File under: Pop Danny Baker's Great Album Showdown

Good evening, losers, boozers and Jacuzzi users. Thank you

for joining me on what is frankly an extravagantly crackpot,

but I hope, tremendously enjoyable, adventure into sound.

This 12 inches of glossy groove and dark promise is one of the most

exciting creations in the history of carefree human gyration.

It's an LP, of course. A pop LP.

Tonight, I'll be joined by a group of hot bopping,

finger popping sound scientists to hash around the pop music

and end up with a smorgasbord of 12 selected LPs that are pure pop

for now people, well now and then.

Whatever the era, this is about the pop, the...

that was heard around the world.

Pop music.

You know one of the best pop pieces of pop music ever

was about pop music. And it was called Pop Music!

By M. It included the genius couplet,

"Want to be a gunslinger? Don't be a rock singer.

"Eeenie, meenie, miny, mo Get you where you want to go."

Suck it up, Black Flag.

And taking us to the topper most of the popper most tonight,

we have writer, novelist and doyenne of all the leading waspish salons,

that's Grace Dent. Over there, actual top tier pop royalty.

He wrote Karma Chameleon, maybe you've heard of him. Boy George.

And not least, the man who launched Mojo, Empire and Q magazines,

and most importantly, Smash Hits - David Hepworth.

I'm going to ask you as a settler,

the first pop album you bought with your own money. Grace?

Pop album with my own money would be

Welcome To The Pleasuredome - Frankie. Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

-Frankie Goes To Hollywood. George?

-T Rex, Tanx.

-Yeah, you and I both.

-What a piece of work. David?

-We're The Beatles, by The Beatles.

Yeah, yeah. There you can carbon date the ages of everybody on board.

Tradition dictates pop spins at 45 rpm

and lasts no longer than three minutes, one second.

Up until the mid-60's, that was all the recipe required.

But then, things started to get interesting and pop vinyl,

like pop minds, began expanding.

Pop, pop! The perfect word for a short burst of excitement.

Singles have historically been pop's weapon of choice,

but from the mid-60's to the '80s,

some pop artists wanted a larger canvas.

They needed the album.

In 1955, Frank Sinatra released In The Wee Small Hours,

a collection of ballads for lost love, Ava Gardner.

It was probably the first-ever concept album

and hinted at the creative possibilities of the long player.

But not everyone could grow from 45 to 33,

not everyone had vision, not everyone was any good.

What, say the Barron Knights lacked, Brian Wilson had in bucket loads.

The Beach Boys 1966 album Pet Sounds

was constructed as a complete work, designed to serve

different emotions than their zippy 45s.

After the Beach Boys showed how it could be done,

simple giddy slapdash pop LPs became, well, more brainy.

Money, time, creativity, possibly drugs,

were lavished on cutting an album. Peppy, improved record players

and teenagers with lots of spare cash didn't hurt, either.

By 1968, album sales had even outstripped that of the single.

It was the beginning of the 33 1/3 revolution, a golden age

when the pop album was fun, wildly creative

and the repository of a new booming culture's dreams and emotions.

David, earlier you said your first pop album you bought

with your own money was the second Beatles album.

Was that the beginning of it?

When did you first think the pop album,

which is a difficult concept, had legs?

I suppose about 1965, when The Beatles had repeatedly

made albums where they had written all the songs, I suppose.

Which was a concept unknown in the 1950's.

You got an album, an Elvis Presley album,

you never expected it to be any good.

It would have two hits and then a bunch of potboilers.

And then the standards changed in the mid-60's

and I suppose Bob Dylan, at the same time, Highway 61,

all these kind of things and they suddenly started becoming really

sustained and people would play them and play them and play them.

And never get bored.

The difference there, I think, between say, Dylan

and The Beatles thing, I mean, the rock album went a different way.

I always think it's a trickier concept

and they're fewer and further between actual pop albums.

It's almost an oxymoron because they should be singles.

George, was it the albums you first started buying

and playing every track, what were they, apart from T Rex?

The first real important album for me

was The Man Who Sold The World which I inherited from my older brother,

who, I think, just found it a bit weird.

I remember hearing it through the bedroom door.

-It is a weird album.

-What's this record, what's this record?

I did not know anything about Bowie at that point.

I think my brother very quickly went off it

and moved on to the Faces or Alice Cooper and I got the album.

-And that album was like, a life changing record for me.

-How?

People say that, maybe when they're younger, folk will think, how can

an album, if they know what one is, be life changing? What do you mean?

When you're like, sort of, 11, and you hear,

"he swallowed his pride and puckered his lips

"and showed me the leather belt round his hips...

"he screamed and hollered...", you say, what is this?

He smelt the burning pit of fear, I believe, as well!

Everything, pop music...Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, The Sweet,

all those sort of pop records and suddenly,

Bowie was painting this kind of, very interesting landscape, which I

had never heard, you know, never.

Pop, in itself, is separate from rock.

A pop album, and Grace, it is the same,

I hesitate to use the word - journey - that every teenager goes on.

You think there has never been anything like this.

-This is about me and stuff.

-You talk about life changing

and the album I was going to mention is Parallel Lines by Blondie.

I was pre-teen when I heard that, but just that striking image,

she is on the cover, flanked by men, and if you look at the personnel,

if you look at who was working on that album,

she's pretty much the only woman and that whole album is just

full of these strong songs about her taking control in relationships and things like Sunday Girl, she is

kind of having a bit of a laugh about drippy women and things like that.

And that did, as an eight, nine, ten-year-old girl,

I thought, God, it's out there, it's out there.

It wouldn't have been no good though, without the tunes!

The tunes were fantastic, yeah, yeah, I mean, it is single,

-after single, after single.

-It's everything.

I don't think you can ever separate a good artist from what they wear,

how they wear it, how they walk, you know, it is

all encompassing, I think.

When we talk about the X factor, that idea we have now, the X factor,

we don't really see that whereas that was what we were seeing.

I hesitate to be the first person to use the expression,

"the thing that you can't tell kids today" but, in the golden age

of the album, you had no other entertainment.

You know, if you were a teenager or young 20's or whatever,

you went home every night and you went in your bedroom

-and you listened to your records again and again.

-Finding new meaning.

There was only one TV show once a week

that you could watch music on and I think life was better for it!

You couldn't even watch it

without a chorus of disapproval behind you from your family.

It upset my father. I couldn't watch it.

That was the end of life. If I upset dad.

The album, the actual album and we'll go into the cover

and everything else, it was almost like a narcotic and a secret,

even though they were selling hundreds of thousands.

The one that you owned was the one that mattered.

Also it was stuff, like my mother would hear the records

I was playing and say that isn't music.

So it was your secret thing that you took to your bedroom

and listened to over again. Nobody could understand why you listened to it.

Any extra content you could find on it, because you were so bored.

You'd look through everything on the back, you'd read everything,

you'd look for the play out messages, it would be, you know...

The pop album is different from the folk album, the jazz album,

the reggae album, whatever.

They were something that just you put on

when you needed not to think about stuff as well.

I mean, you had all your different albums, your serious albums,

but the pop album is a hard thing to carry off,

because, by definition, it has to keep the hits coming over two sides.

Did you keep your pop albums,

did they have a special place for anyone here that you actually

thought, what I want to do is put this on and kickback?

I have always been really disrespectful of vinyl that I owned.

I know this is going to annoy you men,

but there was no system, there was no order.

A lot of things didn't even get put back in sleeves.

DAVID GASPS

Look at that. There you go.

Jam, mascara, you know!

The hollow laugh you heard from south London is you suggesting

I have order in my system! That was my wife coming aboard there.

There was no discretion.

It was like, I could listen to Man Who Sold The World,

listen to the Irish rebel songs, the showbands, listen to jazz.

You've got a theory about why we call that pop music, haven't you?

That most winning theory for why you call it pop music,

I picked it up recently watching a film called The Wrecking Crew,

about the great studio musicians of Los Angeles in the '60s.

Carol Kaye, she talks about making a tune pop.

The job of a session musician was to make a tune pop,

make it work in a way that leapt off the record.

That's far more winning a definition than talking

about popular, but I think all these categories have been

increasingly slavishly adhered to recently.

I think category names are good servants and very bad masters.

I think there is a great danger nowadays where people say, you show

a kid a picture of a band and they can tell you what it sounds like.

Because everybody dresses like their sound nowadays,

whereas I bought The Monkees' "I'm A Believer" on the same day

I bought Jimi Hendrix' "Hey Joe". It's the same world.

I tell you, I am going to make selections for what we call

in Phil Spector's absence, The Wall Of Sound, behind us,

although you'll notice it doesn't make a noise.

I'll be peppering the show with the ones I'll put there.

At the end of the show, I'll ask you to suggest three to complete it.

The first I'll put up could only happen with a pop album.

I don't trust best ofs and greatest hits by rockstars

or opera singers or anything else, but pop music can do that

and one of the greatest is straightaway is T Rex Greatest Hits.

It's all killer, no filler,

and even the B-sides on here Jitterbug Love,

songs like this, all terrific,

so the first one for the Wall of Sound, inevitably, everyone has got

to live up to T Rex, Greatest Hits, sitting on a real tiger, I'll bet!

In some ways, the pop LP requires more work than any other genre.

You can't just put out your product in an old sock and shuffle away.

We punters wanted the whole package and you've got to sell, sell, sell!

Pop - it's the gateway drug, before we start with the harder stuff.

It starts with singles and if you're not careful,

it ends up with double albums.

It's the pop style that hooks us, their album, the sound,

the sleeve, and yes, the smell,

would give us even more of what we really, really wanted -

to be part of something, something global, yet somehow, still secret.

Oh, Ronnie! Ronnie, Ronnie Spector - beautiful, talented,

bad girl of the Ronettes, reducing her bandmates to mere luggage,

this was Phil Spector in full flood and before the fall.

Just one of the Ronettes magnificent songs seemed to be an album of

emotions in itself, or as Phil said, "a little symphony for the kids."

MUSIC: "Get It On" by T Rex

T Rex - pop at its best. How can something so shallow, hit so deep?

In 1971 on Top Of The Pops, Marc Bolan went from

gently toking on Tolkien to Little Richard reborn,

simply by making up his face. The girls loved Bolan.

You can't fake what Cilla's putting out there

and the boys suddenly found their feminine sides to be fun.

Market traders silently blessed him as they flogged glittery loon pants

by the truckload.

But it was Marc's pal, Elton,

briefly a fellow foot soldier in the glam rock army -

who graduated not just to ever more flamboyant stage clothes, but to

even greater song writing success with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Here, was that rarest of vinyl creatures -

a double album that worked.

MUSIC: "Like A Virgin" by Madonna

Sweet mother of mercy!

This is a great pop record and from a powerhouse album.

Madonna bringing aboard Nile Rodgers from Chic to produce,

created a diamond encrusted bear trap of a sound and it is the sound.

That same snaky narcotic that winds through generations of popular hits

like a platinum thread.

George, I suspect we're heading towards, inevitably, David Bowie

here, but what was the first album where you thought,

oh, it's a lifestyle too, there is more to this than just

a bunch of tunes on an album?

I think from the moment I discovered Bowie from my older brother,

it was the sense of kind of, not being alone,

not being the only person in the world that was a bit odd.

Because when you're a kid,

when you are gay and you are a kid in suburbia,

other kids point out that there is something odd,

you don't know there is anything odd about you at all.

You don't think it's weird hanging out with girls

and singing on the doorstep. You get told you're different

and you're made to feel different, so when I discovered Bowie

and Marc Bolan it was a sense of oh, there's other people that might

be a bit like me.

Without having a real understanding of what it is

that's entirely wrong with you.

Why couldn't that arrive at you then from any other way?

I mean, would you have known that you could get it in books, films,

-anything else?

-Possibly and I know that people do.

I know, alternatively, I remember my brother's friend, Barry,

who was a Status Quo fan, I mean, I fell in love with him

-and listened to Paper Plane.

-Well done!

GEORGE LAUGHS

It was just, music was a kind of fantasy realm,

it was out of reach, whereas nowadays, it is everywhere.

Lift up your shoes and someone is doing a gig.

Then, it was like, you know,

so out of your reach and so other worldly, do you know what I mean?

But it took that jump, though,

from being a happy-go-lucky pop picker

and buying singles to suddenly thinking, no, I want the album,

I want to buy into what this person is putting out.

Who was it for you, Grace, that you actually thought

I'll look like that, dress like that, follow that, was there anyone?

I didn't want to look and dress like that but completely infatuated

-with Adam Ant.

-Oh, yeah!

I have an older brother who's ten years older than me

and Dirk Wears White Sox was in the house, the album,

and then Kings of the Wild Frontier,

but that by the time it had turned into the Prince Charming part,

well, the nation was in love with him, you know, the whole...

-All that...we all know what I mean.

-We know exactly! Just do that!

I think by that point, because, I mean, I was a young girl,

and he is incredibly beautiful, but also very female,

so it was all a bit confusing,

and also, from early on, you can see that, you know...

..I always knew that I was not entirely normal in Carlisle

-and he was...

-What do you mean by that because George's sexuality...

-and that otherness. What do you mean?

-I wanted out.

From when I was that big, I wanted out of Carlisle.

I love Carlisle, it's a lovely place, but I wanted to be here,

-I wanted to be sitting on this seat.

-Where did you think...

Where did you think the pop world was? Where did you think that was?

-It was in London where Smash Hits was.

-Oh!

-Well!

I wanted to be chatting to him and sitting with him.

The bohemian lifestyle, the bohemian lifestyle!

I always imagined, like Bowie eating space food

and getting visits from Steve Priest from The Sweet, bringing him gifts.

It was quite biblical in my mind.

I was so shocked when I found out he wrote Life On Mars on a bus

going to Lewisham to buy a shirt, he didn't do things like that.

-Yes, he did.

-Of course not.

Someone said to me the other day, your life's not very rock 'n' roll.

I was talking about something I could. I was, that's a myth!

But it is good to kind of, encourage the myth sometimes.

David, have you ever been a slavish follower,

absolutely consumed by what a pop album was offering?

I remember in my later teens, people like Bob Dylan

and Paul Simon and suddenly, I was in the sixth form,

I was not extraordinary, I was really normal,

straight down the line.

But I wanted to pursue this interest in pop music as I got older.

The thing that was happening at the time, '66, '67, '68,

was the music seemed to be getting slightly older,

it seemed to be about things

and so you could sell it to yourself as being partly educational

and it's no exaggeration to say I learned a huge amount about

the world and American history from the records of Paul Simon.

-Those albums.

-Now, people can't even compute Paul Simon as pop.

They would say, Paul Simon, he is a poet, a legend, and he's a monolith.

Actually, knocking out songs like Cecilia and that,

and Bridge Over Troubled Water is 100% a pop album.

He's written more pop hits than just about anyone else in popular music.

I heard about Dylan through Bowie, Robert Zimmerman,

-Song for Bob Dylan.

-You went sideways, didn't you?

You do discover people, also Lou Reed I discovered through Bowie.

It's easy to beat past generations of pop with a stick, which is

apparently what should happen, but people forget that pop wasn't

the culture, it was a subculture and it wasn't on adverts, etc, etc.

Even the biggest and brightest of Bowie, it was a bit of a battle,

but I think that's half the attraction of it.

You had Sunday night with the charts which you'd sit with Radio One,

you had Smash Hits, for me, this is it.

You had Top Of The Pops, if you could get it

and then you had WH Smiths and Woolworths.

As a boy, you weren't allowed to...

Jackie was like, you borrowed it off your girlfriends

-because you really weren't allowed to buy Jackie!

-Yeah.

-Or My Guy!

-Things like that!

-There was Fab 208 and all of those, etc.

And just putting T Rex up there,

because a greatest hits is legitimate in pop,

equally the compilation album, you know, you could get those

super hits ones and they were a bit naff and all of that,

those 25 tracks aside,

pop music is the only thing that allows you to skip from one genre

to another, so you go from Guys and Dolls, I don't know,

into, whisper it, Gary Glitter, into something else etc.

Those compilation albums were absolutely legitimate.

I think you all have a very different attitude

and feeling for T Rex than I do,

because you all see, kind of, a great depth in it

and there is something there that's not there for me,

-because to me that's just a party album.

-No, no, it's not great depth.

-I disagree, I disagree.

-Half the idea is terrific fun.

There was Marc Bolan,

who had been a pillar of the underground, suddenly said,

you know what, I'm singing a whop-bop-aloo-bop

and he just turned it round.

I don't know, I think there was depth, I mean, Cosmic Dancer,

you know, "what's it like to be a loon, I liken it to a balloon",

there's great depth in T Rex. I think you're absolutely wrong.

I wonder whether we have the same view,

you feel like that about him as I do about Adam Ant.

I love Adam Ant as well.

I watched him play last year doing an acoustic version of

You're So Physical and it was like watching Marc Bolan.

I was like, wow, he's such a rock star.

We're a heartbeat away from me

telling my Marc Bolan shirt story again. Can we calm down!

For something so seemingly shallow and throwaway,

pop can really pack a punch and often it's a wounding

stiletto aimed straight at your teenage heart.

# Billy-Ray was a preacher's son

# And when his daddy would visit he'd come along... #

I always wanted to marry Dusty Springfield but I was only nine

and anyway nature wasn't listening.

In the 1960s and '70s pop music may have gone through a seismic

revolution but love remained its engine,

love between the singer and their chosen object of desire or,

best of all, between the singer and you.

A three-minute dirty secret.

The sexual revolution meant songs got more risque, productions got

lusher, more swelling with the strings, clever harmonies.

# I've been crying over you... #

And weeping wasn't just for the girls, Roy Orbison,

as sweet a vocalist as you'd hope to hear.

We believed at the time he hid his tears behind those shades.

# Touch me in the morning... #

Some performers could make love seem smooth,

sultry and, for the younger fan, grown-up.

Producing herself for the first time, Diana Ross continued to

leave us yearning with her second solo album, Touch Me In The Morning.

# I can't live

# If living is without you... #

And the heartbreak could be big,

orchestra big, with sweeping vocals and industrial strength anguish.

Without you, arguably the first ever power ballad was the emotional

peak of Harry Nilsson's terrific Nilsson Schmilsson.

# Talking to myself and feeling old... #

Then there was the Carpenters' ethereal third album,

so fragile, so rarefied

that it felt like love would simply blow away on a wind of heartbreak.

# Nothing to do but frown

# Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. #

Sometimes you just want to belt up and play the record.

I don't know what we're doing here!

Grace, not suggesting for a second anyone's ever stood you up,

dumped you or sent you a Dear John/Jeannette letter.

Do you have a go-to heartbreak album, even if you want to make yourself feel sad?

Um, yes, definitely.

But I would say some of them are so effective it's almost as

if you have to ban yourself because you don't...

that's the beauty of an album, you can be there for 10 tracks

drinking the supermarket-brand vodka just pushing yourself to the limit.

I would say Kate Bush. Anything by Kate Bush.

The Hounds Of Love, possibly.

Is that because it reminds you of a break-up or you...

forcing the emotion I am all for.

I think affecting emotion is a terrific thing to do.

But sometimes an album can be like... it's like blood-letting,

you know you can go there.

There's stuff by Stevie Nicks I will go to

and I know it will provoke reaction but Kate Bush,

even her big pop singles and things that go through her albums,

they are extraordinarily moving,

deep themes about losing someone,

unrequited love,

making yourself more beautiful for someone who doesn't want you any more.

These are all big sad...

Considering she was 16 when she was penning some of them.

A wonderful line in Love and Death by Annie Hall which sums up that -

Diane Keaton delivers it - "I never want to get married, I just want to get divorced."

There's that forcing of emotion. David, you strike me as not the most emotional man I've ever met but...

You'd be surprised.

I think pop albums were used as a way of rehearsing

emotions for yourself.

And so I could still go back to Scott Walker's first solo album

and put it on and I could go back into the mindset I had

when I was 18 when something had gone wrong with a girl

and you listen to the record and it was full of Jacques Brel songs about death

and Jacky and Mathilda and you think if only I could respond to romantic

disappointments as magnificently as this character does.

And they were a way of learning bits about life.

And that was one of the ways you did them.

We didn't read romantic novels. We didn't see romantic films.

It was largely through albums we did that.

George, albums where you wish you could feel about someone

-felt about me like that?

-No, I have no problem crying!

There are many many songs from the Beautiful Ones by Prince,

that's a big one if I'm really having a bad time.

Is it him or is it me? Sara by Bob Dylan.

Please forgive me, my unworthiness...

But sometimes I think it doesn't have to be, even though

its most delicious perhaps if you are thinking about an obscure object of desire,

but Gilbert O'Sullivan, who has been resurrected quite rightly

and his albums had something like Alone Again (Naturally) which

deals with desolation, old age and death

and when you're 15 and hearing... "Looking back over the years whatever

"else that appears, I remember I cried when my father died,

"never wishing to hide the tears and at 65 years old my mother,

"God rest her soul, couldn't understand why the only man

"she'd ever loved had been taken leaving her to start with a heart so

"badly broken despite encouragement from me no words were ever spoken.

"And when she passed away I cried and cried all day alone again, naturally."

I'm 14 and hearing that.

And now I see myself at 14 and think, wow, oh,

is that pop music or poetry or just genius?

It's also the fact these things are imprinted on you cos you've listened to

them so many times so when something comes along in your life...

14, jilted and...

You learn it first and then understand it years later.

It's good to know, isn't it?!

LAUGHTER

There is a set of albums in my house that I love but I can't go to,

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got by Sinead O'Connor,

-Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos.

-Why can't you go to them?

Because they remind me of a time...

stuff by Suzanne Vega from when I was 14

and I was going out with somebody who probably said he didn't want

to see me any more because he didn't want a relationship.

-Then I saw him with Julie Arragon!

-< It's always her!

And forgive the cliche, as somebody who pulls no punches and waspish...

It's something about when you see even a casual remark

in a Sunday supplement badmouthing a record you really love.

Nothing is a call to arms more than that.

If you suddenly saw a piece by me saying,

"What a waste of time Tori Amos is," nothing makes you...

Even beyond, for me, football or anything else, I go into battle.

One of the worst things you can say as a writer,

that will rile people up, is to take something that they love

-and say, "You only like that because it's cool." People go mad.

-I know.

-You're going to get green felt tip.

-Morrissey's take on love as well,

-like Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.

-I was going to say that.

You know, "if a ten-ton truck kills the both of us".

That really speaks to me when I'm feeling sad.

The whole of The Queen Is Dead is just this whole album

and anthem to loneliness. Public loneliness, isn't it?

But the music itself, we're dealing with the lyrics,

and when that piece came on earlier on,

Wee Small Hours by Sinatra,

just that little glockenspiel and violins,

that somehow is a deep speaking to deep, you just think,

"I'm in a great mood,

"but I'm willing to just indulge myself in this."

There's something in the actual series of notes, of course,

especially in pop, they can do it in three minutes,

and say, "I'm going to break my heart before this is over,

"even though it's a lovely sunny day in New York."

Do you not worry about the neighbours, that they can hear,

that they know that it's that album that you've got out again?

I once lived beside someone who would always play

an Elkie Brooks album at about 11:30 at night.

I would suddenly hear him singing along to No More The Fool,

and I was like, "Oh, God, mate, she's not coming back!"

One of the more successful phone-ins I've ever done on the radio

was asking people to call in

on the subject "My neighbours apparently only have one record."

And there was plenty in there. I'm going to lighten it up now.

Sometimes with pop music you can't see the wood for the trees.

You take things for granted,

until you get a few years under the belt and you think, wow.

Some people just put out pop album after pop album after pop album,

but because it's pop, it's overlooked.

One of those people is Elton John.

People think "silly old Elton," you know, but an album like this

is faultless. It is absolutely beautiful.

Even the stuff that could have been released as singles and weren't

it's almost of a single piece.

It's got hits on it, it's got tunes on it, brilliant arrangements.

Elton John's Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy.

From a period when he was selling 2% of all records in the world.

That's a fact.

Can you remember how he unveiled that record?

Did he unveil it?

He played the whole thing in sequence at Wembley Stadium,

-and I was there.

-Was you?

Nothing makes my heart sink like when somebody says,

"Now I'm going to play some new songs!"

Unlike other forms of album, pop is not allowed to intrigue,

suggest or grow on you.

It has to be immediate, finished and fully formed from the world go.

Pop is a fantastic, insistent, glittery salesman,

and what it's selling you is your own life.

Great pop touches everyone. And those that it doesn't

should be thrashed with a rolled-up copy of Smash Hits.

Great pop can't be planned, either.

It's just down to some crazed alchemy.

Just the sight of that album cover, or a few bars of, I don't know,

track four, side two, can take you to some magnificent moment in time.

Some say such majesty as this is melodramatic.

But these people have pea-sized souls. Just listen to Art's voice.

That's not normal.

Suddenly it's 1970 again.

'60s folk is but a memory, Simon and Garfunkel

have consecrated a new cathedral in sound.

Thanks, Melody Maker.

Then there's reggae.

In the 60s, Trojan Records' Tighten Up compilations

saw a generation swing a non-stop Sta-Prest leg.

By 1977, reggae too had grown up, got roots.

Bob Marley became an international star on the back of Exodus.

Roots reggae as pop music as Proustian rush.

Sometimes, though, you just want to escape with a pop narcotic,

an album that will offer you an instantaneous, fleeting pop high.

And the pop audience remains insatiable.

Few of those can keep their hits a-coming like Abba.

Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Meryl.

The album, Arrival.

Money, Money, Money, Knowing Me, Knowing You, Dancing Queen.

That is a song cycle.

# Having the time of your life.... #

# I know a girl from a lonely street... #

Blondie's Parallel Lines - so-called because it drives along

like some shiny bullet-proof locomotive

from the moment the needle hits the groove.

# ..Hey, I saw your guy with a different girl... #

The more I think about it and the more I see of it, it is,

to quote The Sound Of Music, like trying to nail a wave upon the sand.

Pop music, you can hear reggae there,

you hear Bridge Over Troubled Water, you got Blondie, you got Abba -

all of the, what would otherwise be different genres

coming together to agree they're pop music.

So can then, is it tied to a time?

Would you say certain pop songs are tied to a time?

They can be evocative, but are they timeless?

I think they are timeless. Yes.

I find as I, you know,

I'm going back to records that I may have bought 40 years earlier.

I'm more likely to play again the thing that I bought

because the record was on the radio than the thing that I bought

because it was the cool thing to do and my mates were buying it.

I'm more likely to play Blondie

than I am to play Ten Years After - Stonedhenge, you know?

I understand exactly what you mean.

Because those things, you know, tunes, lyrics -

those are the things that are timeless.

-These people deserve far more respect than they get.

-They do.

George is the person here who has actually written hit records.

You're never going to get respect for a pop album

because it's "just" a pop album.

As an artist, do you want to be taken seriously

and do you think your music is particularly evocative

-for people of an era, just?

-Absolutely.

And I think it's taken me a long time to realise what I meant,

what we meant to people, you know.

When you're in the thick of it you take a lot of it for granted,

but over the years as I've travelled around the world

to places I couldn't go to in the '80s like Argentina,

places in South America where I wasn't allowed in,

Russia, where I wasn't allowed,

so may people coming up and saying, you know, "You changed my life."

"You helped me come out."

Transsexuals coming up to me and saying thank you.

I'm like, "what did I do?" Just by being myself, you know?

Let me ask you this, George.

As someone who had, you know, regular on Top Of The Pops

and the joy of seeing a number one record around the world,

did you actually want to make pop albums?

Were you quite happy doing singles?

Did you have anything to say by saying, "here is a pop album"?

I think when I started in music I just wanted to be Bowie.

I had this idea of myself as kind of dangerously weird,

on the edge, lock up your sons. And then I started this band

with three other people and they changed.

We were a goth band. We were like doing goth.

-Were you?

-Yeah!

We had this song about dying amid applause, you know.

We were originally called In Praise Of Lemmings.

-Were you?!

-That was the first name.

-Why did you change?!

And John Moss came along and went, "Nah, no-one's going to like that."

Then we were called The Sex Gang Children, and John said,

"No-one is going to buy a record by The Sex Gang Children."

So I gave it to my mate Andy and they became The Sex Gang Children.

And we became Culture Club.

And it's just, whatever intentions you start out with, you know,

they can be the best in the world, but they get changed.

Just looking like that as well, again, forgive me,

but people say, "Oh, the '80s, Culture Club in the '80s."

You weren't of course aware, "Here I am making an '80s album."

Oh, no. And I have to say when people come up

and say, "you're from my era,"

I say, "No, no, I'm still here! You are as well!"

I mean, I have a lot of... kind of respect for the past,

but I'm not someone who's interested in wallowing in the past.

I think the past is great, but it's over.

And yet it would be hypocritical

if you went to see one of your favourite artists

if they didn't play the album from years ago.

Oh, I always play the old songs, always have. Always, always have.

You always have to be careful not to kind of torture people with...

You've got to place things properly when you do a show.

When I go and see Prince, I want to hear things I know.

When I go and see Bowie, I want to hear things I know.

So I understand how it works, you know.

Grace, how much then is, you know, remembrance of things past,

as they say, in an album?

Is it a hard sell if you try to say to somebody,

"This is a great album," but they haven't got the context of it?

Do you know, I think it perhaps is.

Especially if something really means something to you,

something like The Queen Is Dead by the Smiths,

which to me is me, 13 years old,

sitting in a back bedroom

and suddenly having this kind of beautiful slice

of another north-west weirdo

talking about feeling like an outsider

and being, you know, being unsuccessful

at making wonderful relationships with...

Well, men, women, what was Morrissey doing then?

However, I think if you give it to somebody now, they just go,

"It's just the Smiths."

If they didn't know the Smiths,

that's just another slice of their misery, if they weren't into it.

But you know, it's something that was very much of that time,

that kind of him popping up on Top Of The Pops.

I think the Smiths are...

I'm a huge Morrissey fan, I'm a Smiths fan,

and I think the Smiths really divide people.

My musician friends, I have rows with them

because they say, "Oh, well, it's not melodic, it's not intelligent."

I'm like, "Aaah!" I mean, I just...

It's one of those groups that you will fight with people over.

"How can you say...?" It's so genius. It's so clever.

David, if you've got, as they say, this context thing,

especially now when music has exploded

and become to some extent worthless,

is the context absolutely crucial?

If you're going to say to someone, "This is a great album,"

-they may say, "Come off it, Grandad".

-I think stuff lives.

I got a remainder of this at the closing ceremony of the Olympics,

when The Who turned up and did Baba O'Riley.

I thought, "Why are they doing a track that was never known

"as a hit single? Whatever."

And of course people told me it was

because it's widely used on American TV shows.

And so this music nowadays,

and this must apply to George's music as well, just lives for ever.

It's going round and round.

And so a 16-year-old nowadays listening to George's record

doesn't place it in the 1980s.

It could be now or it could be the 1960s. They've no idea at all.

But I think trying to sell the concept of listening to an album

to 16-year-old, it is quite difficult anyway.

I think that younger people now, they are used to

kind of two singles and being a bit short-changed.

-The remote control generation.

-Yeah.

Pop is synonymous with the new.

"Tomorrow's sound right now" is the message.

More often than not, though, it's just last year's model

with a new wig and hairspray.

Sometimes, though, something genuinely, shockingly new appears,

as if you never knew pop at all.

MUSIC: "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us" by Sparks

Every now and then, a pop act comes along and you think,

"Hold on, hold on. Where has this come from?"

Despite being inherently mainstream,

sometimes the forces of pop conservatism takes 40 winks,

and that's when the left-field loonies storm the barricades.

They get swept up in the moment,

and allowed at last the attention the talent actually deserves.

And if you have a wonky worldview or live in a parallel universe,

you need space to stretch out. You need an album.

MUSIC: "Ladytron" by Roxy Music

Reaching beyond glam

and smuggling in bits from what we can still call Krautrock,

Roxy Music's debut album, released in 1972, was utterly original.

And by taking their underground proto-electric explosion overground,

they offered us something blindingly new.

Yes, it was pop, but not like anyone had known it.

MUSIC: "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk

'Kraftwerk have a name for this. It's machine music. This is Autobahn.

'Based, say the group, on the rhythm of trucks, cars and passing bridges

'heard while driving through Germany.'

It was the Tomorrow's World programme who first introduced us

to what appeared to be a group of accountants

fiddling with synthesisers

and trying to recreate the impression of a journey

on a German motorway.

Everyone loved it, and in 1974, Kraftwerk's Autobahn album

sped ahead to leave everyone else stuck on the pop hard shoulder.

MUSIC: "Babooshka" by Kate Bush

Kate Bush's 1980 album Never For Ever

opened with a multi-octave song, A Wife's Paranoia,

then moved on to a tribute to a turn-of-the-century composer,

and ended with a song about a foetus worried about a nuclear war.

It went straight to number one

and it was the first album by a female solo artist

ever to enter the charts right at the top.

Like they say, just give them what they want

when they don't know they want it.

One or two still surprising looks in there.

Obviously, Bowie is a given.

But has anybody else, and away from, if I can,

what it meant to you personally and sexually and all that,

are you continually surprised in pop

when people arrive and think, "That's new!"

Is it possible that something can still leave you thinking "wow!"?

I think it's different now.

You know, these days it's whether the kind of music excites me,

and whether it feels real.

You know, cos a lot of pop music today feels like

it's really been kind of designed and really thought about,

and I think some people still make it look effortless.

Although I can't think of any in particular right now!

Coughs, points at his own chest.

I just feel like, I don't know, it's just whether you believe the person.

Then looking at it from the other end of the telescope,

we can say Roxy Music and Kate Bush and all these people arrived

and we went, "Wow, where did that come from?"

Can that happen again? Have we exhausted the seam?

No, I think it does happen all the time.

I think there are great records being made all the time.

But I think you have to look harder now.

I think the mainstream is very formulaic now.

Everyone sounds like someone else. This is the new this person,

and the other person's only been around two weeks.

And it's the new, you know, Ellie Goulding or the new this.

And I think the Internet is really the great place to find new things.

It never seems very visual, though.

It don't seem like that physical thing.

And I know it sounds romantic and nostalgic,

but the physical thing, the commitment to

getting on a bus, going to, remember record shops, getting something,

taking it home, then sitting indoors as you were saying earlier on.

It's that commitment. Grace, what was the shock of the new for you?

The very first time you thought, "Wow! What is that?"

-Or does it happen repeatedly?

-It happens repeatedly.

I can still remember the first time I set eyes on you.

You know, like, the sign of a good experience like that

is when it almost causes a violent reaction in your living room.

Because you've got generations watching together

actually becoming angry at each other,

because one person is loving it

and the other person is asking too many questions,

and somebody's finding it kind of morally wrong,

and it's all kind of kicking off, so, yeah.

So George, when you were most extreme,

or even when you first came on it, was it disheartening to find everyone

who bought your albums and stuff dressed exactly the same as you?

-That's not quite the point, is it?

-No, no.

What was interesting was when we got on Top Of The Pops,

we got on Top Of The Pops by accident.

We were too low to be eligible for Top of the Pops.

I think Shakin' Stevens was ill. So we got his slot.

Thank you, Shaky.

And the reaction from the industry,

all the interviews that we'd had set up, all pulled out.

They all said, "We're not having that on the telly. What was it?

"What was that?" But people loved us.

The difference when I went out on the street,

I went into a department store and got mobbed by housewives.

People liked me, but the industry was, "What the hell was that?"

There was a thing in the paper saying, "Is it a bird, is it a plane?"

"Wally of the week." I got all sorts of... but people loved us, so...

As an editor of Smash Hits,

as influential as it is, how much were you trying to push new sensations all the time

and were you ever affected by new sensations?

Well, you used to look at people and think, "I hope this happens,"

because this will be really exciting if it happens. George was one case.

Human League were another case, because you thought,

there's not just a sound here, there's a look,

there's a world view, there's a personality that comes with it,

which as a magazine editor, you are looking for absolutely all the time.

There was that kind of Thursday night theatre of Top Of The Pops,

where the nation changed its mind in 10 minutes.

And that activity was changed on Friday and Saturday as a consequence.

You can't have that any more.

Do you think that we, the British, are better at it than the Americans,

actually throwing new genres and sensations out there. We seem to be more willing to be shocked.

We play with things, don't we? We like costumes, we like funny voices.

-It's all part of our tradition.

-Some things just are undeniably great.

I remember seeing Suede's first appearance on Top Of The Pops,

and I was an artist myself, and I remember thinking, this is amazing.

And exciting. I totally got it straightaway.

I didn't have to be convinced. There was just something about it that was just very now.

It made me feel a bit old-fashioned.

And also very flexible, because we're looking there...

saying, whether it's Roxy Music, Bowie, Kate Bush,

but the perception is that that's, then, what you're into.

But just slotted in alongside all the other albums in your collection.

You can jump from punk to Kraftwerk. That's what a real pop fan does.

You are always willing to... there are things that you live and die by.

There are things that you'll never let go of because

they're part of who you are.

But if you're a good pop fan, you're always open to "What's this over here?"

Like acid house. Good example.

When that happened, I was like, I want some of this.

Can I just throw in one thing that very often gets forgotten

when you talk about albums, particularly in the days

of vinyl, that they existed in the public space.

You took them around with you.

You carried them, in order to attract the envy

and excitement of your peers, and to say,

"I'm this kind of person now."

The hottest boys at school would have a kind of Our Price bag

and you'd go, "what's in the Our Price bag?"

And if you're really good, you can read through the plastic.

You can see what it was.

I'm going to go to my third selection for the wall of fame,

and it comes out of the shock of the new, because pretty much nothing

shocked everyone more than punk rock when it turned up in 1976,

and yet it was born out of the cartoon pop and genius pop

and a group who never, ever, ever really got their due.

Of course, the Ramones. A pop album that's just...

Surfin' Bird, Cretin Hop and of course the only real hit,

Sheena Is A Punk Rocker on it.

It may sound like a guitar album, but this is as good pop writing,

economical and brilliant, as you'll find.

And the Ramones' Rocket To Russia for all they did for us

and all they never got at the time.

Most successful pop acts have only one sound,

which we're all happy for them to hammer into the ground,

but the truly great artists liked

to keep things fresh by radical reinvention, and good for them.

Doing something different is the beating heart of all art.

Most of the time.

# Wake me up before you go-go... #

we first fell in love with pop stars

because they played mainstream pop, but then they, and we, grew up.

They matured and wanted to become artists,

no longer constrained by disposable three-minute puppy love songs.

They wanted to go their own way,

to be unchained from the forces of commercial repression, and that.

What pop star didn't want 40 minutes of album time

to mess about reinventing themselves?

MUSIC: "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson

After leaving Motown,

Michael Jackson was determined to redefine his solo career,

and his 1979 album, Off The Wall, created by Jackson

and producer Quincy Jones, was a jawdropping game-changer.

From there, it was but a short moonwalk to its successor,

Thriller, and 50 million album sales

and a silly, but justified, new title, the King of Pop.

MUSIC: "Faith" by George Michael

Following his breakout 1987 album, Faith,

George Michael set out to do a reverse Jackson.

The album had spawned six singles, including the fruity I Want Your Sex,

but George still felt he wasn't being taken seriously.

Cue his po-faced follow-up, Listen Without Prejudice volume 1,

and all that could be heard was the sound of furrowed brows

and tumbleweed.

We're still waiting for volume 2.

# Just look through your window

# Look who sits outside... #

But the indisputable dame of reinvention will always be Bowie.

From glam rocker to Germanic electronics boffin,

to Philly soul boy and beyond,

Bowie has raided the style wardrobe with gay abandon,

over and over again, and nearly always it has worked fabulously.

Fleetwood Mac have often had their reinventions forced upon them.

No group has had to juggle fame, fortune and obscurity

quite so cleverly as they.

It was their 1977 album, Rumours, where they discovered pop perfection,

not to mention worldwide sales of 40 million copies.

Of course, hubris took its toll after that, and the follow-up,

Tusk - double album, natch - saw the whole thing get a bit boss-eyed.

# Just tell me that you want me... #

Grace, do we want pop stars to be real people

and even, whisper it, artists and change?

Is that a good thing?

-Do we want them to be real people?

-Real people, yeah.

No, I don't want them to be real people. I don't want...

that's what was so beautiful about the '80s,

which is my era of pop, that we didn't get to see them

being real people, so they became these huge stars.

You know, you don't get to see... there wasn't the Internet.

There wasn't the Daily Mail, constantly refreshing Internet coverage

of them putting their bin out and scratching their bum in Tesco.

You didn't see that.

Did you want, you know, your favourite bands to do

an unplugged album or do something different?

No, I don't want any of my favourite bands to ever do unplugged.

No, no I don't. But, you know, talking about George in the '80s.

I just assumed that he sat on a pile of gold all day

while people fitted him with beautiful shoes.

Not far wrong!

That's what he did.

-I don't want to think that George got a gas bill at any point.

-No, no.

-You know that I still don't deal with those things.

-There you go. Thank you!

But musically, I was quite happy for people to make the same album.

I'm quite happy to.

I disagree. I think as an artist, you... Look at someone like Bowie.

When I was a kid, every album was like, "What's he done now?"

To start with, I never liked anything.

The first one I bought, Station To Station, it was like, "What's he doing now?"

Diamond Dogs, Low... Within a 24 hour space, it would be my favourite record ever.

So in a way, Bowie was one of the last artists that did that.

They're few and far between - artists who CAN do that and know what they're doing.

I've seen Bowie do acoustic gigs.

Any form of Bowie or any form of my favourite artists - stripped down, rocked up, I don't care!

I don't care, it's all great.

David, are you in favour of people doing new things?

I've got no problem with him doing new things as long as they're GOOD.

That's the trick, isn't it?

In the end, strip all this away - it's "Can you come up with a tune?"

Some people DO come up with the tunes

while totally changing their line-up, their image and everything.

And some people - Bruce Springsteen being a case -

sort of make the same record again and again but it's not as good.

I don't mind people changing if it gives them inspiration

and it reawakens some kind of spark within them.

I don't like it when an artist tries to be trendy.

There's some Bowie records, some remixes that I didn't like.

What I like about the new Bowie record is it's BOWIE.

It's Bowie with Visconti, it's not trying to be anything but what it is.

I think there's a point with every artist where you have to just be yourself and do it well.

I think one thing we've overlooked, particularly with the pop album as distinct from any other genre,

it's not necessary for the person even to write the songs.

For a long time, it worked better when they didn't.

In the '70s, you've got to do your own material.

But a lot of the songs we've heard tonight - Rainy Days And Mondays etc -

they were written by people we can't even conjure up the names now, we couldn't if we wanted to.

I think that might have got lost - the great tunesmiths or songsmiths.

They're around now but they're very formulaic.

They're mechanics!

We live in an age where there's a distinct lack of melody around, I think.

We need that back.

I edge towards Grace here - I like my artists to be good and reliable...and predictable.

LAUGHTER

Here's the real fun part of the evening where we've asked our guests

to bring along three albums which for them define the very word "pop" in album form. Grace?

Ooh, yes. I've brought Kate Bush - "Hounds Of Love".

I must have listened to this album 1,000 times, especially in the '90s

when I was doing my dissertation in Scotland on Virginia Woolf.

This was the perfect backing track.

It sent me a little bit off the edge.

All right. Kate Bush - solid pop album.

Just wonderful and very, very deep and, you know...

"Hatful Of Hollow" by The Smiths.

Love "The Queen Is Dead" but I think if you weren't a Smiths fan and you were given this first,

I think you'd find this one a little bit more challenging cos it's just utterly, utterly miserable

with no pick-up at any point.

But that's what I love about them.

Also things that really pushed the buttons of people and annoyed them.

I love pop that aggravates people so much that people just want to ring the police.

LAUGHTER You know? "What is he saying?! I've got to report somebody!"

I may reach for the butterfly net and chase you down. Sisters Of Mercy?!

I'm having this. I'll let you into a secret.

-I used to be a Goth.

-Yeah. And him.

I haven't changed that much. I'll stretch to a navy blue dress at the moment.

I absolutely love this album and I still put it on in the house.

Again, relentlessly miserable, almost panto miserable, but fantastic.

Whenever I listen to this, I'll go on Twitter and just announce I'm listening to it

and it's like a dog whistle for every old goth across Britain, nay the world,

to remember the times they hung around the town hall steps.

We're a long way from How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?, aren't we?

George, what have you brought with you?

OK, I've brought Hunky Dory

cos I think it's probably the most interesting avant garde Bowie album.

Should pop be interesting and avant garde?!

Absolutely! And the sleeve - the Greta Garbo, everything about it.

And as I said earlier, it introduced me to Bob Dylan because of Song For Bob Dylan.

Amazing album and I still play this all the time.

T-Rex - "Tanx".

I just remember the controversy of the picture of him sitting on the little tank.

I think this originally came with a pull-out poster.

Again, massive Marc Bolan fan - I think this is a stellar album.

It is a punchy sonic album.

And then "Desire" - Bob Dylan.

This was a real turning point for me, hearing this on Hurricane,

and finding out you could write really intellectual songs about things.

Bowie and T-Rex was all sort of nebulous and fantastical. This was real life stuff.

Yeah. And one of the few albums that includes the word "kelp".

Absolutely. And of my favourite songs is on here, "Sara",

-which is just so...

-I can still hear the sound of those Methodist bells.

Absolutely. Just a very clever love song and a brilliant album.

I think Bob would be flattered to know he's still a pop artist as opposed to some statue.

David, what have you got?

This is pretty obvious - Beatles, "Hard Day's Night", 1964.

The first album they made where they wrote all the songs.

Do you think it is faultless? Betting without the Beatles might overwhelm everything.

They wrote the first side with songs for the movie and they had to fill the second side

so they came up with six unbelievable songs, none of which they put out as singles.

So every British band that has gone in the studio ever since has been trying to match this.

It can't be done.

Paul Simon - "There Goes Rhymin' Simon", his second solo album.

He's a really interesting case because he's an unlovable pop star.

He's unique. Nobody likes Paul Simon, nobody wants to be Paul Simon,

nobody dreams about Paul Simon, but by God, Paul Simon is good.

And the older I get, the more I realise how good he is.

And finally, Joni Mitchell's "Court And Spark".

George is also keen on this, which I'm glad to see.

I started playing it last week. I played it 10 times in a row.

I've had this record since 1974 and I thought, "Does it fit a pop category?"

OK, it's performed by a light jazz group, all the tracks are four minutes long

and the whole record is about waiting for a bloke. How much more pop could you possibly get?

And it does include the line "stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song".

-And she hates that record!

-Well, she's wrong and we're right.

-Controversial old bag!

Right, well, corny though it is, I'm allowed a Baker's dozen, doing the 13 here.

It comes with the title of the show and I think we'd be remiss in our duty

if we didn't say yes, this is all interesting takes on pop,

but one thing really is it and the world has voted on that.

"Off The Wall" - Michael Jackson. There's not a bit of spare production or tunesmithery on this.

POSSIBLY the greatest pop album ever made.

And now we're complete.

There they are - 13 solid sonic blocks in our wall of sound.

Thank you very much, Grace Dent, for helping us build it.

Some heavy lifting there from Boy George, for once.

And the mighty intellect of our own David Hepworth.

There you go, everyone, thank you very much.

I think we've given the X Factor generation something to suck on.

We might have even given Simon Cowell himself a bloody nose by discussion alone.

I do hope you enjoyed it and, more importantly,

experienced just a whiff of what it was like to be 15 all over again.

Thank you very much. Good night.

# Trying to change the world with an LP's worth of tunes

# Trying to change the world with an LP's worth of tunes

# Trying to change the world with an LP's worth of tunes

# There's something at the heart of it that's simply awful

# A man who makes a living off a plastic waffle

# There's something at the heart of it that's simply awful

# A man who makes a living off a plastic waffle

# There's something at the heart of it that's simply awful

# A man who makes a living off a plastic waffle

# Trying to make a living off an LP's worth of tunes... #