Recently, my mind has been vexed by a recurring thought. It's troubled me deeply and often kept me up at night, I'm sad to say. The source of my woe is this: since when were Take That seen in any way as credible?
Perhaps the source of this is that they recently won a Q award of some kind. Now, I know Q magazine has long gone to the dogs in terms of any kind of journalistic integrity, but I did buy it every month between around 1996 (Paul Heaton from the Beautiful South on the cover, if I remember right, and a cover CD featuring hip up-and-coming bands like Mansun) and 2001. I'm assuming the slide I noted became terminal if they consider Take That worthy of an entry into any "Hall of Fame". I'll guess David Cassidy will get the nod next year.
What disturbs me more is that a band who made it by covering crap songs with crap arrangements and crap singing are set to go on a tour of stadiums. I'm aware I have little patience with most aspects of pop culture, but this really is a step too far. I can only assume the media have decided to get behind the Take That story - with the return of Bob Williams being as inevitable as a comeback in a Rocky film.
I shouldn't care, I know, but I'll remain eternally baffled why tens of thousands of people - most of whom around my age - will pay stupid sums of money to see five middle aged men sing wretched AOR ballads alongside the inconsequential shite they peddled first time around. Even back then, as a young lad unversed in music, I recognised it was crap and, please, don't give me that "come on, Back For Good wasn't bad": it was nothing but a dried, encrusted wank stain on the blanket of popular music.
And of course, an extra reason to loathe Take That is what they started. They made a huge pile of cash and fully cemented the boy band line up including at least two useless tossers who did nothing but have a few dance moves and enough muscles and dumb smiles to moisten some teenage girls' kex. We can blame Westlife on Take sodding That and the quicker this whole fiasco is over, the quicker we can consign them to the blackest voids of our memory.
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People generally look to the past with rose-tinted glasses. Nobody remembers Elvis now the way he was just before he died, as a washed-up has-been struggling to fit into his sequinned onesie. Or whatever that lycra abomination was. No.. now he's 'the king' and all that.
ReplyDeleteClearly people have forgotten why boy bands died in the first place and think by jumping on this reunion bandwagon they're somehow reconnecting with their lost youth, when the reality is they've spent the better part of the past two decades being embarrassed they ever had a Take That CD. Or should I say tape.
There are the odd die-hard fans, sure, but most people have just woken up and gone 'oh, are they cool again now? Guess I'd better get me some tickets then'.
Some things are better left in the past, right?
Let them have their reunited boy-bands I say... how else does one feel musically superior unless everyone else listens to gobshite while you have the good taste?
Of course. The main source of my irritation is that, somehow, Take That have become (it would seem) artistically crediable. Even The Guardian had them on the front page the other day. It's just baffling to me.
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