As I believe I’ve made abundantly clear, I am at heart a huge fan of pop music.
But what is pop? When is a piece of music pure pop confection?
I think there are two elements that tip the scales. When you hear them, they instantly transform the song to pop.
- Handclaps
- Background singers going ba-ba-ba-ba
You’ve got to give me the handclaps, right? You could take the crunchiest Einstürzende Neubauten track and fix it by adding four people going clap, clap-clap through the whole thing. Read more here.
On the background vocals, I’m thinking of a small group of mixed gender, employing nonsense syllables, along the lines of ba-da-ba-da-ba-da or doo-do-do-do-do-dooo.
Right away I think of the Swingle Singers, who seemed to epitomize a particular brand of pop music in the Sixties.
As founder Ward Swingle tells the story:
The swingle singers began as a vocal exercise by a group of freelance session singers working in Paris in the early sixties. Most of our studio singing was limited to background vocals – oo’s and ah’s behind people like Charles Asnavour and Edith Piaf.
I got out Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavichord” and we began reading through the preludes and fugues just to see if they were singable. We soon found, like many before us, that we were swinging Bach’s music quite naturally. Since there were no words, we improvised a kind of scat singing a la Louis Armstrong, which we later reduced to simple doo’s and boo’s, dah’s and bah’s so as not to get in the way of Bach’s counterpoint.
The theory seems to be the same behind that of vocalese and doo-wop, to substitute the human voice for musical instruments (Slightly different, I think, from scat, which preceded both of these forms by about 40 years). There is something about those bum-ba-badum-ba-da‘s that seem so light-hearted and cheery.
On this cut from 1963, the group is Christian Legrand, Jeanette Baucomont, Anne Germain, Jean-Claude Briodin, Ward Swingle, Claude Germain, Claudine Meunier, and Jean Cussac, with Pierre Michelot on double bass and Gus Wallez on drums.
Jump forward forty years and the technique works as well as ever. Sufjan Stevens sometimes uses an arrangement of instruments playing Philip Glass triplets with choral backing. On “They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For The Homeless In Muskegon),” Stevens is accompanied by vocals from Elin and Megan Smith of the Danielson Famile.
Swingle Singers – The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Prelude No.9 — BUY
Sufjan Stevens – They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For The Homeless In Muskegon) — BUY
Tags: Swingle Singers, Sufjan Stevens, MP3s
6 Responses
-
Laura Says:
Sufjan Stevens is definitely not what comes to mind when you say pop. I think of it more as energy sizzling, instantly catchy, sweet candy to the ear, glossed quality type songs with all sorts of emotions behind it. Claps and ba ba ba’s are more of the indie pop quality. Although I love both, Sufjan is definitely of the latter.
-
béa Says:
Charles AZnavour.
(I HAD to rectify!lol)
A french reader.
-
The Pop View Says:
Typo was in the original, but merci!
-
The Pop View » Flobots on the Handlebars Says:
[...] There was a second song that really jumped out at me. It features soulful female vocals, I assuming from violinist Mackenzie Roberts. It starts with acoustic guitar and then the vocals kick in: ba-ba-di-ba-ba. Ah, yes. As I have noted before, ba-ba-ba-ba vocals rock. [...]
-
The Pop View » “Songs of good cheer, Christmas is here…” Says:
[...] for a bonus, I’m including a short version by the Swingle Singers (Read background on them in this previous post). Family Force 5 – Carol of the Bells — [...]
-
The Pop View » Thoughts on Radiohead’s The King of Limbs Says:
[...] many ways, I’m a classical pop structuralist. I like A A B A song structure, sweeping choruses, harmony & handclaps. I love Gershwin and the [...]