“There’s no reason for staying in/There’s nothing on the television.” —Art Brut, “Bad Weekend”
The BBC TV show Top of the Pops began broadcasting on New Year’s Day, 1964. The weekly program featured recordings from the British Top 40 accompanied either by video or by bands miming along to their songs in the studio (bands were briefly allowed to sing along to prerecorded backing tracks in the ’90s). The show maintained strict requirements regarding what bands and which singles could be featured—of course, songs had to make the Top 40, but they also had to be climbing the charts, and only a chart-topping song could appear for consecutive weeks. The requirement that bands play along rather than perform their songs live has actually led to some pretty interesting appearances, such as Pulp’s elaborate dance routine for “Party Hard,” Public Image Ltd.’s sneeringly half-hearted delivery of “Death Disco,” and Nirvana’s mocking version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
The term “art brut” (literally “rough art” or “raw art”) was coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet in the mid-20th century to describe art produced by people working completely outside mainstream culture and society. Dubuffet focused specifically on the institutionalized insane, but the term has come to apply more generally to any naive or untrained “outsider” working without knowledge of or connection to the established art world. These aren’t artists just outside the Top 40 and the Tate Modern, but rather those who’ve never even heard of such institutions.
Dubuffet writes: “Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses—where the worries of competition, acclaim, and social promotion do not interfere—are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions… in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade.”
What’s brilliant about the band Art Brut is that they are of course anything but “outsiders.” Singer Eddie Argos’s lyrics reference the Pompidou and the Velvet Underground, discuss popular culture and modern art, and play with both irony and rock ‘n’ roll’s hallowed authenticity. They posit themselves as wide-eyed upstarts only to expertly dissect their subjects; their seemingly simple lyrics are actually full of in-jokes and allusions, but their energy is undeniably sincere.
Their debut single, “Formed a Band,” is a kind of meta pop song announcing and celebrating the band’s existence while detailing Argos’s lofty ambitions: “A song that makes Israel and Palestine get along,” “a song as universal as ‘Happy Birthday,'” “eight weeks in a row on Top of the Pops!” Argos slyly half-sings/half-speaks, “Yes, this is my singing voice/It’s not irony/It’s not rock ‘n’ roll/We’re just talking to the kids!” On the title track of Bang Bang Rock & Roll—a song about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—he shouts, “No more songs about sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll/It’s boring!”
This playful self-awareness drives the best bits of Bang Bang Rock & Roll, transforming Art Brut’s perfectly catchy songs into fascinating little fractals of self-referential pop-cultural critique.
Argos’s transparently genuine stage persona is a mix of Jarvis Cocker, Mark E. Smith, and a bit of game-show host. Live, he chants “Art Brut! Top of the Pops!” with such conviction that one almost believes he could simply will himself onto the show.
The band came maddeningly close with the single for “Emily Kane,” which hit number 41 and is rumored to have missed the Top 40 by only two sales. Sadly, the long-running show aired its final episode on July 30, 2006; Art Brut never made it to Top of the Pops.
The demise of that show means that Argos’s lyrical ambitions will forever go unfulfilled, but that’s not such a bad thing. Argos is most compelling as a perpetual “outsider,” an everyman suddenly catalyzed by exposure to rock ‘n’ roll, naively optimistic and ambitious, determined to win popular status and acclaim. With this particular arbiter of pop-cultural inclusion gone, Art Brut’s incendiary songs are forever fixed in that moment of unbridled inspiration and enthusiasm. “Top of the Pops” will never become a bloated, triumphant boast, but will instead always express eager yearning. They can always have just “formed a band,” always have their eyes on the Top of the Pops, but there will never be anything worth staying in for on the television.