Taub Judah Entertainment Palace

OK, here’s the deal. For every TV-related chart entry that gets into the Top 10, I’m gonna throw a review their way* – they’re clearly doing SOMETHING right after all – and then crowbar in a few words for some other songs that don’t quite have the same level of promotional oomph. That way we’re neither snarking unduly at these performers who are new to the public eye, or leaving out other acts who deserve a bit of coverage.

This then, is this week’s Pepper and Piano: a song which is being bought in some quantity after an appearance on This Must Be The Music. It’s probably important to say that this isn’t the only song to appear on the show in the last seven days, so even though there’s an element of well-of-course-it’s-going-to-chart to proceedings, Emma Gillespie has done better than her fellow contestants (and a LOT of seasoned pop stars) because she has a beautiful voice and a very nice song.

It doesn’t START like a very nice song, mind. There are a lot of guitar minstrels out there who know how to throw a couple of plangent chords together and moan like Stevie Nicks. What they don’t always have is the ability to freeze time around a massively distracting pop hook – in this case it’s the “bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-BAY-beh” bit. It’s not an easy trick to pull off, cos you need the right idea, the right setting for it, and the right voice to deliver it.

But if you get it right, you don’t need to have Dizzee Rascal nodding at you to get through to people. Although clearly it helps.

Now, let’s leave the world of magical showbiz for a second and have a listen to You Me At Six singing ‘Stay With Me’.

(Here’s the video. Important Note For Younger Readers: This is NOT how people are made.)

Now, the YouMe’s don’t have that stopped-time moment that Emma does, but they do have a heroic enormity, which could prove to be equally distracting. Everything feels like a titanic struggle between good and evil, where the possibility that someone might not stay with you is of equal scale and importance with a colossal asteroid falling out of space and destroying your home town.

Of course, if you’re desperately trying to prevent someone from leaving, that’s pretty much what it feels like, so they’ve definitely caught something there, and not just their privates in a mangle. And really, when your job is to throw around huge blocks of noise, you’re going to need to match that with something of equal emotional weight, or your singer is going to come across like Tinkerbell cadging a lift off King Kong.

Interestingly, for all that the choruses of these songs do very different things, if you stripped the verses of this one back to just one guitar, and got a girl with a dark voice to sing it, it’d sound like Stevie Nicks.

Music: it’s a smaller world than it seems.

Download: Out now

www.youmeatsix.co.uk/
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

*I may change my mind if there’s an onslaught. Or they are rubbish. Or I get bored.

Strange Glue says: “The melodramatic ballads also seem to have taken over this album.”

Kat says: “The problem with You Me At Six is that you could close your eyes and be at any pop punk show and not tell the difference.”

Altsounds says: “‘Stay With Me’ highlights the band’s increasingly sophisticated ability to blend devastating dynamics with immediate pop-fuelled hooks and intense lyrical themes.”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

True fact: This song made Fearne Cotton cry. Out of her EYES, dammit!

It all happened on the Sky 1 sort-of-like-the-X-Factor-but-the-judges-are-all-off-Later-With-Jools musical talent show Must Be The Music. You all know the setup by now. Three judges, a big audition arena show, a presenter backstage talking to the acts before they go on. Two girls walk up to Fearne, who is basically the ‘Dermot’ in this situation. One is called Katie Pepper and the other is called Emma, she plays the piano, hence the name. They are from Manchester and they are excited and nervous.

Emma reveals she has had some troubles in her life, and that making music with Katie has helped her pull herself together. They then take to the stage. Then The Magic happens:

Instead of performing an off-key version of an Alicia Keys song, or even a bland re-write of an even blander recent pop ballad, Emma strikes up some dour chords, and then Katie opens her mouth and sings up a great big bruise. A massive black-eye of a song. An ‘Everybody Hurts’ where literally everybody hurts.

(Can’t show you the video. Ad cooties.)

I don’t mean it’s painful to listen to, not in the sense that they’re doing anything musically wrong, at any rate. It’s just…blimey that’s an unsettling noise to hear coming out of a televised human face, isn’t it? Katie’s voice is closer to that of Antony (of …and the Johnsons fame) than, say, Leona Lewis, and although the song they’re playing is a little clunky and unvarnished (by the standards of yer slick Top 40 acts), it’s clearly a thing of substance, especially when sung like that.

Outside of the viciously-pigeonholed TV context, it would probably make less of an impact, a slightly wonky song, earnestly sung, by a lady with a boyishly deep, but operatically huge voice. But stick it in the middle of a silly old TV talent show and WHOAH!

The looks of shock and delight on everyone’s faces are perhaps similar to those you would see if you organised an imaginary dinner party, where you and your friends have dressed up smart, and gathered around an immaculately-laid table, only to spend the entire evening pretending to enjoy a sumptuous feast (more ghost beef, vicar?), with all the not-really-there trimmings…and then a latecomer arrives with real home-made trifle.

It might not be the finest trifle money can buy: some of the jelly hasn’t set properly and the custard is a little runny, and there are peanuts and raisins sprinkled all over the top, as a radical garnish. But you can’t deny that it is actual food.

Download: Out now

www.facebook.com/pepperandpianoofficial

(Fraser McAlpine)

View full post on BBC – Chart blog