Welcome back to Mostly Pop! Last time out it was all a bit tedious because it was old men trying to be pop stars even though their career was about ten, fifteen, thirty years ago and they’re mostly rock stars gone soft. Enough of that. We’re 4/5 female this time and it’s all about POP POP POP, in your face. No ballads, all bangers. Get comfy, turn your speakers up and click through as I attempt once again to not get too confused and angry in the face of music intended for people twenty years my junior.
This month on Mostly Pop – old people! Well, some of them are merely getting on a bit in pop terms (ie they are now in their 30s), but some are proper old. Like David Bowie! Remember David Bowie? Ask your granddad etc. Anyway, as Jim touched on in his Music For Old People column last week, Bowie’s back after ten years of, I dunno, playing Call of Duty and wanking. This is his first single since some single literally no-one gave a toss about, and it’s my duty to review it because people apparently give a toss now, plus January is just the worst month for singles releases and I need material. Sorry, Jim, I do know he’s your turf.
Yay! It’s Nicola, Kimberley, Cheryl, Sarah and Nadine! They’re back! It’s an objectively-decided fact that Girls Aloud created the greatest pop music of the 21st century, possibly of all time. Yes, it is. And I know they came from a Cowell-inflected TV talent show, but it was back in the old days when the format was fresh and, crucially, they were launched with a sequence of tunes so astonishingly great they’re still pop benchmarks. Furthermore, their ratio of proper pop bangers to tedious ballads is a mighty 3:1 (yes, I did the maths), making them better than anyone ever. The songs are provided by ultraproducers Xenomania, of course, but Xenomania are behind lots of pop songs and none are as good as those performed by Girls Aloud. It’s kind of a perfect match. And one of their B sides was about the freaking Kronstadt* rebellion, because they’re a) awesome and b) really the last great working class band, now that you can’t be a musician on the dole. I haven’t really fleshed that argument out, but it’s 100% true. Who are our pop stars now? Mumford and Sons. Fuck’s sake.
Hooray, they let me do Mostly Pop again! I warn you – I like not a single song this month. Don’t blame me. If you want a nicer Mostly Pop, I advise you to go out there and make some great music – really you only have yourself to blame.
I’m fond of Dizzee Rascal (Bonkers was number one when my daughter was born, plus he’s dressed as a shark in the video), and I can’t say I’m not partial to a bit of DJ Fresh – Gold Dust was one of the best, most summery pieces of pop* in the last few years and even the omnipresent Louder didn’t grate after so many repeats. So this should be the hit of the summer, right? Well, yes and no.
Mid-slap, K'Naan realises that he's going to need a bigger hand.
Keane – Silenced by the Night.
Apparently, Keane have been releasing records fairly regularly since they stunk up the airwaves back in 2004 with Somewhere Only We Know. Amazing. A band who have risen without trace, they’ve had three number one albums. Seriously, what? Anyway, in a country where Adele’s 21 outsells Michael Jackson’s Bad, this will probably be another number one album. Which is a shame.
For one thing, I think – I think – we’ve already heard the Killers’ second album, which is what this song could be taken from. Not the video, though, because it’s, er. Actually, no, replace dish-faced Tom Chaplin with a scraggy-bearded Brandon Flowers and it is a video from the Killers’ second album. Which would be fine if the Killer’s second album was worth copying, which it clearly isn’t. Also, also, also, this video has my LEAST FAVOURITE video cliché, when the protagonists turn up where the band were, but – ooo-eee-ooo-eee – they’re not there! Just their instruments! Oh wow, spooky doo!
This is a sort of ‘behind the curtain’ version of Mostly Pop this month; every time I’m called upon to write this column, I sit down a few days before with YouTube, a laptop and a sparring partner – my wife. Over the course of the next few hours we watch, with increasing horror, the videos for the latest pop releases (or not that latest, thanks to the On Air, On Sale policy which totally screws with my timetables). The following is not a transcript (because I am usually struck dumb during these sessions and can only communicate through eye gestures and screams – that doesn’t make good reading), but it is sort of how the process goes.
I last wrote Mostly Pop back in September 2011. It’s 2012 now – how things have changed! We have jetpacks and robot servants, I’m writing this while tucking into a bowl of food in pill form (mmm… roast chicken and yorkshire pudding pills!), the NHS is finally going to be destroyed (at last, eh?) and the pop scene has moved on to an unrecog… oh, wait, it’s One Direction again.
One Direction – One Thing
So, the band with the biggest hair in the world, what do you have for us? A video packed with studied wackiness. Marvel! As we follow the boys around in their open-top bus for some impromptu, heavily-rehearsed, zany goofing around. Look at them jump! Bounce bounce bounce! They’re such fun! They do that walk like the Monkees do! Wow, they must be as fun as the Monkees*! Look at how they’re dressed! Well, ok, I guess it’s an improvement on their former look. I can imagine the meeting with the stylist now: ‘You! You’re dressing like Doctor Who! You! You’re dressing like one of those blokes from that Richmond sausages advert! You! You’re also Doctor Who, but the other one! You! You’re… you… I… er, DOCTOR WHO!’.
Mr Moth, dispirited but unbowed, does his last Mostly Pop for the time being
The One Direction tourbus, yesterday.
One Direction – What Makes You Beautiful
I’m no fan of Grease. Really not. But I can appreciate an irresistible tune when I hear one, and so can whoever put this crap together. Whoever they are, they have appropriated the riff of Summer Nights in order to try and make this sound in some way fun or exciting and they have failed dismally. The song’s lyrics are just as unwelcome, with the central message boiling down to “There’s nothing hotter to me than a girl with self-esteem issues”. Continue reading Mostly Pop – September 2011→
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