It occurs to me that much of pop music is pretentious, both in its exposition and in its appreciation. So called Britpop in the 1990s had this character. What I refer to was exemplified by bands like Suede or Blur. Their antithesis at the time was Oasis who were by contrast too artless maybe to be able to muster a facade. The same could not be said for the Daman Albarns of the world or in the present age the Franz Ferdinands who can con the music intelligentsia - the taste-maker journalists and consumer snobs who claim to know what's good - into buying into their sophistry.

It's interesting to note that all these pretentious creators and commentators are often the ones who are big on authenticity. They would throw their hands up in horror at the very idea of anything contrived or manufactured about music. Producers and songwriters who have honed a talent for putting forward work for others to like are for the snobs tantamount to the antichrist. The lack of so called authenticity denies these kinds of artists any credibility. Their fakery renders them irrelevant in terms of a valid cultural contribution.

The irony is that just the reverse of that is closer to the truth. The art-pop bands whose value is fostered by the credibility people are probably the most pretentious of all. Usually everything from their clothes to their haircuts, everything indeed that is image related, is carefully contrived. That of course includes their music. They do this to cultivate something meant to be essential to the moment. But their true identity is quite something else, nearly always derivative. Franz Ferdinand are a rehash of a Talking Heads meets a Roxy Music. Blur were mere Bowie clones. The more blatant, less subtle operators who leave little to the imagination, impresarios like Cowell, producers like Waterman, bands like Oasis are probably more authentic in their way making no mistake about their motive which is to make music that will be accepted by the greatest number. That is the beginning and end of their motivation, to appeal to the public taste and sell as many records as they can. This is how they define their success. It is hard to argue with as it is a quantitative matter: success is a lot, failure is not a lot.

And anyway, the credible types themselves are just as concerned with sales but don't admit it as it doesn't fit the image. This only adds to their pretentiousness in my view. They want acceptance like everyone else but want to hide behind a vale of cool and musical integrity. Personally I don't believe there is such a thing as musical integrity. It is one of these ghostly terms that means something other than it is supposed to. Specifically it points to a kind of elitism in taste where the work is only understood by a minority who are superior to everyone else in being able to appreciate it. These people are the ones less likely to consider themselves elite in other areas of life. They might lean to the left politically. But they slip their superiority in by the back door using music as the vehicle. The pretentious art-poppers appeal to this inverted vanity which boils down simply to: "the music I like is better than the music you like therefore I am better than you". They do what base humans do: find ways of lording it over each other. Barred from doing so by their allegiance to cultural correctness they drag music in to do the job for them.