Anti-Production...

One thing I don’t care for, in the current (well, last five to seven years, anyway) trends of popular music is the incredible amount of production. While my tastes in music generally run to under-produced music to begin with – Tom Waits, Neubauten, Grinderman, Cop Shoot Cop, that sort of thing – I still listen to most of the Top 40, just to keep up with the Jonses.

What I’ve noticed, specifically in rock and R&B but in some other genres as well, is a desire by the producer (or, gasp, the band) to fill every possible moment in the song with the entire frequency spectrum of sound, and at least half of those sounds have some sort of plug-in trickery applied to them. Now, being largely in the business of making plug-in trickery possible, it’s probably a bad idea to complain about that too much; it sounds like those “how to stop smoking” ads from Phillip Morris. But even so…

What got me on this line of thinking was that “Ladies And Gentlemen” track from Saliva that is used in the PS3 ad currently playing at every time out in every NBA game. That song is so totally overproduced as to almost be comical. There is literally no possible way a good rock band could play that live, let alone Saliva. It is just as programmed as any song by Autechre or Aphex Twin. (If you’re not familiar, and for some reason curiosity gets the better of discretion, you can stream it here.) Another example that just pops to mind is Timbaland’s “Give it to Me.” I think it would be amusing to watch Nelly Furtado fuck the dropped beats up live; they wouldn’t even make it to the first chorus. There is no way that song could be performed as you hear it, either, unless our current crop of pop vocalists learned polyrhythms overnight.

For my next Chris Randall record, which I’m starting this week, I’m going to go the other way entirely. I’m going to see exactly how much production I can do away with. We’ll see how that works out, of course, and it may turn out to not work at all, but quite frankly, I’m of the opinion that you gotta start somewhere, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.

In any event, no particular reason for this rant, except that I call ’em like I see ’em, and this is something I’ve been thinking about. Thoughts? Where do you draw the line when production “tricks” are now part and parcel of pop music?