Teen-Pop Politics (and Wham!)

Was there any 'outcry' about Wham! at the time btw?

"Girl I wanna hold you like the first world holds down the third with its jackboot of capitalism (Tax the Rich)" etc. over a bland ballad backing.

I don't think it's possible for pop acts in 2003 to be as political as they were 20 years ago, for the simple reason that any act currently charting, who could conceivably be compared with Wham!, is extremely unlikely to have a hand in writing the lyrics.

Mind you, if Robbie put his mind to it and stopped thinking about his dick for a second, he could conceivably add some political spice to his tunes. But for most of 'em? Naaah, it's out of their hands.

The other thing is, the UK political landscape is now such that there are no polar opposites anymore, just a weird gloopy right of-left-of-centre sea of grey - and who rails against grey? Maybe someone'll show up in the US to give it a pop shot.

Meanwhile, over to you, girls:

I'm in serious shit, I feel totally like lost
If I'm asking for help it's only because
Being with you, has opened my eyes
Could I ever believe such a perfect surprise?

Now THAT's politics!

The difference being how you like your eggs.

The face of politics looks really grim when it comes to mainstream music. And especially with pop groups. Good Charlotte says the mayor of dc is on crack, and thats about as much politics as radio can stomach, and i can stomach in that form. Hip Hop seems to be the only music right now that is bringing politics into the forefront.

About time we made Mike Ladd into a global superstar then!

Hip Hop seems to be the only music right now that is bringing politics into the forefront.

As in the politics of getting rich off emasculated, disenfranchised youth, and then bragging about it as if it took some kind of fucking genius to figure out how to talk fast about yourself over an eight bar loop for five minutes? Or were you talking about the politics of enjoying sex and liquor in fantastic amounts while driving enormously wasteful luxury vehicles through town after having your teeth replaced with gold and precious stones?

/TROLL

Of course if we're discussing Mr. Lif, the Coup, et al. then I see exactly what you mean. I just had to get that off my chest.

What do you think I was talking about, seriously? I was referring to underground hip hop that occasionally breaks and makes it on a billboard chart lists. What you were referring to is NOT hip hop, it's an insult that blatant rappers like Lil Big Joe Wayne or whatever are calling themselves hip hop artists. I think I feel a rant coming on, I'll refrain.

Outdated politics don't reflect well on a musician. (Anthony Williams is so bland that he's obviously not on anything.)

Golden anti-bling and satire while still flaunting the good gettin's of young, dumb, and nothin' to do.

pop-songs are not newspaper editorials: their energies and beliefs and stances and hopes and sadnesses are expressed MUSICALLY not journalistically => which means BY DEFINITION not at the "forefront"

most of the demand for More Politics in Music bespeaks a tremendous hostility towards and suspicion about what music actually is... I'd actually argue that there's FAR more subcutaneous radical attitude sedimented into chart music today, at a sub-sonconcious level, than there was in the 70s and 80s, and until the politically literate address THIS level of expression coherently, and begin to imagine liberating and transforming these energies, rather than suppressing them, they're effectively calling for the silencing of music in favour of pamphleteering, and the (continued) dominance of the Empire of Words and the status quo (of course a lot of radical posturing DOES prefer the status quo, because it looks more exciting and daring and different and lonely and heroic that way...)

i was just thinking this the other day. brought on by, uh, levi-straus' Structural Anthropology I think.