It Was A Time of Darkness

So The Darkness didn't manage to get the Christmas Number One.

My review of their album seems to have attracted rather too many semi-literate comments of the 'they suck/they rock/U R all morons for thinking..' variety by assorted poorly-socialised 12-year olds.

The Darkness are not a great band, merely a good band that had the good luck to be in the right place at the right time. It's silly to try and compare them to Queen, Led Zeppelin or Thin Lizzy; on present form, with just one album recorded, they're not even in the same league. That's not to say they won't achieve greater things in the future, given a good producer and a good manager; they've already demonstrated their ability to write hits, and I think it's too early to write them off as one hit wonders. Their second album will indicate whether they're likely to mature into a major act or not.

Their success is has a lot to do with the moribund state of the British music scene at the moment. The music buying public are tired of the formulaic manufactured Pop-Idol sausage-factory pop pap. Likewise, they've tired of the angst-ridden whiny indie-rock from the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay, which has got very boring. Radiohead (who were once a good band) are now self-indulgent, pretentious and dull; they and their imitators are actually guilty of all the crimes 70s prog-rock was merely falsely accused of. It needs a noughties equivalent of punk to sweep them all away. Are The Darkness the new Sex Pistols?