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There's something special with the period 2009-2013. Or 2008-2014. Or 2010-2012. Whatever it is and however long it spanned, it seemed to peak in 2011. 2011 has for many reasons, both personal and pop cultural, always felt like my favorite year, even before I tried to put any words on explaining why. If we go into the pop music of the time, the period has something similar to what the 80s had, a complete lack of self-consciousness and irony. A 100% attitude, an embracing of... I don't know, just embracing in general! In which other decade would we see pure guitar gods like Yngwie Malmsteen and Gary Moore get born? (not get born literally) Only in a decade where embracing is the main culture (and not one where irony, reference and critique is): Watch this first. And then watch this.
(There are probably lots of examples of self-conscious and more ironic pop music from 2011, but there are strikingly few from the 80s. Hearing The Smiths sing personal and brutally honest lyrics to laid-back melancholic guitar pop with an 80s sound is really the exception from the rule.)
Irony is the best way to seem cool and distant, but Pitbull did the complete opposite and embraced... whatever he embraced. It doesn't really matter what he embraced, he was Pitbull and that's enough. That's the whole point with the 2011 mindset, don't think things through too much because it will make you self-conscious and you'll start to doubt yourself. Instead, just make song. Say lyrics to song. Dance to song. Suit. Party. Pitbull. Watch this video now by clicking on it
This was first supposed to be a post about the k-pop group Girls' Generation's Japanese songs from around 2011-2012. Because they have that special 2011 electropop sound that they share with Pitbull's songs, and also with a bit of that party and embracing mindset that Pitbull has but on the complete opposite of the scale of... I don't know what to call this scale? Or is it even a scale? I was supposed to call it the elegance scale, where Girls' Generation are elegant and Pitbull isn't, but it feels wrong to do that to Pitbull, because he wears a suit. He at least looks elegant, while his behavior may be more like a parody of elegance, where you're a guy who wears a suit but behaves like a guy wearing a t-shirt. The suit promises business and class but the guy inside the suit (Pitbull) instead brings party and good times. Which is completely in line with the mindset of 2011: Just embrace. What you embrace is secondary, and if it's coherent morally and aesthetically doesn't matter at all. We could simply call this scale I'm talking about the "Pitbull to Girls' Generation scale" to make it easy for ourselves. Something with Pitbull is comedic while Girls' Generation are classy.
Despite all the talk about Pitbull being wacky and Girls' Generation being non-wacky, Girls' Generation's music from 2011-2012 still has the 2011 embracing mindset, uncompromising and unironic. It shows in the whole style of that time's electropop, where emptiness and nothingness are the core ideals. Songs about nothing important with no specific style, sound or theme. It's neither extatically positive or filled with sorrow, it's uptempo but without sentiment and energy bursts. That's what makes pop music good, at least from this time, it doesn't give you all those strong, deep and intense things, it only gives you song. It gives you music. Lyric. And dance. Pop. The sound is synthetic, almost devoid of references to non-electronic instruments, it's just electronic sounds. Even when the instruments are trying to sound like more "real" instruments, they still get that 2011 sterile electronic sound. Like, it removes all the warm tones and keeps only the cold ones. Pop is when you remove all style and theme and only keep what's left. But it's not minimalism, something is still there. Even the song names align with the pop simplicity and the general embracing culture of 2011. It's just. Song Name. Here are the songs you should listen to:
Reflection
Gossip Girls
Flower Power
Animal
Galaxy Supernova
Motorcycle
Girls & Peace
Bad Girl
The Great Escape
You-Aholic
Paparazzi
This simplicity is a type of elegance (elegance is really just simplicity achieved through careful intention and high effort) that goes well together with the more classical elegance that Girls' Generation portrays. But I won't get more into that side in here, because it's not unique for 2011. Girls' Generation's 2011-2012 Japanese songs have an artistic touch that makes them good and interesting to this day, while still sounding like typical 2011 music. They put melodies in small subtly different ways than others, even if the main melody is simple and recognizable, and the same with their sound and everything else. That's also why I wanted to make this post, because these recently listed songs are just so good, specifically because of the 2011 mindset and not despite it or unrelated to it. We don't look back at these songs from a distance, they're still today what they were when they came (some of Pitbull's work may not have held this standard). They did the most anyone could do with the 2011 sound and mindset.
I don't know why 2011 was like this, why this seemingly completely unrepeatable culture happened. Probably because of some circumstances in the world that no one could control, although I suspect Pitbull may have pulled some strings behind the curtains, so to speak...
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