Earlier this week I tried to interview Harry from McFly for Chartblog. Through no fault of Harry's this was a spectacular disaster. The interview (such as it exists) will be up on Chartblog itself soon but my justifying essay was, quite rightly, edited off by Fraser so here is the EXCLUSIVE (ie: not really, given I posted this under a f-lock earlier this week) inside story of what a completely amateur idiot I actually am. Oh and what we talk about when we talk about 'fangirls' and where the gender frontlines in music really are. And koganbot.

The crappy interview is also at the end; I'd appreciate it if anyone who wants to link to it credits Chartblog, though (although the editor might not...) it should be up there within the next few days, so just send a link back there.

Edit: It's now up on Chartblog here.

McFly are a pop group. They were launched as a boy band. They make jaunty pop music. Those are the facts. There are plenty of bands that exist in this way and make a decent living. McFly, though, like the doomed Busted before them, had the audacity to play real instruments and write their own songs, in an unfashionable, sixties-referencing manner. This became incredibly awkward for a lot of people who daringly talked about The Beatles (who, after all, were on every teenage girl of the time's bedroom walls) as the first and best and only credible boyband and so the hate towards them is, even after nearly six years and defense from such credible corners as Roger Daltrey, more vehement than the hate directed at, say, the Backstreet Boys, since they simply fall beneath the radar of guitar fans, whereas McFly are standing right there.

Nearly two years ago now my friend Frank Kogan wrote an article called What's Wrong With Pretty Girls? (Is it that they like the Backstreet Boys?) for the Las Vegas Weekly. Frank's a very, very brilliant man (& much better music writer than me) and brings up a lot of the questions I'm about to discuss here, although he was talking about the Backstreet Boys and I'm talking about McFly, which is a comparison I'm a bit loathe to make most of the time but which happens to fit this framework. He asked why there's such a violently critical reaction to acts viewed as "boybands," why the reaction seems to, half the time, be more directed at the "pretty girls" in the audience than the "pretty boys" onstage and what the heck's really wrong here?

Frank was also talking about sexism within the music industry, with regards to what kind of girls get to make music but it was the part about boybands that I found most interesting. McFly are, essentially, a boyband; they are boys, in a band, who make music that largely appeals to teenage girls. They used to appear in Smash Hits doing interviews about their snogging technique & there are PHWOAR, HAWT!!omgeleven!!!1 posters of them in magazines aimed at teenage girls. This is, it goes without saying, patronising to everyone; McFly are, after all, human beings and musicians not pieces of meat or glamour models.

They never did this to be fancied and although it is, hilariously, the motivation used by several of Britain's most popularly credible bands (Pulp & Franz Ferdinand, for starters) that they started a band to get girls to notice them and McFly probably don't exactly mind being flashed boobs at every concert (again, something popularly credible rock acts like Guns'n'Roses, Pantera, etc. were generally proud of) but when the media starts talking about "fangirls," there's always something difficult going on.

I am, as you can probably tell from my name, a GURL. Admitedly a very tall one with a low voice who can quite frequently get away with pretending to be a boy but still, often found in a skirt and have all my own boobs.** It's very boring to talk about sexism in the music industry, since quite a lot of it's enforced by women themselves and yet any discussion of it tends to come out a bit man-hating, so you'll have to forgive me for the next few paragraphs but there's a conundrum that exists for "pretty girls" who like McFly.

There's a sort of equation that goes on in a lot of people's minds with regards to writing about music: I'm not sure exactly what it is but it basically amounts to the fact that women can gain credibility by selling sex (if Girls Aloud are in a lads' mag, it's alright to buy their album) and thus making themselves accessible to men but if too many girls (who, after all, don't have that many other objects of celebrity lust in the same way that teenage boys can stare at Jordan or Jodie marsh or whoever-it-is these days) fancy a male musician, this undermines them.

Since it is, establishedly, not cool to like music that's "for girls" and McFly make music largely listened to by girls, this makes them not cool. Then at the same time, they make music with guitars in, which is cool but they can't be cool because they're not indie and so they can't be credible but they're playing guitars and ... bugger, this is a mess. Let's hate 'em instead, that's easier. Anyone who's a fan of McFly must be really stupid or else they'd worry about this kind of thing. Haha, look at those stupid pop-loving girls, what bimbos.

McFly don't hate or resent their fans; this much they've made clear very many times. McFly's fans certainly don't hate them; they're very dedicated and as well as covering their walls in posters spend hours learning guitar chords and studying their sound set-ups and working out what pickups they're using this tour. If there are girls who've learnt to play guitar as well as Danny whilst following McFly, they're probably a million times better than any boys who've learnt to play guitar as well as Pete Doherty (not that girls don't like Pete Doherty, obviously) but of course the ancient rumblings of 'well they don't even play their own instruments,' a long-ago chucked out myth, carry on and so of course a girl can't play as well as Danny because by that logic Danny can't play as well as Danny and we're back in the infinite loop.

Coming out as a McFly fan when you're over fourteen is a big one. Telling your parents and your friends can often be awkward; my best friend genuinely defriended me for a week on Facebook and said I was disgusting awhile ago because I said the 'Lies' video was one of the best things ever made. As soon as you say 'I like McFly,' the instant reaction of the hataz, despite the fact it really doesn't mean anything to them, is "well you're an idiot who doesn't know anything about real music."

Which leads the McFly fan, locked into a slightly altered universe along with the band themselves, to a desperate drive to justify their music taste: you start saying things like "Shove off, I listen to about fifty new albums a month, I'm a blimmin' music writer" whilst getting increasingly annoyed at yourself for justifying it, since you shouldn't have to and the whole situation's irrational.

As soon as you've taken that step, though, you're locked in pretty much for good. You've said it now: no backing out and so what you end up with is a joyous, punky movement of young women who don't give a stuff what anyone thinks about their music taste, their dubious relationship with spiced rum or gig-centric lifestyle. Young people who genuinely do not care what the tastemakers think, since the tastemaking rarely applies to them; what's new for McFly fans? Oh, look, it's Scouting For Girls. Nevermind, we were busy listening to Mastodon and Kate Bush. McFly fans come from all kinds of musical backgrounds, maybe at first drawn in by these pretty, hilarious and extremely charismatic boys but ultimately held there by the music and the incendiary live performances thereof.

There was the recent (hilarious and utterly biting) South Park episode about the Jonas Brothers where a sinister Mickey Mouse used the band to sell sex to little girls, since their clean-cut image and purity rings prevented anyone thinking it was anything other than good, wholesome fun. Now, for the sake of libel I'm not saying whether I agree with that; it was satire of the deliberately offensive order that South Park specialise in. Trey and Matt were pretty sympathetic to the Jonases themselves, directing the bile at Diseney; the idea, though, that boyband music is clean-cut and gentle, something for little girls with little minds, is something that exists across the media and popular perception.

That isn't what McFly are, though. There's nothing spectacularly wrong with teenpop, even Disney teenpop, aside from a general tendency to patronise the audience but McFly don't do that. They have lyrics about erectile dysfunction, teenage suicide, shagging aliens, shagging Lindsay Lohan, getting so drunk you go mad... I mean, to be fair, Demi Lovato covers a fair few of those as well (well, err, kind of the teenage suicide thing anyway) and contrary to the rumors, pop music isn't insipid pap with no substance but the point is that McFly aren't a pop band because they can't make rock music or because they will eventually evolve into one (which tends to be how they're talked about; gradually progressing to a rockier state when in fact the heaviest song they've ever written is on their second album) but because they have deliberately chosen and want to make pop music. Same way their fans have deliberately chosen and want to listen to pop music. The constant urge to justify yourself, as a McFly fan (and in fact a McFly member; the topic of credibility's never far away in their interviews) turns into this desperate desire to say "I'm not stupid" and a constant, niggling knowledge that people still think you are.

The lack of a pop press backs things further into a corner; McFly fans don't want McFly to be in the NME. The NME's a total rag, for a start and McFly aren't that type of band. There's a reason female pop's dominated recently, though and it's to do with where pop gets its outings in the press: are you ever going to see McFly in a fashion magazine? No, probably not; they dress like students. Not cool students, either, I mean they dress like actual students who rolled out of bed and staggered to a lecture. Are they going to appear in FHM? Probably not, either; that'd compromise the raging masculinity of said publication and they'd look a bit daft in lacy underwear, although I'm sure they'd probably play along.

That leaves the technical magazines and gay magazines. Not that there's anything wrong with either of these- the former are interesting if you like your effects pedals and the latter are some of the best places for pop interviews, quality-of-journalism-wise, since they don't assume their audience are children at least. And then what else? Oh yes, Bliss and Cosmo Girl. And we're back to pretty girls, who must OBVIOUSLY only want to know about Dougie's sauciest snog situation and what the most romantic thing Tom's ever done for his girlfriend is. That's what girls like, isn't it?

This isn't just about McFly, though: this is about an entire demographic who are a significant proportion of music buyers and who aren't spoken to. Teenage girls who like music (who the people who pay upwards of £20 to go to see concerts are) don't want to read Bliss; they read Rock Sound and Kerrang! and they don't need "special consideration" because their fluffy little minds can't handle proper music journalism and just want to think about boys. Not only are they not being spoken to but they're being forced to be associated with conversations that are nothing to do with them. Of course we don't all want to have Harry's babies: we're not "fangirls," we're fans who are girls.

The hilarious (and brilliant) thing in all of this is that McFly's lack of critical credibility stock and the social stigma attached to liking them means that, as you throw your lot in with them, you make a sort of pact to be In It For The Music and subsequently probably work out knowing more about the technicalities and listening to a far more diverse range of music. Precisely by and because of their high-profile and pop stock, McFly have become their own independent music scene (literally, now they've removed themselves from Universal) with fans as deeply attached to each other as the bond between the band members.

And their label move is deeply important; yes, they're a major label pop group who make radio-friendly rock but the McFly question always feels considerably more complicated than that. McFly are mainstream but have hardly ever had a song A-listed at Radio 1. They've had seven number ones and are one of the biggest-selling bands in the UK and they're not taken seriously: that's fine, they don't seem to want to be taken seriously, they're not a srs bsns po-faced band but there's a difference between 'not being taken seriously' (after all, who the hell wants to be James "sour tart" Hetfield, reputation-wise?) and 'being your very own social stigma.'

And thus it is that I write about pop music: when I was younger (not that much younger; I'm only a bit older than Dougie) I liked noise punk and metal and pounding pounding techno and Atari Teenage Riot and industrial and hardcore and basically anything classifiable as a 'bloody awful racket.' Then at some point my parents got a Freeview box and, in my fascination with these new-fangled Music Channel Thingies I got earwormed by 'Obviously' and had to admit that my then-rampant (and unfounded) hatred of McFly was possibly A Bad Thing. That was the revelation; not 'oh man, pop music is for kids I'm going to listen to some Bring Me The Horizon.' Kids like noise; just because something's noisy doesn't mean fourteen-year-olds don't like it. Equally, just because you like McFly doesn't mean you don't still listen to noisepunk and techno and beat'n'click and ambient drone metal and norwegian folk music made by black metallers.

But then how do you explain that in "public" when pretending to be a music journalist who doesn't necessarily know any of that? Well, you shouldn't really; the above is more than enough material for an interview and this, patient readers, is where we come to Why I Couldn't Do A Good Interview With Harry. And where, to my deepest frustrations, I actually let the detractors make me prove them right, in some assbackwards manner: I am stupid.

Consciously aware of being A Gurl, I didn't want to insult Harry by suggesting they'd sent out a loopy fangirl to interview him, despite the fact that I myself am fully aware that girls who like McFly are not all loopy fangirls. Also consciously aware of being one of the minority-female music writers out there, I wanted to prove I was capable of doing a good interview. This was, on many levels, my big shot and I panicked, put my I Are Srs Writer face on and proceeded to ask the most boring questions known to mankind.

Preoccupied with trying not to stare at him in case he thought I was giving him the adoring doe-eyes, I stared at the floor. I failed to listen to what he was saying, so didn't follow on from things he said because I panicked and thought 'Oh god, he must think I'm a proper fool' and plunged myself into the 'god this is awkward' spiral where everything merely becomes more awkward until eventually you cut off a ten-minute interview at under half its length because you are afraid one of you will die otherwise.

Now, I'm not going to blame this all on sexism or credibility crises or indeed, any outside forces aside from the bus that ensured I had to run half a mile to actually get to the interview. As I said before I went off on this epic ramble, this is entirely my own fault, ultimately. However, I had really wanted to score one for the pretty girls who liked McFly and I desperately failed and for that (and for probably freaking out Harry) I am very, very sorry.

Since my audio recording is pretty noisy, the interview having been done backstage, I have taken it upon myself to transcribe the full, boring horror of The Worst Interview Ever, leaving in the bit where I lost my questions and the bit where me and Harry collectively tried to remember the name of a forest. And hopefully, Fraser will one day let me do another interview when I can prove that I've learnt from my mistakes.

Hello Harry from McFly! You're in Oxford tonight, doing a gig as part of your Up Close But This Time It's Personal tour; how's the tour been going?

Yeah, it's been great thanks! We've got ...I think three more shows left? So we're nearly at the end and it's been a lot of fun. Really good fun.

You have been getting a lot more up close and personal with your fans lately; you've all got Twitter accounts now. How is it having that close level of interaction with your fans?

It's actually really cool; I was a bit like ...I wasn't so sure at first because it's quite personal, y'know but it's really nice and I hope it's really good for the fans and entertaining for them- they only get to see us when we're doing tours or if we're on TV or we're doing something like that, so I think it's nice for them to have a daily connection with us. So yeah, it's great!

I noticed Tom at least's been using it to talk to other popstars on it...

Has he been talking to people?

Yeah, he's been exchanging tweets with Demi Lovato.

Did she reply?

Yeah, they had quite a long conversation awhile ago.

Oh right.

Not that I'm stalking Tom's twitter or anything, just researching the interview...

Well it's interesting, yeah.

Hang on, I've lost my interview questions....one minute.

It's alright.

I had to run from my bus stop cus my bus was delayed so everything's moved and...

Were you coming from Oxford?

No, near Reading... hang on. [rummages in bag, expelling biros and tissues onto the floor] Oh, I've found them. You've been sort of touring the world this year- you've been to Latin America, Australia and done your first gig in continently Europe, in Holland. Are you planning another tour on a global scale?

Uhm, yeah, hopefully. We're going back out to South America in a couple of weeks and that's going to be fun-

Are you scared of Swine Flu?

Well, quite, yeah... a little bit. We'll probably be fine, it's probably over-hyped but we don't want to let our fans down and they've been waiting for a long time, so we're gunna go back there and we'd like to do some more in Europe and we went to Japan as well as Australia, so it's been a real crazy year. We've been doing lots of travelling.

And at the moment you're doing the thing for the forestry commission, planting trees with schools and you're doing those gigs in Sherwood and ...somewhere else?

Oh, err... Sherwood and ...uhm. ...Thepford?

Yes.

Ah, right.

Well actually I don't know why you're asking me but Thepford sounds right, anyway. And you are at the moment flogging -wait, sorry, not flogging, producing- a single and the old tour DVD. Is there going to be a DVD for this tour?

Uhmmm... I don't think so; we did a DVD for our last arena tour that went with the album -the tour we did in December- which was like a bigger version of what we're doing now; this one's like a scaled-down version.

Oh right, so it's still very much the Radio: Active tour?

Yeah, pretty much but it's on a much more personal level and we're playing a couple of new songs and a new cover song.

So it's not exactly the same?

No it's not exactly the same cus I think that'd be harsh -we like to keep it fresh. Really, we saw the DVD the other day cus it's just coming out and everything and we're really happy with it, it's got a documentary on it and stuff so it's great.

So will that be the end of the cycle for Radio: Active?

I think so, yeah. 'Falling In Love' is gunna be the single that's promoting the DVD and that'll be it, yeah.

So, after that there'll be new stuff?

Yeah, we've already done some recording and there'll be some more recording this summer. We were in Australia doing some recording and definitely more recording this summer; there'll be the forest shows like you said and we've got a load of festivals and things.

Which festivals are you doing?

Well, I know Isle of Wight's confirmed but I don't know if I'm allowed to say anything about any of the others.

Oh right, ok; so there might be others...

Might be others, yeah. And there'll be the other summer shows and things so ...yeah, gunna be a good summer.

Busy summer! Well that'll probably do [checks dictaphone, realises has only used just over four minutes]...oh.

After the interview, I watched a gig where a theatre full of people (many of them, in actual fact, male) stuck their fists in the air and declared that we didn't care and one of the best bands in Britain played one of the loudest gigs I've ever been to (and I've seen Mogwai several times) and had an absolutely brilliant time. There no theatricals, no pyrotechnics and no gimmicks (aside from a bizarre metal cover of 'The Promise' which can be classed under 'pleasingly insane') but the crowd was absolutely transfixed and sang every word back at the band, unselfconsciously. There was every kind of person there, from the twelve-year-olds in front of me to the bearded man across the row from me, to ageing rockers in Motorhead t-shirts, to teenage girls to people like me, in their early twenties. People from all social backgrounds, as Tom From The Enemy attempts to flaunt as some kind of concept unique to his band. And at the end of the day, it was and is all about the music.

And then I went home, felt very, very stupid and wrote this.

McFly release Falling In Love and the Radio: Active tour DVD on 11th May.

*Which generally clock in at 'at least half a week after any final deadline.'
**Actually tbh that doesn't really gender me either, does it?


EDIT: Apologies for not replying to anything here, I've just moved to a house with no internet access for a little while.