The Guardian on Amy Studt. If there was ever a red rag to a NYLPM bull it would be this subheading: “The latest pop phenomenon is 17, stunning, and managed by the Spice Girls’ Simon Fuller. But Amy Studt’s unique selling point, says Libby Brooks, is that she actually has talent”.
This “actually having talent” business is up there with “keep music live” in its disingenuity. This is pop music we are talking about. And also, note, this is Simon Fuller we are talking about and if all he can fall back on to promote Studt is the fact that she writes her own songs then she either has very little going for her or Fuller has lost his nous. As for our gushing journo Libby Brooks here, are we really to believe that having talent is so unique that in the whole history of pop Amy Studt is the first person to have had it.
She has been sold as some sort of British Avril Lavigne, mixing a bouncey guitar tune with vaguely (very vaguely) alienated lyrics. But Misfit tied too hard. The video of her in a ra-ra skirt did not help. Sure the goth/skate fashion is well past its sell by date, but no-one is rebelling by going back to ra-ra’s and puffballs. Good luck to the girl, but her songs need to get better. And she needs not to be in articles like this in The Guardian. It is talking directly to the Modern Parents : if your children must by pre-packed pop, at least this girl writes her own.