Pop just got better?

I made a striking realization today. Almost as striking as when last year's ‘I am really hairy!’. That took only 10 years of being called Chewy, this discovery was on a musical note though and took slightly less time.

Perhaps it's years of DJ-ing or just being a bloke but I have pretty much always been a hater when it comes to manufactured pop music, dismissing most of it all straight off as sh!te. Today though my office buddy James (check out his Bitches With Wolves for the perfect example of the pop I refer to hereafter) was listening to Alexandra Burke's new single Bad Boys and and I found my foot a tap-tapping and my head a nodding. I saw her performance on the X-Factor the other day and have heard it on the radio a few times and today came to the conclusion, I actually quite like it.

Now the wheels in my head started turning and I remembered the goo I had on me yesterday for Shakira's new 'She Wolf' track. I also remembered humming along to the riff of Brit's ‘If you seek Amy’ recently.

The way I see it there are two possible reasons for my change of heart, either I, in my mellowed out 'wrong side of 25 condition' am becoming less of a music fascist or, as James suggested… pop music just got better.

There is no doubt that there have been some great electro-pop outfits infiltrating the charts recently, La Roux and Little Boots spring to mind. Artists who (with great producers) are making great catchy pop with a harder edge free of the bubblegum sentimentality and polished feel of the boy band era.

Then again maybe it's just Shakira's pant suit?