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.
