Taub Judah Entertainment Palace

Sometimes, when settling down to listen to a hot new waxing by a world-beating band or singer, it helps to forget that you already know and love songs they’ve done before, or that you have some idea of who they are and what they do. It’s especially helpful to let go of what kind of genre field you assume that they operate within.

In the case of My Chemical Romance, it’s a good idea to put amazing bratty brilliance like ‘Teenagers’ and ‘Na Na Na’ to one side, so you don’t wind up letting the momentum of your approval steamroller all over their new ideas. Nobody wants that, and your taste will always win out in the end anyway.

A useful trick is to imagine listening to the song as if you’re a visitor from an alien planet, attempting to make sense of the bangs and huffs and scrapes, and trying to work out what this human thing called ‘pop’ may or may not be.

Incidentally, I said ‘pop’ and not ‘rock’ for a very good reason. As we are about to find out…

(Here’s the video. It’s the same as the last video, but in cars.)

See, while the band operate within the rock arena, using the outsider myth as a launchpad for who they are, ‘Sing’ is absolutely a pop song. It’s not a pop song in the unhinged, cartoony way that ‘Na Na Na’ was a pop song, either. That’s always been part of the MCR sonic arsenal.

Take away the Mad Max video and everything you know about MCR as a band and it’s not really that big a stretch to imagine this mid-tempo, stately anthem coming out of the gobs of grown-up insider pop acts like Maroon 5 or the Script, is it? OK, not a perfect comparison, but not that far off either.

And hell, if Matt Cardle can cover Biffy Clyro and, without dramatically changing the structure of the song, still make it sound like The X Factor Winner’s First Single, it’s becoming clear that the boundaries between that which is pop and that which is rock are becoming riddled with more holes than a teabag’s string vest.

In fact, it’s only Gerard Way’s customary finger-pointing list of people he would like to pay attention to his song – “the deaf”, “the blind”, “the ones that’ll hate your guts” etc – that mark this out as a particularly My Chemical Romance sort of a song. The rest of it, from the moody piano/funky drummer introduction to the swirling dark synth at the end, is pure Radio 2. I guess it’s only a startling revelation because the chuntery guitars have been toned down for once, but still…

That’s why it’s sometimes best to come at these things with a fresh mind, cos I’d be tempted to love it more, if the sonic evidence that this isn’t really my sort of a thing wasn’t quite so overwhelming.

Download: Out now

www.mychemicalromance.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

The Quietus says: “What follows is the mother of all sing-along choruses and a bass line so cavernous you could hollow it around and take shelter in it.”

Filthypop says: “The chorus really is an empowering sound and is a sort of a sound that makes you want to rekindle your love with that special someone because the apocalypse is coming.”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

Nothing gets in the way of the X Factor. As a TV event that becomes a real-life EVENT event, the show continues to be an unstoppable force which will either squash or absorb everything in its path.

It’s like a jelly juggernaut with a blue whale on top, rolling down a steep hill in a paper town, with no brakes and a push at the top from Brian Blessed. Raise a hand in protest, it’ll just roll over you. Try and ignore it, and you’ll end up with flattened feet. Jump on board, and you become part of its rolling mass, making it faster and heavier than ever before.

Oh sure, it leaves a trail of squashed and bewildered people in its wake. All of whom thought they knew what they were doing when they hitched a ride, and none of whom are quite sure what happened to make them lose their grip so quickly, but there are always more passengers to pick up, more customers to hoick in.

Even the people who stand in direct opposition, the people who wish most to stop the thing, are also adding fuel to the engines by caring about it in the first place. So long as there is attention on this one TV show and the talented people it hopes to find, it will continue to run, and it will continue to do whatever it wants, in the name of satisfying public demand.

What’s confusing, especially to someone who can’t watch it (I honestly find the mix of ambition, disappointment, ruined dreams, karaoke, deliberate selling-out of your own life history to gain votes, scathing critique, stupid critique, self-regard, smugness, cruelty and freak-show giggling so upsetting it keeps me awake nights) is quite what this Matt fellow has done to win so much public support.

I’m assuming he’s been very, very brilliant in the backstage bits, cos on the evidence of this song, he sure as hell can’t sing.

Never mind that this is a Biffy Clyro song, that it’s about a curdled relationship with an obsessive edge, that it already exists in a pretty damn-near perfect form – sung by a man who knows how the tune goes – and that it already had a perfectly serviceable title in ‘Many Of Horror’. To object to the idea of this cover without hearing it is as far removed from an appreciation of music as, well, the show itself.

Watching Matt perform the song – the performance is here, on his website – is not a fun thing to do. Listen to him slide around all over the notes like a giraffe on a frozen pond. Marvel at his thin, reedy voice. Whoever came up with this probably should’ve run through it with him a few times first, surely? I mean I’m not sure how these things work, but I’d say that would be a good first step.

The second step might be to check that the Westlife Key Change moment doesn’t stretch the poor lad’s voice even further, into sonic territory which could be described as ‘just plain unpleasant’, if it were even possible to listen to the whole thing without running out of the room. That last high note? The bit where he falls to his knees and really goes for the climactic BOOM? Yeah, that’s horrible.

Of course, it’d be tempting to run off a big rant about how much harm this is doing to real music, because the public are being conned into believing this is good music when it’s not really good music even though the original song is good music but it’s being turned into bad music by evil people who want to hurt good music because it doesn’t make them any money. Some people really want to believe that this is the case, but it’s probably not true.

All you can really say is that this is a song from a TV show. A TV show which places a premium on telling a story, one that starts with many and ends with one. What that one person goes on to do afterwards isn’t really part of the story. It’s interesting, in the sense that Harry Potter fans might like to know what Book 8 would be like, but it’s not really that important. The big stuff has already been and gone.

So, even though the X Factor is a real event, the reality of the show – that Matt Cardle is the best singer of the year – is not the reality of, y’know, reality - not by a LONG shot. Sometimes the two things do coincide – Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke – but it doesn’t really matter to the story if they don’t.

As for the No.1 thing…well it’ll make a nice Christmas present for Biffy Clyro. Anyone who cares more about chart positions than the songs the positions represent isn’t exactly serving music all that well either.

Download: Out now

www.mattcardlemusic.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Popjustice says: “A charisma black hole with a lovely voice used mainly to sing songs made famous by ladies while wielding a crap acoustic guitar.”

Digital Spy says: “The boy really does have a good recording voice.”

The Dam Nation says: “At first, I thought it was a dud but I’m loving it now after each subsequent listen.”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

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.

(Here’s the video. It’s fishy.)

And now he’s shining his special starmaking spotlight on Daley, a luxuriously-bequiffed singer he first discovered while listening to 1Xtra of a morning bringing him in to stretch his delicious tonsils all over a skippy electro skank, based around a stuttery, farty Omnichord, a drum machine and some random squeaks and whooshes. It’s named after an ancient Japanese drum machine, y’know.

It’s not as attention-seeking as a lot of pop music, but that’s really the charm of the thing. What it lacks in explosive self-importance it more than makes up for in cuddly warmth and feline slink.

And this refusenik/combative switcheroo has occurred before, apparently. Damon recently told Zane Lowe – I know, it’s a total BBC/Albarn love-in today – that he had never seen the point of iPhones and the like, doesn’t tweet, acts the luddite, in essence. And then suddenly, given access to an iPad, he writes most of a new Gorillaz album on it in the same amount of time it would take you or I to write a Facebook status update.

Clearly the man is a coiled snake, waiting for his moment to strike. But when he does, he does it HARD.

Download: 22nd November

gorillaz.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Death and Taxes says: “The generic sounding vocal is balanced by the primitive digital sound of the 8-bit midi-based chord progression.”

Earmilk says: “Any new Gorillaz material is going to get you excited regardless”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

There now follows a transcript of a conversation between myself and Siva from out of the Wanted. In preparing myself for the rigours of this most challenging of conversations, I had been listening to the band’s album on repeat for most of the day, and had become more than a little intrigued by a song called ‘Let’s Get Ugly’, which samples the theme music to a famous old cowboy film.

This seemed like quite a strident move by such a young pop act, and something which they should definitely be congratulated for doing. So, y’know, that’s what I did.

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ChartBlog: Hi Siva, how are you?
Siva: Hey Fraser, you alright?

ChartBlog: I’ve been rocking out to the ‘hold’ music for your record company, which is ‘If You Want Blood’ by AC/DC. So I’m VERY well.
Siva: [laughs] Amazing!

ChartBlog: Now, to business. People have been trying to launch new boybands for years now, and none of them have done very well. Why do you think The Wanted are making headway?
Siva: Don’t even ask me. I’ve no idea. I think it’s partly to do with JLS and the X Factor bringing…I dunno, pop’s come full circle. If you start with Gaga, she’s daring, ridiculous and she’s just herself. And that kind of attitude has been imprinted on England. It made pop OK again. Then JLS came out, bringing cool back to boybands, so now it’s just an open market for boybands, I guess.

ChartBlog: You do have a killer first single too. ‘All Time Low’ is great because it’s neither the R&B sex-you-up boyband song or the massive ballad.
Siva: [laughing] Mmm…

ChartBlog: And I’ve heard the album, and some of the songs you’ve got aren’t a million miles away from the indie thing.
Siva: Oh wicked! I love it when people have heard the album!

ChartBlog: Well it’s good! I’m really impressed by the way it’s not all classic boyband songs. There are bits and bobs of things that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from people in your position. Are you pleased with that?
Siva: Definitely. We did about 25 songs, and we dwindled them down to 12. And changed a few songs, and fought a few battles to keep a few songs in, and a few songs out. We put a lot of effort into it, and we’re really nervous because the singles have a certain sound, but the album is the essence, you know what I mean? It’s us, our blood. Hopefully people will like it and it might do well. That’s what we’re really nervous about, lately.

ChartBlog: Can you tell me something about one of the songs you fought to keep off the album?
Siva: [after a long ponder] ..no, I don’t think I can. It’s not really like that. There were just certain songs on the album that didn’t fit the sound for us. They’d be a bit too acoustic or a bit too much in some way. Too poppy. We’d think “if we were normal lads listening to this, we’d think ‘nah’”. So we’re looking at it from a normal person’s point of view.

ChartBlog: That’s the fiddly bit, isn’t it. Cos if you’re normal lads and you’re in a boyband, you’re not your own target audience.
Siva: Yeah. You’ve got it on the ball.

ChartBlog: Can I talk to you about ‘Let’s Get Ugly’?
Siva: Yep!

ChartBlog: OK first of all, well done to whoever had the sheer brass neck to sample Ennio Morricone’s theme to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. That takes some nerve! Did you have to be convinced that it was a good idea?
Siva: That’s the beauty of pop, you can make anything from anything, from any track. So when we heard it the first time, we were actually seriously negotiating to have that as the first single. After a lot of deliberating, we came up with ‘All Time Low’, which had more of a fresh sound. ‘Let’s Get Ugly’ is one of those tracks that…some people don’t like it! We love it because it’s got a lot of depth to it and it has a kind of older sound to it. Some people just don’t get it. All the dads like it.

ChartBlog: Are you going to release it as a single then? I’m thinking of the cowboy video…
Siva: That’s what it was! For the single we were thinking of Clint Eastwood being in the video and we were getting all giddy. But then the management weren’t sure it hit the right audience. We want to appeal to both sides, but if we hit that older market with ‘Let’s Get Ugly’, it would stay there. I think ‘All Time Low’ is a really good balance, and when we heard it, all of us knew that was the angle we were going at.

ChartBlog: Have you had any other giddy moments like that? Are you gonna be the first band to play on the moon?
Siva: Haha! Well it would be America. I know all the acts say it in interviews, like JLS saying they want to go to America, but I think America has high hopes for us. I’m not gonna say the cliche of “world domination”, but we’d just love to spread the music, spread ‘All Time Low’ to America, to Europe, but without forgetting the English fans.

ChartBlog: Next time you see Taio Cruz, just take him to one side and say “HOW? HOW IS IT DONE?”
Siva: [laughs] Well we’re on the same label as him in New York, Def Jam. We’ve met him a few times, we did a gig in Germany and came back with him, and he was explaining the whole situation, how it goes and…yeah he has killed it in America. Literally everyone talks about Taio Cruz, he’s one of those guys, which is like…gutting…but great, y’know.

THE END

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The Wanted are also available in website form…
And BBC Music form…

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

Oh THERE it is! That’s what you lot were all banging on about when you said Diana was a different kind of reality TV contestant from the usual mob! Cos to be frank, I was starting to wonder if you were talking about someone else. I mean X Factor contestants are usually determined and passionate and all of that, but rarely quite as dogged and sure as this one, and what’s more, her struggles seem to have paid off.

That Diana Vickers has a solo career at all is some kind of triumph of her determined square-peggery in an industry which often demands their pegs to be not only round, but small enough to slip through the template hole without touching the side. She put her first single out long after the buzz around her X Factor appearances had passed. She put her second out, and it didn’t seem to do quite as well as the first. This is usually the point at which the story of an X Factor pop star fizzles out.

But not our Diana, oh no…

(Here’s the video. It is, in a very real sense, a rum do.)

And look what she came back with! To kick off the re-launch of her album, here’s a song which is all puff and swagger, pomp and nonsense, brassy and kick-assy, and a video which is pretty much Lady Gaga for kids. All of which are officially Good Things*.

Just about the only thing against it is that the production sometimes feels a bit anaemic for a song with quite this much spirit. Diana’s giving it the full “WHOOPS! BONKERS!” treatment, and the music, while arranged into an artful patchwork of trumpets and stutterdrums, doesn’t quite match the sheer what-the-hellery. We need timpanis! A marching band! Very very loud guitars! Explosions!

In fact, the bit where voice and music seem to be in closest alignment is the breakdown, which is almost entirely voices: a bank of Dianas, some of whom have been playing with helium. That’s a brilliantly confident thing to do, especially when followed with her Barbara Windsor-y “whoops-a-daisy” yelp. These are the kind of moves you pull when you don’t care how your song fits next to anyone else’s, and of course, that thought is always how you get to the good ideas.

AND it scores extra points for being the first Diana Vickers single to fail to mention death. Just at the point at which her career recovers from, well, the thing itself. Amazing.

Download: Out now

www.dianavickersmusic.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

* Apart from the album thing. That’s a bit ripe.

The Pop Web says: “Firmly puts to bed any lingering doubts we may have had that Diana Vickers is becoming a licence to print money.”

PopAnonymous says: “Huge props to Diana for not taking the electropop/Guetta/RedOne train, and instead choosing the more worthwhile trip.”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

Some people are very good at leading lives in which things happen. Not always nice things, but things nevertheless. Good things, bad things, some amazing, some terrible, all in a fairly constant stream of constant upheaval which, if you could just stop and examine one thing at a time, would be the stuff of family legend.

Taken all at once, and the patience of friends and relatives starts to wear thin. It’s almost as if they think you’re doing it on purpose.

“You’ve WHAT?”, they’ll splutter, “you’ve seperated AND got malaria AND recorded a new album AND been a judge on the X Factor AND been at the centre of a huge tabloid row about your choices as a judge AND made a video as a ballerina AND had a bit of an argument with your boss about something AND started divorce proceedings..? Don’t you ever take a day off? I’m exhausted just LISTING all that stuff!”

Such is the life of Cheryl Cole/Tweedy. And if it has led her to make some interesting song decisions, well that’s all grist to the mill too.

(Here’s the video. Babe in the wood.)

(Here’s Cheryl having a lovely long chat with Sara Cox)

The brilliant thing about that “alouetta wettah wettah” refrain is that you kind of forget that it’s there. It’s a trap laid at the beginning of the song, a trap which is clearly marked, practically with a sign that says BIG TRAP HERE and yet it’s still possible to be caught up in the disco drama and distracted by the velvety swoon of that chorus, to such an extent that the triggering of the refrain feels like a slap around the chops from a spring-loaded wet flannel.

It’s a very distracting song all round, really. Almost punishing, the extent to which it demands your attention. There’s no respite. It goes from weird refrain to panicked verse to dignified chorus – complete with Robert Miles piano, popspotters – without so much as a pause for breath. Listen to it three times in a row and you’ll end up feeling faint. Go for the full half-dozen and you might need to call for medical assistance.

What with this and the Rihanna song it is officially not a good week for the frailer pop fan.

Download: Out now

www.cherylcole.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Radio Pop Culture says: “I was expecting something more on the lines of ‘Fight for this love’ but it’s growing on me.”

Resonance says: “The melody itself seems almost Super Mario – esque”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

What is up with Katy Perry’s sense of timing? First she releases an album and a single on the same day, undermining the chart position of one with the success of the other; and now she’s jumpstarted the release of this, the third single to be taken from that self-same album, by appearing on the X Factor and FORCING people to go out and buy it in droves, before the video is even FINISHED!

Now she’s heading up the charts, as you would expect – the X Factor is quite a big show for promoting music, y’know – and the single’s official release date isn’t until November 15th. That’s a MONTH from now.

I suggest we all ignore the song for the next few weeks. Just pretend it isn’t there, no matter how hard Katy bellows in our ears. She has to sit back and wait for our attention, at the appropriate moment. She made the appointment in the first place, so we are just going to very calmly keep it, and not let her interrupt herself for once. She has to learn not to go off half-cocked.

You can go ahead and insert your own joke here, if you like.

(Here’s the preview of the video. It’s stately.)

When the time is right, we shall commend Katy on her enjoyable dance-pop direction. We shall say that her decision to work with the Stargate production team has been a good one. We shall point out that ‘Firework’ is uplifting and joyous in the best possible way, and note that her trademark whinnymoo has been channelled into the choral enormity of the, erm, chorus rather well.

We shall also note that, for all that she is capable of writing popular silly songs, like the one about popsicles, it’s the heart that rules music, not the funny bone. So we will be pleased to note how well sincerity suits her.

Oh, and on that issue of rushing things out before they’re properly finished…would some kind of ending have been too much to ask? A repetitive fadeout, maybe, or a build-up towards a peak of some kind. What happens is the song just…stops. It was there, and now it’s gone, leaving nothing behind but a planet filled with people who were dancing, and now suddenly are not.

It’s like a global game of musical statues, only there’s no prize.

And it begs the question; what if everyone was to take a similarly slapdash approach to their work? What if we were all in such a rush to get things out there that they didn’t really bother to finish things off properly? What if we all promised a rocket ship ride to the stars, before suddenly dropping everyone off at the moon?

Yeah, I know, it’d be brilliant. Bad example. OK, let’s call this one a draw.

Download: Out now

www.katyperry.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Neon Limelight says: “A song about letting your inner awesomeness shoot across.”

Kayleya’s Blog says: “It’s hard to find a reason not to like her”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog

Did anyone else spot the huge conceptual joke going on at the heart of Joe McElderry’s comeback single? To have an X Factor winner releasing his first song outside of the safe glow of his victory, and for that song to have a chorus which goes “ambitions are already starting to fade”? Amazing.

If you thought the song was written on Joe’s behalf, you’d have to conclude that someone is trying to warn him to enjoy his time in the limelight while it lasts. Someone like STEVE BROOKSTEIN!

Actually, it wasn’t written for him, and in fact, if you’re from Norway, you’ll already be more than familiar with the song, as performed by Donkeyboy. It was at No.1 in your charts last year. No.1 for THIRTEEN WEEKS. Can you imagine? In terms of obvious song choice, that’s like the winner of the Norwegian X Factor doing a ‘We No Speak Americano’, if that song had stayed at No.1 for twelve more weeks than it did.

Of course, the McElderry version is slightly faster than the original, all the better to hurry the listener towards that lovely chorus. They’ve made a special feature of it, as Syco acts often do, by making it so much louder than the verses. That’s the production equivalent of putting big neon arrows on either side, with a sign saying “Astonishing Chorus Here!”.

(Here’s the video. You don’t often see columns with socks on, do you?)

Anyway, the song’s being released now because the X Factor is back on the telly. So here’s a brief chat I had with Joe earlier this week. Watch out, he gets fiery!

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ChartBlog: Hi Joe!
Joe: Hi how’s it going?

ChartBlog: Very well thank you. Is it nice to be promoting a single just because it’s out, rather than to try and beat another single in a chart race?
Joe: [laughing] Yeah it’s a bit of an easier ride this time.

ChartBlog: And is ‘Ambitions’ closer to the sort of music that you yourself would like to make? ‘The Climb’ was very much an X Factor winner’s song…
Joe: Yeah, definitely. DEFINITELY. That was why we made the conscious decision of choosing it, cos it’s a closer…well it IS the style I wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to have a song where I can move around on stage, have lots of dancers, things like that. So the fact that I’ve been able to do that, like a big performance aspect song, has been fantastic.

ChartBlog: And it’s a massive song in Scandanavia already, isn’t it? Donkeyboy’s original version was No.1 for thirteen weeks. THIRTEEN!
Joe: Yeah! Crazy isn’t it?

ChartBlog: You’re doing pretty well though. Didn’t your fans manage to crash the iTunes server?
Joe: Yeah it did! We’ll have to see what happens. I mean it’s a big week with big, big songs, so we’ll see. Fingers crossed. I’m not gonna get my hopes up for anything yet though.

ChartBlog: And the b-side ‘If You Love Me’ is heading up the charts too, isn’t it? That’s quite rare too.
Joe: Yeah! I heard about that! That’s climbing up really fast as well, isn’t it? That’s great!

ChartBlog: OK, so for every rockbore who claims they ended your career…what HAVE you been doing since Christmas?
Joe: Well I’ve basically been putting all my concentration and time into the album. Y’know, to make sure that it’s a strong album, and something that resented…resented?…REPRESENTED me, and something that I was proud of. I didn’t want to just rush something out and neither did the label. So I made the conscious decision of waiting like every other winner has in the past couple of years, and hopefully it’ll pay off.

ChartBlog: It makes a lot of sense for you to release your album now that the show is back on the TV and people are thinking about it again. Mind you, the media coverage of the show isn’t really about music at the moment…
Joe: Yes, and that’s getting on my nerves a bit, actually. Because I just think let them bloody sing the songs! Let them sing the songs and then once you get to know them as people, in a couple of week’s time, then people can have their opinions. But everybody’s being so horrible about them. I feel a bit sorry for them, y’know this Katie girl… and obviously Cher had it last week. Y’know give them a chance, they’re not used to any of this kind of stuff. I do feel a bit sorry for them, y’know. The press interest has gone a bit out of control this year.

ChartBlog: And if you do one really startling performance, like Cher did, there’s an expectation that they’ll do well, and then it becomes a story about pressure and…
Joe: …and then they start to try and knock her down.

ChartBlog: And really this is a TV show about singing. I know people’s emotions are very high, but it’s not life or death, and it shouldn’t feel like life or death, should it?
Joe: No, but also it means a lot to these contestants. And I think it’s hard enough getting up there in front of 14 million people and singing for the public – which is obviously what they want to do, and I loved doing that last year, I didn’t find that a chore. But to wake up the next day and have the newspapers slating you for every single move you made the night before, on the show. And they’re picking out, like you said, things that haven’t really got anything to do with the singing. And at the end of the day it is a singing competition. It’s supposed to be a fun, lighthearted entertainment show that gives people the opportunity of a lifetime. It should be fun. It should be all happy and positive.

ChartBlog: Is that what your album is like?
Joe: Well, it’s very similar to the single. A lot of uptempo…there’s a few ballads, not much. And it’s just fun, it’s fresh. I think it represents me as a person. I like to have fun on stage and I think that’s what it’s about really.

ChartBlog: Just like the hokey-cokey. OK, thanks Joe. Best of luck for Sunday!
Joe: Thank you! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!

THE END

NOTE: He really did say “Bye!” four times.

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Joe McElderry is also available in website form…
And BBC Music form…

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

What’s that expression about poking a sleeping tiger? In the wake of last year’s Christmas Rage Against The Machine campaign, news reports are trickling out that this year’s X Factor innovation is the ability to download that week’s performances immediately after each show.

This will have an immediate impact on the chart, of course. The show already tends to boost sales of the songs the contestants perform, with high chart placings for at least one old classic every week: in much the same way that Glee basically stapled Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ to the Top 30 and left it there all year. Now, rather than give that money away to people who just happen to have recorded those songs in the first place, the show is going to make sure they get it for themselves.

Sorry, that’s too cynical. What I meant to say is this: now the show is offering fans the chance to buy recordings of the performances they love, rather than having to try and recreate the magic, puppet-style, using a hit from the olden days and a printout.

The knock-on effect could be disastrous. Middle-ranking pop and indie performers are going to struggle to get their traditional No.19 hits, because they’ll be knocked down to the low 20s. And what of the people who actually prefer to go and buy the original versions of songs they’ve seen on the X Factor, especially if those songs have been badly mauled. So there’ll be even MORE of a bunfight in the lower 30s, with two versions of the same song battling over the coveted No.35 spot.

In short, it will be just like Glee all over again. And the Rage people are going to be all “oh no you didn’t!” and the X Factor people are gonna be all “you’d better believe it, buddy!” and the everyone else people are going to be all “oh man, I am MOVING TO THE MOON.”

(Here’s the video. In summary: it’s summery.)

Of course, poor Olly here is a veteran of the old school X Factor, and as a result has had to go the long way around the houses. He’s had to wait until now to release his debut single because now is the time people are thinking about the show again. He gets to stand in front of it, pointing at himself and grinning furiously while yelling “HEY! REMEMBER ME? IT’S OLLY! YOU LOVED ME LAST YEAR!”

AND he’s got his own song, a light reggae-tinged thing about love. It’s a sweet song, crossing the enormous void between Travie McCoy and Peter Andre with some warmth and skill, and naturally boasting a great big choir to beef up the chorus. It suits the man well, and should see him having a little chart moment of his own, assuming the show doesn’t juggernaut all over his chances.

He’s lucky he didn’t make any enemies in the X Factor production office, mind. Imagine how galling it would be if some new contestant performed this song, and leapfrogged over Olly’s version to have The Hit with it. That would be horrific.

Sometimes the modern world is almost too much to bear. *sigh*

Download: Out now

www.ollymurs.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Swear I’m Not Paul says: “What Murs needs to launch his solo career is something fresh, and this is not it.”

Beehivecity says: “it’s well paced middle-of-the-road pop music, inoffensive and perfect stuff to ensure that Olly sells as many records as possible in the incredibly crowded post-talent-show market which sees many a hopeful crash and burn.”

Not Another Music Blog says: “I just find this song and video bland”

View full post on BBC – Chart blog