Geeta’s Original Soundtrack site has been on terrific form recently and here is another excellent example, where she calls for a New Pop revival. I totally agree about the need for absurdity in pop – the “what the fuck?” element that the genuinely new has in common with the outrageously cheeky or just bogglingly vast. Of course there’s generally nothing worse than forced absurdity, and I say that as someone who likes The Darkness (they stay just on the right line I reckon).
The last couple of days has been spent in a download frenzy for Popular while I still have access to a fast connection, and I reached the mid-80s, lending particular relevance to Geeta’s post. Isabel and I scanned through my spoils and it dawned on me that the particular just-post-New Pop era was the golden age of the megaballad: the young bucks of the 80s pop landscape, glistening with sweat and confidence, trying their hands at slow numbers and coming up with unashamedly colossal smoochers like “True”, “Careless Whisper”, “The Power Of Love”. Older hands got in on the act too – “Hello”, “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” (the earth-shaking Brontosaur of the Popozoic era, that one). And actually just as the dinosaurs and other prehistoric megafauna would now be simply too vast to survive, so too the megaballad seems to have died out – I’m sure part of the appeal of Christina’s “Beautiful” was how anachronistically big it sounds. R&B slow jams evolved into something more sleek and predatory, but the teen-pop ballad had a horrid 90s despite everyone’s supposed idolisation of George Michael. And now? What price a “True” from Blue?