It's over forty years since Roland Barthes posited the now acceptable view that nothing about 'pop' is real anymore, that in fact nothing about it had ever been real, that it had always been staged, counterfeit, artificial, nothing but a construct sold to us as authentic.
However, even after the alleged death of authenticity we continue to lust after its mere semblance, better a beautiful lie than the sad truth. This is where things stand in pop-land- artefacts that we can coolly enjoy, in full conscience of their factitiousness.
Yet Soap&Skin, twenty-one year old Anja Plaschg, is a pop singer, by definition.
[...more...]