Top Ten, Stop Ten: the Second

Well that is a relief.

Almost as though acknowledging that I have had a week where summoning fever-pitch fury has proven difficult, the Top Ten has remained mercifully static. As I have decided is customary, instead of the usual lambasting of popular singles, I will instead provide a gushing recommendation of music I enjoy. A sane person may question why I choose to continue with the self-inflicted slog of weekly reviewing music that I clearly view with distaste, and to them I say: touché. Oh! anonymous inquisitors, how you cut to the quick of things.

Essentially, and hopefully honestly, it is far easier, and safer, to criticise than it is to commend. However, that is far more of an excuse than a reason, and if pushed to give my original, and rather high and mighty reason for beginning this exercise, it was in order to highlight the potentially dangerous use of thoughtless lyrics, as my area of expertise is linguistics, rather than music. I began this endeavour in the hope of unearthing huge reservoirs of ignorance and ill-will coursing below the surface of songs, but as weeks have gone by I have discovered that as a rule the songs are lazy and boring, rather than secretly '–ist' in any way.

While mediocrity and a paucity of ambition are nowhere near as bad as, say, overt sexism or racism, it is still not commendable in what is ostensibly art. So if sometimes the ire I heap upon songs seems disproportionate, remember that I do it for the future, in order to safeguard art, dya get me? Yeah. I am like the music Batman or something. Even with the silly lines after the ‘safeguard art’ sentence I am still not sure whether people will understand that it was a ludicrous joke, so now I have added this blatant line here outlining that I am, perhaps, not taking the end of this paragraph wholly seriously. The first line of the paragraph is valid though, I’m proud of it at least. Why don’t you put it on a poster or something?

In the previous (and only other) of these positive music posts I mentioned that I would give a gushing to Dog Fashion Disco / Polkadot Cadaver, and I am a blogger of my word(s).

Dog Fashion Disco and Polkadot Cadaver will always go together, in my mind at least, as they have much the same line up. The members of DFD chose to change the name of the group after one member decided to give up music, feeling the need, perhaps, to signify this alteration. Despite this, Polkadot is very definitely a stylistic continuation of DFD, so fans of one will almost certainly be fans of the other.

Dog Fashion Disco’s magnum opus, and my first and favourite album of theirs, is certainly Adultery, a dark and nuanced concept album tracking the descent of a man into madness. The album plays like a suspenseful and stylish film noir, which is remarkably conveyed using only the music, especially considering that the iconic visuals are perhaps the most striking aspect of the genre. Every track is a triumph in and of itself, with new ground being broken in each one, showcasing an uncanny mastery of an eclectic assortment of musical styles. The album weaves through driven heavy metal, haunting chanted choral singing, bursts of spoken word, a Johnny Cash pastiche and a manic burst of jarring manic elevator music. What is particularly impressive is that these diverse and very different tracks fit comfortably into the narrative, where in another album it could feel overly jittery. In fact, the stark contrast of the tracks only accentuate the edge of frantic madness that the album is laden with, which often provides a frightening immersion into their characterisation of the madman. Adultery should rank highly amongst the most gripping and masterful albums that never have achieved the acknowledgement they deserve.

Polkadot Cadaver’s debut offering, Purgatory Dance Party, was something of a departure from the full on, immersive, epic nature of Adultery, focusing more on dark comedy, and subverting pop and disco sensibilities in particular. At its best the humour of Polkadot can reach a delightfully sinister darkness, such as in the bleak track Chloroform Girl. The menacing lines “Chloroform girl, how have you been? / Don’t let me catch you sleeping again” are given the tint of eerie madness due to being sung incredibly tenderly over a loosely strummed guitar and xylophone melody that would, with other lyrics, be a song describable only as “lovely”. The lyrics are also incredibly naïve, “You’re only alive because I like you”, with the singer characterised as simple and deranged, and with the addition of a slow and ominously deep bass-line the song is turned into a chilling masterpiece.

Polkadot utilise synth significantly more than the more metal-oriented DFD, but often this does not detract from the pace and force of tracks, with powerful, driven tracks like Pure Bedlam for Halfbreeds and Bring Me the Head of Andy Warhol packing a vigorous punch. Despite the seemingly forceful edge of the music, the sometimes controversial topics the tracks touch on are always dealt with deftly, with tracks on religion, politics and art all treated adroitly.

The music produced by the two outfits is certainly dark and grim, but always coloured by fantastic writing, and a willingness to deal with topics that less courageous artists wouldn’t attempt in their wildest dreams. With a new Polkadot Cadaver album, tentatively titled R. Kelly’s Big Black Spaceship, on the horizon, it certainly would be a good time to enter the wonderfully dark world of Polkadot Cadaver. I would encourage you to ‘enter the fold’, but that both sounds needlessly dubious, and also makes me seem like a humungous horror-poseur.

This is perhaps slightly redundant as I imagine if you managed to reach the end of this description of dark-horror-comedy-synth-metal music then I imagine you aren’t here for pop countdowns, but there we are, a tradition is a tradition. Here is the Top Ten:

10 – Remedy – Little Boots

9 – Get Shaky – Ian Carey Project

8 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)

7 – Beat Again – JLS

6 – Supernova – Mr Hudson ft Kanye West

5 – Sweet Dreams – Beyonce

4 – Behind Closed Doors – Peter Andre

3 – Ready for the Weekend – Calvin Harris

2 – Never Leave You – Tinchy Stryder ft Amelle

1 – I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

The Cheek: Contribution #1

Here is a copy of an article I wrote for The Cheek (Issue #7). A shiny version can be found at The Cheek.

****

Thanks to the rising availability of computer generated music it is possible for any talentless banshee to create a grating, repetitive dance track, and more often than not, they do. In the vast mire of commercially available dance headaches it is necessary for a track to have a unique selling point in order to stand out.

Acts used to incorporate a direct plea to have their music played, using attention grabbing titles such as Hey DJ and the less ambiguous Hey DJ (Play That Song). And who could forget the forgettable hit from DJ RCT Ow DJ (You Gonna Play This Song or What Like?).

It is interesting, then, to see Cascada rise to the top of the charts with the track Evacuate the Dancefloor, which does not employ these gimmicky methods. In fact it seems Cascada have utilised schoolyard reverse psychology in order to manufacture heavy rotation of their track, emploring everyone within cacophonous yelping distance to remove themselves from the area reserved for rhythmic motions, or Evacuate the Dancefloor, if you'd prefer.

Odd that a song would describe it's own noise as "like an overdose", the symptoms of which include dizziness, disorientation, nausea, vomiting, and oscillopsia. Having listened to the track I can confirm some side effects, and to be honest I am touched by the band's honest and frank admission. In listening to the track I certainly experienced a degree of nausea.

The singer also claims to have been "infected by the sound". Wikipedia describes an infection as "the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species". So essentially this track is like music aliens invading your brain, in a bad way. This is supported by the following line "stop this beat is killing me". One wonders how such a dangerous track was ever allowed to be made commercially available.

Worryingly the final line in a number of the choruses is "Hey little DJ let the music take me underground". Even overlooking the extremely patronising "little" in that line, it certainly seems that the lyricist of Cascada is harboring self-destructive tendencies. Far be it for me to speak out against the euthanasia of vacuous dance outfits, some sacrifices are hardly sacrifices at all. It is, however, a harmful message to be sending out for the little dance droids. An alternative version of this line advocates burning the dancefloor, which is despicable. There is nothing funny about arson (not unless you remove the last two letters).

So somehow the mystic music charts have ensured that the number one spot is inhabited by the teeth-grinding noise of Cascada. Cue three and a half minutes of footage of a posing tool. Strangely the woman from Cascada looks remarkably like an R.E. teacher I once had, the main difference being a noticable lack of strutting and wailing to a backing track of ear-rupturing dance noise like a public service announcement from the seventh circle of synth hell. Instead, she taught R.E. I preferred this. Unquestionably, the woman from Cascada is attractive, and that is, of course, enough to get to Number One, even pipping the recently deceased Michael Jackson to the post.

What we can learn from this is that you can't cheat your way to the top by using cheap gimmick titles for your songs, or by dying suddenly just before a huge farewell tour. It is also possible that Jacko isn't number one because a consensus wasn't reached about which song to back. There is nothing worse than a disorganised fan-base. Apart from death. Jackson just can't win. I suppose it is some consolation for him that "woo"-filled funk-fest Billie Jean reached number two. It's what he would have wanted, though he probably would have preferred a number one. And not to have died.

Congratulations are in order to Cascada however, they now enjoy their place in an elite group of artists that have achieved Number Ones over the years, their contemporaries include Bob the Builder and Crazy Frog. Truly the highest echelon of musical recognition.

and I feel like taking off, my mistake, it's the Top Ten.

A disappointing lack of movement in the charts this week means that there are only two new entries to have a mock at. Familiar names about as the new track galumphing into Number Nine is

9 – Sweet Dreams - Beyonce

So here is another track from the equality retarding Beyonk. The noise this track makes is a high level bass-synthaggedon. With a whomping bass loop plugging away behind Beyonk’s signature wailings and vocal flailings this is truly an unpleasant musical experience.

Competing with how unutterably annoying the music is, the lyrics give a truly amazing effort to match the level of its annoying fuckery. There is a line in the song that smacks of a more self-aware element than I would usually associate with Beyonk, where she sings: ‘You could be a sweet dream / or a beautiful nightmare’. I don’t think this line is actually referring to the song itself, or if it is it doesn’t quite reach the level of honesty I would hope for in a prancing piece of post-modern pop. If she was being more honest the first line of the chorus would instead be ‘You could be a sweet dream / With several hundred rewrites and the introduction of actual instruments and a tune etc / or you could remain like you are now / a complete and utter nightmare.’ But Beyonk has a history of ignoring my suggestions, so I very much doubt that those lines will make their way into the track. Not even in a remix or something.

Beyonk must actually be some sort of music masochist for, as we have ascertained, her music is a nightmare, and yet she utters the lines: ‘Either way / I don’t want to wake up from you’. This sort of filth should only get played on BDSMfm.

Another strange line, which this time suggests visions of the apocalypse, which is fitting since the song itself provides the sounds, is: ‘Clouds filled with stars cover your skies / And I hope it rains’. Now in my understanding of this line, the skies in the scene described by Beyonk are hugely overcast, and not only that, the clouds themselves are filled with stars. Now I am going out on a limb and presuming that the meaning of stars that Beyonk is alluding to here is the ones in space, the burning balls of fire in the great dark beyond, rather than the more mundane meaning of ‘celebrities’. Although weirdly if the clouds were full of celebrities and it did rain, maybe we would be spared a lot of vacuous inanity. The other, perhaps more likely option, is that Beyonk is wishing to see huge boulders of flame raining down on the variety of different locales in the world, visiting fiery molten death from above on everyone. Sweet dreams indeed.

Carrying on the theme of quite violent imagery she uses the line: ‘Tattoo your name across my heart’. Now I had to play with, I mean examine, a heart once in a Biology lesson, and while I don’t believe that it was a human heart I still feel that it is representative. It would be very difficult to tattoo something on to a heart, not only because it is quite tough, and not a flat surface, which is what we usually tattoo things on to. Skin. Also, the heart is usually present inside a person’s chest, and so even if the tattooist was talented enough to actually tattoo an image through the ribs, the lungs and onto the heart, which would take some skill I imagine, probably go to Miami Ink or something, the pictogram inked thereupon would be impossible to see. Because it is inside you. That is presuming that the ink placed on the heart doesn’t get directly into your bloodstream, which I don’t think it would straight away because the heart is not really an important organ in terms of the pumping of blood, that’s what I was taught in school anyway. And if you had ink instead of blood pumping through your veins you wouldn’t be able to live properly anymore. Because you’d be a squid. Or dead.

On second thoughts Beyonk, knock yourself out. And then I will tattoo your heart.

The other new entry this week in at ‘Oh, almost!’ Number Two it’s:

2 – Supernova – Mr Hudson ft Kanye West

It’s an effort from the excessively formal Mr Hudson, and the second appearance in the Top Ten, since I began sneering at it, for Kanye West, even though neither song is technically his.

This song is clearly suffering from the synthocalypse that was dreamt up by Beyonk in her sweetest of dreams, as it is filled with synth beds and what sounds like basic Casio pre-set drum loops. To be wholly fair to the track though, it isn’t anywhere near as terror-inducingly “Judgement Day is approaching” in its sound as is Beyonk’s track. It does, however, contain some catastrophic imagery.

The chorus goes: ‘And I feel like taking off / Let me be your supernova’. Overlooking the fact that he has opened a song with the word ‘and’ (lazy and ungrammatical), the line itself doesn’t even make sense. His allusion to ‘taking off’ suggest an aeroplane or a rocket, however the following line ‘let me be your supernova’ doesn’t correspond to this. As a supernova does not ‘take off’, it is an explosion. Wikipedia describes a supernova as:

“a stellar explosion. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval, a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun could emit over its life span”.

I would say that if Mr Hudson were indeed to become a supernova he would be endangering the life of every man, beast, plant and woman on the planet. That is either extremely reckless or completely malicious. Also, in the worst of R.L. Stine, be careful what you wish for...

It would be a pity to lose every living thing on the planet, and in all likelihood the actual planet itself, just to witness the death of the mellow hip-hopper Hudson-san, but if left to continuous consideration could actually be worth it.

Speaking of mellow hip-hoppers I would be glad to see the back of, I haven’t really given enough time to Kanye West’s part of the song. My favourite line of Kanye’s in this track is: ‘He’s not you or me / I wanna break up the scene and see you running back to me’. Now I do not applaud the relationship-sabotage that Mr West seems to be suggesting in this line, but I am particularly drawn to its poetic merits, such as the revolutionary decision to take the word “me” and then to later on to rhyme it with the word “me”. Astounding.

Similarly there is a line which includes the phrase ‘tonnes of fun’ which for some reason just doesn’t sit right with me. Having tonnes of fun is something the Chuckle Brothers should be doing, I expect my hip-hoppers to be moody and pretentious, not cheery and Blue Peter.

Perhaps the line I have the most problem with however is the end of the chorus which goes: ‘Before you make the biggest mistake of your life / give me a chaance to get it right’. Now you may have noticed that I have placed two a’s in the word chance. This is because I wanted to opt out of using the phonetic alphabet while still giving an indication of how that word is said. Now I don’t really have a problem with hip-hoppers using received pronunciation when they do a dropping of their lines yeah, and for all I know, and am unwilling to research, Mr Hudson may indeed be a member of the royal family. However, there is no call for Kanye ‘Gay Fish’ West to follow suit. There is no way in the ice rinks of hell that Kanye West says ‘chance’ in the same way as Michael McIntyre. Although if they were to make a show where the two were forced to live each other’s lives for a bit, I would probably watch that.

In summary:

10 – Poppiholla – Chicane

9 – Sweet Dreams – Beyonce

8 – Paparazzi – Lady Gaga

7 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) - Pitbull

6 – When Love Takes Over – David Guetta ft Kelly Rowland

5 – Bulletproof – La Roux

4 - Evacuate the Dancefloor – Cascada

3 – I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

2 – Supernova – Mr Hudson ft Kanye West

1 – Beat Again - JLS

Cabeza Diez, or in English, the Top Ten.

The Sundays appear with worrying haste for my taste, but when Sunday comes it brings with it another Top Ten snide-a-thon. There are three new entrants into this week’s Ten, including (oh em gee) a new Number One! Of course the phrase “Number One” ain’t what it used to be. It is, of course, a joke, which is what I will make of it. Then let’s begin.

Cruzzing in at Number Nine is:

9 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) – Pitbull

The main message of this song seems to be that someone wants the singer, and luckily for them, perhaps, the singer also wants them, though they, in true pop song tradition, remain unnamed. It is quite difficult for me to follow half of this song, as they have taken a Dora the Explorer approach to song writing, with an educational half-and-half approach to the lyrics, infusing repetitive idiotic English lyrics with what I am driven to assume are repetitive idiotic Spanish lyrics.

The presumably fan-heard lyrics that accompany this song on the tube of you include

“Mami got an ass like a donkey, with a monkey,

look like King Kong, welcome to the crib”

Now I assume that this is insulting, unless the writer has trouble with simile. I don’t know whether or not this ‘Mami’ has a backside which is comparable to the backside of a donkey, or whether her backside is like a donkey, inasmuch as she has a donkey sticking out of her arse. Alternatively, the ‘Mami’ could be the front half of a pantomime horse, which the Latino writer has confused for a donkey, as most likely no one would dress up in a costume of that kind in a Spanish speaking country just in case they are mobbed and thrown off a church.

Unimaginative drums abound accompanied by a minimalist approach to all other instruments involved, with synth pings, guitar bursts and trumpet parps occasionally joining the fray.

The most memorable lines from this song are, in the words of XOXOKISKISXOXO:

“one-two-three-four
Uno-do'-tres-cuatro”

Quite literally music by numbers.

7 – Poppiholla – Chicane

A mellow trance offering in the Top Ten this week, from everyone’s favourite way of pronouncing chicken; Chicane. The music is a mix of a despair-inducing mind-numbing busy default-trance drumbeat, with the piano melody picked out by what seems to be a previously talented pianist who unfortunately lost all but one finger in a terrible accident and as such is forced to pick out as interesting a melody as possible whilst only utilising one key per go. Other noises in this track were created by 1) keeping the beat with an air-freshener and, 2) allowing the wind to blow through a particularly musical crevice (or possibly a crevasse).

The video, then, is a more intriguing offering, with a haggard and worn hoodie-type individual stalking the streets like an emotionless, yet threatening automaton. First he scares a bedraggled woman at an ATM, then disgusts the lady who lives at Number 8, then gets sneered at by two dodgy looking white blokes and pitied by a taxi driver. For me, this is the first part of the story, where the hoodie-character is built up to look like a yob, with this presumptuousness being subverted in the second part.

Or does get subverted? The man leapfrogs a fence, and upon landing breaks into a sprint which incorporates the techniques of both Lynford Christie and a futuristic detached killing machine (or Terminator if you will). He then proceeds, during his sprint, to knock tea out of a bloke’s hands, knock paper out of a woman’s hands, and upturn a waiter’s tray, dousing everyone in the vicinity with chilled beverage. This, rather pedestrian, chaos is initiated in order to perform an unconvincing rugby tackle on a ditsy looking girl who is fully enraptured with her phone, playing snake 2 presumably, and is about to get seriously brained by some falling stonework. Having saved this gormless youth from brick-induced-brain-death she then lies on his chest looking at him backwards like a confused but ultimately disinterested halibut wrenched awkwardly from the watery deeps. The video then fades out.

It is an instrumental piece, though likely no actual instruments were used, and as such there are no accompanying lyrics in order to disentangle this gripping drama. Perhaps the message is: “don’t judge hoodies because they are actually mediocre vigilante superheroes there to save vacuous phone-dwellers from death-by-unstable-masonry”. Maybe there is no message. The amount of stonework that actually fell was unimpressive, considering the apocalyptic SFX we are used to as viewers of film, though likely the phone-girl would disagree.

Trance isn’t really my thing, but everyday heroism is. The film portrays a good deed, though the trail of soaking by-standers may disagree.

And new in at Numero Uno (as Pitbull would say):

1 – Beat Again – JLS

A, perhaps, unlikely entrant in the Number One slot for X-Factor leftovers JLS. It is possible they are enjoying success on the back of the death of Michael Jackson, as a four-man black boyband would of course draw comparisons to the Jackson 5.

What struck me first whilst watching their video, apart from a feeling of my own impending seppuku, was that one of them was wearing a dickie-bow. Clever put-downs and wordy insults aside; what a twat. The video is an example of clever filming, as they have heavily utilised dynamic camerawork to disguise the fact they look like diarrhetic ducks with ants in their pants, prancing around in order to clench tighter. This is made all the more disgusting by their insistence on maintaining a facade of vomit-inducing squinting and pouting faux-sincerity. Ych a fucking fi.

The music then is computer-generated nothingness bleeping and blooping around the same old vague lyrics. I believe I have, however, deciphered the meaning of their song. It is the touching tale of the love and loss of their liver. Stay with me.

Lines such as:

“Damn,

the doctor’s just finished telling me,

there’s no time,

losing you could be the end of me”.

And:

“they’re telling me that my heart won’t beat again”

suggest that the writer of the song has been involved in a botched operation, where his liver was accidentally removed. As everyone knows, the liver is an essential piece of kit when it comes to being alive, and having no liver would put extraneous stress on your heart, resulting in death. Now go back and read those lines and tell me I am wrong. Yeah~.

The confusing line “If I die / would you come to my funeral?” is likely due to the writer suffering greatly due to the slow collapse of his bodily organs, and this has led to him/her considering whether, in the event of the anthropomorphic transformation of his liver, whether it would then attend the ceremony commemorating his/her death. Yeah I know, what a weird song.

If you bought that single, Simon Cowell is laughing up his sleeves, or more likely, down his trousers at you.

Here is the full list for posterity, which means to insert up your posterior.

10 – Diamond Rings – Chipmunk ft Emeli Sande

9 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) – Pitbull

8 – Man in the Mirror – Michael Jackson

7 – Poppiholla – Chicane

6 – When Love Takes Over – David Guetta ft Kelly Rowland

5 – Paparazzi – Lady Gaga

4 – Bulletproof – La Roux

3 – I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

2 – Evacuate the Dancefloor – Cascada

1 – Beat Again – JLS

And there was Top Ten!

And here begins what blogologists are already calling "Another one of those blog thingys you may have heard about". It is a simple premise I'm sure you will all warm to:

Boy meets Radio 1 Top Ten Chart (every Sunday) and talks snidely about the songs therein. You'll have to pretend that the riff from Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love is playing over my analyses, as actually having the track play on this page would be hugely annoying.

Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh NUH nuh-nuh-nuh nuh-nuh-nuh duh-nuh-nuh-nuh NUH! (rinse repeat).

Starting off this enterprise in a possibly distasteful way it's an unlikely replacement for Gordon Brown at Number 10 it's:

10 - Billie Jean - Michael Jackson

Renewed popularity and chart appearances will likely offer little consolation for everyone's favourite alleged paedophile Micky Jack as he enjoys his first week in whatever afterlife he currents moonwalks in. The appearance of prophetic hit Billie Jean in the Top 10 has particular poignancy amid speculation that Jackson was in no way biologically involved in the creation of his children. "That kid is not my son" indeed. Rumours abound that it is not Billie Jean that will get custody of the children, but singer/actress Diana Ross.

9 - Mama Do - Pixie Lott

The Number Nine slot is filled this week by generic airbrushed 'diva' and punchline to the joke "What do you call a woman who is often nose-mining for boogers" Pixie Lott. Ms Lott falls comfortably into the Gwen Stefani school of poppelganger. This track contains a subtitle in parenthesis, Uh oh, uh oh, which is a surprisingly apt summation of my reaction to the noise contained therein. The Grade 1 plinking of piano keys is beautifully complimented by the deranged percussion of clapping. The vacuous pop instrument of choice, as always, is the hand. Hands feature heavily in the video aswell, in one sequence, which will surely be remembered as the iconic scene of the video, a line of fashionably dressed poseur men play pattacake with a line of skantily clad poseur women. In fairness the pattacake playing is quite energetic, but it is still, nevertheless, pattacake. Of course when I say this is the scene that will be remembered what I mean is the entire song will be forgotten and Pixie Lott will likely not even be worth putting to work in a Buzzcocks line-up (the show or the band).

8 - Knock You Down - Keri Hilson ft Kanye West and Ne-yo

Hip-hop non-entity Keri Hilson is joined by both rampant egomaniac and all-round despicable human being Kanye West and the man with a name like Japanese phrase signalling agreement Ne-yo, in order to give this track a smidgen of credibility. What is most striking about this song is the unbelievably painful repetitive synth which seems to have been composed by a maniac and played by an elephant in boxing gloves. However on closer inspection it is the lyrics that are the most notable in this song. Lines like: "I used to be commander-in-chief of my pimp ship flying high" that truly single this track out as an outstanding piece of art. I am in awe of the particularly topical references and also the breathtaking metre in the lines: "This is bad, real bad Michael Jackson / Now I'm mad, real mad Joe Jackson". This song truly is bad, real bad Michael Jackson, as further demonstrated by the line: "You should leave your boyfriend now, I'ma ask 'em". What a wonderfully 2D world Kan-yo lives in (I have created this amalgamation because I have no idea which is which). Another line features Kan-yo declaring that he was the 'class clown' which is ironic given his famous sense of humour, or lack of one, but it is what we have all come to expect from him, he is after all, a gay fish.

7 - Release Me - Agnes

Complaining gently into seventh place is another poppelganger, this time with the name of a middle aged Scottish grump, no it isn't Susan Boyle, it's Agnes. This song has opted for violins rather than piano, which makes me hate it less just for offering the tiniest fraction of variety in this frankly stale countdown. However the video soon makes me fall in hate with this song, with juddery dancing and camera technique adding to the vague creeping nausea already instigated by the music. There is also far too much casual nuzzling in the video for my liking. If someone is nuzzling you I believe it is polite to acknowledge it in some way, at the very least, don't just whinge out your tedious track. From what I can tell the message of this track is fairly controversial, with a strong pro-euthanasia standpoint being taken throughout: "no, i'm not in control, so let me go, release me". Just point me to the plug Agnes, and I will pull it with pleasure.

6 - Boom Boom Pow - Black Eyed Peas

I'm unsure whether I was watching the real video for this or a Vista advert with the track spliced over it, whichever, I wasn't pleased. More than the hateful vocal and musical stylings I was angered by the surreal dating methods used by this outfit. "Two thousand and late" is not a year. 200Late. It doesn't work, FURY. There are also references to "cybertron" in the song, which is worrying as this track could very well be, barely, coded messages to the Decepticons. If our world is brought to the brink of destruction by robots in disguise I will be furious, and will pin the blame squarely on the name-stealing piss-pants Fergie. With the inability to use accepted dating systems and references to Transformers this track certainly seems to have been written, and composed, by a child, with lines such as: "This beat go boom boom" which are not only idiotic,they are also an innacurate representation of the beat. The Black Eyed Peas must not be big fans of Flight of the Conchords, as a similar track already exists which sends up the idiotic repetitive use of "boom".

5 - Paparazzi - Lady Gaga

The incredibly Swedish opening to this video does not bely the strangeness to come. The presence of the word 'cunt' in the subtitles is quite a good hint though. I'm uncertain as to who the Lady Gagger's target audience is, she seems to be a poppelganger cut from a Toxic-era Britney Spears mold. In line with this the video contains a vaguely distasteful combination of bdsm and morbidity. I don't really know where I stand on this video as it contains far too much footage of the Lady Gagger in a wheelchair with a neck brace on, and subsequently juddering around on crutches, for me to be wholly comfortable watching. With this sort of imagery the video is attempting to make a point about paparazzi & celebrity but in so doing is possibly trivialising disability. In retrospect it was easier when she was in her "I'm stealing David Bowie's face lightning is that okay?" phase. It isn't okay, you Bowie thief.

4 - When Love Takes Over - David Guetta ft Kelly Rowland

This track opens to a piano riff cut and paste from the track Clocks by little-known band Coldplay. Let's be fair, if you are going to commit piano-based daylight robbery, you may aswell steal it from a bloody famous song, eh? (as the Canadians say). In the video you are treated to many lovely holiday-snap style shots of Kelly Rowland looking lovely with her massive face and her holey dress, and also to footage of, who I presume to be, David Guetta pushing his dance-creating equipment around a city on a trolley looking for all the world like a techno tramp. This song is really much of a nothingness, which will ensure that it is this summer's anthem that pilled-up sweaty Ibizagoers will spread their STI's to. Lovely.

3 - Bulletproof - La Roux

Slamming synthilly into the Number Three is the androgenously fronted synthy-synth duo La Roux. The track is the distant aural cousin of fond childhood memory of millions: the theme from Tetris. This is augmented by having a very abstract video, which has a particularly 'boxy' feel to it. There is a very definite edge to the check-out-attendant-having-a-nervous-breakdown chic that is sported by La Roux. Interestingly I discovered that her mother holds the record for longest ever serving actor in stalwart British police drama The Bill, meaning that she also holds the record for longest time spent playing a police character (according to the trustworthy and accurate Wikipedia). I suppose you would believe yourself to be bulletproof as well if your mother was a police (acting) demigod. There's a joke about Acting-Sergeant etc in there somewhere. I have also attempted not to pass comment on her hair, which I'm sure is very cool, though occasionally she does resemble Egon from The Real Ghostbusters.

2 - Man in the Mirror - Michael Jackson

He moonwalks in the footsteps of Tupac, another place in the Top Ten for the dead man (not the Undertaker). Strangely there is footage of La Roux in an old video of Man in the Mirror hosted by YouTube.

Jacko is unable to avoid irony, and the opening lines "I'm Gonna Make A Change, For Once In My Life" are no exception to this rule, providing the need for me to explain that he is unable to make a change, as he is dead. On the comment section of this very same video I found this moving message:

mrbeanslefthandman (19 minutes ago)

I want to make a change for once in my life. I want to stop eating pizzas and change my diet to high protein and low carb diet. The man in the mirror is looking pretty fat. Micheal there is no doubt you were the best in the world you have motivated me to get rid of the tyres round my belly.

I feel that there can be no more fitting a tribute than this completely unrelated tangential one to the, if we're lucky, one and only Michael Jackson.

1 - Evacuate the Dancefloor - Cascada

And at Number One; the teeth-grinding noise of Cascada. Cue three and a half minutes of footage of a posing tool. Strangely the woman from Cascada looks remarkably like an R.E. teacher I once had (teaching me), except I quickly warmed to the R.E. teacher as she did not spend most of her time strutting and booming middle of the road dance noise like a public service announcement from the seventh circle of synth hell. Instead, she taught R.E. I preferred this. Unquestionably, the woman from Cascada is attractive, and that is enough to get to Number One, so there. She now enjoys her place in an elite group of artists that include Bob the Builder and Crazy Frog, truly the highest echelon of music recognition. Huzzah.

Eurovision Wrong Contest

I dislike the Eurovision song contest in a very big way.  It is currently in the middle of the voting, so I will be able to dive you the results at the end of this blog.  Chances are you’ve either seen the results by now, or you don’t care.  I don’t care, but I have been trapped in the living room and I am being subjected to this rubbish, so I am going to share the pain.

 

I think what I am most disappointed with is the lack of Bill Bailey.  I doubt he would have even wanted to participate, but from a completely selfish point of view it would have made it more enjoyable for me to have a little nugget of Bailey in the middle.

 

I have just finished watching the bit where they lowered a giant plastic pool filled with bellyflopping women into the crowd, and I really don’t know what to say about that.  I mean that was really boggling.  Just weird.  At times it looked like some sordid sex-pool-burlesque-psychadelia business, and at other times, most notably the bellyflopping times, it looked like some wet, scantily clad women bellyflopping.  Because that is what it was.

 

Here are some things which I disliked about the Eurovision Song Contest this year:

 

1. Dita Von Teese’s presence in Germany’s song.  Is that really allowed?  She is hugely famous, although at this point in the points giving, it seems not to have done Germany well to be affiliated with a burlesque act, it may only have served to further emphasize Germany’s black-leather, eurotrash image.  Is that libellous?  Possibly.
2. My mother got freaked out by the fully blue sequin-faced man in the Albanian act.  That was strange.  They were also joined onstage by a hellish Thing 1 and Thing 2 act, which scared me to my core.
3. The growing old screen in the Russian act was a terrifying thing, filmed straight on to the poor woman’s face.  The recording utilised a cut that I imagine would be used in a recording of a suicide message.  Seeing a woman looking directly into the camera and singing in a faux-sincere manner makes me wish that it was actually a suicide message.  Or at the very least a trigger recording that would set some hitmen in motion to take out the key people involved in broadcast of this rubbish.
4. Malta were awesome.  Cheese & Energy is what I want from the Eurovision, not hateful pop-ballads sung in horrific American accents.  No-one in the Eurovision song contest should speak with that accent.  As the participants are all European.  It is in the name.
5. UK.  UK?  No I am not.  Seeing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s twitching Peter Pettigrew face convulsing softly on my screen is not an enjoyable thing.  Just like Dita Von Teese, I don’t know whether Master Pettigrew should be allowed to play on stage, because he is a world famous musical talent, and also because he is vermin.  Sorry Andrew, your music is nice, but I don’t like you.
6. The Ibiza rave that that Finland made was hypnotic.  But horrible.

 

It’s not quite the end now though but it’s fairly obvious already that Norway are going to win, which is good because the singer actually played an instrument aswell, which wins him some actual musician points.  I grudgingly accept his talent, even though he has a High School Musical face, which I think fits him into Charlie Brooker’s “made in a Petri dish” category of human beings.

 

What I dislike the most about this Eurovision, even more than Graham Norton’s presence, is the way in which the fact that our act, Jade, was prostituted out across the Europe to tour extensively and be interviewed and appear on TV generally.  In recent years people have disliked the Eurovision because they believe that the voting system is based on politics rather than quality of song, which is probably true.  But this year our presence quite high up in terms of points is not reliant on the quality of the song, which I accept is good even though it isn’t to my personal test.  The song is nice enough, though the lyrics are lazy rubbish, which is ‘necessary’ so that other countries can learn the song in what is not their first language.  However the reason we have received more points this year (more than none) is largely down to the fact that the song has been widely advertised all over the continent, and to be completely honest I don’t think that that would have been a good way to have won, and makes me hate the coverage of this event, where succeeding because we smeared our shitepop all up in peoples faces is a good thing.  It isn’t.

 

There’s also something to be said of the fact that people are picked to give points based on their physical looks, as though this one individual can be held up as a sexy advert for the country.

 

“Ooh bloody hell I should go to Armenia, they have some sexy people there!”

 

What a load of rubbish.  But what is more rubbish?  The rubbish or the rubbish that watched it?  Or the rubbish that watched it and then wrote a blog about it?  Or the rubbish that subsequently read the blog?  Yeah~.  Think about it.

 

It’s the original rubbish.  Eurovision.  Rubbish*.

 

*Apart from the sexy Israeli woman on the bongos.  Nice.

An Analysis of 'All the Single Ladies' by Beyonce

Once again I am driven by tedious pedantry to provide an analysis of another vacuous pop song for the sake of my own amusement.

 

I have chosen this song due to the aggravating nature of the lyrics, the singing, the music, the video, the dancing, the outfits and the general aura of the piece in its entirety.  It is also in part due to the insistence of the student union to play this video several times an hour, although maybe they only do this at 11-12 on a Monday morning as they have worked out my schedule and my distaste for this particular piece.

 

I will start by talking about the actual music, which seems to be generated by an elephant being repeatedly anally mutilated by a mini-moog, accompanied by a crowd of happy-clapping brain-dead pop fans who are more than happy to complement Beyonk with their continuous clap-based percussion.

Opening the song with the lyrics ‘All the single ladies’ and repeating this a mere seven times, I feel is a slightly week opening, as I feel the song would be stronger if this sentence was repeated significantly more, as it is straight repetition that I look for in a catchy pop song.  The repetition of this line has the sonic frequency of a panicked crow squawking incessantly, which of course fits in well with the poppy elephant-violating nature of the synth.

Of course this line is followed with the highly original and novel appeal to have all these ladies that Beyonce has gathered using her siren-call to ‘put their hands up’.  I doubt this is meant in a law-enforcing or threatening-with-weapon way, though that is certainly the message that the incessant music is portraying, I for one felt as though I was being held hostage aurally.

With the next line, Beyonce takes a bewilderingly fast turn into a narrative, in which she describes that she has recently ended a relationship, though no details are given at this point as to the length of the relationship, or indeed its seriousness.  She also takes time out to inform the listener that she is currently in a club, and ‘doing her own little thing’, though this admission is vague enough that this could be singing, dancing, drinking or even relieving herself in a toilet.  There is no way to know without having access to Beyonce in order to quiz her further on the matter.

Beyonce then continues to extrapolate on the reasoning behind her break-up, revealing that ‘You decided to dip but now you wanna trip’.  As a student of English I am distressed to admit that I have no fucking clue what this means.  Some of the possibilities that I tentatively suggest are that the ‘dipping’ is perhaps a rather crude reference to the sexual act, and in this case ‘trip’ would refer to the man, in my heteronormative assumption it is a man, journeying away from her.  In this instance I decipher the line as meaning ‘you decided to have sex with me but now you want to travel’.  On the other hand ‘dip’ could refer to dancing, but now that he is sick of dancing, the man would prefer to ‘trip’, though this seems increasingly unlikely.  Alternatively, the ‘dip’ could refer to the man’s desire to enjoy a sherbet dip, but now that he has he would rather enjoy some magic mushrooms in order to ‘trip’.  It could even suggest that the man wanted to go for a swim, but now that he is sick of swimming he would rather get dry.  In this example the work ‘trip’ has been misheard as ‘drip’.

The actual definition I am going to work with is one where ‘dip’ does indeed refer to dancing, and the ‘trip’ refers to getting mad, as in “You are tripping fool’.  This I have decided due to the next line being ‘cuz another brother noticed me’.  I am again using my powers of deduction in order to work out that the ‘brother’ in this sentence is not a blood relation.  Beyonce then admits that she is ‘up on him’ and that he is similarly ‘up on’ her.

The focus of this song then changes, for Beyonk has been talking directly to the ex for the duration of the song, and now she addresses the new fellow who is ‘up on’ her.  She assures the man that there is no need to pay any attention to the ex, for she has cried constantly for an entire three years, and as such feels that all emotional ties have been severed with her previous relationship, and that the ex has no reasonable right to be aggravated that she has chosen to be ‘up on’ a new fellow.

She continues then into the chorus, where she indicates that her ex should have provided her with jewellery, accompanied with a desire to eventually be joined in a form of matrimony with her.  The assumption behind this is that because he did not provide this shiny thing plus marriage he has no right to take umbrage at her behaviour, even is she is ‘up on’ ‘another brother’.

Luckily the line of ‘if you liked it you should have put a ring on it’ is only repeated six times at this point, which ensures that the listener doesn’t become jaded with this rather wearisome line.  Of course I am also assuming, possibly incorrectly, that the two ‘it’s in this line refer to different things, namely the first ‘it’ refers to Beyonk, and the second refers to her finger.  I could be wrong, although neither the idea that if he liked Beyonce he should have put a ring around her middle, or the idea that if he liked her finger then he should have provided the digit with a ring seem feasible.  Of course there is the off chance that Beyonce is in fact deriding the fact that the man was unable to throw a hoop around a pole in order to win her affection, though that is perhaps too odd a conclusion to draw.

The next verse is a description of her current state, where she notes that she has adequately moisturised her lips with lip gloss, and that she is wearing a man on her hips (odd choice of clothing, even for a pop diva).  She also notes that she has drink, I’m assuming alcohol, and that she is behaving like a fool, but that she doesn’t really give a toss what it is that ‘you’ think.  I am assuming in this line that the ‘you’ refers to her ex-character rather than me personally, as I feel my critique is valued highly in the mind of Beyonk.  She also notes that she has no need of permission due to the fact that a chance has been squandered, further emphasising that there is no jurisdiction over her actions.  This verse is ended with a quite bitter declaration that Beyonce is going to punish her ex, by forcing him to feel regret for his actions, which is perhaps slightly childish, and moreover it is the work of a bully.

The reminder that her finger needed to be clothed in tat is now repeated further, also followed by the obligatory ‘wo-oh-oh’ing.

The last verse is hypocritically opened, for though Beyonk has spent the previous two choruses declaring the need for jewellery, she is now announcing that she has no need to be treated to material goods, ‘I’m not that kind of girl’, and that she instead desires affection.  Furthermore, what she ‘deserves’, in her opinion, is a man that will ‘make’ her, ‘take’ her, and finally ‘deliver’ her to her destiny, ‘to infinity and beyond’.  At first glance it may seem that what Beyonce desires is Buzz Lightyear working as a postman, but more worrying is the continued objectification of women that is rampant in the song.  In the chorus she repeatedly objectifies herself with the term ‘it’, juxtaposing this with an ‘it’ which refers to her finger, which then conveys that Beyonce is only as important as her own finger.  The desire for a man to ‘make’, ‘take’ and ‘deliver’ her removes all agency from Beyonce, who is then stuck in a passive role, once again emphasising her as an object, rather than a person.

The verse is closed then with Beyonce imploring a man to give her a cwtch, ‘say I’m the one you own’, which of course begs the question do you own your partner?  I was of the opinion that we were living in the 21^st Century and had left such unhealthy notions behind.  Maybe not, and Beyonce stresses that, if this claim wasn’t made then ‘you’ will be left all alone, and that Beyonce, now fully objectified, will disappear like a gossamer apparition, or in her words ‘like a ghost’.

The song is brought to its moribund close with further repetition of ‘all the single ladies’ and ‘put a ring on it’.

I think that, objectification of women aside, my main gripe with this song is both the ugly dancing that the video contains, and the idiotic choice of giving Beyonce a metal robot hand in said video.  In purely logical terms, it would be impossible to put a ring on that finger, for you have yourself clothed it with some sort of robotic exoskeleton, which would restrict the placement of a ring, due to it’s un-circular nature.  Maybe it was the man’s desire to ‘put a ring on it’ but he was unable to due to Beyonce’s frankly impractical choice of accessorisation.  Though maybe his inability to work around her unique hand-garments is the true reason for their break-up.

In summary:

All the music-buying public x7

Put your hands up.

 

I don’t like it and I want you to put a sock in it x7

Woo oh ooh oh oh ooh oh oh ooh oh oh oh.

**Lyrics provided by www.elyricsworld.com**

An Analysis of 'Hot 'N' Cold' by Katy Perry

Some would say that pop music in general cannot be counted as poetry or high art, and would consider that attempting to disseminate a deep underlying meaning in song lyrics is a foolish thing.

I am going to do it anyway.

The first line of Katy Perry's song 'Hot En Cold' goes:

We used to be just like twins, so in sync

Assuming that this is a love song, as I'm sure I am able to do due to the Wedding setting of one of the videos, the comparison to twins is just tasteless and grotesque, or at least flags up her own incestuous issues that she is foisting onto this relationship.  This would perhaps indicate why the two aren't so close anymore.  A second, less likely option is that they used to be like the now-defunct boy-band *NSync, although if this is her suggestion it poses a whole other set of problems.

The same energy's now a dead battery

Staying away here from issues such as karma and chi, if her relationship is indeed a dead battery, I just hope that she disposed of the relationship in a responsible manner.  The acid can be dangerous if left thoughtlessly.  I also wonder if she ever licked the relationship, because the shock that she might have got from it might have been what killed the relationship.

Used to laugh at nothing, now you're plain boring

I'd suggest that perhaps if her boyfriend laughed at nothing on a regular basis he may have had a history of mental illness, laughing at nothing seems like the activity of someone that is unwell.  Also, if Miss Perry finds pleasure and solace only in the company of the mentally unstable, it really does bring her own sanity into question.

I should know that you're not going to change

Again, slightly harsh here from Miss Perry, I mean if the other participant in this narrative is suffering from a mental illness, then it is not his fault that he isn't able to change, maybe he is trying his best, and surely he deserves all the support he can get, rather than her cynicism.

Then into the chorus, which seems only to list his symptoms:

Cause you're hot then you're cold - some sort of irregular temperature

You're yes then you're no - indecisiveness, possibly due to ADHD or similar

You're in then you're out - a cold description of their sex-life

You're up then you're down - bipolar disorder, this is surely depression

You're wrong when it's right - this is a value judgement, right and wrong are both subjective

It's black and it's white - a newspaper

We fight we break up, we kiss we make up - At this point you'd have to wonder whether these two are even suited to one another...

You don't really want to stay - no - but you don't really want to guh-go...

Truly a moral duh-dilemma.

Some of you cynics might say "look, they are just a series of contrastive pairs put tactlessly into the form of couplets, there is nothing to be read into", and that would be a fair point.  But on the other hand, maybe it is a riddle.

Back into the verses then:

Someone call the doctor

This is the first sensible suggestion from Miss Perry, I have been worried since the first stanza that there is a medical issue that needs to be resolved here.  The main problem is that she seems to be unwilling to take responsibility for this phone call.

Got a case of a love bipolar

My analysis of this seems to indicate that it isn't the "love" that is bipolar here, to be completely honest I think that Miss Perry is being quite ignorant if she still is unwilling to accept her partners problems.  You are only fooling yourself Perry!

Stuck on a roller-coaster can't get off this ride

Ah, the pull back and reveal.  Turns out they've been on a roller-coaster the entire time!  Hot/cold because the ride probably goes inside and outside, yes/no are the fun and scary bits of the ride, in/out and up/down are how roller-coasters generally go, wrong/right is probably just a mistake, I'm sure she meant left/right.  And with black/white, well, there were many colours there I'm sure.

You change your mind like a girl changes clothes

 An ambiguous statement, to be honest, if Katy Perry doesn't provide a case study or a girl as a base-line example then the comparison isn't going to be idealogically viable.  And I don't think that she'll be able to find a girl that is representative of all females.  An impractical analogy.

The final chorus then is exactly the same as the first.  Lazy.  If you've run out of contrastive pair Katy you should have just asked me.  Here're my suggestions for lines you could have used in the chorus:

Cause it's hard then it's soft,

It's back and it's front,

It's north and it's south,

it's spots and it's stripes,

It's skirts and it's skins,

It's chalk and it's cheese and

It stops and it starts.

If you wish to experience a genuinely awesome song that utilises contrastive pairs then I point you hither.

Of course if taking advice from someone who perhaps lacks credibility in the pop world would undermine your artistic freedom then feel free to discount this analysis out of hand.  Your work is fantastic without my help Katy, I'm sure we can all look forward to far too much of your stellar work in the far-too-near future.