Thanks to the creatively bankrupt likes of Boyzone, Westlife, A1 et al, the charts are increasingly crammed with insipid, karaoke facsimiles of vintage hits. Not only do these manufactured mannequins imitate the original versions note-for-flippin'-note, but sometimes they even go so far as to mimic the accompanying videos! Good grief. Is there no start to their talents?
Hear'Say, the prefab five from the stratospherically successful Popstars series are the latest to clamber aboard pop's conveyor belt. With such phenomenal media hype, the clumsily christened combo were always destined to shift shed loads of product regardless of musical quality.
Predictably, their debut single, 'Pure And Simple', a surprisingly slinky amalgam of All Saints' 'Never Ever' and Oasis' mop-top mimicking 'All Around The World', soared to the UK top spot, becoming the best selling debut single of all time.
Now comes the debut album, 'Popstars' - hey, inspired title. And what a disappointment. It's not as if we expected 'Kid A', but Spice would've been nice. Bizarrely, two of the 15 tracks, Simon & Garfunkel's gospelly 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and the Mamas and the Papas' 'Monday, Monday', were originally employed as part of the Popstars auditioning process. The embarrassingly naff versions here are very much "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be …rubbish". Poor John Phillips (Mamas and the Papas) must be rotating in his freshly dug grave.
Kym Marsh appears to have been nominated as lead vocalist, and her soulless, stage-school-diva-in-Northern-night-club warblings dominate proceedings. The lyrics may not be Byron (this is pop after all) but surely they should be imbued with at least a soupcon of passion, the occasional insightful nuance and a vague semblance of spontaneity? But no. Kym and co - Myleene, Suzanne, Noel and Danny - deliver every ditty, regardless of lyrical content, as if trilling the shipping forecast.
Crap karaoke covers apart, 'Popstars' consists of mid-tempo R&B lite and Top Shop pop, though sadly there's nothing as ingeniously compulsive as 'Pure And Simple'. Perhaps 'One', a funky meld of David Bowie's 'Fame' and Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition', comes closest. Otherwise, it's Charles Kennedy DULL. Just like Pondlife and their menopausal, cardigan-sporting, Elton-esque balladry.
Not only is 'Popstars' a corporate marketing campaign designed to part the planet's prepubescent population from their pocket money, but with the single excepted, it's truly lousy pop. Pure and simple.
