I Love #1s - 2002

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I know it's early, but wipe the cobwebs from your eyes and crack your knuckles out, it's another Number Ones poll!

Last week the Shadows rocked the bottom with their Apache song to claim the crown of 1960 ticky-love. Poor Me? Poor you, Adam Faith! Not a tick to be had for him. But without further ado, lets find the best number one of 2002! Plenty of Pop Idol action, plus double dosage of Ver 'Loife in case you'd been missing them. And what's this? Blazin' Squad and Atomic Kitten? It's like teen pop never died, kids!

[Poll #973612]
(Daniel Beddingfield was no.1 in 2001 as well so he's been left off here)

Comments

Also:

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

If UK teen pop has indeed died, who/what killed it? strange_powers sez Channel U. I say: JAMIE OLIVER is to blame! Kids no longer eating as many e numbers = less affection for brightly coloured pop, Scooch aside...

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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I have never rly understood the economics of teen pop - it seems to take a colossal amount of money and work to put together and break a teenpop band, scrappy guitar bands must be more cost effective surely. (Even though the idea that they have a longer lifespan is a total myth).

Is the shift away from physical singles to downloads a factor? How easy is it for under-16s without their own credit/debit cards to download? Maybe they're all buying ringtones instead etc etc. [/grandad]

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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I still think a lot of it is due to the way that, around this time, both rock and hip-hop became sufficiently commodified so as to be acceptable to under-14s. I remember in the 90s hard rock and gangsta rap were, basically, scary, and also far too rude to risk bringing home, but around this time you get Blink 182 and Avril at one end, and Eminem and Nelly at the other, all of whom are exciting to 10-yr-olds rather than frightening. But they've all still got these assumptions of realness and authenticity built into them, even if just the patina of it, and this in turn makes traditional plastic pop like Steps et al unacceptable to the kiddie B182/Eminem fan.

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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

You could be right here - realness always makes more money than non-realness. But I remember from when I was 10-11 that the qn of who was more or less real (usually expressed in terms of coolness rather than danger) was equally acute. (And some kids were into AC/DC, and others were into electro, so there wasn't a fear of rock or rap then). So in that case the question becomes - how does teenpop ever arise in the first place?

(The answer obviously being that there are other axes beyond real-fake and cool-uncool at work)

(Besides which the real-fake axes totally apply WITHIN teenpop anyway I'm sure)

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[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

"Besides which the real-fake axes totally apply WITHIN teenpop anyway I'm sure"

There's a thread over on Popjustice about the merits (or otherwise) of Scooch that proves this point.

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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think there's also a gender thing here - I don't think under-14 boys have ever really been teenpop's audience, those at my school were more likely to be into Nirvana or Red Hot Chili Peppers (ugh, under-14 boys are the worst creatures). But the less scary, more poppy versions of rock and rap would probably have opened both genres up to lots of under-14 girls who'd been put off before, and who would have been precisely the people buying Take That/Spice Girls/S Club 7 before.

I'd never noticed the real/fake axis re teenpop ever before anywhere before reading the mental Popjustice board - I was talking with Peter the other day and neither of us can quite get our heads around the concept of people arguing in those terms, but placing LISA SCOTT-LEE and SCOOCH on the 'credible' side of the line. I think it might be quite arbitrary and also not v common, whereas both rock and rap have a massive already-written history of what constitutes real/fake which new fans buy into as an entirety.

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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think real-fake is an unhelpful way of putting it actually. A 10 or 11 year old listener is hugely alert to when they're being sold something bogus or imitative. They wouldn't buy a Scooch single when they had Steps, any more than they would buy a Chad Valley pirate set when they could get a Pirates Of The Caribbean one.

12/13 year old boydom is VERY different from 10/11 year old!

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[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Also teenage girls have either EMO or RNB to distract them these days surely?

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[whalefish.livejournal.com]

I don't think kids of that age will ever care about that kind of pop again sadly. It's all about bands and R&B once you hit 11 these days, it seems - they seem to be aware of the difference between pure pop and supposedly 'credible' acts a lot earlier on now.

These days I suppose we have the likes of McFly, who probably appeal to the pre-teens up until the point where they graduate to Fall Out Boy and the like.

Nice cuddly pop music will rise again though! They just have to find some way of successfully getting it to the very young kids who will want it.

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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

They already have surely - The Wiggles etc.

There is a big market I think for adults who still want to hear pop but aren't bothered about credibility - The Feeling, Daniel Powter, Dido, etc. The trick is to combine that with more contemporary production and feel - TashBed is aiming for this, so is Bextor, so was Rachel Stevens. Annie and Robyn probably should have marketed themselves to Dido fans instead of club kids, etc etc. Heat magazine pop, basically - multi-purpose pop for 25-34yo women to put on their iPods, hear down the gym, dance to. No derogatory implications meant obv.

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[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> multi-purpose pop for 25-34yo women to put on their iPods, hear down the gym, dance to

Hurrah a demographic in which I am happy to be included! All I need now is an ipod and a gym membership. No The Feeling No Credibility :-)

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[graciousviv.livejournal.com]

Make that 25 - nearly 36 yo women

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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

All the above have a kind of credibility though, apart from Poor Rachel - the basic credibility of writing their own songs which I suspect still goes for a lot. It's not music snob cred but most Dido fans would readily admit to being moved emotionally by Powter/Blunt/Bedingfield/Dido where they wouldn't re Stevens or - as overtly EMO as she is - someone like Simpson Jr. There's always a distinction between music perceived to be for adults (cred or not) and music perceived to be for kids (whether or not the kids are bothered).

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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think this will change though. And part of the reason why is that the kids who bought Spice Girls albums in massive quantities in 97-98 are now in or reaching their 20s. The emphasis in the spice girls was HUGELY on authenticity of performance, not authenticity of creation: that kind of formative experience doesn't leave you.

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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Though it might be suppressed when you're in hugely institutionalised places like school or further ed.

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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah - witness the massive popularity of nu-Take That.

And of course the reason in the first place for the current indie/band-led trend, which I believe we've already discussed, is that a couple of years ago the kids who were into Britpop were beginning to get into positions of power within the music/marketing industries.

So when the 99-02 generation gets into its late 20s/early 30s, it'll be time for another golden age :D

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[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I actually think that the big thing that's hit the 00s pop audience is fear of looking ridiculous, hence you get a glut of bands and sensitive singer songwriters and big Hollywood pop stars but the humble all-singing-all-dancing boyband or plastic Europop act look like an irredeemably naff relic of the past. Maybe around 1999 there was just one Vengaboys or ATB too many or something.

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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Shakira and TashBed would disagree! Though theirs is def a middle way, being ridiculous lyrically and a bit crazy in persona, but still tasteful in other ways.

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[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I've tried arguing this to people I know about record companies about acts like those but of couse they'd much rather be marketing stuff as cool stuff for the hipsters rather than targeting 25-34 year olds so they all think I'm mad to even suggest stuff like that.

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[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

which is ridic because hit that demographic right and you = LAFFING ALL THE WAY TO BANK, whereas p!ssing about with hipsters = next to no money ever...

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[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

It still amazes me that record companies don't get why they are doing so badly.

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[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Poor sales of that last Tash Bedingfield single would appear to disagree with you.

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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hang on the one which is top 10 on d/ls alone? Babies?

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[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Well (in my experience) it's this weird disconnect where the people who go to work for record companies now don't really come out of the trenches of the music biz like they used to, they just go right to work for record companies, and since they pay shit salaries, you have to be doing it for the cool factor. But those people are not actually cool, they're buisinesspeople just like anyone else working in an office. But they're unwilling to admit that and actually act like profit-motivated businesspeople most of the time, they want to accrue cool points, and so they're more interested in bands they see as hip (which, ironically, are the bands most actual kids don't think of as cool). Or, to put it more fairly, they sign both cool and can-sell-well bands, but they put way more effort into working with the cool ones, and that's where record companies fuck up.

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[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Doing unpaid work experience at a major label for 3 months was quite an eye opener [tho v enjoyable as I was under no pressure and could walk out at any time!] as to how isolated they are from the real world. Especially in the A&R, press and plugging departments that actually work directly with the artists - everyone is totally obsessed with Radio 2 airplay, lengthy articles with lots of pictures in Sunday Times Culture section or getting on Jools Holland. This wasn't just for Amy Winehouse but for the Sugababes and Busted as well! Everyone was so obsessed with good results for current acts that they seemingly paid 0 attention to new stuff (bands, scenes, media, non-music related things). It was very easy to get caught up in the hype.