I have been thinking about this a lot lately, as the charts have filled up with brilliant pop songs and one of the absolute best of the year has been no.1 for almost 10 weeks. We surely must have won! And I think we actually have, but a lot of people (as exemplified in this article) will not realise it. As long as we do, and enjoy it, I don’t think it matters. Now I will explain…
There have been many cycles in the history of pop music (by which I mean music that sounds poppy, not music that is popular). It has been cool and uncool and usually both at the same time. I was a surprisingly rockist child, cheering when Take That split up and mocking friends for owning their cassettes, so my pop fandom began in the mid/late 90s with bands like the Spice Girls and Aqua, who were all the rage at my primary school. I started listening to the charts and watching Top Of The Pops, and one day in WhSmiths I decided I was bored of Girl Talk magazine and bought TOTP instead.
I loved it so much that a day later I bought Smash Hits too, and continued to buy both for about 4 years, until pop was brutally murdered by three boys who jumped up and down too much in 2002. The main attitude that reading these magazines at that time implanted in my head was “pop is great and indie is boring”. Alice Deejay summed it up perfectly in their album title, Who Needs Guitars Anyway? It became my motto instantly and ever since.
Pop was hugely dominant in the charts and the media for the half-decade from the Spice Girls up until Pop Idol. The opposing attitude of authenticity and integrity never really went away, and fans of every genre other than pop relished the opportunity to grumble, but “pop” was such a buzz-word that one of the biggest bands in the world at this time named a song after it (and I in turn named this blog after that song). *NSync were proud to be pop… at least as long as their music kept on selling by the bucketload, even if their shameless declarations of poptasticness made them perhaps the most hated band on the planet.
I don’t know enough about other areas of popular culture to know if the trend is universal, but it seems that when something becomes hugely popular and ubiquitous, as pop music did, people eventually get sick of it and need the antidote – the complete opposite. This meant that the years from 2002 to 2005 were very dark times. Every other genre tried to edge its way in and be that antidote, with the rock and indie acts grabbing every vulnerable teenager brought up on Steps and feeling the natural desire to distance themselves from what they loved as a child. What’s the opposite of cheery, cheesy Steps? Angry rock and authentic indie. And so the silly children blindly ran from what they knew, unwittingly towards what those grumbling journalists had led them to believe was the real true quality music, while we pop fans clung on hopelessly to our dearest ex-S Clubbers and boyband wannabes, reminding ourselves that the opposite of credible is incredible. But it turned out we needn’t have worried so much.
Another big thing was happening at this time: a technological revolution. The Internet and digital TV and radio meant that everyone had access to a limitless variety of music and musical styles. Whatever tickled your fancy, you could be its biggest fan and quite easily ignore whatever was in the charts and mainstream media. Simultaneously, MySpace and the ease of selling music online independently is handing over a huge portion of music buying from major labels to independent acts, many not even signed. This all means that the music bought has become much more diverse and far less concentrated on the top acts than it had previously ever been. This left the charts and mainstream media for the one thing that always wins – a great melody. And who provides those great melodies? Great pop bands!
Of course, it hasn’t been quite that easy for pop to regain its throne. The biggest opposition has not been indie music in its original sense – in fact these days I would align myself more with a traditional indie attitude than a mainstream trend-following one, and many of my favourite bands (such as I’m From Barcelona and The Pipettes) merge indie attitudes with brilliant pop sounds. Instead what caused me most angst in the Dark Ages of pop (see above) was really bad music masquerading as pop and in fact indie.
Both popists and true indie kids had to put up with the term they’d always applied to their music being continually applied by dogmatic media opinion leaders to awful things. We had to deal with Crazy Frog, Westlife and the Noise Next Door (I’m upset just thinking of them!), while our indie cousins fell into even deeper depression as an indie revival was declared with Pete Doherty and Razorlight at the helm! In all our wallowing at the dismal failure of V and Rachel Stevens to reach their deserved no.1 spots, did we ever stop to think of those poor shoegazers who could never read an NME again.
Recently I have begun to think that the antidote theory may have reversed, and now that it’s the guitar bands who are ubiquitous, people will be so swarmed by all the negativity in that music that they’ll be desperate for some positivity. We’ve already seen it in the huge successes of the Scissor Sisters, High School Musical, The Feeling, Girls Aloud and Mika. Also lacking in indie music is any kind of good beat, hence dance music and upbeat r’n’b are very much in demand. Music journalists may be able to persuade punters to choose Fall Out Boy over the Backstreet Boys, but Britain can never be robbed of its party music – we are a nation of binge drinkers, after all. All this has collided with the 90s being long ago enough for us to feel nostalgic about it, and those who ran from Steps have suddenly remembered how much they always wanted to see Take That and the Spice Girls in concert. This fickleness greatly benefits us true pop fans!
So, it could be that pop is back as an antidote to authenticity and negativity, and I do think this is definitely a big factor in its revival, but I also am not sure we can talk about music in this sense of cycles and antidotes anymore, due to the aforementioned diversification (is that a word? sounds good anyway!) of music in general. Everything moves so fast and very few people’s tastes reflect the overall state of music, so it’s impossible to make generalisations about individuals, only about social groups and musical tribes (which certainly do still exist).
I love following the changes and trends in music, and will continue to do so and enjoy discussing it, but as that Guardian journalist’s analysis shows when compared to my own, the diversification means that anyone can present the history of music as they know it in a way that suits their beliefs. Much like real history, our analyses tell more about ourselves than the real facts, but perhaps if enough intelligent people tell music history from their point of view, we can eventually piece together the whole picture.