Intelligent pop. It's just what it sounds like!
But perhaps it does bear a little more explanation.
Intelligent pop is not exactly a style of music. Rather, it is an aesthetic. It is a certain approach to creating music. Intelligent pop artists want to create accessible music that's compelling to sing along with, but which not only doesn't insult our intelligence, but feeds it. It's both intelligent AND pop.
And intelligent pop listeners, we think more or less know who they are. Many of them seem to enjoy the same artists — even when those artists are very different in style, one from the other. It is the aesthetic, not the particular style, that intelligent pop listeners love.
One thing intelligent pop is not is "indie-pop." Although the artists endorsed by IntelligentPop.com are mostly independent of a record label, "indie-pop" is a style of pop which certainly does contain many intelligent and respectable artists...but indie-pop and indie-rock are a more specific styles, marked by an emphasis on lyrical irony, punk pedigree, an avant-garde, sometimes experimental ethic, and a self-conscious art-ideological suspicion of easily accessible melodies or attempts at sentimentality or undistorted beauty.
We respect many "indie pop" artists, but intelligent pop is something else. Occasionally, it's possible that an indie pop album might qualify as bona-fide intelligent pop, but they are very different things.
One of our favorite pastimes at intelligent pop is the constantly ongoing attempt to define exactly what intelligent pop is. We welcome your letters to our online magazine and newsletter on this subject. Tell us what YOU think it is!
But we have come to believe the easiest way to explain what Intelligent Pop is, is a list of famous artists who clearly qualify. We think intelligent pop fans, looking at this list, will readily recognize that, yep, that's the kind of music I love. You know it when you see it!
We find that this "universe of intelligent pop" divides roughly into artists who follow the "British" intelligent pop aesthetic, and artists who follow the American. Both styles contain artists who are clearly intelligent and who are clearly pop. But there's something slightly intangible in the music — The British use more electronics and more orchestration? The Americans rely more on acoustic guitars, more straight-ahead beats, or borrow from jazz more often? which seems to differentiate the two sides of the intelligent pop aesthetic.
Or maybe we're imagining it. Some artists, you'll see, seem a blend of the two.
So here is our universe of major-label intelligent/intellectual pop music. Look at it and you'll understand what intelligent pop is! But who have we missed? Who are we wrong about? We hope you'll tell us!
British intellectual pop aesthetic:
- Tears for Fears
- Sting
- The Police
- Level 42
- Dire Straits
- Beatles
- Paul McCartney
- John Lennon
- George Harrison
- Prefab Sprout
- Howard Jones
- Thomas Dolby
- Peter Gabriel
- U2
- Pre-Kid-A Radiohead (after Kid-A, Radiohead is no longer pop)
- Coldplay
- The Fixx
- Seal
- Wang Chung (Yes, check out their rich, layered albums and forget the "Everybody have fun" single.)
- Scritti Politti
- XTC
- Queen
- Some Elton John (some is not intellectual enough)
- Annie Lennox
- Occasionally, Duran Duran ("Ordinary World" and "Save a Prayer," but definitely not "Hungry like the Wolf")
American intellectual pop aesthetic
- Steely Dan
- The Eagles
- Don Henley
- Joe Jackson
- Hall & Oates
- Lloyd Cole
- Bruce Springsteen
- Tom Petty
- The Pretenders
- Billy Joel
- Simon and Garfunkel
- The Wallflowers
- Michael Penn
- Til Tuesday
- James Taylor
- Marvin Gaye
- Stevie Wonder
- Prince
- Earth, Wind & Fire
- Michael Jackson — Thriller and Off the Wall albums only.
Artists who seem to blend the two aesthetics
- Fleetwood Mac
- Phil Collins/non-Gabriel Genesis (Late Genesis/Early Phil Collins)
- Elvis Costello
- Crowded House
- Sarah McLachlan
Some people will swear that we are leaving out many intelligent artists like, say, Bob Dylan. Was he great? Intelligent? You bet!
But often we leave these artists out because we've made a judgment that, however popular, these artists aren't aesthetically "pop." This essentially means their melodies aren't particularly catchy or singable. They are great for other reasons, such as their lyrics or their ability to capture the essence of their generation. We are not saying these artists aren't great! They just aren't what we do.
Intelligent music that just fails on the "pop" count
- Velvet Underground
- Flaming Lips
- Kid-A and later Radiohead
- Parliament/Funkadelic (too jam-oriented, not song-oriented)
- Wilco (They're very close, and if they mixed their vocals louder, they might be intelligent pop!)
There's also pop music that's perfectly good — sometimes even amazingly great — but it's not quite "intelligent pop." It just slightly fails on the intellectual count — more often than not, it's because, despite a wonderful melody, the lyrics are perhaps a little banal, or seem tacked on as an afterthought. Or perhaps it's just driven by a great beat, a powerful groove, and its lack of a great melody is inconsequential.
This is pop that's not "intelligent." But again, we are not denying that non-intelligent pop can be great. But again, it's just not what we do. Some of the artists below are terrific, but generally their music is very good, non-intellectual, pop.
Good Pop that just barely fails on the "intellectual" count
- Gwen Stefani/No Doubt
- Rod Stewart (some of his songs would make it)
- John Mayer
- The Monkees
- Neil Diamond
- Def Leppard
- Journey
Let us hear from you! Tell us what you think intelligent pop is! Have we got it defined too narrowly? Too broadly? Just right?
