Unpop

About me:

Unpop. Weird Pop. Pop gone wrong. Beautifully errored Pop with a glitch in its component parts. From post-Nazi polysexual alien kabuki robots to lesbian teen runaway lovers fleeing the Lilya 4-Ever dystopia of dead-Communist Russia. A gorgeous parade of heroes and villains, misfits and mis-shapes marginalised by an industry where every little star is slung back on the production line and pulped into homogenic pop putty, ready to be remoulded into more Wills and Gareths. Even Kylie, Pop’s own ass-wielding hologram redeemer, could only cheat her fate at the cold hands of Nick Cave, a rock and a pool, gloriously reincarnating herself forever as a typeface (German Bold Italic). Unpop is soundbite slogan shorthand for a kind of Outsider Pop. It’s a badge, a clubhouse, a heterotopia – the name of a better time and place, a world that never quite existed, except perhaps in Leiji Matsumoto’s head and Dickon Edwards’ hair. In Unpop Klaus Nomi and Jobriath were never slain by AIDS before their rightful thrones were cruelly snatched away by metteur en scene’s, in Unpop Gary Numan *did* die in that plane crash and thankfully never got to hear Nine Inch Nails. Why Pop? Because it’s the only genuinely rootless music. The only music that actively abhors atavism and all the fake guitar-smashing that goes with it. It’s the only music that thinks starjumps are fucking cool. Every so often a ‘what-the-fuck??’ solar flare of weirdness erupts from its cold, controlled landscape. These chancers are the Unpop avatars. Some of them were visionaries, most just dared to be wrong in a world where wrongness (unstraightness, ungreyness, uniqueness) is sent to the showers and the charity shop bargain bins. Some of them had Number 1’s. Most had their flame pissed out before that ‘difficult’ second single. They *all* desperately, heroically, wanted to be wanted. Unpop is NOT about kitsch, it’s about finding style, sensitivity and intelligence in the uncoolest of all musics. All Pop, All Style.