X marks the spot with Shayne Ward, but
would Ofpop allow him through?
Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
It's something of a landmark week for music - in very much the wrong way - when reality-show contestants are responsible for three of the top 12 singles: The Ordinary Boys' Boys Will be Boys, Pete Burns/Dead or Alive's You Spin Me Round and Shayne (X-Factor) Ward's That's My Goal. It doesn't matter that Boys Will Be Boys and You Spin Me Round are actually better than most of the rest of the top end of the charts (which includes Will Young, of course, whose pop-conception was hardly immaculate); the principle of the thing is just plain wrong.
Their presence at the top, of course, is but a timely reminder of the familiar fact that the charts will always contain more than their fair share of rubbish - if it's not a Simon Fuller protégé, it'll be Westlife, a novelty rapper or any of the other only-just-life-forms that find their way in when you allow 10-year-olds the dangerous freedom to buy records.
The stock answer from Fuller and co is that they're meeting a demand: if people didn't like them, they wouldn't buy them. Well, X-Factor to that. It's time for the music industry to take control in the form of its own watchdog. The purpose of Ofpop would be to lay down guidelines about what should be allowed in the singles and album chart, putting the kibosh on records that offend standards of quality and decency.
Of course this wouldn't be aimed at routing out bad language or difficult music (for instance, the Canadian mad-rocker Peaches and her ditty Fuck the Pain Away would be allowed in, on the grounds that she has something to say). Its object would be to keep the chart less cluttered by people who shouldn't be there because they make listeners froth with impotent irritation. Let's start with three categories, to me the most obvious transgressions against ethics and common sense:
- Reality-show contestants, past and present. Even if they're pretty good, and regardless of whether they're vinyl virgins or old hands in need of a PR makeover, they should be made to do it the hard way.
- Actors. Why don't Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix (hear him "be" Johnny Cash on the Walk the Line soundtrack) and Minnie Driver realise that making records as a hobby is completely patronising?
- DJs who release "artist albums" that they actually don't sing on.
Your own ideas, naturally, are encouraged.
