pop - the bitter sweetness

Here is a news flash - jet lag sucks. I left Adelaide Australia in January 1996 and since then I have been flying around the world quite a lot , and I am still yet to come up with a fail safe way to deal with it. I am back in the UK, my home for nearly 8 years during that time away , it is cold, it is dark and my body clock has no appreciation of what time it actually is. i feels like it could be a very small hour, but the clock says it is around 7 pm.

I don't need much sleep, although i am much better with it, and so i do like this times as it gives me a quiet house and I can listen to some music and now with this outlet write about it and try to order some of my thoughts on it. People often tell me when I say that i don't sleep much that it must be great to have all that time. I often feel that i waste a lot of it. i should be investing more wisely, should have re-written that book that I wrote a few years back, should have could have but didn't . Is listening to music wasting time? Well yes, in very practical terms if there are things you should be doing, then it is wasting time, but when I think about what it is a now know, and the amount of pleasure it gives me then no, most definitely not a waste of time.

So where are we on this worst of jet lag days?


I am listening to Fosbury by Tahiti 80. Tahiti 80 are  french band with a large back catalogue that no one has heard of. i came across them when i ws living in japan as an unemployed but professional shop wanderer. it wasn't a bad life, apart from the lack of available cash. i would get up exercise , spend some time looking for a job and then go out and wander around. Inevitably I would gravitate towards a music shop. Tokyo is pretty good for this as there is a massive music culture based around everything from really far out there elctronica, see mad capsule markets, who are frankly mainstream, to what is a very interesting vinyl based second hand industry.

Anyway, in the larger stores there are a huge amount of listening posts for albums and as a westerner they are just pretty happy that you are in the store and let you listen to music for hours on end. One of the bands I came across during this time was quite obviously Tahiti 80. Specifically what was their latest release, Pieces of Sunshine and extra pieces of sunshine. I have always and probably always will love the way some people are able to write incredibly sweet pop songs about their misery. i refer specifically to aftermath on the Pieces of Sunshine album. Unfortunately, this is apparently so obscure that it isn't on the Internet at all. So here is another song, perhaps not quite as bitter sweet , but excellent none the less. Better Days will come

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyTexQ2bp_s

Why haven't more people heard about his band? This is just a brilliantly written and executed piece of pop sorrow. Much of their work is like this, although it is also a little more electronic based, which perhaps has some sort of leaning towards other Frenchies such as Air and Daft Punk. This has got me to think though.

Why are some albums so popular and others seemingly at least as good largely ignored by all except those of us music geeks? or hipsters if it makes you feel better . .

Why are Air huge? despite only one really great album? but Tahiti 80 not despite what i see as a couple of very good albums?

Compare the above song, Better days will come by Tahiti 80, to this , All I need by Air (extended version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr7JuEI6qZ4

I realise that Moon Safari is by far the better selling album and I can see why, it is a better album. But is it that much better? I think rather what happened is that the ordinary people got wind of it and it became an album that a lot of people then went out and bought, played a few times and have subsequently forgotten about. i think this happens a lot. There will be an album produced that us geeks (hipsters ) rave about , that somehow gets some traction and as such becomes a huge seller. Air, have not come close to anything as good as Moon Safari subsequently, I challenge you to come up with another album title without looking it up. But they entered the mainstream and as such more peoples lives because of it. Doesn't make them better.

So , there are two pieces of beautiful sadness. I describe them as pop, I am not sure this is the correct pigeon hole, but I am not sure there is anything more appropriate.

With that in mind I am going to go to a weird place. i am going to show you a very brief glimpse of J-pop. What a weird and very very frightening place j-pop is. I speak from a metal head perspective here. Give me pentagrams and images of an imagined devil any day over j-pop sugar sweetness. That said listen to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muh3fW4y06I

That is Utada Hikaru, Automatic set to an Anime video for those of you who love that stuff  (i do) . Although most of the lyrics are in Japanese , you get the general sentiment I am sure. Isn't that a piece of great bitter sweetness? Now I am not really recommending that you take this as an endorsement of j-pop. As far as things go, that is about the best of it. But Utada is a good place to start if you are interested.

it does raise a point though, particularly if we are talking about pop bitter sweetness, do women do it better than men? I think there is something in this. And to prove it we have to go way back in time to a completely different place to where we have just been. We have to go to the Folk pop scene of the early 70s and compare Carole King and James Taylor. Lovers and two extremely gifted songwriters in this genre (any genre really)

here is So far away by Carole king, with James Taylor on Guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urt2cy7AqFs

That is all done live and shows what it is like to be an actual musician. What a voice and what a beautifully sad song.

And so as not to bias it, from the same year with Carole King on piano, here is  You've got a friend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7RPCFfudmU

I will let you make up your own mind on that one. When it comes to the bitter sweetness of pop, then that is about as good as it gets. I am not sure which song I prefer, they are just great songs. i don't think it matters if a woman or a man sing about it, as long as it is good.


So, in a final example which perhaps shows the sheer versatility of pop. The Pet Shop Boys. I have always liked the Pet Shop Boys, and have always received a lot of grief for it. yes I get it, they are gay, and are also gay icons. They write pop music and as such you can imagine that the metal heads, and electronicans i hang out with don't really see it. However, listen to their album Introspective. here is my favourite song off the album im not scared


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dj3ymyCl3s

That is a good song, and has that lovely dark tinge to the lyrics that pushes it into pop sweetness.

I am going to leave it there. I think i will write about this topic again at some stage. there is so much good material out there in this area. this is the only area of pop I am really interested in if I am honest. people jumping around telling everyone what a good party they are having doesn't appeal and is generally so fake it is galling. But when it comes to the darker side of it, it is clear that there are a lot of very talented song writers out there , who perhaps weren't having a great time and where able to wrap it sweetness.