I was 13 when I went to my first "grown up" concert. It was Fall Out Boy, in Leeds, with my dad. I wore an entire stick of Claire's Accessories eyeliner, my skinniest Topshop jeans, and bought a t-shirt that I still have. Dozens of gigs followed, one memorable being Lady Gaga with my best friend. We were sixteen and got the train to Nottingham after school, painted Ziggy Stardust lightning bolts on our cheeks and made friends with other teenage Gaga fans in the queue. When the music started, we grabbed each others hand and shouted "IT'S HAPPENING! IT'S HAPPENING!" - we joke about how excited we were even today.
I love pop music, and it shaped a huge chunk of my life, and still does. If we're being honest, my first gig was Pop Idol on tour with Will Young and Gareth Gates. But beyond that gig (after which I bought a commemorative scarf), pop music was everything. There's an argument that pop music is lowbrow, reductive, with silly lyrics that don't make much sense, or that popstars are too sexy, self absorbed, or even worse, stupid. But teenage girls, throughout history do not care about how stupid you think their idols are, how little grammatical sense the latest Fifth Harmony track makes. Music, in whatever shape or sound, will play a part in their formative years. Today's thirteen year olds will giggle with their friends to Katy Perry, cry over teenage heartbreak to Little Mix and practise doing their eyeliner to a soundtrack of Rihanna, just like we did with the Spice Girls, Destiny's Child and Avril Lavigne, and Madonna, Duran Duran and Wham! Teenage girls make pop music what it is, and pop music makes teenage girls what they are. There's nothing lowbrow, reductive or stupid about that.
Ask any twenty something to finish the line of Reach by S Club 7, and watch their face light up as they do. Maybe it's the nostalgia, but the reaction we all have to pop is infectious and pure. The feeling that pop music brings with it is uninhibited, carefree and special. When teenage girls first move on from their bubblegum worlds, replacing fluffy Justin Bieber tracks with concrete Joy Division, it might seem like the end of an era of innocence and silly dance routines in the playground with friends, but put What Do You Mean? on for a teenage girl, and you'll be hard pressed to find one who doesn't at least tap her toes.
Music is a safe place, one dedicated to camaraderie, self expression and the navigation of emotions. When I went to see Drake with my brother, the Birmingham NIA was lit up with the unmistakable flash of an iPhone camera as hordes of fifteen year old girls took selfies with the new friends they'd made in the crowd. Before he even came on stage, all I could hear was the giggly rendition of Hotline Bling that murmured its way around the room. Music is an emotion we all have in common, subjective and personal. I'll forever defend Kylie Minogue as a groundbreaking artist, and tell you how good Call the Shots by Girls Aloud is. Disagree? Fine, just don't take it away from me. I see pop music as more than just a genre. It's a rite of passage for a time in your life that seems messy, confused, covered in questionable fashion choices and even more questionable crushes. The opening bars of a specific song can transport a woman back to being fifteen and drinking Smirnoff Ice on the park before buying gum on the way home so mum didn't smell it on her breath. It's an important, special and personal part of growing up as a girl. Pop music is a diary.
People are trying to take that away from us. Horror at a concert devastates and makes us angry - and rightly so. And sometimes the call is coming from inside the house, the PWR BTTM scandal - manipulating and abusing young fans disappoints and scares. But there's power in girls, power in pop music. Live music is a joy, a moment of exhilaration and fun. Go to gigs. See your heroes, meet them, take photos, sing until you've got no voice left, please.
They can't take the joy of music away.
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