Adam Lovejoy writes from London: The thing about pop acts that puzzles me most of all is not the bad singing, the stupid lyrics – I mean, how many times can you squeeze the word ‘baby’ into a song? – the primitive tunes and the stupid names of bands. It’s the so called ‘dancing’.

How can they call it dancing? It’s more of clumsy gyrating, shuffling of feet and performing aerobics very badly. It’s an offence to the whole concept of dancing. The choreography is non-existent, the moves are stupid or sexually explicit, with pelvic thrusts and crotch rubbing, and it all looks amateurish and pathetic. And if you consider that pop videos are shot for days, and then the best bits are picked and glued together, you can imagine what sort of ‘original dancing’ was involved.

The whole thing about pop is that practically anyone can be a star – just like anyone can be a modern artist. You don’t need any talents at all. You can sing out of key like the Rolling Stones did for decades, you can be s..t at playing the electric instruments, like 99 per cent of all pop acts are, you may not be able to hold your tune properly for more than ten seconds and you can move like a gorilla and yet, you can still become a huge hit with the public. Why? Because the public is easily satisfied, that’s why. It doesn’t really need any lyrics that make sense and, once pissed or stoned, can basically listen to anything, including the sounds of the construction site, especially if it’s peppered with F-words, for grittiness and realism. It’s like real life, innit?

And still, with all that in mind, the so-called dancing part remains a mystery. Because it sort of makes you brutally aware that you are watching total nonentities, who would have done everyone a big favour if they had gone into catering or retail, to save all that embarrassment.

But if you want the whole sad truth about pop then I’ll let you have it: the stupid gyrating pop stars lack any personality or character. They are like cardboard cut-outs, with no hint of any intelligence in their eyes – the window to the soul – with nothing even remotely amusing to say and no sense of humour present. These semi-literate, inarticulate individuals were thrown into the spotlight, having nothing new to offer, simply because everyone is lacking talent these days and the audiences are not particularly fussy. And so the never ending vicious cycle of non-talents emerging from the depths of the swamp that is the pop music industry continues. And it will get worse with time, because these plebs actually listen to each other for inspiration, being unable to appreciate the ‘greats’ of the recent past, who were not really all that great, but still sound like classics compared to the current lot.

So what’s the solution, you may wonder. Well, it might make sense for people to go back to jazz, R&B and take a shot at listening to the classics. And if not, then maybe just not listen to music at all. The sound of silence is so much better than pop anyway.

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