For no particular reason other than that it
seemed like a good idea on one sunny August afternoon, Neil and Chris decided that for this issue of Literary the Pet Shop Boys would informally discuss The State Of Pop - always a favoured Pet Shop Boys subject with reference to the British album and singles charts o August 17, 2003. They agreed to touch on all the records in either Top Ten, if only briefly, and to consider any records and artists less successful that week but which also seemed to be worthy of their attention. Literally listened, and occasionally prompted or chipped in.
"I think what's interesting is that generally 1 think at the moment we all assume that pop music is rubbish..." begins Neil.
"I don't," interjects Chris.

... so let's just look at the facts," says Neil.
"I don't agree with that;' says Chris. "I think that's just people who don't actually listen to the records. As I said to someone the other day, you can't say that you don't know any of these records when you never put yourself in the position of hearing any of them."
"Yeah;' Neil half-agrees, "though I've always maintained that true popular pop music you don't have to put yourself in the position of listening to it, you just hear it anyway, somehow."

"But if you don't listen to the radio or watch music on the television, where...?" begins Chris.
"Shops," says Neil firmly. "Shops." 'And you don't go shopping;' says Chris. "People's cars;' says Neil. "And you don't have the radio on in the car;' says Chris.
"And it's on the news;' argues Neil. "It's on the news?" says Chris.
"It's just around," says Neil. "I didn't sit at home listening to 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' by Kylie Minogue. It was just unavoidable?'
"Well, you go clubbing as well;' sighs Chris.
"I'm a dubber, unlike you, Chris;' says Neil. "I still go clubbing.
"Dads down the disco;' teases Chris.

First, the Singles chart:

1. BIn Cantrell featuring Sean Paul "Breathe"

Chris: Like it. This record, I kept thinking 'what is this?' because I really really liked it, and then one day I realised it
was number one in the charts. A deserved number one in my opinion. I think it's really good. I love the whole brass sound. And Sean Paul's really good. The whole thing's very sexy. Neil: I don't think I know this record. Do I know it?
Chris: She was a porn star, apparently Neil: Oh, she was. I read that on Popbitch. I'm not aware that I know it.
Chris: There's a nice Mercedes in the video. Neil: I've seen posters of Sean Paul, because I always think it's P Diddy's clothing range but that's Sean John, isn't it? Astonishingly I do not really know this record.
Chris: The album's not selling. (This week the Blu Cantrell album is at number 51.) Who wants albums when you can collect your own good singles.
Neil: Put them on your iPod.
Chris: Yeah. I think the album's dead as a format. Long live the single.

2. Ultrabeat "Pretty Green

Chris: I like this, again. This is cheesy trance house for the

Neil: I think I hate it.
Chris: You will. I can tell you without you even hearing it. You'll hate it.
Neil: What was that record I really hated? Chris: DJ Sanuny?
Neil: No, that one about... that real Euro cheese. "Castles In The Air".
Chris: Oh no, this is better than that. This is actually one of those really good summer holiday records.
Neil: The problem is that I haven't been watching MTV or The Box very much the last few weeks because we haven't been recording and I haven't been in London.

3. Busted "Sleeping With The Light On"

Chris: A new entry at number three. Weren't they predicting number one, though?
Neil: They were, yeah.
Chris: So they must have been very disappointed.
Neil: I'm not on the Busted bus yet, it has to be said.
Chris: I think this is a good Busted single, this one, though.
Neil: I don't love it, to be honest.
Chris: Oh, I think it's in a very good tradition of teen angst.
Neil: Have you looked through Busted - The Unofficial Book by any distant chance? I was looking through it in Harrods the other day. It might have even been the official book. Like the book Blue on Blue. But how old are Busted?
Chris: I was going to say late teens. Neil: Have you looked at Busted - The Unofficial Book? They all look like they're pushing thirty.
Chris: No way!
Neil: Way, I'm afraid.

Chris: No way, man, are they pushing thirty. Neil: Boy bands have got quite interesting. It started off with: you've got to look good and be able to dance a bit, maybe. New Kids On The Block was the classic example. There is a possibility that two of New Kids On The Block could sing though it's never really been definitively proved that they could. But it didn't matter, because they were meant to look good...
Chris: They were meant to look good. Neil: . . although weirdly they didn't look good either Actually, that's why they were always a bit of an enigma to us.
Chris: I think they were a bit of a turning point. Neil: The turning point I think was.. then you had East 17, classic boy band, two of them could dance, one of them could sing, one of them wrote the stuff... Take That, talent level, three of them couldn't really sing.. .then after that what happened was: The Backstreet Boys. The Backstreet Boys could all sing. They could sing
close harmonies live in MTV in a depressingly impressive way.
Chris: And do complicated dance routines, but look terrible.
Neil: Apart from Brian they looked ghastly. And like all American boy bands they had absolutely zero style, and an appalling stylist. But they were really good dancers and they could sing, and they actually had some very nice records. They had a very good ballad, "I Want It That Way". And they were the turning point, because after that they all sort of became talented. In America. The British and Irish loyally maintained the tradition of most of the band can't do anything. Which is what I think makes a boy band interesting. Because a boy band really should be like a classic pop group - it should be more of a gang than a statement of talent. Like New Kids On The Block.

Chris: Like the Rolling Stones.
Neil: It should appear to be a gang of lads having lun, I think. Busted and Blue seem to be talented in that they can sing - Blue are all really good singers.
Literally: Don't Busted and Blue right now seem like the antidote to Pop Idol-ness?
Neil: They do, even though they are a bit showbiz-y. When I went to that Liza Minnelli party recently, there were Blue.
Chris: I don't know the history of Busted, but were they all Iriends at school that formed a band or were they auditioned by a svengali figure? It's difficult to know with them because they present themselves as a band that write their own songs. I just don't know how true that
is.
Neil: I think they co-write all their songs. Chris: But did they all know each other before? Because that's the difference between a real band and a manufactured band - the hand is put together and none of them know each other until...
Neil: No, I don't think that's the case, because actually Blue were put together but Blue definitely functions as a real gang of lads together Westlife were put together and Boyzone were put together and they all ended

up, for better or for worse, as a kind of gang of lads.What seems clever about Busted is that they're writing songs about being at the school disco...
Chris: And fancying your teacher. Neil: That was quite a good one, the fancying your teacher one.

4. Jaimeson "Complete"

Neil: Never heard of this.
Chris: Don't know it.

5. Lumidee "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh Ub Oooh)"

Neil: Don't know it. (Literally tries to sing the chorus to Neil, unsuccessfully "Sounds like Teletubbies," he says.)
Chris: I might know it if I was to hear it.

6. Mark Owen "Four Minute Warning"

Neil: I'm impressed with this that it went in at number four and only went down to six. That's very good. I was
assuming it would be number 17 or something like that. I've only heard it once and I can't remember much about it. It's the indie rock thing he's still doing, isn't it? "Four minute warning's a phrase, isn't it? For a nuclear bomb or something.

7. Pharrell Williams featuring Jay-Z "Frontin"'

Chris: Don't love this, myself, although there's a good bit towards the end.
Neil: I've seen this in MTV but I can't remember anything about it. I like Pharrell though.
Literally: It's one of the strongest currents in modern pop music, isn't it? Pharrell Williams,
the Neptunes...
Neil: It's a pretty good one. It's what we call Justin Timberlake. Chris and I went to a party last year and we saw them performing with Justin Timberlake.
Chris: Very good.
Neil: I thought they were great, and I thought he was particularly good, Pharrell. I thought he was very very charismatic. Much more charismatic than Justin Timberlake was. Better-looking as well.
Chris: And Christina. She was there as well. They were all there.
Neil: She sung for fifteen seconds. Christina Aguilera makes Kylie look very tall. She's absolutely beyond tiny.
Chris: It's all very musical, though, Pharrell, isn't it? I've preferred other stuff of this. I find this very dry.
8. Richard X featuring Kelis "Finest Dreams"

Chris: Now then, what is the
song on the top of this?
Neil: The Human League.The S.O.S. Band's The Finest on top of The Human League's The Things That Dreams Are Made Of".
Chris: Oh, it's the S.O.S. Band? Do they get a writing credit? It's Jam & Lewis.
Neil: We had a very interesting conversation with Trevor Horn about your sample records, because people keep wanting to use "Moments In Love" by the Art Of Noise. This conversation was inspired by me suggesting that we sample "Moments In Love" and put it in "Numb". And he says that he will only allow people to use "Moments In Love" on the basis that they get one hundred per cent of the publishing. It's "write your own flaming song, then". It's "well, don't use it then".
Chris: I think this record works very well. Neil: We approached Richard X to work with us, for the greatest hits, and he was interested but all this year he's been finishing off his album and sorting out the permissions.
Chris: The great thing about getting him to work with us is that we wouldn't have to have any involvement with it at all. Basically you'd be commissioning him to do a bootleg. I like this whole bootleg industry, because I think it's produced some really exhilarating pop music. There was one using Odyssey's "Native New Yorker" and it was fantastic.
Neil: Also, the Sugababes record.
Chris: And the Eminem one, "Cleaning Out My Closet", by Jacknife Lee. As a genre I find it very exciting. I think it's just a phase, though, and we'll all get bored with it and it'll fizzle out. But going back as far as Stardust and "Holiday" together, which was played at midnight at my fortieth birthday party Sometimes the combination of two records is greater than the pans.

9. The Cheeky Girls "Hooray (It's A Cheeky Holiday)"

Chris: I hate this record, but I
kind of like the whole concept
of The Cheeky Girls. And I love the fact that they proved Pete Waterman wrong afier h~ been so dismissive of them. Neil: Where are they from again?
Chris: Transylvania. I mean, how great is that? Transylvanian twins in the charts. Actually, I've always hated this record - I hate the Boney M version and I hate this version as well.
Neil: Oh, it is the same song?
Chris: Yeah. Their mum's rewritten the lyrics. Neil: Good on their mum. It's the kind of awful record that shows that the charts are healthy, isn't it?
Neil: Yes.
Chris: You need this kind of stuff in the charts because it means that the public are involved. Actually, my mum made a very good point about pop music. She said, 'the trouble is now, it's really openly aimed at very young people and it never used to be'.
Neil: It's true, actually.
Chris: She said, 'there used to be something for everyone and now it's aimed at the under tens or
something'.
Neil: I mean, when was the last time we had an Engelbert-type crooner on the scene? Chris: The charts are too exclusive at the moment.

10. R. Kelly featuring Big Tigger "Snake"

Chris: Don't know this one. It's
not the number one one.
Neil: I don't know that.
Chris: You must know
"Ignition"The biggest hit of the yean Neil: I must know it, then.
Chris: You know, you hear them in shops. Neil: Oh, I have heard it. It's a good idea, that 'afler party' bit. But it doesn't really speak to me about my life.
Chris: I have heard this one once on the radio but I can't remember it.
Neil: What we've learned about the state of pop so far is that I don't know most of it.
Chris: I think what I've realised over a long period of time is that there are always good records around, and the idea that you go through periods of crap is just wrong. Because there's always good records. And also one overlooks what age you are as well, because music when you're younger is far more part of your life than it is when you're olden
Neil: Yeah. I'm always having this argument with taxi drivers. And I think if you were at school now in the sixth form, you've done your A levels, you're going out, you'll be so familiar with all of these records in a way in which we never will because they're not really a part of our youth.

12. Beyonc6 "Crazy In Love"

Chris: For me, that's the single Of the year
Neil: I've actually bought that
Chris: The brass riff.
Neil: Exactly.
Chris: And it's got loads of hooks. 'Uh-oh uh-oh
uh-oh uh-oh..
Neil: The records I've got from this week's chart are Beyonce', Benny Benassi's 'Satisfaction" (nomber 18), which is good but not as good as it could be really... and I'm astonished to say this, but I think the Stereophonic' single (Maybe Tomorrow" number 26) is really good, and I hate the Stereophonic.
Chris No it is
Neil I think its a really good song.

28. Craig David "Spanish"

Neil: Craig David, I think the less said the better.

56.50 Cent "In Da Club"

Its 23rd week in the
chart.
Neil: Don't mind that.
Chris: No, I like that.

58. Dannii Minogue "Don't Wanna Lose This Feeling"

Neil: Well, let's face it, she's got a career. Who'd have thought that?
Chris: That's hung around for ages. (This is its ninth week in the chart.) Look, it's gone back up.

74. Justin Timberlake "Rock

Your Body"
Neil: My favourite record in
the top 75.
Chris: A very good one.
Neil: A fantastic record, and I think you'll find your mother knows that.
Chris: She may well do.
Neil: That is the kind of record it is possible to flick through the video channels at midnight and it's playing on three of them at the same time. That's what I call a hit.
Chris: He's got world domination.

Copyright Areagraphy Ltd 2002: All Articles have been
Taken From Literally 2002 Issue 27