Plaid shirts and eye-wateringly skinny jeans; all indie haircuts and glasses. At Babylove on a Thursday, it’s hard not to know exactly who I mean. They’re alternative and they revel in it. They seem to be among their own, but to pick out your friends from among this sea of identical people becomes a herculean task.
In a quest to be individual they appear to have created a whole new genre of identikit teens, and I frankly don’t get it. Maybe that’s because I am one of the ‘others’ – I am painfully mainstream, and proud of it. I think Britney Spears is the greatest recording artist of all time; my favourite singer is Lemar; I have only been to one concert and that was Hear’Say – when I was 10. And guess what? I bloody loved Hear’Say. I thought the greatest news of the noughties was the Spice Girl reunion and I adore unadulterated cheesy pop: give me Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, JLS or Beyonce any day. My iPod contains classics like B*witched’s ‘C’est la vie’, The Vengaboys’ ‘We’re going to Ibiza’, Hanson’s ‘Mmmbop’, and Miley Cyrus’ ‘The Climb’. It reads like a who’s-who of the most over-played crap blasting out of Capital radio, Heart or, (dare I say it) Magic, but there is a reason these artists top the charts. The thing is, people love pop.
You see, pop makes the music world go round. It may not be universally loved, but record labels know that it will be heard and, more importantly, bought by the masses. Pop makes you feel good; it makes you want to dance; it makes you want to belt along.
Not that the music on a Thursday at Babylove isn’t enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, with a few vodka and cranberries down me I can dance to pretty much anyhing, and I will.
But I prefer pop. There’s something liberating about indulging in pure, unpretentious, unaffected music for a while. You can listen to a song just for its synthesized beats and auto-tuned artists and you can dance like you’re thirteen again, tipsy after your first Smirnoff Ice.
If you want my advice, abandon Babylove, eschew The xx, and escape the plaid for just one week. Try something that’s not quite so very different – try, I don’t know, Kukui? Because that’s where I’ll be, dancing like my life depends on it with all the other mainstream kids. Who knows? You might even want to come back next week.
