden with Gartside's witty wordplay in lyrical form. In a sentence, it's charming, it's gorgeous, it's melodic, it's cheesy as hell (but ever-so lovable for it), it's Scritti Politti! Maybe not your cuppa tea, but it certainly is mine. Whether or not this is your thing, I'd recommend you check out the Rough Trade compilation of Scritti Politti's early stuff (the aptly-named Early), as that album and this one are simply worlds apart.

Really enjoying the posts so far, Cupid & Psyche is fantastic stuff.

Cheers guy, glad you like it :) Don't forget, you (or anyone else) are welcome to ask for a link or two if you want. Might wanna check this out before you do though...


^ They'll come to you in a jumbled order should anyone feel like downloading, and they're best re-arranged by artist as above. Click the pop tart to download and enjoy.

I've got a lot on this coming week, so I probably won't get the next update done for at least a few days...

This looks awesome :) Im gonna got on that mixtape and hopefully a few of those albums. Pop is one section that my library is lacking in... scratch that, I just did a search for 'pop' and I didn't even get one song.

Cheers buddy. Hope you enjoy the mix too.

I should mention at this point that not a lot of these albums I'm thinking of are from the 60s and 70s, as most of the albums I have from those decades aren't really what you could call pop music. I'll do my best to represent them fairly though.

your name is Guy?

It's a classic Brit-ism:D

guy = mate/old chum/buddy etc

ah I was gonna say, **** will go down if someone here shares the amazing-ness that is my name!!! :ar_15s:

Excuse the non-britism :)

Good call on Scritti Polliti and especially St. Etienne. I will get on the comp too as I would like to hear a couple of things from other bands.

Long time no update. I'll get another three and another mixtape up fairly soon as well.


Twee pop's a weird little phrase to go around using. I don't know about anyone else, but for me it brings to mind, among other things, those really annoying Red Bull commercials (I've always been torn between which is the most irritating - the ads or drinks themselves...probably the drinks considering how with the addition of vodka they taste like urine). I think of the phrase as something that's affectionately derogatory myself - a way of saying that whatever music you stick that label on is gonna be pretty bright, chirpy, harmony-laden, very melodic indeed and more often than not something with a real feel-good factor about it.

From the little I've heard of them (I've been meaning to dig around their discography more since what might as well be the dawn of time), it's the perfect way to describe the noises that Belle and Sebastian are famed for making. What you see in the form of the group's (to date, although from what I've heard it won't be so long before we have another one heading our way) latest album, the Life Pursuit. This here was also one of the very first albums I thought of when I was dreaming up this thread. It fits in with the kind of vibe that a lot of the albums I've already covered and will cover in future have - whenever you've kinda had enough of all the high brow, arty, avante-garde stuff (which, of course, is all very nice in itself), this is another great album that'll have you nodding your head all the way. The melodies are wonderful, the songs are beautifully structured and fine-tuned just enough so they really leave a mark. I remember the Life Pursuit first coming to my attention when I was flicking through the music channels back when I were a nipper, thinking how boring and edgeless everything I was seeing was, and then a few minutes later I came across the below video. The song sums up this wonderful album in all its glory when all's said and done. Since this is the only Belle and Sebastian album I own, I don't know if it's their best, I can only highly recommend it.


A country album in a pop thread? Surely this can only mean terrible, terrible things? Well, that's obviously not the case in my admittedly totally subjective opinion. Part of the reason I crossed paths with this album is that I'm a pretty big fan of the singer Chris Hillman's work with the Byrds, Gram Parsons and Manassas and, when all's said and done, his work in general. Another part of the equation is that ever since somehow being exposed to country music in some shape or form through the music of Elvis Costello and the Beatles, I've gone on to pick up the odd album here and there and, gotta say, I'm actually quite a fan of it, particularly the sound of a pedal steel guitar over a set of lyrics which I myself find bearable. The best country rock (which as an umbrella term is the area I find myself enjoying the most) just has this laid back and carefree vibe about it which is totally unique to its own musical tradition, at least to me anyway.

Enough waffling about all that anyway and more the above album cover that's currently staring you in the face. The Desert Rose Band were basically the brainchild of Byrds founder Chris Hillman and a gentleman by the name of Herb Pedersen, who between them went about injecting a mix of originals and country standards with the energy and panache of Hillman's work with Gram Parsons in the Flying Burrito Brothers and the infectiousness (I'll let you decide if that's a word or not) of pop music. What this leads to is, yes, country pop, but one which in its pop elements alone is so memorable, what with the great melodies, killer choruses and the way the vocal harmonies between Hillman and Pedersen really give it all that extra kick. There's also how it seems to effortlessly fuse pop music, the laid back atmosphere of country and the energy of rock 'n' roll and even bluegrass into one seamless package. Basically, this is the first and by far best Desert Rose Band album, and probably my favourite with Hillman's involvement since he left the Flying Burrito Brothers. The guy's got a terrific voice too. Such a bright, uplifting album - keep an ear peeled for arguably the catchiest chorus of all time on One That Got Away and the gorgeous, Beach Boys-style harmony-off in the shape of Once More. The song in the video below's not exactly one of my favourites off the album, but hey...


The Tom Waits fans among us may find the above sleeve art kinda uncanny. With good reason too, as you're officially looking at the inspiration for Waits' Heart Of a Saturday Night sleeve art, and for all I know one of the inspirations for that album's sound (it certainly seems like it to me anyway). So, apart from all that, not to mention its being quite possibly the only album released in the '50s that I'll mention here (at least as far as I can remember without another dig through the vaults), this goes to show you the perfect example of what a few more albums you'll find in this thread will be - torch music! Simple, good old-fashioned easy listening stuff. This one in particular is probably the most famous Frank Sinatra album (I can think of a few more individual songs which are more renowned), and is also an album which makes it on to a lot of journo-originated top album lists. Often, if you're a shameless musical elitist like me, that's reason enough to be turned off. Doing that here couldn't be more of a mistake though.

You see, although my musical knowledge of pre-'60s music is very limited, without doing hours of research and listening to countless more albums (driving myself insane by asking 'now then, is this a concept album?), In the Wee Small Hours is definitely among the first concept albums, the concept. Seeing as this was recorded and released via a music industry which was much more single-based in a commercial sense than it would be about ten years later, this alone makes it a standout. That concept itself is one that attempts to recreate a kind of lovesick, late-night sense of isolation in musical form, and is one that definitely succeeds in that respect. True, that's a bit more of a credit to Frank's songwriters and whoever selected the songs for him to sing than anyone else, but you get the picture. Anyway, no, it hasn't got the big band swing of a lot of his other works that I've heard, what with this being the definitive (and, to my knowledge, best) snapshot of Frank the crooner that there is with its very mellow sound which, in combination with the man's great voice, really does nail down the intended concept and stick it where anyone can see it. To sum up, the only times I listen to this album end-to-end are either very late at night or very early in the morning, and doing so really does this album a lot of favours. One of the truly classic pop albums this.

As far as Belle & Sebastian goes it's If You're Feeling Sinister>Dear Catastrophe Waitress>The Life Pursuit>Tigermilk>The Boy With The Arab Strap>Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant>Storytelling.

Are you implying that you've never heard If You're Feeling Sinister? If so, please listen to it ASAP before I have to disregard you're entire pop thread... :P Thanks for the reviews, I really enjoyed the first mixtape so far and learned that David Byrne was a member of Catherine Wheel. I guess I'm a little slow. Also, your review may have inspired me to finally go out and discover what St. Etienne is all about, as I think I have yet to hear a single song. They've been on my list of bands to check out for quite a while now.

I can't remember which one madeUrban's album list (got a feeling it was Dear Catastrophe Waitress), but I made a mental note to check it out when I first read through is thread but, evidently, never did. Thanks for the beginner's guide link you sent me as well - just finishing dee-elling it as of a few seconds ago.

I'll do my best :D

And, yeah, David Byrne's first solo album was with the Catherine Wheel, just before he went off and did My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts. As far as solo Byrne goes, the former, Rei Momo and Grown Backwards are well worth checking out too. Look Into the Eyeball's the most blatantly accessible of the lot though.

Good to hear you dug the mix as well. There'll be another one coming up whenever I get the next three done, which should be fairly soon.

And here we go again.


If I walked up to you and said 'hi, whoever you are - I listen to shitloads of modern soul music' I'd not only be a bit strange but also telling you a nasty fib. The way I see it, in the most obvious cases the soul and r'n'b that I adore of the 60s and 70s has mostly mutated in a hideously deplorable way, be it into the nauseating disco sounds or the contemporary urban r'n'b fluff. If you're reading this and actually quite like a bit of that stuff every now and then, good for you. I'd rather listen to MP3s of cricket commentaries from down the years myself, but each to their own.

Anyway, what I'm driving at is that classic soul and r'n'b hasn't evolved wholly into the kind of stuff I myself wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. There remains an interesting variation of the whole thing and (getting this baby sharply on topic again) such a sound is to be heard on the above album - Cat Power's mightily impressive seventh album and possibly her finest too (at least in my eyes). I've looked up some of the tags for this in various places on the world wide web and found stuff like 'folk-rock' and whatever 'sadcore' is being used to describe her. When it comes to this album at least, cast those shackles off as bullshit - this is a modern soul album, and a damn fine one at that. Alright, maybe it's quite far removed from, say, Shake a Tail Feather, but I reckon it's a modern take on the genre and that calling it indie pop/rock is just pure laziness and doesn't really do this marvellous album justice.

There's certainly a very melancholic feel to this Cat Power (real name Charlyn Marshall) album, but it makes for a great mix-up when it's married with sparse, slow musical backings, the smooth, groovy soul-reminiscent basslines and the lady's soaring, beautiful voice. In that sense, two-fold is the triumph of this album - both in some very classy songwriting from Marshall herself and a neat, uncluttered production sound courtesy of Stuart Sikes, which as a component of the overall sound does neither too much nor too little to the album. The Greatest here features in a lot of albums of the 2000s lists you may or may not come across and deservedly so, because the Greatest is indeed that great.


From what I've heard of them (four out of however many other albums they've released), there are two artists you could split this group into. One is their latter-day incarnation, and the result of one of a change in musical direction of David Bowie-type success; that being a move towards down-tempo electronic fusions of chillout vibes and breakbeats. Such is my personal favourite area of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt's musical career, but not one I'd call pop to a degree thatit warrants a place in this thread. Couldn't recommend Walking Wounded and [I]Temperamental[/Ienough as far as that goes though.

The other would be the folk-pop duo that Watt and Thorn started out as. The two albums of theirs that I've got which you could go so far as to describe as folk-pop in one way or the other are both pretty awesome. Amplified Heart, coming just before they disappeared off the pop radar they'd initially been on, is one I'd highly recommend in this category as well. When it comes to which one I'll stick in this thread though, I'm gonna go with Idlewild here because, apart from sharing its name with a mediocre Scottish indie band, it also presents Everything But the Girl at their most softly vibrant and melodic (at least from what I've heard). So, basically there's a lot more melody to proceedings here, as well as a heavier use of full backing bands in the studio to flesh the songs out in a more conventional way. It's also the album I'm listening to as I type this, and subsequently the one I feel like droning on about the most.

For anyone who (for whatever bizarre reason) may not have heard an Everything But the Girl song before, the focal point of their sound (no matter what genre they'd find themselves working in) is the soothing, gentle touch that Tracey Thorn's voice brings to things. A lot of the music you'll hear on this album, especially Ben Watt's gorgeous acoustic guitar, is the perfect foil for her. All in all, you're looking at a very soothing and laid back pop album here - certainly more flat-out pop than Amplified Heart to these ears. It's one of those perfect late night/early morning in albums - silky smooth, melodic and memorable enough all over to really get you involved as the listener and therefore enjoy immensely (or at least that's the case with me).


It was only a matter of time eh. I've probably posted this album in the Albums You're Digging thread about 750 times, and dropped it subtly into conversation twice as much as that, so I won't go on too long about this one. As a lot of you may know already, I fucking love Scott Walker. To give you a nice, kinda broad statement about the fella, there are three heads to this beast. The first sang with his uber-successful mid-60s pop group the Walker Brothers (who may yet get a mention here depending on how quick I am to run outof ideas) and on his first six solo albums (including this one). The second didn't really give a shit and released a bunch of fairly average, MOR covers albums in the 70s. The third is the one I prefer and think of as the most profound, this being the very one that recorded some of the best art music I've ever heard, resulting in two sheer masterpieces in the shape of Tilt and the Drift.

Calling those albums pop would be like calling Eamon Dunphy a shining beacon of impartiality and calm composure, so the aforementioned first six of Walker's solo efforts are the ones that'll be represented here, by the fourth of them no less. Basically, for an idea of what this album sounds like, imagine a musical hybrid of the Cat Power and Frank Sinatra I've already mentioned. Just so you can't call me lazy, what that means is that while there's a very prominent and important, although faceless backing band (tight bass, drum and percussion rhythms as well as some great, unintrusive guitar work) holding up a very string-heavy musical sound. On the face of it, it's kinda like In the Wee Small Hours being run with a more rock/pop-leaning motor, but this is where the vocals come in. I'll first say that Scott Walker is possibly my favourite singer of all time - he holds notes, swoops in falsetto and changes key (at times here while singing the same line) like no-one else I've heard. He pulls it all off so effortlessly and does it with more soul and passion than you could shake a stick at. Put all this together and you get songs like the below. Apart from being my favourite chamber pop album of all time, it's only about half an hour long in total (which might be a flaw, but shouldn't stop you checking it out eh).

As an artist, I find that Scott Walker is pretty divisive as far as listeners' opinions on him go. If you're new to him, you're just as likely to end up on one side of the fence as the other. Should be obvious which I'm on though.


And that's another six albums done, so here are another 12 tracks for you to peruse. Again, click the pop tart to download...


^ Also, to make things a bit more interesting, I've stuck a couple of unrelated pop songs I pretty much love on the end. Bear in mind when/if you listen to them that one has an awesome bassline and the video for the other was filmed in parts about 20 miles from the house I'm currently typing this message in.

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

That Cat Power album is amazing!

lady gaga is the best producer singer song writer on generic radio today..........

To make things that little bit more interesting, I'm gonna take you on a bit of a stylistic detour before taking you back down a more general/conventional pop route. Anyway, these next three albums should give you something of an idea as to how pop songwriting can find its way into the field of reggae music. At the same time, I can see I've started rambling a bit much here, so I'll try and trim the reviews a bit. Anyway, here we go...


Let's start with a certain Barrington Levy; a man who mainly, outside of the world of dedicated reggae-heads, doesn't really get an awful lot of mention. It's a shame really, because he's actually quite good (hence my staring at this screen and typing up this post). He's been mentioned before in mine and Sir Jackhammer's reggae introduction thread if anyone wants to have a gander.

Anyway, meet Barrington Levy, one of many of the more famous singer-songwriters to emerge from Jamaica's dancehall scene of the late 70s. Giving you a nice, quick run-down of what exactly that was, dancehall reggae was the Jamaican musical community's response to the international popularity of the roots reggae of the likes of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, the Abysinnians, Aswad and so on. That response was one that took the rhythmic, groove-based backbone of roots reggae, removed the politically-motivated lyrical themes and replaced them with all kinds of more light-hearted stuff - songs about cutting some shapes on the dancefloor, where babies come from and so forth. Some singers (DJs as they're called in Jamaica - the term MC is an American, hip-hop culture thing) decided to simply record roots reggae with different lyrical themes while others (like Mr. Levy here) chose to inject pop melodies, song-structures and contemporary production values into their work. So then, if I was gonna be stone-faced and technical, I'd call this good old dancehall reggae. A simpler name for it to go by is reggae-pop. Good reggae-pop as it happens. It sounds a tiny bit dated but, looking back over this list, so do a few other albums I've mentioned (and will mention in future). This is reggae music for someone who doesn't really listen to a lot of the stuff, and the kind of reggae music which just leaves its mark on you afterwards as the better and more memorable pop music of any kind does. Definitely a must.


I could just not bother typing up something to go with the above sleeve art, but I'm completely dry as far as booze goes, the chick-a-dee's currently on the opposite side of the Irish Sea and I'm on a caffeine buzz and therefore not really feeling particularly lazy at the minute. The point is that if not every picture is worth a thousand words, the above one is - kinda describes this album fairly well.

Soul Reggae = reggae soul then, which itself is another form of the side of reggae music with more of a mass appeal to it. Jimmy Cliff's superb You Can Get It If You Really Want is probably the most famous reggae soul song there is, and Beres Hammond here is one of the more renowned singers of such music. Like the above Barrington Levy, he's got a very vast discography, although this is one of his more highly-regarded efforts and is therefore one of the more highly-regarded reggae soul albums you can go about laying your hands on.

Anyway, let's back up a little bit and put this into some kind of context - roots reggae had peaked by the time dancehall reggae emerged from the ether, and one of the other sub-genres to emerge from that ether was one called lover's rock. The clue's in the name really - lover's rock is the codename for the more schmaltzy, romantic side of reggae music. In some cases, singers would emulate the vocal styles and production methods of any amount of the Philadelphia soul records they owned. An example of this coming into effect is, of course, this Beres Hammond album. This is done to such great effect that, in some places (like the song in the below video), this doesn't sound like what you'd expect from a 70s reggae album at all. It's as much a top of the pile reggae album as it is such a soul album, and one of the finest products of one of the legend of reggae music in its prime.


And then, fast-forward to the last decade, and you've got people like Matisyahu. Again, he's not exactly what you'd call out-and-out, bubblegum-chomping, student-bar-on-a-weekday-night pop music, but not only is he a great example of what roots reggae's evolved into over the last 30-40 years, but also of how reggae still has a role to play it popular music today (and how it can do so without resorting to shitty, modern r'n'b embellishments a'la Damian Marley, Beenie Man etc).

From what I've heard of mass-oriented, popular reggae today, ragga-styled vocals are the in thing, and this album provides no exception to that little rule (well, mostly). I won't mince it - ragga vocals really do have such an edge to them when they're used well. In fact, ragga makes up another component of Matisyahu's sound here on the whole, what with the lively drum and bass rhythms to go with the whole package. Barring such evolutions of the archetypal style, this superb album is a great show of reggae taken into the 21st century and, as I say, one that doesn't suffer from being driven by an over-ambitious writer and record company that are all too keen to seem contemporary and reap the benefits of having a single or two turn up on the next instalment of SingStar. It's modern reggae with style, dignity, a hell of a punch and King Without a Crown to it, which are quite simply never bad things.

Loving this thread, though I do have a heterosexual hard-on for you Bulldog.

I still haven't checked out Matisyahu - Youth yet, despite there being several positive comments on this forum. This shall be rectified shortly.

Cheers - good to know someone's digging this new rantbox I've made myself here :D

Matisyahu's definitely a lot more popular than most of the modern reggae I could mention, and deservedly so. I first came across him via an old, long-since-moved-out flatmate of mine who had an obsession with King Without a Crown. It's kinda easy to see why. The guy's newest effort's pretty good from what I remember as well, but not quite on par with Youth here.

How about 'Shake Off the Dust... Arise', RYM has that rated slightly higher but never noticed anyone talking about that release. You had a chance to listen yet?

Nah, unfortunately I've only got the two albums. I've got quite a lot of new albums to get through first but I'll definitely stick that on my to-do list. As far as modern reggae goes, some similarly interesting stuff you could look out for if you want is Lutan Fyah - same sort of moden roots, but less of an emphasis and the ragga and pulsating basslines than Matisyahu. Fyah's not quite as accessible either, otherwise I'd have dropped him a mention in this thread already.

Some more pictures and words for you to look at...


So I lied when I said I was gonna cover some more conventional pop music. Rather than give you another more focused three albums like before, I'm gonna give you three examples of three different kinds of pop music.

Two of these I'm gonna mention are kinda like two sides of the same coin, and the first of them would be what you, me and all the little kiddies god bless 'em would call dream pop. If I could just wrap and tape that up into a nice little package for you, for the benfit of those who aren't in the loop dream pop entails more introspective, 'deep' if you will lyrical themes to serve as that kind of foil to the more ethereal atmospheres and textures thrown up by the music. Basically, the sub-genre is the triumph of mood over the guitar, and that mood mood is more often than not pretty grim (as reflected by the slow pace of the songs in tandem with the atmospherics).

What keeps you from falling asleep with your face on the desk though is, of course, melody (hence dream pop of course). Not only are Natasha Khan's songs here well-written and thought through enough to keep this album well above mediocrity, but also her breathy voice, capable of traversing the highs and lows as convincingly as a skag addict, serve the genre tag so well and really do conjure such a wonderful piece of work, and easily one of the very best albums of 2009. By sheer contrast, her preceding album was about as edgy as a bouncy castle, so don't be put off if you hated that.


I'm sure 100% of any of you who are reading this little note have come across Iggy Pop before, whether he's blared through your speakers at some point or other or been flashing his wrinkly torso at you in that vomit-inducing insurance ad. I'm gonna bet that a lot of you associate him with a livelier, proto-punk sound, be it in the form of songs like TV Eye and Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell that make you want to kick things or more considered, flat-out immense numbers like Five Foot One, the Passenger or China Girl. The Bowie anoraks among you may even associate him with the classic 1977 albums Lust For Life and the Idiot, both of which were produced and, in most places, co-written by David Bowie.

What some of you probably haven't noticed just yet is that the Bowie/Iggy collaboration didn't end there, but that in 1986 Bowie produced and co-wrote a third (and final) album with Iggy. What with its appearing in this thread and all, you can probably guess that this album represented an effort by a formerly heroin-crazed Iggy to present himself as a more cleaned-up guy after the chaos that was his professional and personal life in the earlier 80s. It's rumoured that, upon talking about making another album together, Bowie said to Iggy "I can make this album as commercial as hell". Neither of the pair were exactly at the peak of their artistic greatness at the time (the undeniably crap Never Let Me Down was just around the corner for the former), and it's true that Blah Blah Blah here isn't really one of the latter's best albums - for me, those would be Preliminaires, Brick By Brick, Lust For Life and the Idiot. Those aren't what I'd call flat-out pop albums though and, evidently, this is. By putting their heads together here though, what they produce is, for me, one of the better unashamed pop albums of the 80s and, when it comes to a lot of Iggy's fellow 70s big cheeses who tried to go for a mass audience and, therefore, to sound 'contemporary', this is a much better album than a lot of them. Dated, sure. A blatant pandering to the masses, certainly. But this is a very charming and infectious 80s pop album to me.

To tell you the truth though, you'll either dig it or dig a hole for it. If all you've heard is his work with the Stooges, prepare for a shock. Also, for anyone who was insane enough to watch Pretty Woman, you'll recognise one of the songs on this one.


So, we went off on a little tangent there with the kind of music I'm sure pretty much everyone recognises as out-and-out pop music. Now I'll just take you through another kind of pop, and something of the flipside of the coin when it comes to dream pop. This one is a rougher-edged version of the aforementioned sub-genre, and one that sounds to me like a variation of shoegaze and noise-rock. This is, in case that sentence didn't get you guessing, noise-pop.

This noise-pop is the noise-pop of one Zola Jesus - a girl by the given name of Nika Roza Danilova who's a year younger than my good self and has already accomplished this (and man is that depressing). All in all, she gives us not only another one of the hot contestants for album of 2009, but also a much more sinister variation of the dream pop of Bat For Lashes. The focus is still well and truly on atmospherics and ghostly, haunting vibes, but they're created in a totally different yet equally fascinating way here. This method presents us with a much more obviously minimalist approach, and one that utilises feedback and fuzz to a huge degree. The percussion sounds very industrial too, giving off a very authentic, Einsturzende Neubauten kinda vibe.

Which is all very well but a) is it any good and b) is it pop music? My answers would be a) don't be daft and b) absolutely. Somewhere beneath the walls of drones, feedback and industrial backdrops you can hear the kind of souful vocals and dreamy melodies that dream pop tends to go for. Here, though, any melodies tend to be a lot more subtle, almost as if they're buried beneath the embellishments (often a bad thing but, in instances like this one where the embellishments are good embellishments, sometimes not so), but the pop songwriting at the music's spine is definitely there. Plus, this way, it's all the more memorable for it. Anyway, great album this, and another sign that there's plenty of good stuff out there these days.


And, on that note, it's time for that old chestnut...


Again, click the pop tart and all shall be revealed.

Anyone out there wonder, like me, what the hell happened to this guy? He used to be pretty popular, at least here in Ol' Blighty. This aside, I'll admit I only remember the odd song from the radio a good seven or eight years ago, and there was this pretty cool video where the Badly Drawn Boy himself wears a yellow shirt and piggy-backs punters around town for taxi fares. I'm sure a quick visit to wikipedia would solve that little mystery, but it's a good review-starter anyway!

Either way, Badly Drawn Boy are basically the musical vehicle of Boltonian singer-songwriter Damon Gough and a load of session musicians from project to project providing a foil for his multi-instrumental talents and, as such, every song on this album was written by him and him alone. Around the time I spoke of earlier when the guy was enjoying a healthy slice of the pie of mainstream success, Nick Hornby's About a Boy was due to be adapted to the silver screen (as probably the only Hugh Grant film I actually like as well) and, unusually for such a mainstream film production with the amount of trans-Atlantic potential it had, Damon Gough here from little grey Bolton was the man deemed best for the job of writing and performing the entire soundtrack.

He probably couldn't believe his luck eh. As for the kind of music this soundtrack consists of, being a soundtrack album and all, about half of it comprises of all these sweet little instrumentals, while the other half is built on the back of some simplistic little indie/folk-rockers with a very mellow and calm feel, all sung in Gough's trademark deadpan vocal style with enough hooks for anyone to really grab onto. Basically, I'll put it this way - it's Sunday, I've seen rain for the first time in about a week and the skies are just covered with little patches of white and grey. This is the perfect album to go with that kinda backdrop.

Also, simplistic as this album may sound, it's clear that there's a lot of talent that goes into making stuff like this. Gough's a bit like a swan on this album - looks all fine above the surface, but below it his little legs are going mad.


I doubt though that this here's a man who needs any introduction whether you're British or American or have or haven't seen or read About a Boy before. Possibly for the wrong reasons too, seeing as I'm sure you've heard Don't Worry Be Happy at least once before in your lives. I'll admit that's a little bit of a guilty pleasure of mine but, my point is, don't let that put you off. Also, it's not worth being skeptical about the amount of grammies he's won throughout his career (at least it'd normally leave me asking a few questions anyway).

For those of you who've only heard 'that song' before, what you might not have known (I know I didn't for years after I'd first come across it) is that it's entirely acapella, as in every line and full stop in that song is all down to McFerrin's vocal. In that respect alone, if you view talent in objective terms like I do (the way I see it, talent is doing what the untalented find difficult with ease, whereas genius is doing what talented people find difficult with ease), then it's so easy to see it being served up in buckets here, whether or not you like the results of it. That's just a me thing anyway, so don't take my word for it or anything (that said, this whole thread is really). It's does take a hell of a of lot of something pretty special to do any song acapella on your lonesome as well, particularly over an entire album such as this (if I'm not mistaken, this was one of the first jazz albums to be recorded entirely solo).

There's not really an awful lot of explaining to do. I can only tell you that if you haven't heard it before, you're either gonna love it or absolutely despise it. I'd say it's worth a gamble myself though (evidently). Strangely enough for someone who's had so much critical acclaim go his way, videos apart from the one of 'that song' are pretty thin on the ground with youtube. The below song (apologies in advance for the out-of-sync-ness of it) isn't actually from this album, but it should give you a good idea what it's like anyway. Some of the album's actually a lot more lively than you might think it'd be as well.

Also, I'm fully aware that it's pushing it a bit to call this pop music of some sort. I'm just going by the amount of records sold and awards won here.


Talking of people who don't need introductions, hands up who hasn't heard of David Bowie before...

I really can't think of many other artists who've appealed to so many listeners from so many musical backgrounds. Throughout the length of his 40-year recording career (if he has indeed, which unfortunately looks very likely at the moment, retired by now), while it'd be exagerrating more than a Sun article written by office's cleaning lady to say that no two of his albums have ever sounded the same, the amount of styles and genres that the full extent of his back catalogue has provided us with is simply mind-boggling. Folk, glam, soul, r'n'b, funk, krautrock, electronica, new wave, disco, stadium rock, industrial, drum 'n' bass, gospel; he's kinda like that old geezer you see weekday nights down the pub who gets there about 5pm, stays all night, stares into space and doesn't even look at or talk to anyone - he's done it all down the years.

A pop thread just wouldn't be a pop thread without David Bowie chiming in somewhere in the middle of it, and there's no album of his that I'd call more out-and-out pop than this one (or at least not any good ones anyway). While is far, far away from being one of my favourite Bowie albums, it's also worth mentioning that it just happens to be far, far away from being a bad album by any stretch of the imagination at the same time. It's 80s pop, or at least early 80s pop, in a nutshell - very loud drumbeat, heavy use of brass augmentations, a production style so polished you can see your face in it etc. This is down to Bowie's ditching his usual producer Tony Visconti in favour of Chic's hit-machine Nile Rodgers in seeking a more mass-oriented sound. It might smack of sellout to some but, to tell you the truth, this is just another experiment with a new style of music from the man, and no more commercial than songs he released in the 70s like Rebel Rebel, Starman, Life On Mars or whatever.

Also, even if was the definitive sellout, the music backing it up is wonderful. In most places anyway. The only song I plain don't like on this album is Ricochet - just sounds like it's being edgey and 'out there' for the sake of it. Overall though, I always think of this as the classic album of two halves. Side A (particularly the three singles) represent 80s pop music at its most vibrant, fun and infectious, while side B has good points scattered around but meanders a little on the whole.

Whether you're into Bowie or not though, if you want something that's just a good pop album, get hold of this somehow.

Well, whether or not anyone's interest in this thread's been exhausted already, I need something that's not as frustrating as my dissertation to keep me occupied!

Another update (maybe two) to come very soon, perhaps even later today. In the mean time, it's about time I got some sort of index for this thing going. So, (in the order I've posted about them) albums covered so far then...


Can't be bothered to hotlink each one to their individual bits either :p:

Needless to say, this thing'll be added to over time - I've got at least four more bundles of albums to come (provided I don't get bored of this thread again before I can post them)...

Time for that belated update then...


Whoever said music critics don't know bugger all eh :p: As per one of a couple of posts I'm gonna make in this thread about the more endearing corners of an area of pop music that time hasn't been particularly kind to over the years, we're gonna have a quick look at what happens when a journo joins the band he's interviewing. Upon interviewing the new wave outfit Vice Versa in 1980, Martin Fry did indeed end up joining their ranks as vocalist - a move which saw the band's name change to a much more recognisable ABC. 2 years and a hit single (in the shape of funky Tears Are Not Enough) later, the time came for the quartet to record and release their debut album; Lexicon Of Love.

It's a ham-and-marmite sandwich of an album this, meaning it's no exagerration to say that you'll either love or hate it. Not in the mad as a box frogs/Captain Beefheart sense, obviously, but it all depends on your standing when it comes to that instantly-recognisable 80s synthpop/new wave sound. While this album hasn't dated as badly as, say, any given Prefab Sprout record, there's still a very early 80s sound to the percussion and synths. Very Trevor Horn, basically, who as the more retro-savvy among you may have noticed just by listening to the song below, actually produced this album. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure this album was the first huge, trans-Atlantic hit for Horn, who assembled his characteristic production team for the first time during the album sessions - Gary Langan: chief engineer; Anne Dudley: arrangements; JJ Jeczalik: programming. Emerging from the same Sheffield scene as the Human League as they did, it's not much of a surprise that ABC's debut sounds overall like a funkier version of the former's landmark Dare! album. Although there's a little bit of a lull in quality on the second side (the last two tracks in particular), Lexicon Of Love remains pretty much an essential pop album, with enough of a soft approach and melodic appeal about it (including one of my favourite hits of the 80s by a long shot) to have it rise well above mediocrity. When all's said and done, you couldn't have a pop thread without it.


In October 1980, a pivotal event in the history and evolution of pop music occured and, no, it wasn't Jim Callaghan resignation as Labour Party leader. Instead, it involved the same Sheffield scene that I was on about above (and, what the hell, I may as well focus on it with this post eh) - specifically the growing sense of dissatisfaction within the Human League at their lack of success that saw the band split up, seeing singer Phil Oakey and drummer Ian Burden retain the Human League name, while keyboardists Ian Craig Marsh and Marty Ware went the other way. While we'll rejoin Oakey and Burden in a bit, Marsh and Ware recruited a fella called Glenn Gregory as their singer, lifted their name from a Clockwork Orange and away they went, on their own path to pop stardom.

Although much more consistent than Oakey and co, meaning that any one of their first three albums are definitely worth your while if you're up for looking at bygone pillars of the pop community, their third album here is probably my pick of the bunch, or at the very least the one I've listened to enough to particularly want to write a couple of paragraphs about it. Plus, this album is the first Heaven 17 album which isn't entirely synthesized either, which makes it stand out from their early work that little bit more. As a unified sound, there's enough competent musicianship, use of what were then modern synthesizers and studio treatments and enough of an approachable vocal style from Gregory (for want of a better phrase) to set it up as a genuine pop album. Given that Ware and Marsh were side of the Human League that drove Oakey and Burden to pursue the more left-of-centre direction they did when all four of them were in the same band though, there isn't so much of an emphasis on melody as other synthpop albums of the day, but rather a lot more effort goes into creating vivid sonic pictures and delivering a good old-fashioned lefty, anti-yuppie message through the lyrics.

To sum it up in a sentence, either side of the Human League's splitting up in 1980 Heaven 17 here, while sparing no effort in giving themselves a very chart-friendly demeanour, have quite a bit in common with the earlier, more confrontational Human League records.


Now, let's have a look at the other side of that split eh. Better yet, I'll give you a bit more insight into why the split happened in the first place. There's that whole dissatisfaction with the lack of any real chart action the Human League were generating up until October 1980, but it was also down to the growing tension within the band over their musical direction, principally between Phil Oakey and Marty Ware. In essence, Ware saw the answer to this little problem the quartet had come upon being the continued pursuit of their more confrontational, more post-punk than synthpop direction, while Oakey thought it wouldn't exactly be a bad idea to lighten up and take a less aggressive appraoch to the charts. So, as I've already said, keyboardists Marty Ware and Ian Craig Marsh packed their bags and formed Heaven 17 while Oakey and drummer Ian Burden were left to pick up the shattered pieces of the Human League and start from scratch. Instead of looking for a couple more musos to recruit, Oakey made quite the odd move of picking up two girls (Joanne Cathrell and Susan Sulley) from a nightclub and employing them as backing vocalists, before taking to the studio to record a third album without any real hope of making a dent in the charts on either side of the Atlantic.

The result was an across-the-board smash of an album, propelled by the band's noticeably softer approach in the studio and the mega-hits Love Action and Don't You Want Me (which still grace many a dancefloor to this day). Not only did this album spawn two of the bigger and better hit singles of the 80s, but it was also a hugely influential landmark in that it was the first pop album to be recorded entirely on synth. Like Cupid and Psyche (my other favourite 80s pop album), it's true that you can blame this for a lot of charmless, passionless pop music to come over the next decade but, in all honesty, you can say that for just about any truly influential pop album. What matters is that the music is easily among the cream of the crop in its area and that is, of course, the case here - an album with more synth to it than you can shake a stick at, all the more charming for how 'of its time' bits of it sound, propelled by some of the most infectious hooks and catchy choruses committed to record.

To put it nice and pretentiously, this album serves as the kinda yin to Heaven 17's yang - a much brighter, friendlier sound than the just as accessible yet darker edge that Oakey's former bandmates in the latter were peddling. As I say, this is easily one of the most important pop albums of all time, and a shoe-in for any collection as far as I'm concerned.

Hey, I'm pretty new around here, but wanted to "pop" in and tell you how much I'm enjoying your work on this "pop" thread. I have to keep coming back again and again. Guess you could say addiction, but it is some of the best, most credible effort I've read. Thanks. I'll be popping back in --- The great thing about pop, which you are demonstrating very well, is the diversity of the genre - yet, it's universal appeal.
Keep Poppin'.

This Angry Silence is one of my favorite songs of all time.

Sorry for the necro-bump. Just back-tracking through Bulldog's stuff and this caught my eye. Sounds good.

Thanks for mentioning Idlewild, one of my favorite albums from the late 80s.

I don't think any other MB member has mentioned Saint Etienne, except for myself and you. I still think they're the best pop group of their generation. I love So Tough, Tiger Bay and Good Humor.

Nice post! There's really nice information which i can use.. Thanks