DEPTH PERCEPTION

In 2008, I was a columnist for an online magazine and social network called eVelvetRope. The site had a sister site called EVRMag. In addition to writing reviews, I wrote a column on music under the title “The Audio File.” This was the second installment of the column.

I once got into a heated conversation with a friend over the term “pop music.” I told him I liked pop music and he looked at me like I had just insulted his mother. I quickly discovered that we had different notions of what constitutes pop music. All he could think was that I had shrines built in my bedroom to the Backstreet Boys and Brittany Spears, the quintessential icons of contemporary US top-40 music. For him, pop music is boy bands and Velveeta-like songs done by prefabricated “entertainers” that really have no talent apart from their polished good looks. But for me, pop music isn’t about American radio at all, it’s about British radio. There is a glaring distinction between American pop music and British pop music. That difference is that the British still remember The Beatles.

American pop music lost its way decades ago when it put down the guitars, drums and any need for talent and began parodying all the worst aspects of contemporary R&B. I think this can be traced back to when Michael Bolton butchered Percy Sledge’s classic song, “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Nothing has ever really been the same since.

I’ve always had a thing for pop music. Maybe it was all those long road trips as a child with my parents listening to my mom’s Neil Diamond cassettes. Yes, Neil Diamond is cheesy, but he sure could write pop music. And, to clarify, pop music can be defined as songs that are catchy and memorable, structured around sing-a-long lyrics and the hook of the chorus. I mean, who doesn’t know the melody to “Sweet Caroline?” Besides, Neil Diamond actually wrote and performed the music himself.

While, in retrospect, Neil Diamond may have been a stepping-stone towards the cliff that saw American pop music to its death, I learned to appreciate the simplicity of the form. This admiration was only intensified when I dug through my mom’s record collection and found The Beatles “Red” album, a compilation of their singles from 1962 – 1966. Here, I had stumbled upon the Holy Grail, an original collection of songs by the band that defined pop music. Now that I truly understood the essence of the genre, I would spend countless hours and dollars searching for other bands that could replicate that magic.

As the 80′s pushed forward and American pop music began its swan dive towards New Kids on the Block, across the Atlantic Ocean in England numerous bands clung to their Beatles albums, stopped cutting their hair and began crafting songs that took pop music from a genre and transformed it into a lifestyle. By the 1990′s, this movement would generate numerous chart-topping hits in the UK, and ultimately be given a title: Brit-pop. This new generation of pop music enthusiasts would be known as much for disheveled appearances and effeminate good looks as for their craftsmanship, but their music has held up against the test of time. Fortunately, the good people at Rhino Records decided to collect the best of this genre in a recently released compilation called The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium.

For the average American listener, the band most recognizable from this collection is Oasis and their single “Live Forever.” Oasis was the only band to really cross over the Atlantic, charting in the US with several singles in the mid to late ’90s they would go on to sell over 50 million records worldwide. But Oasis is just the tip of the iceberg, and the range and quality of music on this compilation is overwhelming. There are four CD’s covering the development of the genre from the mid 80′s through its evolution over the next fifteen years. The first CD begins with the quintessential British pop band, The Smiths, and their single, “How Soon is Now?” which became an anthem for mopey, black-clad youth around the world. The Smiths produced some of the most sophisticated pop music ever, and in proper British etiquette, once told the press they were more important than The Police. They were probably right.

Some of the more exceptional bands on the compilation include well-known groups like The Cure, The Verve, and New Order, to more obscure but equally great bands like The Pale Saints, Pulp, and My Bloody Valentine (who have recently reunited and will be touring the US in the late summer.) If this sounds like your cup of tea (English Breakfast, of course), then you can listen to clips of songs off the collection at the Rhino Records web page. You won’t be disappointed.

Cheers, mate!