Trolls Holiday in Harmony includes four original songs and features the voice talent of Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Kenan Thompson, Rachel Bloom, Ron Funches, Kunal Nayyar, Anderson. Meanwhile, Tiny Diamond comes down with a bad case of writer's block trying to think of a special holiday rap for his dad.
Things take an unexpected turn, however, when she and Branch draw each other's name. This is, of course, a very specific and narrow definition that doesn’t much resemble the pop landscape in 2020 - no Post Malone-style miserablism, Drake-esque sing-rapping or Weeknd-like glittery angst.As the holidays near, Queen Poppy plans the first annual Trolls Kingdom Secret Holiday Gift Swap. “We love music with a hummable hook, with an upbeat melody, with a catchy rhythm that makes you want to snap your fingers, tap your toes and wiggle your butt,” says the Pop Troll king. There are characters representing reggaeton (played by J Balvin) and K-pop (played by the girl group Red Velvet) as bounty hunters living between tribes, though ones inclined toward dance-offs.Īs for pop, the genre is presented as a tonally narrow emotional ethos. Classical and Techno merit little narrative exposition, however. The Country Trolls - fronted by Delta Dawn, voiced by an almost embarrassingly good Kelly Clarkson - are robust and protectionist, just like in real life. There are, in fact, six Troll tribes - Pop, Funk, Country, Techno, Classical and Rock - that do not overlap (apart from Cooper, a Funk Troll raised by Pop Trolls).
the belief that rock determines the framework through which popular music should be analyzed.) But in “Trolls World Tour,” which reads like a position paper written by someone extremely, perhaps unreasonably frustrated about how the dark side of pop history was erased by the first film, both sides are flawed. (Or, in non-critic terms, the idea that pop music has real cultural value vs. This is the film’s central battle: poptimists vs. But this is exactly the sort of conversation that’s been de rigueur in music criticism for the last couple of decades, especially when compounded by the film’s other plot throughline, the impending imperialism of the Rock Trolls. The actual truth: Pop absorbed all of the things that made each of the other styles great and watered it down! Pop wrote the history books - a scrapbook, in this universe - suggesting that it wasn’t, in fact, the aggressor!įor 6-year-olds who sang along with Poppy and Branch (a tepid Timberlake) last time around, this might be a destabilizing plot twist.
Turns out all that Pop Troll joy was built upon the subjugation of other musical Trolls. Paak who’s tasked with the sociopolitical heavy lifting. Blige, Kelly Clarkson, J Balvin, Ozzy Osbourne and Gustavo Dudamel, it is, somehow, the genial, sometimes grating funk-soul singer-rapper Anderson. The real lesson of the movie? That one Troll’s privilege never comes without another Troll’s suffering.Īnd yet in a movie that features musical megastars including Justin Timberlake, George Clinton, Mary J. What horror lies beneath, though? In “Trolls World Tour,” which was released last week, Poppy, queen of the Pop Trolls, discovers that her tribe isn’t the only one out there, and that the Rock Trolls are intent on conquering them all, a residual effect of a time when Pop Trolls were, in fact, invaders. Chipper, loopy songs peppered the film, which presented pop music, and Pop Trolldom, as sources of joy that are unimpeachably good (if a little oblivious). The original “Trolls” movie in 2016 was about the unique privilege associated with being a Troll - kaleidoscopically colorful lives, unrelenting joy, hourly hug-a-thons.