"Oh woe is us!" cry the indie masses. Because music, you see, is bad. Terrible. Music is in a terrible state, what with all these manufactured pop bands and this dreadful 'nu-metal' stuff. Oh, how we wish it was 1967/1977/1989/1991 again when music was brilliant and only good bands ever got into the charts!

Er, what? Hello? This attitude I do not understand. First of all, any idiot knows music is in no way any more commercial than it ever has been, since the emergence of pop music in the 50s. Elvis, remember, didn't write his own songs. In fact it's fair to say that this first ever pop star was largely manufactured; every bit as manufactured as N-Sync, the Backstreet Boys or  Limp Biscuit, only somewhat less talentless. Manufactured pop. Nothing is new here.

But that's not the issue; there's always been pap, they will always be pap. What I don't understand is why it bothers people so much. Contrary to popular belief, there has never been a period when 'good music' has been exclusively popular. We remember the Beatles and Hendrix, but we forget Andy Williams and Cliff Richard. Or at least we try to. 1977 may have been the year when there were suddenly a few more decent bands in the top 40, but that was all. Punk didn't magically remove all the pap from the charts, nor did the Sex Pistols ever reach number one. There's always been a balance between pap pop and good pop, and although there have been minor fluctuations, you can't say that music ever gets officially 'better' in one year, nor that this year or that year was overall better or worse than another year.

Pap, in it's very nature, is transitory; it's like cheap electrical equipment, designed to break after a short while. Good music is like, well, better quality electrical equipment, in that it doesn't break... ah... or if it does you can take it to the...er... repair shop... Anyway, the point is that because cheap rubbish never lasts, it makes sense not to buy it. Although it's a bit stupid to compare music to a hairdryer or a microwave oven, still the point's the same; if you want something that will last, don't buy rubbish.

So there's pap. That's bad. I avoid it, and seeing as you've read this far, you probably avoid it too. Fair enough. But seeing as manufactured pop music is purely emotionless and functional, what I don't get is why people get so uppity about it. Streams of verbal bile are hurled against pap acts like the Backstreet Boys and Britney, condemning them to internal destruction for daring to sell records and get to number one at lot. Well, wakey-wakey!, peeps, that's what they're there for. Commercial pap which doesn't get to number one would be like alcohol which doesn't get you drunk, food which doesn't fill you up, or pornography which doesn't- well, I think I've made my point.

The Backstreet Boys selling a billion trillion singles isn't the triumph of soulless corporate cack over endlessly worthy indie, it's the fulfilment of a business plan. But 'good music' isn't a business plan, and only the shallowest of real artists make records purely for the money. Some guitar band or other not getting in the charts isn't a failure in the battle against the unholy might of interglobal capitalism, it's just kinda sad. Where good music should succeed is not in the charts, but in the music itself. Who cares if Godspeed You Black Emperor! never get into the top 40, providing the music they make is good? The music N-Sync make isn't good, but then it isn't supposed to be. It's supposed to be cack, just cack which people will buy. Good music isn't supposed to be anything other than good music.

Obviously, I want good bands to succeed. I'd like to see more of the bands I like making money, because I like to see nice people doing well and continuing to make records. But that's all. There's no war on here, and it doesn't matter how many records whatever boy/girlband sell, because quite frankly I don't give a shit. I don't buy it, so I don't listen to it. In fact, personally I think the people who attack manufactured music most vehemently do so because they secretly like it. I'm not ashamed to say I like pap when I do; 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' was a great song. But generally pap is pretty bland, so I just don't notice it anymore than I notice the sound of traffic or the buzzing of my computer. It's there. It's not going to go away. So who gives a fuck?

Of course there are always mythical bands which span the gap between pap and music; bands which are both popular and good, and never sell out or anything. Well, guess what? They don't exist. Or rather they do, but there are so few of them as to make them inconsequential. In order to be successful, bands compromise and turn out dumbed-down and less exciting versions of their original music. This isn't indie snobbery; if bands want to make money, good luck to them. Chances are if they're in it purely for the money and adulation, they were never any good in the first place. Though it's annoying that there's such a long line of bands who became progressively crapper as their sales increased (The Clash, U2, Oasis, the Manic Street Preachers to name but a few), still there are always ten other better new bands to fill their place.

Music journalists are forever searching for the ultimate 'good pop band', a band who's music is exciting but already accessible, meaning the band has no need to sell out and popify their sound to become a success. The Beatles are often touted as the ideal good pop band; but this ignores the fact that the reason they became popular was because they were, quite frankly, crap; only later did they get good, and in doing so made albums which would not have been successful, were they not already the biggest group on the planet. If they'd released 'The White Album' as an unknown band, no fucker would have bought it.

There are many other supposed eternal pop bands. But I can only think of a handful of bands or artists who have been extremely commercially successful in their own time, while remaining innovative and any good; Bowie, the Beatles, Radiohead, Public Enemy, Bob Marley and Nirvana are some which come to mind. But all of these artists either started off bad, or started off pop, or had their bad patches, or turned bad or turned pop later on. And besides, these bands only come along every five years of so, therefore I don't expect them to rule the world, and replace pap entirely.

It's nice that these bands exist, and that they make money for themselves, but personally it wouldn't make a difference to me if Radiohead were signed to an independent and were unknown outside the UK; I'd prefer for more people to hear their music, it's true, but I don't feel a burning desire for Radiohead to outsell the Backstreet Boys. I'd much rather Radiohead continued to make good records, than that they continued to be in the charts.

As I've already said, there's no war here. The charts aren't a meter of how good music is, just how much it sells. It's surprising how many people forget that. Good music should be judged on your own personal reaction, not the reaction of 10 million other people. But even if there ever was a war, I think it's clear that in five hundred years time the bands which are remembered won't be N-Sync, The Backstreet Boys, Limp Biscuit, Britney Speares or whomever, because pap doesn't matter. And things that don't matter don't count.

Wake up and smell the decaf; the state of music is just the same as it's always been.
 
 

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