3: Manufactured pop music (with the exception of Girls Aloud)

Music is mankind's greatest artistic achievement. I may love comedy, graffiti, video games, films and brightly coloured trainers but nothing affects my mood more than music. In my 30 years on the planet music has evolved tremendously - even more so if you look back earlier.

Composers would sit in isolation for months, even years, to bring their ideas to reality. Musical visionaries in the twentieth century were brave enough to try new things, to push boundaries: Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, James Brown, The Clash, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, The Beastie Boys, Boards of Canada, Radiohead, Burial - you could probably look through your iTunes and pull out another dozen names of geniuses to add to my ramshackle little list.

I'm fairly sure that you would not include Five, A1, 911, S-Club 7, S-Club Juniors, Gareth Gates, in fact any of the X-Factor / Pop Idol / Fame Academy solo winners or the godforsaken Spice Girls in your list. Unless someone had taken your brain in the night and replaced it with a chewed tennis ball and some mandarin jelly.

The Monkees started the manufactured pop music phenomenon, but they were still half decent. They had a funny TV programme, they had remotely catchy pop tunes - and in the 1960's, that's all you had to do. I used to write a column for an American website about music and I once described The Beatles as the most overrated band in the history of the universe - maybe a little harsh, but their early output was no more cerebral than the Monkees. Just because you have guitars and such it doesn't mean you're not a boy band.

COUGH Busted COUGH McFly COUGH.

I could accept it if our chart music output these days was Monkee-esque. But it isn't. It's an obvious point to make that our charts are ruled by whoever wins the latest reality show - but that's not what is to blame for the homogenisation of the greatest of all the art forms. I'll tell you what is.

We've got no imagination.

If you turned up at a record label now and had somehow recorded the British equivalent of Captain Beefheart in a dilapidated shack in Wales, the record label may be interested in your potential. But they'd take you to Top Man and buy you a pair of skinny jeans first, then some pointy shoes and a trenchcoat. Then they'd overproduce and water your music down until somehow your hours of genius sounded like the fucking Kooks. Again, this isn't the fault of the record labels - it's all down to us. And I'm just as bad as everyone else.

When I was a student I would spend all of my time and money on two things: Video games and music. The video games I would buy would be Japanese imports, and I would spend hours researching them and seeking them out. Music was a similar thing: I would read magazines, books, websites - all in a quest to discover something new, something exciting. Just as I no longer buy my games from the Far East, I no longer put my effort into looking for music. Because I'm lazy. I can put MTV2 on and sometimes find something I like, or I can click through iTunes and find something vaguely interesting and download it. But I don't put the effort in anymore. And no-one does. X-Factor winners dominate the chart because we let them and we're too lazy to stage a revolution. I'd love to say that we're about to have another 1976 style musical overhaul but we're not.

In the same way that it's easy to buy fast food, it's easy for teenagers to buy manufactured music. Some of it is tolerable - you'll note from my disclaimer for this little rant that Girls Aloud are excluded. This is not because I'm an FHM reader who values them merely on how they look. I mean, they're pleasant enough - if a little too WAG-esque. I can't really tell them apart, if I'm honest. My personal favourite is Nicola, and the howls of derision that this brings when I tell people so merely underlines my point about us being an unimaginitive society. She IS the prettiest, with porcelain skin and the most striking looks - but it's the easy and simple thing to do to fancy one of the blonde ones and be done with it. Or that racist one.

My positive attitude towards Girls Aloud comes because their music isn't bad. It's pop, yes - but inoffensive and almost subversive because it's actually remotely interesting. Despite the fact that "Sounds of the Underground" made my ex-wife sick when she was pregnant with our daughter (what can I say, little Amelia has good taste - her favourite songs are by MIA, Kings of Leon and Animal Collective), songs like "Love Machine" and "Biology" actually crackle with personality.

No, I'm not going insane.

They can even get away with lyrics like "I don't speak French / So I let the funky music do the talking". Because they're cheeky, the musical equvalent of a saucy 1920's postcard. The Saturdays can try and take their mantle but, cute short-haired singer aside, they have nothing visually to offer and certainly nothing at all musically. They're merely the Mr Pibb to the Girls Aloud's Dr Pepper. I would rather that Girls Aloud have continued success rather than any of the identikit Indie band out there with their lookalike £75 Toni and Guy haircuts.

I'd love to offer a solution for this problem with our music industry. But I can't. I am merely one man, and a slightly tired one at that. For all my pontificating I'm not going to make you change your music taste. And I would rather people liked SOME type of music than nothing at all. But just consider it next time you buy a CD or a download. Are you promoting the rise of a generic, own-brand music industry? Or did you purchase something interesting, vibrant, different, creative?

And if you think you're helping by buying Duffy records, you're not. She sings like a fucking mallard.