Pop

I'm spectacularly hung over at the moment. My body aches from a rather intense deep-tissue massage. The last thing I want to do is to jump up and down and scream my head off.

But sitting in front of me is my Kylie "ShowGirl" ticket, reminding me that, somehow, I have to channel my inner poof and get excited. We've been waiting for so long and finally she's returned. Brilliant.

What do I wear? And do I still remember the words to her songs? I've less than three hours to learn all the dance moves from the DVD. Shure I've had about a year to prepare...

Tags: Kylie Minogue.

• Madonna's film clip for Get Together looks like a Winamp visualization.
• Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous is so ordinary, it could have been done by any one of the BEP wannabes. I'd rather she'd just released Man Eater worldwide, though you've got to appreciate the effort of releasing three different tracks for different markets. No wonder she was reduced to silly little giggles on Rove the other night...
• I prefer tone396's version of Lily Allen's Smile better than the official release version.  It's such a cute song, though.
• They had a report on Ten (?) last night about there being too many sexy music videos like Pussycat Dolls' Buttons but, to illustrate their point, they included a clip of The Aphex Twin's Windowlicker which was was strange choice to make and in any case they should have shown the part where the women all start to morph into the Twin himself.  Hot.

A random on-the-spot list of hot songs of the moment:

• Mary J Blige and U2 - One
• Lily Allen - Smile (tone396)
• Beyonce ft Jay-Z - Déjà Vu
• Scissor Sisters - Don't Feel Like Dancing
• Londonbeat vs Moby - Thinking About Lifting You (DJ Tripp mashup) (though I have to say that Moby's vocals really shit me; it's not uplifting, it's a dirge. I do like the beats, though, and thank god Londonbeat come back to pick it all up again...)

Technorati Tags: music, pop

Saw Stick It with JPB. Wasn't too impressed. It's supposed to be the next Bring It On but wasn't anywhere near as fun. There was a bit of a story, I guess, but that wasn't very interesting and when we finally get to the good stuff, the tricks, it's all so brutally chopped up that it loses its effect. And in any case (SPOILER ALERT!) at the end just about all of the gymnasts walk so you don't actually get to see much. Spirit fingers in Bring It On were daggy in a good way, the "radical" routines in Stick It were not.

What's going on? I had also recently seen and was quite disappointed with Take The Lead.

AND WHAT'S WITH ALL THE ANIMATED FEATURES THAT ARE ABOUT TO BE RELEASED? Just about every preview we saw tonight was an animation, y'know, CG and cute furry characters with attitude. Nemo was good but for god's sake move on! I was going to see Cars but I think I'll plan a Stick It style rebellion against all of these animations. Who's joining me?

PS sorry about the spoilers...

Tags: Movies, Stick It, Bring It On, Animated Features.

Previous: Top 50 of 2004

I felt I couldn’t get as excited by new music this year as I was in 2004. Last year’s favourites went missing somewhere: Scissor Sisters were holding back on new music and instead went on tour and did a few collaborations; Franz Ferdinand lost some of the infectious immediacy in their hooks in their latest material; and groups like Girls Aloud and The Darkness made such a late entrance their new stuff now has to be delayed to the 2006 list.

At the end of the day, the top song is there not because it was anything amazing and exciting like Franz Ferdinand was last year but because I listened to it an awful lot.

Instead, 2005 for me was a backward looking year, full of mash-ups, remakes and Madonna. Mariah Carey made her so-called Comeback-of-the-Year though I found myself more interested than expected thanks to an extra cheesy mash-up. I was listening to a lot of mash-ups, perhaps too many, I could have searched out for more original material. But the rock hooks that I started to like in 2004 were there, they were just mashed up with some groovy vocals. Is that really a bad thing?

The following list is an attempt to represent the music that I was listening to in 2005. Gone are the days of weekly charts and point systems that may have been more accurate, there are tracks on the list like Inaya Day’s Nasty Girl that may have been higher up the list but have now lost a lot of their allure for me to place them there now. To deal with the sheer number of mash-ups I was listening to, I decided to only include those that used at least one track that was new for me in 2005. Songs can only occur once in the list, preventing a song, it’s remix and it’s mash-up from being on the list.

So here it is…

1. Missy Elliott ft Ciara & Fat Man Scoop – Lose Control
2. Goldfrapp – Ooh La La
3. Sugababes – Push The Button
4. Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc
5. Madonna – Hung Up
6. Mylo vs Miami Sound Machine – Doctor Pressure
7. Mariah Carey vs Cyndi Lauper – We Belong Together Time After Time (Arty Fufkin Mashup)
8. Gorillaz – Dare
9. Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl
10. Kelly Clarkson vs Depeche Mode vs Rex The Dog – Since U Been Gone (DJ Earworm Mashup)
11. Robbie Williams – Trippin’
12. Gwen Stefani – Cool
13. Rogue Traders – Voodoo Child
14. New Order – Jetstream (Richard X Remix)
15. The Prodigy – Girls (idiotech Remix)
16. Kylie Minogue – Giving You Up (Riton Re-Rub Dub)
17. Mylo – In My Arms (Sharam Jey Remix)
18. Lisa Stansfied vs Soul Central – Hold On To Life (Jhuny Mash)
19. Dean Gray – Boulevard of Broken Songs (Dance Mix)
20. Rihanna – Pon De Replay
21. The Prodigy – Out Of Space (Audio Bullys Remix)
22. Black Eyed Peas – My Humps
23. Ciara ft Missy Elliott – 1 2 Step
24. MIA – 10 Dollar
25. Gorillaz – Dirty Harry (Jon Carter Remix)
26. The Prodigy – Smack My Bitch Up (Sub Focus Remix)
27. Shakedown vs Taylor Dayne – Shakedown My Heart (DJ Matt Hite 4 Minute Man Mix)
28. Mariah Carey – It’s Like That (McSleazy Remix)
29. Madonna – Future Lovers
30. Inaya Day – Nasty Girl
31. MIA vs Nintendo – Superlangalang! (cry.on.my.console Mashup)
32. MIA – Bucky Done Gun
33. The Pussycat Dolls ft Busta Rhymes – Don’t Cha
34. Destiny’s Child ft TI & Lil’ Wayne – Soldier
35. Black Eyed Peas – Don’t Lie
36. Franz Ferdinand – Do You Want To
37. Bodyrockers – I Like The Way You Move
38. Kaiser Chiefs vs Amerie – One Less Thing (Cheekyboy Mashup)
39. Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
40. Rachel Stevens – I Said Never Again
41. MIA – Sunshowers
42. Mylo – Destroy Rock & Roll (Tom Neville Remix)
43. Goldfrapp – Number 1
44. Sarah Vaughan – Fever (Adam Freeland Remix)
45. The Prodigy – Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix)
46. Basement Jaxx – Oh My Gosh
47. Robbie Williams – Advertising Space
48. Cabin Crew – Star 2 Fall
49. Destiny’s Child – Cater 2 U
50. Roisin Murphy – Leaving The City

Tags: Pop, music, chart, 2005.

There were two particularly fabulous moments that night:
- the fabulous clubbed-up reinvention of Hand On Your Heart. It reminded me of Roger Sanchez's Another Chance (or maybe it was the love-hearts). I for one would love to hear the original to be remixed and re-released because it sounded awesome. Besides, it's been awhile since I'd bought any Kylie gear and, apart from the up-coming DVD of the tour, there's nothing to look forward to until she's well enough to work again. (UPDATE: I just read on the official Kylie website about the digital-only release of Somewhere Over The Rainbow on Christmas...)
- the fabulous staying-true-to-the-original I Should Be So Lucky. It was quite a shock, bold and defiant, Kylie singing such a sugary-sweet (and dare I say daggy) pop song so proudly and enthusiastically, it was like she was telling us, in her sweet and well-mannered way, to "fuck off, this is my song, I think it's rather good". I just couldn't stop smiling.

It's such a shame about the circumstances, and it's easy to understand why she was so disappointed that Australia didn't get to see this show because it looks bloody incredible. That stage is fucking mind-blowing. I don't think we got a full idea of how good it is and how it gets used, in the snippets that we saw on TV. It was like Mega-Techno-Vegas, fit for a modernised 21st Century showgirl like Kylie. And so many clever moments, too, like putting the Can't Get You Out Of My Head choreography with Locomotion and taking the piss out of herself and turning the whole arena into one giant Karaoke room for Especially For You. It seems like such a full and complete retrospective, it even has references to those classic b-side dance tracks I Guess I Like It Like That and Do You Dare. And, how cool, she even throws in a bit of Nick Cave as well. If anything was missing it was the easy-going banter that Kylie does with the audience throughout her shows, but I guess those bits just got cut for TV.

Kylie, I'm still holding on to my ticket. Can't wait to see this show (I hope I'm not on tour or something) it looks fabulous.

Tags: Kylie Minogue, Showgirl, Pop, Music, Concert.

Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor

"I don't like cities but I love New York, other cities make me feel like a dork."

After the first four tracks, leading with the first single Hung Up, the album starts of quite strongly. And then we get the pile of shit that is I Love New York. I don't care what she was intending to do with this track, the fact is is that it's embarrassingly awful. Witness the rhyming of mad with sad and glad. She obviously didn't record this one in New York because she really does sound like a dork. After that, the album just doesn't seem to recover, at times she sounds like we're listening to some mediocre poetry recital.

It's a bit of a shame, because I really like the first four tracks, especially Hung Up. It's got a great driving beat, the ABBA sample is fantastic, it's catchy, and when it all drops out in the middle and builds up again it absolutely soars. It may not be classic Madonna, we may not even be hearing any of these tracks five years time but they do get you dancing. Future Lovers is just as strong, taking it's cue from Donna Summer's I Feel Love (what tribute to dance music wouldn't touch on this?) even if you can't help but be reminded of Kylie's Light Years.

Second-half album tracks such as Forbidden Love and How High are almost as good and eff me I do like the "spirituality on the dance floor" moment that is Isaac. And on the last track Madonna does her best Goldfrapp impersonation in Like It Or Not but doesn't quite get there. Each of the tracks smoothly fade into each other, with traces of dance floor classics throughout, providing some kind of dance floor journey. It's all extremely well polished and produced but by about the middle of the album it all just seems to blur into one seamless homogenous beat with no obvious highlights. And nothing that Madonna sings sounds like it is actually important, gone are the days when she wanted every girl in the world to Express Themselves and find men that are worthy of their love. Gone are the days when we simply had to "let our bodies move to the music".

Maybe I just expect too much from Madonna. Maybe I should just take her advice, that this is who she is, like it or not. Then again, like ABBA and Donna Summer, Madonna is an important part of dance floor history but much of this album doesn't do that any justice.

Tags: Madonna, Confessions on a dance floor, Album review, Pop.

Typical. I've been trying to find Madonna's new song to download and so far all i could find is a handful of mashups courtesy of HOW TO KILL THE DJ.

Don't worry, Maddy, I was always going to buy your new song. Honest! I just couldn't wait for you to release it! And, besides, your new *song* is like a mashup anyway (nevermind the fact that Hung Up doesn't exist as a standalone song independent of Gimme Gimme Gimme), does it matter that someone else thought that your lyrics sounded better with New Order rather than ABBA? The mashing up of Madonna with Gwen Stefani is particularly interesting (even if the actual mashup isn't so exciting): when I first saw the filmclip for No Doubt's Don't Speak I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the upcoming pop-rock-ette Stefani with the then fading Queen of pop Ciccone. Nowadays, while Gwen (the New Madonna) is pilfering eighties sounds, Madonna (the Old Madonna) is just blatantly ripping them out intact, which I guess is even more "now", more "pop", where innovation is to find the best samples and to use them in the cleverest way. Today SP brought into the studio a really cool eighties mix that has the track that contains that "Music makes you lose control" sample that Missy Elliott uses.

Pop has well and truly eaten itself, but we already knew that. I just want someone to please point me to the proper version.

Tags: Mashup, Madonna, Hung Up.

ARIA charts

* 1 (-) Shannon Noll - Shine
* 14 (-) Ricki-Lee - Sunshine
* 27 (-) Paulmac - Sunshine Eyes

Three Aussies. Three new songs. It must be springtime in Australia.

Tags: Music, Shine, Australia, Spring.

The Work of Director Michel Gondry
I was already a fan even before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but seeing this collection of film clips on one DVD confirms just how clever this boy is. I haven't watched the entire disc yet but I've seen enough.

Film clips is such a fascinating medium for expression in popular culture. With a film clip, a director has approximately four minutes to not only convince us that we should buy this music but also, to varying extents, what we should wear, what we should feel, how we should relate to people (not necessarily in a good way, obviously, if you were to believe the directors of certain American *Urban* film clips, women should basically be wearing skimpy bikinis and be playthings for men that wear alot of jewelry). And, as with popular music, there's alot of crap but there's also alot of gems too.

This disc is full of gems.

Out of the three directors in this series, Gondry is easily the cleverest. How else do you describe someone that can apply principles of advanced particle physics to Kylie? There is alot of repetition in his work, both in the content of the clips and across his portfolio. Lots of different kinds of repetition. He employs recursion; witness Bjork in Bachelorette performing her life story where she's on stage performing her life story on stage performing her life story... (potentially ad infinitum except that pop film clips have very real finite limits!).

Circles in space AND time? Daft Punk's Around The World, through it's repetitive beat and it's title, begs to be looped back on itself, resulting in a classic clip that harks back to the works of Busby Berkeley. Or what about Cibo Matto's Sugar Water, every time I watch it I get something new out of it; the two girls get up out of bed and travel around two "time loops" (???) in opposite directions, colliding, and sending themselves back to bed. I'm sure Einstein didn't think about this happening! And in true entangled particle-antiparticle fashion, the girls are completely in sync with each other, even when apart; they wake up, do stuff to the window, pour stuff on themselves, dress/undress all in the same sequence and even cats walk past them at the same *time* (I'm being quite careless about my use of the word time here... sorry about that!)

Or what about having the visual completely complementing the musical structure of the song, like in Bjork's Joga where the camera pans across the striking Icelandic "emotional" landscape in perfect time with the music. There are some very romantic ideas here: the geology of Iceland being alive and with it's own pulse emanating from its core, but living in the heart of Bjork. In The Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar, this idea is taken to the extreme, where the viewer is placed on a train that passes a landscape where the features pass by in perfect time with the music (sorry if I gave the game away; when I first saw this clip it wasn't until halfway through when I realised what was going on).

But, of course, being a big Kylie fan, I absolutely love Come Into My World. All Kylie does is walk around in the streets but Gondry puts her in some strange space-time loop whereby she meets her earlier self when she reaches the begining of the loop. Time folds back on itself so that occurrences happen with events from the past and soon the street is cluttered with people and multiple instances of their past selves. It's even interesting to simply pick a character other than Kylie and watch what happens to them in the course of the song. The cleverest thing about doing this for a pop film clip is that it exactly mirrors the structure of a typical pop song: repetitive yet progressively building. And the genius is that, all the while, during this whole space-time exercise, Gondry has Kylie being, well, KYLIE! She is utterly radiant, there just happens to be lots of her. I went from thinking this was a passable single to being one of my favourite Kylie tracks thanks to the film clip.

I also love Massive Attack's Protection (a triumph of set design?), The Chemical Brothers' Let Forever Be and the Foo Fighters' Everlong.

Very clever boy.