XYZ Magazine April...The Great Pop and Roll Swindle

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

I do and so does Johnny Rotten, but then he’d lost a shit load in the deal. Rotten left, and Sid self-destructed along with the band. No fun, no fun at all. Reduced from an incendiary force to a sad, smacky circus in only two years; and so is the way of the music industry .Forever. Cheers Malcolm.

But if there’s anything barks loudest from the swathe of bullshit sound-bites, and all that retrogressive “You kids don’t know how it was back in the day” misty-eyed punk crap, it’s that question.

We know full well that in the main, pop music is a process of manufacture. From Motown to X-Factor, the plan has been to get some kid in the studio with somebody else’s song, book that flight to the Seychelles and watch the royalties roll in. It’s an industry after all.

But a good tune is a good tune. Almost undeniably so, and I could bang on about music and the ‘capitalist factories’ that churn it out until some Bacharach/Holland & Dozier/Ashford & Simpson number pops up out of nowhere and takes me somewhere else for a bit. You know that ‘hairs on back of neck’ stuff. Lovely.

But my beef lies with that great big distorting wedge between fantasy and reality; everything we invest our hearts and imaginations in only to be dashed on the shabby rocks of reality.

Every year The Brits turns up and I clap my hands. Not generally in appreciation for a particular talent, just for watching humanity dissolve into a bloated keg of self importance, all faux-humble and whatnot. Tee-hee. But this year it left a bad taste in my mouth.

For one, there was serious lack of the good pop folk of Britain making right royal dicks of themselves. All that ‘meedja training’ has no doubt has put paid to the Brandon Block brilliance of yore.

But just what fuck is all that Brit school stuff about?

Nobody more than me supports the funding of Arts in education. To hear people prattle about lottery money and hospitals is a major worry. Like we should just turn up to the call centre/coal face to earn a wage, have kids and that, before snuffing it without once thinking, aspiring or looking outside the confines of our own consciousness for inspiration or just ‘summat else’. Warhol to Leona Lewis, it’s the difference between being a donkey and human being. Period.

But never has pop music stooped to become so transparent. Not only do we know it’s a music factory but we’re also invited to watch it. The ‘kids’ in the audience at the Brits were mostly from that Brits Academy, a school funded by the British Music Industry to develop young talent. For them, an investment in potential profits. For the kids, a fast-track to fame and fortune. So the winners look down into the audience all grateful and humble thinking about how they were down there last year, wide-eyed and hopeful, the audience looks back thinking ‘that’ll be me next year’. Like walking round a battery hen farm, the whole process from the egg to supermarket shelf is laid bare.

What a shame. The best pop music comes from nowhere, sweeps you off your feet, wines and dines you for three minutes then dumps you. But now we just have ‘the product’, the joy and mystery sucked out of it from the off. Plaudits and pundits all hail the emperors’ new clothes, but it looks like knock-off Nike to me.

Dorothy pulls back the curtain and Willy Wonka shouts ‘You lose!You get nothing!’

Ouch.

Pop music has cheated on me and broke my heart, but I’d take her back tomorrow.