November 17, 2000

Sound Loaded

Manufactured? As fuck. And the ballads stink. But you'll find no more life in a tramp's vest, we can assure you.

You know pop's in a weird place when George Michael feels the need to bemoan its vacuity. The man who once insisted on being roused before any go-go-ing occurred recently blasted the acts that make most folk get jiggy today. Too manufactured, says the man from Wham!. Too insubstantial. That howling noise you hear is the sound of several million music fans laughing like gassed hyenas.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of Michael's early career as a very hired young gun, and the fact that maturing pop stars have an interest in rubbishing their competition, he's absolutely right. There is plenty wrong with today's pop. What Michael - and all right-thinking people - object to is the conveyor belt of stage school non-entities, drilled in the fine art of grinning and moving their feet at the same time, then delivered to Pete Waterman, ripe for trademarking with a perky tune. And Ronan's your uncle: hits a-go-go.

But for all the pigswill sloshing around the charts, there is plenty right with pop too. Occasionally, the hit factories throw up an act so daft, so totally unaware of its own magnificent ridiculousness, that you cannot but crumble in awe. Ricky Martin came up through the manufacturing process, ratcheting up CV points as a teen heart-throb in Latino boy band Menudo, as well as starring in Puerto Rican adverts, a Mexican soap opera, US über-serial General Hospital and Les Miserables on Broadway. If anyone has been groomed for international-jet-scum-light-entertainment-mega-fame, it is he. But, as his second English language LP, 'Sound Loaded', shows, Martin's combination of crazed Latin rhythms, preposterous rock stylings and bon-bon shaking exuberance genuinely kicks pop arse.
Bland? Please.

The single, 'She Bangs', had to be edited for rudeness. Its blaring brass heralds 15 tracks of up-tempo insanity and piss-poor balladry that has more joie de dancing unironically than anything bar the last Ricky Martin album. 'Loaded' itself is totally deranged; its trumpets swooshed by go-louder stripes. 'Amor''s minor key pumpery is pure high Latin camp, boasting enough 3am fiesta excess to embarrass the most
be-ruffled Flamenco dancer. For added territory-conquering panache, 'One Night Man' flirts with a little Arabic. Hubba hubba, habibi.

Manufactured? As fuck. And the ballads stink.
But you'll find no more life in a tramp's vest, we can assure you.
Kitty Empire