Genre Decision

Before I started in depth research into the covers of music magazines, I felt it best to gain a rough idea of the branch of music I'd like to create my magazine in, as I think the techniques and paradigms magazines use to appeal to their readers vary greatly for each genre of music.
I've recognised that the dominant hegemony of music magazines is that of the rock genre, which I think follows a shift in the music industry, in Britain especially, as it becomes more edgy and open to accepting more variations, or it could just be "the" music of the decade. But with artists coming from everywhere now (like MySpace a la Lily Allen) and not having to be signed to a record label for success, there seems to be even more of a need for music magazines that feature new acts that music junkies feel the need to know about to feed their "individual" music tastes. However, music and print being institutions, they are there to control and regulate individuality, so is the new spangled individuality actually that unique? I don't believe it is and this is why I feel it isn't necessary to make a magazine that fits in with the recent movement.
I looked into making a magazine of a genre not so currently popularised, but after the browsing of various magazine stores, I decided I didn't have enough knowledge of one specific genre to make a magazine out of it. After Mr Furness' advice to follow my own music taste, which doesn't consist of any major favourites, I made a list to see what if what I liked could fit into any area. After making a long list with the help of my playlist, I decided that it was most closely suited to mainstream, and although it could be argued that rock is now Britain's mainstream music, I mean real mainstream - pop mainstream.
I then decided to look for inspiration I could use from real magazines. I searched for a list of top pop music magazines on Google, and found a useful list on About.com. It featured Q, Clash, Rolling Stone and Billboard. Yet I was left in dismay that even these, considered closest to pop, were still heavily influenced by the rock culture as I could instantly tell from the connotations I could draw off the front covers. I couldn't believe that in a society where pop reality shows like the X Factor rule Saturday nights for a lot of people, where squeaky clean Disney stars are becoming more infectious by the minute and where pop acts like Girls Aloud, Leona Lewis and Madonna are still going strong, that there wasn't a magazine deciated to this massive music genre (except from Top of the Pops). On further investigation, I've discovered that features on these kind of artists are reserved for general teen magazines like Bliss and Sugar. So I concluded that pop must no longer be for the older teens and we are all expected to be hardcore ravers or headbanging moshers, and that people interested in pop over the age of 12 just don't want a magazine about it, as the flop lauch of the Popworld magazine (which was axed after 1 week) proves. However, when collecting magazine covers of the 4 magazines I'd decided were closest to what I want to do, I noticed the American magazine Billboard was featuring pop acts like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus on their covers, yet still doing it in a fairly sophisticated way, as was suggested to me by the signifiers of an elegant staircase and music equipment. Not only were they featuring fresh faced stars like this, but there were also covers with Missy Elliot on and Alicia Keys, from a slightly different, yet still very mainstream genre. I couldn't compare this to a UK equivalent, but I think that as a lot of the UK public have similar music taste to those in the USA, I thought it would fit in well. Unfortunately Borders didn't stock the USA import of Billboard, and although I've read that it's more aimed at music industry officials, it's graphics, language, codes and general style of the cover really suggests to me that it can be read by any member of the general public.
So after a massive contemplation of what genre of music to do, I conclude that I shall try and stick to mainstream pop without veering too greatly into rock territory (although I'd like to represent a couple of different groups of society on my front cover), however at the moment I have a problem with the word "pop". It connotes a strong vibe of cheese to me... :p

So can pop be sophisticated? Yess!