The Real Power Pop
If we think of disco and Italodisco as being to the '70s and '80s what rock 'n' roll was to the '50s and early '60s, and if we think of techno and acid house and some of the other visionary stuff in the broad electronic dance area as being to the '80s and '90s and onward what rock was to the '60s and early '70s, then let's say there's the tendency within techno/EDM to embrace its lost rock 'n' roll/disco self in the same way that in the late '60s and early '70s the punks and glamsters and glitter babes were rediscovering their own lost rock 'n' roll/pop/punk selves and inventing something new out of it. One of the words that emerged when "the punk rock movement" started to go big was "power pop." According to Wikipedia, the term was coined by Pete Townshend back in 1967. But as an idea (Greg Shaw's I think, though I don't recall if I was reading his own words on the subject or other people who were crediting him), it doesn't emerge until the late '70s, the idea being that, while punk was a necessary moment of destruction, the music we really want is more open and expansive, a broader palette, hence "power pop" (the term subsequently designating something far too narrow, unfortunately, but that's not Greg's fault). So my thesis is that the real new power pop - as opposed to rock-based throwbacks like "Bar Bar Bar" - is EDM in its more pop and cheesy and reductively opportunist impulses (of course, my def'n of "new" here goes back to the early '90s; one of the advantages of being old is I can take "new" back a long ways; e.g., to me anything Dylan did after 1967 is "late Dylan").
Of course, the '70s and '80s weren't the '50s and '60s, and techno etc. wasn't/isn't the new version of the supposed '60s rock revolution, though I actually think there's a hunk to be gained from exploring those analogies. Disco didn't have nearly as much of rock 'n' roll's air of insurgency, but like r'n'r it took the funk 'n' groove of its time while carrying itself as if to say "we can bring this to the whole world, and use anything in the world in our sound." (Hip-hop also felt it could use anything but was very much about staking out its own territory.) And disco was probably more insurgent and utopian than outsiders realized, just as rock 'n' roll and rock were more of a consumer niche and less insurgent than claimed. (Not that being a consumer niche forestalls all insurgency.)
Unfortunately, I'm not the person to push forward these analogies, since I don't know the world of electronic dance music. But I'll play with them anyway. Think of '60s rock and of techno and progeny as each being an electric adventure, an electronic frontier, that pulls you in but also puts you a step away or a step ahead of everybody else. So within it there's a race to keep moving (or at least to keep up) and an urge to transform, nebulous though the urges and transformations actually are. Original techno as I "understood" it (i.e., read about it) was both a critical reaction to technology (the ravaged Detroit urban wasteland) and an insistence on using technology. And this does recall lots about the brief psychedelic scenes in London and New York and San Francisco: it's extreme and it's a scene. There's the live psychedelic dance, the happening, the rave. Yet these things also function as reference points as the music plays in a much wider life, e.g., to a bigger audience as it's pushed on FM radio or on record or later on CD or later still on message boards or YouTube - so you're part of the dance scene even when you've never been to one of the dances. And whether you have or not, you're also with it in the parts of your life where you're not dancing. You have it in your head, the sense of the scenes you're part of or are at odds with. And in the nowadays, lots of the music and camaraderie and enmity take place online.
So, to the "power pop." What I have in mind here isn't the pop music that incorporates technology (all pop music incorporates technology), but rather the stuff, coming up from the electronic beats, that is challenging or pushy or abrasive, yet at the same time adds a tuneful front and grabs any available color the world offers up. So it's extreme and it's a scene, on the one hand, and on the other it's catchy and opportunistic and embraces the casual listener.
This post was inspired by arbitrary_greay asking if there was any room for J-pop saxophone EDM in the Austral-Romanian Empire; my answer was that the Morning Musume that AG embedded didn't at all have the rhythm I had in mind for Austral Romania, which is really quite narrow; but I did get to thinking about what a REAL power pop might be, music coming from "new" power sounds rather than from the memory of rock's old rush. So here's Scooter, my prime candidate for hard power pop, followed by a couple of AG's Morning Musume tracks:
"One (Always Hardcore)"
モーニング娘。 『愛の軍団』(Morning Musume。["GUNDAN" of the love])
モーニング娘。 『わがまま 気のまま 愛のジョーク』(Morning Musume。[Selfish,easy going,Jokes of love])
A few notes:
I'm choosing Scooter rather than, say, Norman Cook because Cook never really hit me, and the Big Beat subgenre in Britain probably isn't what I have in mind: doesn't do right by the potential extremity of electronic dance music, though maybe my problem is that I just don't know Big Beat or EDM well enough. And, of course, I know even less (virtually nothing) about Morning Musume and J-pop and their relation to EDM.
As for my calling Crayon Pop's "Bar Bar Bar" a throwback: actually, one of the great things about K-pop is that it takes disco and freestyle etc. without feeling at all like a throwback but rather as if those musics never ended, which means they didn't. "Bar Bar Bar" doesn't fit that template in that it's rock rather than disco or freestyle; but in fact it doesn't feel like a throwback to me, even if it could have emerged whole from Los Angeles circa 1980. (And as I said to petronia, in looking back at anything it's easy to unconsciously interpolate later elements. So maybe if I were to take a psycho-teleporter back to my 1980-consciousness some element of "Bar Bar Bar" would jump out as strange and novel in comparison to what I was expecting from power pop.) So far, "Bar Bar Bar" seems like a bright spot rather than a direction. Not that very many of my predictions regarding that song's prospects have been right.
Of course, the '70s and '80s weren't the '50s and '60s, and techno etc. wasn't/isn't the new version of the supposed '60s rock revolution, though I actually think there's a hunk to be gained from exploring those analogies. Disco didn't have nearly as much of rock 'n' roll's air of insurgency, but like r'n'r it took the funk 'n' groove of its time while carrying itself as if to say "we can bring this to the whole world, and use anything in the world in our sound." (Hip-hop also felt it could use anything but was very much about staking out its own territory.) And disco was probably more insurgent and utopian than outsiders realized, just as rock 'n' roll and rock were more of a consumer niche and less insurgent than claimed. (Not that being a consumer niche forestalls all insurgency.)
Unfortunately, I'm not the person to push forward these analogies, since I don't know the world of electronic dance music. But I'll play with them anyway. Think of '60s rock and of techno and progeny as each being an electric adventure, an electronic frontier, that pulls you in but also puts you a step away or a step ahead of everybody else. So within it there's a race to keep moving (or at least to keep up) and an urge to transform, nebulous though the urges and transformations actually are. Original techno as I "understood" it (i.e., read about it) was both a critical reaction to technology (the ravaged Detroit urban wasteland) and an insistence on using technology. And this does recall lots about the brief psychedelic scenes in London and New York and San Francisco: it's extreme and it's a scene. There's the live psychedelic dance, the happening, the rave. Yet these things also function as reference points as the music plays in a much wider life, e.g., to a bigger audience as it's pushed on FM radio or on record or later on CD or later still on message boards or YouTube - so you're part of the dance scene even when you've never been to one of the dances. And whether you have or not, you're also with it in the parts of your life where you're not dancing. You have it in your head, the sense of the scenes you're part of or are at odds with. And in the nowadays, lots of the music and camaraderie and enmity take place online.
So, to the "power pop." What I have in mind here isn't the pop music that incorporates technology (all pop music incorporates technology), but rather the stuff, coming up from the electronic beats, that is challenging or pushy or abrasive, yet at the same time adds a tuneful front and grabs any available color the world offers up. So it's extreme and it's a scene, on the one hand, and on the other it's catchy and opportunistic and embraces the casual listener.
This post was inspired by arbitrary_greay asking if there was any room for J-pop saxophone EDM in the Austral-Romanian Empire; my answer was that the Morning Musume that AG embedded didn't at all have the rhythm I had in mind for Austral Romania, which is really quite narrow; but I did get to thinking about what a REAL power pop might be, music coming from "new" power sounds rather than from the memory of rock's old rush. So here's Scooter, my prime candidate for hard power pop, followed by a couple of AG's Morning Musume tracks:
"One (Always Hardcore)"
Click to viewモーニング娘。 『愛の軍団』(Morning Musume。["GUNDAN" of the love])
モーニング娘。 『わがまま 気のまま 愛のジョーク』(Morning Musume。[Selfish,easy going,Jokes of love])
A few notes:
I'm choosing Scooter rather than, say, Norman Cook because Cook never really hit me, and the Big Beat subgenre in Britain probably isn't what I have in mind: doesn't do right by the potential extremity of electronic dance music, though maybe my problem is that I just don't know Big Beat or EDM well enough. And, of course, I know even less (virtually nothing) about Morning Musume and J-pop and their relation to EDM.
As for my calling Crayon Pop's "Bar Bar Bar" a throwback: actually, one of the great things about K-pop is that it takes disco and freestyle etc. without feeling at all like a throwback but rather as if those musics never ended, which means they didn't. "Bar Bar Bar" doesn't fit that template in that it's rock rather than disco or freestyle; but in fact it doesn't feel like a throwback to me, even if it could have emerged whole from Los Angeles circa 1980. (And as I said to petronia, in looking back at anything it's easy to unconsciously interpolate later elements. So maybe if I were to take a psycho-teleporter back to my 1980-consciousness some element of "Bar Bar Bar" would jump out as strange and novel in comparison to what I was expecting from power pop.) So far, "Bar Bar Bar" seems like a bright spot rather than a direction. Not that very many of my predictions regarding that song's prospects have been right.