by Bob Stanley
EPILOGUE
In the future, the artist will be not so much creator as curator: someone who takes historical resources from the archives and arranges them, finding provocative juxtapositions and unexpected affinities.
Simon Reynolds, 1992
When I first walked into the music business in ’67 it was linoleum on the floor, in about ’69 they got carpets. From 1970 the pile of the carpet began to rise, and in some offices, particularly the head of A&R’s and the managing director’s, it rose to about four inches. You could shag in there. Then from 1974 it started to come down again. It reached carpet tiles and now we’re down to even cheaper carpet tiles.
Roy Harper, NME, 1990
Modern pop had started with the introduction of vinyl, the charts and the modern music press in 1952, and each of these components had grown in significance through rock ’n’ roll, the Beatles era, the album era, punk and the eighties, before fracturing in the rave era and dissolving in the late nineties as the digital era began in earnest. Since peaking in 1999, physical sales have steadily and rapidly slipped, magazines like Smash Hits have gone, and so have TV outlets like Top of the Pops. The pop media of 1992 was remarkably similar to the pop media of 1952, but pop music is now consumed and absorbed in a completely different way.
What brought the modern pop era to an end? Greed, ignorance and the compact disc, the Trojan horse of digital technology. While it had fattened the industry in the eighties, the new format’s own sales began to fall annually from the year 2000 once the blank CD became available in supermarkets, chemists and corner shops for pennies, and the public realised just how much they’d been fleeced; it still seems shocking to find a nineties CD in a charity shop with its original £16 price sticker. Pig-headed and arrogant, the major labels cried foul when Napster and Limewire became a means by which you could hear music free of charge at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Public Enemy’s Chuck D, a supporter, and Napster founder Shawn Fanning hosted a ninety-minute open forum in Washington in April 2001, just ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing about the growing phenomenon of swapping music via the internet. In a June 2000 issue of the NME, editor Steve Sutherland reckoned it was ‘game over’ for the music industry. KLF accomplice Nick Coler predicted the industry wouldn’t stand for it and civil war would break out.
While all of this was going on, the major labels had happily allowed Apple’s iTunes to legally acquire pretty much all of their catalogue for downloads. They were fighting the wrong battle; there was an enemy within.
A pair of former employees of the Apple technology company, Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid, developed SoundJam MP in California in 1999. Kincaid remembers ‘listening to NPR on the radio and somebody was talking about the latest geek toy, a little device called a Rio that was like a solid-state Walkman that played something called MP3 files – first I’d ever heard of them. It all sounded really interesting. And when, at the end of the spiel, the fellow said something about “Don’t get excited, Mac users, ’cos it won’t work with Macs,” I thought, “Ha! I can fix that!”’ SoundJam MP was bought by Apple and renamed iTunes in 2000. A year later Apple brought out the iPod – a digital music player and a data-storage device – rendering the need for physical copies of music redundant. Civil war was avoided, but the NME had been spot on – the CD soon felt like dead technology, though vinyl still kept its allure.
What the NME didn’t read as clearly in the tea leaves was the almost simultaneous demise of the music paper. The NME lives on as a source of information for the rump of the industry, but on sales of fewer than twenty-five thousand a week (it was selling a hundred and twenty thousand copies at the turn of the century). Of the other British weekly papers, Sounds (the go-to weekly for rock fans since 1970) and Record Mirror (the chart obsessive’s paper of choice, and the only one to feature the official BBC charts) had already fallen on the same day in April 1991; the oldest weekly, Melody Maker, which was first published in 1926, lasted until the year 2000. Smash Hits, such a breath of fresh pop air when it was launched in 1978, went in 2005, a year before Top of the Pops.
Top of the Pops could not survive the digital era. If MTV had wounded it, and The Chart Show made it look grandfatherly, then the dozens of music channels (on TV and radio) available by 2006 meant that a weekly digest of hit singles was only relevant to an ageing, working audience who watched it partly out of a sense of duty. The charts had become a minority interest. The kids weren’t united; there was no pop consensus.
Though it was compounded by the loss of Top of the Pops, the chart’s significance had started to shrink around 1994, when singles regularly began to debut at their peak position and fall off the chart completely just three or four weeks later. One industry strategy that led to this was getting radio play for a single weeks before it was in the shops, thus building up demand and ensuring a high first-week chart position. Between 1952 and the mid-nineties pop fans and DJs had kept a keen eye on highest new entries, biggest climbers and bizarre drops (I remember the Four Seasons’ ‘Silver Star’ falling from three to twenty-one on one memorable 1976 chart). Entering the chart at number one had been an extraordinarily rare feat, the province of superstars like Elvis, the Beatles, Slade, the Jam and Adam and the Ants. By the late nineties it was the norm, whether you were Madonna or Wamdue Project. When the UK’s number-one single became more a triumph of marketing than popular consensus, the public began to feel disenfranchised. As Westlife came within an ace of equalling Elvis and the Beatles’ record tally of number ones (seventeen each if you don’t count reissues), there was a general sense of panic.
This has been partially corrected in the age of the download, when records can build in popularity as they did before the industry almost killed the chart, and now singles are more likely to sit around for months on end than fly in and out in a fortnight. To the artists and the industry, at least, the UK singles chart is still number one. A major reason for its continued authority is that it has always been entirely sales-based. Since the forties America had used its complex and potentially corruptible mix of sales, radio play and jukebox plays; when the more accurate and sales-orientated Nielsen SoundScan chart was introduced by Billboard in 1991, alternative and country records suddenly leapt up the charts at the expense of middle-of-the-road, major-label-promoted fare like Paula Abdul’s ‘Promise of a New Day’ and Roxette’s ‘Fading Like a Flower’. For this reason, the Official Charts Company in Britain remains hesitant to introduce streaming to the singles chart.
On the airwaves Radio 1 survives in Britain, for now, but the 2002 introduction of Radio 1Xtra (urban) and 6 Music (indie) marked the first time the BBC decided that pop was too fragmented to be contained by one station. As an unlikely glue for this endless splintering, YouTube has made the past part of a permanent present, and old TOTP clips – not to mention other more esoteric TV performances – are as readily available as the new Kylie video. If something new deserves attention, then word spreads overnight.
How did the music itself change? It had become apparent by the turn of the century that rock, the vocals/guitar/bass/drums set-up pioneered by the Crickets, Shadows, Beatles and Led Zeppelin, had become as fossilised and ancient as Dixieland jazz was in 1952. It had run its course. While post-grunge blue-collar rock by the likes of Live, Nickelback and Creed continued to be hugely popular in the States, and the Strokes and the Libertines reminded British schoolkids and students that electric guitars could be fun, rock had lost its sense of progress; it existed like Wal-Mart or Wilkinson existed, to serve a need, to fulfil a consumer demand.
In the nineties Nik Cohn likened rock to a boulder dropped in the middle of a lake; there had been several ripples since the first wave in 1955, he reckoned, with each progressively smaller and less impressive. Simon Reynolds compared rock to a blank sheet of paper that had been gradually coloured in since the fifties until, by the early nineties, there were virtually no white spaces left.
The late nineties saw a widespread embrace �
� from the music critics as well as the public – of teen-orientated pop, the kind that was written by professional songwriters and sung by professional singers. Hanson’s giddy, Jackson 5-channelling ‘MMMBop’ ended up as Village Voice’s single of the year in 1997. The Spice Girls had led the way in Britain with ‘Wannabe’ in 1996, a song as uncomplicated and pleasurable as squeezing bubble wrap.
In the US, the Backstreet Boys became stars in 1996 thanks to a shy Swedish hit machine called Max Martin; his style was rhythmically martial and lyrically awkward (Backstreet hits were catchy enough to get around clunky titles like ‘I Want It That Way’ and the almost surgical ‘Shape of My Heart’) but also a return to simple, modern, pop songwriting. Louisiana teenager Britney Spears was the foil Martin needed to cause a real stir. Her first single, ‘Baby One More Time’, had an astonishing, ever-climbing chorus with a moist-eyed, killer lyric (‘my loneliness is killing me’). Unlike Kylie, say, or the equally mute Backstreet Boys, Britney was unguarded, and the video for ‘Baby One More Time’ – with Britney as hard but vulnerable schoolgirl – was startling enough to make her an instant superstar.
So none of the changes in hardware or consumption meant that pop itself died, or that the Smiths, White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys or Radiohead were ‘the last great band’, or that, in the future, no one will ever take Madonna’s crown as pop queen (Lady Gaga gave that an almighty try, and the tribulations of Britney Spears – documented in the style of a hospitalised robot on 2007’s Blackout – might even make her a more interesting long-term case study). What they have meant is that we have entered a different era, the digital age, in which great records will continue to be made but, with such a choice of influences a click away, it will be much harder to create a brand-new form of music. All that a musician needs to do is to rearrange the constituent parts of the modern pop era in a way that no one has done before, and I hope that some fifteen-year-old in Newark, New Jersey, or Newark, Notts, is working on it right now.
The first flush of the pick ’n’ mix digital era has led to many of pop’s biggest names appearing on each other’s records: Rihanna and Coldplay; JLS and Tinie Tempah; Katy Perry and Kanye West; David Guetta and Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj. While the possibilities of merging R&B, hip hop, Eurobeat and rave had seemed thrilling, the results have largely been a generic blur of unchallenging rhythms and predictable song structures – the Top 40 had never sounded more samey than it did in 2011 and (to a lesser extent) 2012. People who miss certain aspects of the modern pop era could find solace in twenty-first-century country, which – for now at least – remains a singles-based format, still driven by radio. Anyone bemoaning the lack of teen traumas, witty love songs or just verse/chorus-based pop on Radio 1 will find something of what they need in the work of Taylor Swift and Toby Keith; these acts still adhere to classic pop structures, just with a Southern twang in the accent and maybe a Southern frame of reference.
Do I mourn the passing of the modern pop era? I don’t miss the delusions of authenticity and tribal pride that killed Kurt Cobain, Richey Edwards, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur in the nineties; almost no one thinks in terms of ‘selling out’ any more, and it’s getting ever harder to understand why somebody would have carved ‘4 real’ into their arm to prove a point to an NME journalist. I do miss being able to go into a local record shop and buy a single of, say, Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’, take it home and go through the ritual of putting the needle on the record. I miss the fact that, with downloads replacing physical artefacts, no one really knows what a single even is any more – Rihanna’s ‘Man Down’ and Nicki Minaj’s ‘Stupid Ho’ were stand-out album tracks, with pricey videos, but neither was officially a single.
Without the detail, pop music doesn’t have the desirability it once had; it’s not as wantable. Instant downloads require no effort, and so demand less of an emotional connection – it’s less likely that you will devote time and effort to getting inside a new record, trying to understand it, if you haven’t made a physical journey to track it down in the first place. Still, the modern pop era was as long as the jazz era; there’s enough in those five decades to spend a lifetime digging through, and even then you’ll never hear all of it. Things changed fast – almost weekly in particularly fertile periods. There was no time for boredom.
Music, as it was in the pre-Edison nineteenth century, is in the air. The modern pop era is all there to be enjoyed and pilfered, curated, compiled and recompiled, an endless, interchangeable jigsaw puzzle for future generations. I feel incredibly lucky to have been conscious of so much of it while it was happening.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Very special thanks to Cassandra Gracey and Alex O’Connell who encouraged me to start writing a book in the first place; Daniel Scott and my agent David Godwin, who both read a piece I wrote for the Guardian about the folly of condensing the story of pop, then convinced me that I was the kind of fool who should try and take it on; Martin Green for coming up with the perfect title; my editor Lee Brackstone for his enthusiasm, patience and good humour; Dave Watkins and Becky Fincham at Faber; my copy-editor Eleanor Rees; proofreader Ian Bahrami; and especially to Mark Sinker, who put in an extraordinary amount of work dissecting my first draft, offering many insights and enriching suggestions, happy to talk things through at a moment’s notice – his invaluable contribution helped me to make sense of my often conflicting thoughts.
I received considerable help on some chapters from Tom Ewing, Kevin Pearce, Jane Bussman, Tim Hopkins, Daniel Scott, Martin Green and Cecily Nowell-Smith – I am very grateful to all of you. Alex Conway, Travis Elborough, Paul Kelly, Matthew Lees, Adrian Lobb and Pete Paphides all ploughed through early drafts of the book out of sheer kindness, which kept my spirits up during tough times.
For support and inspiration, direct and indirect, I am indebted to Mike Alway, Danny Baker, Rob Baker, Jeff Barrett, Malcolm Baumgart, Jane Beese, James Brown, Sheila Burgel, Ian Catt, Emma Chambers, Lucienne Cole, Nick Coler, Elaine Constantine, Paloma Cordon, Fabrice Couillerot, Paul Coyte, Scot Crane, Ossie Dales, Matt Dixon, Anna Doyle, Julian Fernandez, Lora Findlay, Jo Forshaw, Tariq Goddard, Steve Hammonds, Elain Harwood, Brian Henson, Emma Jackson, Jerry Jaffe, Gerard Johnson, Shoichi Kajino, Johan Kugelberg, Lawrence, Keith Lee, Andres Lokko, Niamh Lynch, Dorian Lynskey, Lucy Madison, Robert McTaggart, Anneliese Midgley, Leanne Mison, Caitlin Moran, Gail O’Hara, Ben Olins, Bryn Ormrod, Carolyn Parmeter, Mick Patrick, Sian Pattenden, Tris Penna, Alexis Petridis, Emma Pettit, Alison Poltock, Simon Price, Paddy Pulzer, Robert Rider, Michael Robson, Jude Rogers, Andy Rossiter, Andrew Sandoval, Jon Savage, Neil Scaplehorn, Andrew Sclanders, Dale Shaw, Caroline Sullivan, Gareth Sweeney, Jonny Trunk, Robin Turner, Kieron Tyler, Adam Velasco, Audun Vinger, Isabel Waidner, Quentin Walshe, Emma Watkins, Liam Watson, Andrew Wickham and Harvey Williams. For eleventh-hour help on fine details, thanks to Emily Bick, Sonny Marr and Joni Tyler. Special thanks to my bandmates, who had to put up with my furrowed brow and scattered piles of half-finished manuscripts for five years – much love to Pete Wiggs, Sarah Cracknell, Debsey Wykes, our liaisons officer Andrew ‘Pep’ Peppiatt, and the hardest-working person I know, our manager Martin Kelly.
For keeping me supplied with new records and new sources of inspiration over many years I am deeply grateful to my dear and generous friends Geoffrey Weiss and Ian ‘Hector’ Black. I am also lucky enough to be within a bus ride of four record shops run by some of the most friendly, knowledgeable and helpful people I know: hats off to Alan Dobrin (Alan’s Records), Derek Burbage (Record Detective Agency), Darren Reed (Vinyl Frontier) and Roger Spiers (Oxfam Crouch End).
To my mum and dad, thanks for giving me that stack of old 45s – ‘Red River Rock’, ‘Teen Beat’, ‘FBI’ – when I could barely toddle. Look where it got me! It’s all your fault! And to my sister Jules, lots and lots of love.
Finally, I could never have finished this book without the constant love, belief and tenderness of my wonderful girlfriend Tessa Norton, who never flinched fr
om reading and re-reading drafts, then added all the best jokes. I love you very much.
SOURCES
One of the challenges of this book was to find contemporary quotes wherever possible. Quotes which aren’t acknowledged in the text are courtesy of David Dalton (Little Richard), Andrew Sandoval (Everly Brothers), Jon Savage (Larry Parnes, Nirvana), Marvin Bronstein (Bob Dylan), Barney Hoskyns (the Monterey Pop Festival), Jay S. Jacobs (Tony Burrows), Paul Lester (Kid Creole), David Menconi (Chip Shearin, Sugarhill Gang), Angus Batey (Wu-Tang Clan) and Everett True (Nirvana).
Though this book gave me an opportunity to make use of my yellowing stacks of old music papers, many of the contemporary quotes I did find were thanks to the work of Barney Hoskyns and rocksbackpages.com – which I urge you to support. Finding Keith Altham’s Black Sabbath feature online was infinitely preferable to locating it on microfilm.
The digital age has also given us some of the most insightful, intense and adventurous new writing on pop music. I am hugely grateful to Tom Ewing’s Popular blog and its family of contributors, especially Pete Baran, Rob Brennan, Lee Caulfield, Lena Friesen, A. J. Hall, Steve ‘Carsmile’ Hewitt, Steve Mannion, Hazel Robinson, Billy Smart, John Martin Somers and Kat Stevens. Not only does Popular have great wit, depth of knowledge and good humour, but it has also led me to discover other exceptional writers and blogs: Marcello Carlin’s Then Play Long, which made me listen to Slim Whitman, Jim Reeves, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and many other records in a totally new way; Sally O’Rourke’s crisp essays about US number-one hits on No Hard Chords; and Chris O’Leary’s Pushing Ahead of the Dame, which contains the best writing on David Bowie bar none.
The American chart positions I have used are from Billboard, while the British ones are those recognised by the Official Charts Company. I have spent many hours thumbing through Joel Whitburn’s Record Research books – he is a giant among music historians. The first edition of The Guinness Book of Hit Singles, published in 1977, was my bible; it helped define my idea of pop history, the one that shapes this book, and I owe a great debt of gratitude to its authors, Jo Rice, Tim Rice, Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read.
