A. G. COOK, the visionary behind PC Music, has already redefined pop with his audacious and inventive approach. His latest project, ‘Britpop’, blurs genre boundaries, exploring the essence and future of pop through a blend of nostalgia, innovation, and a deep dive into British cultural identity.

Words: Martyn Young.
Photos: Sinna Nasseri.

A. G. Cook is one of few artists in the 21st century who can truly say they have shaped the future of pop. Daring, exuberant and subversive, PC Music, the pioneering record label and collective he founded back in 2013, has been a constant shining beacon of questing experimentalism and pop brilliance that has defined an era, traversing through all manner of genres and wild ambition. It’s been a journey that has taken in triumph and tragedy and has seen the producer forge powerful and inspiring creative collaborations and reach the exalted heights of working with Beyoncé on ‘Renaissance’. Does the unassuming, softly-spoken, long-haired producer consider himself a star as he prepares to release his third solo album? “I don’t see myself as a pop star, but for the last decade or so, I’ve really enjoyed playing with ambiguity,” he smiles from a sun-drenched room in his home in Los Angeles.

Ambiguity has always been central to the PC Music story and A. G. Cook’s vision for what music can be. ‘Britpop’ is perhaps the ultimate realisation of all that ambiguity, creative expression, and sheer bonkers escapism, but is it pop music? Does it matter? Like most things for A. G. Cook, the answer is it’s anything you want it to be. “People can’t even decide what pop is,” he says animatedly. “Every year, it gets less and less clear with the different levels of what’s considered mainstream now. The whole argument about is pop popular or is it like classic pop, what does that mean? Is it a genre? Specifically, I feel like a lot of the music that I’ve worked on with different collaborators hasn’t been shying away from that conversation at all levels.”

He cites 2016 song ‘Superstar’, the first to feature his own vocals and his first solo single, which would go on to be incredibly instructive in the journey of A. G. Cook, the artist. “That song, in the way I recorded myself and the way the lyrics are, and the whole tension of it, is very much a music producer taking centre stage and the awkwardness of that. It plays into a bit of a Napoleon Dynamite quality,” he laughs.

The awkwardness is the charm, though, and that’s what makes it brilliant. The producer began to sprinkle his DJ sets with flashes of performance as he cultivated the vision of his own artistic career and how he might work within a pop space. “The idea is that we’re all documenting ourselves like pop stars in a way because of how socials encourage it,” he says. “I have a self-awareness of the theatre of pop, and that’s the only thing really left in pop, more than the music itself, in a way.”

Perhaps the strongest artistic and creative partnership A. G. Cook has developed over the years, certainly since he first started making music with fellow producer genius Danny L Harle in the proto PC Music duo Dux Content in the early 2010s, has been his visionary work with Charli XCX. Charli is a musical force of nature, and her boundless personality and genius with a hook has provided rocket fuel for all of Cook’s musical endeavours. Working closely with Charli, you can’t help but feel energised. “A lot of the Charli tracks we’ve done together have these outrageous outros where it’s almost like a kind of, victory lap is not the right word, but in my head, I’m like she’s nailed the hook, and it’s so catchy we can go anywhere from here, and anything can happen.”

Anything can happen: three words that perhaps encompass the entire A. G. Cook story and the philosophy that guides everything he does.

“The way that someone like Charli does it is genuinely inspiring because of how much of the writing she can make work as well as her being someone who’s slightly more known in the mainstream and has this amazing stage energy. It’s really the hooks. We could be doing something really casual, and suddenly, she can give it the DNA of a big radio song, and then it can go back to something more lo-fi. She has the willingness to jump between those things.”