It's time to create a new genre. But not in that hoary old music press way where you get two bands who dress alike, get them to stand next to each other, and put a 'New' or (if you're REALLY DESPERATE) a 'Nu' in front of some form of musical endeavour which happened in the past. An example would be calling Paul Potts and G4 'Nu Opera', or Leona Lewis 'Nu Shayne Ward'. It's kind of witless, see...
I'm considering my words very carefully for this review, judging by the drama that occurred when Hazel R (correctly, in my opinion) suggested in her review for 'Misery Business' that the song was a tad misogynistic. WHOA THERE, SAILOR! I'm not dredging that argument up again, it's water under the bridge. Let's just focus on the task at hand here, shall we?
How much reality do YOU like in your pop music? Most of us are quite content with the idea that music can capture emotions like falling in love, or regret, or anger pretty well. But how about the feeling you get when you realise you've bet your entire future on some feckless tool whose wild claims of lifelong love and support are a contract written on mist, with an imaginary biro.
Frankly if we were grading on punctuation alone, I wouldn't know what to give this song. On the one hand, the exclamation mark and ellipsis show an encouraging sense of invention that deserves rewarding. On the other hand, the fact that the punctuation as listed in the song title bears little resemblance to how the lyrics are used in the song itself suggests a somewhat slapdash approach, which quite possibly ought to be nipped in the bud. Oh fiddlesticks! I'm just going to have to judge this on the strength of the song itself, aren't I?
The funny thing about popstars is that they're often a lot like the villains in slasher movies. Let me elaborate: in the same way that the Candyman appears if you chant his name five times, or Bloody Mary if you say hers three times (although the number may depend on which specific folk tale you've heard), quite often all you need to do is think "hmm, I haven't heard anything of so-and-so for ages now, I wonder what happened to them?" and then suddenly - ta da! They've got a new single out.
Oh yes, HERE WE GO! This is definitely one of those times when you know you're in the presence of something truly majestic and huge. And the reason you know it, is because 50 Cent, a very modest man, by all accounts, has chosen to point it out at the beginning of his song. "Somethin' special...unforgettable" he mumbles, before going on to list the godlike beings whose combined auras have blessed this sonic treat, in that odd sing-song sneer he's perfected. "50 Ceeen'", he goes, "Justeeeen'", and then "Timbaleeeen'" and finally "God-deeeem".
Sometimes a little bit of humility saves a whole world of pain. Like if you were forming a band which just fails to re-create the best moments of the second-string bands formed in the wake of the late '80s indie-dance 'Madchester' boom, and you aimed to fill these songs with nearly-clever street poetry, in a voice which, to be charitable, would like to be better than it is...well, you'd maybe want to stop acting like you're THE BEST.
I can't remember the last time I heard a song which is as guaranteed to create strong reactions as this one (actually I can, it was the Crazy Frog). There are just SO MANY things you can get yourself in a tizz about within the bars of this little gem. So, for the benefit of international tranquillity and goodwill, here's a handy exploration of some of the bigger ones, together with a some hints for dealing with any sudden rage issues which may arise.
Don't worry if you can't read this, there's a proper text version below...
Settle down, this is going to be a LONG REVIEW, but totally worth it. I first encountered Tokio Hotel last year as a kind of musical holiday romance, when the song 'Durch Den Monsun' ('Under The Monsoon') came on MTV Europe while I was waiting to lech over Alexz Johnson. I must admit, my original thoughts were "my God that lesbian singer is beautiful, I wish I could carry off that haircut" and thinking the song was pretty.
A recent bio of Candie Payne described her as 鈥淣ancy Sinatra meeting Dido鈥 (owww, my ears!). Mark Ronson, who produces her latest single, pictures her as "a mixture of '60s Dusty Springfield and Mika" (owww, my eyes!). So essentially what we should be expecting from 鈥極ne More Chance鈥 is this: a slice of heavenly '60s-style pop fabulousness, with a sprinkle of 21st century somethingness (sorry, the leap from Dido to Mika is something I don鈥檛 even want to consider).
NOTE: This is a nasty, nasty thing to do. It's worse than throwing up on Kate Nash's trainers and then putting holes in Rihanna's umbrella and then spilling ketchup on Plain White Ts' plain white T. So, the kind of circumstance which would make this OK would have to involve a full moon, most of the band turning into werewolves or zombies, Sarah being a vampire and someone mistakenly calling Cheryl Cole 'Lily'. That's the ONLY circumstance in which it would be alright to tip cack all over them.
Oh, and don't ask too many questions about what's in the bin. You REALLY don't wanna know...
This song brings together a few threads which have run across different ChartBlog entries and comments over the past few months, for which we should all be grateful. It's almost as if the Park knew the things we all want to talk about in advance, and then tailored their creativity so's to fit the needs of an insignificant limey blog with a slight chippiness about whether it's OK to claim personal lyrics as global messages or not (go here if confused). Who knew modern music was becoming this interactive?
In some ways, forcing an up and coming band to take the ChartBlog email questionnaire live on the phone (rather than having the time to concoct amazing answers over email, as you'd expect) is a cruel torture indeed.
This is because some of the questions are specifically about the act of emailing, some of them rely on the person who is answering them being able to look back over questions they've been asked, and some of them are just really odd.
In 'Merry Happy', one of the stand-out songs on Kate Nash's VERYVERYGOOD debut album, Kate (or, in honour of La Tunst, K8), points out that "you can grow flowers from where dirt used to be". Now, apart from the fact that this is 100% incorrect - you can grow flowers from dirt (or soil, as it's more commonly known), you can't grow flowers from the absence of dirt - there's something about this statement which brings KT Tunstall to mind.
THE TOP 5...
| Click on song titles for ChartBlog review and media. | |||||
| 听 | 1 | KANYE WEST ft. DAFT PUNK | 'STRONGER' | |  |
| 听 | 2 | ROBYN WITH KLEERUP | 'WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT' | | |
| 听 | 3 | TIMBALAND ft. DOE & KERI WILSON | 'THE WAY I ARE' | | |
| 听 | 4 | KATE NASH | 'FOUNDATIONS' | | |
| 听 | 5 | PLAIN WHITE Ts | 'HEY THERE DELILAH' | | |
| The entire Top 40 is right here... | |||||
When Britpop was very popular, many people, myself included, acquired guitars. Mine was five quid from a junkshop, which is very indie and real of me I'm sure. Since I was about eight at the time and not all that concerned with ideas of Proper Genuine Music, the rock and roll potential of its origins was somewhat lost on me. The first time I picked it up, I strung together a series of noises that sounded not totally unlike 'Wonderwall' by Oasis. This wasn't because I am some kind of musical prodigy (because I'm definitely not,) it's just that the first time nearly anyone picks up a guitar they can produce a series of notes not totally unlike 'Wonderwall.' That's how guitars work.
I'm going to try really hard, during the course of this review, to not get over-excited. This is for two reasons. The first is that I really don't want to put anyone off this song by claiming it is some kind of cure for terminal disease when in actual fact it just a song. The second is that I don't want to make a fool of myself, only to discover that the thrill of the music disappears overnight. Some things you just don't recover from.
It all seemed so easy at first. A bit of a listen to Elliot Minor's really-very-good 'Jessica' for review purposes, some conversations with the band's people about maybe getting to speak to Alex from the band in an interview situation, a brief chat with some ChartBlog Street Team people to help get some questions together, a wander into the ChartBlog studio at the alloted hour, what could possibly go wrong?
According to Ms Nicole, you can only tell it's summertime if it's light at bedtime, if you're hot, if you're a man with no top on and if you've a new bikini (from a very specific high street retailer) to brag about to your friends. Can I just reassure all ChartBlog readers past and present that if this is true, I have NEVER EVER experienced the full delights of a British summer. Not once. And even if I had, there would be NO pictures of me doing it. Not a one. Nada. Zip.
Well that's a bit better, at least. I know it was a massive massive hit and an iconic song and everything, but 'Ruby' got REALLY old in the end (something to do with those crammed-in words in the verses - like "due to lack of inT'REST, tomorROW is canCELLED") and 'Everything Is Average Nowadays' was just a decent song title in need of a less average song. So, after charming everyone into believing 2006 was 1996 all over again, the concern was that the Kaiser Chiefs were just another bunch of up-themselves indie rockers with only one good idea...the one they borrowed off Blur.
What follows is an extract taken from a book entitled 'Timbaland's Big Book Of Thingses What I Are Done', which is collection of his blog postings, written on a broken television with a muddy stick. If it's really real*, it does throw interesting new light on the super-producer in his home environment.
============================
'Ello my 'andsomes!
Oi'm right glaad you've all come over on this magic wordybox of yourn to see old Timbo do my typin'. It's right peaceful here on the old 'omestead now the sun's out. Oi was all on me lonesome, just watching the worlds go by, out the window and listening to the cowses all mooin' an' that. Oi loves to hear me cowses doin' their mooin'...
In Britain, it's a bit hard to tell when the summer happens. As a nation obsessed with weather, we're also necessarily obsessed with working out what season we're trying to complain about and the lack of clear definition between sort-of-March-ish time and sort-of-August-ish time this year has been quite traumatic for the average stiff upper lip, even if it hasn't suddenly found itself underwater.
Meanwhile, popstars have been trying to resolve some of this problem with some concerts no one watched but which, like the weather, we have all come to enjoy complaining about. Little did they know that their proper role in the whole scheme of things used to be far simpler...
*sigh* Y'know, it really doesn't do to get too full of yourself in this business we call show. And that's just as true if you're a little blog-writing person as if you're a great big rock band with lots of fans and a very busy schedule.
See these two pics above? You've got your Funeral For A Friend on one side, and the Subways on the other. And, as you will see if you read on, there's a really good reason why both bands are up there next to each other, and it's a story of frustration and being mucked about, but with a really happy ending...
Wow! What a week for music. No doubt you鈥檝e all been shocked to the very core by recent stirrings in the redtops and broadsheets. Indeed, the headlines screamed a warning that set klaxons (not those klaxons, real ones) going off in the nerve centre of Chart Blog Operations: Pop star ANGERS PARENTS by encouraging teenagers to be NAUGHTY.
NOTE: See? Doesn't EVERYONE tell you that it's a bad idea to play with live grenades? All it takes is a madman (a word which scores double anti-PC points because people with mental health problems don't like to be called mad, and women don't like to be left out if there are punk rockers to blow up...or at least I THINK that's why the second half of the word is un-PC) with a window-hook, and it's goodbye Billie-Joe. And here's me thinking he DIDN'T want to be an American idiot...
It's always quite annoying when you thought you were finally rid of something, only for it to pop right back up in your face when you least expect it. Like when you've spent the past ten minutes washing a saucepan and you think you've managed to scrape last night's dinner off the bottom until you look at it from a slightly different angle and you realise you've got at least another five minutes in the company of your scouring pad ahead of you.
THE TOP 5...
| Click on song titles for ChartBlog review and media. | |||||
| 听 | 1 | ROBYN WITH KLEERUP | 'WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT' | | |
| 听 | 2 | TIMBALAND ft. DOE & KERI WILSON | 'THE WAY I ARE' | | |
| 听 | 3 | KANYE WEST ft. DAFT PUNK | 'STRONGER' | | |
| 听 | 4 | KATE NASH | 'FOUNDATIONS' | | |
| 听 | 5 | FERGIE | 'BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY' | | |
| The entire Top 40 is right here... | |||||
There's an unintentionally brilliant bit in this video, where the band Hard-Fi film themselves playing this song - a rabble-rousing dissection of what it's like to grow up overlooked in the suburbs of a British city - outside a satellite dish which is presumably responsible for beaming SOME TV stuff out to CERTAIN CHANNELS, and then, because they've plugged themselves into the dish and they're Hard-Fi and therefore very technical, they manage to interrupt all of the TV broadcasting in THE WORLD.
I don't want to come across as some kind of pervert here. This would a dreadful thing to do for someone in my position, after all. The Daily Mail would petition the 大象传媒 for my immediate sacking, hordes of vigilantes would mass outside my house, with flaming torches and big signs saying "OWT PEEDO SKUM!", and it would take FOREVER to get the lawn back just the way I like it. So, it is with a great deal of caution and fear that I stand before you and I say the following...
Regular ChartBlog readers will be familiar with the idea of the rocksnob. That's someone who only likes music if they are sure it has been entirely written and performed by the boys (and it's always boys) in the band (and it's always a band), and no-one else, using only guitars, in a time-honoured fashion which has been handed down from generation to generation ever since the days of the Beatles.
Not that there's anything wrong with boys and guitars and writing your own songs, it's more the utter disdain your average rocksnob has for music which is not made in this way which is troublesome...
When it comes to a song like this - which comes to you with it's tiny beating heart cupped in tender hands, so that you can stroke all the pain out of it and maybe help it find a safe new home - there are of course only two legitimate responses. The first is to coo softly, tears welling, and gently hug yourself that you're lucky enough to receive such a lovely musical present while the sun is in the sky and the birds are tweeting in the trees.
Friends, we've been living through trying times. We've had Biblical weather - gales, floods, rain, more rain - and this has severely affected the nation's music-loving habits. Not for nothing has the No.1 throughout this entire ordeal been a song about an umbrella. And this does raise interesting questions about music's power over the world in which we live.
Enter Remi Nicole, a young songwriter from London with a perky little song called 'Go Mr Sunshine'. Has she come to save us from more elemental punishment? Only one way to find out.
By which I mean it's ChartBlog interview time again....
Hey! Who's been feeding helium to Brandon Flowers? He's gonna be SO GRUMPY when he finds out his brilliant new song has been spoiled by someone making his voice go all high and squeaky. Why, it barely sounds like him! And yet this is clearly the Killers, right? There's no mistaking that pop bombast, that rumbling bass, the background whoosh which makes every song sound like the pivotal scene in some epic movie (in a desert). Yup, that's 100% definitely the Killers, right there. No question. May the Good Lord strike me down if I'm wro...
Now, under normal circumstances, there would be no reason for ChartBlog to bother writing about Paul Potts at all. This isn't because he's beneath the contempt of a site devoted to popular music, or because he won a talent show. It's more because he's just doing all those arias everyone else does, so what is there to talk about exactly?
Well I'm glad I asked that question, because his album is at No.1, and it's only recently that I had the chance to take a good long look at the picture on the cover.
On the surface, there's nothing noteworthy about it. It's a fairly standard CD covershot. Head angled a bit, thoughtful face, black and white for added class, shirt collar undone to suggest the end of a hard day's singing, sepia tint to make it seem a bit 'olden days', the works.
Sometimes a little bit of research can unearth the most startling facts, even when you're fairly sure you don't really need to do it. I mean anyone who's been paying any attention to the last couple of chart years knows who Nicole is. She's The Pussycat Doll. The one who sings. But a quick look at her (you can hear the song there too) has unearthed a very early blog posting, from the days when PCD were mere kittens, in which she manages to hint at her personal artistic standards without even realising it.
NOTE: Sometimes the simplest things hide the darkest secrets. Now, I'm not saying that anyone should try and actaully DO this. It's bad manners, and it may get you beaten to a pulp by some burly bouncer or other. Having said that, if you happen to become fixated by Mutya's deadly ice-stare, and don't know how to save yourself from imminent freezing, no need to drive erratic, now you've got options, OK?
Music can be a cruel mistress sometimes, turning you upside-down just when you're expecting a nice sit-down or making you floppy and listless when you're desperate to throw your maddest shapes. In many ways listening to music is like watching an inept conjurer. Sometimes, even though everything is as it should be, and all of the equipment is working properly, the magic just fails to happen.
It has some to my attention that the 大象传媒's Slink website has made this beautiful thing. And being a beautiful-thing-loving kind of ChartBlog, it's only right that we all get to wallow in the glory which shineth around, and stuff...
Not for the first time, the choice of a single off a well-liked album has caused ripples of bickering among Team ChartBlog. Particularly between Steve P and yours truly. In the case of this song, I won't go into detail as to the two viewpoints we've been expressing, as it's not dignified. Let's just say that one of us thinks the disco-tastic 'Love Is Here' should have been released instead, and the other one of us rightly thinks that this is much better, and that Steve P is wrong.
THE TOP 5...
| Click on song titles for ChartBlog review and media. | |||||
| 听 | 1 | TIMBALAND ft. DOE & KERI WILSON | 'THE WAY I ARE' | | |
| 听 | 2 | KATE NASH | 'FOUNDATIONS' | | |
| 听 | 3 | FERGIE | 'BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY' | | |
| 听 | 4 | RIHANNA ft. JAY-Z | 'UMBRELLA' | | |
| 听 | 5 | ROBYN WITH KLEERUP | 'WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT' | | |
| The entire Top 40 is right here... | |||||
Now I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking that a superstar team-up between R Kelly (he's like Usher's dad!) and Usher (R Kelly junior!) is a very irresponsible thing to do. It would be like the meeting of matter and anti-matter, which, as we all know, would cause a breakdown in the fabric of the universe, resulting in the total obliteration of all life-kind, therefore seriously denting CD and download sales FOREVER MORE..
Golly, it's kind of tough to know what words to use these days, when you're talking about Amy Winehouse. Certainly the media-profile-version of her is as some kind of talented super-freakshow - all hairy skin, odd physical twitches, lost teeth, the battle with the bottle, wearing the same vest for months on end...a kind of anorexident waiting to happen, if you'll forgive such a heartless pun.
Having only narrowly escaped a very long and very unpleasant prison sentence last week, just for attempting to follow the lyrics to Fergie's 'Big Girls Don't Cry' to the letter, I am approaching this week's assignment with a fair degree of trepidation.
I've also had the Lyriscope itself thoroughly cleaned and tested, just in case it was some faulty diode or other which left me languishing in a cell for very ages.
A few things to bear in mind before you watch Stronger. First of all, Kanye鈥檚 admitted that his version isn鈥檛 as good as the Daft Punk track that it samples*, but there鈥檚 obviously no hard feelings because they鈥檙e in the video. Secondly, those sunglasses took three months, THREE LONG MONTHS, to source.
You join us at a very exciting moment in ChartBlog's long history of having a big old debate about stuff to do with music. There's a new Girls Aloud single on the way, and this gives us a perfect opportunity to perform some careful analysis, using our most experienced careful analysts (hi Steve!), and a lot of stropping, pouting and general breath-holding (all me, sadly) in order to arrive at a proper scientific measurement of how brilliant (or otherwise) it is.
I feel cheated. I've been keeping an eye on this fella for a while now. He's one of an entire school of acousti-songwriters who've been washed up on the shore in the wake of Jack Johnson's surfer-dude tsunami. There's him, Jack, Donavon Frankenreiter, G-Love, Timmy Big-Board, Beardy Strumfella, Laid Back Snoozy Thompson, Float Waverider and (my personal favourite) the Pet Shop Boys.
Only joking. Laid Back Snoozy Thompson's real name is actually Really Laid Back Snoozy Thompson...
Getting older comes to us all (hopefully). And one of privileges or getting older is that you get to talk about what it was like when you were younger as if it was the best time which ever existed in the world ever. Every summer was hot and long, you could get 10p if you took your glass (GLASS!) lemonade bottle back to the shop, and there used to be a half-pence piece. Why wouldn't that be brilliant?
For what I am about to do, for the sins I am about to commit, may the gods of hip hop and R&B forgive me. These are not the actions of a mindless bigot, but a concerned friend. I come not to damn two entire genres with hate, but to encourage them both to develop and grow, with love and support.
And maybe throw in a few little snarky jokes too, because I am only human, and it is fun.
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