I'm actually somewhat happy with the state of pop music right now. It's not perfect, but it's a relief that the Usher wannabes and their crew of half-witted no-talents are finally sodding off and allowing soul and melodies and real musicians get a word in edgewise again. It's just too bad the ringleader of this is Amy Winehouse who is currently too busy tenderizing her arms to help see this change through.

I still look back to the past however, in one area. What I like to call "Vapid Gay Pop" is still in a rut. Sure we still have Girls Aloud, but that's only the British. Anyone outside the UK is stuck with the Pussycat Dolls and the latest cyclone attention whore off Big Brother with botulism for lips. Apparently it's too much to ask for one of these girls to produce something that isn't about who ate her out for dinner last night. Half the joy of songs about sex is the nuance and romance. This is apparently lost on Miss Sherzingerator and crew. Then again, it's not like she writes the songs or anything. Nor is it like any of the other 14 Pussycat Dolls sing on the albums.

I've been listening to some early 90s pop fare as of late. I turned to an old friend, Kylie Minogue. I was at her concert in Rotterdam recently, and she not only puts on a great show, but she also sings live, well, for 100 Euro less than Madonna. Her songs also have a melody, and are about varying topics. They tell stories and create a scene, and have multiple meanings in some cases, always a good sign. Granted, a lot of this credit goes to her vast team of fantastic writers, but I give her credit for not shying away from a bit of depth with her pop.

I'll leave you with a reasonable example: "What Kind Of Fool (Heard All That Before)".



This came out in 1992 for Kylie's first Greatest Hits package for PWL. It was a completely disaster, peaking at #14 in the UK, making it at the time her second-lowest charting single, and it still ranks as her fifth-lowest showing in the UK. (with over 40 singles released to date in the UK, that's quite an accomplishment). The song was brilliant and was completely cheated due to two major contributing factors.



a) in 1992 pop was essentially dead in the UK. Kids weren't listening to it and had turned to "cooler" dance and rock music. Kylie was seen as part of the uncool 80s Stock-Aitken-Waterman stable that ate everything in the Top 10 in the late 80s and while her success continued far later than any other SAW offering and with far more consistency, any pure pop offering of the traditional SAW ilk was immediately panned and rejected by the press and public at large.

b) Kylie went through a more dramatic bout of what's happening right now in her career. After a long period of constant success, she'd become what the radio would call "burnt", meaning the public had tired of her constant presence on the airwaves, and were less interested in purchasing her records. As a result, public exposure was low for this single, and the public's growing indifference to Kylie was so bad at this point that even a performance on Top Of The Pops didn't get this single into the Top 10.

It would be really brave to cool down the sex enough on a modern pop female to make a song like this palatable. The lack of a defined gay music scene of the sort that defined 80s and 90s pop makes this even more difficult, but I still think it's possible, and I guarantee that with the right person singing and the right promotional push, this song can easily become a huge hit. It's a shame it wasn't in 1992.