What do you call that pathetic musical genre of the 2000s?
What do you call those gay, pussy-arsed songs sung by those sweet little girl-boys who dominate the charts?
What one phrase concisely captures the essence of the new wave of pre-pubescent, over-sensitive dweeby wusses on the radio whining about the love they have for some teasing little tartlet?
Where have all the Men gone in music?
Don't get me wrong, baby. There have always been softies in pop music: the Righteous Brothers, John Farnham, the Eagles, Kenny Rogers, George Michael...
There have always been hard-arses: Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, The Doors, AC/DC, Metallica, Nirvana, Linkin Park, Nickelback...
What they had in common was that they were all Men - fully grown, life-experienced, full-blooded specimens from the spectrum of masculinity.
And yes, like Karl Popper, I realise that when someone says all swans are white, the first thing people do is look for a black swan. I refer to the hermaphroditic gender-neutral/gender-dubious experiment that was New Wave and New Romantic music. The early 80s music scene was attacked by a plethora of gay hair-dressers who weren't really gay or hair-dressers (except for Flock of Seagulls):
Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, A-Ha...
Okay, so some were actually gay. But they were still gay Men, not gay boys. They were not sweet or soft, easily drawn to tears, still living at home with mummy and daddy to pwotect dem fwom da big bad world. These gay Men were incisive, confronting, garish, risk-taking, brave-hearted. And this constitution was reflected in their music and lyrics.
Alright, alright. Yes, later on in the 80s we saw the rise of the man-perm that was Hard Rock:
Def Lepard, White Snake, Poison, Twisted Sister, the Cult
But this is also different! They weren't actually the pansy little princesses their gay hair-stylists tried to make them. They were severely talented and visionary young men who were testing the boundaries of society's appreciation of art and expression. They were still men under all that make-up.
Today's factory-produced talentless whiner is designed to sell "records" and merchandise to the wuss market - from 5 to 25 yr old girls and their fellow girl-boys.
These are not Men!
This is not the music of Men!
There is an emerging attempt to fuse lollipop boys and wussiness with masculinity. Check out the half-thawed rawness, the roughness and homelessly bestubbled disguises worn by wussy older blokes:
Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon, Snow Patrol, Eskimo Joe, Wolf M
other...The new genre of the 2000s is sweet, caring, cuddly, mothering. It is the pre-pubescent, impotent, immature and weak wailing of a teary-eyed mummy's boy.
Their only talent is to look sweet, sing sweet and taste like lollipops.
