It's the moral tussle over the imminent future of industry-backed pop music that everyone's talking about – but is the BBC Sound of 2012 poll really that important and influential, or is it just a meaningless list assembled by idiots with an agenda?Us? Well, we couldn't decide, so we created two fake journalists who don't really exist to have it out over a liquid lunch that didn't happen in a venue-cum-pub that's shut down because no one buys merch at gigs any more. Lean closer, hear our clear (yet controversial) arguments for either side of the argument, and let us cool your fires of self-righteous indignation with the whisper: "It's OK, baby – it's the world that's wrong."THE SOUND OF 2012 IS THE SOUND OF WOMEN ROARING
by Sophie Gourlay
So the votes are in again. And once again, it looks like there's only one winner in the BBC Sound Of 2012 poll: women. For so long they've been playing proverbial second fiddle in the biz to their male counterparts, but the past few years have seen sisters doing it for themselves: striking nothing less than a revolution in female dominance of the popcharts.
It started with Lily and Amy. It's continued with Adele, La Roux, Ellie Goulding and Duffy. Topping last year's list, we were treated to another one: Jessie J – a sassy young feminist, who talks about how she'd like to "Do It Like A Dude". Nowadays, girls are so dominant that men's role in society will be over just as soon as they invent a vibrator that mows the lawn!
On this year's list, there are no less than five women, out of 12. The likes of Lianne La Havas, with her soulful voice and moody introspection, and the likes of Ren Harvieu, with her soulful voice and moody introspection, are collectively showing that women can produce music in all sorts of varieties. Niki & The Dove are demonstrating that women kick ass when it comes to taking women's music into bold new areas like synths and being kooky, while Stooshe are on the opposite tack: talking about how much they enjoy penetration without preceding foreplay – run an article on that, Cosmo! Even the indie band du jour, Friends, have a feisty female lead singer in the shape of Samantha Urbani, the sharply-dressed temptress at the heart of their gorgeously swoonsome indie-pop racket. There's even Dot Rotten. Not actually a woman, but has a woman's name, which is certainly encouraging on some level.
It makes you think that if Mary Wollstonecraft were alive today, she'd be rejoicing over the BBC Sound Of 2012 list, and certainly, if the woman who threw herself under the King's horse could hear Azealia Banks swearing 40 times and talking about how she likes to eat fruit, she'd probably be thinking 'mission accomplished', and wouldn't mind so much the terrible trampling of hooves as her skull began to resemble the bottom of the biscuit tin.
Better yet – after years of male music execs forcing ladies into skimpy cocktail dresses and making them sit crying in their rooms over the state of their thighs, finally, we have a body-positive industry that recognises that women come in all different shapes and sizes, and doesn't judge them for it. After all, the girls from Stooshe certainly look like they could do with a few hours on the treadmill when they've finished wandering around Brick Lane talking about penetration. And as for that girl from Friends, well, she may think she has the perfect figure now, but just wait a few years until her tits start to sag, then she won't be feeling so peppy. Yup, women in music are finally free to be themselves without being judged. Better still, most of these women are black, which really shows that, finally, black music is coming out of the shadows (if you'll pardon the pun!), and stepping into the mainstream from which it has been cruelly excluded for so long. And it doesn't even stop at the gates of music any more, either. Even at a traditional patriarchy like the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have lost his job because of a woman, but let's not forget that he lost it to a woman as well! Yup, even as she claps generations of Greek womanhood into penury, Christine Lagarde can say she's a feminist icon at the heart of the neoliberal elite. You go girl! In 2012, while Angela Merkel clonks the boys' heads together and says: "stop squabbling and come up with a new fiscal union!", I for one will be kicking off my shoes, pulling up on the couch with a margarita and the new Azealia Banks record, and celebrating the new queens of music: girls.Infuriated and appalled by this opinion adopted by a fake journalist for money that doesn't exist? Try out page two for some immediate TLC and to increase our page view stats. Everyone's right on the internet!THE SOUND OF 2012 IS THE SOUND OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TURNING INTO THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
by Dom Heawood
Well, once again, the votes are in for the BBC Sound Of 2012 list. And once again, the votes are a complete waste of time. The industry's insider prognosticators have once again gone into their Hoxton conclave, and once again annointed a handful of talentless fellow Shoreditchers as their new champions – who coincidentally happen to be the people they have record deals with – and decent music is once again locked out.
For all the huffing and self-puffing of these so-called "industry experts", most of them have probably never even heard of my own three top picks of the year – Dog Cat And The Cat Dogs, the richly realised paeans of Oakland folk troubadours Sun Screams, and the sweet croon of Ghanaian folk singer Kwami 'Tudor' Okwanare, all of whom I've already written about several times on my blog: NewSoundWave.blogspot.com.
There's simply no other way to explain the fact that these are the names they've come up with. Azealia Banks? This potty mouth seems to think it's very big and adult to swear its way to fame, when really, it just makes her look immature. Frank Ocean? Basically a very bad man of limited intelligence who sings like he has trapped wind. Lianne La Havas has talent, sure, but the fact that she's on a list like this proves that she is not actually a serious artist. As for the others, well, they're just a grab-bag of passing trends masquerading as music.
Skrillex? The dubstep trend.
Ren Harvieu? Can you say 'A British Lana Del Rey trend'?
Michael Kiwanuka? Just the Jack Johnson trend updated, recycled and re-hoovered, plastered-over, given a new nose and tailfin.
Dry The River? Just call them Mumford & Sons' Sons.
Stooshe? Check the 'girl bands who sing about pre-emptive penetration' trend.
Spector? Check the twentieth year of the ongoing 'Fred MacPherson bands' trend. You might as well have assembled them in a lab, which, in essence, is what the music industry does. There's simply no space in this sort of by-numbers carve-up for organically grown talents like psych-prog delights Luminous Detorri, the impish new wave of Missing Maddy, or the guttural post-punk of Nanging Chain – a band who've been doing great things on the Leeds scene for nearly a year now, and are quite clearly ready to make the step up. But as I wrote in the editorial of my new 'zine, Sparta FC, the truth is that the industry just doesn't care about valid artists. It's a steamroller. A monstrous big old steamroller that flattens the lovely little dreams of the true talents in the name of 'what sells' and 'what people will be interested in'. That's the greatest irony of all – that the public is being given what they want, when in fact the public has no idea what it wants, because I haven't yet been given enough of a platform to tell them what they want.
Annons
by Sophie Gourlay
Better yet – after years of male music execs forcing ladies into skimpy cocktail dresses and making them sit crying in their rooms over the state of their thighs, finally, we have a body-positive industry that recognises that women come in all different shapes and sizes, and doesn't judge them for it. After all, the girls from Stooshe certainly look like they could do with a few hours on the treadmill when they've finished wandering around Brick Lane talking about penetration. And as for that girl from Friends, well, she may think she has the perfect figure now, but just wait a few years until her tits start to sag, then she won't be feeling so peppy. Yup, women in music are finally free to be themselves without being judged. Better still, most of these women are black, which really shows that, finally, black music is coming out of the shadows (if you'll pardon the pun!), and stepping into the mainstream from which it has been cruelly excluded for so long. And it doesn't even stop at the gates of music any more, either. Even at a traditional patriarchy like the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have lost his job because of a woman, but let's not forget that he lost it to a woman as well! Yup, even as she claps generations of Greek womanhood into penury, Christine Lagarde can say she's a feminist icon at the heart of the neoliberal elite. You go girl! In 2012, while Angela Merkel clonks the boys' heads together and says: "stop squabbling and come up with a new fiscal union!", I for one will be kicking off my shoes, pulling up on the couch with a margarita and the new Azealia Banks record, and celebrating the new queens of music: girls.Infuriated and appalled by this opinion adopted by a fake journalist for money that doesn't exist? Try out page two for some immediate TLC and to increase our page view stats. Everyone's right on the internet!THE SOUND OF 2012 IS THE SOUND OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TURNING INTO THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
by Dom Heawood
Ren Harvieu? Can you say 'A British Lana Del Rey trend'?
Michael Kiwanuka? Just the Jack Johnson trend updated, recycled and re-hoovered, plastered-over, given a new nose and tailfin.
Dry The River? Just call them Mumford & Sons' Sons.
Stooshe? Check the 'girl bands who sing about pre-emptive penetration' trend.
Spector? Check the twentieth year of the ongoing 'Fred MacPherson bands' trend. You might as well have assembled them in a lab, which, in essence, is what the music industry does. There's simply no space in this sort of by-numbers carve-up for organically grown talents like psych-prog delights Luminous Detorri, the impish new wave of Missing Maddy, or the guttural post-punk of Nanging Chain – a band who've been doing great things on the Leeds scene for nearly a year now, and are quite clearly ready to make the step up. But as I wrote in the editorial of my new 'zine, Sparta FC, the truth is that the industry just doesn't care about valid artists. It's a steamroller. A monstrous big old steamroller that flattens the lovely little dreams of the true talents in the name of 'what sells' and 'what people will be interested in'. That's the greatest irony of all – that the public is being given what they want, when in fact the public has no idea what it wants, because I haven't yet been given enough of a platform to tell them what they want.