August 15, 2000

Four Sure

Track after track of anonymously bouncy, happy-clappy, puppy fat pop about love'n'stuff...

5 / 10 A startling report released last month announced that in the Western world, today's brood of children have changed more radically in their tastes over the past decade than any other generation in history.

But the academics have missed one vital factor. For while those under the age of 18 now eschew books and sports for Pokimon and fashion trainers, the music industry has remained steadfast in its attempts to grab the kiddy pound. For every generation-defining movement that's terrified parents, there's always been teen pop.

/img/Scooch0800.jpg Scooch are its Identikit embodiment, guided into the hearts and minds of the malleable by Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, who've cannily peddled the exact same formula for almost two decades. Interchangeable, good-looking, wholesome boy/girl members straight out of stage school - like Steps, but with slightly less personality. Scooch's debut album continues in the same vein - a perfect, anodyne pop pill that's easy to swallow, harmlessly addictive and sounds great at school discos or gay clubs.

Current single 'For Sure' outlines the manifesto. Catchy tune, synth horns, kitschy keyboards and perky rhythms, much like past single 'More Than I Needed To Know', a great Abba pastiche with its disco beat, flamencos, tinkly piano and Agnetha-a-like harmonies, and the perma-grin of previous single 'The Best Is Yet To Come'. And so it continues relentlessly, track after track of anonymously bouncy, happy-clappy, puppy fat pop about love'n'stuff - give or take the occasional last-dance ballad like the cover of Fat Larry's Band's 'Zoom' that manages to out-saccharine the original.

It's not evil so much as clever business. Ignore it or learn to love it - whatever - the likes of Scooch will still be there when Slipknot are just yesterday's kids.