As T in the Park embraces its inner pop kid, Nicola Meighan swoons at a festival bubbling over with chart-tastic girl bands, pin-up boys and feisty females
ick Cave battered Kylie to death with a rock and in doing so resurrected pop. For when the implausible twain married larynxes — on 1995’s hit murder ballad, ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ — it caused a schism in the pop continuum. By I996. the prince of darkness had incited the impossible princess to reclaim her 80s bubble-perm frolic. ‘I Should Be So Lucky’. as a liberating, post-modern précis. at London‘s Poetry Olympics. It‘s long been held as an emancipating turning point in La Minogue’s brilliant career.
Sure. pop music isn‘t all about Kylie — although she has embodied the genre for over 20 years — but the key motifs of said Cave- related anecdote resound through pop culture in 2009. It thrives in the alliance betwixt
18 'l'HE LIST 25 Jun—9 Jul 2009
mainstream and counter-cultural doctrines (witness the recent news that lung seductress Christina Aguilera is to cross vocal chords with riot grrrls Le Tigre). It celebrates a new-found respect for 80s melodic excess (VV Brown‘s new single. 'Shark in the Water‘ is a glorious throwback to Amazulu‘s I986 hoopla. ‘Too Good to Be Forgotten‘). And it revels in the harmonious union of ‘manufactured’ pop with ‘authentic’ rock (Girls Aloud are set to support — and surely outshine — Coldplay at Wembley in September 2009).
All of these constituents prove. and improve. the credentials of pop.
Perhaps. then. it‘s fitting that Cave‘s ancillary resuscitation of said genre will climax at this year‘s T in the Park. The swaggering rock
diabolist and his cabal of bad. Bad Seeds will savage (and salvage) the Balado massive alongside The Saturdays. Katy Perry. Lady Gaga and Lily Allen. And that’sjust for starters.
TiTP has toyed with token pop cameos in the past — Mika, Pink and Lulu have previously performed: even Kylie herself bedazzled the festival in 1995 — but the bill has never been more incandescent with instant aural gratification than it is in 2009. Ladyhawke. Calvin Harris. VV Brown, Little Boots, Gary Go and Daniel Merriweather will take to the stage — to name-check a few.
Festival director Geoff Ellis credits Scots music fans' broad-minded aural appetites with the prevalence of pop on this year‘s programme. ‘With T in the Park. we’ve always