Are "Pop Idol" really Pop Idols?!?!?!

Hmmmmm.

They weren't going to call it "Pop Star" though were they?

Reading too much into the name, OF? I reckon they just couldn't think of anything else more suitable. You're right though, there should be something unique about a Pop Idol as opposed to a Pop Star. In that show, it did seem that anyone with any quirk, individuality or human foible at all was disqualified precisely on those grounds. It is so necessary that the chosen act is hyper-successful and appeals to the widest possible demographic that Cowell, Waterman and chums were forced to go for the blandest options.

I really, really wish fat bloke had gone on and won it now.

Honestly, should we even dignify this rather obvious scam with a debate? Cowell is a businessman, no more and no less, interested in making quids out of children and who has already admitted that he has no concern whether the wannabe redcoats who offered themselves up sustain a long term career . Fair fucks to him, but frankly the idea that a light entertainment programme should present anything of deeper significance than a reasonable bit of pop fluff shows is about as realistic a hope as that displayed by the contestants. Time + experience makes for interesting pop 'idoldom', as Robbie 'Annoying but certainly not dumb' Williams and even the veterans who made up Abba showed. Frankly all this show demonstrated was that you can haul a few kids out of a bus queue and tidy them into something adequate for broadcasting. The success of this and Popstars just show that you can sell anything to the public and even make the process part of the entertainment, but if you don't cut it on pop terms, you're dead nonetheless (cf Hear'say). Surely Phil Oakey chatting up a couple of girls in a Sheff nightclub with the old 'wanna join my band?' line is a far more interesting tale?

As has been pointed it, it is all a bit boring talking about something that is so obviously manufactured. But in a way, what the show harks back to is what I feel is the true era of the Pop Idol, which was between 1960 and 1962 - the era of Larry Parnes and Jack Good taking kids off the street, giving them ridiculous names (Johnny Gentle, Adam Faith etc) and making bland schmaltz which was promoted heroically on shows like '6.5 special' produced by - oh - Jack Good until the audience bought it. So in a way, the show is a throwback to that, in that Cowell and co are simply showing the machinations that went on behind the scenes in those days. No less obvious, no less bland, no less sickening. It all stopped when the Beatles arrived and blew all the crap away. Here's to the next Beatles to do the same.

I like talking about something so obviously manufactured. Many of the things I use every day have been manufactured and no-one has tried to hide the fact :-)

I think the original question is fascinating and has been bugging me throughout Pop Idol. The only example of a Pop Idol who seemed to fit the kind of comments the judges have been making to the contestants that I could think of was Kylie. Clearly even Britney or Robbie Williams are a little bit rough around the edges for the Pop Idol audience -- but having seen Kylie do her TV special with all those sad celebs in the audience pretending to have fun for the cameras, I can only presume she must be hitting the same audience. Whereas all the grannies are presumably going 'what the fuck?' whenever _Slave 4 You_ comes on the telly. It was also pretty obvious from very early on that it was going to be won by a boy, given the Great British Public's dislike of women.

The idea of a singer working with material written by other people, pumping out a lot of material and then fading after a year or two may not be one we're currently very familiar with, but it isn't so unfamiliar from the 60s, 70s, 80s is it? My pop history isn't up to examples, I'm afraid.

Maybe the idea of a Pop Idol is that it isn't someone who would / will stand the test of time, but someone to burn brightly for a short space of time. Until in thirty years time some future Stanley & Wiggs type iconoclast and collector re-discovers some battered old aluminium format music playing device (they used to call them CDs apparently) and plays it on his ancient piece of stereo equipment and includes subtle references to it in their futuro-cyber-pop.

The idea of a singer working with material written by other people, pumping out a lot of material and then fading after a year or two may not be one we're currently very familiar with

Actually we should be because it's been going on solidly since the early '90s - post-Take That (the template for a lot that came after). Except it can be traced back to people like Bros...then slightly further to the SAW stable...then to Wham (except they wrote their own songs of course), and Dollar/Bucks Fizz (who didn't). What Rob M said is true though - that it's now eerily like the very early '60s, but with the selection process made public and part of the entertainment in its own right.

I suppose what we're not familiar with is the alternative scene becoming so weak and unable to compete commercially on equal terms with the manufactured artists (not the case from the mid '60s until about 1997).

Some interesting discussions so far! I expect Venga is right in that maybe I'm reading too much into a name that was probably thought up in about 23 seconds. And with respect to Snotty, I'm not really wanting to "dignify" the show as such, or argue that the show has a hidden deeper significance in itself. But whether by accident or design, the show is called "Pop Idol", a phrase which already meant specific things to people, including myself. My question was not such much about the merits or otherwise of the show, but the difference the show's perception of "pop idols" and other peoples, and basically what a "pop idol" actually is!

From where I stand, I reckon the concept of a "pop idol" has definately changed since the Larry Parnes/Jack Good days. They might have been a 60s highpoint of manufactured groups as Rob M pointed out, but let's face it, how many Adam Faith or Johnny Gentle songs do people know these days? Similarly with some 70s groups. Take the Bay City rollers: everyone knows "Bye Bye Baby", but how many can name any of their other hits? Yet at the peak of their fame, Rollermania was seriously compared to Beatlemania. The Osmonds have it even worse in that only their more bizzare "novelty" songs seem to be remembered these days. ("Long Haired Lover From Liverpool", the hilariously whiny "Puppy Love", and of course "Crazy Horses") Come to think of it, apart from Donny & Marie and Little Jimmy, could anyone name any of the remaining Osmonds? And even with the undeniable talent that was The Jacksons, there seems to be this strange collective ~5 year memory-blank between the "I Want You Back"/"ABC" singles and the late 70s when the Jacksons (in particular Michael) started taking the reins and kicking butt again- yet they were massively sucessful during most of this time. And getting more up-to-date: New Kids on the Block. Anyone remember anything apart from the mildly amusing "Hanging Tough"?!?! And I wonder how many of Westlife's record-breaking run of number 1s are going to be remembered. It's like there's a whole load of groups that pop up in "I Love 19xx" as being famous for having had unprecedented success at the time, yet in terms of music, they might as well have been 1-2 hit wonders, and in terms of image, there's an element of "Thank goodness we're not like that now!".

This is what I think is the fundamental difference between what the TV show considers a "pop idol" and how history has treated artists, those that are as generic as the show appears to require, as "pop idols". Being generic and media friendly appears to be only a short-term advantage- unless you're really good, you become a cute nostaliga item at best. (Maybe in this sense, Snotty is correct in it being a bit of a scam.) I'd argue that the most memorable manufactured bands are the ones which present distinct personalities: (even if they are made up) for example The Monkees and The Spice Girls. Even to lesser extent, you have identifiable personalities in the likes of early East 17 and mid-to-late period Take That, and with ridiculously snotty early singles like "When Will I Be Famous?" and "I Owe You Nothing", you certainly couldn't accuse Bros of being too bland or generic. So I'm a bit surprised Simon Fuller, ex Manager Spice himself, is getting involved in this "Pop Idol" lark- especially after the blandout distaster that was Hear'Say. Maybe he's given up on pop, and is moving into TV production instead...

Never mind 1960-62; more like 1950-52. Back to Dickie Valentine and Alma Cogan. Back to before rock ever happened (as Waterman, Cowell, Chapman et al secretly wish were the case) with compliant, cleancut crooners willing to let the Alley cats do the formulaic grafting. This conveniently bypasses the "it's-all-a-con" con which allowed Radio 1/J King to do what they did as it heads straight back towards the Light Programme.

Except of course that Gates/Young/Dinesh/whoever can't even croon blandly now; no, it's the world pop Esperanto of PASSION, of BELTING IT OUT and MEANING IT. That's what sells.

Except of course it won't, not in the long term anyway. Not in that context - but certainly it will in the Dido/Gray context, the context of belief, SOUL (that's why I can't take CTCL seriously - it claims to be "soulful"! Aargh! Stay away! We KILLED soul, don't you understand?).

We are cheap bazaar idols and you will use us and crumple us up with your usual teenage efficacy. Then you will get a mortgage and end up buying/listening to the same shit, albeit far more expensively packaged, in every sense.

Pop Idol's crucial advantage over Popstars - it was voted for. No matter how ghastly Will's records are the memory/suspicion that it's all our fault will keep him on top for a bit until the anger overrides the shame.