pop goes the canon

hi girls! want to reserve a spot in the pance-dop pantheon? just throw your hands in the air!

the topic is pop albums. good ones, i.e. all the songs are good (or, only very few are noticably not good.) (pop=dancepop, basically, because that's what it means, basically.) there aren't very many of them, it seems (exactly why that is is the bulk of the thorny analytical tangle i've just decided to absent myself from.) at least, there aren't very many compared to the very many pop albums that have some good (or great) music but are no-way good albums.

i hope we can agree to agree on this.

ignoring roughly everything before the birth of "modern dancepop" - which i shall somewhat arbitrarily designate the late '90s teen-dance xplosion - my canonical example of a good pop album (and ergo, practically, a bona-fide classic) is kylie minogue's fever. only one truly unmemorable cut (track 10, "love affair"), and the next weakest thing is probably the opener for goodness sakes. which, if nothing else, is a seemingly-revelatory departure from the single-first pop tradition.

coincidentally or not, i trace my modern pop fixation - as it has become - to my first exposure to this album, a good year or two late, in the winter of '03. i it borrowed from rabi, along with avril's let go, after being curious, if not entirely surprised, to find them in her sacrosanct collection. (she'd deny it or laugh it off, but at least in terms of wonky 'net-message-board cool, she was definitely a good step or two ahead of me.) anyway, the avril disc didn't do much for me (though i liked the singles, which i'd heard. i have recently acquired it for myself, but haven't really revisited it properly)...but fever, damn. i can't say it was its albumness that did the trick - indeed, i was mostly just falling in love with individual songs one after another, most chiefly the title track (which i still don't think gets enough love) but also <3@1^stsite. but its consistency surely helped encourage my repeated plays.

from there, the combo of my "professional" interest as a dj, my culture-satured summer in nyc during the reign of many of the most attention-grabbing pop singles of the young decade, the continued influence of rabi and her mysterious multi-aliased friend, and of course the effects of great populist critical glasnost worked collectively on my musical sensibilities such that, when dave moore started raving about annie and then abba and skye and pretty soon bet the farm and, you know, became "unusually shrewd pop blogger dave moore" - i'm going to stop talking about him now, since he's evidently the only person who reads this page anyway, and this sentence is ridiculously long - well anyway i was primed and ready to take up the charge of poptimism, lining up to fight behind dave's (purple, dumb-pun-happy) standard. ashlee lindsay rah rah rah.

except... i still have a strong attachment to the album, and though i wouldn't say it's exactly been a stumbling block in my open-armed investigation of this brave new genre-world (the good news: teen-pop cds are generally so cheap that it's easy to forgive high filler ratios) it leaves me conflicted as to how i actually want to experience it. exploratory mp3 downloads, cream-culling mixtapes, and dj-career-writeoff-patchfest-purchases are all very well, but i still want (it feels naive) to be able to put on an album, sit back, and just enjoy away (i never bother with skip buttons) naturally, i'd rather not waste time on mediocre music that shares plastic with tunes i actively enjoy, but the record collector/librarian/completist in me won't really be satisfied unless i can assimilate and, hopefully, learn to like all the things by the artists i like. (why else would i seek out the best-of comps with the longest possible track-listings for artists in whom my true interest probably doesn't extend beyond a couple of big singles.)

all which means i'm going to keep buying (used) and being disappointed by well-intentioned pop records, in the hopes that i can force myself to construe them as good albums even though they're probably merely angling to avoid embarrassment.

eh, that sounds too dire. let's get on with the listing that you probably thought was going to be the focus of this post. to be honest, fever isn't a very interesting album - apart from the electroclash appropriation/apotheosis of the CGYOOMH monster and its clone with the clone-centric video, nothing even tries to feel innovative; and save the classic[read: 60s]-pop formalism of the title track and the funk jitter of "give it to me" there's hardly any sonic or textural variety.

anniemal, which shares fever's consistently "icy" cast, encompasses far more musical range - and accordingly has much more distinctive singles (by which i actually mean standout album tracks, by which i mean almost all of them.) which translates to an album that's similarly cohesive (and equally consistent, quality-wise) but has a lot more personality, even if annie's vocal presence isn't that much more empathetic.

rachel stevens' come and get it is very much in the same camp, and even though nothing on it quite matches the lovable idiosyncrasy of "chewing gum" or the blissful rush of "love at first sight" (or, i'll admit it, the smile-inducing scene-solidarity factor of "heartbeat") it's probably the best album of the three. rachel herself may not present much of a persona (certainly compared to annie), but her singing is undeniably fuller and more emotive, albeit in a sort of mannered way. her album definitely has less of an emotional arc than annie's does, however, despite a nearly comparable diversity of musical approach and tone.

indeed, the sequencing of the album feels almost arbitrary, its most potentially poignant moments stranded mid-album amongst incompatible, higher-energy numbers. but more to the point: nothing on come and get it even approaches filler. (was gonna say the clunky-funky "je m'appelle" comes closest - but screw that, it's totally good!) on the flipside, nothing on it stands out as an obvious single choice (if pressed, i might tap "so good," although "i will be there" is perhaps my favorite song) - and i can't decide if that might feel like a failing even though the reason for it (every bloody song on the record is great!) is obviously to the album's undying credit. maybe if it did somehow have a true head-and-shoulders stand-out (it'd have to be seriously classic calibre) the album would have been a hit (in the u.k. i mean) - i seriously do not understand how it wasn't; i mean, rach's an established celebrity, right? 'course, look at paris, but rachel's a famous singer. well, blimey. maybe her affectlessness hurt her more than you'd expect.

a very different cd in many respects, and one which i enjoy at least as much if not more, is robyn's dramatically unconventional self-titled 'comeback' from last year. robyn does share with rachel's album a dearth of unambiguous single contenders, although the number one slot is appropriately given to a banger - "who's that girl?", whose only (quibbling) fault is rubbing up dangerously close to (its producers/composers) the knife's "heartbeats". actually, there are really only two or three other dance numbers on the whole album, including "crash and burn girl," whose infectious, sinuous bass slither resembles nothing so much as a double-time "closer." but "be mine!", it's ultimately obvious, is the album's most singularly glorious moment. that exclamation point in the title - and even the title itself - seem to have less to do with the subject matter of the song than the sheer effervescence of the song itself, so sublimely conceived that it can't help but exult despite the heartbreak of its lyrical content.

trying not to turn this into a yawning/fawning belated capsule review here, but singling out songs, even as a hypothetical exercise, is like choosing among children. reasonably ignoring the two cute but tiny introludes and the truly bizarre, scene-setting first track, this record only contains ten songs; but each one feels like a world in itself, a perfect little construction that follows its particular lyrical and stylistic conceits to their necessary ends. just as important, each seems to fulfill a vital role in the context of the whole, combining to present a complex and engaging portrait of this tremendously likable woman, among whose attributes are a top-notch melodic sense, a dynamic and versatile voice, a totally nutty sense of humor, spiky cattitude, and a mile-wide sentimental streak. sigh. (don't even get her started on her bada-boom-booms.) especially effective is the closing quartet of songs, each a sweet and affecting portrayal of a different aspect of romantic relationships, which taken as a whole form the tail end of the non-narrative yet unmistakable emotional arc that renders he album so deeply satisfying.

these are the albums that come most clearly to mind. girls aloud have a lot of supporters along the lines of these things, and i like several of their singles, but what will the neighbors say? - the album of theirs i know best - leaves me unconvinced. i may also need to hear a different sugababes disc (angels... gets half marks.) madonna's music and possibly confessions... should probably be mentioned, especially since we're canonizing kylie - the former, in particular, was a favorite of mine pre-poptimism (at the time of its release i heralded its use of house-based beats as a triumphant reclamation of contempo dance music from the essentially undanceable teen-pop legions - and i'm not entirely sure i disagree with that assessment.)

otherwise, you may note that everything i've discussed so far has been european. americans are traditionally limited at this kind of thing (that is, electro-pop, and i guess i should really say "uninterested") - anyway our contributions in this period have been more r'n'b focused (would be good to do a good albums survey there too - aaliyah, sure, but what else?) or more rock than dance. but i have been wondering about britney spears - britney, in particular, has a lot of strong, and envelope-pushing (i guess) album tracks, towards the end especially. i should also probably spend more time with m!ssundaztood.

likewise, i haven't mentioned anything from this year (last year was the glut, it seems, and i haven't even discussed i am me - which is not really a dance-pop album, and anyway isn't adding anything new to the conversation dave and i and those guys have all the time.) it just occured to me to bring up the junior boys, who are obviously (or just seemingly?) in a somewhat different category, but are somewhat cordoned off by themselves anyway, and definitely made at least one album of brilliant dance-pop (last exit: the new one is more brilliant, more pop, but less dance, though possibly still dance enough - will have to consider whether and how to deal with this.) does that mean including ladytron (yeah, they and also goldfrapp are valid contenders, though i'm not sure if either fully deliver the goods. black cherry maybe.) however... and this is pretty straight up: erlend øye. definitely sweet. whoops i forgot the knife too. or maybe not, now i'm just confusing myself. indiedance affirmative action should not be allowed to make me feel better about my pop album quandary, no matter how poptastic it is.

all of which brings me...or rather, it was meant to...to paris. which i'm not going to write about now, because you've had rather too much to read tonight, and i to write, with the realness. but. hopefully somewhere in here i've managed to dispense with some preliminarities that will allow me to get down to business next time, when i thrillingly assert that (wait for it) ms. hilton has crafted (see what i did etc.) a fully worthy addition to the petit canon of post-teenboom dance-pop album statements. surprised yet? and despite what you may think, on the robyn-annie-kylie-rachel spectrum (is that right?), i say she lands firmly left of center.

yow is it ever bedtime!