Act your age Miley!

How do you like your 17 year old girls? Boasting about how many guys they go through, how hot they are and how good they are with a pole (the thin silvery kind you get tips for working not an Eastern European)? Probably not, unless you're a 17 year old boy who's not fussy.

I'm not remotely prudish and am perfectly comfortable with the way sex permeates pop music (and the selling of pop music). Always has, always will, even at the young end of the market. What I do find a bit grating is young girl singers who feel they have to be not only cute and sexy but also somehow sexually knowing and in charge well beyond their years. Perhaps this is why I don't like Miley Cyrus is acting like she's some out of control sex machine in her latest song and video "Can't Be Tamed". It's not the sexy outfits or dancing, it's the patronising assumption that we will accept a 17 year old kid who was singing about schoolgirl crushes last year, suddenly playing the wonton sex goddess who services half a football team before breakfast. From Mouseketeer to Mata Hari in the space of two pop videos?

It was the same with Britney Spears. She seemed to leap from schoolgirl to callgirl after a couple of years in the limelight. At least she has now been round the block a few times so when she sings If You Seek Amy you can kind of believe her.

It might be acceptable if Miley was a convincing slapper (Kesha pulls off the role quite convincingly and the Millionaires are alarmingly sluttish). I appreciate she's only acting out a role, but I can't see where committed Christian Miley has gained the experience to convince as an in your face sex symbol. Do you see Billy Ray letting the boys of Nashville get too close to young Miley during the Hannah Montana years? and in the last couple of years she's only been dating one of the intensely evangelical Jonas brothers and some kid out of Neighbours. So come on Miley act your age and sing about crushes and young love again. Leave the vampy stuff to singers more age appropriate like Cher and Madonna.

Here's the clip for those who haven't seen it and below that a current favourite of mine by Eliza Doolittle who does seem to be still presenting a sweet, wholesome image that suits her age.

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Kate Nash, Puppets and the battle of the mocknies

This week Kate Nash was my pick as Best Song of the Week with "Do Wah Do". It took my a while to fall for this track even though it is just the kind of fun, witty and likeable fare I usually lap up and it's because of that "mockney" accent.

To non-Brits who don't know what that is, I'll have to explain. She sings like she's a working class Londoner (" a cockney" see left for genuine article) even though she sounds nothing like that in real life. Compare a few seconds of these two YouTube clips, the song and an interview:

You probably now get the idea. It's probably something that just irritates British people (particularly irritable ones like me).

I don't mind singing voice affectations in general just this specific one. After all most British singers from the 50s onwards have tried for an American accent, naturally enough as they are working in an American form. It's just accents which seem designed to give the singer a bit of street edge that seem so absurd and posed. Another example is the white British kids who talk or sing like they are Jamaican despite Ali G having completely called out this nonsense a decade ago.

Pearl and the Puppets - a new mockney low

Actually there is another even more absurd example which again ruins quite a good song. Pearl and the Puppets, a much touted new band for 2010, have a song out called "Because I do". It's a light little ditty which builds into a happy-making sing-a-long chorus (which is why it has already been used in Vodafone ads). But listen to the first lines and you have some classic mockney:

"I saw you the other day, you were dreaming that's O Kay" Acceptable if she's from London but she's from Scotland. I maybe wrong and maybe Scots speak like this but I don't think so. Here's an interview with Pearl (actually Katie) who speaks more like she should be making porridge or shortbread adverts.

On a final note, since I'm moaning, what about being accused of mocknification unjustly? Poor old Eliza Doolittle, a previous best song winner with "Skinny Genes", was roundly slagged off for being a mockney in the music press (and copying Kate Nash) but I can't see it myself. She sounds totally unmockney to me.

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