Pop music today, eh kids?

At the end of a try­ing, tir­ing week, there’s little bet­ter than com­ing home and wast­ing half an hour of pre­cious human exist­ence on watch­ing Top of the Pops. It’s per­fect mind­less fod­der. Hav­ing said that, as I get older I have a jus­ti­fi­able reason for tun­ing in — it’s my way of stay­ing in touch with what The Kids On The Street (©) are listen­ing to.

And some­what dis­turb­ingly, The Kids appear to be listen­ing to Ronan Keat­ing and Lulu duet­ting on a cover ver­sion of We’ve Got Tonight, a song so full of MOR sen­ti­ment­al­ity that it wouldn’t even make the playl­ist of my favour­ite late-night sta­tion, Magic FM (that’s 105.4 FM in Lon­don, kids — and we’ll have no laughter from the cyn­ics at the back about my occa­sional radio sta­tion choices, thank you very much). It’s not even a hard­core gar­age remix ver­sion; oh no, it’s sung com­pletely straight, without the vaguest hint of mod­ern­ity or exper­i­ment­a­tion, and is bathed in more sugary-sweet syrup than even the ori­ginal could manage.

Ronan Keat­ing, as ever, attempts to con­vince us that he is the epi­tome of soul — that he means it, man — by vari­ously rasp­ing, mum­bling his words and need­lessly impro­vising. (Oh, and for “impro­vising” read “sound­ing like a trapped animal howl­ing itself to death”). Unfor­tu­nately, noth­ing can dis­guise the fact that his basic voice has all the beauty of a des­ol­ate fog­horn blar­ing out over a dull, murky coast­line. Being a duet, he also appeared to spend the major­ity of his per­form­ance nod­ding at Lulu when she sang her lines, as if to say, “I’m with you there, Lu. I couldn’t agree more.” Oh, the hor­ror, the horror.

How­ever, most dis­turb­ing of all — at least for any remotely sane indi­vidual — is the fact that Ronan Keat­ing and Lulu are even duet­ting together in the first place. As I watched, he star­ted to dis­play another char­ac­ter­istic tic — smil­ing and giv­ing her a lazy wink. Now Lulu may be a show­biz trouper and a con­sum­mate enter­tainer who’s man­aged to sur­vive since the ‘60s purely on the basis that every­one likes to hear her belt out “W — e — e — e — e — e — l — l” occa­sion­ally (apo­lo­gies, but the first line of Shout doesn’t actu­ally work very well when writ­ten down, as you can tell) — but Ronan should remem­ber that she’s old enough to be his Mum.

In the final ana­lysis, that’s how plain scary this song is. Ronan might be try­ing to go for the more mature pop audi­ence these days, but this charm­ing, home-loving, God-fearing, virgin-until-he-was-married young man was on early even­ing tele­vi­sion, blar­ing into the living-rooms of mil­lions of impres­sion­able young people, while swap­ping verses of a heart­felt love song with a woman who could be his mother. It’s all look­ing a bit Oed­ipal, if you ask me.

Some­times, the world is a sick place. Always remem­ber that the pop songs that seem the most harm­less can often hide the darkest and most troub­ling secrets (and con­versely, Smack My Bitch Up was almost cer­tainly entirely inno­cent). We must stop ped­dling this filth at our kids imme­di­ately. Above all, Ronan Keat­ing must be stopped. Now. Before it’s too late.

I feel bet­ter now, thanks for asking.