Letters to the Editor: Jeppo's hair, Sugababes chucking a stick, the death of pop and a rediscovered La Roux banger

Welcome to Popjustice's letters page, a returning thing which sidesteps social media and the myriad ways in which it is possible for websites to com­mu­nic­ate with their readers, and forces the whole feedback thing into a regi­men­ted and tightly-formatted semi-regular feature.

Popjustice editor Peter Robinson — that's me — is ready to receive. Let's see what's arrived in the Popjustice inbox this time round (and if you'd like to send a letter of your own, details are at the bottom of this post and the best letters receive a leftover badge from the last time we did a letters page).

Queen of follicular manipulation

Paul I am so glad you asked (though let me begin by noting that Popjustice, unlike Jeppo, has a lowercase 'j'). The 2006 me would have said that Carly Rae Jepsen's fol­licu­lar timeline should represent a journey of con­tinu­ous discovery, exper­i­ment­a­tion and joy. And Jeppo would certainly appear to be open to this idea, and her recent Danny L Harle video even shows a will­ing­ness to invest­ig­ate wigs. However the 2016 me regrets to inform you that any dis­cus­sion of these matters between you and I amounts to little more than miso­gyn­istic hair­splain­ing and that what 'is' and 'is not' accept­able is nobody's business but Jeppo's. I am sorry Paul but that's just the way things are.

Important Sugababes/javelin query

This has been on my mind too, Thomas, and after a fortnight's con­sid­er­a­tion I can only conclude that while all three Sugababes are familiar with the concept of chucking something into the unknown and hoping for the best, the member best suited to the javelin toss would be Heidi Range, as success in this area requires the javelin to achieve both height and range. I attempted to pull off a joke involving 'massive prick' and 'Dave Berry' but I'm afraid I couldn't quite get it to work. I'm sorry. (NB: The best Sugababes lineup to join for a relay race would be Heidi, Keisha and Mutya because if you're ready they'll pass the baton and let you go.)

Trolling in the deep

I suppose one option would be to make sure everything makes complete sense to people who don't read Popjustice, or people who are ter­min­ally stupid. That doesn't sound much fun. It's a bit like pop music isn't it? Most of the time, people who attempt to appeal to everyone and hit a real lowest common denom­in­ator audience end up releasing total nonsense. Like, you'd rather be Robyn than Shawn Mendes, wouldn't you? Also: 'Groove Is In The Heart' is terrible, my favourite song of all time (today) is Nicki Minaj's 'Pound The Alarm', the weather is alright but that depends on whether you like hot weather (I tend to view it as incon­veni­ent), I don't have a toilet or any need for one, and CRJ just gets it because the internet says she does.

Reports of pop's death have been greatly exaggerated

Bradley's blog was excellent, and as you can see from MuuMuse and his work on Popcrush, he for­tu­nately didn't end up binning the whole thing off after all. My own piece was more about my frus­tra­tion with big artists and the various stupid decisions that lead them to release crap first singles, then the feeling we all have from time to time when we try to convince ourselves that we like songs more than we do. Re the main question in your letter, the thing is, even if big pop acts release duff music, there are new pop acts coming along all the time. And there will always be new pop acts. In a way, much as I'd love her to have executed a flawless album campaign, it doesn't matter that the first Britney single was semi-ropey, because listening through new album tracks by people like Tove Lo and Zara Larsson it's obvious that there's still brilliant pop being made, and great popstars to get excited about. I suppose it all depends how you sub­con­sciously pri­or­it­ise music and popstars. Do you prefer music, and the people who make it? Or popstars, and the music they make? I only started thinking about this recently but I tend to be music first, artist second, and then if an artist ends up releasing more than a handful of decent songs the priority sometimes shifts, but there's too much good music around to get hung up on artists who don't deliver.

Revisiting Visitor

Well I've now listened to the song and it's quite enjoyable isn't it? I went for a nice drink with Visitor once. Funny how the pop gods decide that some acts will make it while others won't. Well, not very funny for Visitor I imagine, but either way it's good to hear a new song (if indeed it is a new song and not just something they found on an old hard drive).

Leftover badge winner: CAN WE ALL JUST PAUSE TO REMEMBER A GOOD LA ROUX SONG PLEASE

Jake, thanks for reminding me to listen to that album. I think 'Sexotheque' will have its moment, perhaps many years from now when you and I are both dead. Please be aware that before this can happen it's important that 'Uptight Downtown' somehow gets to Number One. I predict this will happen in 2025.

Almighty confusion

The PJ Almighty has lived in the Popjustice sidebar for so long that I barely remember the original point, and yes I should update it more often, but as it currently stands it's five good people (or things) and one terrible person (or thing). They're numbered one to five, then 666 for the terrible entry, 666 being the number of the beast, ie evil. I usually also try to style the 666 so that it's brown: the inter­na­tion­ally recog­nised colour of shit. Originally it was meant to be a bit like those barometer things all magazines used to have — they each had their own not-very-original spins on the same idea, but it was a general best-to-worst, hot-to-not kind of idea that would usually be in the front section of a magazine. Fortunately I've long since abandoned any desire to replicate print mag ideas on Popjustice. Thanks for writing in to the letters page!

If you'd like to write Popjustice a letter it's extraordin­ar­ily simple — just drop a line to [email protected] using your favourite email applic­a­tion. The whole thing's explained in unne­ces­sary detail here. Best letter writers get a nice badge, mainly because we've got a load left over from the last time we did a letters page.