Two boyband generations on from Take That, pop has reclaimed the charts, apparently permanently. Even as we speak, the next teen sensations are being grown in vitro from spare bits of Jason Orange in a secret laboratory on the south coast, and a recently launched girl-band division is flourishing. Five examples of pop '99 gathered in south London over the weekend in a show of strength that warned that, if we're not vigilant, the future will be one of baggy combats and stage-school-accented demands of "Make some noise!"
Four thousand under-10s swapped Cadbury's chocolate wrappers for free entry to a show starring Five, whose 4m sales make them the top English boyband, plus "special guests". Wired on Coke - the liquid kind - the glowstick-chewing house accorded an indiscriminately crazed reception to every act, even those who patently didn't deserve it.
Hepburn, say. You can only wonder at this female quartet's foolishness in choosing a name that illuminates their own lack of gamine elegance. Enfield, as in Harry, might have been nearer the mark, and no, playing your own instruments doesn't make shrill Cockney shoutery any more enticing. Thunderbugs, who are being heavily pushed as "the credible Spice Girls", demanded more of themselves musically. The guitarist even switched to an acoustic on one song, as if it mattered, given that everything but the vocals was mimed.
The girl band I'd want to be in, if I were 10, is the Honeyz, who devoted their energies to looking and sounding like velvet. Standing against a celestial black curtain studded with star-like points of light, they were aspirationally beautiful. It's a pity the one called Heavenli has left. Weirdest (in this company) were the Moffats, four Canadian brothers who, it soon transpired, are only consigned to this sort of gig because of their youth. The one thing wrong with their guitar-heavy covers of the Kinks and Lenny Kravitz is that now the kids probably think the Moffats wrote them.
No such misapprehensions with the boyband-who-are-really-a-lad band, Five. They're so generic that any boy could be a Five, assuming he didn't mind vapourising his credibility by singing catchphrases like, "We're the bad boys and we're gonna rock you". Their genuinely gang-like appearance was undermined by the use of every current cliché including moodily staring at the floor, dancing like Janet Jackson video extras and wearing fleeces that must have been pure hell under the lights. Perversely, their rumbling, Americanized R& B was catchier than anything else we heard tonight. All they needed was personalities to go with it.
