https://slate.com/podcasts/hit-parade/2 ... pop-charts
Spoiler
From the AI-generated transcript:
Speaker B: This is Its a Sin, a 1987 transatlantic hit by Pet Shop Boys, the British dance pop duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Loe. Tenant in particular, started his career in pop music not as a recording artist but as a journalist for the British pop fanzine Smash Hits, and he has the sensibilities of a pop critic. You can tell from the droll, erudite way he described the duos career in the album Notes to an early 2000s reissue of actually the 1987 Pet Shop Boys album that produced this hit. In those actually liner notes, Tennants said, I felt at this time that we had the secret of contemporary pop music, that we knew what was required. We entered our imperial phase. This sentence turned out to be Neil Tenant unwitting gift to music fandom and scholarship. He named a concept that pop critics had observed for decades but never given a name to the moment in an acts career when it seems everything they touch turns to gold or platinum, when even seemingly wacky ideas wont stop the acts hit making momentum. Like, for example, Pet Shop boys themselves in 1987 recording a cover of a love ballad made famous by Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson, Always on My Mind, as throbbing club music. This could have been A terrible idea. Instead, Pet Shop Boys Always on My mind hit number one in the UK in 1987 and top five in America in 1988. Their imperial phase persisted. Mind you, nobody was calling this phenomenon an imperial phase in the 80s. No one was even quoting Neil Tennant in the 2000s when that actually reissue CD came out. That is until a 2010 column in Pitchfork magazine by music critic Tom Ewing, my British friend and colleague whose popular blog does for the UK charts what I do at Slate for the American char charts. In that Pitchfork column, an entry titled simply Imperial, Tom expanded on Neil Tenants concept and basically codified the term imperial phase. Here, in a conversation with American podcaster DJ Louis XIV for his show Pop Pantheon, Tom Ewing describes what he thinks the term means. How do you become inspired to graph out what an imperial phase is after hearing Neil Tenant’quote I think the thing.
Speaker D: That I liked about it was the self consciousness. Obviously what he was doing wasn’t just saying we were very successful. You can look at the chart statistics and the sales figures and you can tell when someone’s being successful. He was saying something else, which is this is the point at which we could do no wrong. It’s this kind of feedback loop between an artist finding a higher gear and a public responding to that gear. And it’s a sort of dance, a kind of like high velocity dance between an artist and the public. And imperial phase is a way of talking about artistic development of a star, but one that includes the audience.
Speaker B: After Tom Ewings 2010 article, the term imperial phase caught on in a big way among critics and pundits. Listen to any music podcast, no matter what music star theyre discussing and the word imperial is going to come up eventually. Here, for example, is a recent installment of the New York Times popcast discussing Taylor Swift, co hosted by Times journalists John Karamaonica and Joe Coscarelli. Joe is the primary voice you’ll hear. You know we’ve started to hear the phrase imperial phase thrown around a lot with Taylor Swift. Yes, this peak of her career, this time of plenty, it’s in the air. Imperial phase. And here’s an excerpt of a recent Band Splain podcast looking back on the 90s career of the Brit pop band Oasis, featuring host Yassi Salak and her guest Rob Har viillla Oasis still in their imperial phase. Like these reviews show that, right?
Speaker C: This is still the imperial era. Even if it’s the crash.
Speaker B: This is the tail end of the imperial phase. But like once the album comes and goes, it’s over. So yes, Imperial is now part of the lingua franca of pop criticism. A cursory check of our own Hit Parade archives indicates that I myself use the word in about half of our episodes. But are there any rules for an Imperial face? You will note that Tom Ewing said the definition of Imperial means more than just chart statistics, and I agree. But the charts do usually provide evidence that a phase is at hand. For example, Pet Shop Boys in their British homeland, they very clearly had an imperial phase, scoring 10 straight UK top 10 hits from 1986s Suburbia.
Speaker A: R with Tonight.
Speaker B: Through 1990s so hard. What about in America? Pet Shop Boys were pretty big hitmakers here too. For a time they racked up five top tens from 1986 through 88 starting with their hot 100/1 hit West End Girls. Okay, the five top 10s werent consecutive in America during this run. Tenant and Low issued a couple of singles that missed our top 40, but I would call the boys two year run fairly imperial. They made hits that seemed improbable on paper like theyre Always on My Mind cover or their duet with UK vocal legend Dusty Springfield who hadnt scored a hit in two decades. Her pairing with Pet Shop Boys. What have I done to deserve this reach number two in America? In short, identifying an imperial phase is not an exact science.
Speaker A: I don’t understand, it’just my job.
Speaker B: You know one when you see it and charts alone can’t determine it. But is it possible to make rules for imperial phases? And can we use the charts? With some caveats, I say we can. At least we can try.
Speaker B: This is Its a Sin, a 1987 transatlantic hit by Pet Shop Boys, the British dance pop duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Loe. Tenant in particular, started his career in pop music not as a recording artist but as a journalist for the British pop fanzine Smash Hits, and he has the sensibilities of a pop critic. You can tell from the droll, erudite way he described the duos career in the album Notes to an early 2000s reissue of actually the 1987 Pet Shop Boys album that produced this hit. In those actually liner notes, Tennants said, I felt at this time that we had the secret of contemporary pop music, that we knew what was required. We entered our imperial phase. This sentence turned out to be Neil Tenant unwitting gift to music fandom and scholarship. He named a concept that pop critics had observed for decades but never given a name to the moment in an acts career when it seems everything they touch turns to gold or platinum, when even seemingly wacky ideas wont stop the acts hit making momentum. Like, for example, Pet Shop boys themselves in 1987 recording a cover of a love ballad made famous by Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson, Always on My Mind, as throbbing club music. This could have been A terrible idea. Instead, Pet Shop Boys Always on My mind hit number one in the UK in 1987 and top five in America in 1988. Their imperial phase persisted. Mind you, nobody was calling this phenomenon an imperial phase in the 80s. No one was even quoting Neil Tennant in the 2000s when that actually reissue CD came out. That is until a 2010 column in Pitchfork magazine by music critic Tom Ewing, my British friend and colleague whose popular blog does for the UK charts what I do at Slate for the American char charts. In that Pitchfork column, an entry titled simply Imperial, Tom expanded on Neil Tenants concept and basically codified the term imperial phase. Here, in a conversation with American podcaster DJ Louis XIV for his show Pop Pantheon, Tom Ewing describes what he thinks the term means. How do you become inspired to graph out what an imperial phase is after hearing Neil Tenant’quote I think the thing.
Speaker D: That I liked about it was the self consciousness. Obviously what he was doing wasn’t just saying we were very successful. You can look at the chart statistics and the sales figures and you can tell when someone’s being successful. He was saying something else, which is this is the point at which we could do no wrong. It’s this kind of feedback loop between an artist finding a higher gear and a public responding to that gear. And it’s a sort of dance, a kind of like high velocity dance between an artist and the public. And imperial phase is a way of talking about artistic development of a star, but one that includes the audience.
Speaker B: After Tom Ewings 2010 article, the term imperial phase caught on in a big way among critics and pundits. Listen to any music podcast, no matter what music star theyre discussing and the word imperial is going to come up eventually. Here, for example, is a recent installment of the New York Times popcast discussing Taylor Swift, co hosted by Times journalists John Karamaonica and Joe Coscarelli. Joe is the primary voice you’ll hear. You know we’ve started to hear the phrase imperial phase thrown around a lot with Taylor Swift. Yes, this peak of her career, this time of plenty, it’s in the air. Imperial phase. And here’s an excerpt of a recent Band Splain podcast looking back on the 90s career of the Brit pop band Oasis, featuring host Yassi Salak and her guest Rob Har viillla Oasis still in their imperial phase. Like these reviews show that, right?
Speaker C: This is still the imperial era. Even if it’s the crash.
Speaker B: This is the tail end of the imperial phase. But like once the album comes and goes, it’s over. So yes, Imperial is now part of the lingua franca of pop criticism. A cursory check of our own Hit Parade archives indicates that I myself use the word in about half of our episodes. But are there any rules for an Imperial face? You will note that Tom Ewing said the definition of Imperial means more than just chart statistics, and I agree. But the charts do usually provide evidence that a phase is at hand. For example, Pet Shop Boys in their British homeland, they very clearly had an imperial phase, scoring 10 straight UK top 10 hits from 1986s Suburbia.
Speaker A: R with Tonight.
Speaker B: Through 1990s so hard. What about in America? Pet Shop Boys were pretty big hitmakers here too. For a time they racked up five top tens from 1986 through 88 starting with their hot 100/1 hit West End Girls. Okay, the five top 10s werent consecutive in America during this run. Tenant and Low issued a couple of singles that missed our top 40, but I would call the boys two year run fairly imperial. They made hits that seemed improbable on paper like theyre Always on My Mind cover or their duet with UK vocal legend Dusty Springfield who hadnt scored a hit in two decades. Her pairing with Pet Shop Boys. What have I done to deserve this reach number two in America? In short, identifying an imperial phase is not an exact science.
Speaker A: I don’t understand, it’just my job.
Speaker B: You know one when you see it and charts alone can’t determine it. But is it possible to make rules for imperial phases? And can we use the charts? With some caveats, I say we can. At least we can try.
https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimis ... timist-29/
and I couldn't help but be tickled by the synchronicity of these sentences:
Looking forward to that musical. Also, a useful reminder for these trying times.There's something double-edged about the concept: It holds a mix of world-conquering swagger and inevitable obsolescence. What do we know about emperors? That they end up naked: The phase always ends.
