This column first featured in Club Huck\u2019s culture newsletter. Sign up for free\u00a0<\/strong><\/i>here<\/strong><\/i><\/a> to make sure it lands in your inbox every\u00a0month.<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n 2026<\/span> was the year of\u00a0slop.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n March 2026<\/span> saw the term \u200b\u201c<\/span>AI<\/span> Slop\u201d spike to its highest ever ranking in Google search results, an indicator that it\u2019s a\u00a0topic everyone has an opinion on. There have been debates raging over AI<\/span> use across the arts \u2013 perhaps most virulently in <\/span>music<\/span><\/a>, where we\u2019ve seen everything from a\u00a0glut of ageing producers (Timbaland, Diplo, Dr Dre) coming out to insist that AI<\/span> music is absolutely definitely the future, to Jorja Smith having to sue a\u00a0songwriter for clearly prompting AI<\/span> to rip off her vocals, to Tyga releasing an album he proudly declared was made with AI<\/span>, only for <\/span>Pitchfork<\/span><\/i> to <\/span>award it<\/span><\/a> a\u00a0remarkable (if generous) 0<\/span>\u00a0out of 10<\/span>. At times it\u2019s seemed out of control, but in all the heat and noise there\u2019s a\u00a0reality that\u2019s been missed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s always been\u00a0slop.<\/span><\/p>\n Case in\u00a0point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In July 1971<\/span> this got to #1<\/span>\u00a0in the UK<\/span> album charts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was part of the incredibly successful\u00a0<\/span>Top of the Pops<\/i> compilation series, a\u00a0series that not only stole its name from the then wildly popular pop TV<\/span> show, but stole all of its contents from the charts. The formula was simple; get a\u00a0load of session musicians and lock them in a\u00a0studio until they\u2019d banged out cover versions of everything currently shifting units. Three songs in three hours? Not a\u00a0bother. To anyone with any sense of discernment the songs sounded atrocious \u2013 disgraceful bowdlerisations of pop masterpieces, Marc Bolan\u2019s fey snarl rendered as an arthritic wheeze. \u200b\u2018<\/span>Won\u2019t Get Fooled Again\u2019 sounding less like The Who and more like the\u00a0why?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And yet, the British public did love it. They lapped it up. They bought <\/span>Top of the Pops<\/span><\/i> albums by the barrel load, enough to propel at least four of these albums into the Top 40<\/span>, and enough for series owner Hallmark to bang out over 90<\/span> editions. No genre would prove too innovative, too sublime, for Hallmark not to slap it into the grinder. Not disco, with every one from Stevie Wonder to Boney M\u00a0getting knocked off. Not electro \u2013 Kraftwerk got butchered on versions of \u200b\u2018<\/span>Autobahn\u2019 and \u200b\u2018<\/span>The Model\u2019. Not the punk-ska fusion of 2<\/span>Tone, with a\u00a0particularly egregious, borderline racist rendition of \u200b\u2018<\/span><\/span>Ghost Town<\/span><\/a>\u2019 making the grade. Even punk, that most anti-establishment of genres, was, in the end, pop music, so in it went. Hallmark delivered covers of The Sex Pistols, and later, possibly a\u00a0nadir for the series, a\u00a0version of Public Image\u2019s \u200b\u2018<\/span>Death Disco\u2019. A\u00a0post punk lament written by John Lydon for his dying mother, \u200b\u2018<\/span>Death Disco\u2019 contains the\u00a0lines:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span><\/span>Watch her slowly die \/ Saw it in her eyes \/ Choking on a\u00a0bed \/ Flowers rotting dead\u201d<\/i>. There\u2019s something truly bizarre listening to these lines whimpered out on the\u00a0<\/span>Top of the Pops<\/i> album by a\u00a0bored, jobbing musician trying to earn money to slap on the electric meter. Who would want this? But as has been proven time and again, and as we are learning at an accelerated pace in our final years on a\u00a0burning planet, the public at large really, really love slop. Always have, always will.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The definition of slop is currently fairly amorphous, and is often used as a\u00a0proxy for \u200b\u201c<\/span>something I\u00a0don\u2019t like\u201d, but to get specific, I\u00a0would argue that slop as we understand it in a\u00a0musical context, is any work that blandly, emotionlessly regurgitates other work whilst stripping out elements that might be unexpected or transgressive, leaving the thinnest gruel, whatever tiny sliver of sound that can be used to extract profit. Does it really make that much difference if the slop was made by an algorithm? AI<\/span> may have democratised slop farming, it didn\u2019t start it. And the Top of the Pops albums didn\u2019t start it. Slop has gone hand and hand with pop since records were pressed, and we have fallen for it every single time.<\/span><\/p>\n Back in 1955<\/span>, when rock \u200b\u2018<\/span>n\u2019 roll was first rattling bones, a\u00a0record label called Dot Records got hold of a\u00a0pre-release version of Fats Domino\u2019s recording of \u200b\u2018<\/span>Ain\u2019t That a\u00a0Shame\u2019, a\u00a0song that would go on to become one of the recognised pillars of the genre. The A&<\/span>R men at Dot recognised a\u00a0hit, and hustled their new squeaky clean artist \u2013 the conservative caucasian Pat Boone into a\u00a0studio to lay down a\u00a0version. Pat himself wanted to alter the lyrics to \u200b\u201c<\/span>Isn\u2019t That a\u00a0Shame\u201d, but his producers dissuaded him. They cut Boone\u2019s version of \u200b\u2018<\/span>Ain\u2019t That A\u00a0Shame\u2019, \u200b\u201c<\/span>hood\u201d lingo and all, and released it in literally the same month as the Fats Domino original. Boone\u2019s insipid version, that is almost entirely forgotten today, shot to #1<\/span> on the American Billboard charts. Fats himself \u2013 the songwriter the originator, the man behind the version that would stand the test of time \u2013 well, he could only reach #10<\/span>. The slop\u00a0won.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tco-london.transforms.svdcdn.com\/production\/tco\/images\/top-of-the-pops-top-of-the-pops-vol-18-uk-vinyl-lp-album-record-shm745-630473.webp?w=1024&q=75&fm=webp&fit=min&dm=1790368288&s=2790e39098fa4a90635226bf66c07ee2\")
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