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POP GOES THE WOMBATS?

By Lisa Spurgin ⋅ April 12, 2008 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

It’s fair to say that it was a musical collaboration that the indie fraternity weren’t anticipating – Franz Ferdinand signalling a desire to work with Xenomania, the production team behind Girls Aloud, on their upcoming album. What sounds like an initially weird pairing had the potential for some genius indie-pop hybrid which may have well taken over the world (or at least the charts). But alas, it wasn’t meant to be. The band announced that they’d parted creative company with Xenomania, with their plans to go pop doing just that. As a self confessed indie fan, it’s all a bit of a shame. For their art student image and the occasional bordering-on-the-pretentious lyric, Franz Ferdinand don’t belong to the ‘too cool for school’ brigade who care more about their NME endorsed street-cred than taking musical risks. The question is when did pop become such a dirty word in the industry? When it comes down to it, all it means is ‘popular’ which despite what precious musos think doesn’t equal selling out. Perhaps the once good name of pop has been irretrievably sullied by the soulless recycled reality TV output which serves only to line Mr Cowell’s pockets. Real pop is all about inventiveness, melody and the slightly kitsch – and if you listen closely is not a million miles away from the current indie crop (shock horror). Even the most dedicated of indie kids can’t ignore the fact that the genre has come in for flak recently for being too repetitive. Perhaps a pop influenced revolution is in order, or maybe the world isn’t yet ready for an indie assault on Love Machine…wait a minute, hasn’t that already been done?