The Synthpop Arguement

It seems that the main, if not only thing I seem to be writing about anymore is the emergence of synth pop female stars, and it is true that the 'emergence' has been drastically over-hyped.
So I was delighted to read an amusing review in the Guardian by Alex Miller that muses;

' Wouldn't it be great if Florence had a cock? Or La Roux had foreskin? Or Little Boots had huge balls? Then maybe we wouldn't have to suffer under the weight of endless editorials about the "re-emergence of women in pop". '

Almost perfectly on time, I received a comment from an anonymous user referencing the following article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/may/26/little-boots-la-roux

The article reads,

'Little Boots and La Roux don't speak for synth pop : For all their intelligence, Little Boots and La Roux look and sound like polished pop stars. And they are not forging openings for stranger, more interesting electronic music.'

The main points made are true, these two artists lack 'the abrasive edge, the awkwardness' of their more underground counterparts, (indicates to 'Fever Ray' , The Knife spin off.) It implies that artists such as these are preventing their colleagues from making appearance.

Hang on, I swear the whole point of this genre was that you don't have to be edgy of 'awkward' to be important in music. This is the centrepoint of the movement, creating music that appeals to the public is not a boundary, mainstream music is not necessarily created for a mainstream audience. 'Mainstream' is not a genre, it is just music that happens to allure to the majority of people. 'Abrasive' music is however specifically created to appeal to the sort of people who wrote this article.

I quote Little Boots herself, "There's room in popular culture to do things that are creative and not exactly straightforward, Just because something has got the possibility to appeal to a mainstream audience doesn't mean you've got to be bland." She never pretented to be anything but a ditzy pop-princess.

People have got to stop this anti-hype mechanism; the theory that all music that is pushing the boundaries, but still popular should have been created pre-naughties. This just isn't realistic, attention can only be good for the scene! That sort of view belongs to the 'landfill indie' which this 'Little / Roux' genre is campaigning against.

Critisising these artists for not being underground enough? We might as well critisize Britney for not having a guitar or Madonna for not sounding raw enough!