Fearne and Reggie were reunited and had a good old chat to Biffy Clyro and Glasvegas - check out these unedited interviews for an extra hit of love from The Chart Show.
Biffy Clyro made it to number 5 this week and we're darn pleased for them because we love Mountains. A lot. James from the band told us about Simon breaking a tooth (no, not a leg) at last week's Reading festival. How rock 'n' roll is that?
Post categories: Reviews
| 13:28 UK time, Saturday, 30 August 2008
I've been giving some serious consideration lately as to whether I unfairly dismissed Duffy during the whole "here are lots of spare Amy Winehouses in case anything happens to the one we've already got!" thing that the press was doing - which wasn't helped by the fact that the figurehead for the campaign was Adele, for whom I do not care. Duffy, however, has given us 'Mercy' and 'Warwick Avenue', both of which were quite good, but not necessarily enough to prompt a full-scale turnaround from me. Will 'Stepping Stone' make a difference?
Post categories: Reviews
| 10:11 UK time, Friday, 29 August 2008
Royworld are, according to some, the new Delays. I find this comparison deeply confusing, since 'Faded Seaside Glamour,' with its delicate arcs of sound and almost perfect reproduction of the noises of a crumbling postal town as pop music, is one of my favourite albums and whatever the Royworld album's called appears to sound more like Turin Brakes after they went off the rails.
Post categories: Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 1 Chart Show
| 16:37 UK time, Thursday, 28 August 2008
Alphabeat are pretty darn good at a lot of things. Writing infectious pop songs is one example. Inventing quirky dance moves is another. But there is one thing that Alphabeat drummer Troels fails miserably at: the ancient art of chatting up girls.
Here, answering the Radio 1 Chart Show's 20 Questions, the man behind Alphabeat's, err, alpha beats demonstrates his lack of 'lady-skills'...
Post categories: Reviews
| 13:17 UK time, Thursday, 28 August 2008
Under normal circumstances, even though I tend to do a lot of my ChartBlog research by browsing music videos on YouTube, I try not to let the content of the video influence my review, because the video is not the song, obviously. There can be exceptions to this rule - if, say, a song comes with a truly brilliant and inspirational video that truly gives the song new meaning, or perhaps where a great song is let down by an utterly rubbish video, but both of those scenarios would merit at most a passing mention.
So I'm breaking protocol a bit to talk about the video for this song in my review, but: it's really quite poor. It's just a lot of NKOTB walking around in white linen outfits, and occasionally whirling some girl around on a beach, and then a bit of a half-hearted dance routine at the end. It was so distracting on my first viewing that I had to go back a second time and listen to the song while deliberately NOT watching the video to see if that made it sound any better, because I really had not been impressed before that.
Excellent, after weeks of planning and hard execution, me and some friends have kidnapped your usual ChartBlogger Fraser, tied him to a chair in a dark room with a blind fold over his eyes and some earphones on playing non-stop Madonna.
We came here to right the wrongs of the ChartBlog, to bring back the anarchy and the rebellion to the music blogging world, but after much deliberation, we have decided it's actually a lot harder than it looks, and will be returning Fraser shortly (after he has learned his lesson for giving the Ting Tings such a high star review.)
Sometimes you can be lucky enough to hear a voice so good that it leaves you wide-eyed and open-mouthed with possibly a little bit of dribble escaping from the corner of your mouth. There is no doubt Bryn Christopher has one of those voices. It's soulful, powerful and extremely addictive. Unfortunately, you have to be even luckier to find a song good enough to match the voice, or at least catchy enough to support it.
This is the dilemma of Smilin' by Bryn Christopher.
Post categories: Reviews
| 09:55 UK time, Monday, 25 August 2008
HALT! Do not panic! Yes, this is a Mariah review, but I can confirm that this is officially a warble-free zone. I repeat: A warble-free zone. You may proceed without the fear of a warbling, vocal-scaling ambush. And I know this because after much deliberating, I decided that, to write this review, I did actually need to listen to Mariah Carey's new single.
You see, I'll be honest: with 'I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time' for a title, I wondered if it was even necessary to hear the R&B princess' latest offering. I mean, grammatically, it makes me want to vomit, and, bearing in mind this is the sickly-sweet Ms Carey we're talking about, I figured that this vomiting sensation was probably a good indication of how the single would make me feel. But I was wrong...
Hola! We're in a darn good mood here at Chart Blog because it's a Bank Holiday weekend, but don't worry we've not forgotten to give you yet more juicy, uncut interviews straight from The Radio 1 Chart Show. Probably the only place on earth you'll get radio outtakes, and that's the way we like it...
They made it to number 16 in this week's chart with Steve McQueen, so Rob from The Automatic battled with a crackly phone to chat with Reggie about chart nerves and their love for the man on the motorbiike...
HONESTLY! You know when you hate a band, then they release a good song and you have to get your head around liking it until you start telling everyone how amazing said song is, partly to justify your own appreciation of it in the face of your loathing for all the rest of their output and then, just when they've got you on board they release an absolute stinker again? It just makes you mad!
Lykke Li has an extraordinary voice. Some singers, like Mariah Carey or Leona Lewis, have extraordinary voices in the sense of sheer range and technical ability and some people have extraordinary voices in the sense of just being very weird. I can't work out the right words to describe the way Lykke sounds; it's not quite 'breathy' but certainly has an intimate quality generally associated with breathiness. And it's not quite reedy, in fact it's very full in some ways but it has a frailty to it that's very seductive. Not in the sense of romantic seduction but the seduction of an open fire or a really good book; cosy and soothing.
Dear The ChartBlog Massive,
It's that time of year again. A time to hang up the reviewing goggles, unhook the taste filters, shake the unpleasant build-up of waxy cack from the ears (then clean the droppings off the desk with a stiff brush) and take a break.
But I know some or one of you have a need for regular ChartBlog action which borders on addiction (hi Mum!), and to force you to go cold turkey just so that I can lounge about is a terribly cruel thing to do, so here's what we've sorted out.
I'm going to be away from Sunday the 24th of August until Wednesday the 3rd of September. While I'm off, the good people of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Switch will be holding the fort. This is going to make typing quite hard work, so I've asked them, once a day, to put the fort down, review something and put it up here. What they choose to do with the fort after this is their own business.
So, everyone, say hello to the review-merizing team, Grant Black, Vicki Lutas and Sam Horner. You already know Steve Perkins and Hazel Robinson, right?
As a special extra treat, Beth Meade is going to be putting up the Chart Show DVD Extras and keeping Top 5 High 5 alive. This is because, no matter how much we all may wish it to be otherwise, the Charts will keep going even in a period of relative ChartBlog drought.
Everyone play nicely, please. I'll be back soon.
TTFN,
Fraser
I like this lot. I can't help it. They're always nice in interviews, they make a right noisy racket which, while never being the very first thing that I want to hear at any point, is always welcome on the ears and always reminds me how much I like them. They are one of those bands who you are happy to see still blamming out the grimy rock thrills (even though I probably preferred Charlotte's old hair, it flew about better in gig pics), but not one of those bands whose records you pine for.
Do you remember last week when I was - probably unfairly - moaning about the way people react to the ChartBlog Slightly Annoying Email Questionnaire as if I didn't realise that it was, in fact, slightly annoying, and wanted everyone to join in the hi-LAR-ious fun? Well, the good news is, I have realised the error of my ways, and won't be complaining about this any more (unless I get a real shocker back).
The even better news is someone as finally stepped up to the plate, come up trumps and delivered the goods. They have also got my back and came through when times were rough, they were a bridge over troubled water, a shelter in a time of storm, and they were there for me, when the rain started to fall.
That someone, ladies and gentlemen, is the Belgian/Australian musical collagist Gotye (known to his mum as Wouter DeBacker). He's the man whose face was on a robot pepper-pot in the amazing video for his song 'Heart's A Mess'. It appeared in a recent Back Of The Sofa, if you missed it.
Anyway, it turns out he's also good with questions.
Philosophical conundrums are always fun to debate, aren't they? There's the one about the tree falling in the forest, and whether, if there is no-one there to hear it, it still makes a sound (it does, but it's the sound of a giant wooden mouth yelling "OW! MY ROOTS!").
And there's the one about what the sound of one hand clapping might be (it's a self-defeating question, that one. If the hand is clapping, the sound it makes is a clapping sound. Otherwise it's one hand NOT clapping. DUH!).
Then there's the one where you get to debate on who is the most foolish, a fool or a man who follows a fool (answer: it depends, is the man making a documentary? Or lost?).
We can now add the following little gem to that list, courtesy of Little Jackie (or Imani Coppola, as she is known to seasoned chart-watchers like me): "what came first, the chicken nugget or the egg mcmuffin?"
It has long been a hidden secret that stationery is the most exciting thing in the whole world. Forget trampolines, sexy people, hot music, bungee jumping, travelling by Space Shuttle and accidentally becoming a super-hero when you are bitten by a radio-active sprout, nothing makes the heart race like a brand new pen making a mark on a brand new notepad.
Some people like thin-nibbed ballpens, some people prefer a quill. Some even like pencils, although there's a lot of debate about the perfect softness of lead. I'm a 2B man, myself, but I can see the value in a good hard H, once in a while.
But this little fetish has been such a well-kept secret that when two inkpen addicts get together (I'm not going to call it being a pen-aholic, because there's no such drink as penahol. There's no such drink as workahol either, come to that. Damn you, language!), there is still that thrilled gush you get when people discover a shared passion.
See if you can tell, in this interview with Lovefoxxx from the mighty CSS, where things turn around from being a pained exchange based on the title of the band's last single into something a bit more fun...
At the risk of exposing myself as a fraud, I'm not all that familiar with the work of Biffy Clyro up to this point. I wonder, though, have they been sampling from paranoid delusions for a while now? I ask this because, well, here's a sample from the chorus of 'Mountains': "I am the mountain, I am the sea, you can't take that away from me."
I'm not trying to take it away from them, of course, but it ought to be plainly obvious that they are neither - and indeed to be both at the same time would be quite the feat of physics.
NOTE: To be honest, it seemed a bit mean to want to destroy the Script when they've only just started their run of success and fame. Plus what do you do to destroy a script? Set it on fire? Change the ending? Give it to George Lucas? The possibilities are endless.
This, on the other hand, is a lot nicer, if a little out of date. And of course, if you add a script to a Script, surely that's script-squared. Still, startlingly similar-looking fellas, aren't they?
Adjectives - that's describing words, in case you were passing notes in English class on the day they explained that sort of thing...and actually, if you were, that's kind of ironic, given than it was paying attention in class which gave you the skills necessary to write and read notes in the first place, so maybe you already know what an adjective is, and didn't need to pay attention, and therefore this interjection is a waste of your time and mine. If that is the case, I can only apologise and bow down to your rolled eyes and loud tutting - can be very misleading. I have personally read several adjectives about this band, and none of them captures what it is they actually do, to my way of hearing them.
We are living through times of enormous worry about health matters. Every day new statistics are reported in the news which suggest that, as a nation, we are all about to suddenly explode into massive gut-monsters and them spend the remainder of our short and sorry lives feasting on deep-fried blubber burgers loaded with peanut M&Ms and garnished with bricks of solid elephant cheese.
So, let's be thankful to youthful Swedish popstrels Those Dancing Days for coming up with such healthy alternatives as 'Run Run', their latest single and general manifesto for health and vitality. At least, I THINK it's a manifesto for health and vitality...
Hmm...maybe I should ask one of them. What do you think? What's that? What about Mimmi, the bass-player? Well, alright then!
What is it about the Scandinavians that gives them such an innate ability to create good pop songs? Is it the climate? The diet? The landscape? I mean, don't get me wrong here; in no way am I trying to suggest that the British don't know how to make good pop music. It's just that it does have a bit of a history here of being tainted with the whiff of the naff, that it's for kids and that there's something fundamentally wrong with adults making or enjoying straightforward honest-to-goodness pop music unless it's somehow alternative or, heaven help us, 'ironic'.
As any film-buff will tell you, some DVDs offer a lot of extras - from outtakes to Easter Eggs and back again - some offer just a chapter selection of the film you want to watch and some pictures of the actors in it.
If the Radio 1 Chart Show (plus ever-faithful ChartBlog) was a DVD, it would be one of those four disc box sets, where there's the film, then the director's cut, the lead actor's cut, the make-up lady's cut, and the tea-boy's cut. Then there's the outtakes, the director's cut of the outtakes, the lead actor's cut of the outtakes...*continues in this vein for three hours*...and finally, a back-rub from the leading lady.
Case in point: Here are FOUR interviews which Fearne and Reggie did for this week's show. Starting with this one, OMG IT'S KATY PERRY!
Sometimes when a particular person or artist does something very well, it becomes a bit untouchable for awhile as everyone gets caught up in the idea that no one else can do it. Synthy R&B, for instance, is currently totally the domain of Timbaland. This has clearly embedded in my brain to the extent that when I first heard this song (and indeed the whole of Taio's album) all I could think was "hrmm, Timbaland-y." Which is totally unfair given that a) this song sounds more Neptunes-esque (when the Neptunes are on a good day, anyway) and b) Taio produced the whole thing himself, so technically it's Cruz-y.
See the name in the headline above? That's right, it's just Will. There is no little 'ft.' next to his name, no guest singer flown in to attempt to extend the brand. This is a song which features NO-ONE ELSE AT ALL. We have finally reached a point where shy, introverted little Will is confident enough to appear on his own records without asking anyone else to hold his hand during the choruses. It's like a breakthrough in his personal journey here, people, would a round of applause be too much to ask?
It is nearing the end of the first week of Katy Perry's domination of the UK singles charts. I cannot tell you whether this will be a long reign or a short one. I cannot tell you whether having this song at No.1 will be a good thing for our nation or a bad thing. I cannot tell you even whether this will turn out to be the beginning of an amazing career or the kind of song Sara Cawood will be rolling her eyes at in one of those best/worst list TV shows which will be on around New Year's Eve.
What I CAN tell you is that the song 'I Kissed A Girl' is very gradually invading the consciousness of the nation in a really pungent way. Like these people here, who have changed the words so that they are singing about animals. I particularly like the last one, cos he sounds like Antony and the Johnsons, only ruder.
Now, who wants to read an interview with Katy herself? I SAID WHO WANTS TO READ AN INTERVIEW WITH KATY HERSELF..?
Much as I like Rihanna, I can't help but feel that she's missed an opportunity by not using the spooky, gothy sounds in the first 30 seconds of the video to this song as a basis for the song itself. It's not that there is anything particularly wrong with 'Distubia' itself...apart from the title, which isn't really her fault seeing as Peter Andre is not someone the American public are massively famililar with. Or at least I hope not, we don't want a major diplomatic incident on our hands, especially not one which is spread across the US, the UK, Greece and Australia, now do we?
Yesterday - and only 8 months late - a new chart was announced which lists the top songs of 2007. This would not necessarily be all that interesting, seeing as we're heading into the latter part of 2008 now, but this is a chart of songs which have been uploaded to licensed websites like YouTube and Bebo, or downloaded from sites like iTunes, and includes every possible performance of each song, including some of YOURS...
The organisation who have compiled these figures is the MCPS-PRS Alliance. They are the people who collect royalties on behalf of songwriters and composers, which can come from businesses who play music in the office, bars who have bands performing, radio stations, TV channels...or any public arena where music is being used as entertainment.
This also includes the internet, and an agreement has been struck between the Alliance and YouTube to for royalties to be paid on all music videos. These include the official promo and live music videos, put there by record companies, official videos uploaded by fans, home-made videos which use the original track, home-made videos in which people cover the original track...in fact, every conceivable performance of a song which has been made into a video clip and put up on YouTube. Even this one!
For maximum enjoyment of this review, imagine it is being read out loud by a man with a very deep voice, and he's slurring his words. Not unlike one of those voice-changer microphone toys you can get, or, if you're rocking the old school technology, when your 7" is playing at 33rpm.
The reason for this is that there seems to have been a disastrous metronome malfunction during the recording process for this song, one which has dramatically reduced excitement levels, and may even, in extreme cases, cause an outbreak of major disinterest and possibly even boredom. So, to prevent this, it's best if we all play along.
Don't get over-excited, it's not a rude word. But it is a useful word to describe a certain musical trick. And to be fair, I didn't know it existed before looking stuff up for this interview either, so no-one is accusing any of the Dolls of having a poor vocabulary.
And this new word is not the only thing we can learn from my chat with Melody Dollypusscat. For instance, do you know how she got her name? You did? Oh. Well did you know where the PCD brand is going to pop up next? Oh. How about the possibility of getting all the members of the troupe, past and present, into a room together, you didn't know about THAT, surely?
Pah! I give in. Here's the interview...
No matter how hardcore his friends are, no matter how 'REAL' he may consider himself to be compared to his former bandmates, no matter how appealing his hyperactive stage presence was, that Pennie fella didn't really add a lot to the Automatic's sound besides the sound of a tiny little yappy dog shouting at the postman. It's not the most versatile of musical noises - although funny when they were covering Kanye West - and BOY did it get old quickly. The band's sole album so far was entirely spoiled by it, although the lack of variety in the songwriting didn't really help either.
So, here we are. The yappy talk is over, the band's one-hit-wonder status is hanging around their necks like a millstone carved into the shape of an albatross, and it is time for them to strike out into fresh waters, and discover a new sound which will win over doubters and former fans alike. What, you are no doubt asking, could this new sound be?
Forgive me if this clip has already stopped working by the time you get to have a listen, it's one of those taped-off-the-radio clips which has web people running around like '40s newspaper reporters, yelling "SCOOP!" and acting smug.
Hopefully it'll be up for a little while though, cos it's VERY INTERESTING INDEED.
This, assuming you can hear it, is the new single by the Sugababes. It's called 'Girls', and it's entirely based on the Ernie K. Doe song which was used in the ad campaign for Boots last Christmas.
Am I allowed to submit a review that just says "this is a REALLY odd song" about five times? No? It's just that I must have said that out loud to myself about once every 20 seconds while listening to this, to try to get a decent reviewing type grasp on it - a grasp which, as you will see in the next few paragraphs, clearly eluded me.
For example: 'Save The Lies' sounds very late '80s Bananarama at the very beginning - something from the 'Love In The First Degree' era, probably - but then as soon as Gabriella opens her mouth it turns into something from Anatastacia's difficult second album, and after two minutes it appears just become one giant run-on chorus which is all so relentlessly uptempo as to be incomprehensible.
How I love this questionnaire. It's not just that the questions are smart-alecky, although that's fun, it's also that there is loads of opportunity here for the people answering them to indulge themselves, have a bit of fun, relax and generally get creative with a process which must bore them rigid - namely doing interviews.
Why else would the first questions make it so clear that you don't have to tell the truth about where you really are and what you're doing. It's like a public service we're offering here, y'know?
And does anyone take advantage of it? No, they do not. They bristle, they act confused, they pretend to be illiterate (thank God for the ChartBlog Spell-Ulator, is all I'm saying), and they act like it's a chore.
So, will Nick, the impossibly-cheekboned singer with up 'n' coming Antipodean jerkypop band Cut Off Your Hands break the pattern and come up with some wild flights of fancy, some astonishing insights into his fascinating personality and some amazingly witty one-liners?
Er...you'd best come and look...
Can you imagine how different the history of pop music would have been if the words 'walking' and 'talking' did not rhyme? I mean if English were not the principal language of popular song, maybe there would have to be another way of summarising the devastating effect of a hot stranger on the eye. Perhaps strolling and chatting wouldn't be the main focus, and there would be more attention paid to the way someone laughs and the way they dance (assuming the words for laughing and dancing rhymed, obviously). Or the way they write and the way they kick a football.
It would certainly make the lyrics to 'Biology' by Girls Aloud a lot more bizarre.
The nice thing about having these little DVD Extra interviews is that you can hear the transformation which takes place when radio presenters change from their normal everyday selves into their super-efficient, on-the-ball radio selves.
In the case of the interview Fearne and Reggie did with Charlie from Noah And The Whale for this week's show, the moment comes just after Fearne says "God we're really unorganised today...", Reg launches into an amazing double entendre, and we're OFF TO THE RACES.
I should add it's a lovely interview too, especially as Charlie is clearly not someone who ever thought his opinions would be sought on the state of modern chart pop.
Slick fibber, innee?
I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'F' (and ending with 'lame war'). It seems the video for this song has set off a shower of YouTube angst because the computer animation isn't really up to much, and because it parodies the '80s geekflick Tron. I say parodies because the motorbikes in Tron travelled along gridlines and never, ever, turned corners in a wide arc like they do here. These details are important (to people who have nothing better to think about) and they are concerned that the band's comeback album is being undermined by shoddy promotion.
It's always slightly embarrassing when your parents rock out in public, right? Especially when they are clearly the kind of people who have mellowed with age, I'm not talking about Slayer or Ozzy Osbourne here. We're all kind of used to the idea that the loud stuff is for you rowdy kids, and the quieter, more thoughtful and polished stuff is for Radio 2. But what happens when a confirmed Radio 2-type soft-rock act discovers the volume control, the distortion pedal, and the rejuvinating qualities of drinking Red Bull at high speed and jumping off the sofa?
Well, it's messy, I can tell you that. But is it good messy, bad messy, or just-plain-wrong messy?
A while ago, I was trying to put together a review of the new Late Of The Pier single 'Heartbeat', but couldn't put the video into the blog posting because it contains some swearing. This mildly-irksome situation took a long time to reach a resolution (we've got a copy without the swearing, basically), but I think you'll agree, if you look, that the wait has been entirely worth it.
I have NEVER seen a video which encapsulates the sound of a band as perfectly as this does for this band.
Poor Bloc Party. It's hard enough trying to get along in this crazy, cruel world, without suddenly discovering, as Kele has, that your mercury is in retrograde. That's the kind of news nobody enjoys hearing. As a substance, mercury is unstable enough - running around all over your surfaces, poisoning people, taking blood pressure - without throwing retrograde...er, ness into the mix.
*goes to look up 'retrograde' in the dictionary. Comes back*
They've written an entire song about a runny metal going backwards? Have we run out of subject matter for popular song? Sheesh!
NOTE: I was toying with the idea of wrapping him in a page from the tabloids, because, as anyone who has played Paper Scissors Stone can tell you, paper beats rock. But it's not the ONLY thing which does. And the more I looked at the man's granite-like face, the more I wondered what it would take to get that hat off him. After months of diligent research and experimentation, the answer became clear.
I should also add that playing with dynamite is a really bad idea, even if you have a rapping rock star to obliterate. But then, how many of us have got access to dynamite on a day-to-day basis? And of the few who have, how many don't know that it's dangerous?
That's what I thought...
Sometimes you read an interview with an artist and they say one thing that leaves you convinced you are destined to be a fan of their music before you've even heard a note of it. That worked out well for me with Jason Mraz, less so with Calvin Harris, so I freely admit it's not an exact science. However, when I saw Santogold remarking in that "a lot of pop music from the '80s had a depth to it, and I hope to bring back some more good pop songs", I got a good feeling about her.
It all started a couple of months ago with an email from Steve Perkins - ChartBlog reviewer and a man who likes his pop with extra sugar (and spice, and all things nice). He'd just seen the videos to 'I Kissed A Girl' and 'UR So Gay' by Katy Perry, and was trying to work out what he felt about it all. We had a chat about it, and then another one a week later...and then another one...and another...
Fast-forward to today, and Katy Perry has gate-crashed the charts (on downloads alone, no less), and let's be honest, now EVERYONE is bickering about whether they approve of her or not, right?
So, to try and move the debate along a little bit, here are the highlights of the discussion. Let's call it The ChartBlog Katy Perry Think-Tank.
For the record, we've both since changed our minds.*
Lazy as it might seem, I think it's only right and proper to bring your attention to the opening paragraph of the , if only so that we can all stand back and applaud the amazing amount of information that has been crammed into such a tiny space. Look:
"Madcon (short for Mad Conspiracy), made up of Tshawe Baqwa (Kapricon) and Yosef Wolde-Mariam (Critical), is a Norwegian hip hop/rap band. Kapricon was born in Germany from South-African parents, but grew up in Tveita in Eastern Oslo. Critical was born in Norway with parents from Ethiopia and Eritrea."
You could write an entire film script from that one sentence alone, and it would be a pretty good film. I bet Outkast would play the band, or maybe Will.I.Am and Ne-Yo, could play it as a hilariously mis-matched pair of maverick rappers, who break all the rules, and are always getting busted by The Chief - played by Timbaland - and they bicker all the time, but secretly have a lot of respect for each other.
This is an idea which I believe has NEVER been used in a film before.
I am old enough to remember the '80s. I was THERE, maaaan. This means I'm also officially old enough to remember Michael Jackson when he was still good, before everything started to go weird. You don't need me to list the weird stuff, of course. The weird stuff is extraordinarily well documented, and it's not like people haven't had a chance to put their side of the argument across, whether it's pro or anti.
But it's important to remember that at one point Michael Jackson was the most famous man in the world, and that as far as everyone was concerned at the time, this fame was entirely justified, because as musical performers go, he was among the best.
Not THE best, obviously, cos that's a matter of personal taste, and if you're partial to Russian folk music, say, Jacko might not be your man. But he certainly was very very good indeed. And to celebrate his goodness, we're all being offered the chance to put together a democratic compilation of his wonderous works...
Once again we have to tip our hats to the Freemasons, who have taken a lot of the Ronson-esque Neptunes production off the original version and re-cast the song, with extra focus on the fire and honey pouring out of Solange's mighty larynx. But this isn't a case of British producers taking an American production and making it palatable for the UK (which they're quite open about admitting they have done before), because actually there's not much to choose between the two versions in terms of musical goodness.
It's a very nowadays sort of thing to show the hidden workings behind all sorts of media endeavours, isn't it? CDs come with their demo recordings attached, graphic novels often show early drawings of the key characters, and YouTube is riddled with pop videos sitting alongside those 'The Making Of...' featurette things which show how they are made.
Naturally the Radio 1 Chart Show is very interested in things which are nowadays-y, and so we've decided to offer you access to the full, unedited versions of the interviews Fearne and Reggie do for the show, in a kind of DVD extras kind of way.
This week, Reggie did the honours, with the Saturdays, Kid Rock and the Script.
So, here they are, in chart order...
The Saturdays
Here's Reggie talking to all of the band, one by one...a task that even HE gets a little weary of, it's fair to say (although they seem very nice, and so is he, so it's hardly a massively tiresome slog, honest).
Keep your ears peeled for Reg and Producer Laura having a quick sing-song.
Actually, you don't have to peel your ears yourself...their singing will do it for you.
Oh GREAT. The blimming Verve are back. Well this is certainly going to be a cause for celebration, isn't it? We should all get our party hats out, dig out the sparkliest numbers from the back of the wardrobe and prepare to par-TAY. Richard Ashcroft - a man who seems to have never been any younger than 35 even in the prime of his youth - and his band of visionary sour-faced space-rockers. They've decided to get back together, just to remind everyone how rubbish everything is. That's their job - they elected themselves, y'know - and they make a decent fist of it too.
AND IN WORD FORM, HERE'S THIS WEEK'S TOP 5:
1: Kid Rock - 'All Summer Long'
2 Dizzee Rascal ft. Calvin Harris - 'Dance Wiv Me'
3: The Script - 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved'
4: Katy Perry - 'I Kissed A Girl'
5: Jordin Sparks ft Chris Brown - 'No Air'
Usual rules apply. High five the screen if you approve, slap the faces of the people you don't like if you don't.
PS: Check the ChartBlog tomorrow, cos I'll have the full, unedited versions of the interviews Reggie did with the Script, Kid Rock and the Saturdays for this week's show. I'm not saying what's in them, but you WILL get the chance to hear Reg fluff his lines.
To hear the proper versions, in their true, shiny context, but at a time which is suitable to you, you might want to take a squizz at the Chart Show Podcast...
Although you may not know it by looking around you, this has been a tense week. It has, in fact, been a week loaded with suspense, intrigue, and sudden revelations, and this excitement has (almost) justified the years of sacrifice and hard training involved in becoming a properly seasoned chart-watcher. Yes, it's THAT good!
The whole thing revolves around predictions and expectations, and one act being suddenly more successful than anyone expected, while another who everyone expected to be huge, appearing to stall before they got started.
Here's the Script, with their song 'We Cry', when they appeared on Sound.
Normally at this point in a review, I would be trying to come up with a fresh, interesting way to start things off, to try and lure you, the unsuspecting ChartBloggerer into reading the whole damn thing. It might be something about science, or a theory I have suddenly concocted about music, or just a series of shouted demands, ending with "AND YOU'VE GOT TO READ THE REST OF THIS, OR THE PUPPY GETS IT!". But then, seeing as this is a re-release of the very first Scouting For Girls song, I'm not sure 'fresh' is the right way to go.
Creative types, if you are having trouble getting anyone to pay attention to the amazing things which you have made, it's just possible that you need to change the way these things are advertised. There is a way you can set the bar of expectation for your work a little bit lower, while pretending you are actually setting it a lot higher, and therefore making yourself appear to be a genius.
Want to know how? Well it's all to do with DIY...
If you work in a canteen, and you make soup, instead of just putting up a sign saying "Cream Of Mushroom - Β£3.50 plus bread", why not add the term 'Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ-Made '? This will make everyone believe that you spent hours cooing over a hot Aga, carefully stirring your perfect broth, even though you are actually only saying "we made it here, in our great big echoey corporate kitchens, while baking four-and-twenty chicken breasts in a pie and doing Gordon Ramsey impressions..."
The same thing applies with music. If you can make some claim that your music was recorded in your bedroom, or your kitchen, or in a very expensive recording studio but only using acoustic instruments and all playing at once, this is automatically better than using Pro-Tools, or something.
And if you have done all this, you can even use the catch-all term 'DIY' to describe your music, even though EVERYONE who makes music does it themselves, unless they are playing the telapathic bassoon, and even then, you still have to make the reeds vibrate with your brain.*
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