Taub Judah Entertainment Palace

Get dressed! You’re about to be blessed with the best of the rest…in a vest…etc…

Most Controversial Review

JLS – ‘The Club Is Alive’

Y’know, I still don’t really get what all the fuss was about with liking this song. It’s clearly better than ‘One Shot’ or the Children In Need one they did (which came with its own comment storm), and even though it suffers from excessive autotune the tune it actually autos is a rather good one. Naturally, just shrugging and saying “ah well, horses for courses” was never gonna wash with the ChartBlog massive.

Key quote: “If the band are in the middle of doing what they do, and you, the audience, are concentrating on the words they’re saying over, say, how they look, what muscles are flexing, which way up Aston is, the beat, the music, the clothes, the bagginess of Ortise’s trousers, the hair, the teeth, the twinkly eyes, the voices, or what the song is saying even if the words are not, chances are you’re not really JLS’s core demographic.”

The weird thing is how long the reaction to this one opinion has continued to rumble on, really. I think the idea is that if you like something that someone else doesn’t like, then this exposes your soft underbelly, ready for spearing. But if you fail to like something that someone does like, then you’re cruel. How this theory has continued to thrive in an era of hateful YouTube comments and snarky Twitter feeds is beyond me, but there it is.

Plus that “hey!”, the one that pushed it from a 4-star to a 5-star review, is STILL brilliant. So ner.

Bubbling Under: Paramore – ‘Misery Business’ HOO-BOY!

================================

Most Successful Meeting of Minds

A Very Entertaining Chat With The Hoosiers…

If there’s anything we can learn from this marvellous interview it’s that it’s always a good idea – should you be lucky enough to interview a pop band – to call the singer a dwarf within seconds of the interview starting. It won’t work for everyone (waves to Kelly Jones), but the rewards are more than worth the price you have to pay to get them.

Bubbling Under: Los Campesinos! – Their Favourite Interview EVER

We Are Scientists – Bleeding-Heart Liberals, And Their Exploding Drum Carpet

================================

Mystic Meg Award For Predicting The Future

Wild Beasts – Bewilderbeasts

I don’t ever really try and predict whether things will be big hits or not. It’s not really for me to say, democracy being a strange beast that seems to explode in many different directions at once. And besides, just because one song sells more than another, it doesn’t mean it’ll make any more sense to you, the listener.

That said, I was pleased when, having written a big confused rant about why I kept listening to this early song by Wild Beasts when there were other, more poppy things to be getting on with, they then went on, a couple of years (and albums) later, to be quite popular, and Mercury nominated.

Quite why ‘Atlas’ by Battles wasn’t at No.1 for 10 weeks straight remains a total mystery, however.

Bubbling under: An Alternative Top 5

================================

Best Remix

Lost in Translation

It’s a simple premise. You take a song’s lyrics, use an online translator to convert them into a foreign language, then use the same translator to bring them back. Something gets interfered with along the way, and all sense is lost. LOST!

Bubbling Under: Important Moments In Pop History – The Saturdays Get Their Name

================================

Most Let Down By The Passage Of Time

Ringtone From Hell Generator – Glamorous

Remember polyphonic ringtones? Remember how they were a version of modern pop songs but always sounded awful and robotic, like Will.I.Am without the astonishing quality control? Well we made our own, and it was also awful. Trouble is, nobody has polyphonic ringtones any more. And quite right too!

Bubbling under: Fun With Press Releases

================================

Best Joke

A Peek Behind The Curtain…

Me and Steve ChartBlog were having a conversation one day about ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ by the Killers, and thinking of other ways you could’ve written that like “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”. We batted them about for a while, laughed a lot, I wrote them up for the blog, everything was hunky dory.

THEN, Bill Bailey started doing the SAME JOKE as part of his stand-up act. I’m not saying it’s cause and effect, because clearly anyone could’ve come up with the same idea. But the fact that it’s now been used by a professional comedian means it’s empirically the best joke on ChartBlog.

Bubbling Under: Armband Van Halen

================================

Best Pun

How To Destroy…McFly

Come on, MCFLY SPRAY!! *highfive*

Bubbling Under: Edgy Soldiers

================================

Best Use of Onomatopoeia

Dizzee Rascal – Bonkers

I love it when a pop song is thrilling and brilliant and stupid and clever all at the same time, and even though ‘Bonkers’ ran out of lyrics halfway through, it remains exactly that kind of song. Dizzee himself may have gone on to make less-enthralling songs, but so long as he’s never too far from a man with a deep voice going “BONKBONKBONKBONKBONKBONKBONKBONK”, he’ll always be forgiven in my house.

Key Quote: “The way he shouts “I let sanity give me the slip” so it sounds for all the world like “I let Sunny E give me the slip”. Sunny E presumably being an even more artificial version of Sunny D. “

Bubbling Under: Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. ft. Q-Tip & MNDR – ‘Bang Bang Bang’

================================

Most Damning Review

Scouting For Girls – ‘Famous’

There’s no trick to writing nasty things about people and their hard work. In fact it’s really, really easy to do. You just subtract fairness, add imperiousness and have at it. It doesn’t make it a desirable thing to do. But sometimes, when you’re being prodded in the chest by a song that clearly wants you to fight it, or it will hurt you, you’ve got to be able to defend your fragile inner self from torment. Or, in the case of Scouting For Girls, point out how incredibly rude it is to write a song slamming the modern obession with celebrity, when you’re the singer in a pop band.

Bubbling Under: Black Eyed Peas – ‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’

================================

And finally…here’s where we came in. My head on a superhero.

The Art of Naming A Blog

So that’s that. The real final end of this thing. Thanks again to everyone ever, especially those pop stars and their (sometimes) astonishing music.

You’ve been great, I’ve had my moments…TATTY BYE!

Fraser

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

As promised, here’s a brief stone-skip over some of the better moments of ChartBlog’s four years of glory.

Some of these have been nominated by ChartBlog readers on Twitter. Feel free to nominate your own in the usual place.

================================

Most Ridiculous Froth-On

The Ting Tings – ‘That’s Not My Name’

The best song to have been released in ChartBlog’s lifetime. Yes it is. Yes it is.

Key Quote: “Stop all the clocks. Everybody put your guitars, synths, drum machines and microphones down. There’s no need to put any more music out in 2008, the race to have the Most Bestest Song Of The Year In The Whole World Ever has already been won, and if you continue to take part, you’ll be lapped more times than a lone saucer of milk in Catland. “

Bubbling Under: My Chemical Romance – ‘Sing’

================================

Best Soundtrack

A hotly-contested award this one. So hot, in fact, that we’ve had to split it between two equally astonishing winners.

First there was the cover version ChartBlog commissioned of the Klaxons song ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, as performed by the Central Band of the Royal British Legion.

New Rave, Meet Old Dave

Apparently the band themselves were so taken with it that they used it as introduction music for a couple of gigs, and the Central Band themselves ended up playing at an MTV party. All because of one daft idea (mine), executed brilliantly (by them).

Smile, It’s Radiohead!

When Radiohead were doing their whole ‘honesty box’ thing, allowing people to pay what they wanted for their album ‘In Rainbows’, they also pioneered the concept of allowing assets from their songs to be released for remix purposes. They even set up a competition for people to remix the song ‘Numb’. So that is what I did. Didn’t win, of course.

Their song is sad, my remix is NOT SAD.

Bubbling Under: Delays and their ChartBlog song.

================================

Least Successful Meeting of Minds

McFly interview – When Harrassed Met Harry

Poor ChartBlog Hazel. So smitten was she with Harry McFly’s startling beauty that she entirely lost her grip on what she was supposed to be doing, while she was supposed to be interviewing him about stuff. The ensuing interview, while it was not as bad as she claimed at the time, did betray a certain nervous charm, shall we say?

See also: An interview with the lead singer of The Academy Is… about their song ‘We’ve Got A Big Mess On Our Hands’, in which he totally failed to see any connection between the song’s title and actual hands and mess.

And: Trying To Get An Interview With Beth Ditto

Bubbling Under: Five Minutes with Justin Bieber

================================

Cuckoo Award For Extensive Nesting

Jedward ft. Vanilla Ice – ‘Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)’

Behind every great blog, there’s a great community of regular commenters. They read every post, laugh, high-five and generally support everything the bloggers ever say or d-hang on, that can’t be right…

Oh yes, what they do is pick the most preposterous place on the entire blog and build a new community there. It’s like guerilla message boarding, or something. Then they talk to each other about up and coming pop songs, swap reviews, and tease one another, while claiming significant numbers as their own. Now that the parent blog is about to fly the nest, ChartBlog’s own comment-cuckoos are seeking other places to settle, so don’t be surprised if you hear strange noises coming from your attic in a week or two.

PS: To the ChartBlog commenters – only kidding! Love you guys! Mwah!

Bubbling Under: Alexander Rybak – ‘Fairytale’

================================

Best Pretend Science

Lyriscope – Katy Perry

Ah remember the Lyriscope? What fun that was! Acting out the lyrics to hit songs, and seeing how close to reality they were, or are, or both. I might have to let you into a little secret though. Some of the things that are written about in Lyriscope reports did not really happen. You can probably guess which ones (and if you say “all of them”, there might even be a prize.)

Key quote: Lyric: “The taste of her cherry chapstick…” …is cherry. What is all the fuss about?

Bubbling Under: Lyriscope – Nickelback’s Rock Star

================================

Best Mission Statement

Everything Everything – ‘Photoshop Handsome’

Some reviews are about the song and nothing but the song. Some are about other things around the song which are more interesting or more relevant to whether it’s a worthwhile purchase or not. And some are about The State of Music In General and how it can only be improved by the song the review is supposed to be about.

Key quote: “I’m not asking this for my sake, or the band’s sake, but for the future of pop music as we know and love it. Let’s make this song a hit, and maybe, just maybe, show *insert name of least favourite pop act here* that there is more to this music lark than turning up half-dressed and pouting suggestively in a photogenic fashion.”

Bubbling Under: Lady Gaga (or GaGa, as I wrongly wrote at the time) – ‘Bad Romance’

================================

Best Attempt At Satire

Cage Against The Machine – ’4’33″‘

Need I say more?

Bubbling Under: When Is A Sugababe Not A Sugababe?

================================

Coming Soon: Part 2!

View full post on BBC – Chart blog