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本帖最後由 bagfgfcde 於 2018-9-21 10:33 編輯
Taylor Swift released a new track to radio a couple of months back-- the "Pop Mix" of "You Belong With Me". Her original mix doesn't sound not-pop to my ears: it's punchy, twangy, airbrushed country, a sweet sound backing up a sharp song about playing the long game, waiting in the background while the person you love wastes their time on a loser. What does the "Pop Mix" do to it? It adds an alt-rock bassline, compressed buzzsaw guitars on the chorus, and a power-pop solo in the middle eight. "Pop" in this context means "sounds as much as possible like 'Since U Been Gone'".
All that ballast crushes the song's sweetness. But what I, or any other writer, think hardly matters-- pop is a troublesome genre for the critic or obsessive fan because they don't get much say in what counts. It's not like club music where every new twist and trick gets its own name soon enough. It's not like metal where the truth or falsity of the music forges and animates fandoms. It's not like hip-hop where debates over realness are encoded into the tracks themselves. Pop is defined by success in the marketplace-- meaning some changeable combination of the labels, the radio, the gossip blogs, the folks who buy music for ads and TV shows, and the people they are trying to please: you and me.
It's not a free marketplace, or a fair one; it's not rational, and it often ignores or destroys quality. But as soon as you step aside from it, as soon as you start to say, "OK, this stuff is proper pop and this stuff isn't," you're defining something else.
Not that I'd blame you. The fierce sense that the market is failing-- that pop has gone wrong and that its spirit lives only in exile-- sits somewhere behind every independent movement that lays claim to the p-word, and every hopeful revivalist. Pop wears many skins and sheds them constantly and inconveniently. The husks can be beautiful, what wriggles free of them often awkward and ugly-- naturally it's tempting to settle on a discard, pay it cult, study and describe it.
Like indie pop, for instance. One reason I like that Taylor Swift single is that in sentiment it reminds me of music I heard on John Peel in the 80s-- the mousy righteousness of Taylor's unspoken infatuation is pure Sarah Records. But there the similarity ends. As music, indie pop held, and holds still, that a messy sketch of an ideal form is worth more than a glossy grab at whatever works. |
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發表於 2018-8-1 11:25
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