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what ONE track do you consider the best ever pop single of all time and why?

 

(note pop = popular music not pop as in watermanesque tripe :) )

 

 

id cite spencer davis group.... 'keep on running' as its original, uptempo, catchy, and ticks every box that a good inoffensive pop song should be ... :)

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David Bowie - Life On Mars (My All-Time favourite song)

 

David Bowie's attempt at writing a British "My Way" and doing a far better job, with a song that has a stronger melody, fantastic image-provoking lyrics, and builds to arguably the most dramatic crescendo ending in the history of popular music.

Bigmouth Strikes Again - The Smiths - utter pop brilliance and perfection.
my favourite song of all time is Going Underground by Jam, the anger in Weller's voice summed up the mood of the country at that time so perfectly. The lyrics are great, the music is brilliant and it still sounds fresh to me even now. Plus the single has a brilliant B side too, together it was, and still is, the best record I ever bought.
David Bowie - Space Oddity , I just loved this song from the first time I heard it
(note pop = popular music not pop as in watermanesque tripe :) )

 

Hey dude have you seen this film about midnight movies??? All about the kind of subversive and non-mainstream movies that wouldnt get into the multiplexes in the 170s and 1980s in America and would only play for example late at night in a big huge urban city like NY. It was out on the big screen last week but i've seen it on itv4 a few weeks ago.

 

http://hunch.club.fr/quickdead/images/cinemaus/midnight_movies1.jpg

 

now one of the films discussed on analysed is Pink Flamingos, a film by John Waters and featuring a certain Harris Milstead aka Divine. Now where you are entirely correct that pop music is just popular music and that any musical sub-genre can be appropiated by the mainstream to become 'pop' (whether it be indie, alternative, metal including all the hair metalers who are already mainstream, my chemical romance, good charlotte, electronica, folk and all those fricking people who are marketed as are some kind of special folk or jazz 'dude' when they are just written by wombles).

 

Now you say you want popular music not in watermanesque pop. but it seems that some of waterman's productions were not pop but really originally an old dance music genre, a genre mainly that came some time between the end of disco and the start of house in dance music linage.

 

so it seems that this waterman sound has been actaully stolen from a non-pop homosexual dance culture and at some point there has been a shift for whatever reason and used for pop uses (i suppose you can also include Paradise Garage/ Larry Levan somewhere here as well).

 

DIVINE:

 

In the 1970's Milstead starred as Divine in a number of New York City theatre pieces, including Tom Eyen's classic camp women's prison drama, Women Behind Bars, which was a major off-Broadway hit in 1976, playing the lead role of the evil matron in drag.

 

Milstead starred in a number of films and was part of the regular cast known as the Dreamlanders. The Dreamlanders appeared in many of John Waters' earlier works such as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, and Hairspray. Repeating their successful pairing in Polyester, in 1985 Divine appeared opposite Tab Hunter in their bigger hit Lust in the Dust.

 

He is also remembered as a major character in the documentary homage Divine Trash by Steve Yeager (filmmaker), covering the life and work of John Waters.

 

In the 1980s, Milstead's dance-music records were hits through America, Europe, and Australia. The typical progressive type of synthesizer disco music was composed, created, performed and produced by Bobby Orlando. In Britain his Stock, Aitken and Waterman record "You Think You're A Man" was his most successful hit, reaching #16.

 

In 1988, the British film The Fruit Machine (1988), a/k/a Wonderland (USA), utilized Milstead's songs in a nightclub disco dance sequence that showcased an early Robbie Coltrane in drag as "Annabelle", the club's owner (a cross between Divine and Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz).

 

Late in his career, Milstead also played in non-drag roles in his last three films: Trouble in Mind, Hairspray, and Out of the Dark. In Hairspray he played two roles, one male and one female (which he had first done in the earlier Female Trouble).

 

 

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Divine.glenn.milstead-dogs.jpg

 

http://www.theminx.com/iss5vol2/divinepf.gif

 

Hi-NRG (High Energy) is a type of electronic dance music which emerged then became popular in nightclubs in the early 1980s and continues to be popular today.

 

Description

The name "Hi-NRG" comes from the Evelyn Thomas's hit, "High Energy" (1984), produced by Ian Levine in London. Hi-NRG is typified by an energetic staccato sequenced synthesizer sound where the bass often takes the place of the hi-hat (alternating a more resonant note with a dampened note to signify the tempo of the record). There is often heavy use of the clap sound found on drum machines. DJ/Producer, Patrick Cowley first made Hi-NRG music popular at the The EndUp in San Francisco in 1982. During 1984 the music began to crossover into the mainstream pop charts in the United Kingdom and the United States, largely due to the success of the Record Shack record label.

 

The label Record Shack also enjoyed chart success with tracks by Break Machine, Miquel Brown and an unlikely comeback single by Eartha Kitt ("Where Is My Man", 1984) which proved to be a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Stock Aitken Waterman were Hi-NRG producers at the start of their career, working with Divine and Hazell Dean, and producing the most successful Hi-NRG track, Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)", which reached number one on the UK Singles chart and the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.. Hi-NRG was largely superseded by House music by 1990, but still enjoys an underground following, usually in the form of Hi-NRG versions of mainstream pop hits. The second generation of Hi-NRG that emerged during the 1990s is a major force in the Club/Dance music world thanks to mainly two essential Hi-NRG artists, Kristine W and Abigail. Its basic production has remained nearly the same. However, the rhythms and synths used sound different as it is usually edgier. As with most Hi-NRG, it still emphisizes vocal personality. Next to no Hi-NRG songs are intrumental.

 

Many of the Hi-NRG tracks produced in Europe at the time qualify doubly as examples of Italo disco (i.e., Taffy, Magazine 60, , Roni Griffith, etc.) and discofox (i.e. Linda Jo Rizzo, Lian Ross, Modern Talking, Fancy, Lift Up, Blue System, Bad Boys Blue.)

 

 

Artists

Abigail

France Joli

Jimmy Somerville

Kristine W

Kim Wilde

Wayne Numan

Earlene Bentley

Miquel Brown

Martha Wash

Laura Branigan

Bronski Beat

Jaryd Rankin

Lime

Lisa

Dead or Alive

Edyta

Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Gioia

Maria Daniela y su Sonido Lasser

Yseult

Paul Lekakis

Hazell Dean

MARINA

Sharon Redd

Eastbound Expressway

Laura Pallas

Barbara Pennington

RuPaul

Scherrie Payne

Seventh Avenue

Shannon

Sylvester, and his most notable producer Patrick Cowley

Evelyn Thomas

The Flirts

DJ Digga

Taffy

Tony De Vit

Tapps

Bobby Orlando

Village People

 

Records

All of these records reached the Hi-NRG charts in the 1980s:

 

Bianca - Midnight Lover

Bodyheat - No! Mr Boom Boom (Diamond Records

Miquel Brown - He's a Saint He's a Sinner (Record Shack Records)

Miquel Brown - To Many Men To Little Time (Record Shack Records)

Crystal In The Pink - Back To You

Celena Duncan - Questions And Answers (Nightmare Records)

Barbara Doust - If You Love Somebody

Sisley Ferre - For You (Hotsound Records)

Fun Fun - Give Me Your Love

Fun Fun - Color My Love

Samantha Gilles - Stop

Havana - Satisfy My Desire (Wow Records)

Carol Jiani - Turning My Back And Walking Away (Nightmare Records)

Lanei - Love Bites (Opium Records)

Lime - Gold Digger (TSR Records)

Lisa - Rocket to Your Heart (Moby Dick Records)

M&H Band - Popcorn

Marsha Raven - I Like Plastic

Man To Man - Hard Hitting Love (Nightmare Records)

Midnight Sunrise - This Is A Haunted House (Nightmare Records)

Modern Rocketry - I Feel Love Coming (Megatone Records)

Off - Electrica Salsa (Ton Son Ton Records)

Linda Jo Rizzo - Perfect Love

Shooting Party - Safe In The Arms Of Love

Sandra - Everlasting Love (PWL remix) (Virgin Records)

Helena Springs - Paper Money (Atlantic Records)

Scherrie Payne- I'm Not In Love (Megatone)

Scherrie Payne - One Night Only (ALtair)

Scherrie Payne - Chasing Me Into Somebody Else's Arms (Nightmare Gold)

Scott Stryker - Science Fiction

T-Arc - Undercover Lover (ZYX Records)

Linda Taylor - Every Waking Hour (Nightmare Records)

Tuillio De Piscopo - Stop Bajon (Primavera) (Greyhound Records)

Vivien Vee - Heartbest (X-Energy Records)

XS-S - I Need More (VCN Records)

Laura Branigan - Shattered Glass (Atlantic Records)

 

Number Ones

These records reached Number One in the Hi-NRG charts compiled by James Hamilton and Alan Jones in Record Mirror

 

Eria Fachin - Savin' Myself (Power Records - 1987)

Man To Man - Who Knows What Evil? (Nightmare Records)

Kim Weston - Signal Your Intention (Nightmare Records - 1987)

Evelyn Thomas - No Win Situation (Nightmare Records - 1987)

Michelle Goulet - Over And Over And Over (Island Records America - 1988)

 

Cover Versions in the Hi-NRG style

Quantize - The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, a cover of The Walker Brothers on Passion Records.

Seventh Avenue - The Love I Lost, a cover of Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes on Nightmare Records.

Bona-Riah - House of the Rising Sun on Rise Records

 

Record Labels

Record labels that most frequently appeared in Record Mirror's Hi-NRG chart are as follows:

 

Bolts Records

Flea Records - Italy

Hi Tension Records - Belgium

Macho Records - Italy

Megatone Records

Nightmare Records

Passion Records

Record Shack Records

Time Records - Italy

X-Energy Records - Italy

MRK Records - NYC

ZYX Records - Germany

 

Other Hi-NRG Record Labels

Dance Street Records - Germany

Klone UK - United Kingdom

Butterfly Records -

 

Source

Jones, Alan and Kantonen, Jussi (1999) Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco. Chicago, Illinois: A Cappella Books. ISBN 1-55652-411-0.

 

 

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lol.. very well researched m8 BUT it matters not really if waterman pinched the sound from gay dance or not.... we now refer to it as 'pop'...
lol.. very well researched m8 BUT it matters not really if waterman pinched the sound from gay dance or not.... we now refer to it as 'pop'...

 

but man its not just about waterman pinching his sound from the dance (disco) sphere of influnce its part of the wider commercial dance/electronic/pop argument that has been going on and the degradation of certain artists because song people think that this muct be for a pop demographic when its more on the radar of i-D magazine.

 

for example this is from the Astralwerks record site

 

now Astralwerks is a record label which releases primarily electronic music. like Mute records its seen as an independent record label but like Mute records its ultimately owned by EMI (Virgin branch)

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/Astralwerks_logo_1.jpg

 

8 Bit Operators

A Band of Bees

Air

Audio Bullys

Badly Drawn Boy

The Beta Band

Breaks Co-op

Graham Coxon

The Dissociatives

Future Sound Of London

Gabin

Ed Harcourt

Gemma Hayes

k-os

King Biscuit Time

Kings of Convenience

Sondre Lerche

Les Rythmes Digitales

Miss Kittin

Prophet Omega

Tracey Thorn

Turin Brakes

West Indian Girl

 

REISSUES

Van Der Graaf Generator

Steve Hackett

101ers

Brian Eno

Terry Reid

 

now a lot of these artists i would say would have the same kind of demographic, marketed to the same kinda i-D type of people, and the type of things i would list together. on BJ where some seems to do a record by record policy its like well this is in indie, this must be pop, this must be dance but not commercial, but really this pop thing is really a dance thing.

 

 

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