Sinister: Talk about... pop music

[Martin Horsfield]

Oh my god,

I've always enjoyed Heather's posts, but never in my life have I heard
pop music described as being a 'movement'? Liking pop music is like
enjoying chocolate - you know you shouldn't, but it works for you every
time.

In Britain, at least, we boys were always meant to be ashamed of pop. It
was for girls and, of course 'puffs'. We boys were meant to like
Prog/the Sex Pistols/Iron Maiden/Tortoise/Sterophonics (delete according
to your generation and whether you had a state or private education). 

However, I dare say if any of us on this list thought back to the first
music that genuinely moved them, it would be POP! It sure as hell
wouldn't have been Faust. So many people live in denial of this fact
because they are swept along by the peer group pressure of liking 'real'
music and only really rediscover the POP! instinct when they start
dancing, getting off with the opposite sex, taking Es, going to 70s
nights, gay clubs, whatever. And of course, once they discover the joys
of hedonism and having their hearts filled with music, they realise that
its just as much fun to dance to Dionosaur Jr as it is to ABC because
its all pop; musicians (with the possible exceptions of Luke Haines and
Roger Waters) want you to play their music loud, evangelise about it,
dance to it, buy it and make it popular. Why wouldn't they?

I've always thought that all the greatest pop songs are essentially
TRUTHS, whether that's Reach Out.. I'll Be There, Supersonic ("you've
got to be yourself..."), So Far Away (Carole King, not Dire Straits), I
Should Be So Lucky, Wake Up Boo, Do You Remember The First Time?, Too
Many Broken Hearts, A Design For Life, Becoming More Like Alfie,
Comfortably Numb, Even Men With Hearts Of Steel Love To See A Dog On The
Pitch, Might Be Stars, Cruel Summer, So Much Love So Little Time, Kiss
Me, Broken Heart, Can't Get Out Of Bed, Walk On By, A Summer Wasting or
Stars Of Track And Field. 

(This partly explains why, in the words of Edwyn Collins, visiting US
grunge bands playing in the middle of the bill at Reading "wonder why we
can't connect/to the ritual of the trashed guitar")

I know this might degenerate into a semantic argument, or worse still a
petty regional one but to us Britons, calling pop a 'genre' is like us
calling your Pop a sex offender.

Martin Horsfield

PS/To the person who asked, Pete Wylie's basically been charged with
making threatening phone calls to his ex-wife (she's going out with an
old mucker of his). According to my man at the Hope & Anchor, poor old
Pete (who's coined the best song title of the year - 'Heart As Big As
Liverpool) has been 'off his head' for about a year now. Sinful, eh?
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