The artist Ian Anderson said made “intelligent” pop music
For any prog legend like Ian Anderson, all pop music can be considered more than a little bit trite.
There may be the occasional tune that’s a little bit more sophisticated on the radio, but given how much prog has evolved over the years, it’s hard to go back to the same stock chord progressions whenever listening to what’s on the charts. Anderson was never that kind of artist, but even if he was uncomfortable with the prog banner that they were put under at times, it’s not like he was anti-pop music by any means.
After all, the first bands that were considered prog were basically pop bands that started to think outside the box. The Beatles dared to dream bigger when making the elongated epic on the back half of Abbey Road, but even if that was an episodic journey, each section was its own mini adventure that could have been released as a single by any other artist if they wanted to break them apart.
And it’s not like Jethro Tull wasn’t the same way. The biggest names in music may have stretched out their songs now and again to jam, but a record like Thick as a Brick wasn’t about all the band members trying to outdo each other on their instruments or anything. They were telling a story with sound, but even with that kind of cinematic journey, nothing could have prepared the prog world for what MTV was going to be.
Shifting from the concert stage to the television screen wasn’t going to be easy, and while Genesis and Yes managed it okay, Anderson still was a firm believer in keeping the music eclectic. Phil Collins could make tunes like ‘Invisible Touch’ and not feel out of place next to the likes of Whitesnake on the channel, but the start of the medium was where Anderson’s heart was.
Before the big businesses came in, MTV was still an arthouse channel much of the time. No one claimed that bands like The Buggles and Talking Heads were the coolest bands in the world, but it’s hard to picture tracks like ‘Once in a Lifetime’ or ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ without their videos. And while ‘The Safety Dance’ could have been either pretentious or stupid, Anderson saw the merit in a band like Men Without Hats.
Although ‘The Safety Dance’ is the more recognisable tune, it wasn’t until Anderson heard ‘On Tuesday’ that he realised what the MTV starlets were trying to do, saying, “I think that ‘On Tuesday’ is a touching and simply lovely tune. I think much of his peculiar way of wedding together pop electronica with intriguing music and lyrics is quite exemplary, a good example of intelligent pop music.”
While it’s hard to imagine that coming from the same band that wrote such eloquent works of prose as ‘We can dance/Everybody look at your hands’, there was a lot more going on in every record they made. The fact that they could make a tune that was as catchy as ‘Pop Goes the World’ and yet have it be about the oncoming devastation that could come with a nuclear fallout is the kind of cynical humour that wouldn’t have felt out of place on a Tull record.
And like the prog legends, the Canadian one-hit wonders did at least have a decent sense of humour, especially since lead singer Ivan Doroschuk did an entire tour with the group wearing a hat as part of his onstage garb. It was nowhere near as adventurous as what the prog giants were doing, but in an era that was becoming more and more formulaic, the fact that Men Without Hats dared to make people think was the kind of breath of fresh air people like Anderson needed to hear.
