Stop yelling at me! A BLOO BLA BLOOO! A BLOO BLOO BLOOOOOOO! BLOO BLOO!
So I got bored of Tumfing. I have now switched to MOJO Radio.
Two thoughts:
1) Is a man saying “Whatever, whenever” really the best jingle you could come up with?
2) If you’re intending said jingle to be a sign of unpredictability rather than apathy, why are you following it up by playing “Everybody’s Changing”?
(subthought – “Everybody’s Changing” is actually pretty decent, isn’t it? About as good as pop songs about alienation and vagueness get these days, anyhow)
One of the channels I get to input at my work is TMF, MTV’s sop to the kids with the Freeview boxes. Since I don’t seem to go to bed anymore, it turns out I have some time to watch them play music videos. Following on from our adventure on Freeview’s other music channel, The Hits, let’s have a look-see at what goes down here…
SCOUTING FOR GIRLS – Heartbeat
Oh, this was a great idea! Good grief, how tepid does this chorus sound? It’s what confuses me about Duffy’s world domination, the intro to ‘Mercy’ is so underwhelming, and it’s the same here. It’s all so fucking polite, so uninteresting, laid-back so as to be all the better to blend into the floorboards. There is no significance to anything – it’s third/fourth single to its very core. If it has a core. The drums sound like they’re being played two doors down by a man trying to form an opinion on someone’s tits.
Adverts follow. We couldn’t have got in at a better time. Here comes the Girls Aloud KitKat advert. I heard ‘Biology’ whilst out about a week ago, and it amazed me just how much that record still meant to me. This advert… no. Eva Longoria is selling me ice cream. Some fucking Pot Noodle advert that I fear I will see too much of this evening. Hyundai would like you to be impressed that their car has a stereo. Thing that has always bothered me – when actors on adverts say “our”. John Simm wants to tell you about Hyundai’s warranty like it in some way involves him.
Can things only get better? No.
KAISER CHIEFS – Ruby
Actually, let’s be fair – this is better than everything Scouting for Girls have ever done. To think, this was only, ooh, a year ago now? Or just over. This “city builds up around band and band do not notice because la la la Inspiral Carpets Harry Carpenter Duncan Fletcher” video remains thoroughly unimpressive. Their recreation of it at the Brits was somehow even less interesting.
Someone is pulling my fucking leg.
THE KOOKS – Always Where I Need To Be
They’ve hit their The Strokes phase. Here they are. they don’t play by the rules at the funfair. They are for people who wear non-ridiculous coats, and sometimes take their hats off, and shit. The advert for this is Luke thingy walking through a house. Corridors, stairs, he don’t give a shit. All good to him. Eh, you can draw lines, “ba da da” becomes “do, do, do-do-do-do-do”, there has never been a better time to be a British man who is also a prick, everything was great in the past because it enabled us to have The Friday Night Project, those who disagree can be drowned out with louder mastering, do you like my tight sweater?
THE FEELING – Without You
“It’s raining hard in North Virginia, just like London Town”. Wistful, yessee. Still has that kind of cartoonish tone to the sound that The Feeling always have – a necessary barrier to reality, a necessary filter to make clear that this is a piece of mass media, a song for the radio, a song for you to hear on the radio and start to free associate from. A song that knows its past and reckons you do too. A song to stop time and bring us all together so we can dream the same dream and want the same thing. The trouble being that leaves little time for the song itself: it was made to be dwarfed by history, by that which came before. It sets up the hierarchy, then sits at the hierarchy’s feet and gazes up adoringly. It’s hard to hate for that, but it’s kind of limiting. It’s soft and cosy and makes me a little weepy, and I fear that’s job done to the very letter.
More adverts. They’re not short on these in Tumf-land. In Bruges gets its second plug of the night, shortly followed by the second ad for Aldi. In between, Hugh Laurie wants your kids to eat fruit. If Britain hates his success so much, why does he feel the need to advertise Fruit Shoot?
Nick Jr advert annoys, but reminds me of the one time I watched Dora The Explorer. The characters excitedly exclaimed “SEATBELTS! So We Can Be Safe!”
GIRLS ALOUD – Can’t Speak French
Nicola Roberts has one line. The instruments have been turned up too loud. But the “I gotta let you know-whoa-whoa-whoa” bit makes me melt. Have I mentioned how well I feel this works as a single? Snucks right up on you with that steady, sturdy clip, and carries you away, all the way away. A constant sidling, hips gently rub atop thighs, caressing, curving, gliding.
ONEREPUBLIC – Stop And Stare
That compression issue makes you notice things. The drums on One Night Only’s single sound terrible – here, it’s those fucking guitars. The tablature is something like this:
CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG
CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG
CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG
CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG
This endless, Snow-Patrol-For-The-Thumbless “rhythm” guitar trudge over which he can emote his League Two contradiction-in-terms-in-place-of-actual-thought gobshittery. I can’t remember if there’s a piano on this record. If there is, it can fuck off just as bad as the rest of it.
NEWTON FAULKNER – I Need Something
Tumf has a different video to the hits, just Newt making the strum and the pluck in a studio. In black and white! He’s quite good at that strum and pluck, but he’s so very, very insignificant. Music for being there. Like flowerpots.
ALPHABEAT – Fascination
A bit disappointing live, though their support acts (Frankmusik and Leon Jean-Marie) were both utterly blinding, so a good time had by all, and there’s still plenty fun to be had here. The ascending howls in what might be the middle eight go nicely. Very nicely. Big sparkly fun. Actually fucking GOES FOR IT – The Kooks could arguably be said to do that, but in their case “going for it” equates to “being a cunt”.
DUFFY – Mercy
And here’s Lady Shit-Intro herself. It’s the way those “Yeah, yeah, yeah”s flounce into view over THE BASSLINE FROM THE THEME TO THE MONEY PROGRAMME FOR PITY’S SAKES and some organ being amped via someone’s armpit – how could anyone like that? Likewise, the way they’ve mixed the spoken word bit so Duffy shouts all over it and you can’t make it out. And this was number one for five weeks. I had a massive post on this all cued up somewhere, compared it to the Pipettes and everything. It would have been great, but… feh. I don’t hate this record, it’s kinda catchy. I also like the way she rolls her shoulders.
More ads. Kerry Katona: She’s Too Big Now She’s Too Thin is on MTV1 at some point.
TAKE THAT – Shine
I never thought I’d say this, but it really has been a while since I’ve heard this one. I am quite a fan, actually, if only cos it’s basically one of those Mark Owen solo records that sold fuck all, but this one got to number one for ages and you can tell that Mark was absolutely made up because Britain was basically telling him he was right all along. Which is a tremendous feeling. Being proved right. In the ELO fashion. “Let me know yer! YOU’RE ALL THAT MATTERS! SHIIII-IIIINE!” Howard Donald is clearly using fame as an excuse to not shave, and that’s also quite great. Best moment: Howard and Jason clap along, and as the camera pans up you can see them sharing a laugh because they can’t believe somebody up there likes them enough. I can’t help but feel heartened.
WILL.I.AM ft. CHERYL OUT OF GIRLS ALOUD – Heartbreaker
He’s a heartbreaker, you know. The people dancing in the bodysuits with the fairy lights makes me think of the motion capture suits they use to animate videogames. This song is not as much fun as Actua Soccer. AndActua Soccer wasn’t much fun at all.
SUGABABES – Denial
I’ve been listening the Cocteau Twins, quite enjoyed it. Frankmusik too. That one Will Young album I have – not so good. “All Time Love” is alright. And this is putting me to sleep.
Obviously, I should have spelt it
WHEN ARGH HORRRLLD YERR BAY-HEEE-YAYYY-HEEEE-BAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
There is nothing about “Set U Free” that is not perfect. Not. One. Single. Thing.
THE HOOSIERS – Cops And Robbers
I kind of don’t hate this. They throw themselves into it with their one fucking drumbeat and their just generally having one sound and one gameplan, but they seem to take much care over their videos, you know? Scouting For Girls are fully shite. The Hoosiers seem like there may be redeeming features lurking in there somewhere. Their wackiness feels forced, and it’s another song that ain’t exactly about jack shit… Am I basically going to say that this song has trombones and I like trombones? I am, aren’t I? Oh, bloody hell…
There is more to say about these boys, I reckon. Not now.
MARIAH CAREY – Touch My Body
This is basically a Black Box Recorder record, isn’t it? By a woman who knows that the idea of her hunting down people who put sex tapes of her on YouTube is somewhat amusing. “Come on and give me what I deserve” is delivered quite deliciously. There is a feeling that she may have earned this. And the feeling that I personally cannot really dredge up any evidence for that. Other people in all likelihood can. This good, though.
MADONNA ft. THE TIMBO TWINS – Four Minutes
The trouble I have with this is it feels more like a special performance strung together for The Brit Awards or something. MTV VMAs and such like. I can picture it in my mind’s eye already. Riddled with deeply shitty parkour. It’s one of those things that The Entertainment Industry has pre-ordained happening and has decided you will find amazing by the sheer seismic force of its happening. And it’s not amazing. It gets criticised for being too busy or having too much going on, but that’s quite the inverse of the problem – not very much happens. The involved parties turn up and some horns go honk and Madonna goes “If you want it, you already got it/If you got it, it better be what you want” and that just reminds me of the bit in “Apache Rocks The Bottom” where Sheffield Dave goes “BE SURE TO GET WHAT YOU LIKE – OTHERWISE, YOU WILL BE FORCED TO LIKE WHAT YOU GET!”, except that sounds like a brilliant proclamation from on high and the lyrics to “Four Minutes” sound like someone wants to do poetry.
I feel absolutely nothing for this song beyond wanting Scooter back now. No, no, fuck looking on Youtube. I want them given to me. I want them to spring up unawares. I want the random, because that assures me that it isn’t just me. I want connection. I want me and Scooter in the actual real bloody world. Because I hadn’t expected this to be about Scooter, but that’s what’s happened, and the fact that I couldn’t and wouldn’t have chosen that to be the case is the best bit of all. Fuck control. Fuck selection. Fuck bloody personalised playlists. Fuck putting me in charge. I know what I would do, and it bores me to bits.
But instead.
FRAGMA – Toca’s Miracle 08
This is what I meant by least necessary re-release of the year. Imagine the original “Toca’s Miracle” except it’s being played behind a medium-sized pillow. Yup.
CHRIS BROWN – With You
He’s a sweet kid. It’s about him and his love, but importantly it’s about how their love is just like everyone else’s. So much of this song sounds very greeting-card like in its sentiments – “there’s nothing that we won’t do” – but he is such a sweet kid. He’s got his limits that he aspires to rise above. He wants the defining love – he’s seen it in the movies, now let’s see if it’s true. And it’s true. Like he dreamed. Love makes him human. Everyone is out there missing their boo. The hearts all over the world feel like he feels. Your song, his song, all the shit. My opinion on this shifts with every listen – sometimes tissue-thin, sometimes adorable. He’s a sweet kid.
I’mma conveniently ignore ‘Apologise’ because I was too busy writing about C. Brown and it got followed by:
SEPTEMBER – Cry For You
I know I heard this in the course of my Jukebox adventures, but I don’t remember putting it up for evaluation. I don’t remember it being this good, either. The UK radio edit homes in on its pressure points quicker, takes the melodic snatch from “Smalltown Boy” and makes it fizzier, cheaper, more unreal – and thus harder – and takes those Nordic vowels of September’s and stretches them longer, thinner, further, and it sounds like it goes off into eternity every second. Also nice that the video has clearly been made by whoever made the video for “From Paris To Berlin” and they have absolutely no qualms about making that really obvious.
Well, they’re playing “American Boy” again. And I’ve noticed the bit where Estelle dances one way and her silhouette dances another goes on for far too long. So I’ll wait til this finishes and see if it’s worth carrying on beyond it. I like “American Boy” more than I’d suggested previous – it feels like a big bouncing-off-of-ideas session, the way things just seem to float and coast. Nothing too purposeful, nothing forced, just a very laid-back sort of charm to the whole endeavour.
Oh christ, it’s “Chasing Pavements”. Bed it is. Night.
KYLIE MINOGUE – In My Arms
Oh, this is good. Even if I’m now recognising it from its use on an advert, possibly for 4Music Sundays on, er, The Hits. All electro-bleep-and-snap. Kylie is awful ethereal and stuff. And she can handle them spoken-word bits rather well. Like how one imagines a Calvin Harris record would be if he didn’t do vocals.
GNARLS BARKLEY – Run
Oh, naff off with your patronage, Justin. Hang on, is this 4Music Sundays backing music too? Er? This is my music consumption, it seems, and that’s bloody worrying. If this were a Bentley Rhythm Ace record, the vocals would be being done by Kermit out of Black Grape. You’d notice the difference, but I think the effect might well be roughly similar.
FUCK OFF JUSTIN.
ESTELLE ft. KANYE WEST – American Boy
I am kinda here-or-there on this song being any good. Cos, nice sounding, and lovely electroglide bass, and Estelle coming back hard and having An Actual Number One Single is very awesome. But at the same time… “Let’s go shopping, maybe then we’ll go to a cafe.” You’re in America, and you’re going to celebrate this by going to a fucking cafe? That’s the lamest tourism since that 90s advert for Eilat that went “Have a drink, relax or talk/Have a ball in Israel!” And the verses just seem to run: 1) “Nice shoes!” 2) “You drive like this! Let’s Go To A Cafe!” 3) “You drive like this! Mary Poppins!” Oh, it’s not bad. It’s just not as good as it feels like it should be. The way it floats off into the night at the end, though. That is nice.
BRIT & ALEX – Let It Go
Step Up 2 The Streets isn’t actually a film. It can’t be. I do not believe it. I do not know why, but the idea that there’s an actual film behind all of these songs seems oddly inconceivable.
Anyway, Brit & Alex. Twins in wigs. They very much make with the Brooke Hogan arm movements. “I can’t let all the fear inside control me/Gotta take a hold of what’s in front of me.” Sounds very much like a soundtrack song, like they just needed 30 seconds or so for a bit of the film and then there was the problem of the rest of the song to fill in…
BRITNEY SPEARS – Break The Ice
Things people don’t mention about Britney – the burrs in her voice. It swings low. I cannot think of anyone else who could do this record, really. People could be similar. Scherzinger, maybe. Rihanna. They’d sound similar. But Britney’s spoken-word bits… I know I go off about spoken-word bits in pop songs frequently not working, but these mutterings are perfect. Intimidating. Perhaps it’s cos you can’t see her in this video, but they don’t make you worry for her like how ‘Gimme More’ and its pole-dancing does. It sounds very, very confident. Very sexual. Very good.
ALPHABEAT – Fascination
Am hoping there are still tickets for this on Thursday, I reckon it’ll be right good fun (The Cockpit in Leeds. Do come, it’ll be larks). Having been clothes-shopping lately, I have concluded that the only clothes shop for men in Denmark is Debenhams. Man, they have some lurid fucking jumpers in that place. Annoyingly, none of them fit me. I mean, every bugger in this city’s a skinny fit, but somehow they all skinny-fit skinnier than me. And I am thin, do not doubt this. Scrawny malakka and no mistake. But they proper rumple the hairs on my arms… Where was I? Big, jumpy, and actually fun in a way that lots of records nowadays really struggle to be because they’re too busy playing those instruments of theirs and thinking very hard about what notes they’re hitting. Which Alphabeat might be too, but they choose not to show it.
THE SCRIPT – We Cry
Imagine OneRepublic’s slightly harder brothers. There is some rap bits here but they are some fucking mediocre rap bits. Imagine if Everlast was in Maroon 5 and not the Maroon 5 that get arrested by the sex police. The hook is constructed by repeating the “Together we cry” bit from “Under The Bridge”. Bad things happen in the city. Had you noticed? Do you remember “What Would You Do?” by City High? This may perhaps be about as bad, or maybe slightly better because it’s not another song where Wyclef is all like “Don’t be acting all hoity-toity to your lapdancer” in that very Wyclef-ish manner he has.
ALICIA KEYS – No-One
It would be fair to suggest that “Like You’ll Never See Me Again” did shit over here, yeah. I still love the little bits of madness – actual deviation – that propel this. Alicia and her farting synth. Her pronunciation of “certayeen”. The way she kind of gives up on hitting the notes in “When the rain is falling dow-we-ow-we-own”. It’s the reggae style production of her vocals, like they’re ghosts floating over a backdrop they can’t see. It’s how very singular, how very apart it all sounds. There’s nothing clean or tidy about this. And I love it for that.
H TWO O ft. PLATNUM – What’s It Gonna Be?
Oh, I could discuss this, or I could just go
HAYEEECH-TWO-OHHHH
because all the talk of intersecting styles and “Is this 2-step? Is this speed garage? Is this bassline? Is there a difference?” is to sidestep the actual issue at hand, which is that
HAYEEEEECH-TWO-OHHHHHHH
is the new
WHEN I HORRLLD YUH BAYEEE-BEHHH
out of “Set U Free” and the two songs are anthems completely worthy of standing right next to each other -
WHAT THE FUCK?
SCOOTER – The Question Is What Is The Question?
No, seriously, this is on my television. Right now. In Britain. Oh yes.
Hang on, they’re dancing in a British truck! Scooter have made a video FOR THE BRITISH MARKET!
GO SCOOTER!
“YEE-ESS!” says Sheffield Dave. Oh, bugger that I thought this was shit last summer. Bugger that Dave sounds like he’s trying to remember the lyrics to about ten other Scooter songs at once and can’t remember which songs those are!
“This is an announcement – PLEASE REFRAIN FROM NOT SMOKING! Here we go! Alright! BIG UP THE CREW!” And he could actually be meaning Crewe there. “Can I have a light please?” Oh, Dave. Always you can have a light. They may follow The Manual, but there is no-one like Scooter. No-one makes so much and so little sense all at once. Oh Dave. Oh Scooter. It’s all about the moment. Listened to as an isolated MP3 this song is terrible. Watched as a video on The Hits and I AM ACTUALLY WELLING UP BECAUSE SCOOTER BLOODY EXIST! They are real! They are do this thing! God, it all seems pointless to do anything else, I wanna misplace a Mark E Smith comparison, “Flick hits for the lyrical tricks” (oh, are those the real lyrics? I don’t know, the words go in there somewhere) – this wholehearted commitment to nonsense, to chucking it in the blender and getting a guy who looks a little bit like Guile off Street Fighter 2 to go “DROP THE BEAT!” You know they have pattern but they have pattern because they want to give you what you know you love and they love it too and we all love it and we all scream to give respect to the man in the ice cream van.
You’ll need to excuse me. There was a James Blunt video and it was better than that video he did for his last single. He got a bit emotional by which I mean he started yelling in that high-pitched indignant squawk of his. Akon and T-Pain have done a single together in the half-hour that their schedules overlapped and there is autotune. Lemme take a breath and we’ll continue.
GO SCOOTER!!!
SAM SPARRO – Black & Gold
Choose tuxedos. Choose top hats. Choose fairy lights. Will’s just mentioned Fischerspooner. He’s a point. I’mma mention the latterday solo work of Darren Hayes. This is as good as neither. It’s sort of existentialist. He’s feary about existence. He has an electro pulse and it is nice electro pulse. But this is weirdly vapid. Weirdly aesthetic chomping but not a lot there to back it up somehow. It just doesn’t… do anything. The Scissor Sisters took shit somewhere, you know? There was emotion, sometimes; heart, sometimes. This lacks something, but at the same time I’m thinking dismissing it isn’t that simple.
ONE NIGHT ONLY – It’s About Time
“It’s about toyme, you were back in my loyfe!” Razorlight begat Kooks. Kooks begat this wank. Let’s not call that drums, it’s cymbals. It’s pub rock that’s never been in a fucking pub. Imagine if this record were by Slade. Cos for a start, they’d never have that “I need you back in my life” followed by “I don’t need you anymore” thing sung exactly the same with no progression or heft just bloody WORDS flopping half-arsedly out of your mouth to complement your pre-scuffed jeans and half-arsedly unkempt hair and it’s your second single and it may build on your first because God is dead and we’re all alone.
WILL.I.AM ft. CHERYL COLE – Heartbreaker
He’s a heartbreaker. He’s a heartbreaker. He’s a heartbreaker. Let’s break it down now, like Cow & Gate break down the carrots into mush. That’s a funk lick by someone who has heard some of a Nile Rodgers record. I eventually learnt to forgive the lyrical flumpery of “The Way I Are” by the force of that beat, the sheer tectonic burble and shove of it all. This… not even slightly close. Wuss-funk. Cheryl gets to echo some of the stuff he says. I can’t actually remember why he’s a heartbreaker. But apparently he is. He certainly fucking says it enough.
LEONA LEWIS – Better In Time
Horrid enunciation of “teevee” here. I input television schedules for a living, and I get to do six music channels. The amount of power ballad compilations they put out is surprisingly high. There seems to be some kind of concerted movement for the approval of them coinciding with the concerted movement for the approval of Leona. She sings this well. But the backing is flaccid. She replaces tension with trill and high notes. Mutterings about soul seem irrelevant. She’s much more characterful than that kind of debate merits… but at the same time, weirdly blank. It’s just curious, the positioning of her range as being a really good thing , the sudden decision that someone who can sound like Mariah or Whitney or Celine is Fantastic, when the past few years of British pop culture seem to have moved right against that. Something is eerie. This song doesn’t take with me and that bothers me.
SCOUTING FOR GIRLS – Heartbeat
About NOTHING. It has those fucking “You can’t beat Carcraft!” backing vocals that all their other songs have. It is structured the same as their other songs, packing the chorus in your ear like a dentist packs a restored tooth till eventually you wanna fucking hurl. They could knock these out every half an hour. Features the expression “pain in the arse”. Fucking sensitive blokes. Fucking banter. Fucking bollocks.
ASHLEE SIMPSON – Outta My Head (Ay Ay Ay)
I have never heard any Cristina. Does it sound like this? Cos I’m thinking ‘The Metro’ by Berlin here, in the sparseness of the beat, the constant monotonous drum splash, with Ashlee vamping up to a certain extent. And then comes the “I am who I am, keep your comments to yourself” thing and that annoys me. I think I may have an automatic switch for songs about public persona, but it’s an interesting little experiment going on, and I think needs some further listens. The brevity/messiness of a lot of these blurbs suggests that several of these songs do.
New Goldfrapp single now, and I don’t wanna rush post that. Given that my post on “A&E” probably accounts for most of this blog’s traffic, I think a companion piece would do rather nicely, don’t you? Part Three after Mr Bunnyhop Man.
Right, 0 page-views today, time for to get cracking.
NIGHTTIME HITS LIVEBLOG!
And we open with…
Oh bugger.
NEWTON FAULKNER – I Need Something
Well, depending how long I sit here, this is likely to be the last song for a bit that I’ve not heard before. But, well, I’ve this awful feeling we know the score here. There’s all that intricate guitar-picking that’s become his trademark that isn’t having ginger dreadlocks, but wow, this goes absolutely nowhere at all and it does it very quickly. Newt’s got self-doubt issues but they’re not necessarily anything serious. He stands on a beach and yowls, which is a lovely image. It’s so very insidious in its instrumentation, like anaesthetic or something.
Already know it won’t be the worst thing we sit through tonight, though. Why?
JACK McMANUS – Bang On The Piano
It’s one of those hot young singer songwriters whose purpose seems to be suggesting the entire sonic output of Virgin Radio in 1998 was a daring vision of the future. Everything is amped too bloody loud. He will bang on his piano until the feelings come. Cos he is nervous with girl. Or writing songs. Aren’t songs about writer’s block always brilliant, eh? But it’s all turned up so loud and made to sound that much like a bloody Space record that it’s impossible to give a stuff.
KELLY ROWLAND ft. HIM OUT OF GYM CLASS HEROES – Daylight
“Most people like getting up when I’m just getting in!” Why has Kelly sampled the guitar riff from the old Magners advert? This is some seriously mediocre partying going on right here. This could be a Texas record for all that it sounds like staying up all night and staggering home with the sunshine. Him Out Of Gym Class Heroes drops what could perhaps be a verse if you aggregate all his lines through the song. “I’ll be back in three days like Paris’ jail sentence” – erm… burn? Maybe? I dunno.
UTAH SAINTS – Something Good 08
Oh, here we GO! Song structure kind of dispensed with in favour of added banging, which isn’t something I think anyone would ever have thought possible with this lot. It just takes that Kate Bush hook and run-run-run-run-runs with it! Exalts it by repetition with everything around continually going up, up, up, faster, faster, faster and then it explodes at the end like all the chart-dance greats do. Reverent and fresh all at once. Van She remix, btw. That never seems to get mentioned, but you can’t begrudge the Utahs getting props. They posted on my MySpace once! Serious!
TAIO CRUZ ft. LUCIANA – Come On Girl
So yes, infamous Slowest Car Chase In The World aside, this all seems like a massive slipping-htrough-the-net in terms of its chart success. One of those wee one-off things that British pop does so very well. Luciana’s verse kind of wrecks the momentum a bit, but it starts picking up towards the end. All about that momentum, anyway. I wish I had more to say here, but that’s the trouble with liveblogging a thing that has no adbreaks – gotta keep moving…
Cos IRL we’re already at the end of this one. Rips the intro from ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ (not ‘Protection’, as I keep bloody thinking). Ronsonised. Adele has interesting texture to her voice, but would I call it good? I… don’t know. Sometimes she just sounds like she’s eating Toblerone. I think there may be interesting records to be wrung out of her, but the over-reverence to musicianship that the Ronson influence is bringing back into British music may hamstring her – you get the feeling some kind of eruption needs to happen and then the true colours will come out…
ELLIOTT MINOR – Parallel Worlds
Not the least necessary re-release of the year (fear that’s still to come), but easily bottom three. Some vague FEAR and BAD THING cliches are muttered over a car that just won’t stop but it is a fucking rubbish car. They have two vocalists who do not have any kind of harmonic skills, mainly because one of them is singing out of some deep, subterranean nose thing that makes every syllable of his sound infinitely flat. But energy almost carries it UNTIL they decide to show off their guitar skills and one of them busts out some fucking Chris Rea shit and the other one comes with his Brian May arsery and oh boy are they ever classically fucking trained.
RIHANNA – Don’t Stop The Music
There are certain things Rihanna does that will never, ever be convincing. Her pronunciation of “Please”, for example. But even that’s not in the league of her one-finger beckon thing that she seems to do in every video of hers that doesn’t involve Ne-Yo. It’s so slow that it’s nearly arthritic. But DSTM is a killer. A killer that has been around forever now. The video is… eight months old, I think. But it’s pure groove, pure carry.
Quick sweepstake – how many more times will I say “momentum” before this post is over? I’m going for nine.
SUGABABES – Denial
It’s strange how inescapable I find the Sugababes’ baggage. Like, everything I hear by them now, I keep thinking is basically about Mutya being a massive cow. There is absolutely no evidence for Denial being about this. But that “Didn’t want to know the things I knew” line… I dunno. Something is inescapable about it. Not as much as the bit in the video for “Change”, where the last bit is the camera moving across them and Amelle sings “Chay-yange” in a manner that suggests ” YEAH, MUTYA! CHANGE! YEAH!”
This may be my fault. The video for this is dead pretty and clever.
THE KOOKS – Always Where I Need To Be
Please not to have this playing over the end credits of last episode of Skins. Better integrated guitar-wankery than Elliott Minor. “I’m a man on thurr seeeen!” It has ‘infectious’(/infected) “do! do! dodododo!” chorus. He’s possibly being vulnerable. He’s possibly exalting. I’m possibly being unfair. It’s better than at least one of their other singles, possibly two. Good? Whoa there, sunshine.
YAEL NAIM – New Soul
FUCK OFF. WE HAVE KATE NASH AND HER TOOTHBRUSHES. WE DO NOT NEED YOU TO LEARN ABOUT WHAT IS REAL AND FAKE. STOP ALLURING ME WITH YOUR ULTRA-THIN MACBOOK even though it is really deeply awwww. BUT NO. DEATH TO FAUX-NAIVE HIPPY GOBSHITERY.
Honestly, who the fuck thought “What would happen if Jack Johnson and I’m From Barcelona had a kid and drip-fed it Petit Filous?”
End of part one, cos it’s Nickelback and I’ve rush-posted about that once (though I ought to reply to Kogan’s post on my LJ about that someday). Part Two to come in a minute.
Can Chad just not pronounce Ouzo?
Mythologising or self-effacing?
“I’m gonna trade this life of fortune and fame” is not actually a solution to the problem of how one becomes a rock star. Unless he’s singing “chase” rather than “trade”. Given what his pronunciation of Ouzo may or may not be, that is possible. Is that a Canadian thing? I was listening to Kathleen Edwards the other day, and that girl’s vowels – ow… it’s like they’ve got a missing valve in their nose or something.
This song makes me wanna cry. It doesn’t quite make me cry, cos few things do. But it pushes me. The essential hopelessness of the dream at the heart of it all, the fact that Chad knows throughout that he’s only dreamin: letting his fantasy roll out, blow up, til he can practically taste it; then exaggerate it a bit more, so he can pretend that he’s just joking about all this, that he’s in touch with reality really, that he knows it’s not really gonna happen. Acting like he can totally separate his fantasy from reality at the flick of a switch. All good, clean fun.
It gets annoying after a while, those fucking drums. There are some awful drums in modern music, One Night Only’s “Just For Tonight” taking the cake; but it’s so ploddy, so lumpen, along with Chad’s “No lozenge can hold me!!!” drawling, that it really starts dragging hard…
… but then, who ever has dreams with a perfect sense of time and perspective? I don’t find it difficult to imagine that the drums in Chad’s dreams do indeed sound this shit. And that they go on forever. Big. Yawning. Cos when you’re dreaming, shit does go on forever. And things just fall into place. Nice drugs that don’t make you ill, fucking with no consequence or consideration; no ageing, too, just you as you are now. No past, no future, no death. Temporal, emotional, physical considerations – not in this dream.
So is this guilty pleasure? Cos it think it could be. Not for reasons of cool. But because ‘Rockstar’ taps nerves I’m not supposed to have. Wrong nerves, wrong wishes, wrong escapes. It appeals to fantasising, hopeless, aimless dreaming. You indulge in your self-defeat.
It can get read as chest-puffing. Idiotic. Inarticulate, clumping guitar fodder for idiotic people. I think it’s much more vulnerable than that. I don’t think there is side here; I ain’t too good at being able to see when I’m being sold a pup, I admit, but I really don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Chad’s letting us in. He’s not really good enough to let people in very far, no.
Let’s compare with Lupe Fiasco’s laugh at the end of the last verse of “Superstar”:
Then they all get up on stage and start performing for me
Like ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha ha ha ha ha.
The point here – parodies of celebrity culture have become pointless. Hear how flat, hollow Lupe’s laugh is made to sound – he knows it’s a shit revenge fantasy, he knows the same complaints have been made before in a billion different songs. ‘Rockstar’ comes out of the same malaise – everyone bloody knows everything, eh? Such is our world now. We all know the score. We’ve heard it before. Don’t bore us, get to the chorus having gone via the middle eight with suitable chord progression melodic melodic melodic melodic…
So it’s you and Chad on the hood of his truck or what have you (try and act like you aren’t dictating the fucking terms), and he wants to let you know what he’s been dreaming. Is it good? Is it bad? It doesn’t change anything, of course – loaded with status quo in all conceivable ways. It doesn’t judge anything, either, because there isn’t really any point. We have been there before. Several times. We can’t fucking avoid going there. It surrounds us.
And Chad, at the heart of it, aspires to that with which he is presented. He can’t really think of anything else. So here he is, him and his deeply shit drums. Fitting into the cycle nicely. Reaffirming the bullshit, if you look at it one way.
Or tapping, tapping, tapping.
