HOW WE FEEL RIGHT NOW


So Pop!'s first single, "Heaven and Earth", has entered the UK singles chart at NUMBER 14. Popofficial.com is crowing about this fantastic "Top 15" entry. But in a world where disposapop acts are lucky to get an album out if the first few singles don't all go top 10, someone has to admit that number 14 is hardly what Pete Waterman would have had in mind. Lisa Scott-Lee, among others, is someone who might have "one or two things to say" about this situation.
Apart from the valid points ably raised by Popjustice a few weeks back, there are a few reasons for the Pop! semi-debacle that we'd like to bring to the table:

1. Fop LOVES "Heaven and Earth". LOVES it to DEATH. But even so, we can't get away from the fact that there's something faintly patronising about a brazen attempt (by Pete Waterman, no less) to replicate a Steps-type outfit, specially for children and gays. For our money, Steps were so charming and likeable because they were so unassuming. They treated pop like a bank job. Go to work, do a simple but memorable little dance. Do the same dance again and again and again. Smile, smile, smile! Go home. Repeat. Perhaps towards the end a couple of them developed some mild delusions of grandeur, but for most of that group's relatively short life, it seemed like Steps were in a state of permanent amazement that they had any sort of career beyond "5, 6, 7, 8". They were damn pleased to have any fans at all, it seemed. And gays tend to like this sort of thing. We like an underdog. And we also quite like to appropriate something that was never originally meant for us (see also, Cheeky Girls, Dannii Minogue). We like to help a pop act develop organically, into something we've supported from when it wasn't very, eg, good. So when something like Pop! gets thrust condescendingly upon us, screaming "Here! You gays like this sort of pap! Buy it, QUICK!", we're less likely to want to participate. It's a little bit reminiscent of Sheena Easton's unabashed attempt to court some gays with a disco covers album that nobody wanted to buy, or even download.

2. Pop! is a stupid name for a band. Not only is it too obvious, but it doesn't work very well/at all as a google search term. Too many results, you see.

Despite all this negativity, it would be nice if Pop! managed to stick around and make something of themselves. Fop supports Pop!. Sort of.