Retro Pop Continues to Thrive

Last year I noted how many current pop songs seem to be using 1960s style arrangements even though the artists performing the songs had not been alive during that decade. This trend continues now and seems to show no sign of abating. Despite (or may because of) all her personal problems Amy Winehouse continues to be a best seller with her soul-motown style (and on the album she also has music in dub/early reggae styles too) in both the UK and the USA. Here her profile was mantained by her collaboration with Mark Ronson on the cover of 'Valerie' by The Zutons (2006) and inadvertently creating a lesbian anthem.

Of course in the wake of Winehouse and the other singers like Christine Aguillera and Faith Hill who did one-off retro songs, others are coming to the fore, notably (Amy) Duffy who was born in 1985 but sings as if she was a member of a girl group of the mid to late 1960s. Her style is shriller, less earthy than Winehouse and she even cites Millie Small singing 'My Boy Lollipop' (1964) as an influence, along with Sandie Shaw (with a bit more credibility as Small has a terribly girly voice), but I suppose that fits in with the uber-girly style that so many young women are engaging with at the moment. In her song 'Mercy' which has reached number 1 in the UK the lyrics are incredibly submissive about a woman begging for mercy 'on my knees' to be released from her attraction to a man who wants her simply as 'something on the side' which is hardly an empowered young woman's behaviour. Winehouse's lyrics may speak of losing control to alcohol or love but references in 'Rehab', 'Back to Black' and 'Tears Dry On Their Own' are about women taking back the control with greater experience. Maybe it is time for Aretha Franklin to start re-releasing her back catalogue from 'R,E,S,P,E,C,T' to 'Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves', she was there in the 1960s and it seems, still has a great deal to say to women in the late 2000s as society seems to be pushing hard to return to the gender balance of 40 years ago.

The retro style is not confined to women and a number of established groups are making forays into the retro scene. I have heard a number influenced by the MerseyBeat style sounding rather like The Kinks and other male bands of the time. Unfortunately many of these slip from radio consciousness faster than I can keep track of them. There was one by a former member of Pulp (though half the music population of the UK seems to have been in Pulp at one time or another) and the one that sticks out currently is by Badly Drawn Boy who formed in 2003 and have had moderate success. Their single 'Time of Times' has a kind of cross-over British music scene sound with hippy inputs. You could easily have listened to it in 1967 and not been surprised by it. It is musical, though the concept of the lyrics is limited, I personally would prefer it over any rap track around at the moment. Maybe all of this is about Britain, though clearly US artists are joining in too, it seems more sustained here. The British always took on board all kinds of American influences of all kinds, for much of their career The Rolling Stones were a rhythm and blues band before morphing into more of a rock band in the early 1970s and you can hear the blues in their early songs applied to concerns of the time like abuse of prescription drugs. However, the sounds and style were mixed in with British sentiments as they seem to be doing now. The 1960s were a period in modern British history when the country seem to be successful and the general standard of living was pretty good and opportunities for people to advance in society were greater than before. No wonder there might be a nostalgia for such times or among people not born then an interest in music influenced by that era. The issue is, however, is what messages are being brought forward in time is it the line of Winehouse about becoming stronger after challenges or of Duffy about submitting in a male-dominated society or Badly Drawn Boy about a time of change. Maybe it is only people like me who worry about what songs are saying and the bulk of the population consume pop music because it engages emotionally with them. Of course music of the 1960s was often well crafted and you can note often the complexity of the instrumental usage. Some of it was simplistic, naturally, but maybe after so long of pumped electronic background and grunted lyrics people are seeking something more satisfying.

I had anticipated that the retro pop era would fade, but we are now into its second year and if the sales continue to be this high and the range of artists coming to this style of music in its wide range of forms then we can only speculate how long it will go on. It would be interesting if The Rolling Stones on their next tour started performing 'Not Fade Away' (1964), 'It's All Over Now' (1964 - a counterpoint male dominance song) or 'Time Is On My Side' (1965) or even 'Let's Spend the Night Together' (1967 - too controversial for 1960s USA 'the night' had to be substituted with 'some time' and I could imagine it would still be frowned upon in the sexual abstinence culture of a lot of the USA of the 2000s) or 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' (1973) as a counteraction to our current consumerist obsessions (though saying that Mick Jagger is a terribly Thatcherite Conservative and tax avoider, his solo single 'Let's Work' (1987) was an appalling New Right anthem against 'benefit scroungers'). Personally I am intrigued to see what happens next, which other vein of 1960s music is re-excavated, how well it is accepted and what it can tell us about life in this decade.

Retro Pop

Today I am so full of anger. Many of my colleagues seem to want us to work as if it was 1970 rather than 2007. I am supposed to make sure we work in an up-to-date way in my business but they simply want to turn the clock back; clearly been watching too many episodes of 'Life on Mars' (a recent UK TV series in which a police officer from 2006 is transported back to 1973; a sequel called 'Ashes to Ashes' about a police psychologist going back to 1981 is following. The titles are from David Bowie tracks of the relevant years). Anyway, thinking about minds locked in the past, reminded me of a trend I have noticed in recent weeks for what I can really only term 'retro pop' music. I am sure there is some other term put around in the media but this is the one I'll use until I come across the one in common usage.

Three tracks illustrate my point 'Candyman' Christine Aguilera, 'Back to Black' by Amy Winehouse and 'Listening Man' by The Bees. 'Candyman' sounds as if it was written in 1942 and you can envisage couples jiving to it. It is reminiscent of things like 'Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy' with the only anachronism the line about this candyman making 'panties drop' which I do not think they would have got away with in a song 65 years ago. Amy Winehouse seems to have been moving through the decades for a while now, 'Rehab' her previous single sounded like a Blues track of the 1930s and 'Back to Black' is a kind of Nina Simone meets The Supremes, somewhere in the mid- to late 1960s. In the case of 'Back to Black' her video is in black and white with her looking like a gangster's mistress of the early 1960s. Joss Stone, similarly has raided the 1960s Motown and 1970s funk scene for her tracks.

You may ask, as I do, why is there this trend towards using the style of tracks recorded long before the artists were born [Aguilera - 1980, Winehouse - 1983, Stone - 1987; cannot find the age of either of The Bees members]. Is it because the biggest consumers of popular music are now in their 30s or 40s (even then that makes them born in 1948 at the earliest) with a nostalgia for tracks of their youth or the tracks their parents listened to? Is it because the music genres of the past decade notably rap and dance music have come to a dead end, simply self-referencing or almost parodies of themselves? Is it because you can listen to these tracks without them mutilated to remove the swearing? Of course these genres are not dead but it is interesting that older stylings can fight with them on equal terms for sales.

Maybe it goes back to the attitude seen in 'The Commitments' (1991) [in the book the hero - Jimmy Rabbitte is less devoted to soul music than in the film] when Rabbitte is telling the members of his putative soul band why soul music of the 1960s is relevant to Ireland of the 1990s, because it is about working class people 'riding' (i.e. having sex), it touches on an eternal theme in away that can be understood by people even decades after it is recorded. Maybe how well the two albums which came out of the movie sold shows there was a truth in this. The interesting thing will be, if the pop music consumers will follow it up and start buying stuff by Johnny Mercer, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, The Supremes, Jean Knight, Funkadelic or even the Puppini Sisters?! I suppose we should not be surprised. Pop music is often portrayed as being ephemeral, but in their day Beethoven, Handel and especially Strauss were seen as the pop music of the day but still sell centuries later.