±«Óãtv

(. It's the best video ever made. No messing.*)

Now, I'm not going to waste a lot of time describing why this is amazing, not when there's a perfectly good link up there with fantastic fun at the other end of it. But what I will say is this: messy call-and-response backing vocals are ALWAYS a good idea.

They're a good idea because, done properly, they sound like a party. You've got your lead singer doing his or her thing, acting out the doomed poet or love-octopus or whatever, and then you've got this gaggle of laughing chimps behind them, half celebrating and half mocking whatever it is they are going on about.

It always sounds like the most fun you could possibly have in a recording studio. There's an Iggy Pop song called 'Success', in which his backing vocalists - including one D. Bowie, I might add - repeat back to him everything he sings, in blank mockery. Even when he starts freestyling, even when he starts yelling "I'm gonna hop like a frog!", even when he signs off with a brief, but well-placed swearword, they're there.

I cannot tell you how much I wish I was one of those people, how much listening to that song makes me wonder if I will ever have as much fun as that. It's THAT intoxicating an experience. And incidentally, 'Drunk Girls' and 'Success' have both suffered the sniffy damnation of people claiming they're just throwaway fun: as if this is a BAD thing!

So, in tribute to the glorious yahoo of the messy call-and-response backing vocal, I propose we make a joint playlist of the best examples known to music. Here's a selection from history:

'Money' by Barrett Strong / the Beatles
'White Light/White Heat' by the Velvet Underground
'Somebody To Love' by Queen / Glee
'Success' by Iggy Pop (warning: not safe for school)
'Boys Keep Swinging' by David Bowie
'M.O.R. (Live At Peel Acres)' by Blur (live version)

Any more for any more?

Download: Out now
CD Released: May 17th

±«Óãtv Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

"Almost everyone agrees that 'Drunk Girls' is as fluffy as LCD Soundsystem songs come."

"At the very least you can pogo to it drunk and repent at your hungover leisure."

"'Drunk Girls' (like 'North American Scum' before it) will get a lot of flak for being loud and immediate and shouty and dumb."

* Actually there is quite a lot of messing, as you will no doubt have seen.