All Angels - 'Angels'
Scuse me a second, we've just stumbled across a pet peeve and I'm trying REALLY hard to keep a lid on things in the name of fairness, objectivity and not shouting. The strain is almost overwhelming, mind, so I might not last out until the end of the review, which would be a shame, this being the season of good will to all men and...HANG ON! It's not the season of good will to all women, is it? Right...here goes!
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Pop music deserves better than to be treated like the scruffy, second-class art-form to opera. THERE, I SAID IT!
There's this trend at the moment to take the kind of songs that everyone has heard far too many times on the X Factor and en-posh-ificate them using these operatic boy and girlbands.
And make no mistake, boybands and girlbands is what All Angels, G4, Il Divo and all of the rest actually are, isn't it? It's a simple formula. Four photogenic music students, fresh out of opera college, wearing all-white or all-black or black and white clothes and standing in a line. Remind you of anyone, Westlife fans?
Give them an orchestra and the Radio 2 playlist and we're off to cash factory heaven. Hell, All Angels and G4 have even stolen actual pop band NAMES (c'mon, you can work it out), so there's no need for anyone to be acting snooty about 'high' and 'low' art, is there?
The result is that people who've grown tired of the same old pop nonsense (grown-ups) can feel that they still appreciate modern music without having to choose between My Chemical Romance and Girls Aloud. Meanwhile, yer actual pop-lovers (not grown-ups, by and large) have to sit and endure endless smug rubbish about how beautiful a song can sound when it's sung 'properly', and how Cheryl Tweedy has 'no talent' and blahblahBLAH...
...with that in mind, this is a very nice rehash of a very good pop song. It didn't need rehashing, but there we are, it's done now. Your auntie wants it for Christmas, be an angel and get it for her, will you?
Released: December 18th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comments
My my, what a rant! Hehe, never actually heard the song though....
By the way they're actually just school girls! I'm 16 and Laura, the youngest in the band is only 2 months older than me! All Angels have done a great job in turning this Robbie Williams track into an epic classic number. They have turned the Christmas No. 1 that never was into something that might actually do it! And i'm not just saying that because I go to the same school as one of the girls (Laura) in the band. I bought their single this morning and I think it's great! I say good luck to them - I hope they get a top ten hit on Sunday!