1 - Sugababes - 'About You Now'
So, the band's first really NEW new material since Mutya left, and it's a case of goodbye frostypop and hello friendlypop. Frankly, I don't trust any of 'em. This is a ruse to catch us all off guard, and then they'll suddenly stick an icicle through the hearts of a pop-loving nation and it'll REALLY hurt. Something like that, I bet. (FM)
We all know what it's like when a dear friend comes over, clutching an over-thumbed copy of their new favourite band's CD, or a hot and sweaty iPod, yes? "Oh my God," they say, "you have SO got to hear this song, right...THIS SONG IS MY LIFE!"
And then they put the CD in, or plug their manky, waxy earphones into your beautiful clean ears, and play you the song which is currently making their spine turn to string and their eyes turn to dew-puddles every time they hear it and you feel...nothing.
Look out of your window, go on. Now go and stand outside with no coat on for 30 seconds and come back to me. You there? Right, then I'll contin...hang on, Tim in Salford hasn't quite got back yet...TIM! TIM! Oh here he is. Right, did you notice anything about how you felt? If you felt a bit chilly and/or wet and perhaps slightly depressed without really knowing why, that'll be because it's autumn. You can tell it's autumn partly because of the dead leaves on the ground, partly because you're back at school/college/work and your summer holiday has been and gone, and party because...well...it's September, dammit. That's where autumn lives.
It's been a while since I dusted off the trusty, dusty and little bit rusty ChartBlog Lyriscope, and feed it some fresh word-fuel, so that I can see exactly how easy - or difficult - it is to try and live by what these poetical musical god-beings are telling us about life and how to live it.
This week, it's the turn of Justin Timberlake and his 'Lovestoned'. I've been investigating the title while the Lyriscope batteries charge up, and apparently it's something completely different to kidney-stoned OR being stoned to death by an angry mob. But HOW different? Well, let's see, shall we?
There are some songs that you hear at some awful, broken moment at 4am and suddenly become entirely spellbound by, as they simultaneously soothe and further discombobulate your mind until you are left, weeping in a heap. Almost always they have a certain sort of chimy guitar playing and mournful lyrics, moving at a steady pace between being a ballad and being a rock song, wrapping you in hypnotic folds of their melancholy.
NOTE: It has taken me AGES to come up with the right means to get past Lily's impressive verbal defences and find the one sure way to take her down. Originally I thought of cutting her bike's brake cables (from the cover of 'Alright Still'), but a) that's a vile thing to do, like really disgustingly horrible and b) who's to say she wouldn't use her dress as some kind of parachute and then come after me with her sharpened earrings?
And then I realised that she is of course an Allen, and Allens must be wound up using Allen keys, or they will run down. After that it was simply a matter of waiting for my chance, and sneaking up on her secret flap (calm down, boys, it's in her back...).
Ladies, we are in the presence of a very gifted man. He's got a honey-smooth voice, he's got the bittersweet melodies, he's got that clean-cut, box-fresh style thing going on, and he's very considerate to your needs, assuming one of your needs is to find yourself a nice clean-cut R&B star to make sexy with. Oh, and on the evidence of this little ditty, he is possibly the largest manufacturer of solid cheese this side of Cheddar Gorge. How does he find the time?
It's not often you'll find gumph about a new TV show here, much less a new TV show which will appear on a channel which is not a ´óÏó´«Ã½ channel, but this is kind of a special case, AND comes with a free gift, just like you get with breakfast cereal. What's not to love?
So, the show is Dubplate Drama, Channel 4's grime-riddled interacti-soap, which started its second series recently, and contains three things which are pretty exciting to ChartBlog readers (assuming ChartBlog readers are interested in urban dramas in the first place, obv).
Two rules to consider before attempting a cover:
1. Pick something interesting for the love of God and
2. Add something to the original.
Essentially, if it’s been sung in an X-Factor audition, you’ll probably want to avoid it, unless you know that your baile-funk version of 'Angels' has what it takes to reignite the fire in the belly of the music industry.
Frank Carter out of Gallows is a man on a mission. In performance, he comes across as one of those people who have elected to take a stand against almost everything which is bad, and the medium he has chosen to deliver this message is gnarly punk rock, played as if the world is about to end and every word could be your last. This is exactly the kind of person who, if you were sat next to them on a bus, you would want to avoid eye-contact with, in case a glance might trigger some kind of emotional confrontation, involving all of the swear-words in the world.
Sorry, this is quite a late review, largely because I've an inbuilt snob reflex against film and TV stars who want to start rock bands. Russell Crowe had one called 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts, which is now called The Ordinary Fear Of God, because that's the kind of thing Russell Crowe would do. Johnny Depp has had a few, here and there, and Keanu Reeves had one called Dogstar (Dogstar + Fightstar = Dogfight? Starstar?)...they're always over-earnest, and overshadowed by the superfame of the film star in question.
From tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow. Well, mighty oaks, weedy oaks, stunted oaks, saplings, shoots, squirrel poo...they ALL come from tiny acorns. The story I'm about to tell you is about the transformation of one tiny acorn, in conversation form, to something else. Whether you consider the result to be a mighty oak or a plop on the forest floor is entirely up to you.
THE TINY ACORN:
One day, I was having an IM conversation with Steve ChartBlog (formerly known as Steve P) about some of the satirical songs Tori Amos has been singing recently about modern celebrities. One of them is a very funny dig at Lindsay Lohan, and one of them is a half-sarcastic song of support for Britney Spears (YouTube is a wonderful thing, you see).
Every so often, I worry about the Sugababes. I can't help it; it's not so much that they keep haemorrhaging members at an alarming rate (anyone want to take bets on how much longer before Keisha quits? The lustre of being the only remaining original bandmember can only keep you going for so long, I'm sure), but sometimes I wonder if they're just losing the hunger these days. I'm not saying it's anybody's fault, but when they start displaying this kind of laziness you can't help wondering.
1 - Sean Kingston - 'Beautiful Girls'
OK, I get it now, Rihanna's people made everyone buy this song so that anyone who'd had enough of 'Umbrella' would think more fondly of it after twenteen weeks of old robot voice encouraging mass cliff-leaps just because some hot mama with no compassion happened to not fancy you as much as you thought she should. Frankly, ears deserve better. (FM)
In all the melee of celebrity life, brand-extending perfume deals, the occasional stint as an actress and all that, it's good to see that J-Lo hasn't forgotten what she does best - making not-particularly-memorable pop songs, and pretending to be very down to earth. This is not the same as BEING very down to earth, but it's nice that she feels the need to make the effort. Strange, given her heightened status in the world, but nice.
Right, stop what you're doing. I mean it. Stop right now. You might have come over here to quickly scan the latest ChartBlog entry while you're waiting for a Facebook friend to reply, or a MySpace request to be approved, or...well let's face it, there's blimming LOADS of ways to pass the time on the internet, which occasionally leave you sitting on your hands with nothing to do.
Y'know those lists people do of important things everyone should experience before they die? And you know how they are always ridiculously silly things like 'making a hot air balloon out of a Primark carrier bag and using it to fly to the moon, then doing some shopping at Top Moon and flying back in time for tea'? Well, here's another unlikely treat which I can thoroughly recommend...making a pop star giggle.
When it comes to splitting opinions, and keeping people so far apart they can't even SEE each other, the benchmark until now has always been Marmite (largely because they say so). But you have to admit that in recent months, their lofty claims of being the only thing that people either love or hate have actually been taken over by a young lady singer and her tales of bitter lemons and sick on trainers. Move over, toast-gunk, when it comes to being adored/despised with a passion that knows no bounds, NO-ONE beats the Nash.
Nice title, eh? Provocative.
Now, when it comes to managing and developing an internationally famous brand, one of the things corporations always try and do is diversify...WAIT! COME BACK! I haven't finished...Now, supposing you're the head of a massive multinational whose wealth has been mainly built up off the back of sales of one product, like, say, a bath sponge which doesn't suck up hairs, leaving them all cold and minging for the next person who uses the bath to gag at...something amazing like that.
Oh dear, oh dear. What are this lot DOING? Don't they know there are strict rules about putting happiness and fun into your indie music? Indie-type music is about things which are SERIOUS, and NOT-FRIVOLOUS or SILLY. Things which are carefree, inconsequential or celebratory are SHALLOW, and not worthy of the PASSIONATE indie fan's attention. It's something like that, isn't it?
Teenagers, eh? Can't do a THING to please 'em. Every compliment becomes an insult, every joke becomes serious, anything you say becomes fuel for a never-ending inter-generational bicker-fest, and when you challenge your young adversary, pointing out that they are twisting your words to suit their internal fight-quest, they either scream your face off ("you just don't UNDERSTAND, how COULD you?") or give in straight away, leaving you wondering what was the point of arguing in the first place.
So, having been offered a chat with Sarah out of Operator Please (the young folks who gave us the amazing 'Just A Song About Ping Pong'), I naturally put on my special strop-deflecting armour and prepared for battle...
There are some lessons that you can only learn the hard way. Like if you're Brad Pitt, and you're having a baby son, the only way you can find out that calling him Shiloh is a bad idea is to go ahead and then wait and see if someone can find a way to make the name sound silly, which if you spoonerise it, it does (note: spoonerising is when you take two words, and exchange the first letters in each. So Natasha Bedingfield becomes Batasha Nedingfield, Pete Wentz become Wete Pentz, and Shiloh Pitt becomes Piloh Sh...well, you can work it out). No wonder the children have been registered as Jolie-Pitt, right?
NOTE: They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and here's proof. If you attacked Pink with a sword, she'd kick your knackers clean off, and then use the sword to do what the Vikings used to call a 'blood eagle' (please don't look this up, it's extremely unpleasant and should never ever be attempted by anyone ever, including any leftover Vikings). But wave a pen in her direction and she's like putty in your hands. Hell, this isn't even the only way to destroy her. How about a nifty equals sign in between the 'Pink' and 'Stupid Girls' on her single 'Stupid Girls' (and crossing the 's' out), so it reads 'Pink = Stupid Girl'? Eh? That's some satire right there? She'd be CRUSHED!
SECOND NOTE: Please don't destroy Pink unless it's absolutely necessary. It's not nice.
THE SCENE: A moonlit rooftop, high above streetlit roads, suspended between the two layers of lights. Detritus blows, gathers, swirls suddenly in a gust of hot wind from an air vent and the animal noises of the city after dark click, scrape and moan in your ears, distant and almost comforting.
It is a cold night, you think, you shouldn't be up here much longer (and come to that, what the hell are you doing up here at all?) but something is telling you to wait. A sudden chill tells you that the wind has picked up again, although this time caused by nothing so mundane as an air conditioning outlet and the light seems stripy as shadows move fast, shreds of cloud chasing across the full moon until the light is blacked out, leaving only eerie lithium uplighting.
See that fella on the end there with all the arrows pointing at him? Stop looking at Pete Wentz for a second, and go look. No, not Patrick Stump, the OTHER end. Him with the hair and the beard. Oh just LOOK, WILL YOU? That's Andy. He's the drummer in Fall Out B...have you gone back to look at Wentzy again? Look, I'm TALKING to you, the least you can do is PAY ATTENTION.
Right, that's better. This is Andy from Fall Out Boy. He is - it's fair to say - NOT the most famous member of his band. Or the second most-famous...or (and this one you can debate, if you like) the third.
Hmmm. Popstars are going a bit overboard (no pun intended) with the transport-related metaphors at the moment, aren't they? Rihanna's currently comparing herself to a car, and now Katie's imagining her beau as a sailboat. What can we learn from this, I wonder? Since it's clearly all not-so-subtly referring to the act of physical lovemaking (seriously: everything relates back to that. Ask Freud if you don't believe me), are we to conclude that a romp with Rihanna is slick, stylish and noisy, while copping off with Katie is wet, wobbly and prone to inducing nausea? Bet Katie's really wishing she'd at least plumped for a motorboat, or a yacht. Or a catamaran!
In a slight change to the chart reports, your Top 5 now comes complete with 100% extra, as it's the Top 10. Also, Team ChartBlog seem to be having a kind of gag-related Show-Off-Off. Humour them, woncha?
1 - Sean Kingston - 'Beautiful Girls'
In the Ben E. King song 'Stand By Me', which this samples, Ben sings of an apocalyptic landscape, where stars go out, mountains tumble, and the world comes to an end. None of which bothers him so long as his special lovely is by his side. This would probably not have been a helpful message had someone chosen to cover the song at the Live Earth concerts. (FM)
ChartBlog Review - -
All this fuss about the gorilla, and how amazing the costume is, how lifelike, etc, and on a drum kit just like Phil Collins's too...
BUT!
...Phil Collins is left-handed. The kit is back to front. Didn't get THAT right, didja, Mr Chocolate Monkey Drumming Ad Man? TRY HARDER!
There's something about Jack Penate that really reminds me of a comic book hero. It's not anyone massively rippling and muscley, like Superman, or grotesque and deformed, like the Thing. No, the cartoon character who Jack most resembles is the Billy Whizz, out of the Beano. This is not because he's got the same haircut, or because he wears a jumper with all lightening down it, but because he never, ever, ever, ever, EVAH keeps still.
Question: Does it still count as a solo career if your song sounds exactly like the sort of song you would put out with your day job band, and contains a guest appearance from the singer in your day job band, and it's basically one of your day job band's biggest hits, only done worse, and in an (even) more remedial, drooling...THICKER THAN JADE GOODY'S HOMEMADE CUSTARD sort of way? At least Fergie's solo hits have tended to feature just Fergie. If Will's solo hits feature Fergie too, what's the point?
Dear ChartBlog readers. If you will forgive a(nother) moment of reflection, where instead of talking about matters related to music and the people who make it, I instead choose to reveal some deep flaw within myself and beg for forgiveness...today you find me a broken man, a mere shadow of a fragment of a shell of a husk of the pop blogger who usually coughs up verbal hairballs all over the internet.
And the cause of my downfall is the bloke with the arrows pointing to his bespectacled head. He didn't look like he had what it takes to take me down, but BOY did he...
The art of naming a new song is a precarious business. You've got to strike a balance. One the one hand, it can be bad to simply name your song after the most memorable moment in it, especially if that moment contains a fairly common pop expression like 'Crazy', 'I Believe' or 'I Want You'. You run the risk that people think it's a cover before they've even heard it - Gnarls Barkley had something like the 17th hit to be called 'Crazy' since charts began, for example.
Once again, I've been rooting about down the back of the ChartBlog sofa to find another selection of slightly raggedy, careworn tunes which possibly won't be giving chart compilers sleepless nights, but which are well worth a listen nonetheless.
Here's a good example of what I mean. It's called 'Excuse Me', it's by a collective called Oli 'N' Clive (Oli being the singer, and Clive being the rest of the band), and it features someone playing the saw. And it's rather lovely.
And here we all were thinking that the only musical members of the family Corr were Andrea, Caroline, the other girl and the man one. But no, here's cousin Ida (who possibly isn't really their cousin), and it's fair to say she comes from the side of the family who are less interested in creating laminated folk-pop, and more interested in creating some kind of dance-floor ruckus.
You might not have heard about this song 'Hey There Delilah' that's been doing the rounds a bit lately. It's by a band called Plain White T's, and it's been mildly popular with people, enjoying a moderately good run in the charts and opening a few new doors for the band in the process. I mean it's not the kind of song you'd want to get over-excited about, but still, a fair effort, right?
OK, all irony aside, 'Hey There Delilah' has been one of THE songs of the year, and therefore deserves to be pulled apart in some kind of intense interview situation, preferably with the man who wrote it, yes?
Where I live we have sharks. Big ones. Fortunately, being Basking Sharks their main aim in life is to look truly disturbing with their huge gaping maws and also to filter thousands of gallons of water through said maws, to feed off the plankton therein. They can, however, grow to about 9.5m long on average and have been found up to 12.5m long. Which is bigger than most caravans, so supposing you got through the filtration process, you might assume it'd be quite roomy in there.
NOTE: As anyone involved in skydiving will tell you, cutting the straps off someone's 'chute is horrible, illegal, and a very bad thing to do indeed. It's also very very hard to do in mid-air, so please don't try this at home (unless you live 3,000 feet above the ground and falling). Also, can you imagine the size of crater which would be left after Kanye's enormo-ego hit the ground? It'd be big enough to wipe out Ipswitch forever. Do you want that on your conscience?
There's a brilliant (but very short) moment at the end of this video which kind of highlights why Dave Grohl is among the most loved of all musicians who have ever lived. It comes after the underwhelming first half, in which the band play their new song in a big warehouse, after the ultra-moody slow-mo build up of tension, as the band play their new song in front of a line of riot police, and after the bit where, just as the 'Stairway To Heaven' introduction comes back for a second airing, the riot police charge, the wall of red liquid behind the band explodes, and chaos reigns.
There comes a time in the life of any music-related endeavour when an artist has to make a choice. You can either allow your brilliant and inspired work to reach people in a free, organic fashion, via word-of-mouth recommendations between close friends, and haphazard discoveries on MySpace, or you can take the short-cut, and employ the services of one of popular music's most interesting (and slightly frightening) organisations...the street team.
One of these days I suspect I will have some sort of small coronary as a direct result of reading the comments that readers of various sites and blogs (not our fragrant readers, obviously, whose comments are always articulate and insightful and entirely welcome, natch) tend to leave. The sort that, were I an anime character, would leave me goggling "WTF?!?!" in a large, spikey-edged speech bubble, while clutching my chest and toppling backwards out of frame, possibly reaching up in the next panel and clutching vainly at the bottom of the frame, purely for comedy purposes.
THE TOP 5...
| Click on song titles for ChartBlog review and media. | |||||
| Ìý | 1 | SEAN KINGSTON | 'BEAUTIFUL GIRLS' | |  |
| Ìý | 2 | PLAIN WHITE Ts | 'HEY THERE DELILAH' | | |
| Ìý | 3 | KANYE WEST ft. DAFT PUNK | 'STRONGER' | | |
| Ìý | 4 | JAMES BLUNT | '1973' | | |
| Ìý | 5 | GIRLS ALOUD | 'SEXY! (NO NO NO)' | | |
| The entire Top 40 is right here... | |||||
Andy Warhol once said "you don’t read your reviews, you weigh them". So in the spirit of Warholian research we’ve spent a good part of the week weighing a pile of Doherty music reviews on one side of an ancient scale, and on the other side, a pile of Doherty life-reviews, that the tabloids have tirelessly been compiling over the past few years.
Good Lord! Here I was talking only yesterday about how certain singer's voices sound like they can only carry the one tune, and here's the absolute KING of this exact situation...and this time he's brought along a friend who also has the same knack. It's like we've reached some kind of elemental plane where music only exists on an atomic level, and all molecular synthesis falls apart. But, if all Ian Brown songs sound like Ian Brown, and all Sinead O'Connor songs sound like Sinead O'Connor...who does this song sound like?
Remember how we reviewed Darren Hayes's song 'On The Verge Of Something Wonderful' and then loads of his fans got excited because it was a friendly review, so I asked them to send in questions I could put to Darren as part of the question-and-answer conversation that we media-types like to call 'an interview'? Remember this? Do you? Hmm?
Well, the good news is that I've had the answers back, and they are ready for perusal. Wanna see?
Melody, she is a cruel mistress. Some voices can carry just about any tune ever invented in the world ever, some can't carry as much as a thimbleful of song. Neither of these situations would necessarily prevent or support your dreams of carving out a career as a world-beating lead singer, of course. That's just the way pop music works.
You know how sometimes you get chatting to someone and you just really GET each other? Not in a romantic way (necessarily), but it's one of those conversations where there are very few awkward pauses and ideas are flying around like flying flies around a flying fly pie.
Well, I hesitate to make any grand pronouncements about my relationship with Paul Steel, beyond saying that his music is rather good - very arch, very orchestral, very swanky - and that he is very good fun to talk to about weird stuff. In the case of this interview, he was very good to talk about weird stuff to do with being a super-hero.
For some singers, morals are very important. The respect with which we all treat one another is an essential part of who we all are. It's the only way you can judge the true worth of someone. After all, ethics isn't just how people with a lisp talk about the county which lies to the immediate east of London, y'know.
(*waits*...everyone with me yet? No?)
(*More waiting* ...Now?)
(Good. Let's continue).
Is it possible for a song to be any MORE White Stripes than this is? There must be music students all over the world whose major project is to write a song in the 'contempory idiom of Jack White', and they would KILL have come up with something as complete and all-encompassing as this. It's like one of those condensed fruit drinks which claim to have all five of your daily portions, only with White Stripes albums, and there are six portions.
NOTE: How many times does your mum or dad have to tell you not to slam doors, eh? Not only could you accidentally knock someones scalding hot tea all down their front, or trap a cat's tail, but in really extreme circumstances, you could also inadvertently end the self-made career of the UK's finest hardcore rock-rave rave-rockers. Which would ONLY be permissable if it turned out their feral noise was as the result of being...well...genuinely feral, and therefore a danger to mankind. It's still a bad idea to slam doors though.
Oh yes! Here we go! I haven't had the chance to really kick a song to death for AGES now. And I only bought new song-kicking boots a couple of weeks back, and there's been no chance to use them, due to the lack of total dreadfulness in most of the recent releases. But this is James Blunt, right? Mr 'You're Beautiful'...The Man Who Should Not Smile (it makes has face look weird, see)..Captain Squeaky...You know, that massively wet bloke with the girl's voice who claims to have been a soldier in a past life. Song-Kicking-Boots, DO YOUR STUFF...
THE TOP 5...
| Click on song titles for ChartBlog review and media. | |||||
| Ìý | 1 | SEAN KINGSTON | 'BEAUTIFUL GIRLS' | | |
| Ìý | 2 | KANYE WEST ft. DAFT PUNK | 'STRONGER' | | |
| Ìý | 3 | PLAIN WHITE Ts | 'HEY THERE DELILAH' | | |
| Ìý | 4 | ROBYN WITH KLEERUP | 'WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT' | | |
| Ìý | 5 | RIHANNA | 'SHUT UP AND DRIVE' | | |
| The entire Top 40 is right here... | |||||
FACTS:
FACT ONE: Rooney are not named after the footballer.
FACT TOO: That would just be ridiculous
FACT iii: They are from the US and have been going for seven years
FACT IV: They were on the OC once but then again, who wasn't?
FACT E: They have toured with Fergie
In genetics and reproduction, it's always considered to be a really bad idea if the gene pool you're swimming in is so shallow it would make the damp patch on a sweaty plastic chair - like they have in fast food restaurants on a hot day - look like the Atlantic. Your offspring would be weak, and prone to genetic defects, like having two brains...on your back. This is one of the many reasons why it's considered to be a really bad idea if you marry your own cousin, another one being the total chaos at the church when the ushers ask family members if they're with the bride or the groom.
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