Pop-Eye Extra: OBEs for Atomic Kitten?

I'm not sure if your question reflects your distaste for Wheatus and Papa Roach (on whom I have no strong opinions). But Atomic Kitten... This latest single is annoyingly catchy but trash nonetheless. It seems to be a bizarre mixture of late 60's/early 70's pop (part of the melody is copied from "Young, Gifted & Black" and there's a general vocal and melodic flavour of a mid-period Lulu or other pop/cabaret crossover singers of that time) plus a crude attempt at a contemporary r&b beat; but whereas r&b has moved on in the last year or so - away from the standard funk beat and into the riff/beat syncopations typified by the current Mya single - Atomic Kitten's producers have churned out a beat that might have been vaguely cutting edge around 1993.

Apart from the way they sound, Atomic Kitten's appearance is also very annoying - on Top Of The Pops they looked as if they were impersonating their future selves, fifteen years hence on the cabaret circuit.

No, you were right the first time, it IS about by distaste for those bands. They're rubbish.

From the Freaky Trigger mailbag:

"listen you tits you obviously dont know a good song when u fuckin hear it do u teenage dirtbag is brilliant, i mean could any of you guys do any better?? so dont bag it if u dont even understand it."

I love editing a pop site. Mind you, he's right. I couldn't do better.

Ah, but you can punctuate.

I must admit I am pleased for ver Kitten merely because they confounded all the pop pundits (even Popbitch) and were the first people in a bout a year to make the predictions wrong. We need at least a bit of mystery in our lives.

Like - who's the real father?

*I* could do better than Teenage Dirtbag though. In fact, I'd go so far as to say 99% of all musicians ever put to record have done better songs than Teenage Dirtbag. Fuckwits.

Agreed, David.

Atomic Kitten always struck me as also-rans, rapidly sliding down the route set out by Girl Thing (where did their last single peak? in the 20s?), so it's quite bizarre to see them suddenly turn it round and manage two weeks at number one (admittedly at a time of year when, traditionally, commercial second-stringers have their easiest route to the top). The song does, as you say, sound like a bad early to mid-90s appropriation of R&B, and desperately out of date - I get the impression that airplay on the Steve Wright R2 show has suddenly become something of an ambition for some of the more mediocre of these sorts of groups, so they feel the urge to combine classicist pop with a *very* loosely and vaguely contemporary sound, and sometimes it works commercially, and indeed I've heard Wright play it as though it was R1 10 years ago.

I can't be infuriated by them, but I just find them strangely irritating - as you say, they resemble what a girl band c. late 2000 / early 2001 will look like on the cabaret circuit, rather than the actual aesthetic and ethos of now. They look like a nostalgia act some years before they will succumb to that fate.

Incidentally, if I confuse anyone there I'm asking where Atomic Kitten's last single peaked, not Girl Thing's. From memory, as I say, the Kittens' previous effort was into the 20s and out.

AK's last single made #20. It was a bit lame.

I would say that I could probably take the song "Teenage Dirtbag" and do something more interesting with it, but I wouldn't have come up with it in the first place. Since I like the song, I have to give them props for that.

I've never actually heard the Atomic Kitten song, so I can't really comment on it. I just wanted to stick up for Wheatus.

I know sod-all about Wheatus, but now I've heard the single I have to say I quite like it. I don't appreciate the whiny self-loathing of the lyrics, but I like the guitar sound and some of the late 70's soft-metal touches in the arrangement.

Inglesfield, I'm ashamed of you :). OK, I can just about take Wheatus, but still the song makes me feel physically sick. However, they aren't actively ensuring that the Confluence project can make no lasting impact, unlike the bands at numbers 3 and 4. I don't exaggerate when I say that I consider Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach to be actively evil.

Oh look, Limp B and Papa R are silly men in big shorts who make bad music. They're at worst symptomatic of unpleasant societal trends, they're hardly "actively evil".

They're actively evil if you're paranoid, you don't get enough sleep and you think George Orwell was prophetic. That's me, take me or leave me :).

Seriously, Tom, I do consider these bands to be representative of the social attitudes of aggression, hate and contempt that (for example) Common Ground has to overcome before it can get anywhere. But I'm just an ideological dinosaur :).

Hi Atomic Kitten. I really like you because i love your songs. My favorite song is "Eternal Flame". Oh by the way my name is Subban and i'm 11 and i'm Canadian but i now live in boring old Sudi Arabia. As i told you i'm an AK fan. I'm kind of pitiful you know? I don't know what to write or what 'Pop- Eye Extra'or what 'OBE' stands for. I just wanted to know you. Maybe you guys can tell me what this stuff means. I wish i could meet you (Atomic Kitten)!

Still Admires U, Subban Jama