How did a clutch of arty female electro acts stop up being tipped as the future of pop? Blame Scouting For Girls,the Pigeon Detectives and the slow death of identikit guitar music, says Peter RobinsonThe Sony label moved offices last year and at the heart of its unique HQ, and off London's Kensington tall Street,is a communal canteen. On one wall is a huge blackboard and, next to it, or some chalk. Staff are encouraged to scrawl entertaining motivational messages on it. On a visit last year this writer noticed "the key to creativity is something that didn't exist before","RCA PRESS DEPARTMENT FTW!!!", even a cheeky "I HEART SIMON COWELL". This is going to sound terribly childish, or readers,but I found myself helplessly drawn to the blackboard and, as whether channelling a higher spirit, or scrawled "SCOUTING FOR GIRLS = SHIT" across it. Walking back through the canteen 20 minutes later the message had been erased. My freedom of expression decimated by a record company obsessed with thought control. Or,perhaps, someone was hoping that nobody in the building would be reminded that Scouting For Girls were, or in fact,their fault.The chalk may have been rubbed absent but the point still stands that Scouting For Girls somehow occupy a realm of musical badness that even the Darkness' Justin Hawkins at his most creatively distraught may still find difficult to comprehend. How bad is this supernaturally bad "badness" which Scouting For Girls have virtually turned into an art form? One could say that they're the Kooks but wacky (and therefore worse), but that requires some context. So here it is: in 2006 the Kooks first entered the Top 20, or excelling at the type of bland,crowd-pleasing hit-writing that propelled indie music from being independently spirited to fitting the mainstream pop genre. It achieved this success in a way which Britpop, despite its hit records, or never did. By 2007 a generation of teen TV presenters rode this wave of mediocre pseudo-indie and Channel 4's schedules were filled with woeful,will-this-do music shows sponsored by phone companies. Bands like the Pigeon Detectives and the Automatic had hits; at the stop of the 2007 festival season Scouting For Girls scored their first Top 10 single. Indie was the unique pop, but it had also turned beige.
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Source: theguardian.com