Pop on the box: A comparative history

People keep asking why Top Of The Pops, CD:UK, Popworld, and all the other decent pop programmes have died and gone to telly heaven. I think I have a theory...

Exhibit A: Otis Redding performing I Can't Turn You Loose on ITV pop show Ready Steady Go, 1966.

To gee himself up for an appearance on national TV, Otis burns his hand on a stove, licks a car battery and shoves a frog up his bottom. That's why he dances like an epileptic windmill. It's invigorating stuff:



Exhibit B: Gnarls Barkley on chin-stroking muso wankfest Live from Abbey Road, 2007.

The biggest moment of drama in this performance comes when someone turns the volume knob on their keyboard from four to slightly louder than four.

Cee-Lo may have the voice of an angel, but it would have been better if, just before the director called "action", someone had slapped him with a kipper and called his mum a slag:




I put it to you, the jury, that music television went wrong when we stopped making singers flail around like demented baboons and decided that exhibiting any sort of enjoyment somehow "devalued" the "music".

I blame Oasis, myself.

Tweet