Update On Pop Legends

I signed and mailed my contract this week (which doesn't necessarily mean I've gotten my advance) and the VERYLARGENEWSORGANIZATION at which I'm employed gave me "conditional approval" to work on the book, which essentially means if I write anything that embarrasses the company, they can fire me.

I'm officially writing a book. Hoodathunkit?

The list took literally two-and-a-half weeks to negotiate. The first effort on the part of the publisher was to try to spike half of the contemporary R&B and most of the hip hop, which leaves a hole in pop music that you could drive a truck through.

Then there was the debate that The Brill Building, Motown and The Sound of Philadelphia should be axed because they were topics rather than profiles about individual musicians. So they will mutate into profiles on Carole King and The O'Jays. Motown will be represented by the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.

Efforts were made to spike Phil Spector and Quincy Jones because they were producers and not performers. We split the difference, so Spector is in and Quincy is out, which breaks my heart.

It baffles me that I had to fight for Spector. No peeking now. Name a Ronnette other than Ronnie Spector. Name one of the Crystals. Speaking for myself, I couldn't. And there's a fairly simple reason for the that. The artist on the record isn't what makes those songs special. What makes "Be My Baby" and "And Then He Kissed Me" classics is the way the songs were approached musically, the arrangements, the instrumentations. They were three minute pop-symphonies. Look, I love Darlene Love's voice as much as anyone. But you don't tell the story of pop music by telling Darlene Love's story. Phil Spector's is the story we need to tell.

Apparently the book will have these floating sidebars, which will allow me to take on some people who aren't in the main entries, so that will give me an opportunity to tell Quincy's story.

Mostly everything that wasn't from the rock era was eliminated. But not only that, almost every artist in the book from the rock lineage, which is a little odd, given that there's a separate Rock Legends book being published.

The next argument was over new hitmakers. Kanye West, Alicia Keys and Kelly Clarkson were eliminated as several of my friends predicted. I thought it was important to place some bets on pop artists today that will resonate years from now. Otherwise you have a book on popular music that does nothing but look backwards, which is sort of beside the point. Besides I thought all of these were pretty good bets. The publisher thought that anyone with a body of work that spanned less than five years was a dubious addition to a book on pop legends. The publisher won.

Chapters on MTV and American Idol were nixed.

Finally, the president of the publisher is British and wanted the Bay City Rollers. "We're going for an international audience," I was told (which doesn't explain why Selena and Jennifer Lopez were axed). Unbeknownst to me, the Rollers had 11 Top Ten hits in a row in the U.K. But I held the line and offered instead five Brit pop acts from the rock era. Three were requests: Cliff Richard, ELO, and Olivia Newton John. And two were my choices: The Jam and Oasis.

So what we're left with is listed below. It's not a perfect list. But I won my share of rounds and even got in a few shots after the bell.

Abba
Christina Aguilera
Beach Boys
Beastie Boys
Beatles
Bee Gees
Beyonce
Bobby "Blue" Bland
Mary J Blige
Michael Bolton
Bon Jovi
Booker T. & The MGs
Pat Boone
Boyz II Men
Garth Brooks
James Brown
Jackson Browne
Mariah Carey
The Carpenters
Ray Charles
Cher
Chicago
The Coasters
Sam Cooke
Culture Club
Bobby Darin
Neil Diamond
Dion
Celine Dion
Dixie Chicks
Fats Domino
Dr Dre
The Drifters
Duran Duran
Eagles
Earth Wind & Fire
Electric Light Orchestra
Eminem
En Vogue
Eurythmics
Everly Brothers
Fleetwood Mac
Four Seasons
Aretha Franklin
Marvin Gaye
Genesis
Goo Goo Dolls
Green Day
Al Green
Hall & Oates
The Jam/Style Council
Whitney Houston
The Impressions
Janet Jackson
Michael Jackson
Jay Z
Billy Joel
Carole King
Madonna
Barry Manilow
Paul McCartney
George Michael
Missy Elliott
Moby
The Monkees
Ricky Nelson
Olivia Newton John
Oasis
The O'Jays
Wilson Pickett
P Diddy
Pet Shop Boys
The Platters
Elvis Presley
Prince
Bonnie Raitt
Cliff Richard
Lionel Richie
Linda Ronstadt
Run DMC
Spice Girls
Frank Sinatra
Sly & The Family Stone
Phil Spector
The Spinners
Rod Stewart
Britney Spears
Dusty Springfield
Swen Stefani
Barbara Streisand
Donna Summer
The Supremes
James Taylor
Justin Timerlake/N*Sync
TLC
Shania Twain
Dionne Warwick
Jackie Wilson
Stevie Wonder

And now for the hard part…