Borak: Pop Will Eat Hannah

Among the Spice Girls, Sporty Spice was the one I fancied. Admittedly, it was a strange fascination. While the other Spices had some sort of sexual appeal about them—breasts, blonde hair, a waif-like figure—Sporty, on the other hand, had all the feminine charms of a skinnier, less bustier version of Ru Paul.

Though I'm not led to believe that I am a lesbian trapped in a man's body, this non-fascination for size 34D breasts or baby doll fetishes has made me conclude that I liked the Spice Girls not because of the way they looked, but because of the music they made.

No one, however, likes a pop whore, more so when one that likes the sort of pop music the Spice Girls did—shamelessly manufactured, demographically catered yet curiously addictive. They epitomised pop music in every sense of the phrase: making music that's popular. This was apparent with their first breakout single “Wannabe” when they started a seemingly inane self-dialogue of: “I tell you what I want/ What I really, really want/So tell me what you want/ What you really, really want/I tell you what I want/ What I really, really want/I really, really, really, really wanna/ Zig-a-zig ah.”

Pop lacked balls until these girls came along, proclaimed “Grrl Power!” and exchanged their notion of self for an adjective and the surname Spice. The last time I heard something so ridiculously poppy was when two white Englishmen (one of them a closet homosexual) called Wham! rapped: “A.1. style from head to toe/ Cool cat flash gonna let you know/ I’m a soul boy, I'm a dole boy/ Take pleasure in leisure, I believe in joy!”

Formed in an age when the Seattle grunge scene was peaking, the Spice Girls had swung the pop pendulum to such an extreme that it could be either instantly suicidal or insanely successful. And I suspect that if they had held back—say, if Emma had refused to bat her eyes like a Japanese baby-doll fantasy—they would crash and burn at the first album.

It's ironic, but to no surprise, that they started being anonymous when they started to put their real names in front of their Spice identities. It was a necessary step, of course, because I can't imagine Eddie Murphy today referring to Melanie Brown as Scary all the time. Then again.

Anyway. The lessons from the Spice Girls' demise was obvious—not that subsequent pop acts learned any of it. Pop acts like that exist in a sphere of post-reality not unlike the WWE, where the audience knows what they're seeing is fake, but believe in the illusion anyway. And from knowing the fate of wrestlers who go by their real names, you can draw the conclusion that pop acts who don't take on a manufactured, media-friendly pop persona will get an atomic wedgie.

All of which points to why Hannah T's branding as a pop icon makes little sense. I've been struggling for concrete reasons why it doesn't work. On paper, Hannah's pop brand takes the right steps: replacing her surname with a capital T, replacing her wardrobe, wearing colour-specific clothes. She even admits to rebranding herself, which though may sound strange then, is the norm in this American Idol age where the pop-making machine is shamelessly made bare.

Start listening to her songs, however, and I get a sense of doom about Hannah T. Not that I have anything against her songs about love, inspiration, and standing tall. It's just that, in none of her songs, there isn't a single “Zig-a-zig-ah.” And in this cartoon world of post-reality pop which she wants to inhabit, finding out that your music has lyrical weight and meaning is akin to finding out that Wild E Coyote died whenever his ACME jetpack failed.

This is the reason why, even after recovering from breast cancer, Kylie won't stop singing songs to the tune of “la la la.” She went serious during her deConstruction-era, and though she made excellent singles during then, her career was nearly shattered. The same rules apply for Hannah T and her brand: it's either she goes all the way to succeed, or don't go at all. Do or do not, there is no try.

John Lim currently thinks that Rachel Stevens makes excellent pop music and should be forgiven for SClub7. That, and she's pretty hot too.