Pop music, how does that go? A four count, some verses, a chorus, a danceable beat. Extremely palatable. Any bar can play a pop mix and not have anyone storm out in a huff. The lyrics are usually romance-focused, sweet or spiteful, pining, maybe a little desperate, even jilted. And in a chart-topping radio hit, what are those things about again? It’s vague, some sentiment about how the hero in question would risk it all to have just one kiss. Sure, everyone can get behind that.
But where would the logical conclusion of that story go? Just one kiss? There’s no way that’s all he wants. He wants to mix business with pleasure. He wants to know their object of his desire in the biblical sense. In short, he wants to copulate. Pop tends to sugarcoat these carnal passions. Coleman Moore’s original songs extend these pop stories to their ultimate, ahem, climax.
The man who’s on a hunt for some beautiful woman, who will stop at nothing to have her? That’s a little aggressive, no? What’s she think about all this? There’s classic masculine aggression inherent to these Billboard dance songs that are implicit but not followed through. Pining for a one-dimensional idea of a woman might not be altruistic and in fact, the preamble to this archetypal pop song, were it to be written, would probably involve a solo self-serving session in the protagonist’s bedroom, phone in one hand, the other very much occupied. Moore’s album “Masculinity” explores this theme – and more! The song “Precum” off “Animal Angel” is an apt five-minute summation of this.
His newest album, “Glute Investment”, is just a little less crude and follows a maximalist pop formula away from carnality. In this album, we’re treated to pop treatises on millennial-ish topics, like the absurdity of human interaction at, say, Apple’s Genius Bar or a pool party. To a degree, these exchanges with consumerist or mundane connotations are a pretense to courtship, to sex. And having greater sex appeal doesn’t just elevate your social standing, it may also improve your ability to climb the corporate ladder. The time and money you spent improving yourself may circle back and net you a profit, how about that! Moore’s newest video of this album, “Time to Invest”, is a wacky, titillating chronicle of this area.
Mildly NSFW unless you work at a particularly sweaty aerobics studio.
