I Like You Girl!

One of the great things about pop music is that it spans the spectrum in terms of how serious artists take themselves. I recently read an Alison Moyet interview where she said 'I have no sense of immortality, and I dislike the smoke and mirrors that some acts use to cover up their extreme common mundaneity'. Too true Alison, too true.

Of course, on the opposite end of that spectrum are the trite boy and girl bands that we're all supposed to think are cute. We're supposed to have our favorite member, cut our hair like them, put posters of them on our walls, buy their records, then pretend they are serious musicians who are victims of their own mass popularity. We're also made to pretend that we are shocked (sometimes even a bit horrified) when our favorite member of a girl or boy band turns out to be gay or becomes pregnant at 14. Soccer moms across the country can be heard saying 'I thought so and so had moral values; I can't believe this!'. Or, 'so and so didn't LOOK gay!'.

My point is that the beauty of pop music is that it can be anything you want it to be - serious, trite, or all things in between. It can be intelligent and insightful, or it can be a bunch of a trashy girls or boys singing about how difficult it is to be popular in high school these days - it's your choice.

With that in mind, there is a brilliant web series on Youtube called 'Toyboize'. It chronicles the reunion of a fictional '80s child band. Enough said.