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Monday 7 July 2008

Sugar rush

Marcus Berkmann buys a Take That album

As in real life, it’s considered faintly reprehensible in music to have a sweet tooth. Greens are good for you, and so is The Velvet Underground, but right now I’m thinking about going up to the shop at the end of the road and buying a packet of Maltesers, having just listened to a Take That album. I can’t believe I have just written those words. If you had told me ten years ago that not only would I voluntarily listen to a Take That album in 2008, but that it would also be my own copy, which I had bought with my own money, I think I would have assumed that some form of early-onset dementia was about to take hold. Somewhere in the intervening decade, however, it became generally accepted that Gary Barlow, Thingy, Whatsisname and Grungyface possess a certain low-level talent and even write the occasional decent song. I’d loved the two singles, ‘Patience’ and ‘Shine’, so when Amazon discounted the album to £4.98 the other week, I pressed click, albeit with a lump in my throat and a blush extending to my toes. Shame isn’t an emotion I experience very often, but I can tell you it was a lot easier buying it this way than over the counter in HMV.

Pop, though, is in the ascendancy again. Radio One announced recently that it is turning its hoodie-clad back on rock, and indeed roll, and embracing once again the broad church of pop — which, from my brief listens over the past few weeks, seems to mean repeated plays of The Feeling in between all the shouting. Vast numbers of people I know who never listen to Radio One if they can help it are outraged by this decision, which probably wouldn’t have been noticed if it hadn’t been announced in order to attract precisely this sort of attention. The world’s premier music station really should be playing something a little more...nourishing. With all those young white female singers who want to sound like Aretha, there’s a distinct shortage of vitamins and minerals — indeed, it’s more like eating one of those vast buckets of popcorn they sell in multiplexes, with a side order of Smarties. And after listening to the Take That album a few times, I felt a bit sick and had to go and have a liedown.

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