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

Re: Also:

[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.

Re: Also:

[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)

Re: Also:

[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.

Re: Also:

[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.

Re: Also:

[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!

Re: Also:

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

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