Comments on Pop Music (By the Numbers)

'Phonation' is probably a good name for a band. 'The Phones' was already unknowingly taken when we considered that name, one typical Seattle summer eve, celebrating a birthday, overlooking the Lake, off of a veranda, roasting steaks, blowing out the sparklers, listening to a dagdurn real reel to reel. Money, Houses, fathers and surfboards.........mmmmm don't you hate it?

Nothing quite like listening to old, out-of-touch people talk about the decline of music. It ranks somewhere between "there are too many commercials on TV" and "why does the local newspaper have so much swearing?"

@2--who are you talking about? are you reading the same article as i am? this is a "scientific" analysis, quantifiable, not so much a cranky roundtable of "i remember when"s.

Wow, thanks for the hat tip, Matt. :D

I guess my next question is: what does "critically acclaimed single" mean in this context. I wish I had time to download all the data and decipher right now. While sales figures and sales longevity aren't the only factors that matter, they're certainly the best to measure how critically acclaimed they are by everyone.

Music critics are people, too. (I know, shocking.) But music critics tend to be more album-inclined since that's how they're able to get more paid work to do music reviews. Not too many music critics get paid to review only single songs.

More "classic" LPs were made in those 10 years ('67-76) as it BECAME the "pop" standard, suddenly if you DIDN'T make a proper LP you lost cred! Pop/rock on LP was suddenly taken seriously thanks to the Beatles (sgt. pepper), the Who (sell out...well, MAYBE that one counts), the Jefferson Airplane (takes off) and the Moody Blues (days of future past), etc...so all rock (pop) bands did it! BTW, pop albums were originally boxes of 45s or in a flip book ALBUM you could stick sequentially on your stacker turntable...later it became easier to stick all the single's sides on one LONG PLAYING record, AKA an "album". Also, prolly as important as the artist's shift to LP as a standard, as the '60s turned into the '70s, many local radio stations were bought by larger stations and local programming was lost to nationally syndicated shows. That's another likely reason why suddenly there is a late '60s surge in numbers of certain well known, "classic," records. Prior to the syndicated shows there were local/regional charts/playlists compiled by local/regional stations which were ignored by the larger media (and national chart keepers like Billboard/Cash Box). Indie labels were also sucked up/muscled out by majors at the time squeezing the reach of "creativity" into their system.

As for LP cuts getting played, it was typically on "underground" FM stations, singles still ruled the game on AM/bigger stations...pop IS based on a POP formula (two and one half minutes long with a hook performed by a group or an individual that is relatively marketable). Long hair music (AOR/classic rock) was still quite the outlaw scene, however most of those bands still searched to write (as the labels DEMANDED) a HIT single. Only a few bands/managers had the power to dictate to the label what they were going to offer the label.

Great pop LPs were thin on the ground during this golden age of the single (pre-'67) since LP's were comprised of hit singles and okay or crap filler...there was typically no cohesive consideration of flow or whatever...well, beyond fast slow-fast-song sequencing. Tho' that point certainly could well be argued, I've never really got down with say, any Mario Lanza/Frank Sinatra LPs, or any pop/ vocal LPs from the first singles age...anyone have any solid, NON ROCK, LP as pop ALBUM suggestions from '55 - 67? Jazz/classical LPs don't count, obviously!

Anyways, I think critics (which I rate as snobby smarty pants nerds with beards and WAY too many jazz records) hate singles because they're typically fluff/cash cows...and to bend the ear of a critic any given single has to somehow be a catalyst change in pop trends/or an upswing in an artist's music making. Without that something extra a single is even less likely to get a critical nod. Contemporary pop gets few nods as it is redundant relative to the past. As critics underscore, most music from the last twenty years is more a parody/rewrite of what came before...and less innovation means, less acclaim.

Oh, the influence of disco singles after '76 is an interesting angle, but most serious critics didn't take disco seriously since it's repetitive dance music and relatively benign. And after that MTV began to exert an influence...well, I can't think of too many critics that were excited about Culture Club...

PS - WHY is Nirvana so high up on these lists? I love Nirvana, but I didn't understand it in '92 when all the critics shit their pants for a not THAT clever "grunge" band, and I understand it even less NOW. Most of the (ahem) "like" bands from the late '80s were WAY more important...however, as those "other" bands are NOT being included as part of the pop cannon could give cause to the extra love for Nirvana. And I guess those critics had dismissed where the underground was, as they often have...anyways...

I think the basis with which these statistics were put together were flawed at the outset, the notion of "critical acclaim" being too subjective. Without any standard to measure what makes one a critic in the first place, you can't extrapolate any other quantifiable standard from that.

Critics have "evolved" (or vary) from paid record company shills to acid-soaked bloviators to neurotic post-modernist fops and back to paid record company shills while occupying various (but largely diminishing) roles in public opinion. Any equation based on such opinion will be zero-sum.

@4 - You're welcome :-) In this context I think "critically acclaimed" just means whatever ends up in a media outlet's "top 10/100 records of all time" or yearly roundup lists. He just scooped up whatever he could find and dumped it into a database. As far as I know it does not count sales -- if you looked at sales alone I think the picture would be *much* different. If I could find a reasonable source of sales data going back that far, I'd love to compare it to this.

@6 - Definitely. It really depends on who you ask, what you ask them and how you ask it. (This is a flaw of many widely-cited opinion polls.) This whole thing is kind of a goof on the very idea that critical opinion -- especially "collective" critical opinion -- has anything to do with quality or anything else

And - what Nipper said. :-)