When was the golden age of pop? Have your say at the bottom of the article
The Countryside Alliance will tell you it’s fox-hunting but, trust me, our
national bloodsport is pop-baiting. As regular as a Sex Pistols comeback and
roughly as welcome, articles emerge by men of a certain age or women of a
certain stripe claiming that pop died with Buddy Holly/ Jimi Hendrix/ Sid
Vicious/ Kurt Cobain/ Eva Cassidy/ Joe Strummer (select your own talismanic
figure).
Does any other nation take their pop as seriously as we Britons do? Are Korean
and Latvian broad-sheets full of handwringing, closely argued think pieces
about the death of the 7in single and the demise of TV pop shows? I doubt
it. Other countries worry about their GDP and food and military might. We
worry about our sitcoms, our house prices and our rock ’n’roll.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Last night I began a series called Pop
on Trialon BBC Four, the aim of which is to decide which has been the
most exciting, fertile, significant and entertaining decade in the short,
colourful life of pop thus far. “Oh, that’s obvious,” say friends when I
mention the premise to them. They then go on to cite, say, the Fifties for
their primal rawness, the Sixties for their revolutionary glee or the
Seventies for the dizzying diversity of their classic records. During the
course of the series, cases are made strongly for both the Eighties and the
Nineties and, indeed, right up to the present day. But the hand-me-down
wisdom is that, the odd great band or golden moment aside, be it Britpop and
Jarvis showing his bum to Wacko Jacko or Dancepop and Kylie nearly showing
her bum in microscopic golden shorts, the music we love is in terminal
decline.
All the veriest rubbish, of course. What we might broadly call Pop Music is –
here, there and everywhere in the rudest of health. As I write this I’m
listening to the debut album by a band from Norway called the Lionheart
Brothers. A giddy mélange of the Beach Boys, psychedelia, dance music and
postpunk cleverness, it is quite astonishingly good.
My favourite hit singles of the year just gone were made by Amy Winehouse and
the Manic Street Preachers, both showing that main-stream rock and soul can
be rejuvenated and new-minted. At their best, I reckon the Sugababes and
Girls Aloud make the best girl pop we’ve heard since the heyday of the
Supremes and the Marvellettes. And that’s before we’ve even started on
dubstep, acidfolk or stoner metal.
But there’s a vague widespread feeling, fuelled by hair-raising statistics and
a panic-stricken distribution sector, that unless we do something quickly,
maybe all dash out and buy three copies of the next Robbie Williams record,
pop will die and we’ll all have to listen to plain-song and modern jazz for
ever.
Yes, record sales have declined. That is as unarguable as the tides. Britons
still buy more CDs per head than any other country on Earth but like
everyone else we’re nothing like as keen on the shiny overpriced coasters as
we were. Look at the statistics for singles sales on page 13. Depressing –
if you’re in marketing. You’re probably not, though.
And it doesn’t mean that we’re tiring of pop. Merely of certain outdated
delivery formats. The compact disc, that barely believable cash cow for the
record labels for the last two decades of the 20th century, is moribund.
Once the last word in high-tech, it now feels as antique as a piano roll.
But just as the decline in piano rolls didn’t mean we were bored with music,
nor does the collapse in CD sales.
Today, the record industry is a terrified beast, frozen like a rabbit in the
headlights of the technological change it should have seen coming for a
decade. When a passionate music fan is eased out of a major record company –
such as happened this week, when Tony Wadsworth, chairman and CEO of EMI
Music UK and Ireland, departed – there’s little to rejoice about.
But what else can we expect from an industry whose response to a liberating
burst of technological progress was to bully, bluster and generally get
medieval on our asses? Energies that could have been put into making legal
downloads easier were spent on threatening teenage girls with the full
weight of the law for swapping their Kanye West MP3s. The lesson has been
learnt now. But only when the likes of Radiohead joined in on our side by
saying “Pay what you like for our new record”. And when Prince gives his new
album away, not via the NME or Q, but tucked between the pages
of that incendiary bible of teen revolt The Mail on Sunday, well,
something must be up.
What we all have to get used to is that the quasi-religious primacy of the pop
chart, the pop single and the pop album is gone for ever. Whatever chart we
grew up with – Johnnie Walker and T-Rex and Monday lunchtimes round the
bikesheds with a trannie, or Mark Goodier eulogising about the Happy Mondays
at Sunday teatime – no one cares any more. Do you know what’s at No 1 right
now? OK, it’s probably something from The X Factor but you take
my point. Unless you’re Simon Cowell nobody gives a toss about the charts
except for a week in late December when it becomes a kind of dull tabloid
equivalent of the Boat Race. Is this such a bad thing? What matters more to
you, whether the new Morrissey/ KT Tunstall/ Sigur Rós album is any good? Or
its first-week chart placing?
The best comparison I can offer is with the so-called golden age of TV.
Morecambe and Wise, like Noddy Holder, once held the nation in the palm of
their hand every Christmas and beyond. In our millions we hung on every
screamed note and every wiggle of the glasses.
I’ve no problem with that, probably because I love Eric and Ernie and Noddy.
But their numbers look decidedly paltry against the 24 million people who in
1978 watched an episode of To the Manor Born. Surely, young and old
alike, if we’d had YouTube and Singstar and iPods and DVD box sets we
wouldn’t have flung ourselves, lemming-like, into such madness.
The CD sales crash of the major labels does not mean pop is dead. It doesn’t
even mean that it’s under the weather. It means that pop music is busy and
quixotic and fragmented and multi-cultural – much as our politicians keep
telling us Britain should be – and that the jury is out, not on pop, but on
the industry that can’t keep up with it.
— Pop on Trial will be broadcast by BBC Four on Jan 16,
17, 23 and 24 (10pm) as part of the channel’s season Pop! What is
it Good For? www.bbc.co.uk/pop
The UK’s bestselling singles by decade
© The Official UK Charts Company (total sales to Nov 2007)
1950s
1. Rock Around the Clock, Bill Haley and his Comets, 1955 (1.39 million)
2. Diana, Paul Anka, 1957 (1.24 million)
3. Mary's Boy Child, Harry Belafonte, 1957 (1.17 million)
4. What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For? Emile Ford & the
Checkmates, 1959 (920,000)
5. Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley, 1958 (880,000)
6. What Do You Want? Adam Faith, 1959 (820,000)
7. Living Doll, Cliff Richard & the Drifters, 1959 (770,000)
8. All Shook Up, Elvis Presley, 1957 (740,000)
9. Love letters in the Sand, Pat Boone, 1957 (710,000)
10. It Doesn’t Matter Any More, Buddy Holly, 1959 (680,000)
1960s
1. She Loves You, the Beatles, 1963 (1.89 million)
2. I Want to Hold Your Hand, the Beatles, 1963 (1.75 million)
3. Tears, Ken Dodd, 1965, (1.521 million)
4. Can’t Buy Me Love, the Beatles, 1964 (1.52 million)
5. I Feel Fine, the Beatles, 1964 (1.41 million)
6. The Carnival is Over, the Seekers, 1965 (1.4 million)
7. We Can Work It Out/ Daytripper, the Beatles, 1965 (1.38
million)
8. Release Me, Engelbert Humperdinck, 1967 (1.36 million)
9. It’s Now or Never, Elvis Presley, 1960 (1.21 million)
10. Green Green Grass of Home, Tom Jones, 1966 (1.2 million)
1970s
1. Mull of Kintyre/Girls’ School, Wings, 1977 (2.05
million)
2. Rivers of Babylon/ Brown Girl in the Ring, Boney M, 1978
(1.985 million)
3. You’re the One that I Want, John Travolta and Olivia
Newton-John, 1978 (1.975 million)
4. Mary’s Boy Child/ Oh My Lord, Boney M, 1978 (1.79
million)
5. Summer Nights, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, 1978 (1.515
million)
6. YMCA, Village People, 1979 (1.38 million)
7. Bohemian Rhapsody, 1975 (1.3 million)
8. Heart of Glass, Blondie, 1979 (1.18 million)
9. Bright Eyes, Art Garfunkel, 1979 (1.15 million)
10. Don’t Give Up on Us, David Soul, 1977 (1.145 million)
1980s
1. Do They Know It’s Christmas?, Band Aid, 1984 (3.55 million)
2. Relax, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 1984 (1.91 million)
3. I Just Called to Say I Love You, Stevie Wonder, 1984 (1.775 million)
4. Two Tribes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 1984 (1.51 million)
5. Don’t You Want Me?, Human League, 1981 (1.43 million)
6. Last Christmas/ Everything She Wants, Wham!, 1984 (1.42
million)
7. Karma Chameleon, Culture Club, 1983 (1.4 million)
8. Careless Whisper, George Michael, 1984 (1.36 million)
9. The Power of Love, Jennifer Rush, 1985 (1.32 million)
10. Come on Eileen, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, 1982 (1.2 million)
1990s
1. Candle in the Wind ’97/Something about the Way You Look
Tonight, Elton John, 1997 (4.86 million)
2. Unchained Melody/ (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs
of Dover, Robson Green and Jerome Flynn, 1995 (1.84 million)
3. Love is All Around, Wet Wet Wet, 1994 (1.78 million)
4. Barbie Girl, Aqua, 1997 (1.72 million)
5. Believe, Cher, 1998 (1.67 million)
6. Perfect Day, Various Artists, 1997 (1.54 million)
7. (Everything I Do) I Do It for You, Bryan Adams, 1991 (1.52 million)
8. Baby One More Time, Britney Spears, 1999 (1.45 million)
9. I’ll Be Missing You, Puff Daddy and Faith Evans, 1997 (1.4
million)
10. I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston, 1992 (1.35 million)
2000s
1. Anything Is Possible/ Evergreen, Will Young, 2002 (1.79
million)
2. Unchained Melody, Gareth Gates, 2002 (1.34 million)
3. It Wasn’t Me, Shaggy feat. RikRok, 2001 (1.174 million)
4. (Is This The Way To) Amarillo, Tony Christie feat. Peter Kay, 2005
(1.174 million)
5. Do They Know It’s Christmas?, Band Aid 20, 2004 (1.13million)
6. Pure and Simple, Hear’Say, 2001 (1.079 million)
7. That’s My Goal, Shayne Ward, 2005 (1.076 million)
8. Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Kylie Minogue, 2001 (1.074
million)
9. Can We Fix It?, Bob the Builder, 2000 (1 million)
10. Whole Again, Atomic Kitten, 2001 (953,500)
