Saturday, June 8, 2013

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Retro Pop Heaven


Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica.
- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Current pop music and I parted ways a good many years ago, so it's unusual for me to feel so enthusiastic about a random song heard on the radio.  It's serendipity that this catchy ditty - "Slip," by a trio called Stooshe (pronounced, one learns, "Stoo-She," which sounds like some kind of unholy Japanese-meets-Irish cuisine fusion) - also falls firmly within the realm of the Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion, thanks to its sleek '60s-goes-'80s hook, exaggerated girl-group personae (with more than a hint of drag-queen affect), and even its very own New Dance Sensation step.

It's manufactured nonsense, but of a fairly high order, I think, and a possibly early entry for Song of the Summer.  Or is it just awful? That's the joy of tawdry pop - perhaps it's both.

8 comments:

  1. You may place my name in the column marked "Fan".

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  2. I, too, am sort of loving it. Especially the dykey blonde (and kudos for hitting every possible social/ethnic niche.)

    Gotta go. The cat and I are working up our dance steps for it.

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  3. Like these ladies, I too have danced in a bowling alley.

    And I would dance to this.

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  4. I can't tell you how relieved I am. I was afraid it was just me.

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  5. It could almost be a follow-up to Girls Aloud's The Promise.

    And that high praise indeed!

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  6. Stooshe "were put together by writer/manager Jo Perry following a series of auditions and scouting in UK fashion shop Topshop over a nine month period. The original concept was to create an urban and soulful Spice Girls." One of them is called Courtney and she's from Penge. In other words, dead classy.

    Catchy though - reminds me of Janelle Monae

    Jx

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    1. Ooh - which one's Courtney?

      And - for anyone who may have the requisite bi-cultural experience: is being Courtney from Penge more like being Angela from Massapequa or Shantay from Jersey City?

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    2. A trailer trash name is a trailer trash name, no matter where you are I the world, I guess... Jx

      PS Penge

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