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?
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.
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?
I’m betting you’re either a supporter of Blindfold, or you’ve never heard of them. I fall into the latter category, so here’s a quick background: Blindfold are an Icelandic four-piece who create some very interesting atmospheric music.
Sad Face, their single which is released at the end of the month, is the first time I’ve ever heard their music. Things do not start well: the song begins according to the dreary singer/songwriter textbook. A minor-key acoustic guitar and some maudlin lyrics over the top.
Oops. I fell asleep last night and missed the Brit Awards ceremony. If, like me, you missed it and were reading the papers this morning, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the big news of the evening was Katy Perry vomiting backstage. Was she wasted? No, just slightly overworked and under the weather, as she explained:
I’m so sick right now, but they said I should show up because something special might happen. Thank you to everyone at my record label. I work pretty hard because I want to die right now.
The big winners at last night’s Brits were Duffy (mopping up three awards) and Kings Of Leon winning the International Group and Album categories.
Following up her hot debut single, Lady Gaga gives us Poker Face. If the song’s lyrics weren’t so damned smutty, I’d be rolling jokes about ‘poke her face’ right now. But she’s taken all the fun out of mocking the title. Damn you, Gaga!
A bit like Just Dance, this one took a little while to grow on me. The gurgling synth sounds are fast becoming a Lady Gaga trademark along with an addiction to lycra that would make Madonna blush.
Scoring the Comic Relief single this year is a major coup for The Saturdays. Their choice of Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough particularly inspired, reminiscent of when Girls Aloud recycled Jump for the Love Actually soundtrack.
The Sun lauded this for being the sexiest video yet for The Saturdays, but as a red-blooded expert on all things sexy, I disagree. It’s about as sexy as Christina Aguilera back in that Lady Marmalade video – i.e. not at all. Gawd, give me Dawn French dressed up as Mel B any day!
Seems Justin Timberlake doesn’t release anything by himself these days, he’s just happy to meander onto any given rap track and sing a few lines. No real hard work to be done, the audience is happy, and everybody goes home satisfied.
Except T.I. – he’s headed for prison in a few weeks, isn’t he?
