With the troubled panic of man who's just found out his mother watches Hollyoaks, Chris sends me a text (TXT) message about a week ago to the effect of "b-b-but the Scissor Sisters are rockist!", which presumably refers to this bit from the Guardian interview I linked to a while ago:
As the Darkness have done with 1970s and 1980s pomp metal, the Scissor Sisters have rescued commercial 1970s and 1980s middle-of-the-road music from the dustbin of kitsch history. "We just like that traditional style of pop songwriting that people haven't touched on for a while."
In fact, the songwriting, mostly courtesy of Shears, is superbly accomplished. "The shelf life of a song," according to Boom, "is exponentially greater if you can sing it with just an acoustic guitar."
"Try and sing a Destiny's Child song a cappella," suggests Matronic. "It's very rhythmic, but there's no melody." Shears can think of a decent current song. "Hey Ya by Outkast," he says. "You could sing that round a campfire."
Let's get something out of the way: it's important to remember that an interview will often tell you as much about the publication as the band, and though I used that interview as an example of why the Guardian don't always suck, it still betrays the existence of certain attitudes that usually surface when broadsheet newspaper journalists write about music. Like it or not, not all interviews with the Sisters can be like this one at Popjustice. So any 'rockist' leanings you pick up on may well not be coming from the band (anyone who's ever written or edited an interview will tell you how easy it is to arrange quotations just so, in order to give the impression that someone is saying exactly what you want them to say) - this isn't a conspiracy theory or a form of excuse, just context to bear in mind.
Next up, I'm not going to try and pretend that I agree with the claim that there is no melody in a Destiny's Child song. But I suspect that if we broaden this out a bit, we might get to a point where most people can agree with what Ana Matronic is saying here. For the last couple of years, the emphasis in a lot of r&b tracks has been on the production - this has been the focus of attention from the artists and producers, but even more so from the critics. Those stop-start, jerky beats perfected by Timbaland and others (Rodney Jerkins, Shekspere, etc) are great to dance to, but it's true, you couldn't play most of them on an acoustic guitar the way you could play 'Hey Ya!'. Bear in mind that what the 'rockists' have been doing in the meantime has often been making songs that use acoustic guitars, but that will never be played round a campfire because nobody would want to hear, let alone play, them ever again. Scissor Sisters aren't doing either of those things, and what they *are* doing isn't something that (m)any other people are doing right now.
It also helps if you avoid the gag reflex you may understandably have on seeing the word 'tradition', and take "that traditional style" to mean "this particular traditional style" rather than "the one true style of olde". What the Scissor Sisters represent primarily is a tradition of pop that's arguably even less credible in the eyes of 'rockists' than modern urban r&b/pop. If I wanted to grossly over-simplify matters, I'd describe it as the gay side of disco rather than the black side. Think of the two records that 'Comfortably Numb' references most obviously - Frankie's 'Relax' and the Bee Gees' 'Staying Alive'. If you need more reference points, think of Dexy's Midnight Runners (and not just 'cos of the outfit Jake Shears is wearing in the photo below) - 'Come On Eileen' is one of the greatest pop singles of the last thirty years, but people are much less ready to admit that this than they would be about, say, 'Thriller'. Dexy's have zero credibility; 'Come On Eileen' is seen as music for wedding receptions and 'cheesy' (self-conscious or otherwise) club nights. It's that all-too-familiar pattern where the tune is so undeniable that a huge number of people embrace it, and then it must in turn be scorned by those supposedly in the know. 'Rockism' (if you're reading this wondering what the hell this term means, now is the helpful bit) if it means anything, means shunning music that a huge number of people embrace, because it means shunning the vulgar tastes of the masses for a canon of artistically worthy classic albums (which in the process creates a hegemony more repetitive and boring than any pop song could ever become through mere overexposure). 'Rockism' values the original version of 'Comfortably Numb' too highly to enjoy a disco cover version of the same.
Which brings me to the point that to be honest Chris, it wouldn't matter if Scissor Sisters spent every interview extolling the merits of the Mars Volta - they still wouldn't be rockists by virtue of the music they make. It's shiny and you dance to it = it's pop. Of the highest quality.
In case I'm not making myself abundantly clear, we should all be exceedingly grateful that as of yesterday, Scissor Sisters have made it into the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart. Top 10 motherfucker! It's like Britpop all over again. Except with better clothes. And better music. And no British people. Yes.
In conclusion:
(Image also courtesy of PopJustice.)
As the Darkness have done with 1970s and 1980s pomp metal, the Scissor Sisters have rescued commercial 1970s and 1980s middle-of-the-road music from the dustbin of kitsch history. "We just like that traditional style of pop songwriting that people haven't touched on for a while."
In fact, the songwriting, mostly courtesy of Shears, is superbly accomplished. "The shelf life of a song," according to Boom, "is exponentially greater if you can sing it with just an acoustic guitar."
"Try and sing a Destiny's Child song a cappella," suggests Matronic. "It's very rhythmic, but there's no melody." Shears can think of a decent current song. "Hey Ya by Outkast," he says. "You could sing that round a campfire."
Let's get something out of the way: it's important to remember that an interview will often tell you as much about the publication as the band, and though I used that interview as an example of why the Guardian don't always suck, it still betrays the existence of certain attitudes that usually surface when broadsheet newspaper journalists write about music. Like it or not, not all interviews with the Sisters can be like this one at Popjustice. So any 'rockist' leanings you pick up on may well not be coming from the band (anyone who's ever written or edited an interview will tell you how easy it is to arrange quotations just so, in order to give the impression that someone is saying exactly what you want them to say) - this isn't a conspiracy theory or a form of excuse, just context to bear in mind.
Next up, I'm not going to try and pretend that I agree with the claim that there is no melody in a Destiny's Child song. But I suspect that if we broaden this out a bit, we might get to a point where most people can agree with what Ana Matronic is saying here. For the last couple of years, the emphasis in a lot of r&b tracks has been on the production - this has been the focus of attention from the artists and producers, but even more so from the critics. Those stop-start, jerky beats perfected by Timbaland and others (Rodney Jerkins, Shekspere, etc) are great to dance to, but it's true, you couldn't play most of them on an acoustic guitar the way you could play 'Hey Ya!'. Bear in mind that what the 'rockists' have been doing in the meantime has often been making songs that use acoustic guitars, but that will never be played round a campfire because nobody would want to hear, let alone play, them ever again. Scissor Sisters aren't doing either of those things, and what they *are* doing isn't something that (m)any other people are doing right now.
It also helps if you avoid the gag reflex you may understandably have on seeing the word 'tradition', and take "that traditional style" to mean "this particular traditional style" rather than "the one true style of olde". What the Scissor Sisters represent primarily is a tradition of pop that's arguably even less credible in the eyes of 'rockists' than modern urban r&b/pop. If I wanted to grossly over-simplify matters, I'd describe it as the gay side of disco rather than the black side. Think of the two records that 'Comfortably Numb' references most obviously - Frankie's 'Relax' and the Bee Gees' 'Staying Alive'. If you need more reference points, think of Dexy's Midnight Runners (and not just 'cos of the outfit Jake Shears is wearing in the photo below) - 'Come On Eileen' is one of the greatest pop singles of the last thirty years, but people are much less ready to admit that this than they would be about, say, 'Thriller'. Dexy's have zero credibility; 'Come On Eileen' is seen as music for wedding receptions and 'cheesy' (self-conscious or otherwise) club nights. It's that all-too-familiar pattern where the tune is so undeniable that a huge number of people embrace it, and then it must in turn be scorned by those supposedly in the know. 'Rockism' (if you're reading this wondering what the hell this term means, now is the helpful bit) if it means anything, means shunning music that a huge number of people embrace, because it means shunning the vulgar tastes of the masses for a canon of artistically worthy classic albums (which in the process creates a hegemony more repetitive and boring than any pop song could ever become through mere overexposure). 'Rockism' values the original version of 'Comfortably Numb' too highly to enjoy a disco cover version of the same.
Which brings me to the point that to be honest Chris, it wouldn't matter if Scissor Sisters spent every interview extolling the merits of the Mars Volta - they still wouldn't be rockists by virtue of the music they make. It's shiny and you dance to it = it's pop. Of the highest quality.
In case I'm not making myself abundantly clear, we should all be exceedingly grateful that as of yesterday, Scissor Sisters have made it into the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart. Top 10 motherfucker! It's like Britpop all over again. Except with better clothes. And better music. And no British people. Yes.
In conclusion:
(Image also courtesy of PopJustice.)
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