Today's time waster

[venta]

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?

Comments

Re: Someone has to mention...

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

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...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Well sure, but a pop song which doesn't live in the genre in unlikely to be the essence of pop, is it ?

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...

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

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.