THE FIRST RULE OF POP IS...

...YOU MUST TALK ABOUT POP.

THE SECOND RULE: SEE RULE ONE, ADD. PERIODS. AFTER. EACH. WORD.

Don't call it a kick-start, I'm not even sure if I ever started. I'm just warming up, apparently, because NO ONE READS MY BLOG AGAIN. It sucks. I suppose I should post here more.

Here's something I just thought up offa the top of my head the other day, not sure if it stands.

PREEMPTIVE NOTE: I just thought this up offa the top of my head the other day, not sure if it stands. I'm not trying to outline a "project"/spin myself into an "ideological stance." I'm just talking about terms that need to be met in order for a conversation to happen. The rest are conventions.

The Unchangeable Rules of Pop:

(1) Pop is music listened to by people, who then think various thoughts about the pop.
(2) Pop can be made by anyone for any reason (which doesn't necessarily make it any good at all).
(3) All pop speaks to all other pop.
(4) Pop is more than (just) a feeling.
(5) Pop is a social activity. My pop is not your pop, but Pop is my pop AND your pop, even if you're wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

[EDIT: Should actually link to partial inspiration here, the ol' Geezaesthetics Manifesto over at FreakyTrigger. A very funny piece that mostly settles for what Tom calls "aphorisms," which I could talk about more but will leave at that for now.]

There has been one interesting contention to Rule #2 so far: namely, pop music must be made with an audience in mind. The goal must be for people to listen to it. But I dunno -- without wanting to get into tricky territory as to what constitutes "wanting people to listen," let's say, for the sake of argument, that I've re-recorded "Like a Virgin" in GarageBand. (No, let's.) The second someone takes it from my hard drive in an act of THIEVERY, and gets it out into the world, much to my embarrassment and fleeting internet notoriety, it is still presumably pop music, even though it was made only for myself and not intended for others.

A few further points:

"Rules" need to be agreed-upon but aren't set in stone (cf. Wittgenstein-by-way-of-Frank-Kogan). If you can't agree on the rules of baseball, you can't very well play baseball (maybe you can play it, but you can't play it very well).

So here's something that happens occasionally: Pop music can be made by [that one girl from The Hills] because [she felt like it and had the means, pretty much 'cuz she was born RICH and a HUGE BRAT or so I've heard].

Getting into those tricky territories (amazing how many of 'em are) because the common argument from ewwww isn't that she can't, but that she shouldn't. I mean, of course she can. She did! But she shouldn't. But the more general point is that so long as a dismissal is fundamentally (proudly!) based on ignorance (I refuse to listen to this because ____), no conversation about the music can happen. Same holds for emo or indie rock or Nickelback or dance music or or or...

Difference between a rule and a convention: if you break the rule, the game either ends or transforms into a new game. If we decide that our music does not speak to their music, and our music is pop, then their music cannot be pop. BUT! If their music is pop (because someone else called it that), then our music has also ceased to be pop to the extent that we talk about it as such, not that it's actually ceased to be pop (we've ceased to discuss it as pop; now it's some shitty subgenre). BECAUSE ALL POP SPEAKS TO ALL OTHER POP.

Now, these people say their music (contemporary classical) is not pop music, and all listeners of pop music have come to a consensus that this music is, in fact, not pop music. NOW WE HAVE A RIFT. Two separate games that never come in contact with each other. Perhaps they've sprung from the same proto-sport (the one where you throw a rock at someone's head and steal their dinosaur or whatever) but at this point they are TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SPORTS. Even though we can categorize them both as sports.

Example:

"I'd like to steal second base and then make a basket."

DOES NOT COMPUTE!

"I'd like to write a simple, repetitive riff that makes people think about THE VERY NATURE OF ART."

BUT WAIT! TRICK ANALOGY! Did I just (accidentally) describe a minimalist composer or the Stooges??

So really, these rules are in flux. Or perhaps the games are similar, and depending on where we freeze-frame them, sometimes indistinguishable. (A woman running on a field! QUICK NAME THE SPORT!)

At this point it should be clear that I'm not totally serious. I'm just VERY serious.

Here's a convention: The pop lifestyle is exotic but the feelings expressed in the songs have to be resonant (suggested by Lex).

We can find lots and lots of examples of this, more than we can find counter-examples, even (Michelle Branch springs to mind as a potential counter-example -- n.b., she usually sucks). But this (perhaps) is more akin to saying, "If no one's on base yet, you do not bunt."

Well, you could, but its usefulness would be questionable and people would probably laugh at you from all sides except for a few contrarians who'd probably think it was brilliant. (That is, to the best of my very limited understanding of sports. I only mean to say that it would not undermine the fact that you are still playing lacrosse.) [EDIT: Bunting for a base hit: counter-example to the convention.]

Wait. Here's a RULE: All pop exists in time, but not THAT much time already.

Derivatives: Don't bore us, get to the chorus. About a minute too long. IF THIS SONG DOESN'T END IN THE NEXT THREE SECONDS.

That is to say, pop has a beginning and an end. A duration. That finishes. A piece o' pop must be closed, even if the pop is open (and what will Britney do next, now that her "official" fuck-you song is much much worse than her unofficial-but-official and actually quite pretty semi-fuck-you song?). Especially during the Pop Open, which will be around as long as its members are contributing and someone feels like orgafunning the thing.

Not all music needs to be closed. My refrigerator, for instance, until one of us dies or moves. Or John Cage's special organ. Or that song I've had stuck in my head forever (Chopin: pop or not pop?). If we were to take Chopin and STOP BORING US AND GET TO THE CHORUS, we would have Nadiya. BUT! Chopin was also pop, because he was in conversation with other pop (e.g., Nadiya), made it for whatever reason he felt, etc. I made him pop and so did Nadiya. Sucked him right up. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? And what pop results?

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AUTHENTIC AUTHENTICITY CLAIMS!

My claim to Chopin authenticity: I have performed several Chopin pieces. I have made pop music out of Beethoven, but not Chopin (I thought it would be "inappropriate"; this is because I was not yet pop. Actually, I just never really thought of it, so maybe I was. Alone at the piano, I can be quite shameless. My own private will.i.am. I make shameless pop by myself and for myself, because I feel like it).

Nadiya's claim to pop authenticity: "Is it right or wrong? Chopin play the song. There is no one to blame. So we can play the game."

NOTE: She never answered the question of whether it was right or wrong (which doesn't mean there isn't an answer), and I think sometimes there is someone to blame, but it's important to figure out who and why. Usually there's never one person to blame, so I'm fairly suspicious when someone blames only one other someone.

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CRISIS! WOOPS! EVERYTHING IS POP NOW! And to prove it beyond a doubt: using a random method of selection*, I will provide a series of words, which I will then fashion into a Pop Universe, a la Foucault's Popdulum. Hermeneutic? I barely even...ah, shit.

*methods cannot be divulged, since this might compromise their randomness.

1 - AUTOGRAPH; 2 - INTELLECTUELLE [pop is obv. multilingual]; 3 - MEMBER; 4 - AMIS; 5 - WARSAW; 6 - SCHUBERT; 7 - BARITONE; 8 - SAND; 9 - UNDERSTANDING; 10 - CASABLANCA.

She wasn't going to do another goddamned autograph. She was above it now, she was smarter than all of them now. Très intellectuelle, said the iconoclast. She was a member of a higher class -- well, she had long been a member of a higher class, but now her BRAIN was in a higher class, too; "she has the wit, boldness, tragic dimension, and open proclivity toward masturbatory indulgence of an Amis heroine," said the other iconoclast. She didn't speak French, but it all sounded OK to her. (I came in from the rain and my shoes warsawggy. Now all I can think about is orange schubert.) HA! Her new single on the radio, that wild, computer-facilitated baritone! ROWR. A little peace love and undersand understanding, all she ever wanted. Just like heaven -- Casablanca, or so she'd come to undersand (I should rent it some time).

As you can see, these games are as easy as they are fun, like many sports that look VERY EASY when I watch them on television, like lacrosse. So long as we follow the rules! Another example:

1 - FRIDAY; 2 - VOWING; 3 - DONKEY; 4 - SABBATH; 5 - DARFUR; 6 - FAMOUS; 7 - PIZZA; 8 - SLUT; 9 - CHILLED; 10 - LIKE

Is it Friday again already? Nothing to do. Listening to myself again. (Vowing revenge versus vowing chastity: change the string arrangement. There must be a joke in there somewhere.) What was that idiot's name? Donkey? Hanky? Flopsy? What's tomorrow again? ...Saturday? Day of the...wait, I forget what day it is. (This reminds me that I have never actually listened to a Black Sabbath record. Where should I start? --ed.) Can I locate Darfur on a map? Can I locate Darfur on a map? Can I locate Darfur on a map? Why does everyone keep asking me that? Is it because I'm famous? Sometimes you just wanna get a zit without getting called PIZZA. FACED. SLUT. Or be a slut, without being called SLUT. FACED. SLUT. Drives a girl to drink. Drives a boy to drink, too. Boy drives, girl drinks (boy drank, too), girl drives (boy...too drunk!)...that was unpleasant. Dank. I had a nice stiff drink as soon as I was driven home. Something simple. They made me a pomegranate daiquiri, real chilled-like.

The best thing about POP: THE GAME is that anyone can play it. EVEN YOU! Choose one of the following (or, if you're a show-off, all of the following) pop-sets and PLAY POP. Or, the only pop that one can play without knowing how to play an instrument (which I do, I mentioned Chopin earlier y'know) or without having an instrument handy (which I do, but I don't feel like it! And that's a reason to make pop, too!).

SET ONE
CONCENTRATED, ANALYSIS, SOUL, SWIMWEAR, DRUG, NETHERLANDS, LILY ALLEN, GLAMOUROUS, EX-HUSBAND, IMPRINT

SET TWO
CUSTODY, PRADA, BOYFRIEND, FAN, CATEGORY, ITUNES, SUPPOSE, MONEY, MIGHT, JESUS

SET THREE
TV, ILLINOIS, DIFFERENT, EMBED, BORN, RIGHT, R&B, DEMAND, COLLEGE, BIRTHDAY

SET FOUR
FLAVOR, ARCHIVE, BASTARDS, SINGLE, DIDDY, SWEET, MICHELLE PFEIFFER, NOBODY, PRINCE, STILL

SET FIVE
RADIOS, CRITIQUE, POP, DAVID BOWIE, MATHEMATICS, DEBATE, SELF-PROCLAIMED, INFECTIOUS, NOSTALGIA, YES

Have at it! First place wins a prize (FOR REAL!).