Smells Like Teen Spirit

`I'd like to say I think the abysmal ignorance of educated persons about the popular music of the millions is deplorable. First, because pop music on its own level can be so good; and I must declare that never have I met anyone who, condemning it completely, has turned out, on close enquiry, to know anything whatever about it. But worse, because the deaf ear that's turned, in pained disdain, away from pop music betrays a lamentable lack of curiosity about the culture of our country."

So much and so little has changed in the past 40 years that pop remains in some quarters a despised, derided entity, despite the fact that some of it is so good - and can equal work in any art form one cares to mention. Pet Sounds? On a good day, they might just change their minds.) (If you disagree, listen, really listen, to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and you might just change your mind.)

Following the debacle of the MTV Europe Awards in Dublin in mid-November, however, there has been a lot of talk about the banality and dearth of talent in pop music. Why are we surprised that so many pop stars are sadly lacking in genuine creativity when one of the hit singles du jour comes from a chorus of singing hamsters? Although it's a smart idea to call a novelty song Cognoscenti vs Intelligentsia (unless it's by Scritti Politti, that is), such "cleverness" says more about the concept than the execution. So much pop music of the late 1990s is driven by marketing concerns rather than by any need to express a creative thought, but we all know that, don't we? As for manufactured boy bands and girl bands over the past 40 years, are they really anything more than cyphers for the money men and women behind them?

But is that anything new? Even as far back as the mid-1950s, during the era of an earlier wave of boybands, the post-war crooners, there were arguments and essays detailing the relationship between the producer of pop and the consumer. Perhaps the key difference between the old boys and girls and the new ones is sex - the old ones upheld the views of the Moral Majority, the new ones are marketed to sell a sexual message. And you could argue that this was a lesson they learned from rock'n'roll.

Rock'n' roll was the death knell for the crooners - Elvis knocked Bing and the boys out of the picture. pop singer, from one who sings material of sub But what controlled both kinds of music were factors of taste, ambition, trends, behavioural patterns and peer group approval. The common link between them was the music industry, exploitative to the last.

"It was always a business, there to make money," says Dana Rosemary Scallon, MEP, perhaps better known in Ireland for being one of the first Irish female international pop stars. However, there has been a change of emphasis; when All Kinds Of Everything won the Eurovision in 1970, Dana says, there was opportunity in pop music for individual initiative. "A lot of the bigger companies play safe and control the market. They don't leave a lot of room for development of talent, and they don't go for the long haul. The real creative people are the mavericks within the music industry, who have got a vision. The danger is that as soon as they get very successful, it's tempting to take a lot of money and be absorbed into a bigger company. The fact remains that pop music is a global industry now, and there is immense control of what goes out into the public domain."

It seems that what is in the public domain these days is a proliferation of soul-less boy and girl bands and pop stars who have neither need nor inclination to be creatively self-sufficient. It's a clear sign that pop, unlike hip-hop and occasional examples of rock and dance culture, has finally become toothless. The only thing that has become harder is the marketing of it. Simply put, pop couldn't eat itself even if it wanted to. MTV, on the other hand, is the multi-toothed vanquisher of pop over the past 10 years.

"MTV is a complete response to market demand," reasons Caroline Sullivan, rock critic with The Guardian and author of the recently published Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair With The Bay City Rollers (Bloomsbury). "Although it could be argued The Monkees got there first, the manufactured band phenomenon actually goes back to the 1980s, with bands such as New Kids On The Block and New Edition. That said, there is obviously a market and there are guys and girls who will do anything to become famous. There are loads of young guys out there who have grown up in the Thatcherist 1980s, or whatever the Irish equivalent is, realising there wouldn't be a job for them. They said, "Well, I'll just be famous, then, and join a boy band or go to theatre/dance school'."

There is an entirely different mind-set behind music with credibility. Almost 40 years ago, The Beatles defined an era that made pop respectable as a self-expressive art form. Play your own instruments, write your own songs, and you'd have the respect of both yourself and your peers. You might even see some chart action. Today's pop market thrives on material written by committee - more a brain drain than a brain storm. While pop music moves quicker as a communications system than film, television and publishing, it can be really, really bad. Credibility is a rare commodity these days.

"Look at Take That and Boyzone," argues Caroline Sullivan. "More than at any time in the past, all you have to be is good-looking and have some clever producer behind you to give you the right songs - which, of course, you'll have had no hand in writing yourself. If record companies have no problem putting a lot of money behind you, then you'll probably become a pop star.

"They seem to be carbon copies of each other. Christina Aguilera is Britney Spears, except she's blonde. Westlife and Another Level are Boyzone. The talent bit comes in when you talk to the press and media. Will you say the right thing? Will it sound witty? That's how Robbie Williams works - he's clever and a master of the one-liner. Talent equals intelligence? That stopped about 10 years ago. I see the producer behind pop acts as being creatively valid, because at least they are putting together music in an irresistible way."

The biggest marketplace for pop music, which now mostly has a base of dance rhythms instead of rock, is the pre- and teenage market, from ages nine to 16 via media like MTV. Caroline Sullivan looks upon MTV as being merely a visual medium through which pop kids can identify with their icons. "They can copy dance movements and crappy Tommy Hilfiger baggy jeans. It makes it a lot easier to buy into an image when the band is on television and being endlessly promoted."

But Dana takes a more cautionary view. "We all need to be very careful as to how we view this age group," she advises. "If we simply view them as consumers, that is a very dangerous and wrong thing to do. We've seen moves to regard them not as consumers but to protect them as children. That's essential. We need to look at not only the marketing of records but the content of the product. Do we just market it in the same way as we do for adults? Some companies are targeting the parents through the children and I think that's a violation of the children's right to be protected.

"We need to see an awareness that we're actually dealing with very impressionable children, and that it isn't always possible for the parent to protect. I know you can't expect a TV station to parent a child, but there just needs to be an awareness that children deserve to have a childhood, and they deserve to be protected by adults."

While the argument on the nature of pop music oscillates between it being described as the "Devil's music" ("manufactured boy bands who have gone off the boil", according to UK music industry insider Jonathan King) and a God-send ("Pop gives a voice and a face to the dispossessed," writes US critic Dave Marsh), the kerching sounds of the cash registers remains a constant presence. And there are no signs - as yet - that the new millennium is going to usher in another rock'n'roll revolution.