Tuesday 28 June 2011

Are pop videos descending into pornography...?

Here is my other recent C4 news interview in full...

As one of the men who launched Kylie Minogue's music career says pop is now verging on porn, Madonna biographer Lucy O'Brien talk to Channel 4 News about the pressure to "sex it up".

Mike Stock was one-third of all-conquering pop production house Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), which gave the world Bananarama, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue. The "Hit Factory" racked up more than 100 top 40 songs in the late eighties and early 1990s, including 13 number ones.

His new campaign is to reverse the music industry's "slow but unmistakable descent into pornography".




He picked out Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry among artists who "have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency". He also criticised Nicole Scherzinger's performance on Britain's Got Talent, which he said included "overtly sexual content on a family show".

Pop writer Lucy O'Brien talks to Channel 4 News about the "pornification" of music:
Has pop music become more sexualised?

Definitely. Rihanna's S&M, Lady Gaga's Telephone, there is a link with soft porn. Videos have gradually been getting more explicit. Pop lyrics, too, have become more explicit. It's a great way of creating controversy and getting people to download/buy your single in an overcrowded market.
Madonna pushed the boundaries years ago so what's different now?
She certainly did. She's a complicated one. I think she always had an intelligent aesthetic behind the pop manipulation... she was testing taboos with videos like Justify My Love. On one level it appears as if she was just peddling the same old same old "sexy chick" persona, but actually her music and videos contained strong messages about women's empowerment and a female-centred fantasy and sexuality. She created the blueprint, and Aguilera etc followed (and imitated). Lady Gaga is interesting, but she reminds me too much of Madonna. But then again, maybe people older than me might have said, Madonna's interesting, but she's too like Mae West.
Is X-Factor/Britain's Got Talent "safe" family viewing?
I think on the whole it is very safe, apart from the young female artists who feel they have to "sex it up" in order to compete. I don't want to sound like a boring old fart, but my daughter is seven and has been copying the overtly sexy dance moves she sees on TV. That worries me. The relentless sexualisation of female singers sends out a distorted message - that to be successful as a woman you have to turn yourself into a sex object and be evaluated on that rather than your talent. I'd love my daughter to be inspired by women's work and real achievements rather than a digitised, artificial image of femininity.

Monday 27 June 2011

Beyonce rocks - but what about that 'first woman Glastonbury headliner' statement?

BEYONCE came and conquered Glastonbury last night with a woman-identified set. A backing band consisting entirely of feisty black woman - a really powerful statement in an industry where too often female singers are surrounded by male musicians. All good...but what about that statement that she is the first female headliner at Glastonbury. Ahem. Didn't Skin do that with Skunk Anansie in 1999? Or doesn't it count because she wasn't solo then? The Beeb need to be careful before trumpeting this as unqualified fact.

I'll be asking Skin about this soon, along with chat about Skunk Anansie's set at the recent Download Festival - WATCH THIS SPACE!!

Saturday 25 June 2011

Bey Bey at Glastonbury

Here's my Channel 4 news piece in full...considering the luscious BEYONCE at Glastonbury



There is controversy again at Glastonbury as critics wonder whether Beyonce’s appearance means the ‘popification’ of the Worthy Farm festival. What with Stevie Wonder, Shakira and Kylie last year, and the negative response that Beyonce’s hubby Jay Z got before his Glastonbury show three years ago, some people are wondering whether the festival has strayed too far from its hippy folk rock roots.

You have to remember, though, that Sunday is traditionally crowd-pleaser day, with past acts including Tom Jones, Dame Shirley Bassey, David Bowie and Al Green. These choices are generally driven by nostalgia and a camp sense of irony - with perfect singalong sets for a completely chilled-out and mashed-up crowd. Beyonce is different. She is the first full-on current global R&B pop star to headline the Pyramid Stage, and in that way is a surprising choice. Will her state-of-the art ballads and rigorous, pneumatic R&B really woo the predominantly rock crowd? Festival organiser Emily Eavis recently defended her decision to invite Beyonce saying, she was keen to keep the festival as "diverse" as possible. “We really want the people who are the masters of their fields, and that's what she is.”

Beyonce is certainly the ‘baddest’ sister on the R&B pop landscape, but is there a ‘ker-ching’ element to this? Her set will ensure Glastonbury a massive worldwide (and more mainstream) audience. I recall a few years ago talking to folk singer/songwriter Roy Harper in the Avalon Field. “This is still the real heart of Glastonbury, unlike Babylon out there,” he said, gesturing to the Pyramid stage. For him, Beyonce would probably constitute ‘Babylon’.

However, let’s look at this a little more closely. Beyonce is not Cheryl Cole. Nor is she Celine Dion. Or Britney, or Christina. She has an earthiness and intelligence that goes far beyond the pop gloss. She is not just a stylist, she’s not all affectation. From the stuttering energy of ‘Bills Bills Bills’ to ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’, she has shown vocally inventive singing genius. She pioneered that funky, staccato phrasing over robust beats; she hauled the ‘80s power ballad out of its bland lethargy and created something of might and passion. She’s not content to do showboating vocal gymnastics; she likes to jolt expectations sometimes, bringing in intonations from hip hop, from Arabic music, and reggae.

I remember interviewing Beyonce in 2000, when she was in the Destiny’s Child line-up with Kelly and Michelle (the one rumoured to be reuniting for a medley on Sunday). She spoke with rapid-fire intensity and emphasis about her life and her singing. She has an incisive intelligence, but also humility. Maybe this is part of her religious upbringing, but she knows her talent is a gift that she needs to treat with respect. She’s the channel for the soul music that rips through her. "I'm pumped just thinking about that huge audience and soaking up their energy,” she said recently. In that respect Beyonce truly is in the spirit of Glastonbury, and part of its continuing evolution.

Thursday 23 June 2011

Now the dust has settled...whither new music writing?


Now the dust has settled it's time to reflect on the Stoke Newington Literary Festival on June 5th, and Juke Box Fury, the panel of rock writers I was on with Charles Shaar Murray, Paul Morley and Simon Reynolds (more of them to come). Our esteemed host was Richard Boon (ex-manager of The Buzzcocks and founder of the New Hormones label) who smoothly steered the debate through a range of musical choices. We all had to talk about tracks that first inspired us to write and then vote on whether they were a HIT or MISS. As follows:

Charlie: The Who 'My Generation' (everyone agreed this was a seismic song, not least for the amphetamine-fuelled stutter and John Entwistle's bass solo).

Simon: Sex Pistols 'Bodies' (a song about Pauline, the unfortunate Pistols fan, and her abortion. It provoked an interesting discussion about Johnny Rotten's fear of women, and punk attitudes towards women generally. As I wrote in my chapter in Roger Sabin's Punk Rock, So What? "...while there were men wrestling with questions of masculinity and feminism, there were just as many content to leave it unreconstructed.")

Me: The B52s 'Planet Claire' (this was partly a tribute to Poly Styrene, a celebration of the 'day glo' aspect of punk. I remember her saying, "we started that whole bright colours, plasticky, whacky fashion as opposed to the black bondage stuff". With their two-foot high beehive wigs and florescent colours the B52s were a perfect embodiment of the day glo aesthetic. Also 'Planet Claire' is one of my favourite tracks because it inspired me, not just as a writer, but also as a keyboard player. As I said on the panel, it's the sound of keyboards showing off).

Paul: The Buzzcocks 'Boredom'(brilliant example of punk's gift for creatively expressing the mundane. Until that point, so much pop music had been over-ornamented and over-romanticised. This was uniquely British, and funny. Particularly like the phrase, "B'dum, b'dum."

After we debated the tracks, the key question of the day was - whither music journalism? We agreed that so much print journalism is consumer-orientated, that as a writer you tend to be subsumed within 'the brand'. Eg "Mojo says this, NME says that". There is much less room for ideas-driven writing, it's much more functional. As Charlie so aptly put it: "the music press now promotes the Culture Hut view of things. Eg, 'on the menu today at Culture Hut we have a taste of vintage Boz Scaggs, and you can also try The Vaccines, or a bit of Loudon Wainwright.'" He also went on to say that in the '70s and '80s we were "getting away with it", basically. Publishing companies like IPC didn't look too closely at the content, because sales were good and the 'weeklies' were making them a lot of money. Writing about the ideas inspired by music as well as the music itself. And exploring politics, literature and subculture in the process.

The answer, as evidenced here and a myriad of blogs, is to grow your own. Blogging is the way forward for strong, independent and more personal music writing. The only thing we have to work out now is revenue streams!

More links: www.stokenewingtonliteraryfestival.com

plus reviews: http://mccookerybook.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-06-06T22%3A40%3A00%2B01%3A00&max-results=15

http://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2011/06/stokey-lit-fest-weekend-reviewed-in-full/

http://edgewaysart.co.uk/2011/06/14/edgeways-at-stoke-newington-literary-festival/#more-891

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Nurse Jackie: those programmes that creep up on you


Hello, welcome to my new blog - where I write about music, culture, life, and...tonight's TV. Nurse Jackie is on BBC 2 tonight at 10pm. It's Series Two, and I've only just discovered it. I came across it by accident one night when I couldn't be bothered to change the channel, and was taken by Edie Falco (formerly in The Sopranos) as Jackie Peyton, the no-nonsense emergency room nurse in a frantically pressured NYC hospital. She's not perfect. She's not an angel. In fact she's had an affair, she has a 'complicated' home life and is addicted to painkillers. Yet somehow she is a breezy, brisk, humane survivor - played with a down-to-earth honesty by Falco.

Nurse Jackie reminds me of that great '80s cop show Cagney & Lacey, with those two ballsy female detectives running amok in New York. Actresses Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly weren't made pretty for the camera - they were playing strong woman leading demanding lives. Too often American TV gives us the Hollywood version of femininity - even if it's tough forensics on violent cases (CSI), or businesslike lawyers (The Good Wife), they look impossibly sleek, glamorous and groomed, and come out with banalities. But there is another strand to American culture and women's history. The USA was built on strong, independent pioneer women. Martha Graham represented that in her modern dance pieces like Appalachian Spring. It's there in Frances McDormand's performance in the Coen brothers film Fargo. Women who get by in difficult circumstances with strength, humour and all the best lines.

So I'm addicted to Nurse Jackie. It only lasts half an hour, but it brightens up my night. It doesn't get a lot of attention and hype, but it has quietly established itself as one of the best dark comedy dramas on TV. It also reminds me of that '90s series Northern Exposure, about the lives and eccentricities of a small town community in Alaska. Again, Northern Exposure was one of those series that crept up on you. I didn't 'get it' at first, but one night its slow pace and gentle, subversive humour insinuated itself into my brain. I still remember that hilarious episode when the hapless young city physician Joel Fleischman encounters the midnight sun and stays awake three nights on the trot, babbling furiously.

Nurse Jackie doesn't have great hair-dos, but it has a fast, funny script, some brilliantly quirky characters, and suppressed mania that bubbles under the surface. Last week Jackie's best friend, Dr Eleanor O'Hara (Eve Best) got bad news about her mother, went out clubbing and came to work still high on ecstasy. Jackie straps Dr Eleanor to a hospital bed, attaches a nutritional drip, draws the curtains, and every so often brings her files to sign. Now there's a good friend!