Poppy's "Knockoff" does the extreme-pop* clackety-staticky thing well, sounds tough and breakable simultaneously, but still it doesn't quite click, or kick, as a song – am thinking in comparison to the melodically similar "Bossy" by Lindsay Lohan, where the melody seems more complete, and the hooks draw blood.
*(1) Don't know if "extreme pop" really is a term, or the right term, for this Poppy song or is what Poppy's trying to do. But there does seem to be a fairly long-running trend or quasi-genre, going since the mid '00s, sweet and abrasive, outsider noise but w/ "catchy pop" affectations, or pop affections. (2) I just checked and two of the three "Bossy" songwriters are the Stargate duo, whom I've never given any thought to but I should, if I ever get to it, seeing (from Wikip) how they've done a lot, for Rihanna and Shakira and others, some of which I like.
Haven't thought much about extreme pop since c. 2006 when I remember the convos about it, but I do think *something* happened to pop in that time (as you're suggesting in (1), I think) -- something hovering around what folks call hyperpop but not quite of hyperpop -- that makes it hard to gauge the "extreme" part of stuff like this, hence my calling it a "regression." (Poppy's "Am I a Girl?" sounds the most like this, but "I Disagree" codes as more extreme.) The music has baked "wtf" into its sound, so that you don't actually go "wtf," something like that.
'Course Poppy has always had to borrow her extremes -- from metal for "I Disagree," say. And the album of hers I like the best is easily the least extreme, a straightforward grunge pastiche. One thing about your original list of extreme poppers is the way that although you could trace influence they stake out a claim as something new without obviously pointing to someone else's extremeness. Mariah Carey's voice even makes dolphins take notice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meE96XCJAr8
Maybe "hyperpop" is the term I was looking for, but instead my brain grabbed "extreme pop" off the top of the pile - forgetting that I MYSELF was the person who coined the term "extreme pop." Anyway, because it never got developed, the idea of "extreme pop" is way more interesting than the hyperpop (or whatever) that I was trying to describe above - though I don't mean to saddle Poppy, or anyone, with my ideas regarding hyperpop. Haven't listened to enough of the bands or heard how *they* would describe what they're trying to do, or even if they can stand the term "hyperpop" themselves, and maybe I'm thinking of something else - Ida Rook, whom I'm rooting for, who has the widest assortment of colors in her splatter gun. --Anyway, looking at the old LJ "extreme pop" thread, I'm glad I led off with Mariah and mostly steered clear of the tuneful-oonful and the bubblegum, rather really did plump for the audacious and unexpected, and the around-the-bend. (Again, this might well be unfair to the actual artists, but the "pop" that the latter-day clackety-staticky acts go for [as opposed to the extreme pop I was invosagingi circa 2006) is a kind of cliché of a "pop" sound, high-pitched, sticky, sweet,.
Extreme pop is a better term than hyperpop -- hyperpop is specific in a counter-productive way in a way extreme pop is ambiguous but expansive. The "hyper" in hyperpop always locked in a sort of knowingness that the best of it can find ways to blast through with noise (the occasional gec) but more often makes the stuff feel kind of dead on the page (PC Music, a good percentage of Charli XCX). The explosion of it in 2020 that I remember was interesting (like "Thos Moser" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khmjbZtMrJQ), and of course I loved what Playboi Carti did with it, but both of those strands feel like the flamed out almost immediately.
But of course extreme pop doesn't need to blast through anything with noise to justify itself, its justifying itself is the whole point and almost goes without saying. And it can also can be extreme without noise, which in an age of noise is potentially very extreme indeed. Has lots of potential moves to get where it's going where it feels like hyperpop pushed itself into a corner and then self-destructed.
Poppy's "Knockoff" does the extreme-pop* clackety-staticky thing well, sounds tough and breakable simultaneously, but still it doesn't quite click, or kick, as a song – am thinking in comparison to the melodically similar "Bossy" by Lindsay Lohan, where the melody seems more complete, and the hooks draw blood.
*(1) Don't know if "extreme pop" really is a term, or the right term, for this Poppy song or is what Poppy's trying to do. But there does seem to be a fairly long-running trend or quasi-genre, going since the mid '00s, sweet and abrasive, outsider noise but w/ "catchy pop" affectations, or pop affections. (2) I just checked and two of the three "Bossy" songwriters are the Stargate duo, whom I've never given any thought to but I should, if I ever get to it, seeing (from Wikip) how they've done a lot, for Rihanna and Shakira and others, some of which I like.
Haven't thought much about extreme pop since c. 2006 when I remember the convos about it, but I do think *something* happened to pop in that time (as you're suggesting in (1), I think) -- something hovering around what folks call hyperpop but not quite of hyperpop -- that makes it hard to gauge the "extreme" part of stuff like this, hence my calling it a "regression." (Poppy's "Am I a Girl?" sounds the most like this, but "I Disagree" codes as more extreme.) The music has baked "wtf" into its sound, so that you don't actually go "wtf," something like that.
'Course Poppy has always had to borrow her extremes -- from metal for "I Disagree," say. And the album of hers I like the best is easily the least extreme, a straightforward grunge pastiche. One thing about your original list of extreme poppers is the way that although you could trace influence they stake out a claim as something new without obviously pointing to someone else's extremeness. Mariah Carey's voice even makes dolphins take notice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meE96XCJAr8
Maybe "hyperpop" is the term I was looking for, but instead my brain grabbed "extreme pop" off the top of the pile - forgetting that I MYSELF was the person who coined the term "extreme pop." Anyway, because it never got developed, the idea of "extreme pop" is way more interesting than the hyperpop (or whatever) that I was trying to describe above - though I don't mean to saddle Poppy, or anyone, with my ideas regarding hyperpop. Haven't listened to enough of the bands or heard how *they* would describe what they're trying to do, or even if they can stand the term "hyperpop" themselves, and maybe I'm thinking of something else - Ida Rook, whom I'm rooting for, who has the widest assortment of colors in her splatter gun. --Anyway, looking at the old LJ "extreme pop" thread, I'm glad I led off with Mariah and mostly steered clear of the tuneful-oonful and the bubblegum, rather really did plump for the audacious and unexpected, and the around-the-bend. (Again, this might well be unfair to the actual artists, but the "pop" that the latter-day clackety-staticky acts go for [as opposed to the extreme pop I was invosagingi circa 2006) is a kind of cliché of a "pop" sound, high-pitched, sticky, sweet,.
Oh, for someone who wanders in, here is the link to the LJ version of the extreme pop convo, 2006:
https://koganbot.livejournal.com/1058.html
Extreme pop is a better term than hyperpop -- hyperpop is specific in a counter-productive way in a way extreme pop is ambiguous but expansive. The "hyper" in hyperpop always locked in a sort of knowingness that the best of it can find ways to blast through with noise (the occasional gec) but more often makes the stuff feel kind of dead on the page (PC Music, a good percentage of Charli XCX). The explosion of it in 2020 that I remember was interesting (like "Thos Moser" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khmjbZtMrJQ), and of course I loved what Playboi Carti did with it, but both of those strands feel like the flamed out almost immediately.
But of course extreme pop doesn't need to blast through anything with noise to justify itself, its justifying itself is the whole point and almost goes without saying. And it can also can be extreme without noise, which in an age of noise is potentially very extreme indeed. Has lots of potential moves to get where it's going where it feels like hyperpop pushed itself into a corner and then self-destructed.