The Twelve Tasks of ToffeeBoy - #2 Everything But The Girl

Just over a month ago, I came up with the (admittedly foolish) idea of posting a monthly … errr … post in which I would put forward the musical outpourings of a particular group for the consideration of my esteemed fellow ‘Spillers. The idea was that I would choose groups that meant a lot to me but, judging by the lack of success as far as A-listing was concerned, appeared not to mean diddley-squat to most of the rest of you.

Mulling over the names of the groups I might include, it occurred to me that there was a common theme which seemed to unite them – apart from the dondless silence that usually greets my nominations of their finest moments. Namely, that they were all purveyors of what might broadly be described as pop music.

So, when I came to writing up the introductory text for the first Task of ToffeeBoy, I suggested that I might alternatively have called it “In Defence of Pop”. Little did I know that those words would provoke one of the most interesting debates it’s ever been my pleasure to read on the ‘Spill, on the fascinating subject of how we might define ‘Pop Music’.

Chris started the ball rolling by asking,

“Just what exactly is this 'Pop Music' you're promoting? What identifies it as different from rock/indie/soul etc?”

and eight days and ninety one comments later, despite feeling intellectually drained, I was delighted to find that, thanks to my new-found understanding of the questions that needed answering, I was actually in a position to formulate some broad definitions.

There were some detractors. Japanther quite sensibly opted out of the debate stating:

Won't comment on the 'what is or isn't pop' debate as I think it's all subjective, if it's "pop" for you, then it's pop! Simple as that!

Which is a perfectly valid and defensible standpoint to take, but personally, I think there’s a need for some sort of agreement about what we mean when we use the term ‘Pop Music’ – otherwise we find ourselves in Humpty Dumpty territory, with nobody knowing what anyone else means:

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.

I’m not in any way likening Japanther to Humpty Dumpty (heaven forefend!) but I do feel that successful communication requires the use of linguistic conventions. And if we’re going to talk about music in a meaningful way I strongly believe that we have to make some sort of attempt to define the genres which, after all, are thrown glibly into discussions and used as if we all know exactly what we’re talking about.

Of course music is an art form, not a science, so it’s never going to be possible to draw boxes around it. Thank Speng for Abahachi is all I can say! As a reminder for those of you who haven’t now got this paragraph printed out and pasted on your bathroom walls (and shame on you if that’s the case!) this is what our learned friend had to say on the subject:

In terms of Weberian sociology, I think we're looking for a polythetic rather than a monothetic model; that is, rather than a definition that says "pop = a, b and c", and rejects anything that lacks all three of those characteristics, we want a definition that says "pop = a sufficient number of a, b, c, d or e", such that abc and cde both count as pop although they have only a small amount in common.

So, if I understand this correctly, in order to define what we mean by Pop Music, we first need to come up with some broad definitions of the qualities that constitute Pop Music and then look for these qualities in songs which may or may not be definable as Pop Music. If, at the end of the exercise, enough of the boxes are ticked, then we can call it Pop Music.

No, I don’t think so either. Abahachi is absolutely right that this is the principle that needs to be adopted and on a certain level I’ve found myself doing this over the past few weeks: running a song through the Spill Particle Accelerator (aka the Large Abahadron Collider) to see whether it qualifies – with, it has to be said, some degree of success. But of course none of us really has the time, or indeed the inclination, to do this – if we do, we’re simply reducing art to a series of cold attributes – which rather detracts from the pure joy of music.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps this is all a pointless exercise. But I keep coming back to the still think it’s important to carry around with us an idea of what those boxes are – what qualities we’re looking for.

There was general agreement about the idea that defining what Pop Music isn’t, is often easier than defining what is. By chance rather than design, my choice of Microdisney worked quite well here - I think it’s fair to say that Microdisney are very much at the edge of Pop and as any good archaeologist will tell you, you have to be to find the edges of things to fully understand what you’ve got. I also found all the ‘Spillers’ top tens particularly useful for this purpose – the songs on the lists provided loads of good examples that helped me to formulate my ideas.

So, having gone back over the comments on the previous post and considered all the issues, I’ve managed to come up with a list of questions which need answering. But these, my friends, will have to wait for next month (or, since I was so late with this one, later this month) and the Third Task of ToffeeBoy.

Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy the mellow, tuneful and, above all, thoughtful pop music of Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn – aka, Everything But The Girl. The tracks here cover more than fifteen years from their debut album Eden in 1983 right up to 1999’s Tempremental. I love them and so does ToffeeGirl – how about you?

Oh, nearly forgot, I promised there would be a recommended album each month. I’ll go for Baby The Stars Shine Bright – it’s certainly the most poppy.

And here are some links:
Official site
Wikipedia
Last.fm

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