The day the music died: Stuart Jeffries puts the case against Pop Idol and the colonisation of the charts by TV. A lot of blood and thunder and what seems to be a strong central point (ignoring the use of the lazy m-word) – “Manufactured pop is not necessarily a bad thing; it becomes so when, as is the case now, it’s deemed to be the only game in town.”. A half-dozen paragraphs before though Jeffries, explaining why Britain’s “pop heritage” is so thrilling and important, cites Ms Dynamite and The Streets. But these acts aren’t ‘heritage’, they’re here-and-now! TV-farmed pop can easily co-exist with the thrills Jeffries is chasing and his own examples prove it – exaggerating its importance only undermines his arguments against it.