Paul Morley describes McFly's ascent from guitar-toting teeny-boppers to 'entertainment hosts' for the multimedia generation
Time to meet McFly, who, while I wasn't really looking, over six years, since they were all teenagers, have released 16 singles, four Top 10 albums, including a debut that meant they replaced the Beatles as the youngest band to enter the album charts at No 1 ? selling enough records to place them high up on the list of the most successful British pop groups of all time. They started out as perky bright-eyed pop rock cousins of Busted, when Britpop went teenybop and boybands held (if not necessarily played) guitars on Top of the Pops, and that debut album, Room on the 3rd Floor, which went on to sell over 800,000 copies, did not seem to be of any interest as music to anyone over the age of 10. I might be getting this wrong, but it seems that every album they have released since, give or take their fourth Greatest Hits collection, has improved upon this age limit, so that their second album Wonderland would be of no interest to anyone over 13-year old, while their latest album, their fifth studio release, Above the Noise, will be of no interest to anyone over 22 ? although if you are over 22 and have never heard Prince, Green Day, A-ha, Duran Duran, Hanson, Pet Shop Boys, the Killers, the Monkees, Billy Idol or INXS, then you will be easily won over by some of the tracks.
McFly are described on their Wikipedia page, where all knowledge rests, for the moment, as pop punk and pop rock, but they can also be defined as a boyband, in that they are mostly designed for the benefit of girls. That actually might be changing with the smarter, more refined and sonically more varied Above the Noise, which is produced by weathered, hip hop-weaned international commercial pop specialist Dallas Austin, who has brought with him experience picked up working with acts such as Madonna, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men, the TLC of CrazySexyCool, as well as the Sugababes circa Push the Button. I might be getting this wrong, but McFly now sound not like a lightweight, trivial cartoon version of an energetic pop group but an energetic, cleverly calibrated version of a trivial cartoon pop group. Someone, possibly the members of the group themselves, have been thinking about what they are, and what they must do to continue being what they are, and have approached a set of problems ? some of them to do with the erosion of the role of the record company and the rise of the internet as the main place where you communicate with others ? and come up with a variety of solutions. These solutions are not particularly inspired, but they do mean that McFly have managed to survive this far into a career that is always on the verge of ending.
This might not mean that the music is anything special, but then a group like McFly are not a part of the music scene in a way that anyone over the age of 30 would understand. They are a part of some new scene, which doesn't have a word yet, and which isn't necessarily as simply magical, revealing and ravishing as old time pop, and which fabricates the idea of magic, fun and excitement in ways that will seem very contrived, perfunctory and formulaic to older pop fans.
If you are to judge a band such as McFly on how they are progressing as a pop group manufactured, by themselves and others, within very strict guidelines, to appeal to a very choosy series of markets where demands and expectations are constantly shifting, to keep having hits even as fashions change and technology realigns entertainment realities, then with the release of Above The Noise they deserve a good four stars. Coming to the album as a traditional rock critic, I might be coming in at a shade under two stars, aggrieved by what is in the end an ordinariness superficially, if deftly, disguised as something possibly extraordinary. As a new kind of critic, though, one not yet invented, some sort of observer whose skills include knowledge of marketing, fashion, video, styling, fun, games, social media, teenage urges, the rampant infantilism of consumers, music genres, remixing, the recycling and repetition of information, the seductive force of gossip, website design, and the way they all fit together, one who is gauging the success and achievement of McFly in terms that are more about their flexibility, impact and presence as a multimedia based entertainment host that is in transition, there might be at least three and a half stars on the table.
This entertainment host still closely resembles the late 20th century idea of what a pop group was, but also points the way to something that will eventually combine and enhance thrills currently contained in other mediums, and which will respond to the hopes, fears and desires of their audience, and exploit their interests, needs and recommendations in ways that we can now only imagine. The result might be closer to a kind of easily accessed dream than anything we might be familiar with because of MTV and the MP3. I might have got this wrong, but perhaps the pop group, as represented provisionally by the likes of McFly, will develop into some sort of elaborately designed destination where you travel, one way and another, to experience shifting forms of pleasure, and maybe deeper forms of intrigue, delight and challenge, that you have designed yourself in abstract consultation with your chosen entertainment host.
In the present, where such talk is liable to bring out the worst in people who think such reasoning is bonkers, and not a little paranoid, I interview McFly founder Tom Fletcher and the News of the World's sexiest man of 2009, Dougie Poynter. They've just been interviewed live on The Alan Titchmarsh Show in between Michael Parkinson and Gloria Hunniford. (My own immediate pressure under the circumstances: to be a little more Parky in my McFly interview than Titchmarsh.) They've just performed what is still called for old time's sake their latest single, and Alan Titchmarsh acts as if the pop world is pretty much what it was in 1973. McFly do too, in the way they hold their instruments, whirl through various poses and project their personality, but there's something about them, perhaps some form of self-confidence, or maybe the way they are festooned in jewellery and tattoos and combine a twinkling feminine energy with their composed, liquid neo-manliness, that suggests they are on the verge of travelling back to the future.
No longer innocent, bouncing teenagers, not of a world where releasing records and promoting them is relatively simple and crude, McFly are still located in the lingering, sweetened middle of the road, trapped a little by their name and their early association with Busted, compelled to maintain a pleasant, patient, non threatening demeanour, needing acting and diplomatic skills as well as the capacity to always appear enthusiastic. (More ways to accurately judge the boyband ? how well they summon up enthusiasm for everything they do in public, which to some extent these days is a lot of their lives. McFly are a throbbing five stars in this area.)
There's a little pop experimentation on show on their new album, but the real experimentation comes with how they are set up as a business operation, and how they use their web site to fabricate connections with their fans and potential fans. This business is all about selling subscriptions to the world, the idea, the lifestyle, the fragrance, the attractiveness, the general views, the products of McFly.
They talk about wanting to be the biggest group in the world, as if there can still be such a thing, and such a thing can emerge from a novelty group that seems so assembled and plastic, and that was so unashamedly teeny. If, again, a key element about a boyband to analyse and grade is their ambition, and the ability to re-invent themselves, and shed skins, and manipulate as much as possible their own fate, then McFly are a full flowing five stars. I'm still old fashioned enough, although I might be right, to consider that what will make them the biggest group in the world will still have something to do with the form and content of their music, and that if they can produce a soundtrack as powerful as their ambition, self-belief and sense of purpose, as their knowledge of how to reach their target audience, as their ability to schmooze the likes of Alan Tichmarsh on live television, then they might yet make it. Or, they might become the biggest pop group in the world when such a thing means only playing to their subscribers, who are ultimately McFly's employers, who really only want them for one thing.
Time to say goodbye to McFly, and consider that if boybands should be judged on their ability to sell themselves as if there is no doubt at all that what they do is important and brilliant, then I give them four stars and a showbiz kiss.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/26/mcfly-boybands-paul-morley
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