MUSIC? YOU MUST BE JOKING



The current version of GENERIC AVERAGE BOYS SINGING AND DANCING are One Direction; created in the furnace of The X Factor’s voracious appetite for money.

They are not musicians; they’re not artists they are boys having their moment in the sun. Like a group of lads working in a bar over the long school break making some money, having liaisons and living la vida loca for one long summer: only amplified to 11. The fifteen minutes of fame will be rinsed by the management company with an evil villain presiding over his team of graduates and analysts to look at inventive ways to garner the cash from Joe Public: only this villain and his entourage have no Superhero nemesis to thwart the plan. Every toy bearing their image, every trading card, every bottle of overly pungent perfume, every download and every cinema ticket will help to line pockets of greedy men in offices where the walls are lined with gold records and the boys themselves will receive their share (fair or otherwise).

When the bubble inevitably bursts and there is no more cash to be made, when sales drop and another younger, prettier group of boys comes along they will fragment. The curly one will go solo on advice from a dubious agent and the rest will try to soldier on. Before long they will be firmly in the “didn’t you used to be?” camp and appearances on Celebrity Irrigation or Celebrity Breathing will be all that they are offered.

They will look back on their halcyon days like any other men who cast an eye back to that summer in Magaluf, only some of them will have sizable bank accounts but some will have squandered it all. Sucked in, chewed up and spat out by the machine of popular music as revenue stream above all else. That’s entertainment...in 2013