Earnie Shavers said:
If you don't have room to appreciate some good, fun pop music, you have no soul.
In that regard, Justin Timberlake is outstanding.
A lot of pop music is actually getting quite complicated and mature in it's sound, structure, lyrics and it's place in music development.
Long gone is the line of pop that runs through the teen girls and boy bands of the 80s and 90s. To really own that game now, you need a whole lot more. Look at how Robbie Williams is stumbling badly as he's trying desperately to keep up. You can't try and keep up, you need to be well ahead.
No more cheesy ballads, no more songs that sound like advertising jingles or nursery rhymes. The stuff that is good now is the stuff that has gained an inch of depth and 10 tonnes of savvy and smarts.
Nicely said. I used to be so critical of pop music and it still doesn't interest me much, and I never watch MTV or VH1 or wherever the hell people see videos anymore so I'm ignorant about much of it, but when I see a good performance like Justin's on the Grammy's I realize that there's a new genre of pop emerging, just as you say. I doubt I'll ever even buy a record (never say never, though) but I appreciate that it's more substantive than it used to be. I found this article in the New York Times the other day to be interesting (and I'll quote the whole article since you have to register and the link will be meaningless). It seems that Justin's getting a new fan base and not just because it's suddenly cool to like Justin, but because he's actually talented and people are opening up to pop music because it's simply a lot better than it used to be. I especially like the comment about him not oversinging, which I agree with as well.
The New York Times
February 7, 2007
Timberlake, Pop Juggernaut, Is Gaining Some Unusual Fans
By MELENA RYZIK
He won over the teeny-boppers long ago, but in his incarnation as a sexy-smooth crooner with a hip-hop edge, Justin Timberlake has gained some unusual fans: hipsters.
Youthful urbanites who normally wouldn’t admit to filling their iPods with anything remotely Top 40, let alone the music of a performer who can sell out Madison Square Garden, as Mr. Timberlake, 26, did for tonight’s show, are suddenly unashamed of their copies of “Justified,” his first solo album, or “FutureSex/LoveSounds,” his recent chart-topper produced by Timbaland. Members of the Flaming Lips, Coldplay and Keane have come to his shows, and his music is a staple of cooler-than-thou fashion week.
On Monday, at an after-party for the Marc Jacobs show at the club Eugene, the D.J. Duane Harriott played “SexyBack,” and the crowd of models, art directors, designers and other insider types hit the dance floor with abandon. “It’s a timeless song,” Mr. Harriott said, favorably comparing it to the Michael Jackson tune he spun next.
Pete Wentz, the bassist for Fall Out Boy, said at the party: “The cool thing about Justin Timberlake is that he’s one of those dudes who can dance, sing, do everything. I went to a Victoria’s Secret show, and he played there, and people loved it. You can go to hipster clubs, and they like it. I think at first they liked him ironically, but now they just like him.”
Unlike his former boy-band colleagues, Mr. Timberlake has even won over musicians who prefer lo-fi thrash to the slicker sounds of mainstream albums. Last month, in a Greenpoint club in the farthest reaches of hipster Brooklyn, Matt Johnson, 25, of the keyboard-and-drums act Matt and Kim, admitted his authentic Timberlake love.
In fact, he told the crowd, he had recently dreamed about playing a show with Mr. Timberlake, a one-time Mouseketeer. (The audience cheered this prospect.) And in December Pitchfork, the online music review bible, anointed Mr. Timberlake “the new King of Pop,” and named his song “My Love” the No. 1 of 2006 above indie stalwarts like TV on the Radio and Joanna Newsom, and an honor no Backstreet Boy could hope to achieve.
“I don’t think he’s as prefab and contrived as other artists,” said Tony Croasdale, 30, a punk promoter in Philadelphia and a singer, as Tony Pointless, for an anarchist hardcore band called R.A.M.B.O. “I like him because I don’t think he oversings.”
Mr. Croasdale, whose oeuvre runs to songs like “Wage Slave Mercenaries” and “If Our Leaders Are Impotent Only the People Can Rise,” picked up a copy of “Justified” when he was on tour in Asia, and he and his bandmates found it “fun to dance to.”
“Believe it or not,” he added, “Justin Timberlake has some major fans in the anarchist punk community.”
like in the Pop era pics where he's in the wife beater tee? I do not have the pic, that is one I never saved (though I did save plenty of other Pop pics)
) but I agree that particular picture doesn't look like what I said about him. His 'Sexyback' an "Alpha Dogs" look is what I mean. I do think he wishes he was a badass black dude, but he doesn't look or sound like one. IMO the image doesn't work for him, but apparently lots of people like it.
Is this 1999?
