Pop Music: Harder Than It Looks
Information has reached the ChartBlog News Desk (by reading a day-old copy of the NME, admittedly), that Franz Ferdinand have abandoned the idea of recording their third album with Brian Higgins of Xenomania (hitmakers to the likes of Girls Aloud, Kylie and Sugababes), because of a clash of working styles. Which is a shame, because that always seemed like a bloody good idea for a collaboration.
The band's singer Alex Kapranos explained that he had discussed how the sessions might pan out with Brian, and it emerged that he would just work them too hard, and make them, y'know...FOCUS...so they've wimped out. He didn't actually say "wimped" or "out", but still...
What he actually said was this: "I've got so much respect for Brian, I think he's a real genius. But for us, it wasn't going to work. I think we both realised that. Although Franz Ferdinand play the occasional pop melody, we're not a pop group and we can't play that pop game properly."
"I find those guys inspiring, y'know? But they've got a different way of creating their music, it's about method; there's a real kind of nine-to-five mentality about the way they work and we can't work like that - we're a bunch of slackers with a five-second burst of inspiration."
Now, this put me in mind of an ancient episode of the classic pre-High School Musical TV drama Fame (which was about a performing arts academy like the Brits School, only without Mark Ronson waiting outside the gates with a trombone in his pocket). There was some stand-off between a bunch of bullish, show-offy professional athletes and the ballet class as to whose discipline was harder, and who was therefore the toughest.
They had an exercise-off, where the athletes (I think they were American Football players) had to take a ballet class, and the ballerinas had to take a training session. And, if I can say this without spoiling the ending, one side did end up wishing they had been a bit nicer about tutus.
Anyway, that's the pop vs rock argument in a nutshell.
One side works harder, pays more attention to detail, is more meticulous, thorough and generally better trained, and has to smile all the time, while the other poses about in vests, flexing their muscles for the ladies and talking about how hard their job is.
I know we've had this conversation before, by the way. But it's always nice to have your theories confirmed by people you respect, innit?
Course the whole argument falls apart if you poll people on which they prefer, football or ballet, but I didn't say it was foolproof, did I?
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