91Èȱ¬

So, third time around, a final big push for the big time; after a spirited but slightly shaky start. Is there a victory in the offing?

What we've got here is the product of a popular franchise, a household name with a couple of fairly solid successes under the old belt, but it's not entirely clear whether the public are happy to offer their support indefinitely, of if they would rather wander off to something else, and leave everything to vanish in a puff of snooze.

But enough about the Chronicles of Narnia films, let's talk about Joe McElderry.

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Fame - like sugar, saturated fat and films containing sex, violence, and swearing - is not good for young people. It's bad when you're the famous person, it's bad when the famous person is a member of your family. It's just bad.

You grow up unsure of people and their motives, you grow up surrounded by people who perhaps do not have your best interests at heart, and you grow up knowing that there is a ticking clock about your head, and when the alarm goes off - it could be now, it could be thirty years from now - that's it, you've just got to grab what you can and run off to obscurity.

This isn't just my opinion either, even the film Alvin & the Chipmunks has the same basic message: don't grow up too fast, don't get everything you want, whenever you want it, and don't trust people who have a financial stake in keeping you working.

At least Willow Smith is not alone. She has a famous dad, and a famous mum and famous brothers. If anyone can get through this with her head on the right way around, it's her.

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There's a latin expression which fans of the old TV show The West Wing will be aware of, and it's kind of relevant here so...

It's post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means something like "after this, therefore because of this". And it refers to the assumption people make when something happens after something else. So if there's a dramatic drop in the sales of washing machines, but a huge rush to buy chocolate, you could make a reasonable claim that there was a trend to do less washing and eat more chocolate. You could even extrapolate that people were choosing to eat less crumbly, flaky chocolate, and therefore had less need to wash their clothes after eating than they had in the past.

It would be total codswallop, but SOMEONE would believe it.

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Today is a momentous day. The day in which a new art movement is named. It might not be as revolutionary as the surrealists, or the situationists, but it's a LOT more common, and what's more, if you're a friendly person, it's really easy to do yourself.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Featurists.

To explain the Featurist manifesto, all you need to do is take a look at the Top 40, and count how many of the acts appear to be a temporary partnership between two singers, or a singer and a rapper, or a producer and a singer and a rapper, or any other combination of the above. The word we are looking for is the truncated "ft.".

That is the signature mark of a Featurist.

As artists, Featurists tend to be sociable, recognisable on first listen, willing to collaborate,and of course, as obsessed with Nicki Minaj as she is with all recorded sound ever.

And right now is their time. Late 2010 is their perfect moment, because they finally have a name.

I have of course, prepared some examples to illustrate my case.

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Ah good, another song featuring the unique vocal stylings of Nicki Minaj. The Nicki Minaj who clearly lives in a recording studio, speaks in rhyme all the time (just like that), and can't listen to any music - from Mozart to Motorhead - without quickly adding an extra verse and throwing it on the song pile. What does this bring the running total to now? Twelvety-eleven? Mumpty-nive? A grocer's bushel?

SO, let's see if we can't beat her at her own game, shall we? Let's just very quickly say that this is unusual - a hip hop waltz - kind of sparkly and magical, and oddly Christmassy. It's a cut above most things Nicki's been involved in this year - which means it's a cut above most things full stop.

It boasts a refrain which is so important and so sweary that they had to reverse the key cuss to get the musical point across. Nicki's on fiery form, blasting her man for hurting her, begging him not to break her heart, and wishing she didn't feel as bad as she does.

Oh and it deserves a huge team point for the line "tired of letting passive aggression control my mind, capture my soul" alone. And that refrain, which is all kinds of sad-lovely.

And now, let's add some music of our own...

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We all like to have a wallow in the past, don't we? It feels nice to look back on things we used to do as children and then try and find a modern equivalent, either for children nowadays or within our own lives. Sometimes there IS no equivalent, and that makes us a little sad, but also a little happy, because it makes the thing special to us alone.

Tim Davie, the 91Èȱ¬'s Director of Audio & Music, has written about this very thing for the 91Èȱ¬ Radio blog, in relation to the charts, and how different generations have experienced the unique tension which occurs when you want a certain song to beat another song in the Top 10. In his day it was all Human League and Cliff Richard, his children worry about JLS and Take That, but it's the same feeling.

In Mark Ronson's day, of course, it'll have been Culture Club and Duran Duran. And the reason I know this, is that the minute he's made a bit of a name for himself with the parp-heavy brass covers of indie songs, and has the time and funding to bring in the guest singers of his dreams, the very first thing he does is enlist Boy George and Simon Le Bon.

Clearly not much of a Spandau Ballet man, is what I am saying.

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Danny from the Script is a very clever man. Not just in everyday life, although I'm sure that's true too, but also because he knows enough to realise that he doesn't know everything. And this is the key to his band's success. That, plus a canny realisation that there are millions of people out there, all talking to each other on the internet, and it doesn't take much to get some of them to talk about you, so long as you're prepared to talk to them back.

And it clearly works for them. Two massive albums, another single in the (virtual) shops this week - it's called 'Nothing' and the - fans all over the world...and it's all thanks to a little chatting and a lot of charm. And some songs, obv.

If you're involved in any kind of creative endeavour, and you're at all interested in how you can build a fanbase of like-minded people around what you do, here's Danny's 10 tips to help you get the most out of the web.

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I love facts, me. Some people really like flights of fancy, feats of the imagination, bashing strange ideas against each other to see what pretty colours emerge, but I often find it's reality where the really weird stuff happens.

Take Jessie J, a hotly-topped singstress/songstress from London, who has somehow made a huge splash writing songs over in America, including - and this is the bit I really like, considering the song we're about to discuss - 'Party In The USA' by Miley Cyrus.

That's MILEY CYRUS, as in Hannah Montana, as in Daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, as in the nation's squeakiest cleaniest pop star (albeit one who is attempting to sexificate her image right now).

I can't even imagine a world where the creator of that song and this song are even in a room together, let alone a skull.

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Simon Cowell is a very literal man, isn't he? When he wanted to get the X Factor finalists to sing a song of support to the children at Great Ormond Street hospital, he went with 'You Are Not Alone'. When the following year's crop got behind the Help For Heroes charity - which supports the needs of servicemen and women who have been injured in the line of duty - they chose Mariah Carey's 'Hero'.

Now we're getting David Bowie's 'Heroes', and presumably next year we'll get either 'Time for Heroes' by the Libertines, 'Search for the Hero' by M People, 'Weak Become Heroes' by the Streets, Enrique Iglesias's 'Hero', Chad Kroeger's 'Hero', 'Calling All The Heroes' by It Bites or 'Help!' by the Beatles.

A LOT to look forward to there, I trust you'll agree.

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The word provocative tends to get a lot of positive press within the world of music. Same with the word challenging.

If you can justly claim to have a song which is provocative, you're creating a reaction, you're getting through to people, and that's always good. If you have a song which is challenging, it's even better, cos you're not only demanding a reaction, it's one which your audience would rather not give. They would far rather listen to something which slots in and around their current tastes, something which enhances the world in which they already live, something which adds a new sheen to the flowers in their garden, and here you are, smashing down their boundaries and letting their pets out. How rude. But also, how exciting!

Duffy's new song has the rare distinction of being both provocative AND challenging. But - and I really cannot emphasise this point strongly enough, so forgive the shouting - NOT IN A GOOD WAY.

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Oh how embarrassing! Poor Jason!

You know what it's like when you're trying to be creative. You start off with something that seems like a really good idea, something you are sure no-one has ever thought of before. You spend ages honing it, and getting it to state where you're confident enough to start showing people what you've been up to, and what is the first thing anyone says?

"Oh, that's just like that thing someone else has already done."

Which would be irritating enough if it were not also blindingly obvious that they are right. And worse, the bits that you've added, your refinements, are not as good as the bits you've subconsciously pinched. The thing you now realise you were influenced by has proven to be immune to your twiddling, and there's now a really clear, clunky gearshift between the familiar bits and the new bits.

You'd have to be really stubborn not to go back to the drawing board after something like that.

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Just because someone is smiling, and saying something that appears to be affectionate, it doesn't meant they're being nice.

Olly Murs smiles a lot. He clearly thinks of himself as a warm, friendly, caring type of fella. Someone who is fun to be around, someone who knows that it's the little things that really make a relationship. And very probably that is what he really is like. I've certainly seen no evidence to the contrary.

Except this song, obv. There's something at the heart of this song which occupies the queasy middle-ground between a backhanded compliment and being a vengeful (or stalker) ex. And no amount of charm can quite cover it up.

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One of the many things I love about Damon Albarn is that he stands in firm opposition to things, and then promptly does the same sort of thing himself, only the right way. It's too easy to sit back and sneer at the state of modern popular music and congratulate yourself that your tastes are too rarified to be hooked into that ridiculous popularity contest, and to therefore have nothing to do with it. That's basically saying you can't win, so you won't fight.

What's braver is to make your curmudgeonly statements and then get your hands dirty, working on actual new pop songs with fresh talent, in much the same way that the people behind the X Factor do, and the people who encourage raw talent at those schools of performing arts.

To throw yourself open to similar accusations of manufacture - and as we know, Gorillaz are the most manufactured pop group on the planet, if only because the four 'members' of the group don't actually exist on the planet - and come out the other side with songs that sound like current pop music, and a not-rubbish variant of it, to boot, well that's a real feat.

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There's definitely a thesis to be written about the way in which singers and rappers check that their microphone is working during the musical introduction to a song. For the singers, it's often a hummed little vocal improvisation, something that asks the listener to make themselves ready for the throatal devastation which is about to commence.

For the rapper, it can be a good opportunity to say their name, which marks the song with their scent in much the same way that a wolf will wee in a circle around its territory. Producers, desperate to get in on this, have even had special jingles made to put on any song they've worked on, so that everyone knows they did it.

In this song, Example has taken the art to a whole new level - or more accurately, a whole new sub-level - with a bleary trampish cough. He's not even really clearing his throat or making ready to commence with the song. It sounds more like he didn't realise the 'record' light was on, and had a little grunt to himself, in the way that a lot of men do when they're left to their own devices.

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I think we all know that this is not going to be the forum in which we discuss what is less than perfect about JLS, especially in the context of this, their latest single.

The song is for 91Èȱ¬ Children In Need, this is the 91Èȱ¬ Radio 1 Chart Blog, and JLS tore the roof off at last night's 91Èȱ¬ Radio 1 Teen Awards, and even if those last two things were not true, as a charity, Children In Need has been very active in my local area, helping to equip a youth club and provide sessions for local young people who would otherwise not have a right lot to do.

They even get to attend weekly music sessions, where they're encouraged to express themselves musically, rather than via the medium of shouting at grownups in the street. So in a very real sense, what JLS have done with this song, even if it does not save lives and make an immeasurable difference to countless young people all over the country, could conceivably give rise to a brand new pop star from Cornwall.

No pasty jokes please, we get that a lot.

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I know, I know, we weren't expecting this: we weren't expecting a new Chipmunk single quite yet, we weren't expecting him to throw it out there with minimal fanfare and we weren't expecting it to be as stark and brutal as it is.

That's brutal in comparison to, say, 'Oopsy Daisy' obv. Sweary as this is, Chippy has not suddenly become Zack De La Rocha overnight.

What he has done is throw down to anyone who wants to tell him he's not hard enough for the game, by releasing a song which is a punky sneer over a minimal backing of handclaps, piano, some grunting, bit of bass, bit of ticky-tock snare and a gang choir backing him up with the "ayy" and the "ohh".

This Chipmunk is becoming a tiger. Hear him roar!

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Hey remember the other day when I was saying how frustrating it is that the Will.I.Am / Nicki Minaj song is less than 100% amazing? We had some laughs, right? It was all in good fun. Nobody got hurt, there were no permanent injuries and we all went away assuming Will would soon bounce back, that he would save his best ideas for the next Black Eyed Peas opus.

I wish those innocent days were still with us. I wish I still believed such a turnaround were possible. I wish, in fact, that I had never ever heard this deeply terrible song, which is so very poor that it has come close to destroying a perfect relationship with the band's finest moment to date - the mighty 'Boom Boom Pow'.

I take no pleasure in saying it. I'm an optimist by nature and try to be fair, up to a point. I mean clearly some things are not going to be to my taste, and I'm fine with that. But it's hard to see whose taste this will appeal to. People who hate music? People who are a long way away? It's baffling.

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It's not often you get to say of a record that it grabs you from the bendy metallic whalesong noises at the beginning. But that's essentially what happened here. Those strange mournful little eeps act like a magical welcome mat to the rest of the song, a little bit sad and a little bit huh?

That's my kinda thing, right there.

And when the song arrives...well let's start by saying that everyone who has had enough of Madame Welch's banshee wail will not find anything here to change their mind. Florence's bullroar is given free rein to call down the heavens once again, and being chronically unable to hold herself back, call down the heavens is what she does.

The question of whether this is thrilling or irritating is really one that I can't answer for you, except to say that she's clearly going to keep doing it, so you might as well get used to it.

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Oh MAN ALIVE! In order to explain what has happened to me in the course of listening to this song, I've got to admit a couple of things. Number one, I had no idea this was a Nickelback cover. If I've heard the song before, it must've been jammed into the place in my brain I try to visit as infrequently as possible, next to all the other Nickelback hits.

So, my first experience of 'Gotta Be Somebody' was Shayne's tremulous, quavery, autotuned-to-robot-hell-and-back version. And what's interesting about it is that it's not bad, as modern pop singles go, but lacks something in the personality department. That songwriting trick of repeating a melody fragment over a changing four-chord trick, the thing the Script do all the time, the thing Snow Patrol do all the time, the thing that TONS of modern pop songs do all the time...that's a neat trick, but it's getting boring.

So, coming at this thing from a fresh perspective leads to a certain amount of eye-rolling because it lacks a fresh perspective, even though it's not all that fresh.

And they say Nickelback can't do irony!

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While it's clear that a point had to be made about Robbie's return to the musical fold, his presence in the band's first proper reunion single will have taken some careful thought. Too much Gary, and it looks like the band are admitting that Rob has only come back because he's somehow weakened by recent events. Too much Robbie, and it looks like he's basically taken over what was already a very successful band without him, and ruined it.

Too much Mark, and people are going to wonder where Gary and Robbie are.

That's not to denigrate Mark's role in Take That's recent past: he's there to add humanity and charm to what can be quite an imperious, regal pop presence if Gary is left to his own devices. Think about 'Rule The World' or 'Greatest Day' - songs with grand themes, lofty concepts, ideas above their station. Then think about 'Shine' - a song which broke down that haughty wall, and was, before it got played to death, their best post-reunion moment.

And that is partly because it was fun and partly because it was clearly a team effort. Everyone got their chance to show off a bit.

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Someone, somewhere has been having a serious talk with the pop star we know as Pink (or occasionally P!nk). It may even have been Pink herself. But there will have been flip-charts, pie-charts and why-charts, sales figures have been cross examined, first-hand feedback from concert-goers have been pored over. A serious review has taken place, stock taken, issues raised. There may even have been a final report, the topic of which is this: "What is Pink for?"

And, after lengthy discussion of the core values of the brand, some examination of, say her ability to get a party started, her qualifications as a rock star, the bad-ass-ity of her attitude, the report concludes that every Pink single which leads the way towards a new album - and especially a Greatest Hits album - must abide by a few rules. This is simply a brand-management issue, a way of ensuring that loyal customers are rewarded for their diligence.

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You can accuse Nicki Minaj of many things; having an expense account at the My Little Pony wig shop, deliberately encouraging Will.I.Am; but you can't deny her ferocious work rate. She just seems to pop up EVERYWHERE at the moment. On her own songs, on other people's songs...I wouldn't put it past her to invent a time machine and go back and offer her services on every recording session which ever happened anywhere, with everyone from the Beatles to Napalm Death suddenly getting a honeyed rap about how great she is at her job.

In fact, we're getting perilously close to a situation where every new song has to have an alternate version which features a guest verse from the 'Naj. This one certainly does. It's as if she is basically tuning into the Top 40 every week, and singing along, just like you are. Only she doesn't get interrupted by younger siblings, and you don't have the hair.

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Hats off to anyone who wants to buck a few trends here and there. Or even give off the appearance of trend-bucking while actually fast-bucking, I'm not fussy.

Y'know, zaggers when we were expecting ziggers; lefties instead of righties. These are the kind of counter-intuitive jumpabouts which are always a good idea. Keeps us on our toes, keeps the flow of ideas from getting too stagnant, and generally shakes things up a bit.

For example: taking a unashamed pop band, who have spent most of their career thus far trying to prove that they can properly rock like the rock bands do, and introducing them to a producer and songwriter who embodies the very sound of what is going on currently in popular music, just to see if they get on. It's a great idea. Or a great idea on paper, anyway.

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It seems a shame that they've decided to go with the school bully video to this song, don't you think? I mean sure, it's a clear metaphor for the brutal way people can treat each other at times, and if you showed the more grown-up version, well no-one would be allowed to watch it.

But still: this isn't really a song about being bullied at school, and it makes it look like Em, who has rapped about that stuff since his first album, can't quite let go. This is not what 'No Love' is about. It's about accepting the bad things that happened during his wilderness years as a grown up. The time after fame and notoriety hit, after the endless intrusion stopped being fun, and after the harsh media spotlight started to burn.

Never mind school bullies, once you've been betrayed by people you consider to be close friends, once everyone you know appears to see you as a revenue stream first and a person second, that's when you know you're in trouble.

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Sometimes you've got to say something ridiculous that you only partly mean in order to get to the truth of how you feel.

Gerard Way knows this very well. He likes to cram MCR songs with overly-dramatic, preposterous ideas, borne out of desperate revenge or terrible fury, as a redemptive, cleansing fire for his soul. He doesn't feel like that all the time, and he knows that you don't either. His songs are there for the moments that you do.

They're also there because overstating the case is a lot of fun. We all do it, truth be told. Only the other day, I was listening to some new song or other, a bit bored, and because I was bored, I got a bit annoyed with the song, for not being more interesting. Then I decided that the reason it wasn't interesting enough was because it wasn't fast enough. Tempo isn't the only compelling thing about good music, obviously, but it definitely helps to grab the attention. And this song was just deliberately getting on my nerves by dragging its heels.

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Coco Sumner is a very nice young lady, with a brilliantly scary stare, whose dad happens to be one of the most famous musicians in the world. She doesn't really like people going on about this, because it implies that this fact has some bearing on her choice of career, which, if you read this interview, you'll understand that it doesn't. Primarily because she didn't really choose her career in the first place. It just happened.

Luckily, this isn't a bad thing, as you'll know if you've been lucky enough to hear her new single 'In Spirit Golden' () or the new album 'The Constant.'

So, for tales of physics, Robyn and letting your subconscious write songs for you, read on...

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There's no point putting your fingers in your ears and hoping it'll go away; pop moguls on both sides of the Atlantic are on the hunt for very young people with very strong voices, and thanks to TV talent shows and YouTube, they are going to find them and they are going to make them make records and they are going to release those records and we are going to have to listen to them. That is simply where we are in terms of cultural evolution right now.

And if this talent trawl annoys older people - people who aren't really the target audience for the thing in the first place - and it gets in the way of heritage pop acts who have got a bit too used to having the Top 10 for a personal playground, and it generally shakes things up a bit, well that's all to the good.

There again, some of the records are going to be rubbish. That's an unavoidable side effect of an initiative like this.

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