Psychedelic pop

Psychedelic pop is a pop music subgenre in which musical characteristics associated with psychedelic music are applied to pop songs.[1] This includes "trippy" effects such as fuzz guitars, tape manipulation, sitars, backwards recording, and Beach Boys-style harmonies. Blended with pop, they create melodic songs with tight song structures. It reached its peak during the late 1960s, and declined rapidly in the early 1970s.[1]

Characteristics

For more details on this topic, see Psychedelic music.

According to AllMusic, psychedelic pop was not too "freaky", but also not very "bubblegum" either.[1] It appropriated the effects associated with straight psychedelic music, applying their innovations to concise pop songs.[1] The music was occasionally confined to the studio, but there existed more organic exceptions whose psychedelia was bright and melodic.[1] AllMusic adds: "What's [strange] is that some psychedelic pop is more interesting than average psychedelia, since it had weird, occasionally awkward blends of psychedelia and pop conventions -- the Neon Philharmonic's 1969 album The Moth Confesses is a prime example of this."[1]

History

Origins

In the mid 1960s, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson began to experiment with psychedelic drugs, eventually resulting in the album Pet Sounds (May 1966), which is credited for sparking a psychedelic pop revolution. Psychedelic rock had existed before Pet Sounds, mainly among garage bands like the 13th Floor Elevators, but Pet Sounds inspired mainstream pop acts to take part in the psychedelic culture.[3][nb 1] Two months later, the Beatles' Revolver (August 1966) was another album that led to the style's proliferation.[1] Biographer Ian MacDonald wrote that the album "had initiated a second pop revolution – one which while galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones, left all of them far behind".[4]

Journalist Barney Hoskyns proclaimed the Beach Boys' single "Good Vibrations" (October 1966) the "ultimate psychedelic pop record" from Los Angeles in its time.[5] Popmatters added: "Its influence on the ensuing psychedelic and progressive rock movements can’t be overstated ... [it] changed the way a pop record could be made, the way a pop record could sound, and the lyrics a pop record could have."[6] By the next year, the Beatles' single "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" (February 1967) would become a prototype for psychedelic pop.[7] Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" (March 1967) and "See Emily Play" (June 1967), both written by Syd Barrett, helped set the pattern for pop-psychedelia in Britain.[8]

In 1968, the Zombies released Odessey and Oracle (1968), with songs that AllMusic's Bruce Eder would characterize as "some of the most powerful psychedelic pop/rock ever heard out of England".[9] According to Record Bin's Joshua Packard, the album was a "psychedelic pop spectacle". "Care of Cell 44", its opening track, "presents the band as bearers of a new kind of psychedelia, one that relied less on psychotropics and more on the natural abilities of the band. ... [the album] has gained a well-deserved reputation for being one of the greatest pop records of the '60s."[10]

Decline and revivals

By the end of the 1960s psychedelic folk and rock were in retreat. Many surviving acts moved away from psychedelia into either more back-to-basics "roots rock", traditional-based, pastoral or whimsical folk, the wider experimentation of progressive rock, or riff-laden heavy rock.[11] Psychedelic influences lasted a little longer in pop music, stretching into the early 1970s.[1]

There were occasional mainstream acts that dabbled in neo-psychedelia, including Prince's mid-1980s work and some of Lenny Kravitz's 1990s output, but it has mainly been the domain of alternative and indie rock bands.[2] In the UK The Stone Roses[12] debut album in 1989 set out a catchy neo-psychedelic guitar pop, helping to create the Madchester scene, and influencing the early sound of 1990s Britpop bands like Blur,[13] and Oasis who drew on 1960s psychedelic pop and rock, particularly on the album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.[14]

List of artists

Notes

  1. ↑ Albums which followed in the wake of Pet Sounds include Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles, 1967), Triangle (The Beau Brummels, 1967), The Magic Garden, (The 5th Dimension, 1967), Captain Sad and His Ship of Fools, (The Cowsills, 1968), Head (The Monkees, 1968), The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands (The Turtles, 1968), Odessa (The Bee Gees, 1969), The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette (The Four Seasons, 1969), Odessey and Oracle, (The Zombies, 1969), and Intercourse (The Tokens, 1971).[3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Anon (n.d.). "Psychedelic Pop". AllMusic.
  2. 1 2 "Neo-Psychedelia". AllMusic. n.d.
  3. 1 2 McPadden, Mike (May 13, 2016). "The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and 50 Years of Acid-Pop Copycats". The Kind.
  4. ↑ MacDonald 2005, p. 192.
  5. ↑ Hoskyns 2009, p. 128.
  6. ↑ Interrante, Scott (May 20, 2015). "The 12 Best Brian Wilson Songs". Popmatters.
  7. ↑ "British Psychedelia". Allmusic. Archived from the original on January 1, 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-07.
  8. ↑ J. Kitts and B. Tolinski, eds, Guitar World Presents Pink Floyd (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2002), ISBN 0-634-03286-0, p. 6.
  9. ↑ Eder, Bruce. "Odessey and Oracle". Allmusic.
  10. ↑ Packard, Joshua (October 31, 2015). "Record Bin: The psychedelic pop spectacle of The Zombies' "Odessey and Oracle"". Record Bin.
  11. ↑ Bogdanov, Woodstra & Erlewine 2002, pp. 1322–1323.
  12. ↑ S. Erlewine, "The Stone Roses" Allmusic, retrieved 6 July 2011.
  13. ↑ S. Erlewine, "Blur" Allmusic, retrieved 6 July 2011.
  14. ↑ S. T. Erlewine, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Allmusic, retrieved 7 July 2010.

Bibliography

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