pop music
Joe Muggs
Well, there we go. Another series of The X Factor about to splutter and crunch to a halt. Seventeen-year-old shouter Amelia Lily has been voted out despite actually turning in the finest performances of the night, leaving delightfully rough-round-the-edges girl group Little Mix and lovable Scouse cheeselord Marcus Collins (pictured below) in the running to “win an amazing recording contract” - in the full knowledge that, given the last couple of years' evidence, pretty much anyone in the final six or so contestants is guaranteed a contract and a good shot at chart success.Unpicking the layers Read more ...
david.cheal
It’s easy enough to diss Coldplay: they make music that’s hugely successful (boo!) and not terribly challenging; they’re middle class – a heinous crime in a form of entertainment that’s steeped in notions of “authenticity” (hence the enduring love affair between music critics and the oafish Oasis – hey, they take lots of drugs and they used to steal car radios!); and as people they just seem a bit nice, to the point of dullness. I’ve done the dissing thing myself often enough: there’s that way of saying “Coldplay” that sounds both slightly sneery and slightly shamefaced, in the same way that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“They’re some of the greatest pop songs ever written,” declares Sir Elton John. He’s right. The Bee Gees – Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb – are responsible for songs that will live forever, songs that are part of successive generation’s cultural furniture. Yet although the title was The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees Song, the question asked on the ITV website was: “Just what is the greatest Bee Gees song ever?” Favourite and greatest aren’t the same thing. They can be, but they aren’t.This kitten-soft stroll through 20 of The Bee Gees’ evergreens wasn’t concerned with any such existential Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Even if you haven’t heard of Slow Moving Millie, aka Amelia Warner, there’s a 99 per cent chance that if you reside in the UK and have access to television, you’ll have heard her sing. The 29-year-old’s cover version of The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” features on the most talked-about, eye-misting Christmas advert of the year: John Lewis’s 30-second commercial of a little boy who can’t wait for his present (wait for it!) to his parents to be given.Millie’s slowed-down, plaintive and beautifully sung cover version is in a big way responsible for the ad’s success. And Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Clever people often make terrible music. Not always: the best pop is smart as well as direct - but an inability to stop analysing, comparing and explaining is the anathema of the pleasure principle, and encyclopedic knowledge often leads to bone-dry discourse. These are problems that all of the performers at last night's show have run up against, and dealt with in different ways; in particular, the headliner Green Gartside has spent his entire three-decade-plus career with various versions of Scritti Politti more or less successfully finding ways of reconciling the immediacy and concentrated Read more ...
Russ Coffey
At last, seasonal talent-show spin-offs are showing signs of real talent. Hot on the heels of the appealing, if insubstantial, Olly Murs album, comes Rebecca Ferguson’s debut. And, if Murs’ release wasn’t too bad, people are saying that Ferguson’s is such a leap forward it’s bad form to mention her in the same breath as the other alumni. Part of the fuss is, no doubt, down to the fact that, finally, The X Factor seems to have uncovered someone with authentic, visceral ability. But the reaction is not just about confounded expectations. Ferguson seems genuinely capable of giving Adele Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It catches everyone out that Duran Duran’s version of the hip-hop classic “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” comes off so well. Not just affable entertainment but actually fiercely funky, raising a large section of the Brighton Centre to its feet. Duran’s 1995 covers album Thank You – from which the song comes - was once voted by Q magazine as the worst album ever, but looking around at the enthused reaction, including my own, that all seems rather irrelevant. Midway through their set, Duran Duran are a persuasive force.The four Durans – Nick Rhodes (keys), Simon Le Bon (vocals), John Taylor ( Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Can the Hanson brothers ever rid themselves of the shackles of “MMMBop” (the 1997 hit that brought them global renown)? More to the point, should they bother to try? These were the burning questions I armed myself with as I prepared to watch a band whose progress, it’s fair to say, I’ve hardly followed in the last 15 years since their falsetto singing and rambunctious head-banging brought the world such joy. So, having done some serious mugging up, and listened to their back catalogue, I was interested to see where fortune would have taken the clean-cut trio with the flowing blond hair.As Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Asked what attracted her to the music of South America, Catherine Ringer says, “C’est comme ça. Boom-ta-ta-boom, ta-ta-boom, ta-ta-boom-da boom, boom-da-da-boom.” She begins singing. “Boom-da-boom-da-boom, doo-doo-da-doo. It’s the rhythm of rock'n’roll,” she concludes. Ringer still exudes the spontaneity that defined Les Rita Mitsouko, whose first French hit, "Marcia Baïla", was fuelled by Latin rhythms. Yet now, she’s on her own, in London promoting her first solo album, Ring n’ Roll, released here this week. Her partner Fred Chichin died in November 2007.He’s gone, but Ringer says, “There Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although they're beginning to get cold, the winds blowing in from Scandinavia have recently brought enough music to keep anyone warm through long, dark nights. Finnish intensity, pop and introspection from Denmark, Swedish luxuriousness, Icelandic keyboard quirk, Norwegians that enfold - all are here. Along with Estonian haziness.Finland hits hardest with a new EP from K-X-P. theartsdesk has met them before, live and on album. Previously with Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, Easy is their first outing for Manchester’s Melodic. It’s an extraordinary thing, coalescing a vision marrying a Read more ...
bruce.dessau
It is probably just wishful thinking from the haters that The X Factor is going into meltdown. Pop might be the sound of a bubble bursting, but the Class of Cowell is still having hits. Olly Murs is currently in a chart battle with Rihanna for the top spot with his single “Dance With me Tonight”, so don’t go sobbing for Louis Walsh just yet. In Case You Didn't Know is the second album from oily-haired Olly. I was hoping for something with the intrigue of Will Young. I got something with decent melodies and the lyrical complexity of Jedward.Proceedings kick off enjoyably with the Number One Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Chart music has always been largely about sex, but for me The Saturdays marked a tipping point in pop's pornification when they covered Depeche Mode's “Just Can't Get Enough” in 2009 and turned an innocent electro classic into a gushing paean to insatiable lust. The video has notched up over five million hits, presumably more to do with the strumpets in suspenders than a frankly unexpected cameo from Muffin the Mule.Still, my Meldrewish moans have hardly held them back and the Anglo-Irish quintet’s new album finds them getting a little bit experimental. Calm down, don't expect them to be Read more ...