The Renaissance of Pop Music | Kieran Murphy

No longer must your ears be subjected to dull pianos and soaring vocals, Kieran Murphy celebrates the return of pop music to the airwaves.

This summer saw the Spice Girls reform for a once-off performance for the London 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony and a new age for pop music was heralded in for pop music with a zig-a-zig-ah. For the past two years the airwaves have been plagued with artists belonging to the ‘new boring’ movement, a term coined by Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian to describe the dull radio friendly tones of Adele, Mumford and Sons and Rebecca Ferguson. Even pop music powerhouses such as Britney Spears and Rihanna got lost in Dubstep’s reverberant beats and Calvin Harris’s classic house.For many, pop music’s golden age was in the ‘90s and ‘00s, when having to listen to obscure acts to be cool  was non-existent and songs like Daphne and Celeste’s ‘Ooh Stick You’ and Lolly’s ‘Viva La Radio’ occupied our tape cassettes recorded from the radio. Magazines like Top of The Pops and Smash Hits dictated who the heart-throbs were and instructed you on Steps’ dance moves, but this utopia of music fell when people started expecting credibility from their artists. The exact moment is somewhere between Linkin Park’s ‘Hybrid Theory’ and Ashlee Simpson being caught lip-syncing on Saturday Night Live.However, pure pop music has reached the top of the charts once again, the most immediate example being Carly Rae Jepsen’s dangerously catchy ‘Call Me Maybe’ which you’re now singing in your head. The sweet-as-candy lyrics and hypnotising violin strings created one of the biggest hits of the year and encouraged more singers to get back to basics. Since then, Rihanna has gone back to her Barbadian pop roots with her latest offering, ‘Diamonds’ and several pop groups have reformed, showing these young upstarts how it’s really done.Girls Aloud have recently reformed for their tenth anniversary and their comeback single, ‘Something New’, contains the essence of pop. Powerful vocals, catchy hooks and that little something extra that makes you wonder. Steps are also on their never ending farewell tour but it just goes to show you that audiences will never grow tired of that dance for ‘Tragedy’. With talk of more ‘90s groups reforming, making the front page of The Sun every other day, just goes to show that people have a hunger for a return to an age where music was fun, light hearted and just a bit naughty. Girls Aloud put it best when they sing, “All I want is something new, I don’t wanna talk, I just wanna dance”.