Pop is Not A Dirty Word

On Sunday (8th April), I went to Newcastle Metro Radio Arena to bring my childhood to a close. In October of last year, the pop conglomerate Steps reunited for a car-crash reality TV series and a subsequent arena tour. I, along with thousands of others, rejoiced at this news. Steps were a manufactured pop band from the 90s, who were popular with small children and the gay community because they paired psychotically catchy dance songs with diligent choreography. Even now, I remember that fateful Boxing Day in 2001 when they announced their split. It was the first taste of bereavement among my peers. As a result, their reunion ignited an enthusiasm within me for crap pop music.

I say 'crap pop music' because during my teenage years, I found my way to the dark side of Virgin Megastores and bought Foo Fighters, Bloc Party and The Cribs. I substituted my dance moves for the frenetic crank of electric guitar. The term 'real music' entered my sullen teenage world along with the phrase 'music snob'. I never used the latter phrase, but I'm sure my friends did. Frequently. Pop music is always battered for it's homogeneity and its crassness. If you mute the TV and see a pretty girl with her tits out, your mind will think 'pop music video'. No one will blame you. A couple of years ago, if you covered the TV up, chances are you would confuse pop songs for others as they were all being written by the same people. But, the question still remains as to why people berate pop music. Why do people treat pop music in the same way that they treat porn in the film industry?

Here is my theory: because it's an easy target. Pop music has always been ephemeral; it's this mysterious thing that is there one week and buggers off the next, never to be seen again apart from on those tragic radio stations that still want to sell you double glazing even though every person in the western world has had it installed and uninstalled in lieu of ironically expensive wooden frames. I digress. The life span of pop music is so short, that we can mock it without feeling guilty about it because it won't be there next week to feel the hurt. Do you think the owner of 1984's 16th Number One gives a fuck about what was said about them on Jukebox Jury that week? You don't know, you probably don't know who it was, nor will you ever care to know who it was! Pop is the mayfly of the music business. Dead important for fifteen minutes, and then just dead.

The pop scene in the early noughties was, for want of a better word, grim. The purple patch of pop had been substituted for failed pornstars starring in hollow videos for remixed '80s soft-rock ballads. Commerce within pop had hit an all-time low due to filesharing. The chart was a free-for-all, no one was buying anything any more. And then came along this brassy girl with a mockney accent and some box-fresh Nike Airs who blew us all away with these stand-up-and-be-counted lyrics that were sung over a lovely ditsy arrangement. She was called Lily Allen. Allen then championed a bunch of girls and boys, just like her, who created these heart-wrenching songs, and then went one better and stuck a synth on top instead of a Fender. Pop was beginning to find its feet again, with a new sophistication that had never been seen. In 2008, Lady Gaga came along and ripped a new arsehole in the glass ceiling, and pop was reinvented all over again.

Pop is not a dirty word. Pop is actually just short for popular, but that term seems obsolete now. In that old respect, Kasabian is pop. Pop music is ephemeral, non-threatening stuff that we can take and leave as we please. Good pop music sticks to the walls of your brain, evokes emotion, provokes discussion at midnight, makes you lose all of your inhibitions in a club, compels you and others to take action. Pop is not crap. How can you say that 'Better The Devil You Know' is less than what it is, which is a very good pop song at least, and a heart-breaking plea at its most? I don't see anyone questioning the lyrics of 'Yellow' by Coldplay, even though it is the most uninteresting, incoherent load of shit I have ever spent time reading. Is it because they play their own instruments? Is it because there isn't any corresponding dance moves? Give me a break. If you choose to sculpt your music taste on what the NME says is cool, you won't have a music taste by the end of this decade. Go away, on your own, and think about what you truly find to be 'real music'. I bet you all the money I have that it isn't Sex On fucking Fire.