PopText

Do you know the popularity rules?

2009-09-15T10:04:00.002+01:00

The End

2008-04-08T06:48:00.003+01:00

Yes, I'm done. Here at least. Poptext is migrating to a shiny new home over at wordpress, and expanding to include general pop culture stuff, YA author-i-ness, life & more. I figured I wouldn't clutter up your rss feeds, but if you want to come along and update your bookmarks, do!

I've copied the archives over, but I'll be leaving them up here too. Poptext.org will automatically redirect, as will abbymcdonald.com (once I get my web guru to decode, that is).

It's been grand. Really, it has. When I read back over the past few years, it amazes me how much this blog expanded my world and what excellent people it brought into my life. I started writing alone in my dorm room, trying to distract myself from college, and wound up finding a career, of sorts. I've been published and paid. I've travelled to new and wonderful places across the world, meeting folks I wouldn't know without these musings, and I've found a love for music I never knew I could possess. See, I don't play any instruments, I can't even read music, and those who have experienced the wonder of my kareoke know that I can barely carry a tune. But delving into songs, picking the threads and chords apart, I discovered that it doesn't matter at all. I can feel music, and I can try to find the words to tell you about it, and that's as much as anyone should need.

But it's time for some shift in direction. I've just set up in a snowy new city, I have a book coming out next year, vast amounts of pop media to consume, and I think it's time to bring more of myself and my world into poptext. I hope you'll come along, but if you don't, then thank you. A deep, heart-felt, sincere thank you.

PopText's new home

Something..

2008-04-06T03:27:00.001+01:00

poptext.muxtape.com

PopText 2007 (Part Two)

2008-01-19T22:46:00.001Z

Stolen Car – Carina Round

“Temptation—I give up the fight tonight. My body is an open mouth.”

Carina came true for me this year, taking her raw ache and crafting it into something controlled and beautiful. That’s not to say she’s stripped away any of the wild insistence, that discordant surge, no, that still rattles and cries full of furious lust. But here, at last, she’s reined back; tugging every messy impulse into some semblance of structure. And oh, how radiant she is for it: hot sun flooding the tiny room instead of dispersing into a distant horizon.

It’s no secret that I adore a shape to things; arcs swooping, neatly-built narratives—melodies are wasted in chaos, less than the sum of their parts for all the confusion, the debris. I remember watching Carina perform ‘Into My Blood’ to an empty room, what seems like a lifetime ago. She took that tiny stage, took us all and unleashed her fury, slamming bitter shards of stardust into our lungs; cutting us from the inside. But as much as I was enchanted, I never listened to the song again: it was too harsh, too difficult to set loose on my already-bloody heart—a taste of destruction, a dangerous path.

But here she is again; still aching, still messy, still full of everything I edge around, only this time pulled tight and fierce and all the more tempting for it. You treated my body like a stolen car. And we feel it. Dark roads, heart-kick speed, recklessness setting our synapses alight. The music is muddy and midnight hoarse, but above all else, it’s immersed in need—the entire album shivers with longing, those harsh chords kept under guard and let free only once you’re swooning, too far gone.

Desire.

Whisper it on the outward breath, and feel the space it leaves.

PopText 2007 aka All the Songs I Haven’t Posted Yet (Part One)

2007-12-26T23:32:00.000Z

I don’t really do lists. I find all that ranking and quantifying to be a) generally something men seem concerned with and b) impossible. I mean, to say that I adored x song over y by z amount isn’t how I consume anything, let alone art. So, instead of a bumper End O’ Year list, here’s the collection of songs; maybe I put them on mixes for my friends, maybe I yelled them loud over the sound of the freeway, maybe I felt them hard.

Maybe you will too.

1. Okkervil River - Unless it’s Kicks

“What gives this mess some grace unless it's kicks, man? Unless it’s fictions, unless it's sweat or it's songs?”

I could simply reprint the lyrics to this very song to describe it, the way that heavenly song punches right through my mind and just hums through my blood; but as somebody who strives for nothing more than to scratch my words into another’s mind for just a few brief moments, that wouldn’t do it justice. See, I spent this year writing, which makes it no difference to most other years, but what happened this time around was that I got to be a Writer. It shouldn’t matter, but the external validation getting paid provides is something real, something that lets me keep my posture a little straighter when asked, inevitably, ‘So are you published?’ This song is not just meta in the outside-in way we know so well—detached, observational—but meta in the way it delves into the murky world of what it means to create for somebody else’s consumption; the delicate line between your heart on the page (or verse, or canvas) and those lines spilling from somebody’s lips. I’ll always remember the first time I heard my own words quoted back to me: a strange burn of satisfaction edged with the metallic discomfort of knowing I was no longer in a vacuum, that those words didn’t belong to me anymore.

Will Scheff nails a lot of things here, from the relentless drive to create, to the uneasy reality that exists one step past that creation, and he does it all with a melody that takes flight behind my ribcage, every damn time. It’s easy to say that something soars, but even that word doesn’t quite cage the lift and flutter as drums and riff and voice weave higher and wind into something perfect. We always have that safety net, you see, time and again. “At least it’s material” we say, and wait for the next thing to become real, but this song manages to craft reality out of the mere act of creation, and that, my friends, is what this year was to me.

Aly & Aj - Potential Break-up Song

2007-08-20T21:27:00.000+01:00

“This is the potential break-up song/ our album needs just one.”

The latest addition to my pop arsenal: a weapon for the conversion cause. Understand, it’s not that my tastes don’t span the depths of the Dixie Chicks back-catalogue and scale the dizzy heights of the Hold Steady, but I’ve got an agenda to push, and Okkervil River won’t cut it on my mixes (glorious as they well may be). No, sometimes I’m out to win over indie hearts and minds, and that means the big guns—the songs that will tempt even the most devoted ones away from their solemn guitars and towards the shiny pop light. I need gateway tracks, and god, does this deliver.

Effervescence is in short supply right now, what with Rihanna’s painstakingly precise beats and hellogoodbye’s careful sincerity, but Aly & AJ somehow muster utter effortlessness in every breezy line. The sisters have thankfully jettisoned that earnest Christian rock phase, now we get delightfully shallow MTV movies, blonde poses and oh, what a song! As irreverent as it is irresistible, this is an ice-cream dream: gone in an instant, leaving only the fleeting memory of a breathy chorus, that lala-ed melody, a faint Spice Girls aftertaste. So the vocoders may be heavy, the lyrics light—you know by now that I care not.

Another pop convert singing my tune is another battle won.

This Aint A Scene, It's A Goddamn Marketplace

2007-08-12T01:11:00.001+01:00

Emo takes the mall-kids, American parents wring hands in fear.

This month’s J14 magazine features nine pictures of Pete Wentz. On the cover and in side-bars; slotted between High School Musical 2 previews and cute back-to-school make-up tips, the Fall Out Boy bassist is the latest tween dream heartthrob—skinny denim and all. For a publication whose target audience maxes out at thirteen, a full-page feature on guyliner and the hotties who wear it (Brendan Urie! Gerard Way!) isn’t just a way to fill space in their super summer issue, it’s a declaration of emo’s transformation. What once was the soundtrack to sincere guitar-strumming boys, and then loner disaffection has been reinvented yet again as a merch-orientated, socially networked, mainstream phenomenon—with Wentz as the ultimate poster-boy....

For more, read my article on the new Collected Voices blog.

The Thermals - Pillar of Salt

2007-08-01T20:46:00.000+01:00

I went West. Like so many before me, and so many after, I packed up a bag and headed out to find something more than this complacency, more than this lull of contentment. Sometimes you make your plans, but sometimes you just snap—running before you can change your mind or think about the dozen ways this could fall apart, because there’s a chance it might not. Just a chance.

So I went West, to lily-edged lakes and quaint clapboard coastline, to sparkling cityscapes and sound. To skeezy loft dance-parties and hot friendship and possibility; cocktails, ice cream, slow-rolled movie nights. To a book deal.

I’m back (for now), but you can hear it, can’t you? The buoyant melody yelled on a 2am highway, that crashing rhythm refusing to drop below eighty. Skidding faster, a flash in your veins. This song is a tale of running, taking everything precious and making it out while you’re still alive. It may only be your heart winding down, but if it’s all you’ve got, it’s enough.

More otherness

2007-06-16T13:46:00.000+01:00

My latest artistDIRECT column is up for you, The Kids Are All Right: a discussion of tweenpop and all its synergistic wonder. I also interviewed the lovely Tiffany (Yes, THAT Tiffany) and Elizabeth Cook, plus there are reviews of Big N Rich, Fair to Midland and Gretchen Wilson. Enjoy!

Elsewhere...

2007-05-23T02:15:00.000+01:00

More artistDIRECT work for you, including reviews of Miranda Lambert, Elizabeth Cook and Maroon 5, plus my very first pop column in which I ruminate on American Idol, Alanis Morisette and the art of the cover song.

Robyn Interview!

2007-04-11T18:18:00.000+01:00

"I want the melodies, I want the bittersweet."

A couple of weeks ago I met the utterly adorable Robyn for tea and talk about taking control, anti-pop attitudes, and the science of great songwriting - full interview on ARTISTdirect.com.

Also there you can find my reviews of the album, Joss Stone and the Fratellis - plus more cool musicy things.

Sia - Breathe Me (Four Tet remix)

2007-03-19T23:14:00.000Z

This isn’t a passing phase. It’s not the footless tights you better laugh over one day, sugar-sweet alcopops and gingerbread lattes – set forever in a Perspex memory bubble: distinct, defined and wholly of that time. No, this something still in motion; a song that coils around your spine, lightly scratching at the back of your chest with dull nails and a low, insistent percussion. This is a constant, the even intake of breath until despite yourself, your pulse quickens and you wait for something – anything – to claw deeper. But nothing comes. There is no kick, no grab to satisfy that shiver; instead the wounded vocal just winds onwards until you have no choice but to exhale and sink into the slow rhythm, resigned to the itch that lingers, just behind your ribs.

The original version’s piano refrain is too pretty for me. It is sweet, complete – it softens the need in her voice and that desperate restlessness into something simple. Crescendo, conclusion. Mylo fills the sound, Ulrich Schnauss pulls the fibres apart into mere whispers, but this, this remix is infused with something closer to the light self-loathing of vulnerability. Lipstick smeared into a pale reflection, that careful machinery inside you paused for just a second. When all that you are is all that there is; and oh, how you wish it was something easy and pure.

A beat, a melody, a steady helplessness – hypnotic in its repetition, yet somehow a comfort all the same. No, this is not a passing phase, and so you sink into it all over again.

Robyn - With Every Heartbeat

2007-03-15T18:33:00.000Z

It struck me one day, doodling idle post ideas in the back of an economics lecture. Station concourses and high school back steps; half-hearted phone calls and holiday apartments – the places and faces change, but a break-up is always the same. Love, you see, is a zero-sum game.

No matter how mutual it claims to be, regardless of the amicable smiles that get beamed about, somebody always loses. Somebody always hurts the most. Somebody always wins.

And. It. hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat.

Robyn knows she’s lost. Even her opening chords are laced with melancholy, the lines are dragged and dog-tired, stretched with the kind of weary resignation that only echoes when you’re close to collapse. And so it goes. One smile dimmer, one voice not quite so full of relief; we’ve all been there, either side, every side. We’ve all flicked our eyes away for safer ground, picked that public spot for minimal damage. We’ve all dug angry half-moons in our palms to keep back those tears, held ourselves together with nothing more than the simple intake of breath and a few silent prayers.

And oh, how we know this final refrain. Every strained syllable forced from her lips is short with desperate self-control. Half a gasp, the jaw clenched, yet still she clings to the pained string melody; kept afloat by the bubbling synth waves.

And. It. hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat.

Damone - What We Came Here For

2007-03-11T19:19:00.000Z

Shuffle doesn’t usually pay out, but, oh, this time it did. My knees were cramped, my mind was cranky – six hours stuffed into the bus with nothing but old playlists and new ARCs and then, and then…

Boston swooped into view the moment those thrum-ta-tum beats shuddered through me. Chords thick with fanfare, the city lights dangling over my highway trail, and that sweet voice spiralling away into the night over a looping, decisive riff. A moment in action: the flick and writhe of something twisting into life. Possibilities hissing as I stepped into the dry, air-con terminal.

We thought we were so damn cool.

Youth and irresponsibility and pained self-righteousness, bound up in a vocal and strung along over sound that doesn’t sit back, confined to the airwaves, but exists. Thick and tangible around you; reeking of smoke and damp and beer and sweat. Sound from a time when drama and power chords set out to shake the stadium; sound sliced and shined and mixed and thrown into the loop with a hair-toss and reckless simplicity.

I could tell you about the production niche, so glaringly modern. I could tell you about 80’s hair-rock legacies, about Meatloaf, about Max Martin. I could diagram the outline this song makes as it punches through the page, or attempt to graph the thunder of beats and chorus chanting.

But all I’ve got is those few days, half a year ago. Neon lights, bright on the horizon; suburban streets, a borrowed car and new friendship cluttering the dashboard. Sherman’s, soul music, apple trees and bad teen movies. Half a world away.

Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend

2007-03-04T00:55:00.000Z

Don’t be fooled. This song may try and trick you into thinking it’s a harmless cherry popsicle – all spring quickstep double-handclaps, dripping sweet sugar rush – but those jubilant cheerleader hi-kicks are only a distraction from the ice shards that will hit your poor, tender brains in oh, five, four, three…

Then you get it. Don’t you? That while you were off, merrily chanting your hey!heys and your you!yous with a flip and a bounce and a daffodil shimmy – the sky clear, the world green & lush & full of spirit fingers – they were taken. Snatched away into the arms of someone with shinier hair that fell sighing of scenes and cigarettes, who made mixtapes with hand-scrawled playlists and read all the Jonathan books you hurled across the room in defeat. Someone who, most importantly, made ohso sure the world knew they were damn precious in a way you could never dare.

And they were humming this song as they did so.

Sure, when your rage is gasping for air and you’ve shattered those ice shards, you’ll have to admit that they weren’t so much snatched as gently led astray, but shh! that won’t make you hate the taste of cherry any less, or shy away from ‘Bring It On’ reruns forever more.

…

This is probably just a holding pattern. I’ll be experimenting with layout, and content, and life. Although, as you’ve guessed, my word means nothing and this same post and this same layout may well be here in six months.

Do Dirt with me

2006-09-12T20:31:00.001+01:00

Hosted By: Do Dirt deejays
When: Thursday Sep 14, 2006
9pm - 3am
A mere:£3 entry
Where: Ditch Bar
145 Shoreditch High Street
London
Description:
Mucky pop. Rude raps. Sleazy rock. Filthy electro.

(Play on player)

I think we're on to something/ Your taste, it mirrors mine.

2006-08-26T22:25:00.000+01:00

I burned out.

It happens, pulling together hopefully meaningful blurbs week after week. Listening to songs on repeat play to tease out that beat, those melodies. Somewhere down the line it shifted from ‘let me hear this’ to ‘what can I say about this?’. The critic’s circle of self-referential doom: linking to my own old posts, feeling trapped in a relationship with the audience’s expectations. Don’t post too confessional. Don’t post too pop. Impossible to create in a vacuum anymore, it was all hit stats and linking quotes. Bigger, better, but above all, new!

You could see it, to read my early work – back when I had stories to tell and the songs were the medium, my vehicle. No hosting or mp3s, but those posts had a freshness, an innocence to them, before I hurtled into the meta-community. When I was a writer first, not a blogger worried about being left behind by the new kids and their shiny obscure indie profiles. Press blurbs sure, but that was what the people wanted – a MySpace link and a free tune.

So I stopped.

Listening to music as a listener is so wonderfully different to listening as a critic. You aren’t searching for words, comparisons. You don’t care who produced a track, whom else they’ve worked their magic for. Industry positioning doesn’t matter so much, or whether it is the one strong track on an otherwise weak album. Inherent in criticism is finding some kind of perspective with which to judge – a standard to hold a work up to. We do it as listeners too, but the standards seem to be different. There’s a beautiful naïveté in engaging with music without the critical faculties; listening with a different part of the mind, or maybe the heart. Turning off coherent thought until even a complete sentence is redundant for the experience, let alone five hundred words on so-and-sos place within the Canadian collective scene or grime resurgence.

But having said that, there are stories to tell. Stories about songs, and the way a particular arrangement of chords can cause our hearts to swell and break, or force our feet to move. Stories about moments, about people, about a place in the cultural fabric of our lives.

I took some time and I listened. I danced and sang and let myself feel music again. And now I’ve got a few more stories for you. It’ll be different this time: no stat counters, no mp3s, no rhyme nor reason to what I end up writing. It could be snark, it could be soul. Maybe I’m wasting the chance to turn PopText into the Gawker of the music world, to give myself a platform. But I’m a writer, not a blogger, and I want to stay this way.

Coming Soon....

2006-07-13T12:35:00.001+01:00

Me. Back. With PopTextable joy and musical musings.

Do Dirt Setlist - 29/6

2006-06-30T18:11:00.000+01:00

Pink – U + Ur Hand
Temposhark ft. Imogen Heap – Not That Big (Metronomy Remix)
JC Chasez – A.D.I.D.A.S
Jordan Knight – Give It To You
Pussycat Dolls - Flirt
Charlotte Church – Crazy Chick (Kardinal Beats Remix)
Nelly Furtado ft. Pharell – No Hay Igual
Jentina – French Kisses
Billie – Day and Night (Stargate Mix)
Missy Elliot ft Ciara – Lose Control (Jaques Lu Cont Remix)
Gwen Stefani – Bubble Pop Electric
Holly Valance – State of Mind
Lillix – Sweet Temptation
Girls Aloud – Models
Rogue Traders – Way to Go
Ashlee Simpson – Get Nasty
Morningwood – Nth Degree
Rachel Stevens – Some Girls
Deep Dish – Flashdance

Making My DJ Debut

2006-05-14T09:40:00.000+01:00

Can you guess which tracks will be my plays?

Ashley Parker Angel - Let U Go/ Marion Raven - End of Me

2006-05-01T11:07:00.000+01:00

“It’s not the first time/ And you know it/ Don't you now?”

So, paradigm shifts. A generation whose formative experiences are so different in context and content that their basically held beliefs depart from the preceding generation’s in a crucial (and often unexpected) way, directly altering the norms of the system they inherit.

Or, why kids who bopped to Britney are now teens ‘n’ twentysomethings devouring the Kelly, long after their ‘legitimate’ pop consumption and natural fallout-emo-indie identity shift would predict.

A: Max Martin.

Because occasionally we get a Pied Piper, weaving production and writing skills in such a way as to heave the boundaries of the pop sound back another frontier. And then come the shockwaves, not so much a copy-paste bandwagon as a personal quest to brand the aural landscape; to dig that flag into the dusty ground and proclaim ownership of something we’re more used to being anonymous, transient.

‘Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)’ through ‘I Want It That Way’; ‘Tearing Up My Heart’ through ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’; ‘Show Me Love’; ‘Baby (One More Time)’ through ‘Stronger’.

You may not have liked it, but you knew it. Same sound, everywhere. Pop values reshaped. Bar raised. And, most importantly, the taste for precision production was carved into the kids’ consciousness. A thirst for that verse/bridge/chorus/verse/chorus repeat blueprint of world domination. A chorus that mattered - for dancing and drowning and jubilant cries, not an excuse for some ego-trip guitar solo auto-eroticism.

“This is not a mistake/ It’s the dawn of a new day.”

So considering everything that came before, it’s no surprise we’re back with our old dealer, Mr Martin, begging for the good stuff. Only this time there’s a twist.

Riffs and drums and leap of intensity. A sound that gleefully dances on the razorblade edge of the shock!horror credible borderline because the acts may be styled former TV-stars with dubious 00’s pop credentials; they may not have written or played or toured the underbelly but what does that count for anymore when the indie kid spends an hour crafting his side-swipe hair and the emo boyz loose sleep over the statement of their goddamn trucker hats?

When you’ve got the bloody valentines failing to craft a compelling spectacle with their MySpace journal self-destruction, and people calling for a panic in their discos over a little overindulgent eyeliner application, isn’t there something to be said for the old-school? When beats were pumping on the stereo in the studio, because they’ve got the perfectionist vision to re-record and program until it’s this crisp and frenetic? Where a riff has something to prove, because if it doesn’t ignite your blood then they’ll just toss it for a different sample?

‘Since U Been Gone’ through ‘I Just Want U to Know’ through ‘4Eva’: the new paradigm demands more from the angst-pop-rock that cluttered the airways. We want it new and improved! Shiny! Irresistible! So now we have Ashley (with only his ruffled blonde fringe and the disquieting perfection of chord structures keeping this song away from fall-out-emo status). The surge, the fall, the relentless enthusiasm that whirls you into drama. And Marion, stealing Kelly’s beats but raising her Robyn’s cello use, until we get anger vibrating with clarity; those bridge notes a shiver-still moment of haunting poignancy.

This, my friends, is pop evolving another blissful level. Darwinism on your airwaves.

Epic

2006-04-23T21:49:00.000+01:00

Or, 'Why Dom Passantino is one of the best music writers around (despite the fact you probably think he's an utter twunt)'

I don't often pimp people, but this is worth it.
Seriously.

(And yes, I haven't been around. Finals doom. And to be honest, music journalism burnout.)

While Perpetua is away...

2006-03-16T09:49:00.000Z

...Poptext shall play!

Reverie Sound Revue - Rip the Universe

2006-02-27T22:37:00.000Z

“As curious as it seems/ I still smile while enjoying the scene.”

Standing on the Place de la Concorde in late January is a seventeen year-old girl, wrapped inadequately against the Parisian chill. She’s wearing a black leather pencil skirt and new kitten heels. Her lips are red, her hands are tight fists in her pockets, and her jaw is clenched to keep from crying.

By her side is another girl – a girl she considered a friend until barely half an hour ago, when her tongue unwound with alcohol. Looking back, she’ll recognize that the chasm opened up earlier that night; the moment a man with stubble that tickled her ear looked past one to the other, but then, in the moment, the change seemed swift and sudden.

Because the other girl is telling her precisely where her numerous faults lie. She is both too much, and not enough, in every possible way.

The girl in her new shoes doesn’t yet know that angry words reveal more about the speaker than the recipient, and that this early morning will be significant only on a flickering screen somewhere in the future. She hasn’t even heard this song, but it’s for her nonetheless. It holds the quiet calm of equilibrium; the place where each new strike can be absorbed without shaking, every blow shrugged away as the distinct episodes that they are. Reverie is the right word – a drift of wistful regret; the lilt of chords; scattering cymbal. Rise and falls reined in to a steady frequency.

But this girl is still unsteady, and so up the Champs Elysees she walks, past the dignified iron gates of foreign diplomats, past the bare winter trees strewn with stars, past the lone couples insulated against the winds with nothing but intimacy. And all the time, the diatribe beside her continues.

Not enough. Never enough. Always too much.

Don’t worry about her. She’ll be just fine. Already a contrary voice is whispering in her head, reminding her that maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s them. Maybe this is always more about them. See how she smothers a rebellious smile as the blonde drips with false sympathy?

She’ll be just fine.

Download
The rest of the material from the now-defunct band is available for free download at a fansite, or to buy from New Music Canada
If you aren’t yet swayed, try Cascade

Nelly Furtado - Maneater

2006-02-13T12:12:00.000Z

“She’s a maneater/ Make you work hard/ Make you spend hard/ Make you want all/ All her love.”

What’s this? I cry, falling on the shiny, new aural package as if I can’t quite believe it’s not a mirage sent to taunt my pop-starved mind. Is the drought over? Is there a new track worth talking about for its own sake and not the various hi-jinx of tabloid thrum? Say it’s so!

Hyperbole is necessary, you have to understand. How long I’ve waited for something to break the tedium; month after month of old playlists, good pop – old pop – until even a blur of Robyn and the Veronicas and JC Chasez and OKGo and the TeenPeople Hollywood spreads start to loose their sparkling lustre. And now, just when I was loosing all faith in the pop gods, here they offer something to inspire and excite, to get me pulled into the simple arrangement and wonder at that perfect construction. Bless you, Nelly! Be praised, Timbaland!

Because hell,this is worth some attention. From the opening vocal harmony, heralding with ominous subtlety then suddenly exploding into vivid petrol technicolour with that drive of synth, it’s something. Nelly’s voice turning on that knife edge into sleazy scrawl, so the chorus of fuller sound and purer notes is unexpected but a perfect fit. Tumbling harmonies layered into a melody with it’s own force, more carefully constructed, delicate even, with that same bubble of beats and occasional cymbal burst, but new electro stardust dropping in – just a touch, the neon sprinkle pulling you from an opposite direction to the low baritone hum so you rise and fall with the breath of the main pitch.

And back to that basic synth drive, because it’s the gravity around which all else revolves. Inexorable force of beat and bass, dirtied and low so her vocals drift just a fraction above the gutter. Seamless to the end.

Pink - Stupid Girls (Video stream)

2006-01-25T15:08:00.000Z

“Outcasts and girls with ambition/ That’s what I want to see."

So the music’s nothing special (think ‘Most Girls’ monotony rather than ‘Get the Party Started’ bounce) but I’ve got to applaud Pink on her good intentions. J-Simpson, MK, La Lohan et al: it’s a veritable SNL skit of tabloid-worthy behaviour, and, unlike Jewel’s sell-out faux-ironic 'Intuition' video, there’s actual humor in this one - albeit the inflatable bra variety.

Because it’s true. She may dress it up in spoof costumes and fake tan, but100lb blondes being praised for their cokearexic figures and healthy work-out regimes isn’t really the vision of an empowered gender I want. Size fourteen is not fat. Food is not the enemy. Go watch Marilyn Monroe in ‘Some Like it Hot’ and think about where the hell we are as a society when flesh is scorned for bone and our conception of beauty is so fucking screwed that it takes actual effort for me not to be seduced into working out five times a week, or taking some warped kind of pride in the attainment of a perfectly flat stomach.

Yeah, I know. Another feminist rant. But come on people, doesn’t it say enough that these rants are still relevant? That their content has barely changed in half a damn century? If it all really was a craftily-orchestrated conspiracy to inspire women to loathe their basic selves, then at least there would be some sense to it. But really, it’s just the basic fabric of our world – and isn’t that the saddest thing? Oh, right, sorry. Just laugh at the silly video.

(And don’t even get me started on those Amnesty ‘public opinions about rape’ surveys – I’m still in denial.)

Morningwood - Nth Degree

2006-01-25T09:15:00.000Z

"Uh-oh/ Here we go/ Turn up the radio/ Come on everybody/ To the Nth degree!"

Are you a cooler-than-thou hipster? Do you long for pop music you can love without losing your ‘cred’? Does trying to explain your adoration of Annie and Robyn leave your American Apparel post-feminist panties in a twist (“Yes, Annie is blonde and Nordic but not really pop. Sure, Robyn was a packaged princess back in the 90s, but now she’s got status. On her own indy label and everything!”)

Your search is over, my troubled friend. Introducing the pop moment even you can publicly applaud. See how there are all those real instruments! Look, they’re a band! With ex-Beastie Boys credentials! Gil Norton produced, and you can’t get any more authentic and worthy than those Pixies dudes, right?

Umm.
So. What?

Exactly. If you have any sense at all (and hair that doesn’t routinely take twenty minutes of artful coiffing every morning), that pedigree will have left you entirely unmoved. But fear not, for there is actual brilliance to back that MTV2-friendly allure! Really? Truly? Honestly?

Why yes! Think synthetic coos of lovingly over-produced and insanely infectious joy. Think jubilant chanting. Think pouting attitude. Think plastic, shiny, melodic, focus-group-tested, demographically divine, pre-teen-friendly, co-ordinated-dance-routine-able, ‘if we’re going to debate the substance of pop then this is more pop than Britney’, start bouncing around with the elation of it all sheer brilliance.

Of course, the poor band didn’t actually get the memo that this was a very good thing indeed and so the rest of the album is packed with that whole noisy-disco-yell-electro-can-I-be-Peaches-or-at-the-very-least-Karen-O? rigmarole, but never mind. We know all too well that pure pop perfection is but a morsel of sugar-rush bliss on our adhd singles-only tongue.

Taste. Treasure. Discard.

Drop on by theirMySpace
Buy the album from Target

All hail Edward O'Kulicz

2006-01-04T23:38:00.000Z

Without a doubt, the definitive, best-written, most thoughtful and engaging 2005 list of them all.

Rosie Thomas - Wedding Day

2006-01-02T11:46:00.000Z

I’ve been here before.

Haven’t we all? A new year comes around and we take a moment, hoping that this will be the year we actually get a handle on things. Some energy or control or movement beyond this. I’ve certainly been here before; trying to articulate my eternal devotion to this song, and – as usual – I shall probably fail. But that’s OK. Because this time it’s not about the melody or bridge; the sunshine on my skin despite snowfall and chilled lips. This is the time of year to bring out my manifesto again. So here it is.

I will be brave. I will be adventurous. I will make sure I am prepared enough to be spontaneous. I won’t let the eventual zero-sum nature of everything deter me from the experience. I will remember that I’ll be OK in the end. I will try to remember that people usually tell you the truth, you just choose not to listen.

Rosie knows how it works; the need for momentum, the literal drive forwards over well-worn terrain until we reach the new – the green light in the distance, some kind of steadier footing. We don’t need the concrete plans – the bullet-point, time-spaced itineries which fail to understand just how random this world is. We just need to remember what we can plan to achieve in our own little corner, and what is utterly beyond our control. Which is most of it, to be honest. There’s something in the pictures she paints with these words that make me dream of Sabrina Ward Harrison prints, overflowing with vivid colour but taken with a fragile, pained eye. A restless pace, a feeling I long for, and which finally, this year, I might just find.

This year, the world will open up to me, I pledge each time. This time I’ll be ready for it; training wheels off, pen at the ready. Maybe this year, it’ll be true.

Buy ‘When We Were Small’ from the Subpop store.
Visit Rosie’s MySpace and main site

So, yes...

2005-12-26T22:38:00.000Z

Apologies for the downtime.

I've been having a little legal problem which means this site is going to need some serious re-evaluation. Sigh. Unfortunately, I don't know if or how Poptext will proceed in the New Year. It may even mean - gasp - an end to my hosting and return to those text-only posts of old.

Who would still have love for me without the shiny new mp3s?

Stars - Look Up

2005-12-16T11:22:00.000Z

“So far/ Keeping it together has been enough/ Look up/ Rain is falling/ Looks like love.”

I don’t like winter. Wet, dark, cold. Christmas means nothing to me, save the memory of blended family trauma, gift angst and more television than usual. But this year is different. This year, I’ve decided to happily submit to the world of carolling, mulled wine and brisk winter walks; scarves thick, icy breath, seasonal cheer and all.

Perhaps this is premature, a Spring melody to rouse you from hibernating slumber. Or necessary – melodic strings bringing a shimmer of spark to tired limbs. Slowly you unfurl beneath those heavy blankets and pull back the drapes. It’s tempting, so tempting to stay wrapped away from the world, but sweet, deep cello is calling you out and a soothing voice shows you the sunshine still fighting weakly against the chill.

Simple, sweet. Reminding me what I'm here for. It’s time to emerge.

Download
Bonus - ’He Lied About Death’
Buy ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ and ‘Heart’ from Arts and Crafts

Popbytes

2005-12-14T23:58:00.000Z

Overcome with the urge to splash, nay, frolic in a vast ocean of indie? Music For Kids Who Can’t Read Good have their end-of-year list up, a veritable bounty of mp3s from Sufjan, Rogue Wave, the Decemberists and Spoon, to name but a few.

“Have you heard the JCB song?” my sister eagerly asks. I roll my eyes. Christmas number one contender? I have terrifying visions of another Ministry of Sound affair with, you know, thongs and vibrating machinery. But no! It’s a twee and adorable ode to skipping school to ride around with dad on his tractor. And yes, it’s a little too earnest for my usual liking, but say it with me: Ahhhh.

Watch the sweet lil' video or stream audio via The Hype Machine and have your Scrooge-like heart melted.

Finally, dubious about the new Microsoft- MTV URGE project launching next year? Well maybe the calibre of bloggers finally getting their (well-deserved) paychecks will sway you. Jessica '’Tiny Lucky Genius’' Hopper will lead the "punk/alt/indie/hardcore/underground" blog; Julianne ’Cowboyz and Poodlez’ Shepard does R'n'B, and Matthew ’Fluxblog’ Perpetua will run rock/pop etc. Good luck in overcoming that wma-only thing!

Rilo Kiley - Portions for Foxes

2005-12-14T15:04:00.000Z

“I’ve got blood in my mouth/ ‘Cause I’ve been biting my tongue all week/ I’ve been talking trash/ But I never say anything.”

I’m not sure how I got to this late in the year without posting this; maybe because it’s such an understated, slow-build creation, or perhaps because I don’t engage with it in the same immediate ‘squeee’ manner of the fluxpop. There isn’t the emotional pull of the deeper stuff, nor even the hip-shake jaunt some chord progressions get me with. No, this one connects straight to that knowing smile as we all listen to “And the talking leads to touching/ Then the touching leads to sex/ And then there is no mystery left.” with a rueful nod. It’s my mind which is so pleased; that analytical distance of self-awareness which smiles along.

As a song, of course, it’s effortlessly pleasant: sliding along with the delightful ringing melodies and all. But see, it’s all in that perfect, petulantly resigned delivery. The metal bite of lyrics, the faint bitterness and acceptance – crafting the sophisticated whole. You toy with your cocktail garnish as you listen to your friend tell the same old story; dark wood, elegant beads and prerequisite sarcastic banter. But even sitting there, you’re aware of the clichéd scene you’re participating in – and no matter how jaded you feel, there’s no escaping it. You’ll reapply your lipstick and make eye contact with the suit by the bar, and next week you’ll be the one sitting opposite, telling all with a wry grin as you swear it will be different next time.

I sometimes wonder how a few thousand years of human development is change at all when the stories essentially stay the same.

Download
Buy ‘More Adventurous’ from Amazon

Republica - Ready To Go

2005-12-12T17:30:00.000Z

“I’m back/ And ready to go/ From the rooftops/ Shout it out.”

“I just got to that point,” she said, “And then I shut down. I didn’t care anymore.”

That’s what drives this determined beast of jubilation. That moment. That half-inch conceptual shift from wading in the mire of emotional fallibility to freedom. That leap from ‘oh god, please’ caring to get-out-of-my-life utter ambivalence. It doesn’t come when you need it, that’s for sure, but god, its arrival is always met with overdue satisfaction. Not happiness, or joy, but a tighter grip of grim, inevitable pleasure.

Sure, there’s the drawl and attitude and mid-90s retro-trip, but there’s also that measured chord intro and soft murmur of vocals breaking out into a crash of synth and darker drag riff; jubilation in slow-build exclamations; head-toss poseur rhyme patterns.

I don’t really remember Britpop. Men in hats with guitars and ego bedswapping with Justine Frischman, right? But this kinda makes me want to.

Download
Bonus - ’Drop Dead Gorgeous’
Buy ‘Ready to Go’ from Amazon UK

Air - Run

2005-12-09T20:35:00.000Z

"Stay with me/ I feel sad/ When you run."

This song is winter. Even if the heavy tones rang out over green trees and warm, midday sunshine, I’d still be transported to a world of shivers and morning frost with a flicker of those ominous beats. Just the opening arrangement is enough to chill any passion or excitement from you, early dark nights creeping in with such foreboding that you pull blankets tighter around you. Hibernate.

And then the softening, initial haunting terror melting into chords more comforting – a transient lull in the dark – but it’s too late to shake that fear.

This is music of profound discomfort. Boundaries being pushed; personal issues ringing out. Veronica Mars, series 2, episode 8. The song backing the most disturbing discovery about a confined space since Wesley enjoyed his powertrip back in the Angel days. Oh, the art of the soundtrack.

Download
Buy ‘Talkie Walkie’ from Amazon

Popbytes

2005-12-08T14:23:00.000Z

The ever-dependable Sean rounds up his songs of the year at Said the Gramophone – with mp3s and everything! In other words, if for some inconceivable reason, you still don’t have a copy of Robyn’s ‘Be Mine!’ or Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’ (because this is obviously the first time you have ever read an audioblog this year), you can obtain one immediately and avoid the virtual pointing and laughing that will otherwise commence.

Elisabeth has an excellent essay on her Songs for the Dumped at PopMatters, including The Walkmen, Spoon and Lyle Lovett.

Elsewhere in this season of rampant list-making, The Hype Machine – an uber-aggregator of mp3 blogs – has their 52 (indie!) tracks of choice.

Abs - 7 Ways

2005-12-07T20:28:00.000Z

“Loaded conversation and bad TV/ Losing our original chemistry/ Walking like I’m dancing on priceless art/ There are seven ways of breaking my heart.”

Ex-boybander in somewhat interesting solo record shocker! Yes, the one from 5ive – (no, not the one with bad foundation; no, not the one who looked more like Shrek than Danny Hear’say; no, not the scary one in a trenchcoat) – who at the time seemed like the boy least likely, actually turned out to be… the boy least likely. OK, so that first incredulous solo record event can be followed up with a ‘decent pop record in chart flop’ shocker too. Even with the monochrome colour scheme. Oh the shame!

Because as Ed O points out, this is Xenomania doing the Streets, only, instead of a nauseating anthem of monotonous misery for emotionally crippled men to sob into their pints of lager to, it’s actually good. With a perfectly understated melancholy and that delicious string refrain; the female vocals hushed and fragile, resignation with a light touch.

Download
Bonus: ’Stop Sign’ - Bounce and sax and synth.
Buy ‘Abstract Theory’ from Amazon UK

The Walkmen - The Rat

2005-12-04T18:28:00.000Z

“You’ve got a nerve to be asking a favour/ You’ve got a nerve to be calling my number.”

When I was younger, I was so much less aware of my taste. Head swaying to teen bands in a church basement; mixtapes on the free-house-party stereo – paint in an X at the end of a country driveway and there I would be, nodding along uncertain; sure that I didn’t quite ‘get’ the sound, not so sure I shouldn’t. I knew something was missing in all that sound, I just didn’t yet know that something was a tighter chord progression, or a vocal that didn’t stretch so far for the top notes, or better production, or less of it.

Now, the other extreme; my refined critic’s ear, with demanding taste to match. Now I won’t settle for filling my soundground with anything but the good stuff: “Another year and a decent producer,” I sigh, patronisingly over the sound of a baby band still forming their muscle. But maybe I’m missing something in the hyper-awareness – the same way there’s something wonderful in knowing only that you like the song, nevermind why.

Would have I appreciated this in the same way back then: undiscerning, instinctive, uninformed?

But how I relish having every critical instinct rewarded the way this does. The sheer ferocity of the sound is something to behold – from immediate reaction, from considered thought. The curve of crescendo, such irresistible swoop of chords and crash and crazed intensity. The inevitable haunt of nostalgia reminding you that you can never go home, because home doesn’t exist anymore for the person you’ve become. Maybe my joy would have been purer, but this appreciation – rolling the sound around inside my mind as if tasting wine – suits me just fine for now.

Download
Bonus: ‘Little House of Savages’
Buy ‘Bows and Arrows’ from Amazon UK

Skye Sweetnam - Hypocrite

2005-12-01T03:03:00.000Z

“Angst schmangst/ No thanks/ Hope my record doesnt tank!”

God, I love these brat-pop anthems; evoking every memory I never had of that petulant head-toss youth. Wrist-bands and thick eyeliner; tantrums, tears and detention. I never was one for rebellion. I missed the bad crowd – I was more the straight A’s, reluctantly stereotyped teacher’s pet. Sure, I didn’t want to be so damn straight-laced, but when it came to the rule-breaking? My poor conscience couldn’t take it!

And god, isn’t this a sugar-rush kick to the brain? Not merely pounding, whiny teen angst, but pounding, whiny teen angst with cheerleader yells and meta!

That drum loop! The self-aware lyrics! The intake growl of ‘I’! But oh, the rushing crescendo of drilled electro chords and thrumming riff, and then her vocal repetition – by the time the ‘hey hey!s’ kick in, aren’t you just a slave to it?

Download
Bonus: ’Number One’
Buy ‘Noise From the Basement’ from her iStore

Videodrome: The Click Five - Catch Your Wave

2005-11-30T08:32:00.000Z

"Well every princess has her knight/ And I'm still in it for the fight/ Not giving in/ I'm gonna win/ Win/ Win."

Despite the dubious anthem of menstrual-love itself, there’s so much smugness here that needs to be forgiven. The hair, for a start. That white-suit sky-jump styling. And then the person who deemed crawling out of cupboard space to be a compelling video moment. But you know what? Just tell me the fact you can burst into ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ over the chorus isn’t redemption enough! Ah, at last – the modern emo-pop derivation with a 60s melody I can get behind; because McFly are just too, you know, jangly.

Honestly, this band needs to accept that they are just a great covers act. ’Lies’? ’I Think We’re Alone Now’? Exactly.

Download
Watch
Buy ‘Greetings From Imrie House; from Amazon

Happy Birthday to Me...

2005-11-29T09:03:00.000Z

So it turns out that a year has passed since that fateful day when I first thought ‘Wouldn’t it be kind of fun to have somewhere to write about good pop?’ I won’t get all sincere and say how much this has actually brought into my life; instead, I’ll give you some of the songs and posts which I’ve enjoyed the most. Tis the season for those end-of-year lists anyway…

(All mp3 files are live)

Robyn – Be Mine
Clor – Love + Pain
Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone
Laura Cantrell – 14th Street
The Faders – No Sleep Tonight
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Me and Mia
Willy Mason – Oxygen
Vanessa Carlton – White Houses
Jimmy Eat World – A Praise Chorus
Rachel Stevens – Negotiate With Love

Imogen Heap - Headlock

2005-11-27T19:05:00.000Z

“You say too late to start/ Got your heart in a headlock/ I don’t believe any of it.”

I didn’t realise how much of life I lead instinctively until it was two am and words were falling from my mouth that a year ago, it would have been inconceivable to utter out loud. It’s not just that I trust my emotions, it’s that now I think I understand the cost of over-ruling them with reason and habit. Those structures of interaction we inherit and never seem to break free from; I know now the damage they do in a way that my teenage self was still figuring out.

So they way that I respond to this song – to Imogen’s music - on such an instinctive level makes it that much harder to vocalise. The way she builds that reality; so subtly layered with powerful cello undertone and the rush of synthetic bass – it just seems to trip along my neural paths in a way that goes beyond what can be analysed with an apt phrase or two.

Usually, when I can’t form the coherent thought to express myself, I ramble – hoping that my excess of words will somehow align themselves in the air in front of me, shaping some clarity from the confusion. But this pulls me back into silence; away from the words that build my world, into nothing but the ring of blood in my body and god, that sense of possibility.

Download
Bonus: ’Daylight Robbery’
Buy ‘Speak for Yourself’ from her iStore

Nickel Creek - Best of Luck

2005-11-24T08:43:00.000Z

“Don’t touch/ Don’t look/ Don’t feel/ Best of luck.”

I don’t forgive easily. Actually, to tell the truth, I don’t forgive at all. The past is such a messy place, weighed down with sum totals of emotion to be cautiously stepped around in path towards the elusive ‘letting go’. Each slight is an indelible mark I can only hope to scribble over; at least the further I get from them, the easier it is to melt away the memory. And every awkward evasion, every angry hiss is bound up in the way Sara spits “It should have ended there/ But I forgot I wasn’t eighteen.”

There’s such satisfaction when you feel a band has finally come of age; emerging from light musings with a fruition of jagged chords and haunting melodies that drive their hollow rage deep through you. Pinched notes ringing static; the crash of instrumental tide. Every note it pulled taut, a grind of cello base clashing the high pick of banjo. Their harmonies are always a joy, but this… This is so full of resentment and softly spoken rage, it’s delicious.

Download
Bonus: ’Somebody More Like You’.
Buy ‘Why Should the Fire Die?’ from Amazon

Videodrome: Gwen Stefani - Luxurious

2005-11-22T21:10:00.000Z

"We're luxurious/ Like Egyptian cotton/ We're so rich in love/ We're rollin' in cashmere."

No, no, NO!

Gwennie, darling, sweetie, dearest? Step away from the piñata!

See, I’d like to take you on a little journey through my ideal pop world. In that place – that special place – the current single is actually ’Bubble Pop Electric’. And instead of the land of acrylic nails and hideous fruity fashion, it’s the 1950s. The Harijuku girls are in poodle skirts; Gwen's makign out with Jonny Vulture in the back of a red convertible at the drive-in; there are waitresses on roller-skates. And, more to the point, the music is actually crazy-blissful good.

Isn’t that world a better place than this?

Watch

Fan 3 - Geek Love

2005-11-22T10:48:00.000Z

“I wouldn’t call him fly/ Suspenders and a bow tie.”

Ah, the universal woe of the geek. Mocked and derided for much of their schooldays, legend would have it that these boys emerge from the cocoon of alienation with strength and chivalry, ready to sweep in and rescue women when they finally tire of their Jordan Catalano’s and are ready for real love and intimacy.

Sure. Truth is, it’s the former geeks we’ve got to worry about most, since they’ve usually channelled every moment of hurt and rejection into misogynistic fury that gets unleashed in their eternal quest to rid themselves of those stood-up, let-down memories. If we dropped by to see what poor Brian Crackow was up to nowadays, he’d be a bitter shadow of his former (obsessive, stalker) self*; copy of ‘The Game’ in one hand, mirror in the other. Steer well clear, girls.

If only Fan were on hand to disarm the bastards-in-training with her sweet ode. She likes your straight As! She digs your lack of style! She’ll ignore her friends when they ‘behove’ her to abandon you! And all to dulcet tones of elevator mood music. Bless.

* Aside from the fact he actually is a muscular, Roswell lothario

Download
Bonus: ’Boom’. Um. Yes. Odd, isn’t it?
Buy ‘Fan 3’ from the Fan 3 site

A1 - Same Old Brand New You

2005-11-20T21:42:00.000Z

“You know it doesn’t turn me on/ Singing that same old song/ You don’t want to find me gone/ Gone/ Gone, gone, gone.”

Oh man, even though it’s only four years old, doesn’t this just transport you back into a blissful world of late 1990s pop? You remember: those days long before superior production and the superpowers of Kelly and the Girls and Rachel made pop a valid cultural choice. Back when it really was just pre-teens and gay clubbers who could legitimately consume this kind of crazy camp nonsense without shame. In the olden days, you really had to own your pop love without the handy, post-ironic veil. You were stranded in the deathly uncool domain of kitsch with no popstarz to save you; no underground mp3 collectives to validate your rebel status. There weren’t even any real blogs!

But, oh, you had A1! The bargain-basement punchy synth beats, those 90s-drenched harmonies – I can practically see the robo-god dance-thrust routines gyrating before me in a haze of coordinated denim and skintight vests! And damn, but they could construct a pitch-perfect piece of cherry-pop pie. (Think they’re unworthy of such alliteration? Take a listen, my dears, and think again).

Isn’t the bridge here an art form? Doesn’t the “Same old lie/ One more time/” quick repetition transcend the boundaries of traditional taste? And the vo-coders! The ‘Up a key!” two-thirds joy! Listen and weep, my friends; weep for the days when this kind of song actually got to number one.

Download
Bonus: ’First to Believe’. Oh. My. God. This is pretty much the most exceptionally, joyfully, gaily fantastic epitome of divine dance disco-pop love. Ever!
Buy ‘The A List’ from Amazon UK

Something For the Weekend - Tyler James / The Dead 60s

2005-11-18T12:42:00.000Z

Tyler James – Foolish

This guy manages to swing the whole nu-lounge-jazz-lite revolution thing with enviable amounts of style; mainly because he thinks he’s the spotlight-steady, swoonsome star of his own existence, rather than, say, the twenty-something with a questionable moustache and that redundant cover of ‘Your Woman’. Still, the pouting smirk of a vocal and jittering beat manage to outweigh those damn Xtina ‘I can sing, me’ gymnastics he throws in at the end.

Download
Bonus: ’Why Do I Do?’.
Buy ‘The Unlikely Lad’ from Amazon UK

The Dead 60s – Riot on the Radio.

Do I like this…

a) Because it’s the sound of the new, authentic, and totally innovative ROCK REVOLUTION that’s sweeping my fair nation?
b) Because, like, omg, the singer is sooooooo hott!?
c) Because that jangle of riff and relentless pace is really rather spectacular?

Download
Buy ‘The Dead 60s’ from CD Wow

Mindy Smith - Come To Jesus

2005-11-17T00:01:00.000Z

"Child/ When life don’t seem worth living/ Come to Jesus/ Let him hold you in his arms.”

Years of stained glass sermons and disapproving glares drove the religion out of me. Hard wooden pews and endless repetition of phrases that meant nothing but somebody else’s control. I would sit in church and breathe the echoing calm before the tirade; beautiful buildings ruined by ugly words.

Then came logic and reason, arguments and awareness. Cynicism, even. If I couldn’t have faith in mere mortals, then what good would it do me to trust an abstract being? Philosophical texts undermining every argument; deep suspicion of such a destructive thing.

Explicitly religious songs make me incredibly uneasy; again, the dilemma of content versus form – hot beats and all. I can’t help but feel preached to, unable to immerse myself in the music because of my fundamental rejection of the message. But then there’s the child in me who prayed every night for eight years even though she knew she had no reason to. The part of me that longs for the comfort of belief – the certainty and resolution people seem to draw from foreign metaphysical realities. Castles in the air that somehow give such a solid foundation.

Somehow this song transcends my every objection and cuts straight to that spiritual need. Warmth, strength, security – every reassurance bound up in her poignant vocal and powerful refrain. I can believe in her vision of a God, the usual platitudes here ringing true instead of hollow, because her message here is the very essence of what religion should be about, before the fear and hatred infects it. Something beautiful, something precious.

Download
Bonus: ’It’s Amazing’ (it is).
Buy ‘One Moment More’ from her web store

My Chemical Romance - I'm Not Okay (I Promise)

2005-11-16T09:05:00.000Z

“What will it take to show you that it's not the life it seems?/ I told you time and time again/ You sing the words but don't know what it means.”

I’m late to the party, but I made it here in the end. They didn’t want me: chasing me away with their goth antics and scary eyes, so convincing in their ‘We’re alternative angry music, we are!’ act that I foolishly accepted their claims of wrath and misery. Oh how wrong I was! Not until I was bouncing around the room in crazy dance-mode that the pop genius of this song finally dawned on me.

That’s right, pop genius. With bounce and drama and hip-jaunt poise. Yeah, yeah – I know they want to be all tragic and serious and stuff, but alienation angst just doesn’t fly when the end result inspires such joyful leaping!

The melodic drive of the chord progression; the air guitar solo; that slow hand-clap section, it’s all so wonderously hyperbolic. They may well be wallowing in desolation, but by god they’re going to do it to excess! I don’t know if they meant for it to have this effect on me – like I doubt Cameron Crowe wanted to have his audience rolling in the aisles with inappropriate ‘E-Town’ laughter – but surely the unexpected pleasures are that much more precious?

Sing it with me: “All the/ Small things!”

Download
Bonus: ’Ghost of You’.
Buy ‘Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge’ from Amazon

Miranda Lambert - Kerosene

2005-11-15T10:14:00.000Z

“Forget your high society/ I’m soaking it in kerosene/ Line them up/ And watch them burn/ Teach them what they need to learn/ Ha!”

True anger and arbitrary cruelness are hard to find in mainstream media, at least with a female attached; sure, we get emotional and distressed, or righteous and principled, but where’s the reality? The rage. The violence. The regret-free vengeance.

Exactly.

The characters I find most compelling are always the women who deal with their darkness, who don’t run screaming from the concept that they might occasionally want to inflict pain without melting into a pool of guilt afterwards. The Faiths. The Veronicas. The women who may even take pleasure from it. Which is why this song is such a delight, cutting through her legacy of insipid balladry with a harsh nasal vocal you don’t find much in commercial country anymore – aggressive and sullen, and more to the point, ohso magnificently angry.

Underpinned with raw drum thrust and ragged banjo, the vitriol is clear and insistent. So seductive is her power that you barely notice there’s no chorus to speak of. Me – with my love of the crescendo, the surge of ‘You make me want to LALA!’ or “I’m not HOKAAAY!’ – is happy to take her ‘I’m giving up on love/ ‘Cause love’s given up on me’ caveat, not even more than a repetition and then the harmonica instrumental solo!

(It’s almost enough to make me forgive her for ‘Me and Charlie Talking’)

Download
Watch the fantastic Video
Bonus: "If loving you's the death of me/I want to die".
Buy ‘Kerosene’ from Amazon

Lene - It's Your Duty (Shake Your Booty)

2005-11-14T08:36:00.000Z

“Some people are born to shut up/ And sit behind a desk/ Some people are born to be safe/ And cannot take a risk.”

‘What’s the point of this?’ I get asked. ‘What’s the end result?’ The thing is, I’m not sure there is one. I don’t take ad money; I don’t tend to post what the labels want me to. Aside from the accidental odd freelance gig I’ve been approached for, this place is entirely about the mission of pop: the pleasure I get from knowing I’ve just introduced an amazing song into somebody’s life, despite the fact they may want to write off the entire genre wholesale out of misguided principle.

That isn’t to be underestimated. There are people – a hell of a lot of people – who don’t know who Robyn is. Haven’t heard Rachel Stevens’ album tracks. Wouldn’t recognise a Clor song; or refuse to listen out of a notion that mainstream pop is nothing but a genre of Westlife crap. Sure, they aren’t the majority of you reading; you are the fluxogram early-adopters. But finding it is half the battle – Petridis went in search and all he found was Pitchfork and MySpace. The hot party is harder to find, but worth the search. This is the good stuff – the joyful, transient moments that enrich and inspire me. I think about how much this music has brought to my life, just by being there to soundtrack my existence – and I don’t even listen to the pop for most of the time. Pushing these songs out into the ether is for my personal satisfaction alone. Never heard that Broken Social Scene before I posted it? Derive even the tiniest amount of pleasure from it? Then my work is kind of done.

Take Lene. She should be known – after all, there was Aqua. There was writing the masterpiece of 'No Good Advice'. There was a video with neon and secretaries and red leather. But no, her songs languish in the forgotten realms of pop, even magnificence such as this. Oh, relish with which she smirks! The thrust and slow drive of purpose and flippant pointlessness! So… She’s my gift to you today. And you probably won’t be changed forever by these four minutes, but maybe the song I post tomorrow will do it.

Download
Bonus: ’Surprise’.
Buy ‘Play With Me’ from CD Wow for ridiculously little. Like, ‘£5/$8 with free delivery’ ridiculously little.

Something For the Weekend - The Futureheads / Lady Sovereign

2005-11-11T09:01:00.000Z

The Futureheads – Area

Stopgap single before the next album, it’s simply laden with the ‘do do do’s’ and trademark harmonies that make these chaps one of the more interesting ‘wohoo, angular British guitars!’ acts out there. Jaunt! And shouty bits! And general goodness!

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Buy ‘Area’ from iTunes

Lady Sov – Addidas Hoodie

"Look that young woman, Lucinda, She’s so cute! How tiny, how adorable! See, not all the youth of today are foulmouthed, corrupt young… But, isn’t that a hooded jumper I see? And, now that I think about it, doesn’t she look… poor? Like one of those filthy council estate children we have to pass on our way home? RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!" Ahem. I’ve got to applaud the girl for distilling Middle England’s fear of the underclass into a song that’s actually about having a lil’ dance despite the fact people don’t like your clothes. Don’t you see? Not just anti-ASBOs as a tool of class oppression, but a rallying cry against scenester preoccupation with club aesthetics over musical experience! Or, something like that.

Download
Bonus - ”Get Random’ with the laziest vocal.
Buy ‘Hoodie’ from iTunes

Rosie Thomas - Pretty Dress

2005-11-10T08:51:00.000Z

“Everyone will laugh/ They’ll point fingers at you/ And be cruel/ But come a few years and they’ll listen/ Because you’ll know much better than them/ Someday.”

I don’t think we ever outgrow our former selves, as much as we might desperately try. That vision of the person we used to be will always linger in the back of our minds, pushing us on to be so much more, or holding us back with whispered insecurities. I cling onto things long after I should; years have passed since that friendship or this betrayal, and although I might have managed to put them aside – drain them of their pain or significance – they’re still there. Shadows; barely alive; but still there. Another motivation to succeed, more hollow than the rest, because I will never see acceptance or praise from those people in my lifetime – no matter how much I want them to validate the person I’ve struggled to become.

I love Rosie unconditionally as an artist because I find her songs always make me believe in a different world, just for a little while. The world where cruelty is punished, strength rewarded, and everything really will be alright in the end. The lilt of soft melody; the elegant sweep of strings. Her voice soothes me with promises of justice and precious emotion, an almost maternal voice of reason wiping tears away and lulling hopeful children to sleep each night.

This song is fuller than most – a more confident vision that backs her fragile voice with rich composition – but still, it spins that myth and cocoons me in a warm shield of rightness. Because these are the Great Lies that kept me going, back in the weeping, mournful years of my childhood. And if I hadn’t at least believed that they was true, that “Nice little girls grow up to be homecoming queens”, then I don’t know if I would be sitting at this old wooden desk now: manuscript pages at my left, view of the deer park to my right, and an untouched stack of metaethics reading tucked away in the corner while I focus on more important things.

These things may be untrue, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for believing them.

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Bonus - ”2 Dollar Shoes’ to match that dress.
Buy ‘If Songs Could Be Held’ from Subpop
Visit Rosie

Videodrome: Shakira - Don't Bother

2005-11-08T23:13:00.000Z

Funny how the presence of a half-naked man convulsing to his death as our pop goddess coyly grins in the background can lift a good post-break-up vow of sufficiency into the league of awesome joyfulness. Instead of strings or un-IDable production squiggles, She of the Transcendent Hips employs a haunting electric riff to underpin the track with a gentle coherency; trademark beat-style and vocal layers lending their distinctive touch. And as always, the lyrics born from her strange mind command adoration.

“For you, I'd give up all I own/ And move to a communist country/ If you came with me, of course/ And I’d file my nails/ So they don’t hurt you/ I’d learn about football/ And loose those pounds/ To make you stay/ But you won’t.”

Watch the Video. Pink guitars and murder always being a good combo.
Download
Buy ‘Oral Fixation vol.2 from Amazon

Hilary Duff - Beat of My Heart

2005-11-08T10:36:00.000Z

"I want you to see/ I'm not scared to dance."

Damn those teen starlets! You – being a truly dedicated fifteen-year-old – put in the time with the dermatologist and vocal coaches, painstakingly nurturing your tumble-dried brand identity of wholesome delight until the adolescents of America clasp your anthems of empowerment and purity to their under-developed bosom. But a few years down the line, what do you find? Your fluffy, parent-friendly guitar pop has paved the way for their TV/movie-music crossovers! If it wasn’t bad enough that Lindsay stole your man (the tragedy of loosing Aaron Carter obviously causing sleepless nights and many a tear-stained pillow), now she and Ashlee are robbing you of your sound and teen angst fanbase with their risqué Leto-swapping, Ketel-fuelled shenanigans!

What’s a girl to do?

Why, embrace the uber-cool edge of the eighties synth-rock revival of course! You can’t expect mid-West pre-teens to know their Bloc Party from their Bravery, so roll out the bubbling, ominous electro guitar riffs; let rip the stuttered beats! In selecting only the finest sugar sprinklings instead of pesky self-importance, your Killers-lite is laden with enough sparkle and glee to drag even the most mournful Smiths fan away from his ‘Meat is Murder’ moping*. Bursting with lyrics of utter irrelevance and irritation, the loop drills into my mind until I’m dizzy with mindless swirl.

*In my ideal world, that is.

Download
Bonus: ’The Math’ - “If you can’t do the math/ Then get out of the equation”!
Buy ‘Most Wanted’ from Amazon

Busted - Thunderbirds Are Go

2005-11-06T20:47:00.000Z

“It always looks so cool/ When space-ships come out of the pool.”

The joyful amp-stack guitar riff leaps are no more; the boyband pop-punk crown hath been passed on, but in my mind, this trio shall live on – forever in a state of crazy prank-pulling and totally unrealistic self-perception. “But we’re a serious rock group!” they pouted, failing to make even the smallest dent on America – Charlie with his ferocious eyebrows, Matt with his Billie-Joe worship eyeliner, James with all the song-writing royalties.

Serious? I think not. And why would you want to be, with such triumphant anthems to offer the world? Bouncing with playful jaunt from the very first movie voice-over intro, I leap, I bound. Mattresses, couches, passing strangers, none are safe from my pogo antics! Oh, the frenzied string section! My, the shout-out chorus!

This is delirious pop joy of the highest order: enough to reanimate even the strung-along Thunderbirds themselves. (Anthea would be proud.)

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Bonus: ’Air Hostess’ - “I messed my pants/ When we flew over France”!
Buy ‘A Present For Everyone’ from CD Wow

Something For the Weekend - S Club Juniors / Gretchen Wilson

2005-11-04T09:21:00.000Z

S Club 8 – Sundown

Things I miss about the early ’00 pop scene:

Synchronised dance routines I always secretly wanted to learn.
Matching outfits with a two-colour scheme that rotated for every song.
Group acts with the prerequisite demographic blends of the cute one, the closeted one, the ker-azeee one.
19 Production productions
Evil svengalis who made you question parental sanity. I mean, leaving your children in a room alone with Lou Perlman or Simon Fuller?
Slick, meaningless pop that actually charted in the top 5… instead of, like, 12.
Pre-reality stage-school training grins.

Download
Buy ‘Sundown’ from Amazon UK
Bonus: ‘New Direction’ - dated but darling.

Gretchen Wilson – All Jacked Up

The girl knows about rhythm, that’s for sure. Rollicking along with jaunty twang and hip-swivel pacing, this breezes through a hard-drinking night on the town with general hi-jinx, debauchery and slick country production. Don’t drink and drive, y’all.

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Buy ’All Jacked Up’ from Amazon

Will Young - Switch It On

2005-11-03T09:22:00.000Z

"Got to/ Got to/ Got to go crazy!"

At last! No more fireside jazz-lite, no more balladeering; for one blessed single at least, the idol has rejected his crooning fall-back position in favour of crazy camp dance domination. What with the Blunts, Cullums and Jameses of the British scene stealing his Radio 2-friendly, housewives-favourite territory, the boy finally has seen the light, stripped off his cardigan and revealed the glistening, baby-oiled pecs of pop stardom lurking beneath.

So what if all he’s done is appropriate George Michealtastic riffage to serve his devious pop ends? Bouncing with furious abandon, the pared-down chords are every bit as infectious as in the original, while the chorus is underpinned by smooth bluesy notes which totally amp up his faux-whine voice. And lo! The crowning glory of a true 19 Productions track: the third verse repeat that goes up a key! My god, it’s like late nineties boyband structures all over again. Layer it on, with a speeding sax frenzy and breathless drumming until…. Well, I could just make tasteless puns about climaxing, but I’m a girl of refined linguistic tastes. Obviously.

Download. (And yes, there are 10 secs of silence at the start of the file. Patience!)
Pre-order 'Keep It On' from Amazon UK
Watch the Top Gun homoeroticism befitting an out-and-proud young man.

Videodrome - Natasha Bedingfield / Son of Dork

2005-11-02T08:59:00.000Z

Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten

There was a brand meeting, of that I’m sure. Flow charts and powerpoint presentations and laminated handouts with focus group polling. Because of course this piece of corporate motivation nonsense couldn’t have been born from an actual, creative mind. Right?

“So we’re launching her stateside. What image do we want to push for this sweet, middle-class British woman?”
“It’s about keywords. Demographic appeal. Emotive performance values.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, like, she’s fun!”
“Frolicking in corn-field fun.”
“And she’s chaste!”
“Totally Christian – so no hot make-out action.”
“But, like, flirtatious looks to some hot guy. Make her relatable!”
“And diverse! Sure, she’s making lily-white acoustic girl pop, but if we put an urban choir in, it’ll show how inclusive she is.”
“Genius.”
“Don’t forget the children and old folks!”

Watch the horror ensue at AOL music
Download
Buy ‘Unwritten’ from CD Wow

Son of Dork – Ticket Out of Loservile

So, like, this is totally a ‘reinvention for the USA market’ week! A song that isn’t so much influenced by Blink 182, as built from their bouncingly nasal skate-rat-pop-punk detritus, plus a good dose of the Busted ‘one-two-three-four!” glee. 'Lil' James has certainly learnt his lesson from the 'Busted Do America' debacle of yesteryear: the suburban, middle America-set video is nought but a homage to Star Trek geekery, jocks, cheerleaders and prom. The pesky kids rock out in their garage! They get beaten up by football players! They wear NFG shirts! They’re from Southend-On-Sea! In, like, Essex. Oh well, dude’s totally rocking the aesthetic.

Watch here.
Download
Visit the Son of Dork homepage and see the vision of world domination in flash graphics.

Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl

2005-11-01T08:51:00.000Z

“Used to be one of the rotten ones/ And I liked you for that/ Now you’re all gone/ Got your make-up on/ And you’re not coming back.”

Sixteen was hard. Eighteen was better. But seventeen, oh seventeen. The year of finding my utopia and sinking as low as I hope I’ll ever know. Discovering the steel it turns out I’m made of; the everyday failings in everyone else.

Scribbled short stories. Citrus sweets for exam hours. The Northern Lights trilogy in two summer days. That strapless, striped cotton dress. California. Darkrooms and bright sun. Carpeted hallways and layered bodies. My first red lipstick. Skipping economics class to take the train to the city and sit with friends, bagels and Elle magazine aspirations. Crushes on boys that never went anywhere, because they were seventeen too. Abandonment and unimaginable loneliness. A world filled with other people’s words, but no conversation. Mugs of tea in the afternoons. Feeling on the verge of tears, all day, every day. Silence. Sick, hot bouts of weeping. Unexpressed anger at men who will never knew.

Soft and slow, this song says it all. Change, loss and quiet promises; I can feel the naïve energy and simple insistence in every hushed melody.

Download
Bonus: The Big Ticket has a live version of ‘Major Label Debut’ from the new limited edition EP
Buy ‘You Forgot It In People’ from Gallery AC

Girls Aloud - Graffiti My Soul

2005-10-31T08:59:00.000Z

“Spike heels and skin-tight jeans/ I’ve got a fistful of love that’s coming your way/ Baby.”

Oh, the cultural wastelands of the reality pop world. A landscape strewn with shattered dreams, glossy highlights and dignity – the discarded Topshop outfit; the faltering Christina cover. And yet, still they come. Wooed by the siren’s song of the precious, chart-topping few; wide-eyed they wander to sacrifice themselves on the rocks of pop idolatry.

Of what worth, the rare glorious result – A thousand broken souls? Ten times that? A million? The moral philosopher is wasted on questions of medical ethics: send them to Mr Cowell and see what permissions and constraints are fit for then!

The cynic might say that Girls Aloud succeed not in spite of this dubious system, but because of it. After all, without their chart-topping, transcendent pop career, what incentive is offered the auditioning hopeful? ‘I want to be just like Reuben Stoddard’. ‘My ideal career path is that of Hear’say’. Exactly. I think not. And without their TV-constructed fanbase, would we now see a pop act so secure in their unique sound that tracks like this are unleashed on the Blunt-buying public?

Because, like ’Biology’, this song is ridiculous.

A false-start of repeated refrain and bubbling chords lulls you into expectations of melody but then that swooping synth hits, and suddenly this isn’t so jaunty anymore. Ominous screech, demanding stuttered vocals; a delicious darkness underpins this whole affair. By the time that same intro refrain returns, there are no cheery illusions left, just dirty energy and an addictive, bitter aftertaste.

The means so justify the ends.

Download
Bonus: ’Sound of the Underground’. Where it all began - with surf guitars!
Buy ‘What Will the Neighbours Say?’ from CD Wow

Something For the Weekend - Rachel Stevens / Clor

2005-10-27T23:31:00.000+01:00

Rachel Stevens – Crazy Boys

The mournful echo of this creation is utterly seductive, a divine sliver of pop superlative. Not just the pitch of vocals, or wistful lyrical content, but the way it swoops into such regretfully delicious melody; the resigned chorus ringing with heavy beats and whispered longing.

Download
Buy ‘Come and Get It’ from Amazon UK

Clor - Outlines

Ah yes, my loves, serenade me once more with your bouncing synth twiddles! Enchant me again with the tweeness of your lilting vocals! Pull me into your world of hum-along choruses and cutesy electro jangling, for I will clap in time with your delight. Each of us are, indeed, special in our own unique ways.

Download
Buy ‘Clor’ from Amazon UK

The Like - What I Say and What I Mean

2005-10-26T23:36:00.000+01:00

“I don't think I've said my goodbyes/ Sometimes I just find that they keep sneaking up from behind/ Closing up the wounds/I suppose it's supposed to take some more time.”

Winter’s coming on in a sudden shiver, but in your mind there are still bluebells and a rumpled blanket of itching green. Pulling layers tight around yourself in the early dark you remember the warmth of half a year ago, now half a world away. The present is two seasons out of synch with your heart – you don’t belong here, but ‘there’ is only an idea that exists in your mind. Something haunts your dreams, but you don’t know what it means.

Oh, that everything you feel could be clustered into these three minutes of melodic musing! The tangled threads of the past, so easily summarised in a couple of well-chosen lines; the echo of memory, but a ringing bridge and delicious chorus.

Like the breezy smile faked for sanity’s sake, there’s so much more lurking here beneath exuberant chords; a turmoil that creeps to the surface to catch you unawares – energetic rhythm giving way to brief bursts of a hollow harmony. Insistent mantra of a surging chorus – moving forward, pulled back. Left to falter in inertia, but what beautiful indecision it is.

Download
Bonus - ’Too Late’: Haunting and heavy.
Buy ‘Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?’ from Amazon
Do you like The Like?

Videodrome - Death Cab For Cutie/ Kelly Clarkson

2005-10-26T01:02:00.000+01:00

Death Cab For Cutie – Soul Meets Body

Only this band can sweep me along in such a foreign tide of twee loveliness that I feel my heart tug as wafting musical notes are cruelly snatched from their soaring skies and dragged to meet their fate on barbed wire and in cluttered gutters. Yes, that’s right – animated musical notes. Such is the soft, melodic breeze of this song, it had me rooting for the drifting freedom of imagined icons. ‘Fly!’ I willed them, ‘Be free from this world of gravity and snark!’ Oh, for a horizon and soul-shaking wind to free me from this body like them – just for a little while.

Watch
Don’t download because they’re generous with their ‘cease and desists’

Kelly Clarkson – Because of You

“I told you so!” John Mayer beams with a smug grin, “There you were, chastising me for simplistic pop psychology, and all along I was right!” Quite. Seems our Kelly bears the demographic-friendly scars of a broken home, and has primed her confessional ballad for the contemplative Christmas market. ‘Tis certainly the season to angst about fathers, what with La Lohan milking her wayward ex-guardian’s misdemeanours for all they’re worth. Anyway, Kelly loved, he left, now we’re treated to the flashback-laden moral of the story. Don’t fight, parents, it tends to fuck the kids up.

Watch
Download
Buy 'Breakaway

OK GO - Invincible

2005-10-25T08:17:00.000+01:00

“When they finally come to destroy the earth/ They’ll have to go through you first/ I bet they wont be expecting that.”

Ah, the tumultuous life of a superhero! Attempts to integrate people’s conflicting perceptions of yourself. Work – home balance issues. A sense of duty towards a set path in life that goes against some of your true desires. No wonder Clark Kent is making such a mess of things in lil’ ol’ Smallville – his Y chromosome has left him totally ill-equipped to deal.

If he were a woman, the show would have barely lasted a season. I mean, honestly – dithering for four whole years about trust issues with Lex ‘I’m going to be evil, me’ Luther? Just smile sweetly, take him to bed and be done with it, my boy! Sorry, I forgot this is the WB. Consequence-free sex is permissible only when straight and/or evil and/or under the influence of kryptorocks and/or after years of chaste and inept yearning. Silly me!

What a fruitless existence. Where’s the sense of unrestrained joy? Where’s the awe of ominous wonder? Where’s the crazy-reckless heart-skip attitude?

At least OK GO are on hand to rescue us from such timidity with their sarcastically drawled odes to destructive superwomen everywhere. As always, their chord progressions simply ooze with style; an exuberance ringing loud with enough jaunt and joi de vivre to get even Lana to crack a pedestal-worthy smile. What these men do with a chunky riff could set the world on fire – my stiletto-steps fall in time with their reality and the street runs for cover.

Download
Bonus - Do What You Want: Jauntiness is a many-splendoured thing.
Buy ‘Oh No’ from Amazon
Watch that video to ‘A Million Ways’.

The Veronicas - 4Ever

2005-10-23T19:06:00.000+01:00

“I’ve seen it all/ I’ve got nothing to prove/ Come on baby/ Just make your move.”

Ever wanted a handy pop time machine? Simply grab the act of your choice, whisk their youthful selves to the present and see what paeans to kittens and rainbows Courtney would be penning pre-Kurt. Or how about wee Connor’s more jaunty musings – “Life is lovely and I’m really very happy”? What about some Donnas, from the days when they would blow your mind, not….?

No need!

Geniis that they are, the dear Veronicas have not only settled on the perfect girl/pop/rock sound, but they’ve solved the time travel conundrum to boot. Someone give them a Nobel prize already!

Their plucked-from-thin-air name begs comparisons, of course, but it’s not just that. These girls make the kind of irresistibly infectious, pounding pop tracks I like to imagine our Donnas dreaming up, long before they were corrupted by that tawdry life of random sex and debauchery. No backseats, just cute red indie-girl beads. No JD and passing it around, just crushes and teen angst, set against a joyfully melodic backdrop of perfect harmonies and thrashing drums. And oh, the joy of an uber-riff; driving the song towards that inevitable, all-conquering chorus with a restrained power that bursts into pure, gleeful celebration.

Download
Bonus –Revolution: Did Feeder ever envisage their riff from ‘Buck Rogers’ would be appropriated to such triumphant ends?
The Veronicas MySpace
Buy 'The Secret Life of the VeronicasAmazon;iTunes

Coming Soon....

2005-10-21T17:16:00.000+01:00

Poptext relaunch.

500% more pop joy!
Proper hosting!
A mass of mp3s!
Redesign!
Regular updates!

You know you want it.
See you Monday.

Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Going Down

2005-10-17T01:01:00.000+01:00

“I’m just a notch in your bedpost/ But you’re just a line in a song.”

Sometime a girl’s just got to get her emo on.

You know what I’m saying. The time for complex interpretations of your inner landscape has passed. Throw out the Broken Social Scene playlist, friends: now it’s time for your petulant inner teen to party. Toss that imaginary fringe! Belt it out at full angst-ridden volume! Leap into the pain, my dear – harness that anger for musical good!

Melodic and crazy cool, with enough riffs and raffs and slo-mo-guitar-leaps to put even Busted to shame. This is the good stuff. Let it sweep you along in adolescent post-break-up bliss; follow the etch-a-sketch outline right the way through layers and breakdowns and power chord greatness. And that chorus! Oh, the surge; my, the infectious exuberance!

Tell me you can resist this. Tell me you ain’t yelling along as he goes down, DOWN! Tell me… Mwahaha! You know you can’t. Another anti-emoist falls at the feet of angsting greatness. My work here is done.

Dragonette - I Get Around

2005-10-14T01:53:00.000+01:00

“Here I come/ When I better go/ I say yes/ When I ought to say no.”

As is so often the way in this game, somebody else was here first, but in this case it’s a fact deliciously apt for the resigned anthem of slutastic behaviour. Want wanton ways? Want morning after blues?

Here ya go, just don’t expect this girl to be returning your calls, m’dear.

From the first burst of crunk-style synth whine, I almost expect the ubiquitous announcement that this is a Jazzy Fizzle production (Sho’ nuff!). Bring the bling and thigh-thrusting ‘empowerment’, dudes. We got us some club action. But no, what’s this? A cooing Annie iced vocal! ‘Chewing Gum’ enunciation = clear pop burst v2.0?

First impressions can be deceptive, huh? See, this is no ordinary electro-neauvaux-uber-quasi-pop artwork; it’s so much more. Artfully dancing along the jaunty indie-electro divide, the blend levels to careless, downbeat exposition. Silent slide out of a foreign bed, creeping guilty grin. Smooth it lilts to that chorus of delicious ‘where the hell’s my underwear?’ resignation; not so much regret as sweet shrugging acceptance. The loop of a single line with blissfully restrained glee.

You know how it feels.

Deep Dish - Flashdance

2005-10-12T00:16:00.000+01:00

"He hasn't met a girl like me/ Are you kidding?/ Well, I tell him that I'd rather die."

There’s a guy and a girl.

There’s always a guy and a girl. (Two guys and a girl, actually - if you want to peruse the Ryan Reynolds sitcom back-catalogue, but that’s another story.)
Feeling equals connection equals intimacy equals joy equals something falling apart at the seams, somewhere down the line. Seduction and rejection, bitterness and rage. Because amicable is a word for edited scenes on a foreign page – the world doesn’t work that way. How can it, when the drive of insistent chords keeps taunting you with the same boiling refrain?

The slow power of constrained anger in this song is a joy to behold; such taut venom, such delicious insouciance. Leave your jaunty, sweet songs at the door and paint the scene in monochromes: gun-metal grey, black reflected in petrol fumes. The world-weariness of drolly arched vocals cuts through the loop; she with the heart of glass staying deep in her dance noir lair.

This is steel in your stomach, ice water in your veins

Ashlee Simpson - Boyfriend

2005-10-06T23:34:00.000+01:00

“Hey how long/ ‘til the music drowns you out?/ You really got it wrong/ I didn’t steal your boyfriend.”

Ready? OK!

So, like, Wilmer was going out with Mandy, but now she’s with Zach and he moved onto Lindsay. But then they broke up and she started chasing after Jared, who had fooled around with Paris before she stole Mary-Kate’s boyfriend. But, like, Jared also dated Ashley who had gone out with Scott (who’s like, so old. Ewww!) and he’d been with Lindsay as well! And then Ashlee went out with Wilmer AND Scott, so, like, Lindsay’s all “wtf?” and Paris is all, “That’s so NOT hot!”, and the Olsen twins just drink their vente frappes and pout.

Got it?

Anyways, this hollaback hangs off a perfectly jaunty riff; Ashlee’s slouching vocals barely phoning in her drawled performance from a hacked Sidekick. Moody and damn danceable, that chord progression kicks you into a head-toss beat as her ‘woah woah’s, are sullen false-starts to the triumphant ‘ha!’

She ain’t sorry, she don’t care.

Black Eyed Peas - My Humps

2005-09-26T19:56:00.000+01:00

“Whatcha gonna do with all that junk/ All that junk inside your trunk?/ I’m a gonna get you drunk/ Get you love-drunk/ Off my hump.”

I don’t want to like this.

I mean, I *really* don’t want to like this. But being the inclusive, open-minded, non-popist blogger I am, I have to admit it. There’s actually a BEP track in existence I will listen to without being inspired to commit wanton acts of violence. A call to worship “lovely lady lumps”? The centre cannot hold for long after this, I’m telling you.

It’s the fact it sounds like a crazy novelty record, for a start. Divinely mindless idiocy, backed by such delicious synth action. What sub-Hollaback beats, oh the droning repetition! And Fergie – the woman whose genetic freak abs strike terror into my heart every time I lay eyes on them – finally sounding like somebody else! Cooing along like a valley-girl, I can at last pretend her muscles won’t leap out of the virtual ether and smother me with their definition.

As Anthony says – it’s almost Fannypack-esque. Except, in that case there would be a large dose of hipster irony undermining the stupidity; this way, we’re left with the dumb-assness intact.

Lisa Scott Lee - Electric

2005-09-20T18:38:00.000+01:00

"Ten thousand volts in my head ain't no way to unwind/ Watch out in case I short circuit and leave you behind."

Ah, the joys of the 3rd tier pop ‘star’.

Not for them the dizzy world of crack production teams, marketing blitzes and the front pages of Heat. Oh no, it’s obscure music channels, local Asda openings and barely scraping a top twenty chart position before being unceremoniously dropped. If they’re very lucky.

Lisa is pretty much the epitome of this dying breed: Former member of a popular 90’s dance-pop act? Steps were colour-co-ordinated, excruciatingly annoying and now utterly irrelevant. Same level partner? Jonny Shantell was briefly a late-entry member of the original Popstars reality TV band. Similarly afflicted family? Think her poor brothers, ‘3sl’ (There were 3 of them. Called Scott Lee. Don’t you see?) now long since absent from the chart scene.

But what’s this? A good, nay, great single from such a doomed breed? Surely not! As death cries go, it may not be a ‘State of Mind’, but the laden electronics and high-pitched breathlessness go a damn long way to making me hope we get an album. OK, that’s aiming a little high – how about another single?

The frantic need for success oozes from every note – not that there are many of them. This operates at the upper end of the scale, and stays there despite any conventional need to, I don’t know, vary things a tiny bit? But somehow, it works, thanks to some well placed descending ‘Uh oh oh’s (which sound everything and nothing like Beyonces) and the whispered layers which manage to elevate even a mediocre voice.

‘Tis a pity the girl has pledged to quit the industry if she doesn’t make top 10. If Rachel can hardly make it, she certainly won’t.

Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)

2005-08-25T00:22:00.000+01:00

“I can’t let go/ I can take no more/ But I want you so.”

I told you never to play my new guitar.

So there I am, wandering listlessly through the pop landscape, unable to muster even so much as a moderate ooh la la for these long hot summers, when some blessed pop angel appears as if from nowhere to throw me down, inject me with a hit of pure adrenalin and then kiss me until my mind is pure static.

Blackout spots and terror nerves; My endorphins are maxed out on the edge of chaos, strung along the drum sequence that splices ‘Some Girls’ to the point of heartbeat and showers the whole damn lot with enough space dust to make your teeth itch. This is full volume stuff – pitched loud until you feel that burn of ice and restless flicker in your hips. Until you’re sweat-drenched and bass-weary and can barely pause for breath.

Yes, now it’s loud enough.

Because it’s not until the moment it all falls away that you realise just how taut that perfect structure is stretched; beats and bass throbbing with every pulse of blood in my hyperventilating veins. And swooping over it all is the ice queen itself. Out with personality! Get thee gone, empathetic meaning! Who needs flesh and blood when you’ve got the vocoder filter fixed and languidly giving no more than nearly enough?

Throw me in the midst of this pop madness; my head is full of your noise and my heart exhausted by your need, but all I have to do is play it again to fly.

Keri Noble - Bartender

2005-08-22T22:16:00.000+01:00

“Bartender, another/ And make it a double/ I can’t go home/ I’m in some kind of trouble.”

This is for those long nights.

The empty ones that hurt in a way you can do nothing to ease; just lie and wait for it all to pass. And pass they do: while morning leaves you questioning if you ever truly felt that low. It’s a defence mechanism I never fail to marvel; how pain can be forgotten, how the heart can teach itself to forget.

Her pain is a little to polished for my liking – so measured, and even clichéd – but then the raw ache comes through pitched to breaking point, and I can see how that underlying calm is the perfect foil for the despair. I’ll forgive her the over-production because oh, that piano refrain is just laced with pure melancholy, fragile and pained.

Correction...

2005-08-18T23:01:00.000+01:00

So you wanted 'Believe in the Boogie', and all you got was '315'?

Oops.

Here ya go.

Bratz - So Good

2005-08-15T20:49:00.000+01:00

“Because the beat in our hearts/ Is the beat of the charts/ Like a spotlight breaking through.”

In no way can I take any credit for discovering this; it was in fact revealed to me by Eppy in a rambling and somewhat drunken email. Oh, that rambling and drunken emails should always be so fruitful!

It’s epic, plain and simple. A kind of epic that can only be attained by the actualisation of a set of plastic dolls. With guitars. And strings. And a slightly euro-pop M2M sweet female vocal.

Said epic-ness isn’t achieved by accident, oh no! This is as artfully constructed as Diane Warren in her glory days, Bon Jovi at the dizzy height of their powers. Opening chords; slow and hesitant, with heavy purpose and gentle lull. Then the bridge, oh, the bridge! Striding and purposeful, the suspense rises, the crescendo builds; reaching, rising until…

IT’S SO GOOD! Crashing chorus, wailing vocals! Energy and volume! Girl power and realising your dreams and believing in yourself with matching accessories and a live action movie!

Sigh. If the legions of guitar bands sprawled messily across the pop landscape could take a master-class of anthem composition, this would be the model answer. The second verse knows its part for sure: richer, more layered, serving only to link back to that bridge and strident chorus again. The guitars are the stuff of 80s rock classics alone!

Infectious, driving and wholly poptextastic.

Mark Owen - Believe In The Boogie

2005-08-09T20:34:00.000+01:00

“There’s a friend of mine/ Who’s wasting all his money/ Think he’s had his time/ Think he’s lost his mind/ Still a friend of mine/ Could have had it all/ From the Albert Hall/ To the uni ball/ How the mighty fall.”

Jauntiness + Meta = ?

I’ve got to have respect for the man. When the great and mighty British boyband of the 90s crumbled into dust, Gary disappeared into obscurity, Robbie disappeared up his own behind, Jason disappeared altogether, and Howard? Not even a day-time TV soap walk-on for the man.

But wee lil’ Mark? He’s spent the last decade churning out mildly jaunty guitar pop songs that nobody buys, and by god he’ll just keep doing so! There he is: strange faux-indie fashion styling, real instruments and all, singing blindly in wind of utter public indifference. And his voice isn’t even that good!

This one wins my instant adoration because it acknowledges exactly how insignificant he is on the pop landscape, and actually revels in said irrelevance. Plus, it really is rather divinely swooping - all energetic ‘oh oh oh oh oh’s, ‘woo woo woo’s and climbing chord progressions. And then the chorus hits, with a jagged strum and fierce optimism, and I can’t help but be swept along in this man’s peculiar vision of music karma.

Mr Owen, I salute you! Long may you give us our ‘Clementine’s, our ‘4 Minute Warning’s, our ‘315’s!

Robyn - Be Mine

2005-08-02T22:22:00.000+01:00

“And now you’re gone/ It’s like an echo in my head/ And I remember/ Every word you said.”

Download

When is a riff not a riff? Why, when it’s a tightly strummed cello sequence!
And when is a lil’ blonde popstress not a lil’ blonde popstress? When she pushes the boundaries and releases the kind of experimental, expletive-laden pop record that her label is no doubt despairing over, that’s when!

You remember the chord progression from That Song, don’t you? The one which bubbled along in the back of your brain, infectious and irresistibly seductive, underpinning every other structure they built upon it?

This is so much better!*

Harsher, deeper; afforded more texture by the fact it’s a string arrangement, so when the violins fall down in their brief swoops, they blend from opposite angles to produce an incredibly rich backdrop. And the drum programme! Staccato, irregular, layered; matched to those strings with darting pace – tense and measured and oh so delicious. And over it all, the voice of lovelorn resignation.

Time to show the girl some love again.

*OK, so maybe it’s only equal with the Clarkson brilliance, maybe this is just fresher, or maybe I simply wanted to quote Elle Woods. Whatevs.

Simone Cristicchi- Vorrei Cantare Come Biagio Antonacci

2005-07-29T12:06:00.000+01:00

Italian patriotism is a tricky issue. Partly because the country is still a barely 150 year old collaboration of 12 separate tributes that don’t trust each other, and partly because its pop cultural portfolio is somewhat less impressive than that of, say, American Samoa.

I’ve fought this battle before, and, yes, maybe part of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of those who fell off the boat straight into the New World and started with the jiggaboo paisano stereotypes for their new neighbours in order to bring in a few dirty pennies. But even so, you have to realise that Patrizio Buanne, Il Divo, and all the other greaseball-in-a-tux crooners are not Italy. Italy, to me, is the Italy of Valentino Rossi, with his Strokes-hair and Bushwick Bill stature. The Italy of La Passeggiata, of not looking where you’re going whilst driving, of Amaretto Di Saronno, arancini di riso, and Amarcord. The Italy of forgotten late 90s rom-com Roseanna’s Grave, and its punchline “Is the Mayor of New York still Italian?” “Who’d want to stop being Italian?” Italy is a country that’s justifiably proud of its past and traditions, and thanks to Berlusconi, completely unsure of its present and future.

So yeah, Simone Cristicchi. He looks perennial comedy nobody Dominic Holland, or perhaps an even more coked-up James Brown (the publishing irritant, not the funky wife-beater). He’s also come out of absolutely fucking nowhere to achieve near-constant rotation on the Italian music channels with this track. A kind of perfect distillation of why meta-pop is a good idea when done properly, and why it’s totally wasted on pop stars whose charisma invoice requires a barrel of red ink to write.

Why is it meta-pop? The title translates as “I Want To Sing Like Biagio Antonacci”. Who he? Biagio Antonacci was one of the star attractions at the Italian Live 8, and a pretty valid argument for ignoring Italian pop music entirely. A man with a passion for over-singing every note possible, and a back catalogue suited solely to providing backing music for a third-rate pizzeria somewhere in, say, Deptford, or Castle Ashby (see also: Tizianno Ferri, who you may remember from that track he did with Jamelia that was so awful they didn’t even bother to release it).

Simone’s not a big fan. He’s a sarky bastard as well, as he spends the entire song talking about how Antonacci is a wonderful artist, and how great it’d be to sign autographs in the same manner as him, to fill stadiums like him, and how he’s a greater hero than Jim Morrisson, Rambo, and Rocky.

Feel that faux-middle eight done in the Antonacci style. Sure, it’s a trick he stole entirely from “My Band” (central and southern Europe loves it some D-12, and, no, I don’t know why), but the boy has enough charisma to pull it off. He has enough chutzpah to ensure what could have come across like a particularly frustrated day’s worth of blogging set to a beat ends up becoming a “Your Woman” for 2005. Jyoti Mishar’s solitary classic is the best reference for this song anyway, being built as it is on a sample of what sounds like a 1940s slapstick comedy. It gives the whole thing a throw-away feel which meshes perfectly with the Head Stylist sophistication it somehow manages to portray as well.

Seriously, Tyler James would kill for a track like this. Perhaps he should grow a white-boy fro and release “I Want To Sing Like James Blunt”.

By Dom Passantino, associate UK editor for Stylus

Emanuel - The Willing

2005-07-27T18:17:00.000+01:00

"I lost my inspiration/Lying in your bed/But you cannot rape the willing/And you taste like self-destruction/I’ll follow where I’m led/But you cannot rape the will-ENNNGGGG!!!"

Yes, I’m well aware that’s shite.

But oh, that’s just a taste of the lyrical glories in this beauty. As you may have guessed, we’re in the ‘depressingly clean-cut emo-mall-punk’ aisle, and the shelves are fucking rammed. You’re excepting a wussy-assed ‘screamo’ bit? Emanuel are going to give you TWO! And you can tell it’s not proper screaming because you can make out all the words!

“EVERYONE’S DEAD EVERY DAY IS LIKE A KNIFE-FIGHT!”

Seriously, we’re dripping with it. “Get high and try that’s all I really wanna do!” Lead singer boy (he’s called Matt, and should probably be congratulated for heroically avoiding being called Seth or Josh BECAUSE HE DOESN’T HAVE TO FOLLOW YOUR RULES!) seems really fond of that one. He also looks bizarrely similar to Jeffrey Lewis.

“I count the days and watch your fires burn/Just give me time to blow them out”

And the trouble is that there’s a dreadfully catchy and stupidly fun pop song under all of this. Totally predictable, of course, but it’s one of those where everything gets polished and over-planned to such a degree that somehow it miraculously avoids sucking. The electro-siren-buzz-ting that the guitars do marries with the horrendous nasal whelp that is his voice (he sounds even more like you’d expect him to sound than you ever believe), hammering that chorus along, picking out the stresses and bursting them in the eardrums. The slow bit comes in exactly when you’d expect it, but that’s only because it’s exactly where it should be. Yeah, the verses are annoying, and the repetition-with-slight-variation of the lines is obviously nowhere near as clever as he thinks it is and makes you want to nauseate on him, plus also the amount of times he says he’s dyyyy-ing… uck uck uck. But somehow, it’s irresistible. So fake it’s beyond fake, someday you will ache like he aches, assuming you haven’t turned 15 yet.

By William B. Swygart, editor of the UK Singles Jukebox at Stylus

Mint Royale ft. Lauren Laverne - Don't Falter

2005-07-27T01:42:00.000+01:00

“Hey, don’t falter/ You know we are to be together.”

Ah, summer.

The sky is blue, the sun is shining; glowing, happy people go about their glowing, happy lives, while the rest of us glare at them, sit in the dark watching daytime OC reruns and wallow in our own, imperfect misery. Or something to that effect.

But wait! The sweet Miss Laverne is on hand to take even the most pallid angster and lead them skipping into those daisy fields of summer joy. Hark, how her lilting tones channel every mythical summer haze you ever envisaged! Herald, how the bubbling chords and jaunty chimes surround you with that vision of gleeful love, more evocative than any sepia-toned Coppola flick or Goldin snapshot!

“Small-town dating differs from more urban situations/ In particular if there’s few places to go.”

Then, of course, there’s the reality.

When summer isn’t a Ralph Lauren ad, or even that episode of Hollyoaks, but a long series of days with nothing much but the absence of anything else as their defining features. Hills and dry forest, toes in the stray blast of a garden hose and that sticky heat of melting fruit ices as you shrink back into the garden shade.

Time takes on weight, stretches with a lack of purpose. Actions are minutia, idle to pass the hours. Boys with cars that mean getting the hell out of this place; backseats and air-conditioned movie chills; late nights, damp grass. The slow beat enfolds it all, quiet and real. Her dreamy vocals whisper the truth. Summer in the suburbs.

State of the Union

2005-07-22T15:51:00.000+01:00

By the looks of the chart, British pop is dead.

The battle is over. The ‘real music made on real instruments for real people!’ purists have won. Brandishing the Radio 2 playlist in one hand, (as the other fist clutches the 6th form notebook scribbles that make up the modern NME) they’ve purged our music scene of those unholy pop stars with breathtaking ease.

“Synthetic backing tracks?” They sneered superciliously, prodding Geri with their Pitchfork-bookmarked Blackberrys. “Lip-synching?” They cried in disgust, sending poor Javine fleeing for the Eurovision hills. “Artists who don’t even pretend to write their own material?” They roared, as Dannii Minogue, Holly Valance and their Antipodean chum Darren Hayes cowered, unloved in the upper echelons of the chart.

“Get thee gone, damned manifestations of our image-driven, artificial world! Pay no heed to the fact we spend just as much on image consultancy and branding as you! Ignore the cynical focus-grouping we employ to strategise our dominance!

For we, we are REAL. We are AUTHENTIC. We have GUITARS!”

They took Capital FM with a Blunt blow. They seized MTV into their bland Embrace. Only dear Simon and Miquita are safe in their Popworld, but even now the might of those angular guitars advance, intent on enslaving every last post-Chiron beat.

“Hang on,” I hear you cry, “Surely you should rejoice! Celebrate the variety of music flourishing. Diversity. Equality. Democracy in action!”

There may be choice in HMV, but it’s can’t be truly portrayed as the choice of the people. Is Tesco rewarding you with the eighteen varieties of apple to choose from really choice, when it’s they who select the lot with centimetre-specific regulations? Is the music industry rewarding you with choice through the decision between this group of 80’s synth art-rock boys who sound like the Killers, or that group of 80s synth art-rock boys who sound like Franz Ferdinand? Where’s the freedom in that?

People are easily led. Hell, I’m easily led. Flash me the trailer to ‘the Wedding Crashers’ enough times and even I’ll be mysteriously overcome with the urge to watch the Butterscotch Stallion prostrate himself on the alter of bad taste. This fact is the centrifugal force behind every political campaign, every advertising drive – the backbone of capitalist society (Really, think about it. Because you NEED that new car). We choose what is signed, marketed, sent out to CosmoGirl interviews and A-listed on radio; thus it has always been, thus is shall always be. But now, in retreating to unanimously to the relatively safe domain of soaring anthems of middle-class blandness, the labels have ensured a return on their investment. While rockists wet themselves with joy to those pure, dull sounds, I’m left wondering how many ominous Joy Division tribute acts I’ll have to suffer through before we get the innovation back.

It’s now the pop-lover who has the underground taste; Poptimists swapping rare Gwen Stefani remixes, Swedish popstress Robyn the new alternative icon. Internationally, pop is still striding forth: Ciara bringing the bubblecrunk, Rhianna with the reaggeton. Kelly Clarkson sits atop her pedestal after providing the best pop song of the past few years in ‘Since U Been Gone’, as Hillary Duff, Avril, La Lohan et all unleash their river of black eyelinered angst below her. The boundaries keep getting pushed, the heart of pop stays beating merrily to the latest jaunty tune, and I keep dancing.

But Britain? Those guitar acts used to sit alongside traditional, S Club pop fare – they were the cool substitute, the balancing force, Stereophonics bringing their croaking animus to Kylie’s sparkly gold-pant-clad anima – now it’s they who are the mainstream. There is no manufactured music in any meaningful quantity to rebel against – it’s ‘real’ musicians as far as the jaded eye can see. British A&Rs have self-censored to the point of absurdity.

Yes, we have Rachel. Yes, we have Girls Aloud. Yes, there’s Richard X and Xenomania and… Well? The former launched off a consistent hit-making group of the pop band era, the latter were backed by the multi-million audience of a reality TV show. Look around for the continually revolving stable of Top 20 B- and C-listers giving us a couple of pop gems before they recede back into obscurity: there’s none to be found. Charlotte Church gave us one fun single and a lacklustre album. Labels would rather re-release ‘I Predict a Riot’ for the umpteenth time than put money into a new pop act that has an ounce of risk attached to it.

Even the patented electro-pop blueprints that proved so resistant to the rockist purge and now sounding lifeless. ‘So Good’ barely scraped Top 10 status with its perfunctory chilled beats, while as you can tell, ‘Long Hot Summer’ is an underwhelming by-numbers effort that doesn’t even come close to the spine-shivers of ‘No Good Advice’. It’s as if the producers are still clinging to their sound-desks, unsure of any new direction. New Rioisin Murphey. New Goldfrapp. It’s polished, perfect, but I’ve heard it all before.

And then I saw the new Mark Owen video flashing before my eyes. Leaping around in an indie-boy T-shirt, real musicians strumming away in his background, the survivor himself was telling me everything will be alright. Because he believes in the boogie.

Times are changing
Everything will come around
We're just moving in circles, baby
All or nothing
Everything will come around.

Lycra-clad boybands and their synchronised moves rose and fell. We had Steps, we had S Club. Boybands rose and fell again - Diane Warren ballads, suits and all. We had A1 and 5ive; we had the Sugababes and Mysteeq; Busted and the Faders.

This isn’t the end. Pop evolves, it’s in the very fabric of the genre to innovate - pushing the boundaries of sound forward with imagination and a recklessness that Athlete and the Rakes can’t even begin to comprehend. Remember where you were when you first heard those decisive opening notes of ‘Baby One More Time?’ Or how about when Ms Stefani pulled you to the dance-floor with such crazy, infectious power in ‘What Are You Waiting For?’

Pop has risen before, and it will do so again. Until that day arrives, and the grey mundanety of the British charts can crumble away into sparkle and joy, I’ll be here playing Clor as loud as my neighbours will allow.

Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek

2005-07-21T23:11:00.000+01:00

"Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth/ Mid-sweet talk/ Newspaper word cut-outs."

Download (File live as of 25/11/05)

I don't know what to say.

It’s not my job to be lost for words. It’s my job to be pithy and adoring, in a multi-syllabic and somewhat sarcastic fashion. With extended metaphors, Lindsay Lohan references and perhaps even a little Swedish thrown in for good measure.

Even when something moves me, I can usually muster a few good paragraphs. The bass line, chord progression; the dip of the vocals, the thrum of a speedy bridge section. But this? This is something more than even I can fit into phrasing.

Because for a moment, I’m no longer jaded, remote. For a moment, there’s nothing but the purity of a sound that transcends my usual existence; something sweet. Something deep. Something other.

There’s a force to this. Swelling, soaring, perfectly poised and playing with my heartstrings as if the sound is wired taut right the way through me; the fall and lifts tumbling along my bloodstream – each lilt a shallow intake of breath, every dive a weight to drag me further down.

Yes, it’s that kind of experience. And if the indierock4eva guys want to get on my case? :shrugs: So be it.

Avril Lavigne - Freak Out

2005-07-19T16:46:00.000+01:00

"Walk around with your hands up in the air, like you don't care."

Two things you should probably know before I get into this: I really like the big singles from Busted and I really, really like the big singles from Evanescence. This Avril track, from her sadly-overlooked last album, isn't a big single, but hot damn, it shoulda been, because it sounds like a perfect combination of the two bands previously mentioned.

The first Avril album was always something of a disappointment to me, because the particular sound the Matrix were working there wasn't fully embracing the hard-pop-rock glory they clearly wanted to, and while I understand why--ease the listening public into it etc.--I love that those who followed in their footsteps, including the Matrix themselves, just kept making things sound harder and louder.

So "Freak Out" starts with something gloomy and black and melodic, like Evanescence (harmonics, whee!), and even does the stutter thing they love so much. But then, whoosh, we're into this glorious, bang-your-head-gleefully major-key hook that's so obvious it's like a nice warm hug of distorted guitars, and the verse vocals, while maybe a bit too sullen, can't hide their power-pop glory. (If there's a downside to "Freak Out," it's that there's no guitar solo that just repeats the verse melody, because that would be awesomely fantastic.)

But what the hell is she talking about in the chorus? "Just freak out, let it go"? I'm confused. If you freak out that doesn't seem like a good thing. But aha, she is saying, do not worry about the people who will call you a spaz, just go ahead and go nuts, and "live your life" "put up a fight" etc. etc. empowerment etc. Kind of dubious, but cool! Us spazzes can always use the support.

Oh, oh, plus: acoustic guitar break! Man.

By Mike Barthel, who has a blog and writes for Flagpole and Stylus, and also likes narcoleptic puppies.

Paris Hilton - Screwed (Alex G remix)

2005-07-15T13:13:00.000+01:00

"When you need someone just to have a little fun/ I could be the perfect girl for you."

How do I love thee, Paris? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth of your vanity and height
Your vast ego (and heels) can reach, when feeling out of sight
Of public eye, oops! Another porn tape will leak.
I love thee as the zeitgeist starlet of today’s
Celebrity-worshipping need, by red carpet and paparazzi flashlight.
I love the music, breathy strained vocals pitched low and beats strung tight;
I love the lyrics, such cynical metanarration on your lays.
I love all you represent as a transient epitome
Of stardom for its own narcissistic end, not in pursuit of power but to sell
Your self; perpetual sustaining force for US Weekly
Gawker, Page Six too – we follow the trials of Tinkerbell,
Nipple-slips, bruises, all the feuding! – and, if you choose indiscreetly,
A pop career too, I shall but love thee for that as well.

M2M - Everything

2005-07-11T15:35:00.000+01:00

“I remember you couldn’t get enough/ You felt it too/ How dare you.”

Ah, the perky strains of post-break-up Scandi pop!

That’s right, he’s gone and left you; sweet lipglossed pout, pastel coloured guitar, neatly boot-cut denim and everything. So whatcha gonna do girl? Dye your hair, hire Max Martin and trash the place? Angst away in dark eyeliner, chanting the mantra of how you’re better off without him as you flirt outrageously with unsuitable men? Or even the last resort: sinking into a sullen pit of praline ice-cream and ANTM re-runs?

None of the above, my dear! You’ve got your Nordic charm and best friend to fall back on. Instead, a rigorous program of reminiscence, poignant wallowing and pleas is called for - especially since its summertime, and all the world is taunting you with their togetherness.

On with the jaunty chords and cutely bubbling late 90s pop production! On with those plaintive reminders of just how much he’s ignoring you! On with the obsessive detail listing, because you’re nothing if not an overdramatic teenage girl, and by god this is the end of your world! And you know that something hurting this badly had better lead to creative genius or financial gain (preferably both), since otherwise, why the hell could we coat it with sugar and put ourselves through it every time?

DaVinChe ft. Katie & Kano - Leave Me Alone

2005-07-01T12:22:00.000+01:00

"Sip my Alizé to taste it / Then he's lookin' at me but he's wasted / I try to walk away but he takes hold of my waist / That's one thing I really hate"

I came here with my girls to roll.

It's a classic scene, one played out in clubs up and down the country every weekend. Many of you will have been that girl, the one who discovers that the downside to looking so fabulous that all heads in the club are turned is that you have to spend the rest of the night playing cat-and-mouse with lecherous drunk blokes. Some of you may even have been that boy, the one who's so pissed that he thinks that girl is genuinely into him and who never realises just how close he came to being smacked upside the head.

Grime artists have a knack for perfectly capturing these everyday memes - brief encounters and momentary feelings which are replayed so often that finding yourself in a situation like this feels like being trapped in a situationist loop, being drawn into an act where "all the world's a stage" becomes a nightmare. Still, Katie Pearl (r'n'g diva supreme) and Kano (smoothest grime MC around) make for fantastic players. Katie's haughty and calm, riding the storm of DaVinChe's incredible production (reeling Playstation shoot-'em-up noises, crunching stutterbeats, circling strings) with ease, detaching herself firmly from the commonness of the situation through her Ciara-esque icy dismissal. She provides just the bare bones of the narrative, but evokes an entire mise-en-scène with every line. Kano, meanwhile, abandons his smooth guy persona to butt in on Katie inappropriately, oblivious to the way she's looking down her nose at his drunken attempts to woo her with lame, clichéd chat-up lines. Freeze that frame; replay every Saturday night.

By Alex Macpherson, writer for Plan B and Stylus

Eleni Mandell - Pauline

2005-06-29T09:57:00.000+01:00

"Pauline/More than a memory girl/Gotta tell you what/Was a cold blue sofa and an oriental rug when your man got down and your man told me ‘let’s go’.”

Let the guest blogging commence

Simply put, Eleni Mandell’s 'Pauline' is the nastiest, funniest cheating song since M’chelle N’Degeocello’s 'If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night)'. And in all honesty, Mandell’s song trumps N’Degeocello’s with ease, particularly as 'If That’s Your Boyfriend' is all snotty, awesome chorus.

The cheatin’ song is a popular genre, but it’s rare to hear one that isn’t from the perspective of the cuckold or the cuckolder. Mandell’s song is from the perspective of the other woman, she who fucked your man, and it sort of stands as a reply to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” (no coincidence, there, with the similarity of the arcane names “Jolene” and “Pauline”) In this song, Mandell’s wreaking girl on girl violence, mocking the old fashioned “Pauline” while the guitars rumble and roar. So why do I love it?

First off, it’s kind of sexy, because Mandell can use her voice like an actress, hitting words and lines with appropriate inflection. Then there’s the trashy but perfect saxophone solo in the background. It’s surprising to hear the virginal Pauline in “her catalogue skirt” contrasted with the narrator who wore “black/I wore heels/I wore an ox-blood t-shirt.” Mean girls indeed, but as the dynamics build from disclosure to slightly hysterical bragging, it’s the type of song that would make you follow Ms. Mandell to the end of the earth.

By Elisabeth Donnelly, writer for Purpology and pop(matters)

Four Minute Warning...

2005-06-24T12:55:00.000+01:00

1. I'm back on a 56k dial-up connection.
2. I spend hours flicking through music channels looking for something that moves me, sparks me enough to post, but nothing.
3. I have a novel due.
4. Something's going to have to change.

I can either relax my strict criteria and move towards a more popbytes style of things - links, snark, pop culture in general; or, hold off that and post more sporadically, but with meaning and substance.

You've got Gawker, and the fug girls, and stereogum. You've also got Eppy and Tim and Matt, and Jess and Julianne when you need them.

So what do you want from me?

BT ft. Rose McGowan - Superfabulous

2005-06-20T22:00:00.000+01:00

“Won’t you wake me up from this?/ All I need is a prince to kiss.”

Yeah come on, and turn it on.

Songs have their time; languishing on my over-filled hard-drive until that listen when they finally spark my synapses – the moment the resonance fires into something real. And now, back in a small town with dark falling on the heat-baked streets that lead nowhere, I need this. God I need this.

Poptastic provided, pounding and blissfully intense, it lifts me from this room with fairy-tale roses climbing across my window but a view I know by heart. I can submerse myself in that driving bass, that sarcastic vocal. The lazy demands that follow every line, the taunt, the urge.

A promise of vivid thunder in my stomach and Oh! The crash of chorus: heart-stop, pulse-shiver. Over and over and over, spiraling out of here in scrawling screams. 4.40 soaring moments away from reminders to keep the volume down. Away from the blinking curser on an empty page.

Give me a dancefloor. Give me my abandon. Get me far from here and the person I used to be.

Yeah come on, and turn it on.

Keith Urban - Days Go By

2005-06-16T21:45:00.000+01:00

“Days go by/ I can feel them flying/ Like a hand out the window in the wind.”

Time for some jauntiness! Some commercial country twanging, chorus woohoo-ing, boots ‘n’ hat ‘n’ thank you ma’am jauntiness to be precise. He may be the lost Wilson brother, but Keith sure knows his cross-over pop hit material, layered bass production precision and all.

This is a song to sweep you up in pace and energy; the bubbling underscore of verse chords seeming innocuous but really they pull you forwards, so soon to be overtaken with building bridge and then that magnificent crescendo chorus. No crash, no cry, but the delicious twang of speedy refrain and infectious lyric repetition, triumphant and joyful. Smooth production that you don’t even notice until the backing falls out; just his voice and that rhythmic strum, a drop of banjo, the surge of strings and then you’re swept away again in exuberant exclamation.

Summer and speed, breeze and possibilities.

Lindsay Lohan - First (the video car-crash week continues)

2005-06-15T09:10:00.000+01:00

La Lohan's Guide to Not Being Like Every Other Girl in the World

1) Have every ounce of flesh sucked from your limp form like you were attacked by Tobey Maguire during his snack-attack. Because, like, the aspiration to be so frighteningly thin that you need to wear that terrible waistcoat over your shirt just to hold up your malnourished body and stay conscious is SO RARE.

2) Release a guitar-driven song that sounds so mindlessly mediocre and dragging, Lilix could have thrown it together in their basement…

2a) ...I mean, why call on Max Martin or the Matrix when you can have a riff that sounds barely even scribbled on the label of your empty Oxycotin bottle, let alone finished?

2b) When Katy Rose album tracks sound like polished precision in comparison, you know you’re there.

3) Redheads are unusual. Redheads are distinctive. But hey, why stand out from the crowd due to natural beauty, when you can dye your troubles away and be mocked? Of course, the true genius was picking the shade of trailer-trash platinum blonde which makes you look like Nicole accidentally emptied the peroxide jug because you were so distracted by Wheel of Fortune re-runs. Repeat after me: “Match the skin-tone. Match it!”

4) Add a glazed thousand-yard stare and the usual artfully posed moves. Why should you dance the way girls really dance – sweat and swing and abandon – when instead you can shift those razor hips as if constricted by that metaphorical corset of female objectification? That would only make you stand out, dear, and god knows you don’t want that.

Jessica Simpson ft. Willie Nelson - These Boots Are Made For Walking (video stream)

2005-06-10T23:02:00.000+01:00

“Now you’re looking/ About where I thought you’d be looking”

Can I get a yee-haw? (Not clicking here is seriously not an option)

Indeed you can Ms Simpson! In fact, you can get anything the hell you want for your part in this crazy, fabulous, pop-meta moment. Got a movie to promote? Got some pesky adultery claims to redirect into a revamped sex-kitten image? Getting tired of lil sis outselling y’all?

Fear not, my dear, Papa Joe is here! Oh yes; so concerned over your career is daddy dearest, that he’s dreamt up a fabulous country-meets-uber-pop project for you to reclaim your place in the nation’s transient hearts.

The breathy coquettish vocals! The teasing country twang! The strip-club grinding bass, and oh, the low Willie Nelson sing-a-long backing! The irresistible pouting breakdown!

A video so exploitative, Jess has obviously been working long and hard at Cheap Stripper Academy to learn that thrust and swing action (“Daddy, daddy! Look at what I learned today" disturbing mental imagery alert!). The pink bikini scenes alone need to be worshipped as the pinnacle of incongruous, pointless masturbation-fantasy sequencing!

Love. It. All.

Vitamin C - Vacation

2005-06-10T02:30:00.000+01:00

"Need a little sun to break up all the frustration/ And turn it into love/ Ain't nobody going to tell us what we're going to do"

Now this is a fabulous surprise! Part of the freebie mix from Poptimism (one of the best club nights in London), here comes a crazily infectious little gem from the ex-Eve’s Plum singer better known for a track that stands as a horrifying blight on the pop landscape. God, I hate ‘Graduation’ as much as the next sane person (in fact, I fail to comprehend how even little Lauri and Vicki can, like, be totally moved to tears as they scribble insincerities in each others yearbook and pledge to be silver ring thing buddies 4eva!) yet even I cannot help but be enchanted by this bouncing burst of pleasure.

Perhaps I’m powerless to resist cheerleader chanting, or maybe it’s the mindlessly repetitive honeyed vocals that suck me into the whirling vortex of idealized Californian beach imagery (the kind of faux-fifties partying that every US teen sitcom needs to find itself indulging in). Either way, toast me some s’mores and let me jive with a wholesome jock named Chip, because I’m sold!

A complete composite, it takes the verse tune from Tricky’s ‘Black Steel’, combines it with pure ‘Sound of the Underground’ surf guitar riff (that’s right: Pre-Girls Aloud, Girls Aloud-sounding pop!) and throws in a sped-up OMD intro sample, because hey, why ever not? The structure is as perfect as if they kissed the ‘blueprint for pop perfection’ goodnight since first imagining a world filled with joyful pop jewels, (for the technical amongst you, the thirty second middle-8 ‘mix and yell’ breakdown hits at 1 minute 53). I can’t track down the producer/writing credits, but I’ll be extremely surprised if they haven’t surfaced again in some spectacular form.

Skye Sweetnam - Number One/ Bonnie McKee - Trouble (Teen Angst Special!)

2005-06-07T23:52:00.000+01:00

“One day/ You’ll see me/ But only when you’re dreaming/ One day/ You’ll see I’m number one.”

I’m no longer a teen and thus, sadly, I can no longer legitimately angst. Sure, I can stamp my foot and pout and slam my bedroom door screaming “Muuuuum, I HATE you!”, but it doesn’t count: it’s not angst, it’s twenty-something ennui. Sigh.*

But Skye can angst, oh yes indeed. That particular breed of self-centred petulance that strops its way through bouncing riffs and exuberant posing. Because you ARE the axis upon which the universe rests! Because inane lyrics and fuck you air punches are SO the way to deal with your emotions! Because, like, this is an awesome tune to leap around to in your bedroom before you take yourself and your fake ID out to some sleazy rock club to try and pick up unsuitable menfolk!

Speaking of which…

“I see the danger that lies beyond your eyes/ And I want to scream when you're rubbing on my thighs/ I know I should but I can't say no”

Bonnie knows all about the sting of failed love affairs, and thankfully has poured all her sharp bitterness into a sensuously sinuous burst of acrid regret. Her vocals swoop deliciously between remorse and frustration; the perfect portrayal of that mistake you made, but oh, what fun it was.

Instead of explicit rage or wailing anguish, there’s something wonderfully controlled about the track. A subtle rumble of drum, the odd tremble of strings, while the bass and chords keep a chunky, insistent canvas. Everything reined in, yet with an irresistible swing to each slinking stride. Utterly seductive.

*Not that I ever actually angsted; I wallowed, I moped, hell I even threw in some weeping from time to time – you know, mixing things up a little. But mine was one of those liberal households that held nothing to rebel against. You know: condoms freely distributed, no curfew. Except for, like, the deviant consumption of non-organic produce, nothing was out-of-bounds.

** Also can be streamed as audio from official website - second track on the player.

Portobella - Viva La Difference

2005-05-23T22:54:00.000+01:00

“Slip on leather/ Stormy weather/ I’ll be taking you home/ Who’d have thought you’d be the one/ To be making me moan?”

Ah, the joys of sleazy electro pop! The grating basslines, the sweaty leer of layered chords and drawled insouciance, and oh, the itch they inspire in my bloodstream.

This is definitely a slow-burn writhe of a track; grinding synths and casual pounding beat, heavy chords and coiled tension. Verse vocals lazy, because then the building bridge rings with brash, pouting attitude and kicks back into that careless ‘oh, oh, oh’ refrain (an afterthought which you’ll soon find lifting the chorus repetition with such casual infection).

But really, it’s all about that bridge and middle segment. The layers dropping back to leave that petulant chord sequence, her voice soaring with harsh anger and blatant desire, dipping effortlessly down to growled seduction.

Because there’s nothing breezy and sweet about this kind of thing. Brick wall hard against your back, torn fishnet tights; mirrored walls and scarlet lipstick smudged across your face. Gorgeous.

Poptext Classic Picks of the Day:

The Faders. Girl rock the way it’s supposed to be: obnoxious and utterly commanding.

Savage Garden. Xenomania. Enough said.

Something For Everyone - PopText Retrospective

2005-05-20T14:39:00.000+01:00

This week: something special.
For the next seven days, every single song I've poptexted has a live YSI link*.

"Hang on!" I hear you cry with heady excitement, "You've been blogging since November. That's about fifty songs!"*

Indeed. See, back when I began, I didn't even post the music. And most of you reading right now will only recently have found me. Result? Lots of dead links, and reviews that only go so far to convey the joy of these songs. Every track I write about is amazing in some way, now it's your chance to catch up.

So welcome. Take some time to rummage around the archives; there you'll find music to like, music to love, and music to blow your mind with such force that you'll emerge a changed person.

It's good to have you.

*(or, as dear Max would put it, "Bero på, den här uppskattningsvis femtio schlager!")
**OK, so there are a couple of exceptions. Go listen to something else!

Laura Cantrell - 14th Street

2005-05-19T12:53:00.000+01:00

“I see you on the street/ You kiss my cheek/ My knees goes weak/ It’s clear you’ve got nothing to loose/ While I’m loosing sleep.”

Download

It’s easy to get jaded in this game.

I turn the page and there’s yet another Ritalin-snorting, tanorexic ingénue staring blankly back (as the man behind the camera/production booth/label puts words in her mouth and an angle in her come-hither hip). Obviously, I adore them; Lindsey, Ashlee, Hillary – the darling girls are the Ketel-fuelled car-crash of my generation, and I’m more than happy to peruse Defamer et al for the latest shuddering stats and occasional burst of pop brilliance to justify my devotion.

But go looking for innocence? It’s another story. Even their faux-naïve adolescent musings are feedback group-ed to a synthetic aftertaste, strategic angst reading like the twenty-something nostalgia that reveals a song-writer’s hand and self-conscious heart.

Which is why this version of Emily Spray's song moves me so much, with its simple refrain and quiet emotion. The melody charms and soothes, skipping lightly on eager toes in dew-damp grass. Because innocence isn’t a child-like body or barely-legal pout, it’s hope. Hope that these tangential connections we strive for so desperately will actually lead somewhere; that our hearts will be nourished by something more than an iPod Shuffle and new pair of Louboutin wedge heels.

Laura’s voice so clear, the gentle hesitancy and trepidation. There’s such admirable control in the production, such subtle backing layers that when she murmurs “One step, two…” the longing is poignant. And that middle section, with its high, falling ‘ahh’: the one that shivers with tangible sweetness – you feel that to the soul.

Maybe it takes age and experience to give you the bravery to express yourself so sincerely, I don’t know. Bittersweet perhaps, because at the heart of such honest emotion in this song is the fear that keeps her from closing the gap between them. But the simplicity and vibrant emotion here will make you promise, just for a second (before the real world and all its scheming structures flood back in), to live a little braver too.

Time for an Answer

2005-05-18T21:25:00.000+01:00

Charlotte.
Church.