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••• Popular Music •••

follow guitar-playing idols by forming bands and collectively go to rock concerts. In
contrast, the female fans of the teenybopper are relatively passive and consume as
individuals through forms of ‘bedroom culture’: ‘as the music to which girls wash
their hair, practise makeup, and daydream’ (Frith and McRobbie, 1978: 381). While
they did recognize that teenybop idols can be used in different ways by girl audiences
as a form of collective appropriation and resistance to school norms, Frith (1985)
was quick to acknowledge the problems in their argument. In particular, he concedes
that they ‘confused issues of sex’ with ‘issues of gender’ (ibid.: 420) and while the
distinctions drawn between teenybop and cock rock now seem rather crude, the
assumptions that underpin them continue to inform popular music practice.
Boyzone and Oasis, for instance, gained much of their cultural currency from these
styles of presentation in the mid-1990s, while the Pop Idol formula trades on the audi-
ence’s identification with a future ‘star’ in the manufacturing process.
Sheila Whiteley (2000), in her discussion of the Spice Girls, also notes some impor-
tant continuities in the packaging of the group with earlier teenybop idols, but con-
tends that they also did much to shape and construct for their pre-teen and teenage
fans an understanding of difference in a multicultural Britain. It was highly signifi-
cant that each of the Girls had a different image and distinct personality, which con-
tributed to the impression that brash individuality rather than blank conformity
could be achieved in a group setting. While many dismissed ‘girl power’ as ‘cartoon
feminism’, she concludes that they did make ‘a difference, not least in being the first
mixed-race all-girl vocal group to front the tensions between individuality and col-
lective identity that are intrinsic to both 1990s’ feminism and pop music’ (ibid.: 227).
In contrast, Steven Miles (1998: 123) argues that the Spice Girls phenomenon
resulted from a slick combination of relentless marketing, catchy tunes and overt sex-
uality so that girl power ultimately justifies the continuing ‘commodification of
female sexuality and the prioritization of image over substance’. What these issues of
meaning pose, perhaps more than anything else, is that they cannot be divorced
from questions of audience interpretation and it is to such matters that I now turn.

Audience

The Birmingham Centre and the subcultural tradition

Up until recently studies of popular music audiences have overwhelmingly concen-
trated on youth subcultures. Of course, the fact that the music itself has been tar-
geted at the youth market since the 1950s suggests that there are strong historical
reasons for this. Moreover, for many, the defining feature of popular music lies in its
radical potential to articulate youthful rebellion against authority figures. Whether
this focus on youth remains the most fruitful for future research on popular music
audiences will be discussed below. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that the
key resource for subcultural accounts of popular music has been the work associated
with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of

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