Soulja Boy! He’s popular. Well, he sells singles. Not so much albums. But a lot of singles! So many singles. And YouTube hits. He attracts the YouTube hits. All related to a dance. A dance you may have heard, seen, or tried to do yourself! You’d think at this point there’s not a single thing left to be said about Soulja Boy and the mini-trend of choreographed toe-tapping that he’s sparked among aspiring popular musicians, one that’s profitable for labels for the moment but not a particularly safe long term bet for reversing dipping sales. And you’d be right! Yet that fact has not stopped the Wall Street Journal from devoting many hundreds of words to recapping the tale of Soulja Boy. He’s divisive! He’s reopened the generation gap! He’s given MC Hammer a reason to go on! And yet despite its rehashery, the WSJ’s story does raise one important, semi-new, mostly implied question: Would rock bands be improved by their own dance routines? Is there room in indie for cranking that James Murphy?
While choreographed routines are still rare among rock artists, more of them are making music to fill dance floors. Popular groups such as LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Justice and Daft Punk feature beats, samples and electronic melodies that often overshadow lyrics.
And why can’t these guys, despite some of them not being rock bands at all, come up with their own leanings and rockings? Feist did it, sez the WSJ. Kinda! And so did OK Go! There is no reason why America’s young people shouldn’t be videotaping themselves doing the Charleston or humping ottomans or maybe some modified Oompa Loompa moves to “Waters Of Nazareth.”
But Can You Dance To It? [WSJ]
some modified Oompa Loompa moves to “Waters Of Nazareth.”
This is now a mashup waiting to happen.
@rhythmchyc: Now i’ll have that damn phrase stuck in my head all day! Yahhh Trick Yahhh!!
I think we can all chalk this article up to ‘lazy music journalism’, kind of like the shocking “Best New Artist Noms are all women!!” and the supposed “Latin Explosion” of 1999.
The only point of merit from this article is the mention of the 30% decline of rap sales. I had figured it would be even more, every ‘rap’ song that comes out feels like a novelty track with a dance moves or a catchy Ay Bay Bay-like chorus. No wonder people don’t invest money in the albums, these songs are horrible!!
How much of the 2007 rap music sales tally can be attributed solely to ‘Graduation’??
@Moimeme: OOPS! Outed myself didn’t I?
I should have said “doing things that are completely outrageous”, a more appropriate (and less vulgar) phrase to deliver my point. A quick glance of YouTube will uncover thousands of examples of teen-tween’s doing things that mom probably wouldn’t approve of — not just sex.
OK Go is exactly the correct foil here - while they had a brief flash in the pan the first time around, their videos and their handlers’ saavy promotion of it allowed them to become one-video wonders (yeah, yeah, “A Million Ways”, but Johnny Watercooler didn’t see it, and “Do What You Want” didn’t exactly tear the roof off the sucka. What’s more telling is a look at Hype Machine stats - a mere two pages of mentions spanning back to 05, something a more traditional indie buzzband stomps into the water: six pages of the Black Lips, 8 for Vampire Weekend, 4 for MGMT, etc. Much like a primary delegate, nobody knows exactly how much power is present in those numbers, but even when using OK Go as a proxy to counter the lily-white listening tastes of the general blogging world, the cute videos do little to sway the snarky and much less-likely to enjoy fad-dancing indie world. Even if any of the dancier acts mentioned did something remotely close to a dance fad, a jumped-the-shark backlash would certainly ensue. As for non-indie rock that exists independent of the blog world, I’m pretty sure any of those 12 bands left can just get a VH1 reality show.
@loudersoft: (looks) Hunh, only 4000 hits for “steroids”?
There is no reason why America’s young people shouldn’t be videotaping themselves doing the Charleston or humping ottomans or maybe some modified Oompa Loompa moves to “Waters Of Nazareth.”
God knows, America’s young people certainly aren’t afraid of videotaping themselves stripping, jerking off and fucking each other. You would think videotaping themselves dancing would be a much more sane choice.
@loudersoft: God knows, America’s young people certainly aren’t afraid of videotaping themselves stripping, jerking off and fucking each other.
It’s a John Waters paradise! Kinda.
Something about this article really cheeses me. Maybe because it’s heralding a spate of new, inane, hip-hop based dance tracks with “creatively” spelled titles that I’ll have to hear about but never actually hear.
Speaking of which, I really wish LCD had won best dance album at the Grammy awards. And I love how the article makes it seem as if LCD and Daft Punk are new artists.
Forget the dances; it’s all about the promotional attire/ accessories and childish, almost primitive, lingo.
After watching that damn video only once, I couldn’t get “Yahhhh trick yahhh” out of my head all weekend. “Yahhhh!”
Yo La Tengo’s live shows have regularly included chorographed dance routines since 2000 or so. If the idea of James McNew and Ira Kaplan doing Temptations-like moves to “You Can Have It All” doesn’t warm your heart (and make up for the guitar solos), I don’t know what to tell you.
@loudersoft: Um really? I hate to sound naive, but I tend to traffic in a highly tween-teen online world and I’m not finding that at all.
Which means you must be looking for it. Tsk!
@Moimeme: Xtube.com
Did anyone else have high hopes for the Aunt Jackie (Harlem) or the Jump Rope (Memphis)?