Guardian
I want pop, not poseurs
Tom Waits v Kylie; Springsteen v Madonna. Rock critics and fans insist that only Proper Music matters, but pop can be just as exciting
Nick Duerden
Sunday November 28, 2004
The Observer
Last week, Tom Waits played his first London concert in 17 years. While traffic didn't exactly grind to a standstill, it was, nevertheless, cause for much reverence and awe in certain circles. Many a rock critic forgot to tape EastEnders that night. Why? Because Tom Waits is a serious artist who prompts serious rather than ephemeral worship. No matter that almost all of his songs sound the same - think skeleton, tin can and a back-of-the-throat gargle - the singer represents Proper Music, which, unlike its bastard cousin, Disposable Pop, is kwality with a capital K. Anything less... and, well, it's just not cricket, is it?
The event sold out in the manner that these things do (i.e. quickly) and, on the evening itself, little Thom Yorke was seen stamping his feet outside the venue screaming that he'd lost his ticket. Had the Radiohead frontman done this when Madonna played Earls Court recently, his woolly reputation would have been in tatters, but tantrums are fine when it's Tom Waits.
A similar response greeted Brian Wilson earlier this year when he arrived in the UK to perform songs from what critics like to call, in inverted commas, 'his great lost album, Smile', although it's not lost anymore. Anyway, the former Beach Boy may not be quite so crippled by fame as he once was, but as these concerts effectively confirmed, neither has he fully recovered. On stage, he shook, he stuttered and the lights in his eyes were incontestably dim, but because he was Brian Wilson, and because this was Proper Music, adoration was duly showered upon him from a great height.
Rock criticism, by its very nature, thrives on a certain level of pretension. In short, it elevates rock over pop. But not everyone agrees with such snobbery. Last month, the New York Times ran a cover feature entitled 'The Rap Against Rockism', identifying a kneejerk backlash against producer- powered idols who didn't spend years touring dive bars. According to the article, a 'rockist' isn't just someone who loves rock'n'roll, or who goes on and on about Bruce Springsteen. A rockist is someone who reduces rock'n'roll to a caricature, then uses caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolising the authentic old legend [or underground hero] while mocking the latest pop star.
For critics, the logic appears to run along these lines: we - and I say we, because I am occasionally one of them - are exposed to such a wide breadth of music, a lot of it great, life-changing music, that our critical faculties are honed and sharpened to precision. We become, very necessarily, high-falutin'. And so where once, as mere regular music fans, we would delight in the simple pleasures of, say, Westlife and the Wurzels, now, as rock critics, we begin to take pleasure from the intricate chord changes of bands who labour under obscure influences and who view mainstream popularity as a form of disgrace.
This has long troubled me, because I've often found myself helplessly drawn to both. Is it not possible to find equal charm in both Kylie's 'Can't Get You out of my Head' and Kings of Leon's 'The Bucket'? (Not publicly would appear to be the answer.) And so, while I've often thrilled to the bedevilled catarrh of Mr Waits - and shamelessly boasted about it, aware of the accompanying kudos - I've also felt fleetingly likewise for the Spice Girls, All Saints and, for three very idiotic minutes indeed, 2 Unlimited's 'No Limits'.
But these are shameful secrets foolishly revealed, secrets I should, by rights, have taken with me to the grave. Back in 1991, when jangly Scottish guitar group Teenage Fanclub released the charming Bandwagonesque, a critically adored record inspired by an obscure 1970s Californian combo called Big Star, I wondered whether I should seek counselling for my continuing fondness for Betty Boo. Ultimately, I kept schtum, filing that non-confession away as a guilty pleasure.
That last sentence provides me with a hackneyed link, actually, because a little part of 2004 has offered some blessed respite for people like me. Guilty Pleasures is the name of a series of compilation albums released this year and presided over by London-based DJ Sean Rowley, in which pap and pop is celebrated over and above the terminally nasal Bob Dylan and the blue-collared bleatings of Bruce Springsteen. Within Guilty Pleasures, Elvis Costello doesn't even exist. Likewise, mercifully, Paul bloody Weller. The next release, due out in January, features Daryl Hall and John Oates, The Doobie Brothers and Sad Cafe. Much of it is uncomfortably wonderful.
On Channel 4's recent UK Music Hall of Fame, the programme in which the public voted for the most influential artists over the past five decades, members of the Proper Music brigade had their flabbers properly gasted by the inclusion of Robbie Williams over REM. But is Williams really so much less worthy a Nineties representative than REM, simply by dint of singing songs with words of fewer syllables? There was plenty to enjoy on his recent Greatest Hits collection, and Williams is, for the twitchy rock hack, perhaps the very definition of a guilty pleasure, while REM's torpid last album, Reveal, was as appetising as a bowl of cold, salty porridge.
Similarly, many of the year's most memorable music has been of the so-called disposable nature. She may be a doltish oxygen thief much of the time, but Rachel Stevens's 'Some Girls' was fantastically hypnotic, as was Britney Spears's 'Toxic', the best James Bond theme that never was. And while Las Vegas's the Killers are ostensibly an indie guitar act, 'All These Things That I Have Done', a song so stupendously invigorating it deserves to make them instant millionaires, is unambiguously, unpretentiously poppy and damned proud of it, too.
In the run-up to Christmas, while Band Aid 20 continues to offend those for whom the inclusion of Busted and Sugababes represents some kind of heinous crime, the album chart looks set to be dominated by two new releases. The first is U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, a magisterial record from the world's best band. The other is Love Angel Music Baby by Gwen Stefani. It is inevitable that U2's will be the more critically adored, not simply because it is the better record, but because it is U2, it is rock music and, therefore, more worthy. Like Oscar voters in Hollywood, who inexplicably view comedy as an inferior art form to weeping dramatics, so rock critics will always view pop as inferior to rock. Granted, Stefani does sing the line: 'This shit is bananas' on her album while Bono is busy setting the world to rights, but sometimes shit and bananas are all you need. The term Disposable Pop shouldn't always be a criticism. Sometimes, it should be a compliment. Sometimes, it should command celebration.
