Anglo Pop for Grown-Ups

Hot on the heels of praise for Paul Morley as the BBC’s ubiquitous Manchester post-Punk music correspondent, it’s time to praise him again, in a different role, as the BBC’s English pop music correspondent.

Morley’s new one-hour documentary, Pop! What Is It Good For?, broadcast Tuesday on BBC Four, was a stylishly articulate, richly detailed manifesto for the peculiar genre that is Anglo Pop. Sections on The Smiths and Adam Faith were particularly challenging, though my attention wandered when it turned to inessentials such as Kylie, the Kinks and the Sugar Babes.

Morley’s programme was the grown-up highlight so far of BBC Four’s current Anglo Pop series. The other stuff has been re-runs of trashy, ultra-lite series - Juke Box Jury, Top Of The Pops, Old Grey Whistle Test and other such fluff - and weak movies starring actors with the gravitas of Cliff Richard. The first (pre-Beatles) programme in the three-part Pop Britannia series confirmed what we already knew: that ‘50s Britpop was third-rate, a desperate parochial cloning of the exciting US template.

Morley’s engaging doc confirmed, yet again, that music for grown-ups can come from any genre – the Smiths … Everlys … Roxy are as worthy of scrutiny as Puccini or Coleman Hawkins. And that most music, in all genres, especially pop, is unsuitable for grown-up consumption.

You can view Pop! What Is It Good For? online, on the wonderful new BBC iPlayer service.

Recommended (Morley’s programme and new iPlayer service).



Gerry Smith