skip to main |
skip to sidebar
“I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden [At Lausanne]. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotion of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame”.
So wrote Edward Gibbon after completing his magnum opus "The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire". I kind of know how he feels. True, I haven’t toiled for the twelve years that it took Gibbon to produce his text, but it’s been over three and a half years since I started this project, which is a good two and a half longer than I initially planned. And over the course of that time, what started as a labour of love has just become a labour.
But why stop now? After all, Gibbon was working to certain parameters with his tome; the Roman Empire rose, the Roman Empire fell and, having fell, Gibbon had a clear cut off point to put down his pen and get on with the washing. Clearly, 'Crazy' does not mark the 'end' of UK number ones; there was a 'next one' after it (it's Sandi Thom’s delightfully titled ‘I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)’if you're interested). Not only that, from my current vantage point in 2012, there are six years and counting of 'other' number ones waiting in line for attention that isn't going to come. Not from me anyway.
So, why stop now? Well, let me explain; I was browsing the second hand vinyl in a charity shop (as I'm wont to do) the other day and I came across this copy of David Bowie's 1972 'Starman' single in the box. Just seeing it there stopped me in my tracks. It only got to number ten in the charts so we haven't come across it on these pages, but there it was - orange RCA label, white/green RCA paper sleeve and 'Suffragette City' on the B-side. Two songs scratched into vinyl and sent out into the world to try its luck with the public, a perfect artefact from another era and an item of substance and meaning that would not look out of place hung behind glass. 
Which I guess is apt, seeing that it and its kind have become something of a museum piece. Give that copy of ‘Starman’ (or any other single) to your average clued up teen today and I've little doubt they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
And why should they - in a digital age of MP3 where Itunes and Spotify stream music straight down the phoneline, the thought of having two or three songs 'burned' onto a cumbersome plastic disc probably seems as ridiculous and cumbersome as the stack of eight 78rpm discs once needed to house Beethoven’s' 9th symphony at a time when the whole thing could be fitted onto two 33rpm discs. Or, as ridiculous and cumbersome as my own two disc box set of ‘Beethoven’s' 9th' (Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) would seem to anyone who has it on a single CD and can listen to it in one go without getting up to change any discs at all; give me convenience or give me death. Or better still, give me seven inches of vinyl.
You see, I've long thought that the 45” single was the best medium for music. Seven inches of plastic over which to make your definitive statement. Yes, people have made definitive statements over the course of an album too, but the extra space also encourages filler and patchiness - song one not up to scratch? Well song two might be, or song three. And so on. But a 45” single is a one shot at the title affair, a condensation of talent and conscious decisions that leads the artist to think that this song is the best statement we can make. It doesn't always work out that way, but even with the most horrendous of singles, somebody somewhere must have thought that it had a decent shot at the title.
Growing up, singles weren’t exactly cheap. Buying 10 or 12 singles cost more than buying an album of 10 or 12 songs, but there was little risk involved - you heard the song on the radio (not YouTube or Itunes) and thought 'I like that'. True, some rich folk may have bought them on a whim, but I wasn't one of them; if I bought a single there was a reason behind it and the thought of owning a 45 I didn't 'like' was as bizarre as going out without your trousers. Buying the parent album was a risk - the remainder of the songs were unheard and might be rubbish (and, as I’ve so often found out to my cost, most were), but you knew where you were with a single in your hand.
I can remember the first singles I bought ("Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" and ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper – one to be proud of, one not so), most people can, but how many can remember the last one I wonder? I can. For me, it was Neneh Cherry's 'Buffalo Stance' and it was bought from the leftover vinyl bargain rack of a local supermarket long after the song had dropped out of the charts and contention. It wasn't consciously my last - I didn't come away thinking 'this is the last single I'm ever going to buy'. It just turned out that way. Local shops had slowly stopped stocking them in favour of CD singles anyway so they weren't that easy to come by anymore and besides, my tastes had moved away from the top twenty by that stage. Where mine and popular opinion did converge, I was by then working full time and had money enough to buy the album without worrying too much whether the bulk of it was up to scratch or not. So I guess that for all my railing, I myself played my own small part in their downfall.
Which in a roundabout way is my answer to the question ‘Why stop now?’ Well, in one way the decision wasn’t mine at all; it's called itself to a natural halt really. You see, my own idea of what a 'single' is has been obscuring like the hazy horizon on a summers days over the past decade or so that I’ve reviewed. Singles in their traditional form have become marginialised and acquired the status of artefact. You can still buy them, even in the today that I’m writing in, but to do so has almost become an act of bloody mindedness when you can download the same thing without even leaving your bed. It’s akin to making your own furniture instead of buying it flat packed from Ikea. Some handy people do make their own furniture in the sprit of naturalness, but as George Orwell wrote “from the very start there is a touch of artificiality about the whole business, for the factories can turn out a far better table than I can make for myself. But even when I get to work on my table, it is not possible for me to feel towards it as the cabinet maker of a hundred years ago felt towards his table, still less as Robinson Crusoe felt toward his.”
There’s no doubt about it, buying singles is now the exception rather than the norm that downloading has become; the days of the top twenty set out in a rack at your local record shop have long gone. CD singles came first of course, arguably the same thing (albeit on a single disc) but arguably completely different too. When did they gain dominance? I'm not sure, but I've noticed that since circa 1994, it’s become increasingly difficult to find a true square image of the single sleeve to accompany each review I've written. In the majority of cases, all I've been able to find are the slightly rectangular images indicative of the rectangular CD case they came in which, in my own bloody minded way, I've compressed into a square. It's not ideal (or factually true), but it was enough to keep the ruse going - even though I wasn't buying them, I could still imagine that rack of vinyl down at Woolworth’s with the latest releases all nestling there in their paper sleeves and waiting for me to call in and browse them.
That all changed with 'Crazy'. With a fact of popular that's surely going to become as widely ingrained into common knowledge as surely as ‘Flowers In The Rain’ was the first song played on Radio One’ or ‘Here In My Heart’ was the first UK number one, 'Crazy' managed to reach number one on the strength of downloads alone. Which means, to put it bluntly, not one physical copy changed hands in order for it to be the best selling song in the UK. And that bothers me. As much as I've embraced electronic media myself, there remains something special about the physical act of buying and owning music, especially the definitive statement of that one shot at the title single. And now it’s gone.
But the music is still there and people are still listening, so does it matter? Well yes it does. The sense of loss is troubling – it is to me anyway. I still own all the albums and singles I ever bought from pre-teen to present day and, apart from the music within the grooves, their physical presence stand as ‘exhibits’ in the museum of my life. If I turn the sleeve to my copy of AC/DC’s ‘If You Want Blood’ to the light, I can still read the History homework indented into the cardboard where I’d used it as a laptop desk to write on back in 1979. That ‘Starman’ disc I found has ‘Steve’ written on the label in ink – who was Steve? Did he buy this disc? Was he given it as a gift? Does he know it ended up in a charity shop box and would he care if he did? Who knows – my point here is that even in something so incongruous and low-key, there’s a small history of someone there just waiting to be uncovered.
It’s not just the covers either. My well-worn copy of ‘Atomic’ has two big clicks on the intro, making it unique, my own personal Christian Marclay remix. Imperfect in itself maybe, but no other copy can boast the same. And even though I’ve not played that actual single in over twenty, those clicks have become so ingrained that I’ve been conditioned into thinking this IS how Atomic is supposed to sound and I mentally put them in place myself whenever I play my CD copy of ‘Eat To The Beat’, be it the 2001 ‘remastered’ version or the 2007 ‘Collectors Edition’ double disc set with DVD. Other examples abound, but you get the picture.
And not only that, in their own small way every piece of mass-produced vinyl I own has become personal to me and comes with its own associated memories. I can generally remember the shop I bought them from and the circumstance of why I bought it. You don't get that with downloads do you? You don't get the physical connection between you and the record, the needle and the groove, the personal touch or individuality. You don't get the hanging around the local record shop with your mates, the browsing through the racks, the reading the sleeves. (though on the plus side, there will be no more frustration courtesy of the disinterested shop girl's attempts to find the vinyl to go into the blank sleeve you offered to her. This might be nostalgic cliché, but it doesn’t mean it’s not fact. Because it is. All now it’s gone, like tears in the rain.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe people neither want nor miss it and clinging steadfastly to the ‘old ways’ is the domain of the same kind of 'special' person who dutifully pedals around on a penny-farthing rather than a light frame road bike. Or still listens to Beethoven’s Ninth over eight scratchy shellac discs on a wind up Gramophone. Or maybe I’ve just got old without knowing it. But whatever, I miss it. And though I may be a Luddite dreamer, I know I’m not the only one – as comedian Stewart Lee put it: "…….tapes and records and things. And for the younger people, a record was like a massive flat MP3, and there was almost no information on it at all. It was very impractical, it could break or warp in the heat or get scratched. But it was better than your life."
Amen to that. But with ‘Crazy’ putting that final brass screw into the coffin lid of the seven-inch vinyl, it’s time to close the lid on this project too. The hits still keep on coming, and I'll still keep listening, but if they’re no longer in a format that will be browsable in a charity shop box some twenty years hence, then I’ll leave it to someone else to do the writing. My work here is done.
Unique insofar as it's the first number one to date to be crowned the best selling single in the UK on the strength of downloads alone, Gnarls Barkley are/were a readymade combination of noted producer Dangermouse and funk soul singer Cee Lo Green. The input of both pronounced and obvious; Dangermouse provides a sprung floor of a beat built on the shoulders of a moody Reverberi Brothers spaghetti Western sample* that in turn provides the wide open sky room for Green to float through with a loose limbed (check out the chuckle at 1:20) vocal of gravel and honey that tips a hat to both Al Green and Sam Cooke. Instantly likeable with an impressionistic lyric ("Even your emotions have an echo in so much space") you can take as meaning nothing or everything, 'Crazy' is a work of organic timelessness that manages to sound spontaneous yet controlled, experimental yet traditional all at the same time. And it does it all in less than three minutes to boot - 'Crazy' is exactly the kind of song that modern day naysayers and deniers believe 'they' don't write anymore, and it really is rather fine.
"You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs" sang Paul McCartney in 1976. And while by no means an 'answer' song (not that a question was being asked anyway), American R&B artist Ne-Yo (aka Shaffer Chimere Smith, Jr.) goes some way to addressing the point McCartney makes."Cause I'm so sick of love songs, so tired of tears. So done with wishing she was still here. Said I'm so sick of love songs so sad and slow. So why can't I turn off the radio?"; love then, or else its fond remembrance and loss at its absence is what keeps them coming. And on that score, 'So Sick' elevates itself above its own generic slowjam by virtue of a lyric of observational everyman hurt ("Gotta fix that calendar I have that's marked July 15th, because since there's no more you there's no more anniversary") and a vocal of genuine dark night of the soul fragility that, in a genre usually marinated in testosterone and battered by bump and grind, for once shows some respect by keeping its pants buttoned. As McCartney went on to argue "Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. And what's wrong with that?" - on the strength of 'So Sick', the answer Paul is 'nothing'. Absolutely nothing.
It would be easy to tag Orson as the American Busted, though while that description gives an idea of the genre they operate in, there was always more bite and a foundation in the poppier end of American Hardcore about them than that (think Green Day or Blink 182). 'No Tomorrow' is a case in point, being a short, sharp slap of contemporary teen hedonism; that title isn't a Sex Pistols "No future" shout of despair but live for the moment call that would have done the Situationists proud. Built around a tight but loose latter period Stones riff (try 1989's 'Terrifying'). 'No Tomorrow's sugar rush gallop might be too much of the Pepsi Max generation for some tastes ("I have a girl who thinks I rock and tomorrow there's no school, so let's go drink some more Red Bull and not get home 'til about 6 'o clock"), but there's snap enough about the no flab racket to make it shine in a genre that, by 2006, was massively oversubscribed.
Well we've had Hammer Time, now 'It's Chico Time'. Who he? Yousseph 'Chico' Slimani was a (non winning) 2005 X Factor contestant drunk on self confidence and the splendour of his own personality with a debut single that's the crudest slice of self promotion since 'Mr Blobby'. And like 'Mr Blobby', 'It's Chico Time' comes shat straight and fun free from the arse end of a pantomime horse onto the platter of a coprophilic public eager to tuck into the latest course of bad light entertainment, this time a platter whisked into a poppy froth by the whirring hyperactivity of a thirty four year old adult whose behaviour in any other context would see him branded a right twat. And rightly so.
Following the back to the clubs basics of 'Hung Up', 'Sorry' sets up a permanent base camp there with a pumping jog of a tune that pulls off the trick of sounding comfortably retro yet edgily contemporary. 'Sorry' has the confidence born of restraint and, sans the distraction of an attention diverting sample (though keen ears may pick out the bassline from The Jacksons' 'Can You Feel It' buried in there), is content to throb like a busy vein under the power of it's own sensuous pulse as Madonna lays down the law to a would be suitor ("I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know. Please don't say you're sorry, I've heard it all before"). And by not trying to be ahead of the game, Madonna ends up leading the pack anyway - this is what Madonna does best, always has been, always will be.
I don't think Leo Sayer was on too many minds in 2006. Not mine anyway, and it was with no small degree of incredulity that I found out he was back at number one that year (made all the more incredulous by being 'told' this by Tony Blackburn on the radio. Just for a second, time was out of joint and it felt like I'd slipped through a wormhole back to the seventies). Not with a new song mind - 'Thunder In My Heart Again' is a dance remix of Sayer's 1977 single 'Thunder In My Heart', and while this doesn't sound the most engaging of propositions on paper, it works Godammit! Sayer's vein bulging vocal always sat ill at ease within the polite, tacky mirrorball disco setting of the original where it seethed like a captured lion pacing up and down its cage. Meck's remix opens up the door to let Sayer out by blowing apart its low end glamour and reassembling it in a widescreen cinemascope that gives Sayer the room to roar like a man who's seen the sun for the first time in thirty years. It's not enough to fully exorcise the whiff of cheese that's part and parcel of Leo Sayer per se (it'll take more than this to rid my mind of 'You Make Me Feel Like Dancing' anyway), but it's more than enough to curb its worst excesses and make him sound relevant. Or at least as relevant as he's ever going to be.
In a neat squaring of a rap feud circle, former 2pac rival and East Coast rap star Christopher George Latore Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls aka The Notorious B.I.G.) gets his own posthumous UK number one some eight years after his own drive by shooting. Like 'Ghetto Gospel'before it, 'Nasty Girl' has undergone some post production from the original track to get here. A great deal more; Small's rap on 'Nasty Girl' is lifted from his own 'Nasty Boy' and then coupled to a completely different and decidedly un-hip-hop dance template borrowed from Chic (specifically, 'My Old Piano') and augmented by a pot pourri of living rap stars who chip in with their own ten cents worth on alternate verses in a kind of 'Rap Aid' but without the charity, making it far less of a 'solo' effort than the 2pac single was (there's a whole album of these posthumous duets should you be interested).
That new backing softens the menace of Small's original rap and fits it out with a commercial edge that rolls as smoothly as a tray full of ball bearings, yet for a genre forever keen to keep it real, 'Nasty Girl's new disco strut leaves it sounding remarkably false. The lads are on fine 'fuck dem bitches' locker room form throughout ("When I, whip it out, rubber no doubt. Step out, show me what you all about. Fingers in your mouth, open up your blouse, pull your G-string down South. Threw that back out, in the parking lot, by a Cherokee and a green drop-top, and I don't stop, until I squirt, jeans skirt butt-naked it all work"), but this brand of jock misogyny requires membership of a club I've never been keen to join; rap as a genre and B.I.G. as an artist are both better than this. Smalls himself is a big character but he's given so little room to breathe he becomes a supporting act, Banquo's ghost (literally) at the table of peers dining out on the weight of credibility his name adds to a song that neither they nor it really deserve; I don't doubt the intentions behind the whole 'Duets' project might have been pure, but this is all just so very unnecessary.
Now here's something that genuinely leaves me torn. On one hand (and for the purposes of my own self imposed brief for this project), I do not regard 'When The Sun Goes Down' as a 'good single'. A good album track in the proper context maybe, but a single? 'When The Sun Goes Down' would sound saw-toothed rough in almost any company, but to say it flings a fistful of gravel into the oil spill slick run of recent number ones would be understatement.
Because although other English singer songwriters like Ray Davies or Morrissey have documented the underclasses of England with no less a keen or unflinching eye, Alex Turner's lyric of prostitutes, their punters and the ever present threat of violence is scraped out with a Hogarthian socio-realist bluntness that jars in its lack of good humour or sympathy toward the dysfunctional lives he describes. "And I've seen him with girls of the night, and he told Roxanne to put on her red light. They're all infected but he'll be alright" - it's heady stuff, delivered straight and raw as an open wound while behind him the band bash out their tune with the glee of drunken buskers on a Saturday night in town. Or a Lieutenant Pigeon with menaces. Whatever, as a post-Christmas comedown after the lights and tinsel have been put away then it doesn't get much lower.
All of which kind of suggests 'When The Sun Goes Down' is no more than a throwaway B side that got lucky, but it's not. Turner's writing is too whipsmart to rely on luck, though what Turner hasn't written for it is the same hook to hang on of 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' that offered the safe ground of a recognisable link to something approaching traditional pop; 'When The Sun Goes Down' eschews such niceties and instead adds an extra layer of grime to bury the melody and spits out a chorus tagline more suited to shouting along to than whistling. It's a 'WTF?' moment for sure and the closest point of reference to date is Mungo Jerry following the good time spring of 'In The Summertime' with the caveman jive of 'Baby Jump' (which was a throwaway B side that got extremely lucky). But 'When The Sun Goes Down' is a far more calculated and belligerent kick in the shins than that.
Ah but so effing what? 'Good' single or not, on the hand other than the one I opened with I take considerable pleasure at something so red in tooth and claw appearing at number one. A greater contrast with the production line pledges of life long love Shayne Ward promised you could not possible imagine, and in such company a breath of fetid yet honest air ("What a scummy man. Just give him half a chance I bet he'll rob you if he can. Can see it in his eyes that he's got a nasty plan") can smell remarkably fresh.
With the finals of TV's 'X Factor' screened each November, by 2005 it had become a hellish tradition that the winner would be 'rewarded' with the previously fiercely contested Christmas number one - Shayne Ward won, Shyane Ward got the prize. Not only that, Ward's debut became the third fastest selling single in the UK. Ever. Which must mean that the 'X Factor' is strong with this one? Well on the evidence of this, then as long as you consider mid period (i.e. not vintage) Elton John as the benchmark for quality then you're in luck; 'That's My Goal' is exactly the kind of vacuous, piano led ballad that John would have taken to number 17 at any point in his career post 1982. Which doesn't make 'That's My Goal' a 'bad' thing, just one that's a tad dull; That's My Goal' is hack work through and through ("Please don't go, you know that I need you. I can't breathe without you, live without you") with a lyric that Ward's own phoned-in brand of doe eyed sincerity barely lifts above parody. "So when I say I love you, I'll mean it forever and ever, ever and ever" - 'That's My Goal' is as perfectly functional and solidly purpose built as a multi- storey car park. Unfortunately, it's got the same amount of personality too.
"I'm Luke I'm 5 and my dad's Bruce Lee, drives me around in his JCB" - and that's a line that just about sums up Nizlopi's song; a first person childhood reminisce of a boy riding with his father in his JCB. Whether that's an actual memory of writer Luke Concannon or purely a work of fiction matters not - 'JCB' has a folksy charm and innocence enough to make its source material irrelevant. I was briefly tempted to brand it the number one Jonathan Richman never had, but on reflection that would be doing both 'JCB' and Mr Richman a disservice I think; 'JCB' is too controlled, too plotted and too carefully written to equate to most of Richman's looser, almost spontaneous output that frequently border too close to twee for comfort. It's that same level of control and writing that keeps 'JCB' away from the trite and the childish with lines like "And we're like giants up here in our big yellow digger, like zoids or transformers or maybe even bigger. I wanna transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and eat up all the bullies and the teachers and their pets. And I'll tell all my mates my dad's B.A.Baracus, only with a JCB, and Bruce Lee's nunchuckers" taking it into the realms of the best of Dahl, Disney, Postgate or Pixar; that is, a work ostensibly for children that carries far beyond it's obvious target audience to resonate with older minds. Like mine. Which finds this an absolute delight. The fact the name of the band is the name of a Hungarian girl Concannon had a crush on in school just makes it resonate all the harder.
Oh dear. After the sassy strut of 'Don't Cha', the Dolls go all ickle wickle and profess their undying love, devotion and emotional dependence on their men in a Disney Club ballad that's conservative to the core and drips its goo with all the charm of drool dribbling from a sleeping tramp's mouth. And that's no charm at all. I'll tell you something for nothing though ladies, if any of you were my girlfriend and u wanted 2 stickwitme then u wouldn't be going out dressed like that.
It's with a wry smile that I remember the 1989 version of me debating Madonna with a work colleague just before the 'Like A Prayer' album was released. As far as he was concerned, Madonna was a short-term concern with a shelf life that was about to expire. For my own part, I countered with the view that I thought she had a few years left in her yet. In the event, we were both wide of the mark (though him more than me, HA!), because even though I was prepared to cut her some slack (a few years indeed!), I would never have predicted she'd be still having number ones over 15 years later.
Should we be surprised? Frankly, yes - after all, there's no precedent here; pop acts do have a limited shelf life before they're replaced and there was nothing in Madonna's presentation back then to suggest she'd be anything different. Of course, she'd already re-invented herself enough times by 1989 to show that she was savvy enough to not stay still, but even so, female singers with longevity tend to be cut from a more sophisticated cloth than a crop top and 'Boy Toy' belt buckle and one that improves and gains gravitas with age; it's easy enough to picture punters paying top dollar to see a Shirley Bassey belting out 'Goldfinger' for as long as she was capable, but I could never quite picture anyone wanting to see a Madonna of the same age creaking out 'Like A Virgin'. Who would?
The closest point of reference we have is the benchmark set by the ever reliable Rolling Stones, but even they don’t provide a precedent that does her justice; Jagger and co haven’t had a number one since 1969. And though they do release new albums on a semi-regular basis, as a catalyst for another world tour they’re met with little more than a respectful interest; nobody expects another 'Exile On Main Street' and nobody is too disappointed when one duly fails to arrive. Madonna doesn't get such an easy ride; each new album is trailed with expectation, if just to see what she's going to do next, and there's palpable disappointment whenever it fails to meet the expected mark.
In 2005, her forthcoming ‘Confessions Of A Dancefloor’ album was seen as another 'comeback' of sorts after the perceived disaster of her 2003 'American Life' album and so was waited for with baited breath. What exactly were people expecting I wonder? What do they still expect (at the time of writing, her 'MDNA' album was generating similar column inches)? I honestly don't know. I don't think Madonna does either - lest we forget, this pop star at 46 malarkey is new ground for her too and Madonna's position is a struggle that can be summed up by 'Hung Up's promotional video.
In it, Madonna pitches up at a dance studio with a leotard and ghetto blaster (a la 'Call On Me's infamous promo film), and then performs an energetic, quasi erotic aerobics workout to her own song…. while still wearing high heels, full make-up and a straight from the hairdresser's chair blow dry. And there you have it, the dual desire for youthful pop relevance countered by an urge for class, sophistication and a nagging sense that she should be growing old more gracefully; there's no doubt about it, Madonna wants it both ways and, in striving for both, she frequently winds up pulling herself in two. With unsatisfactory results.
As far as 'Hung Up' goes though, by retreating back to her natural territory of the dancefloor with a back to basics circling of the wagons to show the world she hasn't lost her dance chops, Madonna plays it safe. And as far as that goes, it’s a success. As clean and precise as a metronome, ‘Hung Up’ derives its glitzy roll from a keyboard riff sampled from Abba's 'Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie' which adds a sparking fulcrum for Madonna to skip around like the eighties club singer she wishes she still was. Nostalgia of a kind then, but it's not all plain sailing - that sample dominates to the point of it becoming a gimmicky crutch rather than a conduit, for innovation, and for anyone over-familiar (like me) with the Abba original, then ‘Hung Up’ is tainted with a sheen of Europop tackiness that takes off whatever gloss Madonna adds. And whatever I myself expect from Madonna, it’s always something more than a borrowed song.
"You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains, you raise me up, to walk on stormy seas. I am strong, when I am on your shoulders, you raise me up... to more than I can be"; less a song and more a corporate motivational tape delivered as mantra and overlaid with a religious fervour, 'You Raise Me Up' is not a 'pop' song by any definition other than that of it being 'popular'. Sure there's a tune that's hummable (based as it on a traditional Irish folk song), but to experience it is like sitting through a self help class delivered by a clutch of trendy vicars doling out enlightenment with one hand while collecting payment for services rendered with the other. Because with its secular/humanist, humanist/secular lyric of thanks to a lover/friend/parent/deity,'You Raise Me Up' is money in the bank for Westlife delivered over five minutes of solemnity that virtually dares you to question its integrity. So is there any point in my doing so? Not really - fans of this kind of thing will be immune to my brickbats and, as Westlife are doing nobody any harm here, throwing them in the first place would leave me with the same cheap and grubby feeling I'd get if I'd been caught haranguing little old ladies with a Richard Dawkins rant as they leave church on a Sunday evening; there are more deserving things to hate after all. So suffice it to say 'You Raise Me Up' does not speak to me on any level save one that kick-starts a subliminal voice deep in my head that whispers 'For God's sake turn it off' into my ear. And though I don't tend to respond well to being told what to do, on this occasion I'm happy to oblige.
I'm getting a sense of deja vu here; just like Oasis in the nineties, Arctic Monkeys seemed to drop fully formed from a mould fired by a readymade fanbase built word of mouth and live performances with the corresponding white heat of media hype and critical expectation fanning the bellows. Just like Oasis, I'd heard of Arctic Monkeys before I'd actually heard anything by them. And then just like my initial reaction to 'Supersonic' (Oasis' debut single), hearing 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' for the first time left me bemused with an overriding sense of disappointment; just what was all the fuss about? In Oasis' case, their times benefited them and their crash glam wallop came as, if not exactly a breath of fresh air, at least an offering of recycled coolness and last gang in town identity that added a welcome freshness and bite in a chart awash with aimless, faceless dance acts and no guitar europop. Arctic Monkeys had no such helping hand; the mid 2000's had any number of indie rock acts with a whinge or a shout out for everyone. Most are now buried in nameless graves over in the indie graveyard.
But then again, the band can hardly be responsible for other the weight of other people's expectations, and it's clear from its opening chords that 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' will itself be making no concession to the contemporary; on its own, the lyric namechecks 1984 electropop and Duran Duran hits from before chief Monkey and songwriter Alex Turner was even born ("I said, I bet that you look good on the dancefloor, dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984"). It's all metaphor of course, a twisted 'Teenage Kicks' of Turner imagining the cold and disinterested girl who's winding him up ("I wish you'd stop ignoring me, because it's sending me to despair") looking good dancing to cold, disinterested music is a put down of sorts.
But to look at it another way (whilst wearing my post-modern hat of pretension), it could also be reference to the dystopian, no love future ("Oh, there ain't no love, no Montagues or Capulets are just banging tunes and DJ sets and dirty dancefloors, and dreams of naughtiness!") Orwell predicted in 'Nineteen Eighty Four', giving reassurance that if this girl doesn't like him then who cares? She's not going to be liking anybody. Is that pushing it too far? Maybe, maybe not - hindsight has revealed Turner to be a songwriter of no small talent, and subtext is a sign of strength for any lyricist. Regardless of the 1984 references though, this is no La Roux or Ladytron style new romantic revival; in tone, 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor's wendy house garage harks back further again to the jerky guitar shuffles of late seventies/early eighties post punk Postcard or Fast Records acts, albeit with added muscle and purpose that's as rock and roll as Turner's quiff but with an earthy, do it yourself charm that's almost skiffle.
And that's kind of my problem with all this; although Turner doesn't outright rape his influences the way Oasis did, 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' still flashes with the magpie approach of a songwriter trying on other people's glass slippers for size. Orange Juice, Josef K, The Pop Group, The Mekons...even Bogshed (listen to this back to back with 'Fat Lad Exam Failure') they're all here in a who's who of classic indie pick and mix that renders 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' prime C86 material updated to C2005. Crucially though, it's not updated by enough to pull it free the gravity field of its obvious influences or for it to lose its hesitant stutter born of an artist yet to find his own voice. A good debut rather than a great one.
I've taken no small pleasure in the jerky, off the wall-ness of Sugababes singles to date, it's been a trademark of unpredictability that's set them apart from the legions of boy/girl bands they jockey for attention with. Cause for concern then when that unpredictability is replaced by a straight pop edge that's almost conservative in comparison? Not really; deceptively simple in its refrigerator hum and toy gun spark, 'Push The Button' finds its groove early then rides it like a rail to the end - you need to be sure of your moves to dance to this one. And though it might lack the angles of old, the low heat simmer of the climb to the implied raunch of the "If you're ready for me boy, you'd better push the button and let me know. Before I get the wrong idea and go, you're gonna miss the freak that I control"chorus is no less a delight. And rare for a genre always keen to push personality over content, the girls forever hover just below the radar and refuse to break cover, opting to keep the tension firmly bottled yet still managing to make that "boy" the best 'female in control' put down since Tanya Donnelly used it with a sneer on Belly's 'Feed The Tree'. Top stuff.
Originally recorded by session singer Tori Alamaze the same year, Anglo American all girl band Pussycat Dolls do very little with her template save add a rap from Busta Rhymes. To be honest, it's neither needed nor wanted - your views on 'Don't Cha' are going to hinge on your reaction to the brassnecked chutzpah of the "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot/raw/fun/a freak like me?" chorus hook that's present in both versions and around which the whole song revolves. Alamaze takes it sultry and slutty, giving it an R&B sleaze tease but while the Dolls add a titanium pop backbone, they are necessarily forced to split it six ways until it becomes more of a competition between themselves than a tempting come on to whichever lucky lad they're singing it to. But no matter how hard Pussycat Dolls or Busta's flow stopping interruptions inadvertentltry to derail it, 'Don't Cha' is wired to the mains R&B pop with an attitude that's irresistible.
Though they have a number one apiece, Gorillaz are a 'cartoon' band who've never been burdened with the baggage of bile that fixed itself to The Archies. Quite the opposite in fact, but then the comparison is not a level one; despite the cartoon similarities (and both acts had equally well developed back stories for each of the 'band member characters') nobody was ever left in any doubt as to who the people pulling the Gorillaz strings were (chiefly Blur's Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett ). Their names or faces might not have been on their covers, but for all the media hype and promotion surrounding them, they may as well have been. Would The Archies - either now or then - be regarded in a new light if it were revealed that its was actually Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Brian Wilson and Jim Morrison behind the drawings? Ah, I doubt it - The Archies (and 'Sugar Sugar') played it for pop fun, not critical kudos. And through never seeking the credibility edge that Gorillaz thrived on, there would have been little opportunity for any drops of that creative talent to seep through.
But apart from all the obvious, 'Sugar Sugar' and 'DARE' share a lot more DNA than they would care to admit. 'Sugar Sugar' might be less cryptic, but neither song has much to say for itself beyond a self generating, good time dance vibe. 'DARE' though is a hip hop/dance hybrid with a shuffling funk that fair drips with sweat. Only that sweat doesn't drip from its dance groove but from the tension of its own pretension and studious attempt to be so very 'now'. And if it's unfair to say that 'DARE' never breaks free of the straitjacket of its own conceit, it's certainty stymied by it (which is something that never bothered The Archies). 'DARE' sounds like a track that was born, gestated and worked up entirely in a studio following a pre-conceived remit with one eye on the zeitgeist; a fine approach if you're 10CC, not so in this field. Having Shaun Ryder guest is another careful tick in the credibility column, but his vocal only serves to remind of the Happy Monday's own loose fit, yet no less bone rattlingly inventive, take on the genre. In comparison, 'DARE' is as loose as a tourniquet with a 'beats in splints' rhythm that's too stiff for its own good with a constant repetition and lack of adventure that renders it something of a bore long before it finishes. Anything but DARING in fact.
I have to confess that I've been coming to almost every Oasis single to date with a very heavy heart; not so much because I'm always able to predict what I'm going to get or that I'm rarely disappointed in my prediction, but more because in being presented with more of the same, there are only so many ways I can express that disappointment. Which is why I'm pleased to report that 'The Importance Of Being Idle' does confound my expectations by providing me with something different. Not that different, but different enough; 'The Importance Of Being Idle' sees the band shifting away from the rock snarl of old (aided in no small part here by Noel handling lead vocal duties) to something altogether more - dare I say it - interesting. 'The Importance Of Being Idle' is very English rustic but with an urgent drive that belies Gallagher's laziness praising lyric ("But I don't mind, as long as there's a bed beneath the stars that shine, I'll be fine"). True to form, precedents are being followed here, but in crossing the kitchen sink music hall of The Kinks' 'Dead End Street' with the controlled, ramshackle charm of Small Faces' 'The Universal', 'The Importance Of Being Idle' manages to be derivative without acquiring the immoral taint of counterfeiting. Or plagiarism. But add it all up and you get one of the few (for me anyway) Oasis singles that rewards repeated plays.
Harder edged than previous, McFly's latest has the spiky bop of a crossover indie hit that almost beats Busted at their own game. Almost, but not quite; as fun as it is, 'I'll Be Ok' follows too many dead ends in its race for the prize, throwing too many spare themes and loose ideas into the pot when one really good one would have done. Maybe that's its origins showing through - 'I'll Be Ok' is an assemblage of the 'best bits' of two earlier McFly songs welded together in a musical cut and shut. But with the joins not sealed with due care, 'Ill Be Ok' fun is rendered fun without being overly memorable.
Back on McFly's 'Obviously', I paused to muse over popular music's fondness for songs about the unobtainable female (or male, I guess, let's not be sexist). I suppose the classic example of this micro-genre would be Roy Orbison's 'Oh Pretty Woman' ("Pretty woman, walking down the street. Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet"). I didn't highlight it back then on purpose; I was saving it because I knew 'You're Beautiful' was coming up and I wanted to keep my powder dry. Because at heart 'You're Beautiful' is little more than a beefed down re-write of Orbison's song, albeit with differences enough to be able to point out why I hold the latter in such affection but have an opposing opinion of the former.
Like Roy, a random girl has caught James' eye and he'd like to get to know her better too, but let Blunt tell you himself: "I saw an angel. Of that I'm sure. She smiled at me on the subway. She was with another man. But I won't lose no sleep on that, because I've got a plan. You're beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful, it's true. I saw your face in a crowded place, and I don't know what to do". And that's it - there's nothing cryptic or obscure about 'You're Beautiful' and Blunt wears his feelings on his sleeve in thick tubes of glowing neon. You know where you are with this one. Unlike Orbison though, there's no twist in the tale happy ending for Blunt who, at song end, accepts "it's time to face the truth, I will never be with you."
Presented that way then it's all so much harmless fluff and any sane reaction would be a shoulder shrug of indifference at the same old, same old. But taken in the round, the cynical exploitation of Blunt's keening raises my hackles like those of a cat being chased with a spouting hosepipe. Blunt the 'artist' presents his little boy lost persona in a way that's distasteful in its emotional manipulation; 'Oh Pretty Woman' was as much about Orbison as the unnamed female, but 'You're Beautiful' is all about sympathy, not empathy, and he plays his audience like a violin. We aren't meant to share an 'I've been there' moment with James; no, his quivering simper instead plays the vote winning, self pity card for all its worth (the video even has him committing suicide Japanese style ferchrissakes) in its search for someone to fall for it. Ultimately, it means that for all his angst, I simply don't believe he has any interest in that particular girl at all - Blunt and his "There must be an angel with a smile on her face" is a means to an end, a very bad, three minute chat up line and his teary hand wringing no more than a palatable version of Buffalo Bill's fake arm cast ruse to get women in the back of his van; for all the forced sincerity in his voice, Blunt may as well be singing in front of a mirror. This is ghastly stuff.
I think it's fair to say that 2pac Shakur is to hip hop what The Beatles are to Western popular music and Bob Marley is to reggae. That is, an artist occupying a position atop a lofty pedestal within their genre that garners them critical acclaim that, at the same time, provides such exposure for their identity that even people with no interest 'in that sort of thing' recognise them. Not that that makes them immune to criticism of course; The Beatles alone have no end of detractors happy to grind an axe to cut them down from their tallest tree perch, but to my mind such people always have the added burden of having to work that little bit harder in presenting their views so as to overcome the overwhelming common consensus that rails against them and is only too happy to dismiss them with a roll of the eyes as bloody minded cranks.
Perhaps Eminem had usurped him by 2005 (and perhaps Jay Z in latter years), but at the point of his shooting in 1996, Shakur certainly held the crown of the most famous/recognisable rapper in town, if only for his name and manner of death and not his face and the body of work he created in life - far fewer people would recognise 'California' as his work than they would recognise 'Strawberry Fields Forever' or 'No Woman No Cry' than they would his name and his shooting. And his fame was such to warrant 'afterlife' releases long after his death; 'Ghetto Gospel' is in fact taken from his posthumous 2004 album 'Loyal To The Game' and produced by Eminem in a neat handing over of the baton.
Eminem's input here is important; the 'featuring Elton John' credit is not reference to a duet recorded with Shakur his lifetime but a later sample from John's 1971 'Indian Sunset' that was overdubbed later (it's not on Shakur's original take). Why? Well, though 'Indian Summer' ostensibly relates the saga of the native American Indian being usurped by the white man, the sample lines "Those who wish to follow me I welcome with my hands. And the red sun sinks at last into the hills of gold, and peace to this young warrior without the sound of guns" chimes well with 'Ghetto Gospel's own appeal for unity and an end to gang warfare and sets up Shakur as the Messiah ("Those who wish to follow me I welcome with my hands") to deliver it. With 'Ghetto Gospel', the message is more important than the medium, and with the a generic hip hop beat backing him, it's a track that stands or falls on the delivery of that message.
And therein lies the problem; regardless of reputation, past glories or the way Shakur spits out his lines with venom, the rhymes come with a flat edge of predictability ("Don't them let me get teary, the world looks dreary, but when you wipe your eyes, see it clearly") that cushions their impact, an outcome not helped by Eminem slowing Shakur's original take (presumably to better accommodate the John sample) until Shakur's free flow turns to sludge with none of the sparky rhyming crash. And though it might be too harsh to see the John sample as taking its cue from 'Stan' to throw a bone to white audiences in the name of greater commercial appeal (an obscure 1971 Elton John song wouldn't be the best vehicle for that anyway), the blend of artistic style is nevertheless of oil and water, a paring that sounds as out of place and out of time as a seventies, piano led ballad being crudely pasted onto a contemporary hip hop tune. Which is what it is really. As a song, 'Ghetto Gospel' is clunkily competent, but as 2pac Shakur tracks go, it's not one of his greatest. And while it no doubt provides a further boost for that legacy the way every Bob Marley or Beatles re-release does, it also provides its own ammunition for those who would seek to detract.
Well this one is simple enough to dissect - a dance remix of Harold Faltermeyer's 1984 instrumental hit 'Axel F' (aka the theme from 'Beverly Hills Cop') with a vocal overdub of a comic voice imitating the sound of a two stroke moped engine ("A Ring Ding Ding Dingdemgdemg") - how does that grab you? Well, not too well if its showing in various 2005 end of year 'Worst Of' lists are anything to go by, but maybe a lot of the ennui is owed to the fact of the whole 'Crazy Frog' enterprise taking on a life of its own that year. Apart from the song, there was an ubiquitous 'artist made flesh' cartoon frog that popped up with a leer just about everywhere, bolstered by virtually every other mobile phone having 'Axel F' as its ringtone. That level of saturation is going to wear anyone down, and that's before the "A ram da am da am da am da weeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" starts up, but cut away the baggage and we're back at my harsh as a bare lightbulb opening description, no more and no less. And as far as that goes, the component parts don't sparkle in the sun.
The Faltermeyer remix that carries it is pedestrian and would have sounded so the mid-nineties. And though the 'words' (provided by Sweden's Daniel Malmedahl)* at first blush are the amusing distraction of a child full of too much fizzy drink running around a train carriage, unless you're willing to buy into the surrounding media hype (or have a fondness for obnoxiously hyperactive kids) then there's nothing else to provide a handhold of depth or context to stop that very hyperactivity becoming its own downfall as it goes about its business of grating away on the nerves. For my own part, I see 'Axel F' as just another work of Eurodance hokum, albeit one a good five years late for the party. And late for the party is exactly how I feel about it - listening to 'Axel F' is like walking late into a stand up comedy show and only catching the closing punchline that reduces the audience to raucous laughter but not knowing what came before that made it so funny. 'Axel F' certainly seems to have amused a lot of people too, but I find the whole thing so insipidly uninspiring that I have no notion that I'm 'missing' anything and no desire to find out for sure either way.
* Comedian Fogwell Flax was doing this routine back in the eighties. Now he was funny.
Oasis, no less than U2, have always aspired to secure a place in The Club of usual suspects in any 'Classic Rock' line-up - that particular stall was set out on the opening track of their debut album when Liam drawled "Tonight, I'm a rock 'n' roll star". That aim was arguably achieved long before 'Lyla', long before this decade even began in fact, helped in spades by a rabid fanbase and compliant media who heard things in 'Wonderwall' and 'Live Forever' that I never could. Both would say that the loss was mine, but even though shifting line-ups and a vague 'dad rock' backlash had taken some of the edge off the lustre by 2005.
But nevertheless, enthusiasm and expectation surrounding the band was still enough to take this, the debut single from their sixth album, to number one; 'Lyla' is a teeth bared, hard metallic clunk of sound where an opening borrowed from 'Street Fighting Man' gives way to a dumb, brick wall hitting Ramones-a-like chorus that does nothing of note bar drag on for at least half as long as it needs to, and each round of the "Hey Lyla" chorus polishes its impenetrable surface further and further until it reflects only what it thinks it is. What does it think it is? Well, a 'classic rock single' in the vein of the same ones The Rolling Stones and The Ramones used to release. Why is it 'impenetrable'? Well, because in holding up a mirror to its own inspiration, it forgets to add anything of its own or show any understanding of what it's actually trying to achieve; 'Lyla' puts me in mind of someone trying to pass themselves off as a master baker because they know what a cake looks like. The U2 of 'Desire' were guilty of trying too hard to get membership of The Club in attempting to naturally hitch onto a lineage they could never have been a part of; 'Lyla' is arrogant enough to believe it can barge its way to acceptance by force alone. But it can't, and despite what they were proclaiming back in 1994, 'Lyla' manages to neither rock nor roll. In fact, it's joyless and dull. Very, very dull.
Those who've stuck with me over recent months will know that one of my common beefs with latter day R&B/hip hop is that, taken in bulk it all starts to sound much of a muchness. If it wants to catch my Philistine ears then an entry in this genre is going to need a hook or selling point to elevate it out of the crowd. And with a sampled chorus of Bobby Vinton's 1964 hit 'Mr Lonely' sped up until Mr Vinton sounds like either Mr Pinky or Mr Perky, then hat's one thing 'Lonely' certainly has. It's a starling move that grabs the attention early doors and sets up 'Lonely' as being played for comic effect, but that notion gets dispelled soon as Akon starts up. Which is also where it all starts to unravel.
So why is Akon lonely? "I woke up in the middle of the night and I noticed my girl wasn't by my side"; so, the old story then. And why has she gone? "Been all about the world ain't never met a girl that can take the things that you been through. Never thought the day would come where you would get up and run and I would be out chasing you" and "baby girl I didn't mean to shout, I want me and you to work it out. I never wished I'd ever hurt my baby and it's driving me crazy" - ignoring the sinister overtones of implied domestic violence (which might explain why she made such a silent exit from his bed), it's fair to say that Akon hasn't been a model boyfriend over the years. Which isn't a crime in itself, but what crawls under the skin is Akon's egotistical lyric of self centred chauvinism and rampant self pity that puts his own unhappiness centre stage. Never mind what his unnamed "baby girl" wants - Akon doesn't care and his understanding is whittled down to a plea of "so stop playing girl and come on home". Does anyone need an R&B version of 'Back For Good'? I'd say about as much as Akon deserves our sympathy. To which the answers are 'no' and 'none'. But at the very least, 'Lonely' gets a reaction out of me that goes beyond ho-hum indifference, so it's achieved more than most.
Ah now - a song that seemed a permanent fixture on the radios of my childhood,* taken at face value then 'Is This The Way To Amarillo' has no place at all in the 2005 charts. That it's here is down to 'Comic Relief' - McFly may have had the 'official' single, but comedian Peter Kay recorded a promotional video where he lip synched the song while flanked by an endless succession of B grade celebrities. Which is where the 'featuring Peter Kay' credit comes from - Kay doesn't actually appear on the song which is in fact a straight re-issue of Christie's original 1971 single.
Originally written by Neil Sedaka, 'Is This The Way To Amarillo' and Christie's junior Tom Jones posturing and vocal always had an all inclusive footstomping, glitzy cabaret charm tailor made to open (or close) any Vegas wannabe show on the chicken in the basket circuit. But whilst no song with the audacity to rhyme "Amarillo" with "hugging my pillow" can ever lay claim to being high art, this 2005 'comic' setting and Kay's gurning lowers the tone by tarnishing it with an unwelcome taint of kitsch and bawdiness that's camper than a troupe of boy scouts in the woods. The result is an uneasy feeling that someone is having the piss taken out of them. And ok, I guess by the very definition of 'Comic Relief' then someone is, but any money raised for a 'good cause' notwithstanding, digging 'Is This The Way To Amarillo' from out of its seventies grave in this way does neither it nor Christie any favours in the long run; Christie's subsequent promotional duties unfairly set him up as a fool singing a fool's song. Fair enough that he was game enough to play along, but better by far for both song and artist to have no legacy at all than this one. Both deserve more.
* But then I could be getting it mixed up with an ubiquitous television commerical for Armadillo sherry that used a re-recorded version of the song ("Show me the way to Armadillo") to encourage punters to turn up at their local off licence with any plastic containers they could get their hands on which would then be filled with budget sherry by the gallon and straight from the tap. I bet it tasted rank.
A McFly double A side and 2005's 'official' Comic Relief charity single, 'All About You' is a brass augmented acoustic stroll through lead vocalist Tom Fletcher's love for his girlfriend/wife to be. Youthful pop with a spring in its step, 'All About You' is McFly's most fully realised number one to date showing little of the meander of old and only an uncanny (to my ears anyway) resemblance to Buddy Holly's 'That's What They Say' stopping me from embracing it more enthusiastically. The world wasn't waiting for another earnest but dull run-through of Carol King's hardy perennial 'You've Got A Friend', but that's precisely what McFly offer up on the flip side. As a song it's solid enough to withstand just about anything, but I'd have a lot more patience for McFly's version if its promotional video didn't feature the band poking around and performing in an African village while random facts ('2.3 million children have lost one or both parents to Aids') flash up on the screen. At a stroke it tars King's micro study in one on one personal assurance with the macro brush of the same patronising hand wring of conscience clearing drabness that Girl's Aloud tarred 'I'll Stand By You' with (and which sits ill with that 'zany' cover). Or maybe I'm just being too sensitive. Again.
Out of all the UK indie/US emo rock guitar bands prevalent in the mid 2000's, Stereophonics can most accurately lay claim to be the missing link between Busted and AC/DC. For my money, there was always a vein of honest, no fuss, working class grit in their output, the like of which you don't find in the likes of The Killers, Bullet For My Valentine, The Rasmus, Jimmy Eat World etc etc that accords with the honest, no fuss, working class grit of AC/DC, whilst at the same time keeping the bouncy pop sensibilities of Busted. And while I can't say for certain, I'd happily bet the farm I could list the sort of music valley boy frontman Kelly Jones grew up listening to. Because it would be the same that I did.
Maybe that's why I find 'Dakota' appealing on a number of levels; the neo Neu Krautrock clicktrack of the opening, Jones's hot gravel vocal, the wistful "Thinking about thinking of you, summertime think it was June" Hefner/Wedding Present kitchen sink reminisces of the lyrics, the air punch of the "You made me feel like the one" chorus - there's much to be enjoyed here. And even though they are spare parts borrowed from elsewhere, they are parts engineered into a well built motor that's able to purr and roar in equal measure. That motoring analogy is useful too in that 'Dakota' plays out like the flip side of 'Born To Run'; the promotional video has Jones driving an American convertible forwards, though with his mind stuck firmly in reverse and ghosts of the past as his passengers."Wake up cold coffee and juice. Remembering you, what happened to you?"; 'Dakota' is the innocence of Springsteen's teenage dreams turned into the experience of a drive time anthem more suited to a weary, too much time to think about what might have been, middle aged commute home on the M25 than the open road of Highway 61. "I don't know where we are going now, I don't know where we are going now"; oh yes, I'm always a sucker for some wistful regret, and this is one of the better examples of that particular genre.
Nelly featuring Tim McGraw? Hip hop crossed with country? Ok, I'm willing to go with it, though in truth Nelly's smooth R&B dominates 'Over And Over', and while his co-star's vocal is prominent, the 'country' is confined to a sedate, rocking chair rhythm and a touch of steel guitar. And yes, 'Over And Over' is as laid back as that description suggests; that isn't a problem in itself, but what does become a problem (for me anyway) is the tail chasing loop the song finds itself in after barely thirty seconds - can a song be more aptly named I wonder? Probably not; Nelly and McGraw ramble their "Cause it's all in my head I think about it over and over again" chorus with an repetition of an Alzheimer's sufferer and in a way that slow turns the thumb screws of tedium with the ruthless efficiency of a medieval torturer. Because whilst I'm sure 'Over And Over' doesn't set out to torture, its sheer lack of colour and variation wears my patience to a nub, generating tension enough to lob a nailbomb into the chilled, laid back vibe it aims for. In fact, there comes a point where I start thinking the "I think about it over and over again" is an clever, post-modern joke and that Nelly and McGraw are taking the piss in seeing just how far they can push it. They're not though, and because they're not all of the above might seem a bit harsh on the guys, but it's what I'm hearing - as a skit between tracks on a Nelly album then it would go down a treat, but spread over four minutes then I'm afraid 'Over And Over' crawls under my skin quite quickly and jabs hot pins into my nerve endings from the inside until relief can only come from turning it off.
Taking its lead from 'Crazy In Love', 'Get Right' builds itself around another 1970's horn riff sample (James Brown's 'Soul Power 74'). Unlike the Beyonce song that knew when less was more, 'Get Right's sample almost becomes the be all and end all of the song, spreading its hard, truncated blare thickly in an endless repetition that, when paired with Lopez's reed thin vocal, manages to exorcise all of Brown's funk. The right frame of mind could take the resultant clatter as a logical dance extension to Jeremy Deller's innovative 1997 'Acid Brass' project.* The wrong frame of mind, however, could see it as just plain irritating. Which means that though Jen and 'Get Right' strive to be edgy, it in fact winds up walking a different edge altogether.
* A musical collaboration with Stockport's Williams Fairey Brass Band that fused a traditional brass band with acid house and Detroit techno. It's well worth tracking down.
I used to love the Looney Tunes Road Runner cartoons when I was a kid. Or rather, I used to love watching Wile E. Coyote try and catch him. The bird itself I always found insufferably smug and annoying, but there was something about Wile. E's persistence and 'never say die' approach to his task that always struck a chord. And in my willing him to catch the bird and rip its throat out, I used to get frustrated by those occasions where Wile E. would run off the edge of a cliff in pursuit and keep chasing with no ground beneath his feet. Then he's always suddenly, look down, realise he was hanging in mid-air and with a gulp he'd plummet like a stone. If he hadn't paused then he'd probably have been able to run forever on nothing but self belief, but that split second of self awareness was enough to send him falling to his doom with another plan foiled. I learned a valuable lesson there that has stood me in good stead during this thing called life.
It's a lesson U2 could have done with learning too; a constant comment regarding each of their entries so far has been in relation to their persistent attempts to sharp elbow their way to a star on the rock mythos walk of fame. As I wrote way back on 'Desire', "if this stuff isn't going to come naturally, then it isn't going to come at all" and their attempts to force it tend to result in something that's always reeked of a self awareness that was their own undoing. Too knowing, too trying too bloody hard - any number of U2 songs would have been improved immeasurably by the band simply getting on with it and not pausing by every doorway to see what they could ape, what they could steal or what they could attempt to innovate. Because in taking their eyes off their quarry to see what's going on around them, U2 have a habit of losing all momentum and falling just like Wile E does.
Which makes it frustrating (for me) when they do eventually manage to come up with a song like this; inspired (if that's the right word) by the death of Bono's father, 'Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own' sees U2 ignoring all distractions labelled 'post-modern irony' or signposts leading to dusty American rock and blues to deliver a song that runs straight off the edge of that cliff.....and keeps on running. "I know that we don’t talk, I’m sick of it all. Can you hear me when I sing? You're the reason I sing"; buoyed by its own natural self belief and honesty, 'Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own' locates its emotional core quickly and then latches itself to it like a ship to an anchor with a minimum of fuss to the maximum of effect.
Not that U2 ever threaten to blow up a storm to shake it loose - 'Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own' recalls the slow burning swell of Achtung Baby's 'So Cruel' or 'One', but without Eno's fiddling to distract them the band behind fall into auto-pilot mode behind Bono, content to fill in the gaps behind his lead without any sideways glances at what they 'could' or 'should' be doing. And in so doing, they do what U2 do best. I'm not sure it's a good 'single', and I've always thought 'Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own' would work better as an album track, but regardless, it remains the most satisfying U2 number one to date and a prime example of why, even though I'm always up for dismissing them, I'm never fool enough to write them off completely.
Second single from Eminem's underwhelming 'Encore' album, 'Like Toy Soldiers' replicates the structure of 'Stan' by using a sampled vocal part as a chorus/link between Eminem's rapped verses, in this case the main chorus line from Martika's 1989 hit 'Toy Soldiers'. But whereas Dido's "My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all" on Stan added to the doom of that song's gloomy, wet Sunday atmosphere , Martika's (here slightly sped up) "Step by step, heart to heart, left right left, we all fall down" provides a secure foothold on what's basically an Eminem soliloquy on the various ongoing beefs within the hip hop community (which gives Martika's "Bit by bit, torn apart, we never win, but the battle wages on for toy soldiers" a satirical bent in context).
"Now it's just out of respect for not runnin' my mouth, and talkin' about something that I knew nothing about. Plus Dre told me stay out, this just wasn't my beef, so I did, I just fell back, watched and gritted my teeth" ; 'Like Toy Soldiers' is personal, perhaps too much so - if you know the story and the personalities behind the lyrics then you can turn the key and unlock the secrets, but to the layman fan just here for the music then he may as well be rapping in Greek. Past digs at Britney or Fred Durst are one thing, but the machine gunned references to "The Source", "Murder inc" "Benzino" and "the Ja shit" etc. renders 'Like Toy Soldiers' introverted and cryptic to the point of impenetrability to anyone the wrong side of the tent watching Eminem pissing out. And while he still dazzles in his sparky rhymes and wordplay over a sparse canon picked out on a piano, there's precious little of this trademark wit or bite on show to lighten the load. 'Like Toy Soldiers' is very much the curveball in Eminem's back catalogue, one that plays out like a page from a private journal and relies as much on Martika's sample for it's success as Dido's subsequent career depended on his use of one of hers.
Which I guess is apt, seeing that it and its kind have become something of a museum piece. Give that copy of ‘Starman’ (or any other single) to your average clued up teen today and I've little doubt they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
