The current thread about whether pop music has lost its fun made me think about the novelty hit. If it’s golden age was from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties, has it gone the way of the dodo? Dealt mortal blows by CDs (everything was more expensive) , mp3s (everyone could share the best music) and finally streaming (just everything). Or does it persist like the Aussie flu currently? So, if the modern musical world began with the founding of Spotify in 2008, what can we dig up novelty-hits wise from the last ten years. Novelty hits from the last decade please. Here’s one to start you off:
Europop
What does the term Europop mean to you? The Eurovision Song Contest? Novelty hits clogging up the charts all summer as bought by sun-burnt families returning from package holidays in Torremolinos? Perhaps you picture tunes sung by a “Johnny Halliday” type: overly beige men with the complexion and hair-style of a wrinkled scrotum who suddenly appear on TOTP dressed like a dodgy uncle from the 70s who’s been enjoying life in the Costa Del Crime but has come back briefly to remind us all of the good life in the sun. Or maybe it’s the female equivalent who springs to mind, the “Sabrina” type: erotically charged women with no concept of sexual repression, parading the most vital of vital statistics and promising the type of moral depravity and undercooked steak your mother warned you about as an impressionable teenage boy.
On its day, Europop often delivers fabulous 4 minute summations of what makes a great pop song: something you can hum along to, something to swing your hips to, something carefree to enjoy without any notion of being hip. Here’a a case in point, the rather lovely looking and deeply sounding Greek lady Monika and her song Secret in The » Continue Reading.