The Most Baleful Influences on Pop Music...
in the last two decades.
1. Whitney Houston. Maybe she didn’t really originate her of style of bombastic pop, but she’s one of the main reasons soul went into the toilet after Al Green went into the ministry. (New jack, new girl groups, and other hip-hop miscegenation with the genre have since fished it from the bowl.) The monstrous self-importance, the stupid operatic voice modulations, the plodding arrangements. Her music (or more correctly, its success) is at the root of Mariah’s ‘90s chart dominance, the bazoople platinum Titanic soundtrack*, and American Idol and its know-nothing, insipid judges**. She’s the proud architect of the second worst song of all time, “The Greatest Love of All.”***
2.
3. Replacements. Unlike the aforementioned, the ‘mats actually have good songs. But for some reason Paul Westerberg’s vocal stylings were the archetype for “alternative” rock singers (though that phase seems to have passed). His band was a bunch of sloppy drunks; the grating soul singing method matches not with cleanly produced studio fare. The Replacements are indirectly responsible for the resurrection of Santana after nearly three decades of irrelevance, a dude who wasn’t interesting in the first place.
Honorable Mention: De La Soul. 3 Feet High and Rising came in 1989 with a running skit about a fictitious game show interrupting its tracks. The songs themselves were amusing. The skit was not. This has become the prototype for nearly every commercial hip-hop album since. Let’s assume 10,000 skits since, three of them funny. I still haven’t forgiven Prince Paul enough to listen to his subsequent albums.
*What about those millions of idiots who shelled out $18 for one song and the rest incidental music? For one song that you could hear on crappy radio stations ten times a day.
**Not to mention all the other primetime remakes of Star Search that the wife prefers over televised comedy or basketball.
***”We are the World” is, of course, the worst.
posted by fats durston at 2:07 PM
7 Comments:
For me:
1. Whitney Houston. I know you're specifically referencing influence, but I just hate her hate her hate her. Bluh. I think "Greatest Love" edges out "We Are the World," just barely.
2. U2. At least as influential as Pearl Jam, and way more annoying. They didn't invent Rock bombast, but they perfected it to entrepreneurial science. Self-important posers begetting other self-important posers. I'm no Pearl Jam fan, but they, by contrast, just seem like sort of a boring Lynyrd Skynyrd to me.
3. What U2 has done for bleeding heart pomposity, Sean "Puffy" Combs has done for thugishness and over-produced hip-hop product. Now, like your Placemats, he has been involved in some good projects, but may I point to that Sting (oh, wait--can I start my list over again?) cover he did? So much hip hop is so cliched and samey, and p.diddy deserves a fair share of the blame.
Honorable Mentions: 1) Not sure who to blame for Nu-Metal (Red Hot Chili Peppers? Faith No More? Metallica? NKOTB?), but when they get to hell, they better hope they don't cross paths with Ronnie James Dio. 2) Morrisey is too often imitated--successfully.
2. As music, I must say that I hate U2 more than Pearl Jam. (I like precisely two of their songs, the one that goes, BOW BOWM, pretty much for that sound effect, and one other I'm too embarrassed to admit.) I remember suffering through high school and then college all the folks who insisted that I would get Joshua Tree if I just listened all the way through. Every room in my freshman dorm had a copy of that damn piece of clatter and moan. I know you're right, that they're way influential, but my unskilled hearing doesn't pick it up. Examples?
3. Sting! Jesus, how I could I forget about that noxious ass swipe? Whatever Police's greatest hits was titled sat right beside Joshua Tree in every dorm room's collection. I think Sting probably just bumped the Replacements down a notch. Hmmm, beginning to look like this list shoulda gone 10 long.
I'd say that I hadn't thought to trace musical suckitude directly to P. Diddy (come on, that's a homophone for a pissed diaper, peed diddy!); I'd always thought of him as a David Bowie-style imitator, copying trends but never initiating them. I think I'd blame him for the hyper-capitalist methodology that has transformed all recent hip-poppers into entrepreneurial cyborgs, with personal clothing lines and acting careers (nice kids' movie there, Cube). Gag.
3a. Hey, you should start an effort to slip "The Right Stuff" into a revisionist Nu-metal canon.
3b. I'm not fit to judge: I've seriously only heard one Smiths album once in my life (Juice, you wanker!). There is a Morrissey song on my computer, which is there for transferring to my sister's collection. Maybe I should listen to it.
2. Radiohead comes immediately to mind. Jesus. I just popped over to the iTunes store to confirm that Coldplay belongs in this group. I feel filthy. There are others. Let their names not be uttered (because I don't know their names). Check out the Garden State album. (Not the Shins though--they're cool. And I'm not just saying that because you're related.)
3. Re: hyper-capitalist methodology. I think we need to blame Wu Tang Clan as well. (RIP, ODB.) Sting is way, way worse. I'm just so tired of the same old hip hop. There's such a profusion of product, but so little substance. Still the most reliable genre these days, though.
3a. I like this revisionist Nu-Metal idea. Must give it some thought.
3b. Damn Don Chung and Big Christine. I also had to hear it from Alex Shaw whose favorite band was the Cure but who (bad to worse) seemed to listen more to Icicle Works. Which causes me to remember another Alex favorite, Depeche Mode, who probably also belong on this list along with, maybe, Joy Division.
2.v3 I jumped to conclusions about the Garden State sound track. Disregard.
2.3 Do we get to blame Pink Floyd for Radiohead? Alternate theory, pointed out by some astute fellow I cannot remember: Coldplay is Dave Matthews II. Confession: I like "Yellow." Even now.
2.3.2 Hey, you gave me "New Slang" on my wedding present CD, and I loved it. I thus got Chutes to Narrow, but haven't given it a solid listening to other than "Saint Simon" and "Mine's Not a High Horse."
Can't listen to iStore on dial-up. So I'll have to take, er, not take your word on Garden State.
3b.3 Jeez, did Alex come out yet? Joy Division does seem to be at the root of all them postdisco brit synth bands. I remember hating Erasure worse than anything else in my sophomore-year roommate's collection, and he owned Wilson Phillips. But my tastes have migrated to enjoy the sound of their descendents in the various fields of electronica. Not much for the moping, though.
2.4-A/B
Undoubtedly, Coldplay has some songs with which I'm not familiar. Some of them must sound like other bands I hate. "Clocks," however, sounds just like U2.
We can definitely give Pink Floyd some of the blame for Radiohead, esp. that OK Computer. I guess it takes a village of crap rockers to raise new bands of crap rockers.
It occurs to me that we've completely neglected the rather huge, baleful influence of the Grateful Dead. This problem is bigger than it at first seems.
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