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When I was working at Rip It Up¹ there was no better way to start a fight than to lob in a reference to bands like Propaganda or the Art of Noise. Zang Tumb Tuum packaged them as new and radical but they were straight-up pop. 'Dream Within A Dream' was 'Kashmir' and the Noise's Fairlight samples² were the same ones used by everyone from Peter Gabriel to Yes. Both bands were produced by Trevor Horn, who had already given ABC The Lexicon of Love and their career.

Mid- to late-80s synth pop looks impossibly fertile now. Everyone dressed like Gaga but they had songs as well, and the cross-pollination of indie, electronic and dance music -- let alone songwriters' one-for-them, one-for us attitude to the marketplace -- made for great records.

But those bands did upset people. And not just any people -- the right people. I remember Barry Jenkin introducing Spandau Ballet's 'To Cut A Long Story Short' on the radio and muttering darkly that 'two singles does not an album make.'³ And I remember people in the office hitting the roof when I said I liked, say, Anne Pigalle.⁴ Pop music was not proper music. It was not the Velvet Underground or Leonard Cohen or classic soul or indie. It was pretentious, style-obsessed, fake and so on and it made people very, very angry. Which is ironic⁵, because all pop was ever trying to do was be liked.

Now at a time when music is an accepted commodity -- 'something you consume while you're checking your e-mail,' as Trent Reznor ⁶ put it -- pop music is annoying the right people again. Was Miley Cyrus's MTV performance any more ill-advised than the Yesterday and Today cover? What is Lorde's 'Tennis Court' but a direct skip to the good Kate Bush -- not the embarrassing Kate Bush ('Babooshka') or the stoner Kate Bush (Aerial) but the electro, B-side Bush ('Watching You Without Me')? What is Lana Del Rey but Portishead without the image problem? And who are the Naked and Famous but ABC with more songs?

It's upsetting.

1 "And avoiding responsibilities at art school" (Chris Knox, Jesus On A Stick #1)
2 'Like a full bottle of milk dropped on a stone doorstep' (anon.)
3 He was right, obv. It takes three. Has Justin Timberlake in his whole life written enough hit tunes to fill Rio? No, he has not. Say it, guys: don't make me point again at Pete.
4 Disclaimer: In London in 2010 I sat behind Anne Pigalle in the audience at a boring book reading and at one point she turned around and looked at me and rolled her eyes. Afterwards I saw her ride off through Soho on a bicycle. This was not a dream.
5 Like 10,000 spoons.
6 Saw NIN at the O2 center in 2009. Trent Reznor bought on Gary Numan as a special guest performer. Think about that.

Why does it have to be this way?