We pop fans are pretty used to shade, but each of us has unpopular opinions that could cause bar fights even among us.

One of mine is, even though Born This Way is a caricature of itself, I reach for it more frequently than any other Gaga album.

I also still like “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

shields up, next

  • Christian Roselund@mastodon.energy
    2·
    1 year ago

    @ajsadauskas @ReCursing @pootriarch

    That’s an excellent point about technology; I personally loved the way that synths were used unashamedly, without trying to imitate another instrument.

    So many people hate on 80s music, but it was a time of breadth and experiment. While much of it may or may not be considered pop, I’m of the opinion that the 80s gave us some of the best music ever made. Talking Heads, Eno’s collaborations with Byrne, Daniel Lanois and others, and Bauhaus just to name three.

    • AJ Sadauskas@aus.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      @croselund @ReCursing @pootriarch Very true, and that synth technology was evolving and coming down in price rapidly.

      Sure, there were synths in use in the '70s (and even the '60s), but they were often just somewhere in the mix of a disco track. See Manfred Mann’s cover of Blinded by the Light or 10CC’s Rubber Bullets for examples.

      By the early '80s, you had the early Yamaha synths and computers like the C64 (released in 1982) making it affordable for musicians to use.

      That progressed rapidly to the Atari ST offering Midi out of the box, and the Amiga offering sampled audio in 1985.

      There was a lot of hype at the time about how synths and computers would put symphonies out of business.

      So this was cutting edge stuff, and a lot of artists were figuring out how to use them for the first time.

      Admittedly, some of that experimentation hasn’t held up well, but it really paved the way for a lot of the modern EDM/hip hop/R&B/pop that’s around today.

      And a similar rapid evolution was taking place with computer animation and video. A lot of the experimentation — before Steve Jobs and John Lassiter were making full-length feature films at Pixar from the mid '90s — happened in music videos.

      (As an example, just compare the warewolf morph in MJ’s Thriller to the morph effect in Black or White to see how much technology improved over the span of just a few years.)

      #Music #PopMusic