There has been a meeting in Hoosiers HQ, between the band and some shadowy, scary figures from high up in their record company. The type who wear business suits even in bed, and who'd think nothing of kicking five underperforming (but prestigious) indie acts off their label before breakfast. It has been a tense meeting, and no-one is leaving with a smile on their face.
1 - Leona Lewis - 'Bleeding Love'
What We Said Then: "I'm grading on a curve here and it's infinitely better than the sort of drivel that The X Factor usually inflicts on us. In fact, why not go and have a listen to the embarrassingly bad new Shayne Ward single, and then listen to this, and just try telling me that this isn't in a different league entirely." (SP)
What We Say Now: Leona's success provoked some of the most heated and barbed ChartBlog comments of the entire year, but you can't deny a song this memorable. It's not the favourite song of anyone who contributes to the blog, but there's no sense of a horrendous miscarriage of justice in this being No.1. That's coming later! (FM)
FRASER'S BIT: And now, with the final part of ChartBlog's review of the year trilogy...ladies and gentlemen I give you...Steeeeve!
So, Fraser asked all of the ChartBlog writers to pick their top five songs of the year for an end-of-year retrospective type of thing, and I have a problem with that. Because I cannot possibly narrow it down to just five. To begin with I had trouble getting anything below my shortlist of ten, but after forcing myself to be absolutely mercenary, jettisoning some of my favourite songs of 2007 (Katharine McPhee’s ‘Love Story’, Timbaland’s ‘The Way I Are’) because I really had to get the numbers down, I got it down to six. Which is just one more than five, you may have noticed.
And I’m refusing to budge any further, because I think all six of these songs thoroughly deserve to be here, and I cannot in good conscience let any more of them go. And you can call that unfair, if you like, but I don’t care. I’m not moving. It’s six or nothing.
Oh God, these Top 5 lists are so hard to write! And it's not just the need to try and find a definitive shortlist (with the emphasis on SHORT) of songs from a year which has been chock-full of amazing treats - 'Tambourine' by Eve, 'Timebomb' by Beck, 'Gum' by Cornelius and 'My Manic and I' by Laura Marling all deserve to be in the list and they are not. There's also the problem of co-ordinating personal choices with those of the other ChartBlog writers, to avoid needless repetition.
First Hazel nicked one of my total faves of the year, ('Atlas' by Battles, if you're interested), then Nickie nicked another (anything by the Wild Beasts, we love those fellas), so before Steve gets his final list in - I'm reliably informed he's cramming more songs in than he is allowed, frisky little sprite that he is - I'm going to get this lot up VERY quickly!
FRASER'S BIT: Now that the last days of 2007 are drawing near, it seems a good time to look back over ChartBlog's first full year of existence, and maybe have a think about some of the songs which have defined that year for the people whose thoughts and ideas about pop matters have so enthralled/annoyed people over the past 12 months. Starting with our resident deep-thinker, and self-styled controversy-magnet, Hazel Robinson.
Hazel, what are your favourite songs of 2007, please?
Some things in life are hard, like long division, playing the oboe, or asking for uncle Simeon's muslim elephant to be erased from the library roof...in Flemish. Then there are things which are REALLY hard, like jumping over a mini from a standing start, or climbing Everest, or explaining the appeal of In The Night Garden to other grown-ups. But there are a few things which are harder still. Unaided levitation is one. Telepathy is another. And then there's creating a song which captures true innocence without seeming contrived, simple-minded or icky. That's just about the hardest thing ever ever.*
NOTE: Now look, you can't blame me if you're checking the internet on Christmas Day and something makes you feel sick, now can you? First of all you should be talking to real actual people now, and not adding snowflakes to your FaceSpace profile. Secondly the nausea could just as easily be a result of overdoing it at the Christmas dinner table as anything you can see on ChartBlog. And thirdly....OK, thirdly is a fair cop. It's all my fault. But I should stress, I never took this picture of John McCririck, that was the Daily Mail.
What does poor Mutya Buena have to do in order to maintain the attention of a fickle pop public, eh? She's already collaborated with Groovy Amanda (must check spelling), and sampled Benny Crabbitz (I think that's what she said, anyway), and now she's got the backing of the one-woman-media-typhoon and headline magnet that is Any Whinehorse. She's got heavy friends, people!
1- Leon Jackson- 'When You Believe'
ChartSnipe: OK, own up. Anyone fail to see this coming? Anyone? And does the fact that the X-Factor got the Christmas No.1 again fundamentally change anyone's opinion of Leon's talents? Even if your friend has the exact opposite opinion and is claiming that a chart position is somehow proof that they are right and you are wrong? I thought as much. (FM)
=======================
It's always been a bit baffling to watch most of the people in the music media fall over themselves to try and justify the way Jack and Meg White choose to conduct their business along strict rock lines. Rock, as we've discussed many times in the past, is all about things being 'real' and exposing your 'soul' and stuff like that. And the amount of rubbish rock journos have had to talk just in order to justify including the White Stripes in The Pantheon Of Cool has been hilarious to watch, especially when they insist on abiding by a strict, self-imposed dress code (like the boybands do), making up stories about themselves and hiding behind them (like the rappers do), and generally acting like the genius pop band they clearly are.
"So", as John Lennon so memorably sang, "this is Christmas, and WHAT have you done?" Well, if you're Leon Jackson, Rihanna, Amy Winehouse, Kanye West, Alesha Dixon, Leona Lewis, Girls Aloud or Jamie-Lynn Spears the answer will be "BLIMMING LOADS, ACTUALLY". The rest of us have just been watching, mouths agape as the world either lived up to our wildest expectations, went to hell in a handcart, or somewhere in between.
Mika, Mika, Mika. I understand how when you released this marvellous slice of retroid pop and no one paid a blind bit of notice, you might be driven to try a 'new direction' but that was really no excuse for the whole Grace Kelly-Love Today-Big Girls-Lollipop horror that occurred, subsequently leaving your two finest moments (ie: 'Happy Ending' and this) to be chucked away at the end of the album's promotional schedule.
Every Christmas Day, we all sit around the table, ready to chow down on the turkey (or whatever vegetarian options have been created instead), and anticipating the HILARIOUS FUN which always comes when you burst open your cracker, put the hat on (for 10 seconds, tops) break the toy, and then unroll the joke. Christmas cracker jokes are not like other jokes. For starters, they're not funny. I mean really epically unfunny. The kind of scale of unfunniness that is only really visable from space, that's how massively unfunny they are.
And yet...
It's an important part of pop music's job to occasionally be so cutely sexy that it makes self-conscious boys blush, and secretly wish they could admit to having embarrasssingly tingly feelings whenever they hear it, all the while realising that even acting like such a thing could be possible is a one-way ticket to humiliation among his peers and social death forever and ever. It's also an important part of pop music's job that it forges a sense of wild abandon and communal party power among all the dancing girls. One of whom is bound to be the chief secret crush of the squirming boy in the corner, who can't help but stare, and whine quietly to himself.
OK, so what on Earth happened last night while I was asleep? Well, I say asleep...what on Earth happened last night while I was trying to block the endlessly repeating loop of the Strictly Come Dancing theme music which was running around and around in my tortured head while I tried to GET to sleep? Yesterday, there were no major celebrity pregnancies going on. Today there are three. And they're not 'celebrity' like the 'celebrities' in Heat magazine's style section, where a selection of pretty girls (Christian names only) are featured in a variety of approved/not-approved clothes and none of us is any the wiser as to who is whom. No, these are actually really famous people.
Post-breakup songs are a tricky beast., especially when you discover that you didn't really want to break up in the first place. And just like securing a new record deal for East 17, it's all about getting the tone right. You can go for broke, and plead for your ex to come back in a sobbing, tear-jerking, great-big-wobbly-heap-of-jelly sort of way, and veer wildly between disgusting the very person you hope to impress the most and impressing some attractive bystander with your passion and commitment (or disgusting the bystander and impressing your ex, it's all in the delivery).
NOTE: It should really be written up, in some kind of Health And Safety manual or something. If you're going undergo a miniaturisation process, and then stand outside a doll's house, looking about you, as if you're Alice in Wonderland and the rabbit has just escaped the corner of your eye, and then you get squashed by a giant toddler who thinks you're just another one of her dolls...well, don't come squelching to us, OK?
When they come to compile a list of the great marketing masterstrokes of the modern era, releasing a single on Christmas Eve will probably not appear at the very top of the list. It will also probably not appear at the very middle or the very bottom of the list. This is because putting out a single on Chrismas Eve, particularly a single which is in no way Christmassy or festive in nature, is a really, spectacularly bad idea.
So, the X-Factor has finished, and popular songs can breathe a sigh of relief that they won't be subjected to a weekly mauling by over-keen, shiny-eyed Bambis, all trying to impress a man who it is clinically impossible to impress, and his three sneery colleagues. But, if you're going to miss your weekly dose of musical makeover-ation there is a place you can go. Video-sharing sites such as YouTube are riddled with self-made clips of people doing stripped-back covers of their favourite tunes, some with instruments, some a capella, and some sung into a webcam microphone while the original plays in the background.
Which makes it possible to create your very own X-Factor/Britain's Got Talent show, and best of all, you can skip the boring performances!
This review comes courtesy of ChartBlog's X-Factor correspondent, Steve Perkins, who is a little emotional about the whole thing.
There are certain things which, once you've read them, stay with you forever. I'm not just talking about a particularly profound piece of Proust or a highly emotive poem by Emily Dickinson (although obviously those are both great); even the most inconsequential piece from a tabloid can hang around in your cranium under the right circumstances. I will always remember Heat magazine's review of Will Young's debut single 'Anything is Possible/Evergreen' shortly after he won the original Pop Idol back in 2002. A reader wrote in the following week to ask how they could possibly justify giving it five stars when the songs were obviously bobbins, and the editorial staff replied that the mark wasn't so much based on the music as it was on the sense of occasion they felt when they heard it; the memories of a tight contest well-fought with a deserving victor. And while one may disagree with that as a standpoint, you can at least see where they were coming from.
1 - Eva Cassidy & Katie Melua - 'What A Wonderful World'
ChartSnipe: No offense to Leona Lewis, or to anyone who shelled out on 'Bleeding Love' and therefore kept it at the top spot for ever and ever, but isn't is lovely to have a bit variety at the top here? You could even go so far as to say it's apt that the song which ended a brutal reign of chart terror just WOULD be called 'What A Wonderful World', right? Course, the real question is whether Katie can hold off that fella with the tombstone teeth from the X-Factor or not. Tune in next week, folks! (FM)
It’s Chrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiissssstttttttmmmmmmmaaaaassssssss!!!!
And if I hadn’t just spent three hours ordering presents and creating a corresponding spreadsheet with per-person cost breakdowns and estimated delivery times, I’d have had time to do some research on Christmas songs of yore and what they say about the times that we’ve lived in.
it's astonishing to think about just how many songs Jay-Z can spin out of his former career as a street-hustler, isn't it? I mean sure, it's not like the rest of popular music covers a massive spectrum of subjects - you don't often hear pop songs from the perspective of someone who is wheelchair-bound, for example, which go on to explain how difficult it can be to get from place to place, given cobbled streets, pavements with no ramps, shops with narrow aisles, and stuff like that - but still...
Forgive the momentary indulgence, but back in my Top of the Pops days, an interview with Lee Ryan was always something to look forward to. Quite apart from the fact that Blue were HUGE, and therefore terribly important, Lee did us all the favour of acting like a proper pop star - meaning he was a mixture of arrogance, silliness, Tigger-style glee and charm, and that he was prone to making daft statements, and generally taking himself WAY too seriously while at the same time taking absolutely nothing else seriously at all...unless he wanted to, or he felt it would make him look good, or raise a giggle.
Containing all of these extremes is not something to be taken lightly, by the way, plus the man was VERY good at it!
I'm beginning to think that it takes more determination than I possess to properly dislike someone. (Except Mika, of course. I will always hate Mika, come rain or come shine.) I was determined not to like Kate Nash, because although the chorus of 'Foundations' was amazing, the lyrics of the verses left a lot to be desired, and also I found her "MAI GLOTTAL STOPZ, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM" style of singing to be affected and unnecessary. It's fine when Lily Allen does it, because Lily Allen isn't really a good singer and so she needs a gimmick of some kind. Kate Nash, on the other hand, I think actually has talent beyond the current craze for mockney bobbins and I was determined to hold out until she realised this and packed it in. Which is why I'm really annoyed that 'Pumpkin Soup' is amazing and therefore utterly breaks my otherwise steely resolve.
As I've already pointed out, Christmas is a weird time for music. All sorts of people, people who would normally be in possession of enormous quantities of common sense, make all sorts of strange decisions when it comes to putting new songs out into the world at this time of year. So what we as a music-loving nation need to generate is a decent way of working out whether their choices have been wise or foolish. We need a way of measuring success in the endeavour of popular Christmas song...and I think I might be able to help.
Hey, you know me, I'm an honest kind of blog. If a new hit song comes from out of nowhere and I didn't see it coming, I'll hold my hands up and say so...and then put my hands back down again and type something similar. This is partly because it's a bad idea to carry round embarrassing secrets that people can use against you, in your everyday life, and partly because, like all good bloggers, I am not above pompously declaring my own superior moral code and staunch ethical backbone in much the same way that the sea is not above the sky. It's the blog equivalent of showing off...which, if you conflate 'blog' and 'showing' together, should really be called 'blowing off', due to the amount of useless hot air which is produced.
First impressions count for a lot. If someone strikes you as annoyingly smug the first time you meet them, it will take a lot to shift that impression, including outright begging on their part, and tears. Trust me, I know. So having enjoyed two massive hits by Robyn, both of which examined the wreckage of a failed relationship using a magnifying glass and an extraordinarily withering eye, you'd be forgiven for thinking she would have many tales of love-gone-bad to share with us all, right?
I tell you what, if I was the producer of a TV teen drama, and one of the major characters had just died, and I was looking for a song to use over a montage where all the other characters were trying to get on with their lives, but kept finding themselves unable to stop thinking about their loss, and having to have a sudden sit-down, while their eyes glaze over, lost in reminiscing about times past, and looking slightly teary, but not all snotty and puffy-eyed...well this is the exact song I'd be looking to use.
NOTE: It's an extremely bad idea to push people into heavy machinery. Even when it's heavy machinery which has been constructed for the sole purpose of adding some funky to anything which is passed through it. Having said that, it's a bit odd to be issuing some kind of public warning off the back of a cartoon which was created in order to illustrate how to destroy someone.
Shall we just assume that you'll only be doing this if you find yourself faced with an aggressive Mark Ronson, in the factory where The Ronsoniser is stored, and there is literally no other way to escape the situation (like throwing Amy Winehouse at him and legging it). You've all got common-sense, right? Good.
Now here's a crossover you would have found it tricky to predict, even with a crystal ball full of tarot cards, tea-leaves and chicken bones, on a ouiji board. For some reason, having spent the last three years plundering '80s pop for quality samples, the trance fraternity has turned its attentions to the dusty, sweaty, cowboy concerns of Adult-Oriented Rock. The kind of stuff Jeremy Clarkson would put on while driving up the Grand Canyon in a Hummer, leaving a cloud of environmentalists in his wake, all yelling "you idiot! You can't drive up here! It's for donkeys and tourists only!"
You would think, having been asked to go forth and gather a simple five-question interview about sounds, with Yannis, the lead singer with hot indie newbies Foals for 91Èȱ¬ Sound, that it would be fairly straightforward to come back with the goods, right? I mean it should just be a case of putting a call in to the Foals massive, arranging a time, ringing a number, pressing record and having a chat.
Tricky cove, the Beckster. By rights, his junk/funk hybrid nonsense should still be barging towards the top of whatever charts are available, because when he's on form, no-one rocks a mad party quite like he does. But he does have one of those voices that makes all of his songs sound similar. It's the Ian Brown syndrome all over again, and unfortunately, it gets worse over time. The more songs he puts out, the less impact each one has on the music-loving public at large. Which doesn't seem very fair, but that's the way it is.
1 - Leona Lewis - 'Bleeding Love'
ChartSnipe: What with this song and the latest Elvis entry in the Top 40, poor old love is getting quite a mauling this week. What next? 'Bandaging Love'? 'Anaesthetising Love'? 'Healing Love (With A Course Of Antibiotics)'? Actually, after twelvety-eleven weeks of the same song at No.1, ANYTHING will do!(FM)
Do you remember the last Scouting For Girls single 'She's So Lovely'? And do you remember how the best bit of that song was always the descending, babbling "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know" section? That was the bit where the band's inherent kOoKiNeSs took a back seat to something a bit less arch and a bit more heartfelt. And it really suited them and the song.
The run up to Christmas has seen a bumper crop of stuff arrive at ChartBlog Towers, each new thing beautifully wrapped in a jiffy bag, and accompanied by a sheet of A4 with wonderful writing upon it. And as always, I've been keeping a careful record of the wild claims and extravagent exaggerations made by the people whose job it is to try and win sceptical people over to their new (and occasionally iffy) music. Music that they can only represent using the written word.
It's clearly a lot harder than it looks.
I don't claim to be any kind of authority on hip hop. It's definitely the kind of genre you could devote your life to studying, and still only scratch the surface of what people are actually doing in the field of rhyming-over-beats (there's a joke I could make here about the music-creation software Reason,and how people who use it to make hip hop could be said to be combining rhyme with Reason, but it's not a brilliant joke, so I probably won't mention it). And anyway, there's too much other music out there to bother specialising.
Years ago the NME ran a feature called The Bds Who Ruined Rock, in which they pointed an accusing finger at a number of classic rock acts, and told them off for being so good at what they do, that other, lesser acts have flocked to cash in, by copying their every cough and scrape, and missing a huge chunk of the point.
It was such a long time ago that original list featured such acts as the Byrds, the Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, but there's no reason why we can't apply a similarly stringent nit-comb to the art of modern song. After all, this kind of industry gold-rush for soundalikes, which happens as soon as a band becomes popular, is still going on, as anyone who witnessed the run of post-Arctic Monkeys Yorkshire terrier-ists will tell you.
Perfection is overrated. Just ask anyone who has had their face surgically altered so there is no visible sign of the aging process whatsoever (but great big massively-visible billboards all over your cheeks, shouting "I USED TO BE PRETTY, NOW I LOOK MELTED" instead). We as humans are all flawed in some way or another, even pop stars. Hell, even pop stars who act like they're perfect probably can't reach a high shelf, or put an entire packet of Wheat Crunchies in their mouth without coughing. We are none of us flawless.
British people do love an underdog, don't we? There's nothing nicer than rallying behind someone who is just starting out, and encouraging them to really GO FOR IT, and MAKE THE MOST OF WHAT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU and stuff like that, right? We also like to knock people who've become successful, and call them names, and tell the general public off for being foolish enough to have made them succesful in the first place. And ChartBlog is a very British institution (we are also, for example, dreadfully ham-strung by red tape and have very uneven teeth).
Isn't it funny how bands often recommend other bands that sound an awful lot like their band? Oasis used to be particularly bad for attempting to get people excited in some other bunch of Northern Beatles nuts who always sounded like someone had attempted to re-run the evolution of the '60s, only with less success. So when Kele Bloc Party started raving about this band he'd found, who turned out to be another bunch of punk-funking art-rockers with a helium frog on lead vocals, well, expectations weren't exactly sky high.
NOTE: It's not nice to drive a steam-roller over anyone, much less an entire band. And ESPECIALLY not a band as popular as the Kaiser Chiefs. So, don't do it unless your very existence depends on it. Or you never really got over how rubbish the cover of 'Yours Truly, Angry Mob' is. And don't be tempted to scale this down either, to see if it has a similar affect on lesser indie mortals. Attacking the Pigeon Detectives with a paint-roller won't necessarily destroy them, but it will almost certainly get on their nerves, and we already know how loud those fellas can shout, thank you very much.
I have something of a chequered history with David Guetta, in that I will still happily rant to anyone who sits still for long enough that the brilliance of the first 30 seconds of 'Love Don't Let Me Go' is somewhat devalued by the thorough averageness of the rest of the song. And then 'Love Is Gone' sounded almost exactly the same as its predecessor, which just made me angry all over again. "Grrrrr," I might've said.
Just imagine what it would be like to be backstage at the very (featuring all five Spice Girls) in nearly TEN YEARS! I mean, five fractious ladies like that, there's surely going to be no end of wayward behaviour going on. There'll be tears (boo!), excitement (yay!), trauma and drama (booyay!). It's got to be worth sending a tiny little spy over to Vancouver with a miniature microphone and tape player to try and get the inside scoop on life in Spice Camp, right?
After the total ramalama blammer drama that was watching Travis Barker smack seven shades of shhh out of his drum kit to this song, and after seeing it slowly creep up the charts for the last few weeks, as the word spreads, is it fair to say we've all heard - or at least heard OF - this floppy hip hop shoutathon? I don't wanna be wasting anyone's time on detailed descriptions of beats and hollers when we all already know what I'm talking about, now do I?
1 - Leona Lewis - 'Bleeding Love'
ChartSnipe: *sigh* I see last week's rant did no good whatsoever then...(FM)
I'm not sure what you'd call it, but there is definitely a moment in the career of most musical artists where they stand at a context crossroads. One sunny road leads back to your illustrious past, where each new song was welcomed like the arrival of a new baby in the family - a distinct and separate entity, forged from similar DNA to its siblings, but put together in a startlingly different way.
Do you believe that music has power? Are you the kind of person who thinks that listening to doomy songs all day long will make you a doomy person, for example? Or perhaps you go a bit further and believe that there are some arrangements of sound and rhythm which carry with them a great big dollop of psychic trauma? Or maybe even that some music is just plain haunted? Well, if you do, the continuing saga of The Life And Times Of Amy Winehouse must surely have given you a certain sense of satisfaction.
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