Adventures in the Top 40: Wayward Choruses

Here’s a geeky little medium-length post about chart pop to offset all that earnest politicising in the last post, and - spoiler alert - all the earnest politicising to come in the next post. I just wanted to describe a lovely musical trend that links three of my favourite tracks clinging doggedly to the UK singles chart. Let us listen first to Nicki Minaj’s ‘Super Bass’ which has just popped out the bottom of the Top 40. An awesome song for many reasons: great hook, great lyrics, great production, she’s awesome. But one of the things that I think really defines this song in particular is how unusual the relationship is between its harmonic progressions (the chords used) and its conventional structure (verse/chorus etc.), especially for unabashed party pop.

On Aesthetic Imagination

Enjoyed this article, which touches on the kind of thing that I've ended up writing about quite a lot here:

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The writer explores the distinction between what he calls the 'aesthetic imagination' of pop on the one hand and indie on the other. In doing so, he touches on the depth to which signifying styles and tropes are expected to permeate musical and visual personas in each culture, and how far an artist's 'theatricality' can extend before appearing 'inauthentic'...