"New Pop": What went wrong?

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Hi, this is my first ever post so I hope you'll all be gentle with me. As most of you will know , "New Pop" (1978-85) had a very specific set of references:origins (punk in general + the "anti-rockism" of Subway Sect in particular),labels (Fast Product,Postcard),critics (Morley + McCullough) and influences (Pop Art, the Situationists,Barthes,Derrida). The basic idea was to infiltrate the charts with a music that was euphoric + edgy, accessible + strange. So how did "New Pop" end up as a way to describe the likes of Wham, Howard Jones + Culture Club?

― Mark Dixon, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Simple really - the music DIDN'T FUCKING MOVE!

As economic forces inexorably tightened their grip on the generational fallout left with the crumbs of their elders' decadent banquet, it became a pressing need to get rich and famous quick without the time-consuming need to develop one's craft, and as the entertainment industry became the only way to access this in the absence of all the other decimated industries, the new battle plan consisted of a pincer movement of 'democratizing' studio tech on one side and theoretical muscle on the other. Unfortunately, naked ambition without hardheaded business sense soon founders, and once the fog of publicity had evaporated to reveal nothingness, the prime movers of this scene (i.e. Edwyn Collins) who had finally learned how to put music together scuttled off into dad-rock, leaving them eternally ten years behind everything. Kajagoogoo kicked Scritti Politti's ass.

― dave q, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Cos new pop was the same as the old pop, except some people didn't see why 'art'(or pretension-ha) had to exclusively prefix 'rock'. Hard headed business sense- oh yeah being a c**t, beware 'New' anything see Tony Blair and vacuums. What was the old pop of the time? Divorce pop like abba? The obligatory novelty records, euro- acts,oh and Micheal Jackson? What was the old pop that the new pop could be compared against, I'm just curious?

― Andrew Hitchcock, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Perhaps the title of the thread should have been "New Pop":What went right? Answer:not a lot. Most of the music suffered from a lack of "jouissance". Probably none of it liberated pop consumers from lives of drudgery. But Human League, Associates + New Order brightened the charts for a few weeks and maybe that's what counts. What was the old pop? Anything the smart critic didn't like. In Morley's case that meant Toyah,Sheena Easton, Cliff + the Nolan Sisters. "New Pop" was an even more arbitrary + inconsistent category. Did anyone really expect Josef K + the Fire Engines to crack the charts? And why did Morley + others praise Haircut 100, Dollar, Tight Fit, Kim Wilde + Kid Creole + the Coconuts? Great artistes in their own way but not really part of the tradition I've been trying to outline. Maybe someone with the relevant N.M.E. articles can help. Most of this was before my time.

― Mark Dixon, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Longer answer coming up, but probably tomorrow. For now, let's just say NOTHING went wrong! Some great, great music and some good (but over-rated) writing about music happened in the period you describe. (I think you'll find that New Order, Human League, ABC etc brightened the charts for more than a few weeks, by the way, not that 'brightening the charts' means much). I don't hold with your description of 'new pop' as it blurs too many of the sub-divisions and 'scenes' within the time period. It's interesting to look at it as a whole, but at first sight it seems to lump together too many acts with little in common.

Do you really think that the 'idea' was to infiltrate the charts? I reckon for some artists this was essential - ABC and Scritti (version 2) were 'designed' to do just this. Most of the others you describe were not.

Anyway to cut to the chase -

**how did "New Pop" end up as a way to describe the likes of Wham, Howard Jones + Culture Club**?

Well, because sooner or later everything ends up like this in order to be digestible in large enough quantities by joe public. Think of any scene you like (punk, acid house, hip-hop, garage...) and there's a lite-version for the masses which came along 3-4 years later (more like 6-12 months now).

I'd like to read what The Pinefox, Billy D, Tom and Robin have to say on this.

― Dr. C, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mark, your first question and it’s a doozy.

As Dr C suggests I’ll cut to the chase. First looking at the examples you pick of how ‘new pop’ ends up I’d suggest that they had little to do with the references that illuminated the work of the Human League, ABC, Associates etc.

Wham were suburban, soul boys in thrall to smooth jazz funk and soul. The records chart the perimeters of their world, holidays, clubbing, girlfriends, the dole. Unlikely that situationism ever figured much in George Michael’s mind, there’s an NME interview in which Morley goes to town on the pair of them for having NOTHING whatsoever to say. Spandau Ballet and to an extent Dexy’s and Haircut 100 are cut from the same cloth.

Howard Jones was a chancer who got lucky. 10 years earlier he would have been playing support to Gilbert O’Sullivan and getting bottled off by an irate crowd for being too pathetic.

Culture Club are the most interesting of the three you mention. Again they’re soul boys, but they have a much broader palette of influences, reggae, Bowie, northern soul etc. In that respect they aren’t too different from ABC or the Human League but I presume the effect of being brought up in London with the meshing of different cultures, gay/straight, black/white, Irish catholic/non religious etc meant that the ideology (or cultural cues) didn’t have to be explicit, it was there in the work. The first two Culture Club LP’s are a real old melee of styles. (Basement Jaxx as their offspring??) Most of the acts you’re thinking of are provincial, London as usual followed it’s own agenda.

Why did the new pop fail though? Well the acts either got lazy, pompous, paranoid or puffed up. Either way it ended up in inferior work. The record companies got wise and were able to steer the agenda back onto safer ground, did I hear someone mention Kajagoogoo. Pop became unfashionable again as the changes wrought by Thatcher made all this cultural play seem at best frivolous and at worst a distraction to the challenge of bringing her down (and we all know how successful Red Wedge was).

There’s scope for another dozen threads about this topic. Such as the rise of the producer as auteur? Could ‘new pop’ rise again? Were Dollar actually any good (yes)? Was it the last time people could play around with any style and be given a fair wind. It could be the truest legacy of punk that the rulebook was torn up and thrown away and that if you wanted to make Abba records about Jacques Derrida you could. If it happened now it would be met with such cynicism (Blurillaz). You couldn’t imagine Louise Wener or someone like that having a go at making garage records. And for that we should be thankful.

― Billy Dods, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Dr. C -My reference to New Pop "going wrong" was only partly to do with a decline of musical quality. It was really about the term losing its meaning so that it became attached to people like Wham who had absolutely nothing to do with the cultural reference points I mentioned at the start. Perhaps people in the 80s interpreted the phrase in the most literal way possible, referring to the new pop releases of any given week or month. I look forward to reading about all the sub-categories + scenes you briefly mentioned. Billy D. -I was wrong to be so dismissive of Culture Club. They had an interesting background. Their sound was influenced by Scritti's "Songs to Remember" l.p. + of course Boy George had his McLaren connections. But like a lot of groups with potential (Heaven 17, A.B.C.)a fair percentage of the music they ended up making was rather bland.

― Mark Dixon, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

"Most of the acts you’re thinking of are provincial, London as usual followed it’s own agenda."

Which was wot? Chas and Dave? Sign up those provincial bands and homogenise them? Wham sound like mods in some of the above descriptions:-)Scuse me for any misreading but implicit in the above quote is this idea that there existed this gloriously unmatchable multicultural, diverse melting pot incomparable to anywhere else in the UK. Funny really I think Detroit, I think Sheffield.

Were Madness and the Specials 'new pop'?

― Andy Hitchcock, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Which was wot? Well exactly.It was one of the few times when London relinquished it's cultural hold over the rest of the country. What I was trying to say (in my usual hamfisted way) was that the acts that Mark is thinking of were almost all provincial. They certainly weren't homogenic, Associates sounded nothing like Simple Minds who sounded nothing like Soft Cell etc. The only London act that would fit in to his description would be Japan.

The 2 tone acts (and Dexy's) I think really predate 'new pop' and come with a totally different set of parameters (reggae/pub rock/music hall/punk).

I know Sheffield, Glasgow, Liverpool etc are multicultural but not to the extent London was 20 years ago and probably not to the same extent even now.

― Billy Dods, Sunday, 7 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I like this discussion - tons of thoughtfulness around - and it's nice of Dr C to wonder what I might have to say. But I don't really know 'New Pop'. Subway Sect: probably a bit of a bore. Postcard: good name, but probably musically overrated. Morley: talented provocateur. Derrida: not an easy reference to make *practical* use of in pop, though I may be missing something here.

Other names have come up - Human League, Culture Club. I have some time for bits of their oeuvres. But I have to assume that the HL didn't get together to try to fit a Paul Morley plan. If anyone did, Frankie?

I still don't think I know this material well enough.

― the pinefox, Monday, 8 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mark wanted to draw the focus back to the loss of the specific *meaning* of New Pop, but I think Dr. C's argument works just as well in that regard. It usually seems to be a process of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. Do Bush represent what 1990 fans of grunge considered the genre to "mean"? Or maybe a better example would be "post-rock", which was a negative (not pejorative) term invented to describe bands who moved away from rock and ended up becoming a positive term to describe Mogwai - not so much a drop in quality as a shrinking of horizons. The ideological core of a critic-sponsored term is probably the hardest part of the term to preserve once it's let out into the public domain - see all the "progressive" substyles in dance music.

― Tim, Monday, 8 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

two words...New and Pop...nuff said. Pop was also never meant to be melded with the likes of punk rock either. They are supposed to be the atithesis of each other. Leave it to those poppy people to try something like that though.

― Hank, Tuesday, 9 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I thought that Punk was about reclaiming the spark and energy of classic pop (50's rockn 'n'roll/60's r'n'b/glam/shouty singalong choruses) that had dissipated in the 70's.

So rather than being the antithesis of pop it's more like it's unruly kid brother.

― Billy Dods, Tuesday, 9 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

punk is the antithesis of ROCK, except using the means and/or tools of rock

re: Morley above. He didn't make a general aesthetic distinction between Dollar and ABC, Adam Ant and the Raincoats — that was the point. They were both there, in the same chart, vibing one another up: arguing ewith one another. If Scritt Politti sold records abt Derrida and the Nolan Sisters had responded with records about Helene ("Siouxsie") Cixous, then kewl. But kewl if not: subversion was not part of the concept. Being free to allow yourself the idea that topping the charts was FUN, esp. if you did it while not essentially altering what you were ALREADY doing. Morley is caught, forever and always, between Bolan his first true love, and Joy Div is second.

Jose F in charts = fab. Charts nothing but Josef K = poor.

― mark s, Tuesday, 9 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Er, sorry: Jose F, that fine misterioso Spanish chap, is none other than Josef K also...

― mark s, Tuesday, 9 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Cixous! OK, now I got it.

― dave q, Wednesday, 10 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

New Pop: partly the story of white post-punkers adopting elements of black music in their sound. Why do some New Pop bands enjoy classic status in today's rock press {Human League, Soft Cell, ABC, New Order} while others are still out in the cold {Style Council}? Because only certain black styles were acceptable to the majority of the post-punk audience and this prejudice has been passed down to rock fans of the present day. Approved: Northern Soul {similarities to punk:uptempo, concise "stompers" + working-class, amphetemine fuelled audience}, Philly Soul {dramatic,orchestral, Bowie-approved}, Donna Summer-style disco {sounds like Kraftwerk},electro{hard-edged, robotic}. Not approved:smooth soul, soft funk, mellow jazz [all supposedly bland soundtracks to affluence}. This kind of prejudice exists with the music of more recent years. N.M.E is more likely to praise minimal techno than deep house, for example.

― Mark Dixon, Wednesday, 10 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

one year passes...

New Pop - what went wrong?

This thread is being revived because I wanted to start a thread about what a beautiful record "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" is, and I was sure somebody else must have already had this excellent idea.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 15:34 (twenty years ago) link

What went wrong is that some idiot at Yamaha suddenly found out he'd replace all those beautiful warm analog sounds with "dirty" digital sounds. Those digital sounds sounded like shit and people stopped enjoying synth sounds.

Also, homophobia played an important part in new pop's demise...

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 18:31 (twenty years ago) link

"people stopped enjoying synth sounds" pah what rubbish gier! Funny how stuff like depeche mode, most of who's good albums are covered in dx7 and synclavier fm sounds sold shitloads. Also, many, many big pop rekkids from the mid-late eighties are full of dx7, m1, d50 etc etc. Plenty of people bought those, and plenty of people enjoyed the synth sounds on them. what analogue synth sold as well as the dx7 and the m1? eh?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 21:25 (twenty years ago) link

the dx7 is alright but people who don't know how to make it sound ok should be beaten around the head with soft shoes

― the surface noise (electricsound), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 22:45 (twenty years ago) link

I could make my old tx7 (ie module version) sound pretty good.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 22:53 (twenty years ago) link

Yamaha started supplying DX7s to schools in the 80s and everybody started associating the sounds with rubbish music classes!

― dave q, Wednesday, 1 October 2003 06:47 (twenty years ago) link

I wish we'd got dx7s. All we got was recorders and xylophones.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 1 October 2003 07:08 (twenty years ago) link

Um, acid house anyone? All massive New Pop fans, but taking the music elsewhere, harder to define as pop perhaps, but...

― Enrique (Enrique), Wednesday, 1 October 2003 08:49 (twenty years ago) link

thirteen years pass...

My own list.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 24 April 2017 16:38 (six years ago) link

Most of those artists don't code as "new pop" to me. New wave, synthpop, even new romantic: yes. I'm particularly laughing my tits off at The Jam being described as "new pop" ...

― ...so music and chicken have become intertwined (Turrican), Monday, 24 April 2017 16:44 (six years ago) link

important contribution itt

― mark s, Monday, 24 April 2017 16:48 (six years ago) link

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IxGtRLM9HYc/maxresdefault.jpg

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 24 April 2017 16:51 (six years ago) link

I do like most of the songs on the list, but no way would I put all of those artists in the same pigeonhole, and in many cases not in that particular pigeonhole.

― ...so music and chicken have become intertwined (Turrican), Monday, 24 April 2017 16:54 (six years ago) link

'The Gift' is the Jam's New Pop album, hence trumpets and so forth

― soref, Monday, 24 April 2017 16:57 (six years ago) link

I disagree, it's just a Jam album with horns on it. If the whole LP sounded like 'The Planner's Dream Goes Wrong' or parts of early Style Council, I'd agree... but it doesn't and I don't!

― ...so music and chicken have become intertwined (Turrican), Monday, 24 April 2017 17:01 (six years ago) link

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