#pop

"The producer invited some of the mavericks of '80s electronic music, including Howard Jones, Thomas Dolby and Erasure's Vince Clarke, to give his tunes a spin of their own. Listen to their revamps below. After all of those years, these three still have a fine knack for adding an eclectic flair to contemporary pop tunes. I'm especially digging Vince Clarke's bouncy remix of "Falling Down," and I must say that Howard Jones remix of "Devastated" is very reminiscent of a Lady GaGa hit. You can tell it comes from the same production house."

"Ecto Cooler was the Hi-C tangerine and orange flavored drink featuring a picture of Slimer plastered on each box or can. Unfortunately, it’s long since ceased production, or at least ceased to exist under the Ecto Cooler brand. But the reminiscing of all drinks got me thinking, why not profile some of the hits, or more accurately misses, of the drink world? Good or bad, sometimes remembering such things can be fun. So this is a great look back on some of the sodas and soft drinks of years past:"

"If you haven't been listening to pop radio in the past few months, you've missed the rise of two seemingly opposing trends. In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of vocal cords. At the other extreme are a few hip-hop singers who also hit their notes but with a precision so exaggerated that on first listen, their songs sound comically artificial, like a chorus of '50s robots singing Motown."

"If you're unfamiliar with Auto-tune, and especially if you listen to much pop and rock, you might not hear it initially. When overdone, the effect yields an unnatural yodel or warble in a singer's voice."

"The whole package—music, message, meme, media—comes together nicely. Like the best cultural phenomena, this can be enjoyed at several levels of participation—at least one of which involves a dance floor."

"we should treat both the predictions and the explanations we are served — whether about the next hit single, the next great company or even the next war — with the skepticism they deserve."

"...a cover of Black Eyed Peas' 'My Humps,' a song that represents a low point not only for popular music, but for humankind."