Lying about her age? ... Duffy's youth works in contrast to her vintage 60s sound. Photo: John Rahim/Rex Features
Does pop music need to be made by young people? I'm asking because there's been an unpleasant undercurrent of ageism around two current chart stars, Duffy and Katie White of the Ting Tings, who have both been "accused" of being older than they say they are. That's 23 and 24, respectively, but Duffy supposedly looks - according to London's Evening Standard - "far older" than she claims, while White's age has been speculated about more than once online. Yesterday, one poster on the Record of the Day messageboard brought it up again, suggesting she was - God forbid - 34.
Before anyone sputters that it's clearly to do with sexism rather than ageism, remember that in 2004 there were also plenty of comments about the fact that Alex Kapranos of band-of-the-moment Franz Ferdinand was over 30, and even in his 1970s prime, Gary Glitter was mocked by the press for knocking a decade off his age, because they assumed (wrongly, it turned out) he couldn't be only 27. Male or female, anyone thought to be "old" is in for it, because maturity doesn't accord with pop's ephemeral youthfulness.
While the rational side of my pop brain finds this appalling, the other half counters that it's only right that pop music - music specifically aimed at the chart - should be made by the, uh, Kids. Pop is the one musical genre that contravenes PJ O'Rourke's maxim "Age and guile beat youth, innocence and a bad haircut". In pop, age and guile just burden songs with mixed messages because of the chasm between the singer and what they're singing. (Franz Ferdinand excepted, as the crux of their sound, Kapranos's jadedness, couldn't have been acquired through anything but the passage of time.)
If Katie White actually were 34 (the only "evidence" is that she's been in bands since the 90s), the Ting Tings' ramshackle ditty about standing up for yourself, That's Not My Name, would feel wrong. The song's pugilistic chorus, "Are you calling me darling? Are you calling me bird?" only works when delivered by someone young enough to have not quite worked out who she is; its innocence is the key thing.
Duffy, too; her retro-styled album, Rockferry, has sold nearly 1m copies because it piquantly contrasts a 60s sound and a young singer. If it had been made by someone old enough to remember the 60s, it would have been dismissed as hopelessly out of touch. (Luckily, 60s stars are too busy "modernising" to revisit the past.)
Same with Girls Aloud, whose music relies on the unquenchable enthusiasm of five people in their early 20s, and Alex Turner, who writes as if he's encountering everything, from prostitutes to sad fans in Japan, for the very first time. Because he probably is. As I said, age shouldn't make a difference unless you're a footballer or a department-store Santa. But it does.
