Pop Reggae

remember that 'Compliments On Your Kiss' one, Red Dragon, I'm not sure how 'reggae' it is as opposed to 'ska' or something else altogether

What gets me is that so many pop acts in the 70s and early 80s tried it - putting a 'reggae track' on an album. The 'story of reggae' I pick up from books like Bass Culture ignores all this, for obvious reasons (ppl big into reggae probably don't care much for 10cc or Ace Of Base). But the upshot is you get this narrative of reggae as a hardcore underground Jamaican music which then bursts into the charts with Bob Marley but swiftly falls away again when he dies. The punk take-up of reggae is well-documented but the pop take-up is mostly ignored. (Actually Lloyd Bradley does have a couple of very interesting bits on Trojan as an English pop phenomenon - whacking a string section on ear-friendly JA hits etc. But reggae's post-Marley afterlife as a kind of rhythmic pop virus is mostly ignored.)

Beenie Man?

Side point - do you still GET reggae influences in chart-pop these days, or has it been usurped by skittering psuedo-Timbaland beats and the like?

good point by Matt DC - all the 'hip pop' is completely influenced by calypso rhythms, the half-step and dancehall style beats, minimal percussion - thats where its at, and traditional reggae sound has bitten the dust chartwise it seems

They were called Mr. President. But I prefer the hardcore sounds of the original Gothenburg massive.

and, what about T-Spoon 'Sex On The Beach'?!

1) Not entirely on topic, but...Marley was the biggest reggae red herring. He wasn't so much taking reggae anywhere as re-working it into something that would cross-over smoothly. Inevitably he had to draw on a lot of rock 'stuff' (song config, band config, promotion, album-focus..)

But while has was around he was a convenient peer for people like the Stones and Clapton to latch onto. Of course the obligatory reggae tracks followed..

Does hiring Sly and Robbie to bolt on a reggae chassis count?

I know I'm not answering the q here - will think more.

This may be something to do with reggae being *fast*.

Masterblaster (Jammin')! The hit version of Brimful of Asha!

Good old Georgie Fame.

and "Bad Boys" reached many as the "theme from COPS"

Of course people don't like to talk about reggae's influence...they'd find it was pretty freaking overwhelming...

Crap. I've got to go meet someone for lunch. I'll have to come back to this. Interesting question though...

'Hotel California' has kind of a skank beat.

'obla di obla da'--the first white pop-reggae stab?

"Walking On the Moon" has got to be one of the most magical, and really unusual sounding hit singles of the post-punk era. shame how the police turned into Yes cira Synchronity. blame those picador Arthur Koestler paperbacks

'dreadlock holiday' is an interesting, ah, pop text. Bit dodgy lyric-wise if my dim recollection is correct

Similarly I think if you imagine a 90s box set made up of similar pop floor-scrapings you'd find a comparable level of borrowings and swipes from hip-hop (5ive, Snap, Culture Beat) but when evidence is sought for the commercial/cultural supremacy of hip-hop it tends to be sought in 50 Cent album sales, not in one-hit Europopsters feeling obliged to have a 'rapper' on one of their singles.

(I suspect partly this is down to a vague discomfort afficionados of these styles have about quite how dilutable they turn out to be.)

(I think that 'pop' is multiracial anyway, Oops, so I don't think it's always a ripping-off-blacks thing.)

This is another one of those what-is-pop questions, though. There's a divide, isn't there, between people who think that a hip-hop track that is also a pop track is still hip-hop and those who think it stops being one. Same for indie, reggae, punk, all the other macro-genres.

10cc: Dreadlock Holiday
Steely Dan: Haitian Divorce
UB40: Red Red Wine
Madness and Specials: More or less their entire 1979-81 output

My issue with "Walking On The Moon" remains Sting's horrible voice. Wasn't it the scouser Costello who badmouthed Sting for singing in a Jamaican accent? What a nerve.

For example, De La Soul: "It might blow up/ but it won't go pop."

I'm not saying pop apes black culture move-for-move, line-for-line...just that elements of it are amalgamated into pop. (I was hoping to talk about the influence of a black sub-culture on pop music w/o labeling anything as being ripped-off/stolen)
Are you denying that reggae, hip-hop, jazz, and r&b began almost exclusively within the black community? and that elements from these forms can be seen in the corresponding pop music of the day?

Reggae - hip hop continuum is very possibly different. The hip hop I listen to most - UK stuff - is a more complicated proposition certainly.

But hip hop IS reggae. It came from reggae...I know I keep harping about this. Also, the whole Timbaland/Neptunes issue...that's not a switch from reggae, but it's even more Steelie and Clevie/Sly and Robbified pop music.

Oh, and Brandon--you're OTM.

Also, I agree with Tom that a radio hit is almost by definition "pop." No commercial station has any incentive to play anything that isn't popular, ie mainstream. Popular = pop, right?

I kind of get the disco comparison, but the difference is that disco was still by and large an American conception (with strong links in Europe), so even for British acts like the Stones and Kinks to put out a disco track was just a response to stuff happening all around them. Jamaica and reggae, though, were from another world entirely, a point borne out by the fact that lots of stuff that wasn't actually reggae used to get labelled reggae by critics who were just figuring out what it actually was. (Harry Nilsson's "Coconut," for instance, and more bizarrely, Gary Glitter!)

The hit--"Rock & Roll, Part II"--is reputed to be reggae, but I don't understand why, unless reggae has been reduced to a catchall for anything with a simple beat. As for the album, it's easy to categorize--unreconstructed rock and roll revivalism of the most reactionary sort. Dumb. C

Brandon, I think to talk about the Bristol sound's reggae element being just Perry seems a bit narrow to me: I think other late 70s mainstream reggae is just as important. Massive Attack's sound on "Blue Lines" reminds me much more of that big Channel 1 sound and Tricky puts me in mind of K. Hudson, in parts.

I'm not getting your point w/r/t what I have said. Certainly in Jamaica, reggae WAS pop music and so talking about reggae's influence and Jamaican pop music is redundant.

1982, in fact. "Pass The Dutchie", "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me", and Eddy Grant's "I Don't Want To Dance".
('83 had "Red Red Wine" and "Karma Chameleon".)

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2026/01/19/stephen-cat-coore-jamaican-music-icon-third-world-co-founder-dies-69/

RIP Stephen Cat Coore guitarist co-founder of Third World