The Best pop Music - Part II

So where do you go after The Beatles in pop music? I do not share some people's obsession with them, but I do recognize that they were a very good pop band. OK, will concede the best Pop band. Although it must be said i usually reserve the word pop in music conversations for various other derogatory terms I use in other conversations.
Where do you go? you follow the muse out to the west coast of the US. Jump into the troubadour scene and inadvertently stumble into the biggest issue that pop music faces. Do all pop songs have to be cheerful? I know that all pop songs are not cheerful, but if they aren't cheerful are they then a pop song? I wrote in my post Pop the Bitter sweetness how much I enjoy the fact that some writers are able to convey the concept of sweet sorrow.

It is extremely hard when you mention the pop scene of the West Coast in the early 70s not to talk about Crosby , Nash Stills and Young. Here is a great song

As you can see, that song is from Deja Vu and I would get it. Every house should have that album in it. The vocal harmonies on it are simply amazing. is it a pop record and indeed is our house a pop song? it is often labelled, because music geeks have to label everything, as folk rock. I don't really see the rock element. So it is Folk Pop. I just decided this. Please let everyone know. if this appeals, then there are a whole bunch of extremely good similar type artists out there. Neil Young , of course, James Taylor, Carole King, a bit more country but The Flying Burrito Brothers, and of course The Eagles.

I inadvertently grew up with The Eagles. I say inadvertently because my parents were not big fans, at all. They do not own an Eagles record. We did however spend a lot of time travelling in cars when i was growing up. Often at night travelling back home. A two hour trip where I come from is not a massive deal. My father often had some terrible radio station on, well it seemed like it to me as I was growing up, and these stations would play a lot of Eagles songs. It is dry and quite country where we would be driving and so the music fit in to the scenery. It took me a long time to come around to The Eagles though. A long time. I think I was about 30 when I re-discovered them and suddenly I had a band with a huge catalogue I actually knew, and it reminded me of home. Weird to say the least.

During this time and also during the 60s a huge amount of the most fantastic pop music came from the Motown label. Seriously, so much of it is so good. I know I spoke about Ray Charles in the first installment of this series, but he was really the cherry on the top of what was some breathtakingly good music. Think Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Jackson Five, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Roberta Flack, and of course perhaps the man who was more equal to Ray Charles than anyone else, the simply unbelievably good Stevie Wonder. I love this song.

That is from Songs in the key of Life. Another album that you should own, simple. It also has songs such as this one it.

Isn't that just a beautiful song? It has such a warm feel to the music. I think my view of the 70s is very much shaded by this type of music. Honestly I was born in the early(ish) 70s and so do have some musical memory of it. I would have like to think that it was hot summers days filled with this kind of music. I doubt very much it was. but listening to it now, I can pretend that the frankly, pretty cool childhood also had this very cool soundtrack. Unfortunately it was a little more like this

Oh well. It was country Australia. A side point, that is a very unattractive group of men in a single place at a single time.

Thinking about the 70s and some of the great music that came out of it, one of the things that becomes clear is that the lines between popular music and more experimental different forms of musical expression start to become much more apparent. This is the decade that spawned, Punk, Metal, Disco, Prog Rock, Glam Rock, the beginnings of Rap, and while much of this music was to become mainstream, at the time it was very much underground.

With that in mind I would like to give an honorable mention to David Bowie. Bowie sits astride the 70s as a sort of anomaly. Yes there was a lot of glam rock and glam pop. mainly coming out of the UK with bands such as T-Rex. (give Metal guru and telegram Sam a listen) , but Bowie sort of invented it and turned his back on it and became this uber cool icon who wrote this song

Music videos hadn't really taken off yet. But that is a brilliant song.

I am only going to go to one more place on this small little trip. New Wave. Punk can't really be considered pop in any way. Although The Ramones music isn't actually very far away at times. New Wave was a watered down version of it, and in one of those weird twists of fate, the band most associated with New Wave, were very much at the forefront of the American Punk Scene. Blondie. Ah, Debbie Harry. Debbie Harry was my first real crush I think.

hard to see isn't it . . . Blondie were about the biggest band in the world at their peak. They made a lot of very good music. Is it pop? Ok possibly not. Well, it wasn't pop at the time. Viewed now through the spyglass of time though I think we can just squeeze them in. Really, listen to this now

Sorry that is not meant to be an order. More, listen to it with the musical sensibilities of today. It is a pop song. We had a copy of Autoamerican at home growing up. It was definitely a favourite and to be honest still is in many ways. I think that Debbie Harry has an amazing voice and there is something about the way the guitar and the drums chug along that make the songs very catchy, very memorable as well.

That is it, I am done with the 70s. I know that again there is so much music out there that I didn't even touch on. But these are some of my favourites and so that will have to do for now.