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Today's time waster
A while ago a friend of mine said that he considered The Rubettes' Sugar Baby Love[*] to be the perfect pop song.
I'm not sure what I would suggest...
A perfect pop song would need to be short (a good example of how being too long can spoil a song can be found in Kenickie's Punka - a great song, I think, but would be so much greater if they'd had the sense to stop about half way through).
I think it wants a chorus, almost by definition. And has to be something you can dance about like a twat to, if you're so inclined. Probably something you can recognise within the first bar and a half, across a dancefloor...
Any thoughts ? Defining "pop" is, of course, left as an exercise for the reader.
[*] at least, I think he did. Richard, if you're reading, am I right?
I'm not sure what I would suggest...
A perfect pop song would need to be short (a good example of how being too long can spoil a song can be found in Kenickie's Punka - a great song, I think, but would be so much greater if they'd had the sense to stop about half way through).
I think it wants a chorus, almost by definition. And has to be something you can dance about like a twat to, if you're so inclined. Probably something you can recognise within the first bar and a half, across a dancefloor...
Any thoughts ? Defining "pop" is, of course, left as an exercise for the reader.
[*] at least, I think he did. Richard, if you're reading, am I right?
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I refuse to put an apostrophe their name on principle. But nevertheless it is a small and perfectly formed pop ditty.
It loses out on the "dance like a twat" criterion, though, as does Love My Way by the Psychadelic Furs. Never tried to dance to Paranoid by Green Day, but it might work.
Maybe Teenage Kicks, the Undertones. However, I think that if you make the dancing criterion genuinely important, you have to look to Tainted Love (Soft Cell's is the version I'm thinking of).
More recently, we can consider Envy by Ash (or, if we don't like that, Girl From Mars or Kung Fu can stand in). Fell in Love With a Girl by the White Stripes also ranks highly in last year's offerings, and I'm told there's a band called The Strokes who are very much into the classic pop song format. In Too Deep by Sum 41? Not sure.
Obviously there are any number of songs that I hate which are perfect pop entirely by design. Messrs Stock, Aitkin, Waterman, Holland, Dozier and Holland are responsible for many of them, and Britney has some under her belt. Unless that's her skirt, I can never be entirely sure.
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Speaking as a person who has involuntarily been treated to most of Britney's hits over the last few days, I'd say she has precisely one perfect pop song under her belt (or skirt, if you prefer). But I do think it's a rather good perfect pop song. Although I'm aware that you will forever think less of me as a result ;-)
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Duh, sorry, Basket Case by Green Day. It's not called Paranoid at all.
Oh, and of course...
Sheena is a Punk Rocker by the Ramones, which is one of the landmark singles which ensured that punk would become a subversion of the pop formula rather than a rejection of it, and without which none of these Undertones or Green Days would have been possible.
Re: Oh, and of course...
And a few more, moderately recent, examples:
Bohemian Like You, Dandy Warhols
Stripper Vicar, Mansun
Sit Down, James
You Only Get What You Give, New Radicals
Some of those might not fulfill the "short" requirement.
I'm not quite sure what criteria I'm applying in my selection - it has a lot to do with the song being very compact, with simple catchy riffs, natural progressions, "obvious"-sounding bridges, and that kind of thing. I'm also limiting it to things I like ;-)
Someone has to mention...
Complete with engagingly daft lyrics, dance actions which any muppet can attempt with amusing results and a Funki Poppi Chown (TM) !
Also, I contend that the perfect pop song must have a slight aura of naffness about it so that you always feel just a little guilty admitting you like it. Without this, it might well fit into some other genre besides pop - and that would never do !
Re: Someone has to mention...
I don't agree about the naffness (anyone saying that my picks don't reflect this will be glared at). The pop formula is so totally universal that there are various pop-related genres where it's very easy to write a pop song which still does live in the genre.
I'm told that this was Kurt Cobain's stated aim in writing Smells Like Teen Spirit, although I'm not entirely convinced he really did stick to the rules. It's too long, for starters, the phrases are a too disjointed, and it doesn't end right. Although no doubt someone will now point out a classic pop song that finishes the exact same way.
Oh, that reminds me. Just a Girl, No Doubt.
Re: Someone has to mention...
Y'see to me something like Bohemian Like You is nowhere near the perfect pop tune because its lyrics are satirical in style. Pop has to be shameless cheese dammit ! It's pop, I grant you, but not even a contender.
Oh - I also nominate Echo Beach by... umm... Martha and the Muffins was it ?
Re: Someone has to mention...
Well sure, but a pop song which doesn't live in the genre in unlikely to be the essence of pop, is it ?
No, but then I didn't say that it doesn't live in the pop genre, I said that it does live in some other genre.
If we want to assert that "genre" provides a disjoint partition (or, perhaps, a strict heirarchy) of all of music, then firstly we're going to have to go through the entire pop/rock section of HMV straightening things out, and secondly we have bands like Blink 182 where each songs is on the pop/rock margin, never mind whole albums at a time. Finally we're going to have to deal with cases like Vanessa Mae's "modern classical" or whatever she calls it. It's impossible.
Far simpler to say that pop is as pop does, and that if someone writes what is blatantly a pop song but that happens to have heavy guitar chugging, we'll call it a pop song rather than trying to work out whether it can't be pop because it might be rock.
Recently became very fond of...
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/shrek/likewow.htm
This, incidentally, was what inspired my recent burst of poetry.
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Got to keep thinking about "the perfect popsong". Does it have to be something I actually *like*, or can I declare something to be a perfect popsong on the grounds of being vapid, saccharine, and ultimately detestable?
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That's just a snob's view of pop, though. "Pop" shouldn't be defined to be any music designed to appeal to the masses and which we personally don't happen to like. Vapidity is not a rquired characteristic of pop, it's just extremely common.
To me, a piece of music being a pop song depends more on the formula it follows and the tricks it uses than it depends on what the song happens to be about, but maybe I'm alone in this.
More examples of archetypal pop songs:
I Get Around, The Beach Boys
Love Me Do, The Beatles
Stand by Your Man, Tammy Wynette
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... which is indeed a great song. And discussing it is how Richard's comment about Sugar Baby Love came up in the first place.
Sugar Baby Love
And yes, I too have difficulty defining the term!
-- Richard (briefly coming out of lurk mode)