The State Of Things, With Sarah Cracknell
Some of you might not be aware of the work of Sarah Cracknell, the brainy blonde behind the hits of pop boffins Saint Etienne, and the voice of 'The Journey', the song by Mark Brown which samples the opera music off the Lloyds bank advert. But she's been 'the indie Kylie' since before KYLIE was the indie Kylie (and continued after indie Kylie went back to being hotpants Kylie too), and as such has had a unique view of the changing nature of popular music over the last...God, is it 17 years now? Its blimming AGES, I know that...
Pop music: It's not just there for the good things in life. I mean you're not in a state of perpetual bliss, are you? You don't walk around all the livelong day with a big daffy smile on your face, winking at the old ladies in the bus queue, pinching the cheek of a passing baby (which is easier than you'd imagine, given recent advances in stretchy nappy technology), and whistling, do you? No, you don't. Even Keith Chegwin has his emo* moments, so why shouldn't pop music, eh? 
The signs are all around us, scattered across the nation's airwaves like crisps on the floor of a busy train. 2008 is going to be the year in which literally EVERYONE starts to encorporate elements of what used to be called 'world music' into their sound. We've already got Vampire Weekend's township jive and Gogol Bordello's klezmer-rock, Foals seem to be attempting to channel the spirit of the late great Fela Kuti on their new album, MIA is recording literally anyone doing anything musical at all on her travels around the world, and Freemasons have greatly improved a Kelly Rowland song by adding Turkish/Arabic twiddles to it. 
Adverts, eh? They're fascinating, and yet deeply confusing at the same time. I suspect I may never truly understand them - especially since, as a member to ±«Óătv staff, I am of course technically allergic to advertising in all its forms. Once upon a time, though, getting your song on an advert was the Holy Grail of pop music, because it meant you had it made. I remember in my teenage years when The Song Off The Levis Ad, whichever one it was and however rubbish it may have been, always got to No.1, because the amount of exposure that accompanied it was fairly unbeatable. It doesn't seem quite such a surefire thing these days, though, otherwise the girls off the Sheila's Wheels advert would have the number one slot all year round.
Web-animators, if you were looking for the ideal song to use to accompany a cartoon you've been working on, in which a gang of satanic imps dances about in a nasty ritualistic fashion, before pouring out of hell's gates on their way to some kind of party (maybe one of them is getting married, or is having a significant imp birthday - his 500th, maybe), well, your search may be over. And if you're not gifted in the creation of little dancing demons for the delight of your YouTube friends, try and use your imagination instead. I have, and it's brilliant!
ChartSnipe: I had the good fortune to speak to Mr Basshunter this week, and found him to a be a curious mix of the spiritual, nature-worshipping woodsman, and the scatology-obsessed, girl-hungry teenage boy. Heck, he even told me the 'B' in Basshunter is supposed to be silent, and that's not even a joke! 
Isn't it odd how Morrissey, one of the most over-discussed of musical people ever (note I used the word 'discussed', not 'talked-about', he's hardly in the Britney/Amy league for gossip, after all), seems to be exempt from the normal rules of common sense debate. I mean Moz apologists will claim the man can do no wrong, Moz-baiters claim that he's nothing but a rubbish moany old gipper, the NME seems to want to praise him AND tell him off at the same time (in the way a bully might say you've got good hair, just before he flushes your head down the toilet), and all the while, he keeps putting records out and living his life in a typically enigmatic, quiet manner, one which seems a world away from all the hysteria. 
I tell you, this is one sentence I never thought I'd find myself typing - who knew that taking a Kelly Rowland song and making it sound like a cross between a Holly Valance song and a Bubba Sparxxx song would be a guarantee of chart success? And yet here we are. Freemasons have taken the would-be 'Crazy In Love' production of Kelly's original and pitched their version between 'Kiss Kiss' and 'Ugly', and it's just SO much better. 
It's not massively relevant in a review of Mary's latest song, but in this cynical dog-eat-cat showbiz world, there never seems to be a good time to mention the good things celebs do for each other, so I'm just damn well going to MAKE time. OK? 
What a difference an imagination makes, eh? I mean, on the surface, this isn't a million miles away from any number of indie bands. You know the ones, they're all desperately hoping that there is enough to go around of whatever febrile magic it is that propelled a band like, say, the Pigeon Detectives up the charts. Their guitars are rough, unlovely things, their singers yelp, and their choruses can be bellowed by large groups of people, while hugging each other. 
Things hang in a delicate state of balance around this band. They're former choristers who play rock-type music, they're breaking through to the wider consciousness, but also generating a certain amount of friction from the rocksnobs who can't deal with a guitar band whose music is enjoyed by young girls. Now they're releasing a song which seems perfect for radio-play and general ear-tweaking excitement, but it's a bit sugary, compared to the startling baroque 'n' roll of their last single 'Jessica'. 
The success of Jo Whiley's Live Lounge does prove one quite interesting thing about songs. It's not that the true test of a song is whether it still works if you play it just on one acoustic guitar, because that it's plainly a lie. Some amazing things sound bloody dreadful on acoustic guitar, no matter how well you play them, and some acoustic guitar songs ARE bloody dreadful, but would probably sound pretty good if given a synthpop workover. So put that thought to the back of your head, that is not what I'm getting at. Done it? Good.
So, they're called One Night Only, and their new single is called 'Just For Tonight'... Do you think these boys are trying to tell us something? Is the One Night Only tour called 'Here Tonight, Gone Tomorrow'? Is their album called 'Seriously, Soon As The Sun Comes Up, We're Outta Here'? Will subsequent ONO songs be called 'Cinderella Had The Right Idea', or 'Basically You've Got Us From Teatime Until Midnight And That's It'?? I mean it's going to be hard to really commit ourselves to a brand new band if everything about them screams that they aren't going to stick around very long, even if we really want them to. 
I tell you what, Tom Delonge must be LIVID with jealousy right now. Not that he'd ever admit it, but c'mon, he must be spitting fire and fury from one end of his dusty I-Empire to the other. There he is, hard at work creating an exciting fusion of U2-styled epic rock, infused with the sugar-rush immediacy of pop-punk and a good dark splat of gothic drama, but does anyone bar a few die-hard Blink fans care? They do not.
Sometimes I seriously wonder if anyone proof-reads biographies on bands' MySpaces or Buzznets or whatever. Take this opening paragraph of Bullet For My Valentine's YouTube channel: "The Welsh metal-core band Bullet For My Valentine has spent most of the past two years taking over the world with massive UK, European, US and worldwide tours, sharing the stage with Guns N Roses, Metallica and Iron Maiden, playing the Main Stage at just about every rock festival on the planet, and seeing their 2006 debut album THE POISON - an album London's daily The Sun called "One of the finest debut albums in rock history" - sell more than one-million copies worldwide."
Folkies, eh? Seems that right now you could open any window in any building - no matter how remote - and lob a 10p piece out of your window, and without really putting any effort into the throw you could hit a sensitive soul with an acoustic guitar. They would then promptly settle down on the floor, cross-legged, and compose a pretty little ditty called 'Metal Rain', which would start off being about the coin you tossed, and would very quickly end up being about why no-one will ever really love or understand them. 
Ladies and gentlemen, we live in interesting times. Aeroplanes are falling from the sky, Leslie Ash is taking millions of pounds OUT of the National Health Service without providing any major health-related service beyond being a bit of an MRSA sponge, and the ±«Óătv is taking heat from people who pretend to be pop stars for a living because they claim The One And Only is making , which does take the pot and kettle thing into a whole new kitchen. 
It heartens me that there’s still a place in the world of popular music for Bjork, you know. While we may be past the point in time where she routinely scores Top 10 hits (a quick glance at everyhit.co.uk points out to me that said period in fact only lasted from November 1995 to February 1996, but my point still stands), there’s still a hearty audience out there for her albums, and I think it does us all good to have somebody like her constantly striving to reinvent the wheel, even going so far as to be deliberately inaccessible ('Medulla', for example) in her unending quest to push the boundaries of pop.
Ooh, in this song, Jay seems to be coming across like an Anglo Akon (Angkon, anyone?). He's got all of the smoothness, sweetness and whispery-silkiness of his randy Senegalese-American soundsake, but also brings a few little tweaks and kinks which could only come from a British mouth, making for a beguiling combination of smugness AND self-consciousness. This is gonna be ace! 
I am going to have to be honest here, it can be really scary on the thin ice, not quite knowing which way to jump, especially when a new artist is involved and they might turn out to be AMAZING, but first impressions seem to indicate that even if they are, they're only going to be the kind of AMAZING which happens to other people and not me. I have much the same problem with the Arcade Fire. I see what people like about them, I understand what it is that they do...but I can't make it do for me what it clearly does for other people. Believe me, I've tried! 
Remember mash-ups? Rihanna's people do, and rightly so. Once upon a time, around the turn of the last millennium, you could barely move for bedroom mix-kids putting the vocals from one song - such as 'Unchained Melody' by Gareth Gates, the then-recent runner-up on TV's Pop Idol - over the backing track to another song - Robson and Jerome's 'Unchained Melody', perhaps - and coming up with an exciting, brash new alternative to music, which contained half the creamy goodness and twice the sugar. 
OK, first of all, you need to entirely ignore the first line of this song. There is NO SUCH THING as spending "too much time sat in your bedroom on your PC". And even if there was, you could easily get around the adverse affect on your health by making sure to spend a large proportion of your time on websites which are empirically good for you. Like, for example, one of the very informative and entertaining music blogs which have sprung up in the last year or so. Can't think of a good example off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's at least one really brilliant one out there (*points to self, pointedly*).
As I sit, dissolute, snot leaking from my every facial orifice, wrapped in my dressing gown and surrounded by the remains of getting up at 5am to spend three hours coughing several nights in a row, I know I am perhaps not in any position to comment that anyone is too groomed. After all, this might seem like I implied my own state of illness-related degeneration was in any way superior. Which it's not, obviously. However, I think there's maybe a sort of spectrum here where me in my dressing gown is one end and Beyonce is the other, in terms of grooming and like any spectrum, the two extremes are in some way offensive.
Would it be too presumptuous to assume that if you're reading this, you're a big fan of modern (meaning the last 50-odd years, oddly enough) popular music? And if that is the case - frankly you're in the wrong place if it isn't - would it be fair to say that there is at least one song within your music library which was never paid for, or given to you for free by the people who made it? Yeah, I thought as much... 
Mmm, I love cheese, don't you? I love it on pizzas, I love it on crackers, I love it in a sandwich with pickle, I love macaroni cheese, parmesan on spaghetti, goat's cheese salads, blue cheese dressing, brie and tomato sandwiches, cheese fondue, chunks of cheek-piercing chedder and sharp Granny Smith apples...cheese is definitely one of the things that make this sad, sorry world worth hanging around for. 
It's often said that we Brits are obsessed with class. It's probably a hangover from history, rolling all the way back to the feudal system, and may even be partly our way of addressing social status without any of those troublesome revolutions that carved up most of Europe. So a non-British ChartBlog reader, on reading that it's patently obvious that Robyn is someone who has class, someone whose music is a cut above the common rabble, may well roll their eyes and mutter "well, you WOULD say that, you crazy Britfolk". 
I wonder what it is about relocating to America that provides such fertile ground for songwriters? I remember there was a track on the first Art Brut album called 'Moving to LA', which a handful of online reviewers who didn't like the album seized upon with glee ("'Moving to LA', eh? They shouldn't hurry back, they won't be missed! Ha! Ha! Ha!" etc.) I promise not to take any obvious potshots like that in this review. I might be cheap, but I'm not that cheap. 
Thoughts about Joss Stone: 
Well, I've checked, and in the days since the last look into the future there have been no grand announcements of silver jumpsuits taking over from tight black girly jeans, or of people starting to take rockets to work on a daily basis. So I can only conclude that The Future isn't really going to pan out the way we all hoped it would. Bah! 
In the film 'This Is Spinal Tap', there's a brilliant moment where the slightly dim rock band that the film is about are having an enormous row. There's been a misunderstanding between their visionary guitarist Nigel Tufnel and the lady the band has hired to build a stage set. He asked for a replica Stonehenge, and sketched out the design on a paper napkin, adding approximate measurements. Unfortunately he's put inches instead of feet, leaving the band with a stage set which, in the immortal words of the band's lead singer David St. Hubbins is "in danger of being crushed by a dwarf". 
ChartSnipe: Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a NEW year? Look at this Top 5...it's pitiful. Same No.1 as before Christmas, Soulja Boy has come back up, Leona won't go home, Timbaland is setting up his OneRepublic in the British Charts, in what seems to be a bloodless coup, and Take That are BACK. It's as if the festive season never happened, which, bearing in mind that it's twelfth night and all the decorations are now down, might as well be the case. New songs, please! (FM)
Forgive the over-specific fannish-rant, but I'm getting a little confused as to why magazines are falling over themselves to praise Radiohead's latest album as being a triumphant return to form, after what everyone seems to have suddenly decided was their first real career-dip since they became good in the first place, the supposedly-disappointing 'Hail To The Thief'. It's not that 'In Rainbows' isn't good, far from it, it's just there's a lot on it which is very like stuff from that aforementioned 'duff' last album, and this song is a perfect case in point. 
Sweaty? At this time of year, not likely. My housemate's operating system informs me it's about two degrees outside and my rapidly discolouring appendages tell me that operating systerms don't know anything about temperature; there's less chance of me sweating right now than there is of me sprouting wings. Actually that's not true, there's a blimmin' great hill outside my house that three years of walking up haven't conditioned me to but anyway, without hideously strenous terrain, this isn't exactly the sweaty season. 
Don't panic, this isn't going to be some smug stand-up comedian routine about how all modern music just sounds rubbish compared to the classic bands of *insert year when stand-up comedian was a teenager / when stand-up comedian assumes his audience was a teenager*. And I'm definitely not going to add any weight to the lie that you lose interest in finding new music to like as you get past the age of 21, because it's just a load of old cack. 
It would seem that I'm ChartBlog's official TV talent contest correspondent these days, for better or for 
NOT, in case you're confused, yet another reworking of 'Love Is Gone' by David Guetta. No this is an entirely new disco-house affair, even though the names are very similar, and the musical style. Although David's song did not have a morse-code motif running through it which seems to have taken direct inspiration from Van McCoy's immortal 'The Hustle', and so therefore loses on points. 
