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.
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”…
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.
“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.
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.
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.
I’m just about drunk enough that I’m feeling enthusiastic. I been dancing to McLusky. Times was good. I been dancing to Tatu’s version of “How Soon Is Now” two nights in a row. Times was good. You can give it some proper hardcore singer “I HAVE A FUCKING TAPEWORM AND YOU STILL ARE NOT IN LOVE WITH ME AND I HAVE A FUCKING TAPEWORM” bending-at-the-waist mishagas and if I go to bed and wake up I know I won’t be feeling this good and I didn’t go to Doncaster but Saints won anyway and we are 20th and you know why? A: TOTAL FOOTBALL
But dammit these past two days they have made me need to play songs at people cos songs are cool and amazing and I have a guide dog stamped on my hand and I’m not sure why this gives me pleasure but yes it does
PM DAWN – I’d Die Without You
I spent a large amount of today listening to PM Dawn. I am thinking of pitching PM DAWN WEEK to A Music Publication. History left them behind, you can sort of see why – they’re very often verbose for the sake of it, and with verbosity comes hella pretension, and often this leads to non-lyrical flow and annoyance and sweet fuck they’re basically wearing bedsheets, big shiny bedsheets, and you can see why that doesn’t fly nowadays.
But god, PM Dawn. Young people do not know PM Dawn. This was not PM Dawn’s big hit, because that was:
I don’t know if I prefer this as such – it’s more straightforward, the lyrics make more sense, there’s actual narrative flow. It’s one of those love songs that make me feel awkward, cos it’s the subject putting hell of pressure on the object, but god it fucking RESONATES – “Is it my turn to watch you walk out of my life and not do a damn thing?” It’s desperation – “Isn’t it amazing how some things can completely turn around?”
One day I will be a grown up and I’ll know what I’m doing and that day had better fucking come soon cos otherwise a life in admin awaits me and I ain’t want that, and one day I can look at my “PM Dawn Phase” in the past tense and laugh, but for know sweet fuck PM Dawn are the band for me. It’s how fucking lonely yon piano sounds, how every note tinkles and sparkles, how those fucking harmonies just kill in the chorus, that moment of desperation when you will promise absolutely anything regardless of thought or consequence just so long as you can get what it is you want at that precise moment – “whatever babe, what ever bay-bay” - you will swear to literally anything at all, because the moment overwhelms you to that extent, the enormity just swallows you and there is no future or past, only NOW. NOW is all that you know. Human existence is all about you and that fucking instant. This song is that moment, that moment absolutely perfectly.
PM Dawn really need to be reassessed. I want to sing this song to people. All of you, preferably, I am not sure why. I need to sing at you. I need to play records at you. That’s kind of what this post is about.
BELINDA CARLISLE – Leave A Light On
Video here – it used to embed, now it doesn’t. Basts.
People who play “I Think We’re Alone Now” at clubs – I AM TALKING TO YOU.
Yes, it got to number one and this only made number four, but at the same time – why do you play that when this song exists in the world and is unquantifiably better than it? This again falls into the category of songs I must sing to people. I think Richard Hawley would absolutely kill it, but unfortunately, I am not ever actually going to be Richard Hawley, or sing like Richard Hawley, so I’ll have to let you know that the chorus is something I MUST SING because, as Ramzy was saying, you hit an amazing bit AND THEN SOMETHING EVEN MORE AMAZING HAPPENS!
HARMONIES!
HARMONIES!
HARMONIES!
Dammit, why is “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” her enshrined classic? I wanna be in a room full of people singing this song till their lungs give out. It’s so poised! So perfectly measured in its distribution of high points, bits to sing along to…
I have got to find the motherfuckers that kept this off number one.
I didn’t mean to include this, by the way, but I’ve got it playing now, and you know what? Their biggest hit, and it’s very, very good. It’s where the lyrics start not making sense, and the video doesn’t necessarily need Tony Hadley to pop up at the end, but the hell with it.
PROLAPSE – TCR
Prolapse are the best band from Leicester ever, because:
a) the only other one I can think of is Kasabian
b) PROLAPSE ARE AWESOME
Prolapse in many ways anticipated the YouTube generation by naming themselves after the medical term for shitting your guts out, since I don’t think Prolapse would have necessarily been hugely in favour of people finding their songs on YouTube and as such would prefer them to get lost in a miasma of videos about shitting your guts out.
Anyway: this is not the best Prolapse song. However, this is one of the few that they did a proper video for (in America!), and it is still very good. Find their records and listen to them and love them.
SKY LARKIN – Fossil, I
I tried doing a poll on ILM about which was the best song Huw Stephens played the other week, and FOUR WHOLE PEOPLE voted, and, er, I wasn’t one of them, so there we go. This was my favourite song that he played. It is not especially big or clever but it has stuck and stuck hard and they made a video (in America! Even though they’re from Leeds!), plus I saw them live and thought they weren’t that great, but no, this is a good single and makes me think I have missed something.
THE PASSIONS – I’m In Love With A German Film Star
It is fabulous. It is slow and slinky and goth-but-not-quite-goth and it’s always a little faster than I think it is. It’s so very great, really it is.
NE-YO – When You’re Mad
This is my favourite Ne-Yo song. What is yours? If you do not have one, you should get one. He’s very good. This is a good place to start – it’s about how he finds his girl even sexier when she is angry, and that premise is kind of dickheaded, but he delivers it in such a way as to be adorable. He’s good at that. Very good.
NE-YO – Closer
This gets better the more you hear it. I heard it on the top 40 last week and it was beautiful.
JORDIN SPARKS & CHRIS BROWN – No Air
Though obviously this is better. I do not get how people can resist this. It is heavenly, from tip to toe. It’s the pitch, it’s the tempo, it’s the way the vocals run not-quite with the beat, it’s how they open up, it’s how in the video when they finally meet all they can think to do is scream “NOOOOO” at each other, it’s the chorus – IT IS TOTALLY THE FUCKING CHORUS – it’s the way they rip off “Umbrella”, it’s when Chris Brown walked and ran and jumped and flew you believe, you believe that it is possible that Chris Brown does transcend humanity that much, it’s how it’s a song about constant struggle but the struggle is always completely worth it, it’s the bits where the strings get tense, it’s the keyboard solo, it’s the ballad for this year, it’s the ballad for these times, it’s the constant fucking rise, I need it to hit you, I need you to feel like I feel, I want that moment, I want to know it isn’t just me, because this is too damn big to be just me. This song, and possibly only this song, is why I listen the top 40 nowadays, so I can be reminded that no matter how many other pieces of shit people listen to, this is still there, this still lives and breathes and walks and runs and jumps and flies and flow-ows every Sunday afternoon, and all the rest of the damn time.
ULTRASOUND – Stay Young
God, this encapsulates me too well. I’m old enough that I’ve come to realise that youth is slipping away from me, and I’m getting annoyed with the people that are younger, but I know I am wrong to do this, and I know I am jealous of them and that’s stupid and it hurts, and when I look back on my youth I won’t do shit but regret and that’s stupid too, but that’s not Ultrasound’s fault, and I don’t want you thinking this song is kneejerk stuff and it’s bitter indie and can be ignored, because ignoring this song is the last damn thing I want you to do.
This song is extraordinary. I had a ten year gap between the first time I heard it and the second, but somehow on the second I could remember it exactly. The first time I heard it, I liked it cos the guitars reminded me of “Lucky Man” by The Verve, because, well, 10 years ago, that excited me, and I don’t want to act like that didn’t happen, because it did, and, well, it’s part of the reason I’m where I am at the moment. The second time, all the layers came rushing upon me; all the contradictions operating at once, all the vulnerabilities coming to light…
I wanna stay young, wanna go and never come undone – I wanna go out, wanna have fun and never come back home
You realise how transitory an experience youth is, particularly when youth is sold to you through music. All that bollocks about how rock should always be about pissing off your parents – the deliberate barriers it sets up, the deliberate exclusions it incorporates – and never thinks of those it excludes, because rock is for winners, rock is for youth – “It’s a naked pagan glory, celebrate the new” – and it leads the fans to believe that the rest of the world doesn’t matter…
And yet the song envies that too, it envies the freedom, it chases that fucking feeling. Hear them guitars, hear their heft, hear how they clash, how they yearn for the eternal and the epic and perpetuity. Hear how the vocals contrast: Tiny Wood (the man) is drawn, haggard, despairing, lunging to cling onto what he’s got, searching for that one more hit he doesn’t know if he’ll get, or if he’ll deserve; Vanessa Best (the woman) is aloof, tremulous, riddled with dramatic, quivering highs. They don’t interact, they just happen to exist at the same time; they are both completely extraordinary in their own ways. The song is rock destroying you and creating you all at once, and you can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not, it’s just what you do, it’s all you know, and it is the most beautiful, most empowered you have ever been, but at the same time you know it won’t last, there is doubt nagging at you all the goddamn time, and bear in mind that this song was Ultrasound’s first charting single. They’d not had an album out by this point. It’s still their highest-charting single, too – the first time I heard it was on the top 40. It got to number 30.
Ultrasound now are footnotes, if they’re even that; they made their first album a double album (that’s a double-CD album, by the way, due to the last song being 35 minutes long). It didn’t sell. They were shuffled out of the back door and split up, cos rock had had its use, they hadn’t served it as it saw fit, and there’s always more, always younger, always fully ready to bend and submit to cultural behemoths, always willing to obey and not challenge things, not try and change things; they can be honest, of course, but that’s only cos apparently that’s the kind of thing that women are into todays. Honesty, skinny jeans, ukeleles; hint at your vulnerability, hint that it might exist. Don’t actually say it out loud.
I can’t let “Stay Young” lie. I can’t. British guitar music tends to churn out ignorable stuff cos that’s what fuels it – there always needs to be someone at number 26 in the charts, and every week it changes. British guitar music is disposable by nature, almost by necessity. It is clumsy, it is overly blatant, it will be forgotten inside a year, it will not make any lists beyond the ones that get put out in order to try and recoup the label costs. Ultrasound’s mistake, on this evidence, was to try and get clear, to try and take the generic big sound of British guitars and make it actually big, actually grand, but no-one would go with, and so people haven’t heard of Ultrasound because then 1999 happened and someone else came along instead and their guitars were just as big, and people didn’t realise how special Ultrasound were, and so repping Ultrasound now is like setting yourself up as the biggest joke – in a world where Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine and Slint and Shellac and Fugazi and Belle & Sebastian and Nirvana and U2 exist, why hitch yourself to these? Are you mental? Are you stupid?
Look, this song is bloody special, it cuts deeply, it is bloody painful, it needs to rise again, I can’t help it, I love it, it’s too goddamn much for me to start making any remote amount of sense about, I want people to hear it and listen to it and love it just as much as I do and unfortunately I am afraid that it and me are currently intertwined that badly that somehow anything less just wouldn’t bloody work, you know? Look, I’m drunk, and hell, I’ll regret this in the morning or afternoon or whenever it is I wake up, cos that’s what happens when I’m sober, but I can’t let this bastard song lie, I can’t let its textures get away, I can’t let its confidence, its exceptionality go ignored – oh God, even though I’m drunk I know exactly how ludicrous I’m sounding, and that this is all screaming out for an editor, and I wish that was how I worked, I wish I could write in something other than these flurries of inspiration, that I could organise and plan and plot, and I know I’m the problem but I genuinely can’t figure out how to sound sensible about this matter, because I need you to hear this song and fall for it totally and utterly and just bloody realise.
“I’d Die Without You” is the only thing in my head. Its madness fits in nicely with my own.
ROCK HARD POWER SPRAY – Trigger Nation
Sometimes, as weak as it makes me look, I can’t explain beyond “This riff is pretty great. This chorus is pretty great. I need to dance to this as soon as is possible.” This is that time.
SUPER FURRY ANIMALS – Demons
There are people whose hearts don’t melt during the bit in the middle of this song where it’s just trumpets, and one day I would hope to join them, but, well. If I can’t help crying at the end of The Snowman (this is the Raymond Briggs one, by the way – I am sure there are several films of the same name, but I’m not talking about them), then I’m pretty much powerless against this.
I have not really bothered with either of the last two Furries albums, but maybe I should – I’m not sure there’s many other bands that can do poignant as well as they can.
SABRES OF PARADISE – Wilmot
Maybe I just like to get infested by things, maybe I want things to fill my brain when life happens, and if that’s true, then this is where music reaches its zenith.
MARIT LARSEN – Don’t Save Me
Myself and young people listened to ABBA the other night, I should have played them this too. It ain’t easy being a Marit Larsen fan, but her songs are too bloody good for me to choose any other option.
MARIT LARSEN – Under The Surface
STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR HAIR. You’re too articulate for that. Dammit, Marit Larsen, you’ve got some annoying habits, and hot damn but you are hell of twee, but you’re so incisive, so articulate, so damn true – Scandinavian pop is clean and elemental and the criticism is that it’s too cold, it divorces the emotions from reality too much, so pain is only know because pain happens in pop songs, and Scandinavian artists only feel things for art’s sake; Scandinavians, so it goes, aren’t actually real people. They’re too cold and analytical, too pleased with themselves in their bilingualism. They know how the parts fit together and they fit their words and play their notes around that accordingly. They pull strings, they use tactics, they arrange things just so.
And that ain’t Marit. She’s too close, too real, too damnably human, too right. She knows too much, perhaps. She’s painful – you think “these are fantastic melodies, these would fit on X’s mixtape just perfect”, then you hear the words and start to worry that X will either think you fancy them or – worse – that you think they fancy you and are trying to disavow them of said opinion. Marit Larsen is dangerous for your health, seriously. She’s too damn brilliant for reality.
CAMERA OBSCURA – Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken
“HEY, Lloyd!” I fear that is the moment I bloody crave, I wanna make sweeping statements about how Cammie Ob (I need to remind myself I am not an American music critic – how? With NICKNAMES!) won’t ever be this good again, since the possibility that they might would possibly make my brain explode. This song puts me right on the pop-not-pop divide, it makes me wonder where indie stops and pop begins, it makes me wonder where the fences get put up – this song is brilliant, it’s about how your relationship to pop defines your attitudes to actual romance and how dangerous that actual concept really is. That’s CO’s gift – they don’t wanna be twee, cos being twee is fucking the hell out of their lives. Onceuponatime I had this excellent review in me about how Underachievers, Please Try Harder is an album about the really dark bits of twee – about how self-identifying as a failure isn’t actually as easy as all that, about how scarring your soul is actually rather painful, about how much “opting out” really fucking hurts, about how you will desire normality and curse yourself for failing to achieve it. CO definitely are not a band who approach C86 as some kind of a godhead, who genuinely believe that their way of doing things is better – they are as they are because, well, that’s what happened, isn’t it? They do not want to be boxed in, but that’s what happened, and they’re trying to get the fuck out but something has gone fucking wrong in the process.
In a way, it’s like Marit – the music is crazy mad painful, but the trumpets are just EXCELLENT.
If you’re wondering, “I’d Die Without You” is still there. “Take every little bitty piece of my heart” – the insertion of bitty to make it scan, to show the extent to which Prince Be (that is what he is called) is going off his rails in order to try and hang on.
I need to keep writing cos I can’t fall asleep. Self-consciousness is descending upon me and it’s making me worry that this post is not sufficiently celebratory, and these songs are celebratory and should be celebrated. This is the peril – the need to prove how happy you are. Over-compensation – lurching. Scary business.
And “Steal My Sunshine” won’t embed.
LEN – Steal My Sunshine
That should not stop me from mentioning it in bold, though, because it is not a thing to be frowned on. Here it go.
Plus I am in a really good mood. Thus far, it has been an excellent weekend, hence this post. I have talked to people, and dammit, I enjoy that. So consider this an extension of me talking to people. I apologise that sometimes I get kinda dark and depressing when I talk at length, it just seems to happen. I wanna share this with you not because I want to depress you, but because this stuff makes me feel incredible.
SEO TAIJI – Moai
Incidentally – how incredible is this song? It’s basically radio pop, but the beat is full-on fucking glitch. It was a big hit in Korea. Lucky fuckers. The wheeze and ease of the organ over the click and rumble creates this amazing effect, totally otherworldly and utterly great.
PETER FOX – Alles Neu
And then this! Leave shit on a positive note, is what I think would be an idea, and this is as positive as they come. Mad drums, menk strings, and a bunch of lyrics in German about rebirth and regeneration and being “completely renovated” and “Peter Fox 1.1″. Oh god I need to fucking play songs at people again and not doing so is driving me bloody mad and I’d clearly be completely sick of it after a while (i.e. and hour) but jesus this is IMPORTANT TO ME and, well, wow. Need dance, need sing, need do something.
But for the moment, this blog post will have to do.
EDIT: I FORGOT:
THE KNIFE – Marble House
I do not know any other record quite like this. I bet there’s loads. But. Oh, the Youtube don’t convey the way that bass rolls in the chorus, the way it rides – just how sensationally tactile it all feels, just how incredible this cadence actually physically makes me feel, how it goes beyond just sound to whole other bastard worlds. What a fucking album this is.
THE BIRD & THE BEE – Again & Again
I don’t mind if I have to dance to this by myself. I’d just really love it if other people were dancing to it too. This song just keeps making everything right, in a slap-tambourine-on-arse twice then hop! kind of way.
Yeah, I’ll regret this in the morning, but it isn’t morning for at least another couple of hours. I’m glad we had this discussion.
Hello – I’ve currently got two posts bubbling for here and am having troubling finishing either. In the meantime, why not look at me flailing about to accurately predict the Mercury Music Prize over at Rocktimists?
