It's A Funny Old World, Eh?
I will get to why this picture made me giggle in a moment. In the meantime, here's some information about the new Portishead album.
The new Portishead album 'Third' is an amazing thing. It's among the coldest, bleakest, most brutal and punishing albums you are ever likely to hear, and yet it is made entirely from whispers, moans, bangs, clanks and groany old synthesizers.
It's also entirely gripping from start to finish, and features a song which is performed on a ukulele - complete with barbershop harmonies - and was heavily influenced by a song in the '70s comedy film The Jerk, starring Steve Martin.
Being quirky within musical circles is often seen as a bad thing. It suggests a lack of feeling, a frivolous, irreverent, silliness, and an unwillingness to get to the point of making music in the first place - namely to create a balm for the soul by banging bits of stuff together in an aurally appealling fashion. 
If I had my way, this is the kind of stuff Justin Timberlake would be spending his time coming up with, rather than mucking about with Madonna and failing to say her name right. It might not boast a cutting-edge R&B production, it might have (gasp!) fuzzy guitars on it, and it might be all bluster and shouting, not unlike the latter days of *NSYNC, but at least it has some LIFE to it. 
Well, this would be another one to add to the list of 'Collaborations I Really Didn't See Coming', not that I'm not very excited about it. It's quite the coup for Cheryl, isn't it? (Although if Wikipedia is to be believed, which it isn't always, her vocals are only available on the British single release of this track. Not trying to rain on anybody's parade. Just sayin'.)
They said he's 
That's an interesting title for a Hadouken! song, isn't it? Everything the band has released so far, from the scenester-baiting 'That Boy, That Girl' to the hedonistic 'Liquid Lives' has already sounded like a battle line drawn between the band and anyone who isn't a) young b) wild or c) one of their sort of people. It's a classic pose for a new musical act, pretending that you are the keeper of a new set of standards, and anyone who fails to meet them is your mortal enemy. My Chemical Romance did it too, only without as much day-glo streetwear...
I have never wondered what it would be like if Daniel Bedingfield attempted to re-write 'Under The Bridge' by the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a social commentary about the way society is going these days, and then got Maroon 5 and Orson to jam it out, in a meaty-pop style. 
So, here's the artwork for Jay Sean's album 'My Own Way', which will be out on the 12th of May. Nice, innit? 
Trying hard isn't the same thing as doing well. That's why school reports give separate scores for effort and attainment (or at least they did when I was at school). It's to keep motivation going for children who are working really hard on their spelling but still can't managed to get the vowels in 'weird' the right way around. You basically have to find a way to tell them they're doing the right thing, even when it looks like they're not getting anywhere fast. 
Never mind that Dan is wearing a television throughout this video, or that Mr Le Sac has angel wings, or that there is cleavage on display, but not the kind that Nuts readers would enjoy...the key thing about this video is that Scroob wears his watch with the face pointing out from his inner wrist. Freaky, huh? 
Isn't the internet brilliant? Astonishing stuff has happened over the last couple of days, and yet there's been no fanfare, no parades, no weeping in the streets. It's almost as if exciting things are happening online all the time, and you never know what you'll find out if you just stay alert enough. Several amazing things are probably being posted to the web RIGHT NOW! Like the new album by a band we will all be totally in love with in a month's time AND some footage of a monkey riding a dog to the shops.
There are a lot of reasons to love Robyn, obviously, but one of mine is the playfulness with which she treats her punctuation. Perhaps it comes from the sort of appreciation of English that you only truly get when you learn it as a second language, as I've heard some other European pop stars say. The best example, of course, was the exclamation mark in 'Be Mine!' that was there to trick us - it leads you to expect a strident, commanding, uptempo pop ditty only to wrongfoot you with a wistful, yearning ballad - the plea to "be mine!" was an ultimately futile one. 
Songs which begin with the words "beep beep", and go on to detail the experience of receiving a text message from a hot lady are few and far between, and that's probably a good thing. That said, Jay somehow manages to try and avoid sounding incredibly smug and desperate when crow-barring a silly lyrical theme into his song (in this case it's references to modern communications technology - being online, having a profile on Facebook). Which is more than you could say for a lot of overconfident R&B singers. 
So, it's time we took this new comments system out for a spin, don'tchathink? How's about creating one of our Perfect Playlists?
Haha! This is amazing! You know how 'Boulevard Of Broken Dreams' by Green Day and 'Wonderwall' by Oasis seem to share the same musical parents? (It came up in a 
Just a quick note to say sorry for any trouble you may be having with ChartBlog over the next day or so. We've had the menders in, you see. 
This may annoy a few rap fans, and I really don't mean it to sound as disrespectful or stupid as perhaps it will, but the thing I like best about this song is that it really reminds me of 'Summertime' by the Fresh Prince. In fact, the very thing I thought the first few times I listened was "oh great! Someone's finally picked up where Will Smith left off", and then immediately began beating myself around the face and neck with a 2Pac CD for thought crimes against real hip hop culture. 
If you read/listened to the interview we ran recently with 
You know how your dad goes on about all music sounding like rubbish versions of what Proper Bands did when he was young? Well, I don't want this to sound like him. I don't want to necessarily say this is a rubbish version of a song from thirty years ago but it definitely is a version of such.
This week, dance music has been popping open bottles of champagne and blowing down those unfurly hooter things people have at parties, to celebrate two notable anniversaries in its glorious history. 
What I like best about this song - which seems to have fallen under the ChartBlog radar since it was release in late March, or indeed, down the back of our sofa. Hey! Great idea for a feature! - is that it sounds like a Los Campesinos! sort of a song, only played at a slower speed. Hell, Sam's voice even sounds slowed down, and this is a LIVE VIDEO!
I think it's fairly safe to say at this point that the marketing push for the so-called "New Amys" (and let's face it, given the state of the Old Amy these days, keeping a couple of spares on hand is just good sense) has been a roaring success, with Adele and Duffy taking up considerable amounts of valuable Top 10 real estate in 2008 with their singles and albums. Forgive me, though, if I remain a little suspicious. I'm naturally wary of anyone who has , partially because anything genuinely deserving of an award ought to get one on its own merits in the end, surely? Perhaps I'm just getting old, but what ever happened to the good things coming to those who wait, eh?
I promise this will be the last posting about 
First there was panic, then there was backfire. I tell you, I am NEVER going to a disco again, they sound like terribly dangerous places. Mind you, you'd probably expect there to have been more of a panic AFTER the backfire than before. Unless whatever it is that caused the panic also went on to cause the backfire, like something so terrifying it caused an instant bowel evacuation by everyone present. That would certainly cause panic, even if the terrifying thing suddenly went away again. 
Feeling fans, do you ever get suspicious that someone might be trying to test your devotion? Do you listen to every new song by the band in total delight, playing it over and over again so that you can learn it faster, only to discover that there's bits of it which are getting in the way of your total enjoyment? Bits which could really easily have just been left out? Cos I do. 
Hmmm... As lovely as it is to have a band who are attempting to really say something with their music, a band who want to reach people and send out positive messages to try and change the cynical world in which we live, a band who really want to mean something (you can go ahead and put inverted commas around any bits of that last paragraph, if you like. I was actually trying not to sound snarky for a second), something doesn't quite feel right.
Sometimes, I know, it must seem from reading my reviews that I hate indie music. Maybe that I hate all music. Just to clarify: I far from hate music, even and especially indie music. I love music lots and lots, I buy hundreds of CDs across the full genre-spectrum, I constantly seek out new and exciting things to listen to, I dance around my room singing to things at the top of my voice, do a bit of amateur DJ-ing and sometimes just sit and stare in silent contemplation at how AMAZING some music really can be. However, it just so happens that the rash of horrible, hideous faux-indie wet-nosed scamps dressed up as bands is continuing, unimpeached and so sometimes, music needs a bit of tough-love and the occasional "I'm not angry, I'm just very, very disappointed" piece of sentimentalism.
Golly, what's this all about then? A spooky hip hop track, with a woozy, dreamlike backing (well, nightmarelike, really), in which Kanye gets caught out by the paparazzi while cheating on his girlfriend, and then all hell breaks loose. It's accompanied by a twilight video in which someone gets stabbed with a spade by a hot girl in her pants, and for some reason, the lighter fluid she has sprayed all over her fur coat has been pixillated out. Killing people with garden impliments is fine, you see, but setting fire to your clothes? That's irresponsible!
Today is a GREAT DAY in POPULAR MUSIC HISTORY, people! We are all present at the birth of a brand new musical experience, and it is one which will transform the traditional thick boundaries between artist and audience into a barely-there, tissue-thin flappy wall. It's not the song, which is basically a variation on 'Give It To Me' by Timbaland only with the monolithic synths from Usher's 'Yeah' instead of Timbo's trademark finger-drums. 
It will come as no surprise to many of you that Newton Faulkner - the man who resembles the offspring of a ginger pirate and a mop, and finger-twiddling one-man band - is not brilliant at making websites. It's not his job to be brilliant at making websites. He's a pop star. Mariah Carey couldn't parse html code if she was forced to at gunpoint (nor could I, actually, it sounds painful), and she hangs out with web nerds. Newton Faulkner probably hangs out with buccaneers and footpads. 
Apologies to all those of you who are still mourning Test Icicles, but I was never one of you. Indeed, the only thing I remember about them is the way they split, with Devonte Hynes admitting rather guiltily that they were never really all that keen on their own music. This stands out for me as a rare brilliant moment of band/audience directed honesty and ought to be applauded and studied in depth by all undergraduates at Band School as a great demonstration of the ways in which you can not only afford your fans the respect they deserve without being an asshat about it. And also how you can provide really great interview copy for journalists.
If you were around last Friday you'll remember that there's an amazing reworking of Radiohead's latest song 'Nude' doing the rounds - y'know getting a massive 'buzz' from taste-makers, scenesters and whatnot - by, well, me. 
Can I just get the most important thing out of the way first? There's a lot of chat flying around at the moment about how this band - well, this SONG, the album's not out yet - sounds absolutely nothing like the Arctic Monkeys or the Rascals, a fact which is considered to be all the more amazing seeing as it's Alex Turner out of the Arctic Monkeys singing alongside his NBF Miles Kane from the Rascals. It's a transformation, people!
We all have good reason to suspicious of the word 'happiness', especially you ladies. Not because of any misguided goth logic about how happiness is just an illusion and the only true reality is eternal pain, mind. If happiness is an illusion, so is sadness, which would make the only true reality an eternal shrug. But, the reason we should be suspicious of the word is that it has been used in the past to manipulate the minds of unsuspecting girls by sleazy men who like to make bold claims about their ability to pull. 
Re-releasing songs is a confusing thing for all bands. Aside from the fact the royalties probably turn into a complete nightmare, you have to re-record the video and probably screw about with the mix a bit and you aren't the people you were when you wrote it so it's all a bit weird anyway, etc., etc. Still, when you've got a bit famous and think your first single was your best even though everyone ignored it at the time, it's a valid option. 
We all know that Radiohead like to do things differently from other music acts. I don't need to go over the whole 'In Rainbows' download pricing malarkey again, surely? So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to find out that the band are experimenting once again, this time with the release of their album tracks as singles, and how to get extra value out to The Fans. 
Oh well, if you INSIST... This is what I have to say. I like your band, I really do. I like the mix of fiery playing, aggro-shouty street urchin singing and accusatory lyrics. I particularly like that song of yours called 'It's Getting Boring By The Sea', that was a cracker. 
So, did you see that Mariah Carey has beaten Elvis Presley's record for No.1 singles in the US pop chart? Exciting times, eh? 
Personality is a much underrated thing in modern music, too little, and no-one remembers your name, too much, and you're just plain annoying. And watching singers work out the right amount does create an interesting tension between artist and audience. The more an artist wishes minimise their own quirks, and sound like other artists that they personally admire, the less of their own personality they put into their songs, and the less interesting their music becomes. 
Aww...look at the poor celebrity rap star. He can't get anything done because he's always getting grief off the fans (LEECHES, MORE LIKE) who want to touch him and rip his clothes and get autographs and sleep with him and stuff, and here he is, just trying to buy cat food. It's a crying shame, is what it is. 
I didn't intend to start writing another thing about Madonna so soon after yesterday's revelations, but this has been doing the rounds today. This is what happened when a Vanity Fair journalist told her Madgesty that he had never read the children's book Pippi Longstocking. The book is one of her favourites, you see, and you can totally understand why, because it's about a wild feral girl with big super-strong muscles and a wooden chest full of gold coins, who does everything her own way*. 
Oh no, you're not catching me out like this again. Every time Scouting For Girls have released a single so far, I've gone from not minding it to sort of loving it to really hating it to not-minding it again in the space of about a week. And it's not like I've fully made my mind up even now...