Reaching Double Figures

So for some reason (probably the band’s PR shitting themselves upon seeing the new single’s less-than-elegant slide down the chart) there is a big hoo-haa in today’s Sun newspaper about Tom Fletcher’s remarkable songwriting achievements.

In case you’re unaware, Tom Fletcher is the one in McFly who looks and acts a bit like Gary Barlow did in Take That.

Apparently, the band’s latest double a-side, Transylvania (quite good) / Baby’s Coming Back (quite not good), is in fact the TENTH number one single that young Tom has had his hands in (if you count the ones he co-wrote for Busted with James Bourne).

Ten number ones and still only 21 years of age. Let’s look at the songs, shall we?

1. Crashed The Wedding
2. Who’s David?
3. Five Colours In Her Hair
4. Thunderbirds Are Go (THIS WAS A NUMBER ONE SINGLE??!)
5. Obviously
6. All About You
7. I’ll Be OK
8. Please Please
9. Star Girl
10. Transylvania / Baby’s Coming Back

Quite impressive, save for a couple of iffy ones; but will Tom get the credit he deserves?

Frankly, no. He’s got more chance of being referred to as ‘the fit one out of McFly‘.

Why? Because it’s not real music, durr! At least that’s what people will (and do) say. The type of people who think a song is somehow inherently better if it manages to ‘speak to’ people rather than make them want to dance and, y’know, actually go out and buy it (because as we all know, the first ten number ones thrown out by Lennon and McCartney were all incredibly deep, weren’t they? None of that shallow ‘pop music’ nonsense for those boys!)

What these people fail to understand is that there is an incredible knack to writing pop songs; songs that capture the public by the balls and make everyone go dizzy for a few minutes and shout along with glee. Fletcher might not exactly find himself in the upper echelons of this songwriting realm, but with ten number ones under his belt he must be doing something right.

Take a song like ’Obviously’, for example: as at home in a teenage girl’s bedroom as it is in the student union; capable of being sung with equal verve by school kids and by beered-up boys down at Varsity. Anyone who can knock out a track like that deserves a pat on the back in our book, so here it is:

ONE PAT ON THE BACK FOR TOM FLETCHER

Here’s to many more!

x


(FYI, we checked on our special computer and there’s NO WAY Tom should have given Dougie that bridge to sing on Transylvania, or tried to do the shouty bit himself, but even songwriting legends have to make mistakes at some point in their careers so we will have to assume it was some kind of ‘blip‘).

Flip, Switch, Reverse

This isn’t our idea. In fact, we stole it off someone else. It is, however, well worth repeating due to it being pretty much spot on.

Think back to the late nineties. A glorious time. A time when any old bird with a nice frock and good make-up could rocket to the top of the charts, provided they had a suitably titillating video. The quality of the music barely mattered, it was more about the tits.

Maybe it wasn’t that glorious.

Anyway, the point is that at this time, there was a form of music called “alternative” that a lot of people liked. Not as many as liked old birds in frocks, but still. Alternative music was of a very high quality. It had to be otherwise no one would buy it, so discerning were the genre’s fans.

Basically, it was very easy for record companies to sell pop music, but a bit harder for them to shift alternative records, because they actually had to be good (that’s not to say there were no good pop songs at the time - quite the opposite - there were just a lot of bad ones too).

Fast forward to the present day and we find ourselves in much the same situation, except now it is pop music that actually has to be good in order to sell, whereas any two-bit bunch of scruffs in a Topman hat n’ scarf combo can find themselves lauded as the next big thing, as long they have a black and white section in their video and say they either like or hate Oasis.

But what brought about this reversal? There are people far better equipped than we are to answer that question, but we’d wager each of the following had a hand somewhere:

Girls Aloud / Xenomania / Richard X etc.
The Strokes
The last Spice Girls album
The Libertines
Topshop playing videos by The Strokes and The Libertines
Soulwax / 2ManyDJs / “Electroclash” etc.
“UK Garage”

Chuck all that and a bit more in a blender six years ago, serve it to the record companies and you end up where we are today. Every fucker wants to be in The Long Blondes. Nobody wants to be in Westlife, apart from [litigious comment removed]. Victoria Newton thinks Rudebox was “experimental”, while Radio 1 have just renamed pop music ‘Daytime’ music.

Despite how this might seem, pop’s not dead. It’s just moved town and changed its appearance. It goes by a few different names. But it’s still there, still alive, and healthier than ever in many ways. It’s really fucking cool now actually. You just have to find it.