From: "Kurt Torster" <ktorster@myway.com>

>You hit it square on the head for me. The singing is AWFUL. I like the 
>music (and I must admit I do hold a small place in my heart for 80s hair 
>metal), the singing ruins it
>for me entirely.

And yet the singing is almost entirely why they're funny.  It's camp and 
silly.  Quentin Crisp in a lycra jumpsuit.  Freddie Mercury channelling the 
howling soul of Demis Roussos.  It's just daft.  Its annoyingness is its 
charm.  You're not meant to put them alongside Jet, rub your chin and assess 
their nostalgic musical merit.  You're supposed to hear "I believe in a 
thing called love..." on the radio, and involuntarily adopt a falsetto and 
shriek "...justlistentotherhythmofmyheart".

Did people listen to the Muppet songs and object to them because they didn't 
like Kermit's voice?  Think of the Darkness as more like the Muppets than 
the Doors.  They have musical merit, but that's a happy coincidence, rather 
than the point of their being.

I've no idea how big Tigertailz were in countries outside the UK (let's face 
it, they were almost unheard of in their home towns, let alone anywhere 
else), but the Darkness remind me of a self-aware Tigertailz.  They look 
stupid, they sound stupid, but they're a bit of a laugh.  They're not trying 
to be anything more, either.  That'll come later, I suppose, once the joke's 
worn off.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone to change their minds on this.  Perhaps 
I'm just trying to help some other people understand why the Darkness are 
enjoyed by so many at the moment.  It's only my take on it, really.  I just 
find it a little ironic that, in a thread entitled "Americans Just Don't Get 
It..." people are saying that they don't like the Darkness because Hawkins's 
voice is annoying.  You might as well say you don't like them because of the 
colour of their jumpsuits.

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