After 2 and a bit years, we’ve decided to move Unreality Music to a new location – our new community site, Unreality Shout.
I’ll be running the site as Community Manager for want of a more high-fallutin’ title. Maybe I’ll think one up eventually. In the meantime, let me tell you a little bit about Shout and invite you to join the community:
Great for music fans – create a fan group for your favourite band or singer and invite other fans to join and chat.
Start your own blog – you can write about anything entertainment related: music, movies, TV shows, books and more.
Contribute to wiki pages – are you the ultimate authority on a band, an actor or a TV show? Share your knowledge by contributing to wiki pages on your favourite subjects!
Buddy up – you can invite your friends to join in the fun and build a network of friends and obsessives on Shout!
Share pictures – got any pictures from gigs you’ve been to recently? You can upload them and share them with the world!
Earn points for contributing – each contribution to the site earns you Shout Points which earn you a placement on the list of most active members!
As for me, I’m excited about growing the new community. I’ve been blogging for easily 4-5 years now, and Unreality Shout is our way of giving fans and bloggers a platform where they can share their opinions about their favourite subjects.
Anyway, I hope you’ll join me over on Unreality Shout – and if you need any help getting started, we have a help forum where you can ask for assistance!
For RSS subscribers, stay tuned – the feed will automatically start showing new music posts from Unreality Shout in a day or so.
I’ve got a lot to thank Bon Jovi for. Back in the day (that’s 1988, kiddies), they were my earliest introduction to the wonderful world of Hair Metal. It’s been quite a ride, and the ‘Jovi sound has mellowed in the intervening years.
Lily Allen is a master (or is that mistress) in the art of misdirection – while we’re all scratching our heads at her new country-music inspired song, Not Fair, Lily is singing sweetly about “spending ages giving head” which conveniently rhymes with “lying in the wet patch on the bed”.
While those lyrics put her in the running for “Perfect Woman” material, the hoedown video weirds me out completely. I think they almost did a little too good a job of transforming Lily into a country star from yesteryear, didn’t they?
Remember when Sara Barielles wrote Love Song as a protest to record execs who wanted her to do more ballad-y songs? Well, she’s been trumped by Amanda Palmer, who’s pulled out all the stops in an attempt to get RoadRunner Records to drop her.
Lovegame is another triumphant electro-pop gem from Lady GaGa. I’m slightly baffled as to where the ‘cherry cherry boom boom’ song went – didn’t we see a video for that a while back?
Anyway, apparently the video for Lovegame is causing palpitations among the guardians of public decency that are the censorship bodies. Well, GaGa has stepped things up a notch – she’s gone from ‘I’ll get him hard, show him what I’ve got’ in Poker Face to essentially wanting to ride his disco stick. Well, it’d be a shame to waste it, wouldn’t it?
In fairness, sometimes I think Lady GaGa boils down to essentially blonde hair and prominent lycra gusset. Which is what Madonna was a few years ago. I’m not sure the look works for either – GaGa has a shop mannequin look that’s sometimes hard to find sexy.
This is quite awesome, actually, because if you’ve ever really wanted to immerse yourself in a new band’s music, this makes it so easy. You can literally work your way through every Black Sabbath album – from Ozzy through Dio and get a real feel for them.
Just a heads up for any metal fan who’s maybe missed Sabbath. You can start chastising me now for not owning any of their albums…
I published my interview with X Factor finalist Eoghan Quigg yesterday, at the same time as the folks at PopJustice were commenting on Twitter about the quality of the album.
Now, I received my copy at the same time as they got their review copy. Up until this point, I’d maintained a stoic silence after being Eoghan’s harshest critic throughout the X Factor. At that time, I said that Simon Cowell stood to make more money from phone votes for Eoghan Quigg that he ever would in record sales.
Anyway, PopJustice released their review of the album yesterday, and it has perhaps the most perfect analysis of the song selection and production values:
Imagine the three worst reality pop albums you have ever heard. Let’s pick the Michelle McManus album, the David Sneddon album and the Journey South album. Imagine the combined badness of all those albums, then somehow imagine that ALL personality has been sucked out out. Then imagine that they kept on sucking, long after there all personality was gone, until there was a sort of personality prolapse. You are still only half way to understanding just how empty these recordings are.
Now, Unreality TV has received some criticism in our time about being so scathing about reality TV contestants. But when the quality is this poor, you can’t help but unleash the snark.
Music blog regulars will know that the Pussycat Dolls have thoroughly redeemed themselves with the (deluxe) Doll Domination album. Jai Ho conveniently repackages the end song from Slumdog Millionaire, giving Miss Scherzinger lead vocals and a background role for the composer, A R Rahman.
Jai Ho alternates between dramatic ethnic verses and uplifting pop choruses. Sure, they go a little overboard with the autotune sometimes (autotune is the modern equivalent of helium, isn’t it?).
My inclination is to crown this the best single the Pussycat Dolls have ever released, actually. The music is amazing. There are overtones of Beyonce and Shakira on Beautiful Liar, but ten times better. The video features the girls looking stunning and doing a fun Bollywood style dance routine. Don’t they look like they’re all having great fun?
It’s clearly a slow news day in Celeb-land, as The Sun and The Mirror both regurgitate Robbie Williams quotes from his visit to We Will Rock You the other night.
The Mirror reckon Robbie said he was definitely going to rejoin Take That (a dull rumour that’s been doing the rounds every month since 2005). However, while The Sun’s report agrees with this, it also says that he was dashing back to the studio to record with Mark Ronson.
Now, let’s imagine that you’ve been asked the same question for four years: “Any chance of you rejoining Take That, Rob?” Why not just nod your head and go along with it? “Yeah, yeah. Even though I’m clearly recording a solo album, I’d love nothing more than to hook up with Take That again.”
NME are reporting that Jason Newsted will rejoin Metallica when the band is inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 4th April.
Newsted left the band in 2001 but had spent 14 years with the band since the death of their original bassist, Cliff Burton. According to the report, the band don’t want politics to mar the ceremony as they did with the Blondie induction in 2006.
"Jason Newsted will be there, and he will be playing with us at one point," guitarist Kirk Hammett said. "We went as a band when Black Sabbath was being inducted, and at that time Blondie was also being inducted that night. And there was so many politics and so much drama that, you know, we collectively said to each other, ‘We don’t want any of that,’ because it kind of, it puts a really bad, sour note on the whole celebration itself."
Having spent so long with the band, it’s great that Newsted can come back and be part of the celebration. After all, he was part of the biggest band in the world as their fame crested and peaked. I think he deserves it, and I’ll be looking out for footage of that performance when it hits the web!
The Hall of Fame induction takes place on 4th April in Cleveland, and the band are to receive their induction from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
