Personal Genius: Trevor Horn

There are some people who babble about this silly, overpopulated planet contributing very little apart from methane. There are some other people who make up for this by being very ace indeed. One of these people is pop impresario Trevor Horn. He is great. This is why:

The Buggles




Trevor Horn was the mastermind behind pop behemoths The Buggles. He spawned 'Video Killed the Radio Star' and thus he invented the MTV generation. He also made it clear that in the post-disco era, you didn't have to be a fittie to make a right old hittie. In fact, all of The Buggles were a bit ugly, which is why they didn't conquer the world. What a lie. They look like Hot Chip.

Malcolm McLaren



Malcolm McLaren is an irritating fucktard. He wafts across talking heads clip shows like the decrepit prune that escaped from Christmas Past and has appeared disappointingly in Christmas Present. Thanks, nan. He gesticulates his histrionics while conveniently missing the fact that he owes it all to Westwood and Johnny 'I sell margerine to The Man, for The Man' Rotten.

However, McLaren's 1983 album 'Duck Rock' is amazing. It's like The Go! Team getting all Bronx with Vampire Weekend chomping on vaseline on toast. It also developed a bit of a blueprint for breakdance riddim and rip-rip-rapping. It's fantastic. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing was overseen by Trevor Horn, who has a gay old time churning out as many variations of the Amen break as possible. Not bad for a dweeb.

Art Of Noise



Having moseyed around with Malcolm 'Shortbread tin trousers' McLaren for a bit too long, Trevor decided that it was time to reinvent music. It was the 80s, mobile phones were really big and so was business. There were these things called 'samplers', right, and you'd record something and it'd play it back. Genius. So Trevor reckons that you can just sample everything and make music doing that. Thus, you get the Art Of Noise, who are mainly responsible for the theme tune for The Krypton Factor.



Over the pond, people were thinking that Art Of Noise were some crest-of-a-wave hip-hop pioneers rather than some stuffy, stuck-up knob-twiddlers. Horn, as we know, is a bit ugly (and not black) so Art Of Noise went all anonymous. They also did that funky rendition of 'Kiss' with Tom Jones. Thanks, you make me dribble.

Tatu



Fast-forward 20 years, past the Clothes Show and the information superhighway and you get to 2003. There's this place called Russia, you might have heard for it. Anyway, there's these two fit birds, yeah, Trevor Horn produces their debut album and they become incredibly popular.

It's a very saccarine affair, but secretly it's a big metaphor for the instability of Russia, following the 1997 default on the ruble, lack of economic and social stability placed next to the yearning desire for a strong political leader. Only joking. But the album does sound very very good and there's the best Smiths cover version ever on it. Hooray! Even Morrissey loves it, and he's a miserable old sausage.

So, what have we learned today?

1) Trevor Horn is ugly.
2) Trevor Horn invented hip-hop.
3) Trevor Horn is a pillar of post-Soviet Russia.

Yes? Yes.