4Music/TMF Liveblog – LIVE!!!

November 27, 2008

So I’ve accepted we’re changing channels a lot this afternoon, so let’s keep it all in the same post.

KATY PERRY – Hot & Cold

It’s the 4Music Top 10, incidentally, and this is number 9. Going searching for the Lillix embed meant I missed Leona doing her Sultry Brown Cow Eyes on some ballad thing, so I win. I think this may be some kind of mega-bosh remix thing cos it’s now got the chorus stuck at the front. It’s all very 1991. And, y’know, better than her other one.

GIRLS ALOUD – The Promise

HOW CAN YOU SAY THEY’RE IN A RUT? If they were in a rut, then you know that bit where Tweedy goes “Oh baby, right… here“? She would be winking, wouldn’t she? BUT SHE’S NOT! She doesn’t even point downstairs suggestively! They movin’ on! Yeeeh! I really love the undulations in the chorus, too, like every syllable pings a different note on the xylophone.

Ad break. Four Christmases – people be falling over. A lot. Please let me never see this film.

Tumf ahoy!

KINGS OF LEON – Use Somebody

Given how big they are in the US, I guess it’s not inconceivable this song’s chorus bit was specifically designed to be featured on the soundtrack of Friday Night Lights. Sunset over Dillon, Lyla looking slightly regretful, Street smashes some form of kitchenware while screaming and then starts crying, that kind of thing. Guitars go racing away into the sunset and so forth.

I mean, it really is a very spookily perfect fit. You couldn’t make it up.

OMG!!!

SHERYL CROW – All I Wanna Do

I FUCKING LOVE THIS SONG! No, really! Her best record by a mile! That slide guitar! THAT FUCKING SLIDE GUITAR!

(I have literally no idea why TMF are playing this, but I sort of don’t really care)

God, this is remarkably tricky to find on Youtube. But here it is. Resplendent with SLIDEGUITARSLIDEGUITARSLIDEGUITAR! YESYESYESYES!

Now they’re playing The Kooks. Don’t bring me down.

Back To 4Music…

BRITNEY SPEARS – Womanizer

Jesus, it would appear I am a massive sucker for these relentless chorus things, wouldn’t it? Still, later this afternoon I’ll listen to Blackout for the first time and then I’ll be as disappointed in this as the rest of the internet. I would do it now, but I’ve missed this package once already and that is not going to happen again. Dammit.

RIHANNA ft. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE – Rehab

How do you miss the “-st” off “best”? She manages it, somehow. The drum beat here is ever-so-slightly-standard Mr & Mrs Timberlake stuff. Y’know, “Cry Me A River That… Goes Around”, that kinda thing. Rihanna is doing the “you are a drug metaphor” thing over said beat, but she’s doing it pretty well. Nice faint guitar whispers, too. All very… actually, I’m not sure what the word is. Not quite wistful, certainly, and hardly ethereal or owt either. Justin’s contribution to this is muttering two, perhaps three words, and standing around in the video looking all moody and stubbly.

LADY GA-GA ft. COLBY O’DONIS – Just Dance

Oh look, Akon’s in this video! “Wish I could shut my Playboy mouth!” she quoth, and then suggestively licks her finger. Lots of people are all debauched and such in a living room somewhere. Lots of sunglasses. And hats. I am aware that if I were in this party I would be going around picking up the loose beer cans and cider bottles and throwing them away, muttering “for fuck’s sakes” very quietly. Oh look, she’s playing a synth. And riding an inflatable killer whale in a paddling pool. Oh yes, and there’s a record. It sounds like Katy Perry sleepwalking.

Maer ads, back to Tumf.

McFLY – Do Ya

In song terms, it’s one of theirs that sounds a bit like “She Loves You”. It throws in a key change very early. It doesn’t appear to have any verses, unless you count the bits where Tom sings in falsetto.

The video, though. McFly are YOUR christmas presents, and now they are playing a Christmas party! And everyone is having a good time! Here’s that chorus again!

And now there’s some zombies turning up and eating everyone. This, of course, is the signal for the slow handclap bit!

It is taking McFly a remarkably long time to notice that these are zombies.

Oh, but now they have, and they escape. In the process, Harry’s trousers have fallen down. How unfortunate. But yes, they get in their van and escape. Because their van can fly.

Merry Christmas, McFly!

And back to 4Music…

Ah baws, it’s T.I. again. Let’s leave this for a bit, then.


TMF Liveblog – LIVE!!!

November 27, 2008

LEMAR – If She Knew

We join in progress, a dress has just caught fire, Lemar is in a lift, Lemar is standing with his feet apparently welded to the floor and it’s making him look very short, or possibly that’s cos this telly is widescreen and TMF isn’t available in 16:9 so he’s looking a bit squidged generally. Anyway, I still have a fairly sizeable soft spot for yer man Obika. He’s rocking that 80s synth noise like e’er one else nowadays, he’s yearning for his girl like e’er one else nowadays, he’s just a bit more likeable than e’er one else nowadays so I’m with him.

THE KILLERS – Human

And what else did we have in the 80s? Shitty poetry, of course! This is a live version (well, Flowers is singing live, anyhow) from some MTV award ceremony, and the staging is admittedly quite impressive – the band are stood in a wall of cubes, in a formation like the five face on a standard board-game die, and there’s various projections of stuff being made to look like they’re pulsing and rotating and so forth. The Killers’ new album is entitled Day & Age, and “Human” certainly matches that level of pretention nicely. Remember that X-Press 2 and David Byrne song from a few years ago? It was better than this.

Ad break – BRAND POWER!

And that brings up our first individual fruit pie of the day. Back to 4Music, methinks.

Or not, cos they’re playing Jon Bon Jovi’s “Please Come Home For Christmas”.

T.I. ft RIHANNA – Live Your Life

In common with most American music videos at the moment, it’s got an overlong outro and intro bit. Why they all wanna be in perfume commercials?

I still can’t get my head around how T.I.’s voice sounds on this record. It’s so… scrubbed-up, sanitised, like they’ve run it through a mess of filters. Thinking on it more, it’s like how FM radio used to sound – sort of strained, bodyless. Really weirdly neutral. Rihanna is easily the best thing about this.

THE SCRIPT – Breakeven

NO FAKE NEWS HERE. They’re in a bar, rockin’. They’re in a car, they’re at the coast, the focus is soft, and oh begorrah are they ever Irish. Look, a causeway! “Prayin’ to a God that I don’t believe in” – REAL! This is by some distance their least offensive single so far. All reasonable chorus and “melodic” and such. I have no desire to ever see or hear it again.

DUFFY – Rain On Your Parade

The big thing this Christmas is deluxe reissues of albums. Leona Lewis, Rihanna, Adele and, of course, Duffeh. They’re the same as the standard editions but with three more tracks and some bonus DVD gobshitery (how did they get the people in the “Chasing Pavements” video to do that thing where they dance while lying on their sides? With the deluxe edition of 19, you can finally find out!)

And they’ve all got accompanying singles, and this is Duffy’s… and you know what, I rather like it. It’s basically a chorus about how she will not take Unspecified Nonsense from Unspecified Man and so now she is going to make Unspecified Man pay in Unspecified Manner, but it’s got some right good violins going STAB STAB STAB STAB! STAB STAB STAB STAB! in the manner of some other single that I can’t remember. Possibly Najoua Belyzel? I know her singles don’t generally have violins… actually it just might be “Sweet Temptation” by Lillix, which is good, cos there’s never a bad time to embed that:

But yeah, good Duffy single, not obviously ripping off 60s anymore, actually trying to, y’know, do something… I approve. Though the video is under the impression the song has some kind of ‘big drums’ thing going on. Which it doesn’t.

After that we had Akon again, and now it’s the adverts. Let’s see what’s on 4Music, cos this ad has Scott Mills’ voice and he’s just said “Crimbo”…


4Music Liveblog – LIVE!!!

November 27, 2008

Day off work today, waiting in for a package, so let’s kill some time, eh?

4Music is the channel that’s replaced The Hits on Freeview. There’s not a raft of difference, except for the fact that videos at night are replaced by The Friday Night Project and it’s just generally worse. Still – videos in the daytime, eh? Meggeh.

We begin:

SUGABABES – No Can Do

Oh boy. So, the road ‘Girls’ started them down is being followed even further as they get rid of those troublesome reggae influences and go for a straight rip of ‘ABC’. It is very, very tepid. The video itself sees them using men as furniture or other inanimate objects and is a moderately interesting concept, but the song is so, so limp in concept and execution that it really doesn’t matter.

THE SCRIPT – The Man Who Can’t Be Moved

“BREAKING NEWS: MAN WAITING FOR GIRL WILL NOT MOVE”. Fictional news station graphics are one of those things about life that are so moderately rubbish that their very existence makes me feel slightly better about things, like individual fruit pies, Pascal Chimbonda, Steve Punt… that kind of thing. This song is still utter balls, incidentally.

AKON – Right Now (Na Na Na)

“Cos you were my homey, lover and friend” – of all the Omarion lyrics to nick, why this one? Also – “I miss you much”. Yep, the future of pop is shout-outs to “Big, Big World”. How many years ago was that, anyhow? Akon wishes you could dine with him. He demonstrates how he mimed the trumpet in the video for “The Sweet Escape”. He pushes the chorus to the edge of destruction, as is his wont. Still, that mid-80s, KURT RUSSELL DOES NOT PLAY BY THE RULES synth sound is easily the best bit about this whole run thus far, so, relatively speaking, well done.

SAM SPARRO – Black & Gold

So what’s on TMF then?


Birthday

November 17, 2008

This blog turned one year old yesterday. And I’ve still not finished 25YoS.


Do-do doom doom. Do-do doom doom.

November 7, 2008

Let’s scribble things.

“Love Lockdown”. Gosh. I’ve been being a bit vague about trying to review a whole US Top 50 again, like I did… almost a year ago now, wasn’t it? Cripes. Well, last night I started watching videos for things in the US chart, got through about the top 20 or so. “Love Lockdown” feels like it seriously dwarfs things.

I am reminded that one of the major reasons I’ve not done chart things in whenever is Leona Lewis, who manages to be at 15 and 45 in the US with “Better In Time” and “Bleeding Love” respectively, and for whom I feel nothing. Not a single thing. Is her voice good? I can’t tell. Not a clue. She’s a balance sheet, an airport lobby, a new Hyundai, the Rugby Union World Cup; she’s there, there, all the time she’s there without ever actually being there at all. She’s not a bad thing, she’s not a good thing; she’s not anything. To me.

Am I trying hard enough?

Let’s talk “If I Were A Boy”. It’s very good. It’s Beyonce doing a country record. It could possibly do without her suddenly frilling out in the verses. You could imagine a lot of other people covering it, but that’s not to diminish her performance at all – a softer touch than usual, a kind of sensitivity I’d never really imagined she had. I am intrigued for this album. I suspect I may be left cold by it. But a thousand, hundred thousand Leonas.

The comparison with Ciara’s “Like A Boy”… not sure how useful. Two very different records, two very different approaches – Ciara’s nowt to compare to “But you’re just a boy…”, but Beyonce’s nowt to compare to “C! I! A! R A!” either. It’s not the same thing at all and shouldn’t be treated as such.

I am now imagining Leona covering The Verve’s “History”. I’m not sure how good it’d be – feels like she’d lunge in on it too much, try to really over-work the chorus. Beyonce may do a better job.

We can all agree that David Archuleta’s version of it would be terrible. David Archuleta’s voice now and his voice when he is 45 will be the same. I’m saying he sounds like a continuity announcer on CNN, that’s basically what I’m saying.

Songs I didn’t entirely pay attention to here: Nickelback, “Mrs Officer”. The latter because I was asleep or perilously close and playing World Of Goo; the former because I heard the noises and started being a bit worried about how the guitar bands that are big are dealing with their place in history. “Gotta Be Somebody” > the slight amount of toothache I’m currently experiencing >>>>> “Photograph”. What’s got two thumbs and hella perspective? THIS GUY.

I literally can’t remember anything about “Mrs Officer” aside from the line “I got pulled over by a lady cop”, cos it’s delivered in that voice Lil Wayne has where it sounds like a thousand things are happening all at once. Truly, no-one out there is currently servicing the letter L like Wayne does. So yes, one line that may or may not actually be part of the song, and an unreasonable amount of shots of shiny cars.

Someone really ought to cover “History”, though, but it shouldn’t be anyone that sounds like The Verve. The trouble with someone like, I dunno, Snow Patrol doing it would be that they’d over-invest in it without necessarily connecting. They’d make too much of a show of caring, try and push too much sincerity in there. Not that a cover should be approached without sincerity, but rather that it requires the correct amount: there should be some kind of essential connection, not some Live Lounge cobblers where it’s covering for the sake of it. There’s someone out there that “History” will click with and they’ll cover it and it’ll take yr fucking breath away, so it will. Not The Verve, though, or Snow Patrol or Leona – it needs a more relaxed, serenely focused approach to the thing.

Which leads us to “Viva La Vida”, which is currently at 19 in the US. The British guitar bands are looking to their legacies and it’s weird. They have realised that they’ve been around for a while, and reached a certain level of success that guarantees them some form of consideration when the people who write books get to writing books about the music of our time. They know that, should they need to do a reunion tour at some point, they will be able to fill bigger venues than the Birmingham Academy. They may well not need to play Birmingham at all, in fact. And now they’re thinking what to do next.

Their replies are various, yes various, I said various. Keane have taken their installation as part of pop’s furniture as an excuse to try and throw on airs of imperiousness, by pulling further into the synth sounds of the 80s and carving themselves out a niche as senior executive figures of the pop machine – which is fair enough, cos “The Lovers Are Losing” is belting. Snow Patrol have “Take Back The City”, which sounds like “The Politics of Dancing”, “The Quiet Life” and all your other favourite slightly-paranoid staples of discount 80s compilations… and is pretty OK, even if it sounds like an oh-so-craven plea for America to buy their records. Razorlight, as is their wont, have ploughed further down the “I write the songs” route, and have become Older Men talking to Young Girls about how hey, the world is a cold dark place etc. Their songs now feature lots of words, none of which are really worth noting.

It’s not accidental that Observer Music Monthly lumped their albums together – less still that they all got four stars.

And somehow, all still in thrall to Coldplay. “Viva La Vida” – the problem I have is that it’s a Guillemots record. One could answer by saying “Ah, but Guillemots didn’t make it and Coldplay did, so ahhh”, but that feels invalid – Guillemots have made this record. Lots of times they have made it. The difference is that Coldplay’s elevated place in pop means they no longer have to scrabble about with the other bands that sound like them. They’ve had hits in America. People buy their albums. They are above, and so Chris Martin is now free to go in the directions he pleases, and can get to the top of the UK chart with a song that sounds like it could have been written for a seven-year-old (note: for, not by). Coldplay can get abstract on this ish, sing of the swords and shields, albeit that the central metaphor is quite probably about how capricious fame is. Martin is free to work in a sphere where the main pressures come from himself, from who he wants to be and where he wants to go. I started off apathetic to it, but have warmed considerably. There’s something huggable about it, warm and human and vulnerable even if the central metaphor is quite probably about how capricious fame is. It’s a record that can get above the petty petty of The Music Industry and think big, float about. It’s just that now we know exactly what kind of records Chris Martin wants to make, it seems a bit of a pity that Guillemots were already making them.

Oh gosh. That was long. What else? Kevin Rudolf! There’s a new name, don’t recognise him, and that’s because… he’s some wally that makes music that sounds like American mobile phone adverts. Y’ever watch Yahoo! Music? Y’know those adverts that pop up in between Fray videos (it’s been a while since I’ve used it), the ones for insurance comparison sites and completely identical-looking sportscars? “Let It Rock” sounds EXACTLY like them. What is Lil Wayne doing here? He’s stumbling about with a guitar and looking stoned off his face. Under the circumstances, it’s for the best.

Jason Mraz is what British mobile phone adverts sound like – all strummy and semi-matey and with a load of pricks in hats skateboarding. It’s better than Jack Johnson, let’s give it that.

Taylor Swift has two (TWO) songs in the US Top 20, and is probably the reason why Marit Larsen won’t be bothering America anytime soon. In these times of economic uncertainty, importing trilling girls from Norway when there’s more than enough homegrown ones to go around won’t go down well. Even if the Norwegian girl’s better. Still, Taylor’s had some blinding songs before – all three big hits off her first album are essentially golden – so it’s not a huge problem. “Love Story”’s narrative kind of plods a bit, though. The man in the video appears to have been plucked from the cast of Westworld. All through it, I was thinking “Yes, but… ‘I’ve Heard Your Love Songs’, dude. Seriously.” That’s my problem, but there’s a certain smell of ruts here. I didn’t really hear enough of “You’re Not Sorry” to retain owt of my opinion on it.

This leaves two bits of lower top 20. One is “Disturbia”, which, y’know. Blugh. I wish I had useful things to say beyond that, but, well, no. It’s Rihanna doing several things she’s done before to increasingly diminishing returns. It’s weird how sometimes she shows flashes of incredible charisma, but the rest of the time… this. It’s not that she’s disinterested or disconnected, but she’s just so very, very dull. The beat it’s built around is pretty good, to be fair, a nice bit of light zombie stomping, but after three or four goes I find it all too monolithic to deal with. It’s a bit of fluff, but it’s a very drudgy, dragging bit of fluff.

The other’s the T-Pain single, the video for which contains my favourite moment of last night’s session. T-Pain is telling the girl about the places he will take her. There will be a condo in Toronto. There will be a (something that doesn’t quite rhyme with Costa Rica) in Costa Rica. Best of all, though, there will be a mansion. Now, how many places are there that rhyme with ‘mansion’? Not too many, and certainly none that T-Pain would be wanting to take his lady to. How does T-Pain get round this? Why not watch and find out?(The song itself is kind of carried by the video, to be honest, but it’s all very light and agreeable).

What else, what else… It almost feels like Ne-Yo’s classiness can go without saying now, which is nice. The stutter of the synths after the chorus is my favourite bit of “Miss Independent” at the moment, even if it isn’t quite up there with “Closer”, which has really mushroomed in my estimations lately. Need to buy his album, which I somehow avoided doing the other week (in favour of Roots Manuva, for some reason).

I have heard “Womanizer” once, and am incapable of getting beyond the chorus’ similarity to the bit in Brass Eye where Austen Tasseltine stands in a playground pointing at children and shouting “Addict! Addict! You’re an addict! Addict!”

I am willing to believe there’s a decent song lurking somewhere within the hyper-compressed sheen of “So What”, but listening to the thing is just too damned migraine-inducing. I like glam. I like stomp. But this is just in the red all the effing time, and it makes me unwell, to say nothing of the continued trudge of Pink’s I R TEH DANGERZZZ pouting. “Hot & Cold” has a similar problem – Katy Perry’s a bit less posturing, but autotune really is not her voice’s friend. Both songs feel like the spreading of American culture via carpet-bombing. I suspect that might be more intentional on Perry’s part than Pink’s.

Anyhow, T.I. is King, actually properly this time. Having two of his singles swapping the top spot between them is kinda weird, particularly given “What You Know” came so painfully close to topping the chart a couple of years ago… and, well, neither of these are close to as good as it. “Whatever You Like” is something I will come to love one day – the chorus is far too charming for that not to happen – but “Live Your Life” feels a bit worrying. He actually doesn’t sound like himself on it – he’s tried to make himself presentable for people. Please note here that presentable is not the same as neat or tidy or handsome, cos he’s plenty capable of doing that, and there’s no question feller can rock a suit, but he sounds… generic, maybe? Rihanna’s on form for the chorus, but T.I.’s lack of personality is weird. These could be the songs that finally put him over the top globally, of course. I’m just wondering how much of him there is to put over.

And then there’s two: “Love Lockdown” and the new Akon single, “Right Now (Na Na Na)”. The latter is, in effect, a lesser Del Shannon or Chubby Checker single, founded entirely on the catchiness of the “right nah nah nah” chorus; however, Akon’s spotted Kanye’s move and now he’s slipstreamed, taking the spareness and isolation of “Love Lockdown”’s view of electro-pop and applying it to An Akon Single. Under the hood, it’s not really got very much – a Shannon or Checker or any chunky dude from the 50s with a spangly suit and some guys on the horns would’ve ripped into the hook, leaning and bellowing and sweating until they could be certain every single person in the venue was out of their seat, hollering and shrieking; Akon’s delivery, however, is basically the same as his delivery on 95% of things, lobbed up in that default chirp of his. He’s an excellent hook singer, but here he just sounds a bit knackered.

Which is kind of where I’m at, cos I’ve left the best song in the chart til last and I’m feeling too exhausted to give it full dues. “Love Lockdown” could walk into any chart of the last… however long now, and it’d still be a standout. It’s uniquely chilling, eerie, lost within modern culture and sound and production. The bit where he hollers “SYSTEM OVERLOAD”, and everything fuzzes up for a moment… I’m really not sure when the last time I’ve ever got that kind of feeling from a piece of music was. Closest I can get is the last bit of “Violet Hill”, when the mastering shifts completely and it’s like Chris Martin is right inside your ear, but that’s not really the same thing – it’s played with the sound in a similar manner, but the effect achieved can’t compare. This is a ghost wandering the halls of pop music, an actual lost soul in amongst all the bass boosters and 300 free texts. This is a song that sucks everything out of the room. It’s cold and lonely. It can’t see any future. It’s numb, and it’s realising that numbness is a very scary state to inhabit.

This is something else.


Consolevania is back.

October 17, 2008

Consolevania is back. It is in pretty excellent form at present. You should watch.


25 Years of Swygart – 2003 – Daniel Bedingfield, “Never Gonna Leave Your Side”

October 15, 2008

(actual video here)

2003 was a pretty big year for me, since it was the year I started properly caring about the charts again. Every weekend (near enough) from the middle of June I sat and listened to the top 40, then reviewed it for Stylus. I got to hear some marvellous songs, some of which I’ll talk about later. I got to hear some bloody horrible songs, which I’ll hopefully not have to ever talk about again. And somewhere in the middle, I got to hear an awful lot of stuff like this.

Even if Daniel Bedingfield were to have another ten or twenty number one hits (which he probably won’t), this one would still be The Other One. Partly it’s because “Gotta Get Thru This” and “If You’re Not The One” are so toweringly, compellingly odd – the sound of a man who doesn’t know the rules, but he has heard of them, and so finds himself navigating his own peculiar path through the creation of classic pop. Hence the garage-not-garage of GGTT, a track propelled by what sounds like DB’s human beatboxing, delivered almost entirely in either falsetto or a slightly slowed-down version of Scooter’s chipmunk-effect voice thing; and the harrowing emotional inarticulacy of IYNTO, a track whose stabs at convention are ruined at every turn by the narrator’s inner fucked-up-ness, his pleas to stay in her arms married with his dreams of building his home with her. The moment when he sounds most at peace is when he sings “I hope I love you all my life”, which sounds nice enough, until you think: what about her? Bedingfield becomes some kind of sympathetically lost monster, a very confused human being indeed, albeit that seemingly he doesn’t quite realise it. He doesn’t know love, but he’s heard of it…

Those were his first two number ones, though. “Never Gonna Leave Your Side” is his third, and (probably) last. It managed one whole week at the top, in between the lengthier and somewhat more noteworthy reigns of “Crazy In Love” and “Breathe”. It also managed to be the lowest-selling number one of the year, and I’m fairly sure that, for a while, it was also the lowest-selling number one ever (so far as I know, that record is currently held by Ja Rule’s “Wonderful”, but I’d have to check it and I’m not sure how).

The first minute of the song is basically a solid run of crap similes. He feels like a song without the words, etc. His girl has left him. His girls have a habit of doing this. However, he also has his habit of doing this:

I’m never gonna leave your side
I’m never gonna leave your side again
Still holding on girl
I won’t let you go
Cos when I’m lying in your arms
I know I’m home

We’re into retread territory, except now things are getting increasingly passive-aggressive and slightly worrying. The ambiguity and insecurity of IYNTO gets lost in an arrangement that seems hell-bent on recalling “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” at any available opportunity. There is a big build up towards the end which is basically Dan’l singing “I know I’m home, I know I’m home, I KNOW I’M HOME” at increasing volume, just so we’re absolutely sure that he’s completely right – the volume, the straightforwardness seems to be used as a kind of airbursh to make the listener forget that actually, no, it’s her that’s left him. NGLYS (he doesn’t tend to go in for short song titles) thus becomes a cousin of The Script’s “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”, songs whose textures are designed to lull the listener into thinking that actually no, there’s nothing even vaguely creepy going on here; narrators feigning a sympathetic nature by not bothering to consider the feelings of the other party.

I didn’t want this to happen, that I’d end up not liking it – NGLYS is always seen as the runt of Dan’s litter, if, indeed, it’s seen at all. Bedingfield was a great pop star, a scattergun creative powerhouse, alternately introverted and extroverted but always with a slightly worrying awkwardness. This awkwardness, oddly, was a big part of his appeal: he was unique, unpredictable, and made sure the listener was never entirely clear where they stood with him. Unfortunately, NGLYS really is as forgettable as its reputation suggests, as he slips over the line into everyday thrusting balladry that could have been by any number of people, were it not for his distinctively cracked, vulnerable falsetto.

Let’s not remember him as disappointing, though. Let’s remember him like this:

There. All better again!

If I were American, this would have been:

Beyonce, “Crazy In Love” – dammit Daniel. Five years on, I still can’t bring myself to actually like this. It’s the memories of what it was, really: how steamrolling the adulation was; how sickeningly deferent to this not-that-interesting woman the UK media were; how, well, oppressive it all bloody felt. Something within me still hates something about this record. I’ve liked some of her stuff since. And, y’know, when this comes on the telly or radio or what have you, I’ll not be inclined to turn it off. There’s lots of things about it that are quite good. But at the heart of it, there’s something cold, something that I find unpleasant – I can’t find a heart here. Or it can’t find my heart. Something’s wrong, and I think it involves hearts in some fashion.

But to claim that NGLYS is better than it? I’m not a fucking idiot, jeez.

American Me: 13
Actual Me: 6

Other notable UK number ones of this year:

There were a few, yeah.

But most of all, the song that topped my first ever proper end-year singles list.

Yuh doggone right.

Five entries left!


Tindersticks, “Can We Start Again?”

October 11, 2008

Not really sure what to say here. Another song from the past comes and makes brrrrap upon me for what feels like no reason. I’m kind of happy that it has, though. I vaguely remember having a two-track promo single by Tindersticks that I once let run on loop for an entire evening back when I was in Birmingham. Turned the heating up slightly too high, lay on my bed and just drifted off. I have absolutely no recollection of what either of those songs were; it might well be that this wasn’t even one of them. They used to play it on Xfm a bit, which I’d reckon is where I heard it most.

What’s it doing in my head today?


25 Years of Swygart – 2002 – Gareth Gates, “Anyone of Us (Stupid Mistake)”

October 10, 2008

The Man is refusing to ‘low us embed this one – the original video (filmed in Actual Venice!) can be found here.

Anyway – reality TV (insofaras I have any kind of working definition of that)! Gareth was the stammering Bradford teen who captured the nation’s hearts on the original series of Pop Idol by stammering, singing the hits of Westlife and generally having all the edge of an ounce of butter wrapped in Kleenex. Somehow, however, when it came down to the big final vote, the Great British Public preferred Will Young; not that that stopped Gareth. Not for a bit, anyway.

This was the second of his four number ones (the last two being duets with Will Young and The Kumars respectively), and the only one that wasn’t a cover. It is a tale of EL AMORA Y EL PASSIONNE: Gareth has been unfaithful to his love – in Actual Venice! What follows is an account of his FILTHY BETRAYAL:

She was sorta exciting
A little crazy – I should have known
She must have altered my senses
Cos I offered to walk her home

FIEND! VARLET! RAPSCALLION! SCURVY, SCURVY KNAVE!

It’s not working, is it? Sorry, but that’s about as racy as things get here – he offers to walk a girl home. Who is not his girlfriend. I am unsure if there’s an animated version of this story, but if so, I’d imagine ITV would air it just after Morning Worship.

Except, well, Gareth’s pleas to his girl seem a bit unconvincing, and worryingly vague. “The situation got out of hand/I hope you understand” – the way he delivers the latter line suggests that he expects she has already understood and he’ll be getting his sexing in due course. The waters are muddied still further by the chorus’ assertion that “It could happen to anyone of us, anyone you think of”. Gareth’s apology is therefore not exactly an apology after all – for all his anguished clenching in the video, what’s he’s really trying to say is that, actually, it’s just one of those things, innit? It happens. Gerrover it, luv!

The murkiness of the sentiment makes this one a peculiarly unfocused listen. Gareth’s performance is… well, I’m leaning towards “passive”, but it’s more all over the place, half-hushed whispers, half-vague anguish. One can easily imagine him being conducted via cue cards – “SAD! SOOTHING! UP! DOWN!” – or one of those mood indicator devices like that Frank Luntz feller uses. He sounds like he’s being led through the thing, and he’s following along blindly. And then there’s the chorus, which doesn’t sound like it actually involves him at all. Instead, it sounds like it’s being delivered by some kind of perfectly neutral multi-tracked generic noise – no accent, no inflection, no tone, just the sonic equivalent of grouting. It fills in the space and then comes out the other end.

Still, even though it sounds like there’s hardly anything of Gareth in this record at all, this is still slightly better than our last entrant by dint of shifting quite nicely into its key change. Given that we’ve suffered plenty of key changes in the duration of this exercise, it seems safe to say this is one of the better ones. Then again, as a signifier of just how far S. Cowell seemed determined to set pop music back, how bland and putrid he seemed set on making it, it’s also really quite depressing.

If I were American, this would have been:

Nelly, “Hot in Herre”: I can’t honestly say I’ve ever given a shit for this, but it has funk keyboards. This fact alone means it dumps greatly on Gareth And His Gates.

American Me: 12
Actual Me: 6

Other notable UK number ones of this year:

Freak Like Me” might just be the best number one of this decade, but it won’t embed. “Round Round”, though:

Also still holding up nicely:

And then, right at the end of a year which had seen no less than six number one singles spawned from Pop Idol, it was time for S. Fuller and S. Cowell and so forth to announce that they’d decided to turn the Christmas Number One into a no-horse race for the foreseeable future. Thing is, though, that the record that heralded that also heralded a shitload of other things, too:

And then 2003 came along. And 2003 was a very interesting year for pop music in many, many ways. Would that include the song that topped the chart on my birthday? Stay tuned to find out…


Drunk again

October 6, 2008

But maybe not drunk enough this time, I do not know. I ended that sentence with a full stop, for instance. No way does that bode well.

I also ain’t been dancing with no people who I felt the need to say “Hey, you know what it is? Peter Fox is what it is. Aw yeeeeeh!” I been to see Bob Log III on my own at a venue with an audience consisting mostly of people about 10-15 years older than myself who has maybe got subscriptions for Uncut and Word magazines. I drank two Kopparbergs whilst mad crazy overdressed for the temperature levels of the venue, hence drunk I is.

But, y’know, last drunken post I made got twice the hits of the last sober one, and far be it from me to be getting cynical about this sort of thing, but 50 hits in a day? This, for me, is kind of like not-quite-Christmas, so perhaps Hannukah or something, but it’s enough for me to go at this again.

FREDDIE MERCURY & MONTSERRAT CABALLE – Barcelona

I went home via one of the local burger shops despite knowing full well I had microwaveable lasagne in the freezer at home and given ten minutes I could have that in my tum, but no, some desire within me required burger and chips. And as I was in there, a young couple was trying to figure out what pizza to share, and they chose the “Barcelona”.

At that precise instant, the chorus of this RIPPED INTO MY BRAIN. And it’s been effing years since I heard this, had any cause to hear this, but there it was – “BAR-CE-LO NAAAAAAAH!!!”

“BAR-CE-LO NAAAAAAAH!!!”

This song is completely magic I had forgotten all about it but here I am in my bed at 1am on a Monday morning, and what is here with me?

“BAR-CE-LO NAAAAAAAH!!!”

THIS IS YOUR FUCKING DREAM POP! This is what inspires, this one word, bellowed by Freddie and Montserrat, paints a thousand colours in your mind all at once, a whole world unfurls beneath you, and at this precise moment in time it’s the most romantic piece of art I can think of.

I have never seen Barcelona. Things I know about it are roughly limited to their football team running things in the 90s, back before British teams over-ran Europe and year after year European coverage would be politely cajoling us into encouraging Rangers to try and overcome the might of AEK Athens, or watching Aston Villa go out in the third round of the UEFA Cup to Helsingborgs again – back when European football seemed exotic, these Continental superpowers in their titanic stadia, the elite units of the football world, the greatest players in the game summoned together to do battle and make Steve Bruce look like a wally – the names whispered in hushed tones by the kids at school who read World Soccer and who would cut you in half with their looks if you so much as mentioned Christian Vieri’s name – back when the best in football took place in far-off lands between stubble-chinned gods, and we were left with watching Ian Dowie and Darren Peacock jostling by the corner flag and we were happy with it

This became the anthem of the 1992 Olympic Games, because this song makes Barcelona sound like the most magical place on earth. This song – well, that one word, to be precise – elevates Barcelona beyond the modern city into that realm of the mystical Better Place – the Place For Us, the Time & Place For Us. Listening to this song, it is clear that in Barcelona, no-one will ever bitch about how the council has messed up the bin collection schedule again, or about how British Gas are a bunch of blooody rip-off merchants. Barcelona is magical. Barcelona is the promised land.

This is what makes my relationship to Queen so troubled – on the one hand, their songs do have this annoying knack of being wheeled out for any occasion at all, and it’s fucking annoying, because “We Are The Champions” JUST FUCK OFF GOD DAMMIT – but on the other, no-one does this anymore, do they? It’s why the people on Strictly Come Dancing treasure Bruce Forsyth so much, because they all know that none of them can do what he does. None of them can make occasion, can command the stage or the audience like he can. Queen, in a way, have emasculated an entire generation of rock bands; Freddie Mercury has done the same to a generation of rock singers. Because they cannot touch this, or at least they are not prepared to try.

Or the world is not prepared to let them.

When was the last time a British band could make anything sound so magical as “BAR-CE-LO NAAAAAAH!!!”? Who could be so unafraid as Freddie here, so enamoured with possibility, so in love with the world? Maybe people do it differently nowadays, I do not know. Maybe irony has shielded us, cushioned us, blinded us, distracted us… maybe we’re all idiots stuck chasing our childhoods, chasing simplicity… maybe it’s just me…

“Barcelona” makes me wanna be excited again, like how I used to be. Shit, that’s probably a terrible thing. This song needs a revival, though.

Oh dear, I fear I might be sober again.