El Generico etc.

Originally conceived as a post on this thread here, but then it got unwieldy.

I’ve kind of been juggling this about in my head, with a whole bundle of bloody thoughts, but I’ve not got them in any kind of shape or order or anything (plus am mindful of ruddy disaster that was me parking a several thousand word caravan in the middle of yr taxonomy of vacuous pop thread). For the moment, songs that come to mind:

This is my favourite single of the past 10 years. There’s not really any surprises. It’s a country song, to all intents and purposes, Edwards kind-of berating, kind-of envying the one who got the fame while she toiled – all well worn ground. And it’s my favourite single of the past 10 years. I’m not sure I care about the lyrics (well, apart from a reference to Marrrrrdy Muck Sorely, which I think I sort of adore cos there’s no fucking reason it should mean anything to me, other than I recognise his name from some ice hockey game on the Mega Drive I was bloody awful at, and I could go further about how happy that makes me but not the point). I love the playing. I mean, it hits spots. I feel as though I know just what it’s doing, and simultaneously that renders me almost utterly incapable of articulating the reasons I love it.

Jason DeRulo has had three straight top 3 singles in the UK this year. I know that one of the tropes on the Jukebox (and, I believe, elsewhere) is to bundle him, Jay Sean, Iyaz and I think someone else together as one person, but the thing is that DeRulo looks like he might actually have legs, and I cannot latch onto a single distinguishing feature about the man. Given his breakthrough hit had a much more identifiable gimmick than Jay Sean or Iyaz, in that it seemed to entirely owe its success to the Imogen Heap sample, the fact his two subsequent singles have actually topped its success (over here at least) seems weird cos they’re just… I simply don’t get the appeal. Despite his almost utter lack of a unique selling point. Jason DeRulo’s everywhere at the moment. Why?

This… I dunno, it’s not dissimilar to the Kathleen Edwards thing, a beat-hitting type wotsit, but the number one-ness of it. I dunno. Something, I feel, clicks between me and the Shapeshifters. It’s a record that wants to agree with me without knowing the first thing about me. Like (and this is gonna sound fucking trite) it is putting itself out there through the medium of familiarity and hoping – needing – to click with the listener as an end result. Isn’t it? “Lola’s Theme” succeeds because of familiarity, because you know where you are and you’ve been there before and you like going there, and so do the Shapeshifters. It’s a gamble. I feel like, to like it in the precise way I do, there needs to be something similar in the listener, they have to feel it in the way I do otherwise anything nice I have to say about it doesn’t work. Which isn’t a helpful way of handling things.

And I fucking hate “Free” by Ultra Nate. I am not sure how this fits in, but I had a sudden urge to yell it out because I hate the genre of songs which is all “You are free to do what you want to do AND NOW YOU ARE GOING TO DO THIS BECAUSE I FUCKING SAY SO”. Into this genre, I would plonk:

Now… this feels unhelpful. Really unhelpful, because I bloody hate “Don’t Stop Moving”, because I don’t believe in it. This doesn’t feel like it wants the connection, it feels like it takes it for granted. It feels like it was written by cynics. It doesn’t feel alive. And yet I’m part of the problem. “Don’t Stop Moving” makes me feel like an utter fool because I not only do not love it but actively hate it, to the point that I basically think it’s evil. I feel like I’m getting off the point, but this song is a vulnerable point for me and I ought to talk about it elsewhere, maybe.

This might work better. I heard it on the radio in the car on the way back from a wedding at the weekend, none of that matters. The thing is, I heard this song, and it felt like every time the word “love” leaves Michael Bolton’s mouth, you could replace it with, say, Kim Jong-Il. Calpol. It made pop feel like the love industry. It felt exploitative, like love rendered through this lens was absolutely nothing. It felt black and bleak, not intentionally, not by design, but because (I feel the need to clumsily haul this back near some kind of point) it made everything feel so completely, utterly pointless. That’s all there is. Love is zilch. Pop is zilch. You really shouldn’t have bothered.

(to be continued)

1. Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name (NEW ENTRY)

Should we point out that the decade’s first number one was this:

They cut out the “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” bit because people that don’t swear at kids are FUCKIN’ PUSSIES.

The oddest complaint about the song that was getting aired on the chart show is that you can’t sing along to it. But you can. That’s the entire point of it. That, and the pleasing chunkchunkchunkCHUNKCHUNKCHUNK noise the guitars make. I’m sure there’s a deeper thing going on here but my shoulders hurt. Poor Joe is going to be perma-tagged as the enemy of real music. Rage Against The Machine will headline Reading and Leeds again, probably (are they still together? It’s difficult to tell). Zane Lowe will talk in complete paragraphs. Mutterings about “grass roots” and “real music” and “the kids” and such.

It’s like they took the last decade of internet discourse about music and poured it into my ear via Scott Mills’ voice.

Switch begins with “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” and my palate is all nice and cleansed. The best number one of the year =

And that’s alright with me. Night.

2. Joe McElderry – The Climb (NEW ENTRY)

Joe really did sound pretty great on the X Factor. Here, he sounds appalling. He tickles the big long note in the title, you can hear him missing it and oh does it hurt. The letter I simply is not the kid’s friend. And it just sounds like those big CDs of Christian music they used to advertise on Channel 4. He’s not feeling it. I’m not feeling it. It’s difficult to tell how anyone could ever feel it. This is, simply, a really very, very bad record. He’s got the potential to make good ones, though, and what the future holds it will be interesting to see. I can’t see him doing stuff that isn’t ballads, but not all ballads are the same – there’s good ones, and there’s bad ones. And this song, this one here – this is bloody awful.

Said it before, say it again:

Opportunity knocked and you scratched your arse.

3. Lady GaGa – Bad Romance

I like this. I like how very, very good it is at being ridiculous. And it’s VERY good at it. I like the stomping of the chorus. I like how it’s everything Alexandra Burke Plays Some Football tries to be but is 12 squillion times better at it. I like how her vocals become increasingly indecipherable the longer it goes on. I like how it does military stomping better than the Pet Shop Boys single (and I’ve become increasingly glad that scraped in at number 40). I like how huge her eyes go.

Oh god Greg James is doing a boxing analogy. Shut up Tom Morello.

4. Peter Kay’s Animated All Stars – The Official BBC Children in Need Medley

So the Black Eyed Peas are better at being cartoons than actual cartoons. Who ever would have thought it? Double points off for somehow making “Jai Ho!” worse than the Pussycat Dolls managed to make it (is that a sentence?).

I bought that Elbow album. I am not sure why now. Wow, this is really a whole individual league of fucking awful. Slightly below the one that “You Are Not Alone” is in, though.

5. 3OH!3 ft. Katy Perry – Starstrukk (NEW ENTRY)

Erm. Who invited you? It’s like this three-minute slab of noise (mit whistling) stuck in the middle of AN ENTIRE NATION BITCHING AT EACH OTHER, and Katy Perry very wisely shunts 3OH!3 completely out of the way to stamp all over the place, and maybe it’s just context but fuck me this works wonders. The whistling is shit, though.

6. Robbie Williams – You Know Me

Hat-trick for stuff that I can’t embed, and this is more Supermarket-tastic stuff, trumpets and xylophones that sound like mince pie adverts… but with a little gleam in the eye. The ridiculousness of the Frog Chorus backing vocals bring it to life – yes, it’s a bit every-Robbie-single-ever-but-especially-She’s-Madonna-unless-I’m-confusing-it-with-the-Badly-Drawn-Boy-single-which-was-also-the-same, but dammit, there’s something about the feller – there really isn’t anyone quite like him, no-one quite as fucked up as him, no-one quite as desperate as him. That propensity for releasing the same bastard song over and over again doesn’t help him, though. This isn’t quite going to the well again, though, and you notice how we’ve been going steadily uphill since “You Are Not Alone”? Power of perspective, boys and girls.

7. Cheryl Cole ft. will.i.am – 3 Words

Not embedding either.

Nice pianos. Nice sofas. Nice. As will.i.am guest spots go, this is much better than “Baby Love”. As songs go… this is somewhere in the middle of the pack.

8. Rihanna – Russian Roulette

Not embedding.

And this is awesomely glacial. I think I adore it. So… immaculate. Her voice sounds shot through with sadness, fear, trepidation, resignation, lots of adjectives. Massively, massively under-rated vocalist. Another song whose lyrics suffer from not making as much sense as they think they do. But good. Very good.

9. Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

I don’t have much to say about this one, but again – stupid optimism; stupid, non-specific optimism – the world likes a bit of that, I do too, and the Chartstats page for this is a fucking picture: http://www.chartstats.com/songinfo.php?id=9816