This is completely unrelated to my "40 for 40" btw ...
This is a tremendous writeup of Britney's debut single from the UK #1's blog, Popular.
Tom really nails it here -- he sets the scene for the album sales-inflated late 90's, defends Spears against derogatory "manufactured pop" charges, and describes why the song was practically destined to dominate the charts.
His only stumble is in his take on Britney's voice and it's well-known limitations. On "Baby One More Time", they covered up her deficiencies well, but without Autotuning her out of existence or drowning her out with background singers or other production tricks. Ewing goes on to write that "it’s not until the breakthrough into full-on R&B and club pop that she (and the producers) can really start playing with it [her voice], and with her role in the song".
I think he's giving short thrift to Britney and to the superstar producers that would become household names in the next decade. This is definitely a case where US/North American and UK/European experiences diverge. In the US, before Britney, R&B oriented chart pop by female artists was dominated by the big voiced Diva. You aspired to be Whitney Houston or else. Toni Braxton, TLC, Mariah Carey, and Whitney herself all took turns barricading themselves at the top of the Hot 100 for years. Just a few months before Whitney's breakthrough, diva worship reached its apex with the extraordinary success of Brandy and Monica's "The Boy Is Mine", which was #1 for the entire summer of 1998 (13 weeks). The popularity of this music showed no signs of waning whatsoever.
But seemingly out of nowhere, Britney changed the narrative completely. Suddenly, the focus was on the song rather than the quality of the voice behind the song. Manufacturing songs and stars, rather than seeking out the most god-given singing talent and accelerating its rise to the top, became acceptable again. This meant that producers were free to create rather than accentuate the same Boyz II Men-inspired vocal melodies again and again.
The Spice Girls owed their success to many of the same ideas, but Christina Aguilera and a million other teen pop idols weren't swarming the charts within months of their debut.
The idea of a manufactured star backed by a producer/svengali figure responsible for the studio magic was hardly new, it was just long overdue by '99. Ewing even mentioned the Shangri-La's, who are a perfect comparison to Britney. They weren't much better than passable singers either, but to analyze their vocal intonations would also be missing the point.
Within a few years, every teen idol and tabloid semi-celeb this side of Hillary Duff and Paris Hilton would be making albums -- hit albums even -- with the best producers money could buy, and nobody would blink an eye.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
Inner City, "Big Fun"
I've decided to cut this song from my "40 for 40" list.
My serious dance/club music fandom began in earnest in '89-'90. At the time (as it is now), my interest in the music was mainly fueled via outlets that didn't involve going out to the actual clubs. You had to be of drinking age (19+) to get into most of the good club nights anyhow, so at least I had a convenient excuse. I'd tune into CFNY's live radio simulcasts from RPM, and browse through vinyl and dance club charts at the shops on Yonge Street on the weekends. RPM closed in the mid-90's and was reopened as part of the expanded Guvernment complex that occupies the same site on Queens Quay East in Toronto. Unfortunately, it is slated to close its doors for good in January 2015. With Sunrise Records announcing the closure of their Yonge Street shops this November, the flagship HMV store and Play de Record are now the last music stores on a strip that was packed with them for decades. The 90's in Toronto already seem like another era.
In many ways it was a golden age for dance music. I've lost count of the number of times that dance, or EDM, or whatever you want to call it, was about to cross over into the mainstream and blow up all over the world, according to rock critics supposedly in the know. The top dance producers of the time were too busy counting their money to care about such trivial labels. Black Box's "Ride on Time" was the biggest selling single in the UK in 1989. C + C Music Factory's first album went 5x platinum in the US, and "Gonna Make You Sweat" was #1 on the Hot 100. Dee-Lite went from having a buzz in the underground to being played at your cousin's wedding seemingly overnight.
The most unexpected mainstream crossover was from Kevin Saunderson and his Inner City project. At the time, it seemed like an organic and natural transition from the clubs to the radio. They had catchy songs, hedonistic summer-ready lyrics, female vocalists who could belt out a tune with the best of them, so what's not to get? As the years have passed though, I'm increasingly blown away by what Saunderson managed to accomplish. Derrick May and Juan Atkins seem to get more respect from the uber-devoted techno heads for laying down the blueprint of what Detroit techno was and what for the most part, it still continues to be. "Detroit" is an adjective mostly thanks to May and Atkins. Saunderson, in comparison, was a populist who had his songs briefly played on the radio. I felt the same way for a long time. Derrick May's "Innovator" compilation was the Rosetta Stone of techno, no less than required listening for anyone who planned to carry on a serious conversation about the music. On the other hand, Saunderson's success was something of a fluke. He was an oppurtunist who happened to be in the right place at the right time and managed to get his album recorded first.
I was wrong, and it wasn't even the "Faces and Phases" compilation that convinced me of how wrong I was (great as it is, it doesn't even contain any of the big Inner City hits). Twenty five years later, in a genre where records often sound dated before the year is over, Inner City's parade of hits still stand out as some of the finest mainstream techno ever recorded. The most amazing thing is that Saunderson took a then-regional micro genre and found a way to fast track this music into the charts, creating a market that almost nobody knew existed. This wasn't like Madonna collaborating with a hot producer with a 5-10 year track record of success, he took his cues from virtually nobody.
My list needed a song that would symbolize that era when dance music streams were crossing over with each other and into the mainstream at a breakneck pace. I was profoundly influences by the era and the styles of music, which set the stage for all my future forays into techno. So who better to represent it than the iconic "Big Fun" by Inner City, my favourite techno hitmakers of the late 80's?
The problem is that as integral as Inner City might be for contextualizing the music I listened to in '89 and throughout my life, this list is first and foremost a songs list. Representing eras is important (this is certainly the case with other songs on the list) but I couldn't justify including "Big Fun" instead of other songs that I couldn't live and breathe without hearing. There are plenty of songs that were representative of my taste in music and defined who I was at the time to the point that my interest in those songs became a calculated obsession.
I couldn't even decide on a standout Inner City song. I think I've tended to prefer "Good Life" over the years but "Big Fun" sounds more like a classic -- a proper introduction to the band and what they were doing -- mainly thanks to that killer opening riff. But "Ain't Nobody Better" is great too, and if we're looking at Saunderson's career apart from Inner City, I was (and still am) crazy over Reese's "Rock To the Beat", and the deliriously fine Detroit mix of New Order's "Round and Round". Was Saunderson on fire in those days or what?
In short, the "40 for 40" list is about telling stories, but first and foremost it's about standout songs. Sometimes it will favour the the artist with one song that drove me crazy over the artist with a consistently strong output.
My serious dance/club music fandom began in earnest in '89-'90. At the time (as it is now), my interest in the music was mainly fueled via outlets that didn't involve going out to the actual clubs. You had to be of drinking age (19+) to get into most of the good club nights anyhow, so at least I had a convenient excuse. I'd tune into CFNY's live radio simulcasts from RPM, and browse through vinyl and dance club charts at the shops on Yonge Street on the weekends. RPM closed in the mid-90's and was reopened as part of the expanded Guvernment complex that occupies the same site on Queens Quay East in Toronto. Unfortunately, it is slated to close its doors for good in January 2015. With Sunrise Records announcing the closure of their Yonge Street shops this November, the flagship HMV store and Play de Record are now the last music stores on a strip that was packed with them for decades. The 90's in Toronto already seem like another era.
In many ways it was a golden age for dance music. I've lost count of the number of times that dance, or EDM, or whatever you want to call it, was about to cross over into the mainstream and blow up all over the world, according to rock critics supposedly in the know. The top dance producers of the time were too busy counting their money to care about such trivial labels. Black Box's "Ride on Time" was the biggest selling single in the UK in 1989. C + C Music Factory's first album went 5x platinum in the US, and "Gonna Make You Sweat" was #1 on the Hot 100. Dee-Lite went from having a buzz in the underground to being played at your cousin's wedding seemingly overnight.
The most unexpected mainstream crossover was from Kevin Saunderson and his Inner City project. At the time, it seemed like an organic and natural transition from the clubs to the radio. They had catchy songs, hedonistic summer-ready lyrics, female vocalists who could belt out a tune with the best of them, so what's not to get? As the years have passed though, I'm increasingly blown away by what Saunderson managed to accomplish. Derrick May and Juan Atkins seem to get more respect from the uber-devoted techno heads for laying down the blueprint of what Detroit techno was and what for the most part, it still continues to be. "Detroit" is an adjective mostly thanks to May and Atkins. Saunderson, in comparison, was a populist who had his songs briefly played on the radio. I felt the same way for a long time. Derrick May's "Innovator" compilation was the Rosetta Stone of techno, no less than required listening for anyone who planned to carry on a serious conversation about the music. On the other hand, Saunderson's success was something of a fluke. He was an oppurtunist who happened to be in the right place at the right time and managed to get his album recorded first.
I was wrong, and it wasn't even the "Faces and Phases" compilation that convinced me of how wrong I was (great as it is, it doesn't even contain any of the big Inner City hits). Twenty five years later, in a genre where records often sound dated before the year is over, Inner City's parade of hits still stand out as some of the finest mainstream techno ever recorded. The most amazing thing is that Saunderson took a then-regional micro genre and found a way to fast track this music into the charts, creating a market that almost nobody knew existed. This wasn't like Madonna collaborating with a hot producer with a 5-10 year track record of success, he took his cues from virtually nobody.
My list needed a song that would symbolize that era when dance music streams were crossing over with each other and into the mainstream at a breakneck pace. I was profoundly influences by the era and the styles of music, which set the stage for all my future forays into techno. So who better to represent it than the iconic "Big Fun" by Inner City, my favourite techno hitmakers of the late 80's?
The problem is that as integral as Inner City might be for contextualizing the music I listened to in '89 and throughout my life, this list is first and foremost a songs list. Representing eras is important (this is certainly the case with other songs on the list) but I couldn't justify including "Big Fun" instead of other songs that I couldn't live and breathe without hearing. There are plenty of songs that were representative of my taste in music and defined who I was at the time to the point that my interest in those songs became a calculated obsession.
I couldn't even decide on a standout Inner City song. I think I've tended to prefer "Good Life" over the years but "Big Fun" sounds more like a classic -- a proper introduction to the band and what they were doing -- mainly thanks to that killer opening riff. But "Ain't Nobody Better" is great too, and if we're looking at Saunderson's career apart from Inner City, I was (and still am) crazy over Reese's "Rock To the Beat", and the deliriously fine Detroit mix of New Order's "Round and Round". Was Saunderson on fire in those days or what?
In short, the "40 for 40" list is about telling stories, but first and foremost it's about standout songs. Sometimes it will favour the the artist with one song that drove me crazy over the artist with a consistently strong output.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
U2 and Apple
The release of a new U2 album for free to 500 million iTunes users has become arguably the biggest music story of the year. I'm surprised that a) they managed to keep it (relatively) secret up to the moment it was announced, and b) nobody has tried to spin "Songs of Innocence" into the "biggest" or "fastest" "selling" album of all time.
A multi-billion dollar corporation has joined with a band of megamultimillionaires to pull an end around the music industry and force their product onto consumers who may not even want it. It certainly sounds bad to have it phrased it like that. Is this kind of practice bad for music fans, as virtually every music critic has been claiming? I don't see how one could argue otherwise. But it is really all that different than what has already been going on? Has a significant line been crossed here? I'm not convinced of that.
In my post about Lady Gaga at SXSW, I wrote that mainstream music seems to be heading toward a model where a small number of wealthy patrons (or companies) will support the work of an equally small number of artists. The arts thrived with this type of funding structure for centuries. Did it provide work opportunities to anyone other than a select few? Did it give consumers (i.e. extremely wealthy people in the proper social circles) much choice about what to listen to? No. But a small number of excellent artists were able to thrive and produce meaningful work.
We're going to be left with a very small number of obscenely funded artists at the top of the food chain, and a huge number of talented people barely able to make a living in music. The music of the rich will be well preserved and easily tracked down by future generations, and the music of the folkspeople will be fractured into so many mini-scenes that it'll remain difficult to collect and process, with or without the internet.
In fact, this is more or less the setup we already have, except that the wealthy patrons are the major labels, who for the time being can fund a relatively large number of artists each (but a much smaller number of artists than they did a generation ago). The majors seem destined to die out within another generation, which will separate the wheat from the chaff even further. Music will be distributed in increasingly creative ways, but seeing bands live on tour may be more difficult unless they're funded by the right sponsors looking to leech off their cred. Rock and pop might have to start taking cues from EDM -- the selling point is the DJ and the party atmosphere first, and the music they actually play comes second.
A multi-billion dollar corporation has joined with a band of megamultimillionaires to pull an end around the music industry and force their product onto consumers who may not even want it. It certainly sounds bad to have it phrased it like that. Is this kind of practice bad for music fans, as virtually every music critic has been claiming? I don't see how one could argue otherwise. But it is really all that different than what has already been going on? Has a significant line been crossed here? I'm not convinced of that.
In my post about Lady Gaga at SXSW, I wrote that mainstream music seems to be heading toward a model where a small number of wealthy patrons (or companies) will support the work of an equally small number of artists. The arts thrived with this type of funding structure for centuries. Did it provide work opportunities to anyone other than a select few? Did it give consumers (i.e. extremely wealthy people in the proper social circles) much choice about what to listen to? No. But a small number of excellent artists were able to thrive and produce meaningful work.
We're going to be left with a very small number of obscenely funded artists at the top of the food chain, and a huge number of talented people barely able to make a living in music. The music of the rich will be well preserved and easily tracked down by future generations, and the music of the folkspeople will be fractured into so many mini-scenes that it'll remain difficult to collect and process, with or without the internet.
In fact, this is more or less the setup we already have, except that the wealthy patrons are the major labels, who for the time being can fund a relatively large number of artists each (but a much smaller number of artists than they did a generation ago). The majors seem destined to die out within another generation, which will separate the wheat from the chaff even further. Music will be distributed in increasingly creative ways, but seeing bands live on tour may be more difficult unless they're funded by the right sponsors looking to leech off their cred. Rock and pop might have to start taking cues from EDM -- the selling point is the DJ and the party atmosphere first, and the music they actually play comes second.
Sunday, September 07, 2014
The Pitchfork 500 and my own 40 for 40
Earlier this year, I read the Pitchfork 500 book from cover to cover. The format is a bit exhausting -- five hundred blurbs of 100-150 words each -- and if you don't already know most of the songs I'm not sure how much you can really get out of the book. There were maybe thirty truly excellent write-ups that either really made me want to hear the song (if it was one I didn't know) or forced me to think differently about something I thought I already understood quite well. I would classify another one hundred or so as "good" or "very good", and the rest were just kind of there. The forced editorial style of constantly quoting from the lyrics of the songs and trying to connect those few lines to the criticism of the song simply didn't do it for me most of the time. Ninety nine percent of music lyrics lose their power to captivate when removed from the context of the music.
However, the essays at the start of each chapter/time-period were nearly all outstanding, and the sidebars that looked at specific genres or microgenres, often with a healthy dose of cynicism, were also consistently entertaining and a welcome break from the super-seriousness of the rest of the book.
It was disappointing to see such a varied mix of songs from the 70's up until the late 90's (i.e. until the early years of Pitchfork), only to have the book suddenly dive deep into an indie rock hell with only token nods to hip-hop and techno. In the introductory essays to each chapter, hip-hop and techno were highlighted as being so vitally important to the evolution of music, but they were mostly ignored once they hit the mid-90's and had passed through the established canon of those genres. Still, for a coffee table book about music that I (mostly) love, it was a worthwhile and often thought-provoking read.
But my main problem with the book was that it claims to be representing the best music of the previous 30 years by songs, rather than albums, or as the back cover explains, "[reflecting] the way listeners are increasingly processing music -- by song rather than by album". However, the actual song selections don't reflect that philosophy, especially once they hit the mid-90's and beyond. A good portion of the book reads like they made a list of the best (PF-approved) albums from the time period and simply picked a song from each of those albums. You could go through the top albums of the year lists for PF from 1999-2008 and pick out many of the artists that appear in the book for yourself.
---------------------------------------------
A lifelong friend turned 40 last year and "celebrated" by carefully compiling a "40 songs for my first 40 years" list. She told me about working on the list and I knew right away that I had at least one thing to look forward to about turning 40.
That time is quickly approaching. She roughly defined the criteria for the list as "whether or not I could listen to the song repeatedly without being sick of it and whether it invokes a strong emotional connection for me." Simple and to the point, and the eventual list was unranked. I want my criteria to be a bit different, and I struggled to define exactly what kind of list I want to make. However, after reading the Pitchfork book, I certainly knew what kind of list I didn't want to make. You will not be seeing 40 tracks from my favourite 40 albums, that's for sure.
First and foremost, it will be a songs list. Some of them will be the songs that "changed everything" and profoundly affected my listening habits going forward.
The list should tell a story, so roughly speaking, it should summarize how my tastes in music changed throughout my life. Songs that captured certain periods or important moments in my life will be on there. In the past I've made fun of publications that bestow a magical influence on a song or album, writing that such-and-such an album summed up the year or who's impact would resonate through its legions of soon-to-be copycats. I make fun of this because it doesn't make sense to generalize about a huge community of music listeners in this way. But for an individual, a song absolutely can summarize a summer or a year.
Because the songs tell a story, it shouldn't be necessary to like all of them as much now as I did then. In most cases, they will be songs that have been close to me for years or decades, but in some cases, a song may be necessary to tell the story even if I don't care for it much anymore.
Not all of them will be songs from great albums. In some cases, I will not have even heard the albums they came from.
A few bands will make the list on account of being in my pantheon of favourite bands ever. If there's not a particular song of theirs which stands out in a way that I've described, I'll probably have to pick a song that defines the essence of that band for me. I will not reflexively pick a great song from what I think is their best album. The song is always the key, it would have to be the song that first drew me in, or the song that I heard and knew I'd be a fan of the band for life.
Not every year needs to be represented, it's not a "40 songs for 40 years" list. Some years may have a few songs represented and many others will have none, because life just isn't neatly ordered that way.
It will be a biography told in the space of 40 songs, attempting to summarize what I am and what I once was as completely as possible.
Even at this late stage of the game, I'm not sure in what format to present the list. It will be unranked and the songs will be presented in the order that they impacted my life (regardless of which year they were originally released). Blurbs in the style of yearly top ten lists seem bland and inappropriate for a project like this. I'm trying to get it all figured out.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 20
"Some of them in the name of national self determination founded their own mixes", 75 min
I've been sitting on this mix for about four months, and at the time I wasn't completely sure what I wanted out of it, besides something new to listen to on an upcoming plane ride. I was aiming for something mellow, but not particularly spacey and chilled to minus-40 like the last podcast (Episode 19). The Lustmord, Jacaszek, Ishay Adar, and John Massoni/Sonic Boom discs were new purchases, and new discs provide my typical excuse for making mixes. The entire tracklist was pretty much improvised.
Somehow, out of this vagueness of purpose, came a nearly perfect mix. Whatever it is, I don't think I could have done it any better, if that makes any sense.
What I remember most about making the mix was my stunned reaction to Talk Talk's "I Believe In You" and how the mix nearly fell apart completely after that because I had no clue how to follow it up. That might be the last time I look to "Spirit of Eden" during an improvised mix. If you're thinking that the John Massoni/Sonic Boom track sounds like a chance to catch one's breath before the mix shifts gears into something with a more aggressive pulse, you're right.
What I remember most about making the mix was my stunned reaction to Talk Talk's "I Believe In You" and how the mix nearly fell apart completely after that because I had no clue how to follow it up. That might be the last time I look to "Spirit of Eden" during an improvised mix. If you're thinking that the John Massoni/Sonic Boom track sounds like a chance to catch one's breath before the mix shifts gears into something with a more aggressive pulse, you're right.
Some of them in the name of national self determination founded their own mixes by Bruiserfs on Mixcloud
Friday, August 15, 2014
Woob, "Lost 1194"
Bob Dylan's "Bootleg Series" albums have been huge hits with fans because they allow them to take a peek behind the curtain, offering insight into creative process of an artist who has always been somewhat shadowy about what he does and how he manages to do it. We can hear how tracks developed through demos and live versions. We've heard acoustic tracks go electric, electric tracks take on new life during live revues, and the unearthing of songs from his ignored or underappreciated periods. The series is still going strong after twenty years.
If only we could open the recording vaults for electronic musicians too (no, the "bootleg series" equivalents for them are not remixes). I'm not comparing Woob's catelog to Dylan's much more extensive one, but for whatever reason, he seems to be at the forefront of prominent 90's electronic artists revisiting/reworking their material ten or twenty years after the originals.
Much like "Repurpose", his earlier trip into the vaults, "Lost 1194" does pack many surprises or relevations. Overall it's a bit heavier on beats and percussion -- the long intros to "On Earth" are scaled back and the dubbier portions extended on "Lost On Earth", and the final portion of "Lost Odonna" adds a drum part that was missing in the original. Many of the samples are different, which doesn't affect the final product much, with the exception of the bone chilling screams that shifted "Strange Air" into a nerve-wracking deep freeze that are missing in "Lost Strange Air". Only "Lost Emperor" serves up a different mood than its corresponding original. Rather than the swampy hell of the bass heavy original, "Lost Emperor" seems tranquil, taking its cues from Eno's early ambient work rather than dub.
The key thing I've learned, having now heard both "Repurpose" and "Lost 1194", is that "Woob 1194" may be the biggest fluke in electronic music history. The alternate takes and everything Frankland has done since then (e..g as Journeyman) can't come close to what he captured live, with no editing, when he recorded "Woob 1194". It gives me a greater appreciation of how difficult it is to come up with quality live improvisations and mixes night in and night out, and how important it is to know your music inside and out, let your instincts guide what you're doing, and record almost everything you do. The stuff that spills out of you, seemingly without trying, may be impossible to duplicate no matter how hard you try.
If only we could open the recording vaults for electronic musicians too (no, the "bootleg series" equivalents for them are not remixes). I'm not comparing Woob's catelog to Dylan's much more extensive one, but for whatever reason, he seems to be at the forefront of prominent 90's electronic artists revisiting/reworking their material ten or twenty years after the originals.
Much like "Repurpose", his earlier trip into the vaults, "Lost 1194" does pack many surprises or relevations. Overall it's a bit heavier on beats and percussion -- the long intros to "On Earth" are scaled back and the dubbier portions extended on "Lost On Earth", and the final portion of "Lost Odonna" adds a drum part that was missing in the original. Many of the samples are different, which doesn't affect the final product much, with the exception of the bone chilling screams that shifted "Strange Air" into a nerve-wracking deep freeze that are missing in "Lost Strange Air". Only "Lost Emperor" serves up a different mood than its corresponding original. Rather than the swampy hell of the bass heavy original, "Lost Emperor" seems tranquil, taking its cues from Eno's early ambient work rather than dub.
The key thing I've learned, having now heard both "Repurpose" and "Lost 1194", is that "Woob 1194" may be the biggest fluke in electronic music history. The alternate takes and everything Frankland has done since then (e..g as Journeyman) can't come close to what he captured live, with no editing, when he recorded "Woob 1194". It gives me a greater appreciation of how difficult it is to come up with quality live improvisations and mixes night in and night out, and how important it is to know your music inside and out, let your instincts guide what you're doing, and record almost everything you do. The stuff that spills out of you, seemingly without trying, may be impossible to duplicate no matter how hard you try.
Monday, August 04, 2014
It’s Time to Revisit All 38 Soundtracks to Hit No. 1 Since "Purple Rain"
The title is rather self-descriptive, and call me crazy, but this is my favourite bit of music criticism of the year thus far. Kudos to Dave Holmes. It's not too often that the most insightful lines in a music article are consistently the funniest as well.
Breaking down the list further, we can see that the distribution of these 38 albums has been highly irregular:
1985-1989 (six albums, 44 weeks at #1)
Each of these albums was a cultural phenomenon and their core songs remain staples of "do you remember the 80's?" compilations up to the present day. Multiple songs from each of these soundtracks dominated pop radio at the time and each was responsible for making at least one or two careers. In the case of "Dirty Dancing", nearly everyone who appeared on it had a first or second career that they owe almost entirely to the soundtrack. There was even a "Dirty Dancing" tour, featuring the performers and music from the soundtrack, and an accompanying live album from the tour. And you thought this kind of brand-name cash-in started with the "American Idol" and "Glee" summer tours?
1990-1991 (zero albums)
Just like that, the soundtrack album gravy train dried up. It's not clear why -- were Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer really so invincible? The "Pretty Woman" movie and soundtrack were huge hits in 1990, and Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" hit #1 on the pop charts, so maybe the lack of #1 soundtracks in these years is just a fluke, rather than a shifting of the guard, especially since ...
1992-1998 (sixteen albums, 72 weeks at #1)
Yep, soundtracks were back. There's no bunching happening here either, these albums are uniformly distributed over these six years. This works out to an average of four weeks at #1 per album, but that's misleading because six of them were in the top spot for just a single week, and four others were #1 for exactly two weeks. Most of the rest were mega-gigantic blockbuster hits with radio exposure to match, especially "Titanic" and "The Bodyguard". This is just further proof that although some people remember the 90's as a time when alt-rock and nu-metal were dominant, the truth is that sappy soundtrack ballads in the vein of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" never went away, and were in fact bigger than ever.
1999-2001 (zero)
I'm not sure what happened here, but I took a closer look at 1999, and it was a weird year for music. Teen pop, country, nu-metal, and hip-hop swapped in and out of the #1 album spot without any rhyme or reason. As for soundtracks, there was almost nothing of note. I suppose the most significant was the "Austin Powers II" soundtrack and it's radio hit, Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" (Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman" also performed well).
2002-2003 (three, 10 weeks)
"8 Mile" was a phenomenon because Enimen was an unstoppable commercial force, and "O Brother Where Art Thou?" may have been the most unlikely Album of the Year Grammy winner ever, but otherwise you can't really say that soundtracks made any kind of comeback in these years.
2004-2005 (zero)
Again, I can't find any notable soundtracks in these years. There were a lot of #1 albums in 2005 -- a majority of them spent only a single week at #1, so you know that soundtracks were ice cold if not a single one could ride a big opening weekend into a first week sales boost and a short stay at #1. The most notable soundtrack in these years would appear to be "Hustle and Flow" and its Oscar-winning track "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp". Yeah, yeah, here's the link. Enjoy.
2006-2013 (twelve,17 weeks)
Soundtracks came back over night, thanks to Disney successfully targeting the tween demographic and young adult fiction making a jump to the big screen ("Hunger Games", "Twilight" saga). There were plenty of dead spots for soundtracks during these eight years, and most of these albums only spent one week at number one. Soundtracks were bankable but forgettable. None of these albums had a huge, breakthrough single.
2014 (one, 14 weeks)
"Frozen" gets its own category because no soundtrack has dominated the album charts like this "Titanic" in 1998. Every generation has its own Disney soundtrack to call its own I see.
Breaking down the list further, we can see that the distribution of these 38 albums has been highly irregular:
1985-1989 (six albums, 44 weeks at #1)
Each of these albums was a cultural phenomenon and their core songs remain staples of "do you remember the 80's?" compilations up to the present day. Multiple songs from each of these soundtracks dominated pop radio at the time and each was responsible for making at least one or two careers. In the case of "Dirty Dancing", nearly everyone who appeared on it had a first or second career that they owe almost entirely to the soundtrack. There was even a "Dirty Dancing" tour, featuring the performers and music from the soundtrack, and an accompanying live album from the tour. And you thought this kind of brand-name cash-in started with the "American Idol" and "Glee" summer tours?
1990-1991 (zero albums)
Just like that, the soundtrack album gravy train dried up. It's not clear why -- were Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer really so invincible? The "Pretty Woman" movie and soundtrack were huge hits in 1990, and Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" hit #1 on the pop charts, so maybe the lack of #1 soundtracks in these years is just a fluke, rather than a shifting of the guard, especially since ...
1992-1998 (sixteen albums, 72 weeks at #1)
Yep, soundtracks were back. There's no bunching happening here either, these albums are uniformly distributed over these six years. This works out to an average of four weeks at #1 per album, but that's misleading because six of them were in the top spot for just a single week, and four others were #1 for exactly two weeks. Most of the rest were mega-gigantic blockbuster hits with radio exposure to match, especially "Titanic" and "The Bodyguard". This is just further proof that although some people remember the 90's as a time when alt-rock and nu-metal were dominant, the truth is that sappy soundtrack ballads in the vein of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" never went away, and were in fact bigger than ever.
1999-2001 (zero)
I'm not sure what happened here, but I took a closer look at 1999, and it was a weird year for music. Teen pop, country, nu-metal, and hip-hop swapped in and out of the #1 album spot without any rhyme or reason. As for soundtracks, there was almost nothing of note. I suppose the most significant was the "Austin Powers II" soundtrack and it's radio hit, Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" (Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman" also performed well).
2002-2003 (three, 10 weeks)
"8 Mile" was a phenomenon because Enimen was an unstoppable commercial force, and "O Brother Where Art Thou?" may have been the most unlikely Album of the Year Grammy winner ever, but otherwise you can't really say that soundtracks made any kind of comeback in these years.
2004-2005 (zero)
Again, I can't find any notable soundtracks in these years. There were a lot of #1 albums in 2005 -- a majority of them spent only a single week at #1, so you know that soundtracks were ice cold if not a single one could ride a big opening weekend into a first week sales boost and a short stay at #1. The most notable soundtrack in these years would appear to be "Hustle and Flow" and its Oscar-winning track "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp". Yeah, yeah, here's the link. Enjoy.
2006-2013 (twelve,17 weeks)
Soundtracks came back over night, thanks to Disney successfully targeting the tween demographic and young adult fiction making a jump to the big screen ("Hunger Games", "Twilight" saga). There were plenty of dead spots for soundtracks during these eight years, and most of these albums only spent one week at number one. Soundtracks were bankable but forgettable. None of these albums had a huge, breakthrough single.
2014 (one, 14 weeks)
"Frozen" gets its own category because no soundtrack has dominated the album charts like this "Titanic" in 1998. Every generation has its own Disney soundtrack to call its own I see.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Teste, "The Wipe"
Is there a more underappreciated Canadian contribution to techno than Teste's "The Wipe"? It still appears regularly in many DJ sets, is immediately recognizable to countless techno fans, but how many of them know of its humble Toronto origins?
Count me among those in the dark, that is, until I read Juno's feature on the story behind "The Wipe". Richie Hawtin broke the track by releasing it on his Plus-8 label (I first discovered it on the Mixmag Live Vol. 20 compilation, mixed by Hawtin) and it's grown steadily in stature over the years, becoming more influential as it ages.
Techno has been around for long enough to reevaluate plenty of old classics. How many techno tunes have become steadily more classic as they age? Underappreciated albums are not uncommon in rock music, people are discovering and rediscovering gems from the past all the time. In dance music it's usually a different story -- a song becomes a smash hit in the clubs, picks up classic status almost immediately, and appears on a million DJ sets and compilations. But after a few years, most of those tracks stop getting played and end up out of earshot, out of mind. There is no classic rock radio equivalent for techno, so eventually twenty years pass and somebody wants to revisit those old tracks in a blog post ...
For example, how many songs from the first Flux Trax compilation are as classic or more classic now than they were in 1995, when the compilation was released? At the time it was as close to a definitive collection of techno's all-time greatest hits that you were going to find. And now? The CJ Bolland, Jam and Spoon, and Empirion tracks have aged horribly and have practically dropped of the face of the clubbing earth to the best of my knowledge. Others such as Slam's "Positive Education" and Hardfloor's "Acperience" are still remembered fondly but does anyone really feel the need to listen to them anymore? I would say that the only tracks that have remained stone cold classic throughout the past two decades are "Voodoo Ray", "Energy Flash", "Can You Feel It?", "Loop", and "Strings of Life". One could also make an argument for "Rez" (Underworld got way bigger long after "Rez", but does anyone really play it anymore) and "Altered States" (one of my all time personal favourites, but it didn't have the impact that many of the other tracks on the compilation had). Out of those first five, only "Voodoo Ray" feels like it's bigger now than it was at the time (and it was HUGE at the time in the clubs, but now it's huge even among casual electronic music fans who don't remember it from when it was in the clubs).
On the other hand, Hawtin's Mixmag Live mix that I linked to earlier, which was underappreciated at the time and still remains probably the most overlooked Hawtin commercial mix, contains several tracks that have gotten more classic with time. Octave One and Plastikman were famous then and are still famous now, but "The Wipe" and G-Man's "Quo Vadis" have slowly grown from minor hits into all time techno blueprints over the past two decades.
Count me among those in the dark, that is, until I read Juno's feature on the story behind "The Wipe". Richie Hawtin broke the track by releasing it on his Plus-8 label (I first discovered it on the Mixmag Live Vol. 20 compilation, mixed by Hawtin) and it's grown steadily in stature over the years, becoming more influential as it ages.
Techno has been around for long enough to reevaluate plenty of old classics. How many techno tunes have become steadily more classic as they age? Underappreciated albums are not uncommon in rock music, people are discovering and rediscovering gems from the past all the time. In dance music it's usually a different story -- a song becomes a smash hit in the clubs, picks up classic status almost immediately, and appears on a million DJ sets and compilations. But after a few years, most of those tracks stop getting played and end up out of earshot, out of mind. There is no classic rock radio equivalent for techno, so eventually twenty years pass and somebody wants to revisit those old tracks in a blog post ...
For example, how many songs from the first Flux Trax compilation are as classic or more classic now than they were in 1995, when the compilation was released? At the time it was as close to a definitive collection of techno's all-time greatest hits that you were going to find. And now? The CJ Bolland, Jam and Spoon, and Empirion tracks have aged horribly and have practically dropped of the face of the clubbing earth to the best of my knowledge. Others such as Slam's "Positive Education" and Hardfloor's "Acperience" are still remembered fondly but does anyone really feel the need to listen to them anymore? I would say that the only tracks that have remained stone cold classic throughout the past two decades are "Voodoo Ray", "Energy Flash", "Can You Feel It?", "Loop", and "Strings of Life". One could also make an argument for "Rez" (Underworld got way bigger long after "Rez", but does anyone really play it anymore) and "Altered States" (one of my all time personal favourites, but it didn't have the impact that many of the other tracks on the compilation had). Out of those first five, only "Voodoo Ray" feels like it's bigger now than it was at the time (and it was HUGE at the time in the clubs, but now it's huge even among casual electronic music fans who don't remember it from when it was in the clubs).
On the other hand, Hawtin's Mixmag Live mix that I linked to earlier, which was underappreciated at the time and still remains probably the most overlooked Hawtin commercial mix, contains several tracks that have gotten more classic with time. Octave One and Plastikman were famous then and are still famous now, but "The Wipe" and G-Man's "Quo Vadis" have slowly grown from minor hits into all time techno blueprints over the past two decades.
Friday, June 27, 2014
The "lost" Caustic Window album
No matter how much of a fan you think you are, there's always somebody out there who relates to the music more passionately than you, is willing to run the mailing list and/or fan site more than you, or pay $46 000 for a one-of-a-kind vinyl album more than you.
Fans of 90's electronica remember hearing the fables about dozens of unreleased Aphex Twin albums supposedly locked away somewhere, all of them supposedly mind-blowing according to the likes of Mike Paradinas (mu-ziq) but relegated to the closet by the perfectionist R.D. James himself. Have the archive doors finally been blown open? It's hard to believe that the likes of Prince relented years ago and agreed to release his archived work, while Aphex Twin stubbornly refused to budge.
The album is streaming in several places on the internet. Fans of "Selected Ambient Works I" will surely love the opener, "Flutey", as it's overall mood and sonic palate are virtually identical. On the other hand, "Stomper 101mod Detunekik" (love the name -- has to be the name of a patch he put together just for this track) and "Popeye" recall the vacuum cleaner rave music of the early 90's done up Aphex style with dreamy ambient synths lurking in the background. "Afx Tribal Kik" seems to be a stab at ethno-techno done for a bit of a laugh, but it actually comes across as a killer demo of sorts for Polygon Window's all-time classic "Quoth". "Airflow" brings things back toward "SAW I" again, only to careen back into pure WTF-ness with the biggest oddity of the album, the acid-cum-italo house "Squidge in the Fridge". "101 Rainbows (Ambient Mix)" might be the biggest find of the album, a collision between then-contemporary ambient house and the melodical precision of Krautrock, like Cluster and the Orb collaborating at the height of their respective powers.
As a compilation of odds and sods, the album makes sense, as many of these experiments wouldn't have blended into his other albums. You can almost imagine Richard James' thought process on every track ... "now I want to see if I can make my style work with (insert esoteric genre name) ... eh, not bad, maybe I'll tweak it a bit later (*files track away and doesn't play it for twenty years*)". I doubt that it will blow many minds, but it will certainly remind people of why they were such big Aphex Twin fans in the first place.
Fans of 90's electronica remember hearing the fables about dozens of unreleased Aphex Twin albums supposedly locked away somewhere, all of them supposedly mind-blowing according to the likes of Mike Paradinas (mu-ziq) but relegated to the closet by the perfectionist R.D. James himself. Have the archive doors finally been blown open? It's hard to believe that the likes of Prince relented years ago and agreed to release his archived work, while Aphex Twin stubbornly refused to budge.
The album is streaming in several places on the internet. Fans of "Selected Ambient Works I" will surely love the opener, "Flutey", as it's overall mood and sonic palate are virtually identical. On the other hand, "Stomper 101mod Detunekik" (love the name -- has to be the name of a patch he put together just for this track) and "Popeye" recall the vacuum cleaner rave music of the early 90's done up Aphex style with dreamy ambient synths lurking in the background. "Afx Tribal Kik" seems to be a stab at ethno-techno done for a bit of a laugh, but it actually comes across as a killer demo of sorts for Polygon Window's all-time classic "Quoth". "Airflow" brings things back toward "SAW I" again, only to careen back into pure WTF-ness with the biggest oddity of the album, the acid-cum-italo house "Squidge in the Fridge". "101 Rainbows (Ambient Mix)" might be the biggest find of the album, a collision between then-contemporary ambient house and the melodical precision of Krautrock, like Cluster and the Orb collaborating at the height of their respective powers.
As a compilation of odds and sods, the album makes sense, as many of these experiments wouldn't have blended into his other albums. You can almost imagine Richard James' thought process on every track ... "now I want to see if I can make my style work with (insert esoteric genre name) ... eh, not bad, maybe I'll tweak it a bit later (*files track away and doesn't play it for twenty years*)". I doubt that it will blow many minds, but it will certainly remind people of why they were such big Aphex Twin fans in the first place.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Casey Kasem RIP
It's been a rough couple of days for celebrity deaths (Tony Gwynn?? No...) and it's good to see that Kasem is getting the respect he deserved in death, seeing as the end of his life appears to have been anything but pleasant. His family feuding over his estate and his wife allegedly holding a senile Kasem prisoner in their home will hopefully be forgotten -- a sad end to one of the great lives in pop music history.
Chris Molanphy captures the essence of Kasem perfectly in his piece for Slate. It's true, he unashamedly loved pop, even when it wasn't exactly popular to do so. Chart nerds could salivate over how he'd phrase a dramatic jump from #5 to #3, making it sound like a titanic newsworthy event without hardly ever raising his tone of voice. I grew up watching "America'sTop 40" on TV every Saturday and rediscovered Kasem (in a way) on radio in the late 80's when I would listen to the countdown in full nearly every week. I listened to and recorded his broadcast of the top chart songs of the 1980's and relistened to it incessantly in the 90's, it was one of my personal all time favourite radio moments.
As Molanphy explains, Kasem's true talent was that he was a storyteller who rarely came across as a hype-fueled DJ paid by record companies to plug the week's most popular music. He humanized the artists in a way that DJ's and even many journalists rarely do, and his stories were so vivid I could often picture myself in the room while the music was being created.
Chris Molanphy captures the essence of Kasem perfectly in his piece for Slate. It's true, he unashamedly loved pop, even when it wasn't exactly popular to do so. Chart nerds could salivate over how he'd phrase a dramatic jump from #5 to #3, making it sound like a titanic newsworthy event without hardly ever raising his tone of voice. I grew up watching "America'sTop 40" on TV every Saturday and rediscovered Kasem (in a way) on radio in the late 80's when I would listen to the countdown in full nearly every week. I listened to and recorded his broadcast of the top chart songs of the 1980's and relistened to it incessantly in the 90's, it was one of my personal all time favourite radio moments.
As Molanphy explains, Kasem's true talent was that he was a storyteller who rarely came across as a hype-fueled DJ paid by record companies to plug the week's most popular music. He humanized the artists in a way that DJ's and even many journalists rarely do, and his stories were so vivid I could often picture myself in the room while the music was being created.
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