Headlines and deadlines

It's become fashionable to find a lot to love in pop idols. Justin Timberlake's last album was extremely well received (despite not actually being much good; but it was produced by Timbaland, so whatevs), and Britney's artistic star rises as her depicted life nosedives. But this is more an outcome of reviewers' desire to get all postmodern on us than it is a fair judgement of the records. It remains true that these are just pretty faces fronting slick operations that are all about getting CDs into shopping baskets and not about building temples of sound.

In the 80s, by way of contrast, the too cool for school reviewer wouldn't be seen dead giving a positive appraisal of Duran Duran, Haircut 100 or aHa, but all three had a lot of merit. (Funnily enough, the same reviewers affected to love pop of earlier eras while hating anything that wasn't "serious" in their own.) They were all pretty boys, who made music that was immediate and mostly shallow, but a lot of fun. In retrospect, it's clear that while it didn't compete well with postpunk or early synthpop, which was experimental and exciting, it was still much more palatable than most of the pop of today, or of any part of the 90s.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming any great artistic chops for aHa. They were not the greatly misunderstood lost Beatles of the 80s. But they made fun, effective pop. I have a soft spot for Morten Harket's histrionic vocals and the clunky synth lite that backs him, and I don't think you can hate the enormously insincere Hunting high and low, which sets a high for bombast that few this side of Meat Loaf would even consider trying to top. But try to stop yourself singing along with it.

Well, maybe that's just me. They were my sister S's favourites in her early teens, and I think you grow to like most things if you hear them enough. But I sneakily taped them when she wasn't looking in the 80s and even now I feel a little lift when I hear I've been losing you, transported the dancefloor of KCs in Gloucester, a bit drunk, never going to pull, pretending not to like it as in my head I sang along with every word.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:40 pm