If post-punk enterprise suggested that pop music could establish a fierce skittishness, an aggressive self-irony, that would enable it to transcend its manufactured state, video narcissism announces that pop has found an easy way to steal more cash from young people and damage their natural desires.

Essentially the soul of the planet is being controlled by corporations.

I always thought that pop groups were going to be made up in the 21st century. It wouldn't be four musicians, as such. Especially in the online world, with the worlds that are opening up.

There's different ways of presenting a pop group to the world. It doesn't have to be the same old poses.

I know, or I dream, that pop music can search out limits, mock restrictions and divisions, exorcise cultural nightmares, contribute to revitaiisation of people's thinking, disturb and inspire if only through its unstable mobility, its readiness to pursue apparently irrelevant links and private associations.

It's going to be an interesting dilemma for certain corporations. They've worked so hard to make themselves important in the way music goes out into the world, but it's completely irrelevant when people can get their music in a different way.

Pop music - what used to be known as rock music, a loud novelty - can be something more than a pointless, artificial diversion.