A day when the Spice Girls are rumored to be reforming seems like an appropriate time to mention my surprise that, according to Google, no-one has made the obvious “zig-a-zig objet petit a” joke. Or maybe ten years ago it didn’t occur to anyone to use a global computer network to disseminate such a mediocre gag.
In other Spice Girls news, I was interested to find an article on Girl Power that says a lot of what I had vaguely imagined might go into a theory of Marxism-Britneyism.
Especially as it was preemptively won by Alistair’s definitive top 100 songs of the 90s.
I must admit, I found the short lived outbreak of 90s-pop hostilities a little depressing. Not because the songs were terrible, although some of them certainly were, indeed the opposite; the music of the early 90s was often so good, current pop music can’t really stand up. I realize there’s a danger of nostalgia, but this isn’t just a matter of subjective taste. The diffusion of acid house and hardcore into chart music that was such a big feature of the early 90s is, in hindsight, kind of amazing, and a positive development that I can’t see much to equal today. Marky Mark is a particularly good example. When I remembered his existence, I had no memory of what the song sounded like; certainly, it didn’t occur to me that a manufactured pop idol would was launched with a song that owes so much to an Italo-house classic. If you want to be depressed, just compare Marky Mark’s amazing track with the contemporary equivalents (James Blunt, maybe, or Daniel Powter).
Well, there are a couple of contemporary trends that give some hope. One would be Timbaland’s remarkable queering of R&B, particularly on the Justin Timberlake album. Pleasingly, this is being picked up by other R&B and hip-hop artists, particularly in the Bay Area, as I discovered from this great hyphy mixtape (mix-podcast?). Particular good is Berkeley group The Pack’s track, “At the Club,” which, unexpectedly, sounds like nothing so much as Belgian New Beat.
This is, unexpectedly, a really good song.
This may not fit infinite thought’s strict criteria, as it was never technically a hit, but it was, for a confusing couple of weeks, regularly played in the Coffee Shop in Neighbours…
antigram and infinite thought’s 90s pop war reminds me that I meant to post this video a while back, but I don’t think I ever did.
I forget why I was going to post it, but then, it’s not like it really needs any justification.
There are some thing which, as far as I’m aware, never appear on bad records: hammond organs, trombones, handclaps.
And, a broader category, ska covers. Why is it, by the way, that two-tone, renowned as a political form of music, got so terrible whenever it explicitly turned to politics? Lots of great tunes about the general shitness of work, poverty, late capitalism; and then when political demands get raised, you get the mediocre “Free Nelson Mandela” and “Stand Down Margaret,” the worst ska record ever made?