Branded for life

It worked for Arctic Monkeys; it worked for Sandi Thom.

No one should be too surprised that another act have now used the MySpace website – which spreads word of a band (and their downloadable songs) via a growing network of Internet “friends” – to launch themselves to stardom. The difference is that Hope Against Hope are a scam, a spoof indie band “with no talent whatsoever” invented by Q magazine in order to prove that the Rupert Murdoch-owned site is now just another cog in the older industry phenomenon of hype.
After just four weeks, Hope Against Hope had a devoted fan base. Promoter Alan McGee – once a member of Tony Blair’s Creative Industry Taskforce, and the man who discovered Oasis and the Libertines – even offered them a gig at his influential Death Disco club night. But while McGee is portrayed as the butt of the joke, he was only doing his job – responding to a “buzz’’. Hype is as old as pop itself, and has brought us many of pop’s biggest names – as well as some of its most notorious disasters.
One of the first artists to be the subject of significant hype was Elvis, who had a very shrewd manager in “Colonel” Tom Parker, and who benefited from a whispering campaign about “a white man who sings like a black man’’. Once Presley became famous – he turned out to be pretty good – another curled-lipped pretender, Cliff Richard, was marketed as “the British Elvis’’. No matter how good an artist’s music, most acts need some way of grabbing an audience’s initial attention.
One of the most effective tools is outrage. In the 1960s, Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham was looking for a way to counter the Beatles’ suits ‘n’ moptops image when he hit upon the idea of pushing his proteges as bad boys. They grew their hair so long that the London Daily Mirror newspaper said “one of them looks like he’s got a feather duster on his head’’. The “cavemen-like quintet” were photographed urinating against a wall and later appeared accompanied by the headline: “Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?” Probably not, but you couldn’t stop her, and her brothers, buying their records.
Of course, outrage is more potent when it appears genuine. On December 1, 1976, Freddie Mercury’s toothache meant Queen had to cancel a TV appearance. Luckily, the band’s label EMI had a standby in their latest signings, the Sex Pistols, whose infant punk-rock fury was intensified by alcoholic supplies from the Green Room. When fusty (and equally tipsy) presenter Bill Grundy seemed more taken by the risque costume worn by the accompanying Siouxsie (later of the Banshees), the Pistols protested in four-letter terms. One member of the public kicked in his TV set in disgust and the following day’s front page headlines (“The filth and the fury!’’) took the Pistols to No 1.
Another effective means of hyping an artist is introducing them as a fait accompli. In the early 1990s, Suede’s publicists persuaded Melody Maker to declare them “The best new band in Britain” and record-buyers decided that they probably were. This approach started to lose some of its impact when the music papers declared a new “best band” every week. A few years ago, Boy George’s buddy, Amanda Ghost, appeared on the cover of a magazine, with the coverline The Making of a Rock Star – after which she disappeared. Last year she had a “comeback” of sorts, as the co-writer of James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful.
If hype were this straightforward, surely everyone would be doing it. But the fact is, talent tends to out – and vice versa. A lack of talent can be made painfully obvious through clumsy hype. In the early 1970s Bacofoil-clad Jobriath was marketed as the “world’s first gay pop star’’, but his only fans in the long term were Morrissey and Neil Tennant. More recently, avant-weirdo Conrad Merz gathered column inches as “the next Beck” – until the public decided he sounded like a jackdaw.
Hype can break careers as well as make them. Bruce Springsteen knew this when in the early 1970s he went around London tearing down posters proclaiming him “The future of rock ‘n’ roll’’, although his music subsequently suggested he was just that.
One of the all-time hype PR disasters has to be the case of 1970s pub rockers Brinsley Schwarz, who were already loved by the media when their record company hit on the wheeze of flying a planeload of journalists to New York to see their first American gig. Alas, there were problems with visas, the planeloads of hacks and band landed in the wrong town, and many of those who made it to the gig were so drunk they were refused admission to an apparently disastrous performance. In 1998 the industry tried a similar stunt when a planeload of 100 journalists were flown out to Copenhagen to meet Barbie Girl hitmakers Aqua, and plied with vodka. The drunken questions at the Press conference were wildly inappropriate. Some journalists failed to make the return flight home, and were never seen again – which is pretty much what happened to Aqua’s career.
There must be scores of “great white hopes” out there, wondering where it all went wrong, from the reality TV-to-bargain bin likes of Gareth Gates, Michelle McManus and Darius, to much-pushed, little-selling would-be phenomenons such as The Legendary Stardust Cowboy (he wasn’t), Adorable, Five Thirty and Orlando. Usually the answer is that, while the people around them told them they were the next big thing, people with ears decided they were rubbish.
Then again, we should all check out Hope Against Hope. Someone on the Internet reckons they’re really good.