2004 List: Top 5 Singles Of Shamelessness

Top 5 mainstream pop singles which should only have been guilty pleasures for a snob like me but which I actually shamelessly adore:

  1. She Will Be Loved (Maroon 5): It’s just sho shweet! My pop ballad of the year, because there always is one which I love despite my hopes of better judgment. (If I’d made a list last year, you can bet Daniel Bedingfield’s If You’re Not The One would have been on it.)

  2. Somebody Told Me (The Killers): I’m sure this band is the new big thing among people who think they’re hip but really aren’t, and the album has received lukewarm reviews from sources I trust, but this single reached out and grabbed me when the more highly regarded efforts of Franz Ferdinand, Scissor Sisters etc. did not. There is a mythical status attached to the Album As Art Form, but sometimes all you need to make someone’s day is a catchy song.

  3. Fuck It (Eamon): When I first heard this song on the Internet several months before it was released as a single, I never thought it would ever get played on the radio. I also find the radio version bizarrely amusing; what with all the censorship it almost sounds like it’s been remixed by Aphex Twin. Despite the obvious novelty value of the song, it does appeal to me beyond the “Dude, he’s saying fuck a lot! Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh” sense. I really like the melody, and when Eamon’s voice quavers upwards on the last “ba-a-ack” of the chorus? Little heart flutter.

  4. Numb (Linkin Park): Unlike Limp Bizkit and all the other nu-metal whatevers, there are actually no Linkin Park singles I actively dislike. I’m fairly indifferent to most of them, but at least I never feel the need to change the channel in disgust when they come on. There’s a chimey, dramatic bombast to this one which I really enjoy when it kicks in at the beginning of the song. The lyrics are same-old same-old, of course, as is the accompanying video – there’s this girl! She has dark hair and wears black and draws! The cool kids shun her ‘cos she’s different! But all she wants is to be “more like [her] and less like [them]!” So she runs into a church inexplicably! – but that’s all part of the fun.

  5. Toxic (Britney): So far, my top pop single of the 21st century. Britney has very little to do with what is great about this song, although she is central to the greatness of the video. Mad props go to producers Bloodshy and Avant for this masterpiece, which is, amazingly, only one among many other sublime pop joys which Scandinavia has given the world this year. (The others will feature in another list if I get around to making it.) Maybe it’s something in their water.

It Took A Lifespan With No Cellmate

One down, a lifetime more of heavy-lidded days to go. I’ve started work. Many rude shocks were involved with today. Waking up before noon. Being forced to use Internet Explorer, in which this blog looks like ass. (To everyone who views this site through IE, I’m not actually as mentally, structurally and aesthetically challenged as that browser makes this blog look.) Being told by my friend that my recent haircut, which I thought was subdued enough to help me blend into corporate zombiedom, is apparently still noticeably funky.

On the bus ride home I was trying to persuade myself to listen to happy harmonizing Northerners but found I was more in the mood for dark starburst guitars and a voice like a cracked slab of concrete. I know everyone says Antics sounds too much like Turn On The Bright Lights, but discussions on musical evolution and the sophomore album are really quite irrelevant when you’re teetering in a crowded bus with your iPod volume too high, heading home on the first day of the rest of your downhill life, because when the chorus hits in Evil, and Paul Banks announces “You’re WEIGHTless, you are exOTic, you need something for which to care” – for a moment, you almost forget where you are.

Cover Girl

I don’t actually agree with a lot of the Telegraph’s 50 best cover versions ever recorded, but it’s inspired me to chase some leads down all the same. I have high hopes for Johnny Cash doing One, and don’t quite know what to expect for The Bangles doing Hazy Shade Of Winter. While I’m trying to find those, here are my random thoughts about some cover versions I like and some cover versions I don’t. I see them as falling into three main categories, namely:

Paying Homage:
Indie bands like covering classic indie songs because it gives both the band and pretentious wankers like me in the audience the opportunity to show how we’re, like, totally in touch with Where It All Started by cheering in recognition and conspicuously mouthing all the lyrics. The problem is that unless you’re actually able to do something interesting with the song, there is no fucking point. Grandaddy’s cover of Pavement’s Here is a case in point, as is Death Cab For Cutie’s attempt at Bjork’s All Is Full Of Love. Neil Young gets covered a lot, but while I like the idea of Emmylou Harris doing Wrecking Ball and the Pixies doing Winterlong, the covers don’t sound like much more than people singing very pretty songs very prettily. The most successful one I can think of in this category (although I’d love to be told about anything I’ve missed) is Nirvana doing Lake Of Fire. There’s something about Kurt Cobain’s guttural “Where do bad folks go when they DIEEEEEEE” and “Don’t see ’em again till the fourth of Ju-LAAAAIIIII” which suits the song better than the pleasant harmonies of the Meat Puppets’ original.

Ironic:
This is the cover version where the artist says “I’m totally secure with my existing amount of cred, so I’m gonna sing something incredibly uncool now because I’m subversive that way.” I have to admit that I never find it that hard to enjoy ironic cover versions, because quite often I love the original song too. Travis did Hit Me Baby One More Time as a staple in their live shows at some point, but I prefer Richard Thompson’s Oops I Did It Again because his voice is so much more authoritative than Fran Healy’s and he puts in all these great acoustic guitar solos. My favourite ironic cover of the past year has been Ben Gibbard’s cover of Complicated. Ben Gibbard’s voice gets on my nerves sometimes, but here its winsome, almost overly-earnest quality sounds absolutely perfect. Also, the idea of him singing “Trying to be cool, you look like a fool to me” to a room full of trucker-capped, thrift-store-T-shirted, vintage-Converse-sneakered indie clones amuses me.

Complete Re-Imagining (but in a good, non-Planet-Of-The-Apes-2001 way):
How can Tricky’s Black Steel only be 29 in the Telegraph list? I’m too lousy at writing about music to think up a new way of describing how and why I love this song, but I stand by every word of my past gushing. The Slits’ post-punk I Heard It Through The Grapevine kills me every time with its crazy vibrato on the high notes, and every note of The Darkness’s Street Spirit is basically a crazily vibrating high note. If you haven’t heard Christopher O’Riley’s piano adaptations of Radiohead songs, Fake Plastic Trees is a great place to start. (And Jamie Fucking Cullum’s attempt at High And Dry, now advertised every five minutes on Singapore TV, makes me want to stuff his grand piano up his arse.) Will Young doing Hey Ya and Nick Cave doing Disco 2000 may seem like they should be in the Ironic category, but I’ve decided they belong here because both these covers actually make you realize how melancholy the original party classic songs actually are. You haven’t heard pathetic pleading until Nick Cave’s begging “What do you do on a Sunday, baby? Would you like to come and meet me, maybe? You can even bring your baby…”

You Make Me Like Charity

A guy and a girl trade verses and half-meanings, some proclaimed, some whispered, all against a background of stripped-down synths and minimalist percussion. That is all. It lasts only 3 minutes 5 seconds. And I am completely addicted.

You can hear You Make Me Like Charity, the song that’s currently ruling my life, here (it’s track 11), as well as the rest of this rather lovable album by The Knife.

Edit: Shit. Looks like they’re no longer streaming the album. Sorry about that. I’ll just have to listen to it a couple of extra times for all of you.

My Pathetic Tribute To John Peel

I’m too wimpy to host mp3s myself here (bandwidth fears, plus that inconvenient future profession of mine), but I thought I’d mention some bands who I heard about through John Peel, and who (unlike the Shite Stripes) aren’t anywhere near famous enough yet.

  • The Crimea: Baby Boom is the song that got me hooked. Wonderful soaring guitar lines, thoroughly appealing melody, and the slightly hoarse wheedling tone of the lead singer endears me instead of irritating me the way Ben Gibbard’s does. Altogether it is rather like skinny-dipping in a lake of shooting stars on the happiest day of your childhood. You can listen to snippets of a couple of other songs here – try Bombay Sapphire Coma and Out Of Africa.
  • Knifehandchop: Mixes drum’n’bass with every sound known to man and then some. Completely manic, deliciously unpredictable, and generally as addictive as cocaine, complete with the tendency for nosebleeds. Already fairly well-known among people who keep up with the scene, but still not famous enough for me, so go check out his Peel Session, kindly made available for download at boomselection.
  • Murcof: I heard some tracks on the John Peel show, which then influenced me to buy a Leaf Label sampler, which in turn introduced me to Asa-Chang & Junray and some very strange dreams. Murcof isn’t for everyone, I’ll admit. I’d understand if people found him too cold and cerebral, but there’s something I rather like about the atmosphere he creates, like a room of shifting sands in an abandoned avant-garde funhouse. Try Memoria, off his excellent Martes album.
  • Magoo: I didn’t actually hear Magoo on the John Peel show, but the fact that he was a fan was the reason I decided to check out their gig at the Arts Cafe. I was completely floored, and have gone on to acquire all of their albums since then. No mp3 link here, I’m afraid, because there isn’t much about Magoo online and they’re almost impossible to locate on file-sharing networks because you tend to get a lot of Timbaland stuff instead. But if you pick up an album I’d recommend The Soateramic Sounds Of Magoo or Realist Week. Better still, see them live because they’re incredibly tight. Tour dates can be found at their official site.

Till February

What I have learned these past three weeks is that it is always possible to be more in love than you were before.

I didn’t trust myself to drive home after seeing Alec off. For the second time this year, I sat in bus number 36 staring blankly into the distance, speeding towards one home and away from another.

Bet you thought this was going to be a sappy weepy post about the pain of long-distance love, but no! I’m actually going to write about Monster Movie’s Last Night Something Happened, my iPod album of choice on the way home.

You know those bits of trance dance tracks which are so euphoric that even without drugs you still find yourself with your head thrown back and your hands reaching for the sweeping laser lights, and you’re so caught up in the moment you don’t even realize you look daft? Monster Movie made a whole album’s worth of music like those bits, except slow and with guitars and pulsing organic harmonies.

You know those bits in films where a song kicks in during a particular scene and suddenly you’re plunged headlong into a world so intensely beautiful you’re almost drunk on it, and you realize that there will never be another song more perfect for these images than this one? Monster Movie made a whole album’s worth of songs like that.

You know how when you’re in the grip of pretty strong emotions but are trying not to show anything on the outside, with the result that you feel as if your heart is literally swelling in your chest, and you close your eyes and mouth tight so that nothing will leak out if it bursts?

I guess that last one didn’t actually have anything to do with my listening to Last Night Something Happened, but the album is pretty perfect for moments like that too.

At least this will be the last time. And February isn’t that far away.

These Boots Were Made For Alt-Country

Word to Adidas for using Calexico’s very lovely song Pepita as the background to their ad featuring big sports names running with Muhammed Ali. I’d have used Quattro instead, because it always makes me think of being borne across a vast expanse of night clouds at exhilarating speed with my bare feet skimming their cool damp surfaces, and that seems to be a fairly nice mental picture to have associated with sports shoes, given that my usual mental picture associated with sports shoes involves heat rash and a general longing for death. But Pepita’s cool too.

Hide It Like A Nuclear Weapon

If you like Orbital’s song Halcyon, this Perfect Moments In Pop feature at Stylus will evoke a blissful, understanding smile. If you’ve never heard the song you will think it’s a pile of shite written by someone on craaayyyzeee mushrooms, but ohhhh, please put yourself in a position to understand. Please.

In other music linkage, oh dear. Ohdearohdearohdearohdear.

Song Sifting

So I’m back from karaoke and wine with Ken, and for some reason the practice of picking discrete songs from a list rather than listening to entire albums has continued even now I’m home. Here are 5 songs. They probably don’t work particularly well in karaoke, but they sound bloody amazing on the speakers.

1) Black Steel (Tricky): I know trip-hop went out of fashion almost as soon as the term was coined, but there is still some trip-hop that is exquisitely, timelessly excellent, and Tricky’s Maxinquaye album epitomizes that. Black Steel is one of the very few covers I’ve ever heard that successfully reinvents the original and completely kicks its ass. Beats that sound like banging on the corrugated iron wall of a shanty town hut – hollow, desperate and rebellious. Martina Topley-Bird’s voice stalks through the wreckage like The Bride in Kill Bill, bloodied but resolute. Public Enemy, run for cover. This is the true hour of chaos.

2) Amongst The Books An Angel (Piano Magic): Piano Magic make a wide variety of weird electronic pop music. Not all of it is interesting or even listenable, but this is a pretty little track which deserves to be listened to on a good sound system. Laid-back beginning with acoustic guitar, fluttering reedy instrument, and earnest male vocals. Later on the backing instruments get more emphatic, more dense, and halfway everything breaks out into an Arabic warbling maelstrom. Randomly.

3) Just Be Simple (Songs: Ohia): No lie. It’s a simple song. Appealing melody, plaintive steel guitar, nice harmonies in the chorus, and full spotlight given to the lyrics. I particularly like “And everything you hated me for/ Honey, there was so much more.”

4) Break (Fugazi): I am wildly addicted to Fugazi riffs, and this has a great one. They played it as an encore when I saw them at the Forum in London, and at earsplitting volume, it sounded even better.

5) Dial: Revenge (Mogwai): If I ever wander on the astral plane, this will be my soundtrack. Acoustic guitar beginning (I’m such a sucker for that) and the guy from Super Furry Animals singing in Welsh. Then it builds to that lush cymbal (I didn’t think I’d ever be describing the sound of a cymbal that way but that really is the right word) that heralds the entrance of the orchestra and the music expands, a dim velvety universe enveloping everything. When it ends I don’t quite know where I am any more, but I have a hazy memory of being somewhere beautiful.

Surround Sounds

I listened to these in surround sound today, and it was divine. I really must start carrying my Discman around again.

  • The first few tracks of the new Outkast in Tower Records, and holy shit batman, Ghettomusick is fabulous. As Stylus puts it, it “makes B.O.B. sound sane.” Unfortunately they give the album(s) as a whole a rather unforgiving review, but of course I’m going to fork out anyway.
  • The duet in Bizet’s opera The Pearl Fishers, in my sister’s car. I usually hate opera, but this is an old favourite. My sister said Russell Watson sings this song by himself – as in, he records himself singing the second male part in the duet as well as the first. How bizarre. Surely he could have got Jay-Z to step in?
  • Mozart horn quintets, also in the car. French horns are fantastic. Where violins mince, the French horn walks with quiet dignity. The French horn sits subdued at noisy brass gatherings, only speaking when it thinks it has a chance of being listened to, but just shut the trombones up long enough to give it a chance, and your reward will be great indeed. Which is why a horn quintet featuring horn, violin, two violas and a cello is a rather special pleasure.