Male pop singers

I want to make them into the male tATu for their comeback but, like, properly pornographic.

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This may be b/c of a lingering suspicion that idiosyncracy in male pop stars = Michael Jackson-style bizarreness. Maybe the problem is that idiosyncracy in pop inevitably signifies camp, which women are more likely to get away with (we're okay with Gwen Stefani being a drag queen because she's, like, a woman already).

Or maybe it's that when males don't conform to very straightforward ideas of pop music we're more inclined to think of them as non-pop. Or maybe the ways they don't conform tend to already set us up to think this. Question: to what extent was George Michael circa Faith still considered a bona fide Pop (in the narrow sense) star? I suspect he was totally considered to be Pop but I wasn't thinking about such things at the time so I'm not sure.

Notable recent exceptions to the above rule: JC Chasez and Daniel Bedingfield, both of whom made very pop and rather odd first albums. But JC didn't do too well and Daniel's since been drifting towards pseudo-rock trad conservatism. Which again suggests to me that the market has more difficulty sustaining such moves.

Are you crazy? Dude's putting up Beatles numbers! Didn't he have four or five #1s off one album a couple years ago?

Yeah I can't see how anyone could've thought of him as anything other than straight (npi) up Pop at this point. That surely didn't happen until 'Praying For Time'.

(Hah! I used the phrase "solo joint.")

In any event, I think Tracer that you're (1) onto something, but (2) overlooking Adult Contemporary. Here are the most played songs in that format over the last 7 days (as reported to Mediabase):

1 LIFEHOUSE You And Me
2 KELLY CLARKSON Because Of You
3 JAMES BLUNT You're Beautiful
4 ROB THOMAS Lonely No More
5 MICHAEL BUBLE Home
6 KEITH URBAN Making Memories Of U...
7 ANNA NALICK Breathe
8 MICHAEL BUBLE Save The Last Dance ...
9 MARIAH CAREY We Belong Together
10 EAGLES No More Cloudy Days
11 DANIEL POWTER Bad Day
12 SANTANA I'm Feeling You (f/M...
13 JON SECADA Window To My Heart
14 D.H.T. Listen To Your Heart
15 LEANN RIMES Probably Wouldn't Be...
16 JIM BRICKMAN W/WAYNE BRADY Beautiful
17 FAITH HILL Like We Never Loved
18 ROB THOMAS Ever The Same
19 JORDAN KNIGHT Where Is Your Heart
20 CARRIE UNDERWOOD Some Hearts

Also notice the country crossovers. So, do we count Keith Urban? I think we should.

But it's interesting that when you say "the catch-all category that lies at the intersection of so many other things and includes the likes of P!nk, Gwen Stefani, Robyn, Avril, Britney" that that's a younger and more thrilling pop that isn't just an intersection but seemingly a cauldron of something potentially new - though I think someone ought to post here and at least try to argue for the AC people as a cauldron of the potentially new as well. (And Kelly Clarkson is part of the youth cauldron, and LeAnn Rimes was a few years ago, but they have vaginas so don't qualify on this thread.)

Little girls.

That is, girls mostly under 15 and many under 10 have an inordinate impact on what breaks as new pop. I think there are many complicated reasons for this - their being young, hence being more open to the new in the first place. But here's one explanation I read years ago that rings true: Girls tell the truth to interviewers, boys don't, so it's much easier to learn girls' consumer preferences, hence much easier to know what music they want to hear and what products they want to buy. So if your radio stations gets you 5,000 girls, that interests advertisers far more than if it gets you 5,000 boys. Second explanation:

Spice Girls.

Not that there hadn't been girl stars embraced by the teens and tweens and teenies before (TLC, for instance, and Brandy and Aaliyah had been breaking through, and Paula Abdul had had strong girl support), but the Spice Girls kind of clinched it. Girls wanted to listen to girls at least as much if not more than to boys. Meaning that girls want to identify with as well as idolize or feel all warm about their stars. (Yeah, I know it's more complicated than that.)

Backstreet Boys and *NSync may have somewhat countered this trend, and as people have been saying on this thread, Jesse McCartney's huge with the teenies (but he doesn't seem to be part of the general pop cauldron/nexus). But in general, the boybands were superseded by female confessional rockers.

Male artist to watch: Akon. Either he could be a big part of the cauldron/nexus, or he could vanish as a novelty.

(Of course, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes guys involved in helping to create the girl cauldron: John Shanks, Clif Magness, Ben Moody, David Hodges, Max Martin, Lukasz Gottwald, Greg Wells, Ric Wake, etc. (not to mention Pharrell Williams). There may be more backstage guys than backstage gals, though Linda Perry and Kara DioGuardi are crucially important themselves.)

1 JAMES BLUNT You're Beautiful
2 ROB THOMAS Ever The Same
3 NICKELBACK Photograph
4 DANIEL POWTER Bad Day
5 KELLY CLARKSON Because Of You
6 GOO GOO DOLLS Better Days
7 LIFEHOUSE You And Me
8 STAIND Right Here
9 FRAY Over My Head (Cable ...
10 TRAIN Cab
11 FALL OUT BOY Sugar, We're Going D...
12 HOWIE DAY She Says
13 BON JOVI Who Says You Can't G...
14 NATASHA BEDINGFIELD Unwritten
15 SANTANA Just Feel Better(f/S...
16 GREEN DAY Wake Me Up When Sept...
17 INXS Pretty Vegas
18 ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS Dirty Little Secret
19 KELLY CLARKSON Walk Away
20 SHERYL CROW & STING Always On Your Side

I think you need to count people like Johnny Rzeznik (Goo Goo Dolls) and Billy Joe Armstrong (Green Day) as male pop singers, even if (or maybe especially because) they've done "punk rock." (A lot of the behind-the-scenes guys I mentioned in my previous post have done rock and metal. In fact, a lot of teenpop basically is rock and some of it has metal leanings.)

Agreed. Trying to think of female equivalent, and right now the best I can do is Liz Phair, who, hit-wise, really doesn't measure up to Green Day or Goo Goo Dolls. Is there something intrinsically male about having a band that pays its dues (or whatever) before moving into/conquering the mainstream pop arena? Conversely, female pop stars seem to spring forth like Athena. Speaking of which...

(Of course, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes guys involved in helping to create the girl cauldron: John Shanks, Clif Magness, Ben Moody, David Hodges, Max Martin, Lukasz Gottwald, Greg Wells, Ric Wake, etc. (not to mention Pharrell Williams).

This is a fact that sometimes makes me a little queasy about those pop acts that get adopted by the indie crowd, i.e. "It's produced by the Neptunes" thrown out there as a veiled, very possibly unintentional, sexist justification for a female pop song that's hip. Not saying this is universal by any means, but in that specific sphere it is almost invariably males who are the hitmaking producers.

I've started listening to the adult contemporary station recently. I'm particularly interested in some stuff that's kinda hard to categorize beyond "pop-rock" but certainly seems to exist as it's own thing:

The one I've heard a couple times and really liked was Last Goodnight - "Stay Beautiful", which really reminds me the hell of New Radicals - "You Get What You Give." It also feels a little bit like a Jellyfish song if they hadn't been so retro.

I feel like I've reached a turning point of sorts by opening my ears to this kinda stuff. Any recommendations from the last ten years or so that I should just go and pick up without even thinking twice?

Also, last post in the thread was just plain adorable.