unclebuck

Turned out to be quite interesting.

In as much as it accurately mirrors the decline of UK pop music into the pathetic pap it has become in 2003 (with the exception of the Sugar Babes of course)

Anybody disagree?

AndiThompson

Pop's always been this crap, your just getting old

south-star

I disagree.

.there's always been crap...ie Joe Dolce in the 80's,bananarama,etc,etc....and there's class music around today....Coldplay for one.

It seems UB is a member of the "the older i get,the better it used to be" brigade.

I'm sure your wife says that too..

..

philc

- UB; I think it goes in cycles.

The artists get in the scene, then the moneymen spot the pattern and milk it to death until the next load of original artists break though.

eg - in the middle to late 50's it was Elvis, Bill Haley, etc - then the moneymen arrived and started churning out 'like' songs.

Wasn't until the era of the singer-songwriters came through (Lennon- McCartney) that good toons were back.

Early seventies and the moneymen returned - Edison Lighthouse and other concocted bands reigned supreme (remember - 'nobody goes where my Rosemary goes' or 'sugar, sugar')

Then along came punk - hooray - sex Pistols, Clash, etc ....

... not sure what's happened since then, but I agree we're in a bit of a trough musically again with the moneymen putting together boybands and girlbands .....

so, what's next?

NotoriousREV

Whats next? Let the milking of Nu-Metal begin: Avril Lavigne, Busted, 888 etc.

At least we have bands around like the White Stripes making original sounding music even if they're not pushing the envelope, as such.

tiggers

It's funny as I wrote a piece for a magazine on this very subject a couple of months ago.

IMHO pop is actually no better or worse now than it ever has been. As mentioned above there have always been manufactured bands/music and there have always been good original bands no matter what the era.

The real problem now is mainstream pop radio and the effect it has on the music buying public's perception of the different scenes. Until about 6/8 years ago the setup of radio in the UK was very simple. BBC's Radio 1 controlled the pop airwaves and could make or break a band via there playlists (admittedly not a very healthy state of affairs). All other stations were either led by them or played oldies (a la Radio 2).

In recent times though for whatever reason Radio 1 became much more specialised and has really become focused on the various dance music scenes and grunge rock. Consequently most kids listening to Radio 1 went out and bought dance/grunge music and therefore this got in the charts which meant Radio 1 played more of it - a vicious circle (not that there is anything wrong with dance or grunge by the way).

There were of course other mitigating circumstances like the decline of single sales due to the CD format and cost (most dance is single CD/vinyl release oriented unlike other types of pop music).

Recently other radio stations have moved to fill the void left by Radio 1 and even Radio 2 has moved towards this with their DJ line up and music playlists lokking much like the Radio 1 of ten years ago.

Put simply good music of all types is still out there - it's just you've got to hunt for certain genres a little more than you used to. Two of the best gigs I have seen in recent times were Travis and Coldplay - both guitar based pop/rock bands and both pretty good - in fact Travis reminded me of an early U2 - can't be bad (unless of course you don't like U2!!!).

Regards,

tiggers