Six pop stars who were deeply weird in retrospect

HAVE you unexpectedly encountered the bands of your youth on MTV and thought ‘f**k me, they were a bit strange’? Here are some of the freakiest:

Adam and the Ants

Hugely popular from playgrounds to punk clubs, but a band powered by African beats and oddly fascinated by well-dressed highwaymen and fairy tales. Strange even by the standards of the New Wave 80s, when men wore make-up and women had asymmetric haicuts.

The Sisters of Mercy

And most Goth bands, to be fair. What was most puzzling was the appetite among Britain’s youth for pseudo-vampire pomp-rock with historical overtones and a focus on being dead. It’s the equivalent of a whole musical movement springing up around Bigfoot.

Michael Jackson

Yeah he was a wrong ‘un, but even before that his actual act was deeply strange. Did those weird yelps improve his songs? How many of them were cheesy rubbish? Why did the spindly popster pretend to be a Bad gang-leader or a Smooth Criminal? Why didn’t anyone say something earlier?

The Smiths

A band who were highly talented, different and, thanks to Stephen Morrissey, had a uniquely bleak and depressing view of everything in Britain from sex to nightclubs. He’s now gone UKIP, but at least he didn’t end up writing songs about the agony of self-service checkouts.

The Shamen

Some great tunes, but catapulting a couple of blokes from traveller parties to the top of the charts is always going to be problematic. What the bloody hell were they on about with their ‘cosmic consciousness’ nonsense? If you like drugs, just say so. Don’t pen lyrics like ‘Space time, a fusion of the concepts/Of space and time’.

The Spice Girls

Apart from their relentless bullshit about girl power, each Spice Girl had a simple, clearly defined personality, like a My Little Pony. Presumably their tweenie audience liked this, but it’s still odd, like calling the members of Led Zeppelin ‘Satany Zep’, ’Drinky Zep’ ‘Shagger Zep’ and ‘Bassist’.

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The Brexiter's guide to why it's definitely not Brexit's fault

LORRY queues and empty supermarket shelves are happening as predicted, but they’re definitely nothing to do with Brexit. Leave voter Norman Steele explains:

People are eating all the food

When people are stuck at home, a bit bored, what do they do? Have a snack. That’s the logical explanation for empty supermarket shelves – everyone’s having a nice cheese and Branston sandwich, with 20 carrots and three bottles of wine.

Remoaner sabotage

Remoaners are so keen to see Brexit fail they’re up in the dead of night changing roadsigns to send all the lorries to Kent. This is easily the most plausible reason for our so-called ‘Brexit problems’. They’ll be blowing up bridges next.

It’s the Pingdemic

Covid cases are up again which is why everyone in the food supply chain’s off sick. Some blame Boris Johnson, but we had no choice but to vote for him because otherwise we’d have Venezuelan socialism and empty shelves and food shortages.

Illegal immigrants are stopping traffic

Look at how many lorries are lined up. There’s hundreds, all full of food and hairdryers and stuff. But immigrants don’t respect the M20 any more than they respect the English Channel and are always darting across, making our HGV heroes brake and causing jams.

It’s normal to bring the army in

So what if the army has to deliver basic food supplies? It’s a totally everyday occurrence for them to help with floods, fire prevention, keeping public order by enforcing a shoot-on-sight curfew, arresting opposition leaders, that kind of thing. All major democracies do it.

‘Brexit has no downside, only a considerable upside’

There’s no way the top Brexiters would have lied about the benefits because they wanted to be prime minister, were on a lucrative grift or were loony anti-EU obsessives. That quote from David Davis MP sums it up, although you don’t hear that much from him these days. I wonder why?

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