SIMON REYNOLDS DISCUSSES CURRENT DANCE MUSIC IN TODAY'S NY TIMES

We had a thread about this over at another webboard recently, how '96/'97 was such a bizarre time for rock music, that radio was throwing everything from the Primitive Radio Gods and Luscious Jackson to Nada Surf and Spacehog against the wall to see what would stick. The big beat explosion was no doubt a big part of this.

The first video to ever be retired on TRL after 65 days at the countdown. It spent at least 60 of those days at #3, never able to beat out BSB or N Sync.

At the time, I thought it was such a victory when "Freak on a Leash" got to #1 on that show.

Small.

life is hard
and so am i

I'll think I miss Garbage but then I remember that "Androgyny" song.

but matthew's right about the top-down thing - this wasn't a groundswell and I'm sort of amazed that people expected U.S. listeners with no previous connection to electronic dance music or dance culture to even relate the success of these particular 97-98 artists to rave culture in general, let alone seek it out.

like bill alluded to earlier, I had said in that prodigy review that these tracks did have an effect on shifting modern rock radio, but it was toward nu-metal/rap-rock/etc. -- firestarter, breathe, block rockin beats, setting son, battle flag (an inexplicably big song on U.S. rock radio), born slippy (nuxx), rockafeller skank, bodyrock: these tracks are more rock/hip-hop meets dance than track-y dance music. They're electronic music with vocal hooks and choruses and, in some cases, frontmen - and this is the direction electronic productions went in the U.S., in modern rock but also pop and, perhaps above all, hip-hop.

For a country with not much of a history in rave/dance culture, this seems almost like a logical direction -- the sounds and textures of electronic music took over the U.S. charts but not via DJ culture: they were snapped up by timbaland, rodney jerkins, lil jon, etc., and combined with the ego-centrism, marketable star-quality frontmen, verses and choruses, song structures that listeners were already comfortable with and other typical elements of pop music.*

From an outsider's perspective, this also seems to be happening in the UK - U.S. hip-hop seems to be increasingly cutting into dance music's audience, no?

* as an aside, what was the last instrumental top 40 hit in the U.S. anyway? We don't even have the odd Mike Post/Vangelis/Jan Hammer hit single anymore let alone the dancefloor friendly crossovers we had from soul. disco, etc.

xpost can we all agree that rednex "cotton eyed joe" was a big hit and makes perfect sense?

Probably Robert Miles' "Children," no?

especially not at the moment--modern rock's probably the least conservative right now than it's been since '96/'97.

maybe post, vangelis and hammer could team up a la G3 (Vai, Satriani and Malmsteen) or the 3 Tenors.

The last big instrumental pop-trance hit I think was Darude's "Sandstorm," and even that song, ubiquitous as it was, only went to #83.

x-post I thought they cracked it for a week! usher had to take a shit or something.

I certainly bemoan this. There's really no reason why "The Reason" (no pun intended) shouldn't have gone to #1 except that it happened to co-incide with Usher's monster Spring of 2004. It depresses me beyond belief to know that Nickelback could possibly have the last rock #1 in history.

Linkin Park, U2, Green Day, most of the usual suspects.

1) Evanescence "Fallen"
2) Sheryl Crow "The Very Best Of..."
3) Maroon 5 "Songs About Jane"
4) No Doubt "The Singles"
5) Blink 182 "s/t"
6) Hoobastank "The Reason"
7) Nickelback "The Long Road"
8) Linkin Park "Meteora"
9) Sarah McLachlan "Afterglow"
10) Switchfoot "The Beautiful Letdown"

That's anything that could reasonably be qualified as rock music, not counting Prince, country music, and Norah Jones.

This is a good point. I can think of a couple exceptions ("Busy Child," "Battleflag," "The Rockaeflla Skank") but for the most part this is very true--a good deal of The Prodigy's appeal was "OMG LOOK AT HOW SCARY THE DUDE IS IN THE VIDEO," and "Praise You" and "Weapon of Choice" would most likely have gone nowhere without those great Jonze videos.

#7, I think. The only crunk #1s have been crunk-n-bs like "Goodies" and "Yeah".

haha, nope but maybe Tim McGraw or Gretchen Wilson counts on Chuck time.