uk pop crisis: supa-koopa.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

So, according to the HQ of the enemies of pop (aka BBC), this band whose website proudly bears the legends 'This is what REAL music sounds like' and 'Against Manufactured Pop' (get fighting koganbot on the case, once he's duffed up those idolators!) might crack the top 40 with full indie credibility intact, having no record label at all. (See here for story, if you can bear it). Blimey, punk or what? (ans: NO, obv.)

The obvious response: 'who knew that REAL music sounded like Mega City 4?'.

The other obvious response: 'crikey is this the future of the UK charts?'

(Or really: 'blimey, slow news day at the beeb!')

But seriously: why does the whole '4 real' thing get up my nose so much? Obviously they're wrong, but since when did truth matter over style in the world of pop? Surely this kind of thing just IS pop, or part of it, even if the music is dire? (esp. since I don't subscribe to the lex's no-guitars-in-pop / pop and rock ought to be mutually exclusive platform) Assuage my guilt, poptimists!

Comments

[maura.livejournal.com]

CRAPPY PROCLAIMERS COVERS TO SAVE MUSIC
FILM AT 11

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

"It's fantastic that a band like us can have an opportunity to put ourselves into the top 30 with Razorlight and U2," manager Gary Raymond told the BBC.

Well, if that's the full extent of their Quest, I think the saving of music is not really a hot topic...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

During my lunchtime mission to HMV I had a look at their 'singles chart'.

1. U2
2. Leona
3. Eric P

U2 being at no.1 being Nothing At All to do with the ENORMOUS poster advertising U2 singles album running entire length of the cashier tills.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Is it the future of the UK charts? Depends on how well the downloaded tracks market holds up. We're in a weird situation right now where singles sales are very low (but growing very quickly - doubled in the last year), so there's a window of opportunity for small bands to mobilise their fanbases at quiet times of year - the standard Babylon Zoo effect, but magnified.

The 4 real positioning is so tiresome because it so often stops there - the implication seems to be is that "making real music" is sufficient reason to believe in a band, they need do nothing else. It doesn't bother me if someone like Mastodon, say, sets their colours against "manufactured pop" because at least they're making an effort, not just providing supremely unimaginative music and assuming that realness is enough. (Flawed analogy: "home cooking" meaning hugely overboiled veg etc.)

(Koopa do offer another slightly worrying selling point - they are "English through and through" as manfiested by "using phrases like Hackney and blagging" in their songs).

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Also, I think that for those of us who have lived through a cycle (and maybe the more perspicacious among us) realize how bald-faced a ploy it is, just another angle, and not even a fun one like dressing up like a New Romantic fop.

Also, what's annoying in this case is that they really don't sound that different from Busted at all, except the song's not that good.

So, um, yes, what freakytigger said.

[koganbot]

Agree as to "sounds like Busted" (or Jonas Brothers) if it had been given a better arrangement and a singer w/ twinkle toes. Which is to say that the melody isn't half-bad pop.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

what's this about megaman 4?

[koganbot]

The "for real" meme can be fascinating, since it jumps across all sorts of genres and arguments, supports ever-changing attributes.

From: "Frank Kogan"
To: "Chuck Eddy"
Subject: Milking the mold
Date: Monday, November 03, 2003 3:26 PM

From the press kit to Marshall Madison's REAL:

"As witnessed by his debut album for Row Records, 'REAL,' Marshall is breaking the mold in country music. With a vibrancy and a passion for old fashioned values of God and country, he seems destined to re-write the book on what defines 'stardom' in today's music marketplace."

The passage explodes itself in your face, as paradoxical by accident as anything that Eminem or Jagger has done on purpose. I admire the PR lady's desperate backflip onto a tightrope, her trying to align "old-fashioned" with "breaking the mold" while not losing her balance. I haven't listened to the CD yet, since I fear it'll be all cliché - facial hair and drab clothes celebrated as some sort of achievement. He's being promoted as an antidote to the pretty boys in cowboy hats. But you never know, maybe he'll go for a less easy "real," or do a good job with the one he's got. Anyway, if I like it, I might re-listen to Liam Lynch's *Fake Songs*, whose cuts seemed to ME to contain telltale signs of genuine songness: verses, choruses, melodies, chord progressions. Not a symphony among them. But I recall that most of the song styles date from the pop not-quite-present, so the declaration of fakery is a way for Lynch to nonetheless declare himself an up-to-date pop formalist, he who has the pop styles of the immediate past at his au courant fingertips.