A WHILE BACK my husband went to see the genius Ray Davies, late of The Kinks, perform, and came home quite understandably singing his praises. I was envious, no two ways about it, because I just can’t imagine going to see a contemporary popular music act and being capable of sitting there for a whole two hours without leading a stage-rush designed to kill the crooning cretins. Ooops — having said that, I saw Franz Ferdinand and, no word of a lie, they made the Clash and the Pistols look and sound like Pinky and Perky.

But Franz Ferdinand is the proverbial exception that proves the inevitable rule. Generally, listening to Radio 1 for a day, you are struck by how overwhelmingly today’s popular music consists of two sorts of songs; bleating songs and boasting songs. Most jokers specialise in either one or the other: Chris Martin, Dido, Natalie Imbruglia and all the other wet white girls bleating, while the rappers, R&B and hip-hop types are given to boasting. Up till now they’ve tended to brag mostly about their cars and jewellery, but on the latest, horrific Black Eyed Peas single, the singer Fergie boasts about having breasts and buttocks, the clown! (Or rather, “humps and lumps”, if you please.) Well, it’d more of a talking-point if she didn’t have any.

Some “artistes” take it a step further and veer wildly between boasting and bleating in the space of one album; Robbie Williams springs immediately to mind here — “Oooo, I’m massively rich and everyone wants to shag me! — BUT IT’S ALL EMPTY, I TELL YOU, EMPTY!” The historic masks of comedy and tragedy have found their final resting place in popular music, except whereas once the laughter and tears expressed the appropriate response to the human condition, now they have boiled down to a smirk of self-satisfaction or tears of self-pity. Either way, it’s small stuff, no matter how you slice it.

I’m not saying everyone can have the ability to paint such vivid word pictures as the great Ray, but surely there is more to pop music than swaggering and/or sobbing? It’s worth noting that Robbie Williams last single (First they ignore you, then laugh at you and hate you/ Then they fight you, then you win — the bleat/boast syndrome in a nutshell, and that it is ostensibly about “gangsters” but still sounds every inch part of Williams’s endless autiobiographical backpages speaks volumes) failed to get to No 1. And also worth noting that there has been such an almighty fuss about the return of Kate Bush — often irritating but always interesting — and that there have been a series of chart-toppers that neither bleat nor boast — from the spiritual redemption of You Raise Me Up to the good-humoured lechery of I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor to the minxy triumphalist stalking of Push the Button. The signs are that the listener is wearying of paying for the privilege of acting as the artist’s ever-available boring best friend, forever ready with an awestruck “Ooo!” or a commiserative “Ah!”. Even Madonna has returned to the communal celebration of her disco roots and away from the boom/bust boasting/bleating of American Life, and whatever you may think of the old baggage, nobody can say she doesn’t know which way the wind’s blowing.

Though I very primly and self-consciously gave up officially writing about music when I was 19, I can occasionally be knocked for six by a group when I feel that they desire something other than pity or adoration. I felt this about the mighty Pulp, and Blur, and about Massive Attack — even about Oasis at one point, though they drizzled down into a long period of alternate boast/bleat from which they are only just emerging.

And, at the risk of sounding like a superannuated groupie, I experienced this again when I saw Franz Ferdinand on Tuesday. And on that shockingly soppy note, I’ll use this opportunity to retire from music journalism once again at the age of 47, this time hopefully for good.

The art of showbiz yuletide hypocrisy

AS CHRISTMAS approaches, what better time for our most spiritually aware stars, whether of stage or screen, to celebrate the birth of Christ by taking a huge wedge from the manufacturers of everything from perfume to mobile phones to tout said luxury goods to an overstretched, debt-ridden public?

Creative little bleeders as they are, no doubt they’ve got some slick excuse all polished up and ready to go if ever any of today’s pathetically sucky-up pop culture commentators asked them why they felt the need to do it; something along the lines of “Oh well, the Three Wise Men brought the baby Jesus gifts; they had to get them from somewhere!”

They won’t mention anything about a camel getting through the eye of a needle, or that Jesus was born in poverty and died that way without at any point feeling the need to feather his nest by endorsing frankincense or myrrh.

But when Christmas is over, they’ll be back in the glossies telling us how empty, materialistic and doomed we and our society are, and how they came to rise above it all. Gosh, the air must be pure up there on showbiz Mount Olympus!

At the risk of coming over all Old Testament here, I believe that one of the most corrupting problems we as a culture face is hypocrisy on the part of those who purport to be frank — that is, artists. The frequent boasts of artists, is that they make their own rules. When they become multimillionaires, they certainly don’t need to compromise. So if they still wish to sell themselves to the highest bidder, they should adopt humility in their dealings with others, acknowledging their own avarice, and the fact that they have the worldview of a particularly desperate dung beetle. If they act avariciously and then lecture others on the evils of greed, they lay themselves open to ridicule; that’s why we all find actors so amusing who bang on about their art and then make megabucks commercials in Japan.

When our golden creatures have finally finished hawking their wares for another year, and are tuned back into spiritual mode to mark the birth of a militantly anti-capitalist prophet, might I ask them to consider the words of another one, the mighty Bill Hicks? He said that once a person had taken the advertising shilling, they could never be believed on any subject, ever again. Just a seasonal thought.