When Pop Takes Over

I’ve written quite a bit about rap and r&b music’s gradual move toward a more electronic, more poptastic, and more European sound, but I hadn’t considered things from the opposite perspective until recently. I read the tracklisting for the forthcoming David Guetta album today, and discovered that his work with Kelly Rowland wasn’t a one-off clever marketing ploy, as I had previously thought. In fact, he has a whole album of dance music with r&b vocalists (Estelle, Wynter Gordon, Akon and a second collaboration with Kelly), and even some tracks featuring raps from Will.I.Am. This may not sound very revolutionary, considering that many of the biggest 90s Eurodance hits had rappers on them, but it’s actually something that very few people are doing these days.

I never liked any of David Guetta’s music before When Love Takes Over, and I doubt I’ll be a fan of the new stuff, especially the collaborations with the BEPs and Akon, both of whom I’ve always found rather annoying. However, I am quite impressed with the boldness of these artists. In Europe especially, dance music and r&b are listened to by very similar audiences. Most countries have NRJ radio stations which cover both genres equally, much like Kiss 100 or Galaxy in the UK. This has obviously not been so much the case in America, but nowadays I think people are starting to see that dance music is not an alien genre: it is not just for the gays, and it is not just for listening to when you’re out clubbing. It’s also not so different to what some of America’s biggest acts are doing these days, including Beyoncé, Kanye West and Ne-Yo, among many others.

Combining r&b and dance music is simply a logical idea, and I think the fact that it’s now so commonplace is a symptom that things are really improving in terms of how people relate music to social groups. The idea that certain people only listen to certain types of music is becoming so outdated, and so is the idea that music fits into perfect categories. It’s easy to categorise songs by the musical elements they contain, but a track like When Love Takes Over, Heartbreaker by MSTKRFT and John Legend, or the collaborations between Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris (although I really dislike their work) defies that categorisation, and I think that’s a great aim for culture overall.

Of course my musical preference is for pop, but one of the reasons I love pop music is because it encompasses what I believe to be the best of every genre. Pop-rock, electro-pop, dance-pop, pop-r&b, I love it all and I especially love artists whose work flits between all of these. It’s not just dance and r&b either – indie music fans have been flocking to buy the work of female electro-pop singers, rock music has had an electronic influence for a few years now, and some of the biggest r&b-pop singers are making slightly rockier music. Leona Lewis has cited Coldplay as an influence for her new album, encouraged presumably by her continued collaboration with songwriting genius Ryan Tedder, although in fact the Tedder tracks which have leaked from her new album are ballads set to subtle dance beats.

Jordin Sparks is another example of r&b girls going rock(ish), as her new album contains not only a Ryan Tedder song (the incredible Battlefield), but also a Fefe Dobson cover! Meanwhile, the second single from her album is the danciest song she’s ever done, and in fact I’d say it’s the furthest any r&b artist has taken this dance music trend. S.O.S. is really not r&b at all, so I’ll be very interested to see how it’ll go down in the USA. Songs like this wouldn’t have stood a chance at being played on mainstream American radio stations a few years ago, but with the success of acts like Lady GaGa and Rihanna with songs which are basically dance music dressed up as r&b, it’s possible that a big name artist like Jordin could take dance music into the US top 10.

I have to be honest, I don’t think S.O.S. is quite good enough to be considered a turning point in American music history, but nonetheless I am extremely pleased that it’s come to the point where an American Idol winner can release a song that wouldn’t be out of place on a Dannii Minogue album! It seems like the political changes over there are being reflected in American music, and since their music scene has a huge influence upon that of the UK and the rest of Europe, a more open-minded approach to music can only have positive implications for all of us. Then again, it has made Bonkers a no.1 hit…