News Whole Lotta Hate: Why Top Of The Pops’ Return Is Nothing To Get Excited About

Not long ago, I found myself unwittingly faced with the prospect of absorbing hours of popular music television. It’s not a position I usually put myself in, and my more accepting friends would be quick to tell you that the reason for that is because I am a horrible snob, unwilling to accept the realities of our current musical climate. All of that said, I quite honestly went in with a relatively open mind. The process soon took its toll.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that pop music is popular for a reason – that stuff is catchy. I now know the words to songs I’d never heard before and could, given a few gins, have a fair shake at some very expensively choreographed dance moves (although the image of me doing so would most likely be culturally unacceptable). So, no real problems with the music then. The real problem is the repetition. In a four hour period I counted, at most, twenty-five different songs being played. The effect is a bombardment which, after a time, begins to reek of advertising and rather subdues any musical pleasure you might have been experiencing.

I call it Chinese Guetta Torture (the name’s a work in progress) – a constant drip of what seems more and more like a state-sanctioned diet of sub-dubstep breakdowns, euphoric synthlines and ballads to materialism that not only blend into one another, but form endless patterns. The “Funky Feel-good Friday” chart might follow the list of the 20 best female artists in “Katy Perry’s Oestrogen Explosion” which might itself follow “Showbiz Grow Biz” (an hour dedicated to playing songs intercut with R. Kelly shilling his new line of gardening products) but you can count on at least ten of the same tracks being played within each hastily-arranged list. It’s not just irritating to hear the same song every half hour, but downright depressing, an endless, funereal toll of cut and paste playlisting.

All praise, then, to whoever finally managed to get Top of the Pops back on our screens, albeit on our computers this time. This island’s greatest gift to the music industry, a platform for chart big hitters, up-and-comers and even the occasional unknown to play shoulder to shoulder, is finally returning next month – a program historically based around proselytising rather than monetising. Who cares if it’s online only now? This is classic programming and having it on demand is a great, great thing.

But wait. It’s acting as a revamped Radio 1 Official Chart Show. It’s another bloody countdown. The torture continues.

Yes, even Top of The Pops is now another list. No outlet for new artists, no respite from the endless repeats because, with even more high profile advertising, the same old songs will stick in there, week after week, only to be replaced with songs by the same old artists because the vast majority of people won’t have heard of anyone else. This, by the way, is not the fault of the casual music listener, but of an industry increasingly unwilling to lose any ground by even daring to attempt something new and offering no opportunities to someone who only wants to listen to what’s on at the time. The BBC should be able to act as a foil to this spiralling nosedive of an outlook. No pandering to adverts and a stated mission to “inform, educate and entertain” should provide the perfect emphasis to actually try and change things, yet what we’re being promised is the same bland dish.

Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper has excitedly stated, ‘This is the Chart Show for the 21st century” and, unfortunately, he’s absolutely right. A diet of videos, performances and interviews with artists from the top ten based solely around the Official Chart is exactly what the 21st Century has provided us with so far and, funnily enough, the industry it supposedly represents continues to decline. Top of the Pops is back, and it’s exactly the kind of show we don’t deserve.