Fluff post, I know, but this clip is such a culture clash and car crash at the same time that you’ve got to see it.
I want to think that GaGa’s playing this up, but she really seems genuinely charmed by Archie. Wonder what she’d do with his disco stick?
I don’t know if it’s just me, but there seems to be a lot of more talk about sad Christmas songs this year. Whether it’s a lost loved one, a lost love, or just a lonely Christmas, there’s something about this sub-genre that speaks to certain people, and I’m included in that group.
Someone asked me the other day what my other favorite Christmas songs are, and it dawned on me that two of my top 3 are sad ones. There’s “Last Christmas”, which we’ve already talked about, and then there’s “Hard Candy Christmas”, made famous by Dolly Parton in “Best Little Whorehouse In Texas”. Even though it’s a sad one, it doesn’t affect me the same way other sad songs do. There’s actually an ounce of optimism in “Candy”, even if it’s forced optimism.
One song that I don’t even think of until the holidays come around is “When Love Is Gone”, from “A Muppet Christmas Carol”. While it’s not a Christmas song per se, it’s from a Christmas movie, so you get to enjoy it here. Fun fact…this song was actually left out of the original release of “Carol”. I can’t imagine the movie without it. If you can listen to this song in its entirety and not be even slightly moved, you’re dead inside.
Moving just past Christmas towards the beginning of a New Year, we run into Dan Fogelberg, pining after love lost in “Same Old Lang Syne”. This song alone could be a “Power of a Song” entry for me, as it has multiple personal meanings, but for our purposes here, it’s yet another classic sad song that comes up in the month of December. [Sorry for the video…I didn’t like any of the live versions I found, so I’d rather put up the studio version.]
NME.com is reporting that George Michael has recorded a new Christmas song in conjunction with his recurring role on “Eli Stone”. Titled “December Song (I Dreamed of Christmas)”, the song will be sent to radio for airplay, and will be available as a free download on his website Christmas Day. It’s an interesting move, and signals his first steps into distributing his own music, which he’s threatened to do for quite a while now.
So what does George Michael and Christmas mean to me? First and foremost, it’s “Last Christmas”, which is among my top 3 favorite Christmas songs. After years of languishing on dusty shelves across America, it seems as if the song has made a major comeback over the past couple of holiday seasons. Those of you in England may be completely sick of it, but there’s a little bit of justice for me in its resurgence. Most of Wham’s musical output (and George’s, for that matter) has just faded into the mist, so it’s great to see a true gem float back up to the surface. There have been a LOT of covers of “Last Christmas”, but the original is still the best.
Of course, if you’re going to talk about George and Christmas, you also have to reference “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, the record-setting charity single released in 1984 by Band Aid. I know about the 20th anniversary re-recording, which was absolutely horrible, but turns out there was also a Band Aid 2, which hit #1 in England. How I never knew about this version, I have no clue. (Kylie! Wet Wet Wet! Jimmy Somerville!)
So now it’s 2008, and what’s the verdict on George’s new entry to the holiday canon? Well, it’s actually pretty good. The opening is a very classic sounding Christmas vocal, but it quickly switches up to a classic George Michael wistful, moody ballad. It’s no “Last Christmas”, but after a couple of listens, I REALLY like it!
Next week marks the release of Brandy’s fifth CD, simply entitled “Human”. One would guess that there is some insinuation that Brandy Norwood IS just human, especially with the drama that her life seems to have attracted over the past couple of years. Management changes, fatal car wrecks, less-than-successful releases (“Afrodisiac”)…turns out that not everything she touches turns to Gold. I root for her, though, because I feel like she attempts to grow as an artist, rather than just sticking to a single formula. As far as I’m concerned, Brandy really doesn’t get the respect she deserves.
Single #2 from “Human” is the power ballad “Long Distance”, and I recently told someone that it’s as if she’s setting herself up for a European pop comeback, because the singles really seem to fit with what works over there. Whether that will translate into success here in the States remains to be seen, although there are positive signs. “Right Here (Departed)” continues to show a strong pulse at Pop radio, and “Long Distance” is off to a good start at R&B and Urban AC…
…which brings me to the video. The first half of “Distance” is simply beautiful. As I watched it, I thought “this is a great interpretation of the song”. Of course, the fact that the video impressed me that much means that I’m headed for a letdown, and I got it in spades. The video literally vomited all over itself, and just couldn’t recover from it. I promise you, if you watch the video, you’ll see what I mean.
I am a musical sponge…this is a fact that I will never outrun as long as I live. Music is always somewhere in the mix, whether it’s finding new music online, playing in the background no matter what I’m doing, or running through my head when I’m not near a music source. So it’s inevitable that I occasionally stumble across new music in the most unusual places.
Yesterday, I was driving home from the p/t retail job I picked up for the holidays, and I had my Sirius on. Their top 40 channel (“Hits 1”) has a show called “Hit-Bound” that plays a lot of interesting new music, and has been known to break music nationally (like Metro Station). They go a bit heavy on the pop/rock stuff, but a song came on that I’d never heard, and yet I knew the voice instantly, and I couldn’t believe I was hearing it on a U.S.-based radio station.
Does the name Per Gessle mean anything to you? It should if you weren’t locked up in a monastery from the late 80s to the mid 90s, because he was the male half of the duo known as Roxette. Based in Sweden, they conquered the pop charts with a fresh blast of sassy, if disjointed, lyrics, accompanied by a perfect mix of guitars and synths. But the band would have been nothing without the great back-and-forth vocal style that they developed, and the chemistry and camaraderie between them was unmistakable. So much so, several people I knew just assumed they were a married couple.
When the hits dried up for Roxette in the mid 90s (the amazing “Spending My Time” only made it to #32), they faded into the memories of American consumers. However, several of their songs continue to get airplay in several formats, including their biggest hit “It Must Have Been Love”, from the “Pretty Woman” soundtrack.
Fast forward to this past October, and Per releases “Silly Really” in his homeland of Sweden, where it promptly debuts at #1. Full-length CD is due out this coming week, and he’s doing the full-court press with the media to hype its release. Somehow, the single has found its way to America via Sirius, which has some pretty interesting parallels to their original hit “The Look”. Known as the “Dean Cushman story”, the band tells how this exchange student brought the track back from Sweden to Minneapolis, and convinced a top 40 station there to play it. The station started making copies for other stations, and EMI quickly rushed the single and LP into production, picking up a #1 single and a top 20 album in the process.
The song’s been kicking around my head for almost 24 hours now, and I can’t get enough of it. After a couple of listens, I realized that it actually reminds me a bit of the Saturdays’ “If This Is Love”, because of the synths that have a Yazoo sound to them. But the song is retro and contemporary, all at the same time. The lyrics are as throw-away as anything that Roxette ever wrote, but the song is a gem, and is something that U.S. pop radio is in desperate need of. Here’s hoping that they heed the siren’s call and give it a shot. [Oh…and if you’re so inclined, head on over to the Hits 1 webpage and vote for the track in the Hit-Bound poll.]
So as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Thriller was a “gateway drug” to other forms of R&B that were coming up at the time. I actually remember my Aunt buying me a Rene and Angela tape (“Street Called Desire”) as payment for babysitting, and the only reason I knew who they were was because of VH1. It’s a pretty well-acknowledged fact that African-American artists almost never got any play on the video channels prior to Michael Jackson, but by the time MTV launched VH1 in 1985, programmers recognized the power of the music, and mixed a heavy dose of R&B into their regular rotation.
I will confess that, while I knew of some of the older R&B music, I didn’t go back to find a lot of it until college or later. At the time, I was submerged in everything current (and even stuff not quite popular yet). My obsession with anything remotely coming into the Top 40 led me to find stuff like Five Star, who remain one of my biggest musical crushes. Largely ignored by pop fans in the US, the quintet of brothers and sisters made some noise on the US R&B charts, but they were megastars in the UK and Europe. Some likened them to the UK version of the Jacksons, and with the family writing, performing, producing, choreographing, and even designing outfits, who would argue with that? One of the greatest injustices in my mind at the time was that “Can’t Wait Another Minute” peaked at #41 in the US. ROBBED!
In my pursuit of all things Five Star, I started buying English pop music magazines, including “Smash Hits”. Through this, I began finding other artists like Mel and Kim. “Showing Out” and “Respectable” rocked my world, and proved to be the seeds of domination for Stock, Aiken and Waterman to control my music-buying habits for many years. The first time I saw this video was on a local access cable video show back in Syracuse. Looking at it now, it seems overly cheap, but I thought it was sophisticated at the time.
And then, the floodgates opened. Someone found a way to bring a slightly watered down R&B to the top of the pop charts, and Whitney Houston’s career was born.
There are nights where I get home from work, and I lose a couple of hours just going through my Google Reader headlines (Yuri, you feelin’ me?). It’s such a brain drain, and I need to go through and weed out some feeds that only show a gem once in a while. One website that will never get the heave-ho is ItsTheReal.com, one of the most consistently funny places on teh Interwebs. Eric and Jeff Rosenthal don’t play favorites, making sure that anyone that’s anyone in hip-hop gets chopped and screwed. Check out an interview with Eric here, and make sure you watch this week’s clip down below.
Evolution 101 with Mr. West from jeff on Vimeo
BTW…Kanye’s “Paranoid” aired on Radio One this evening. If this is what the new CD is about, he’s topped himself once again. Un-freakin-believable!
Want to see what the next generation of Claymates look like? Please, for all that is good in the world, watch this video!
Have you ever waited for an album to come out, and you just knew it was going to be stellar, and then it doesn’t quite measure up to the hype? Yeah…me too. So it is with a bit of hesitation that I declare that the new David Cook CD due out next week doesn’t fully hit the spot. Now, having said that, “Light On” didn’t thrill me upon first listen, but it is now on my most played, so maybe that’s what will happen here. And there are some great tracks right off the bat…”Lie”, “Life on the Moon”, “A Daily Anthem”, and “Permanent” all show the promise of the Rocker Idol. Here’s hoping that by the time the full-length is available for my purchase that I’m good with the remainder of the CD. In the meantime, here’s the full-length video for “Light On”.
– If it’s Tuesday, it must be new releases, right? Today’s batch includes Taylor Swift (only $3.99 at Amazon), David Archuleta, Tracy Chapman, Seal, T-Pain, David Foster, and Deborah Cox. The cavalcade of reissues and re-releases include discs by the Smiths, New Order, Enrique Iglesias, Hilary Duff, Genesis and Abba. However, I predict a dark horse this week that may make a big splash is the new holiday release from Enya. I can’t think of an artist that is more appropriate for Christmas music than her. I’m not saying it’ll be GOOD, I’m just saying it makes sense.
– Looking ahead to next week, an interesting match-up appears. I doubt I have to remind regular readers that David Cook’s CD, but competing for your 19 Entertainment dollars will also be Il Divo, Simon Cowell’s Opera Boys. For most Idols, I would say this isn’t a big deal, but I think these two acts probably share a little more audience then Mr Cook would like to admit. “But they’re BOTH dreamy!”
– In other David Cook news, he has an AOL Sessions that will premiere on November 21st, he’s playing the Red Carpet party prior to the American Music Awards on the 23rd, and he’s currently appearing in ads for Sketchers (which I believe every Idol winner has done following their win). On the retail tip, we know so far that there are bonus tracks on the iTunes (“My Last Request”) and Wal-Mart (“Breathe Again”) versions. And finally, in the Continual Pimping Department (an artform we admire GREATLY around the PMN water cooler), Entertainment Weekly unleashes yet another feature on Mr. Cook. The cool thing about this feature is that it gets into the whole “how do I rock when the housewives/cougars made me what I am?” dilemma. My favorite quote (you KNEW there would be one):
”I do take music seriously. But I don’t take myself all that seriously. I’m kind of a goober from the Midwest who hit the lottery.”
– Despite the King of Fizz not giving them their proper due (I blame him personally for “Boyfriend” not going to #1), “What Is Happening” will get a physical release on November 24th. It looks like they will be releasing some sassy remixes (including a techno Ultrabeat remix), so here’s hoping that might help get them back into the UK Top 10. The Feist-ish video couldn’t hurt, either…
For some amusing Alphabeat visuals, check out the BBC Chart Blog’s latest addition to their “How To Destroy…” series.
– On a personal note, I’d like to thank all of you that have supported me over the past few months. This started off as a little experiment and hobby, but has really turned into a passion. I set a goal a few weeks ago to do a post a day for a month, and so far, so good on that. Due to a search engine find, the blog has exploded in the page view department, with over 1,000 views in the past two days. It’s a little humbling when folks you read and admire compliment your work, but I am grateful for any and all feedback. Thanks for your support…while it’s cool to document this for myself, it’s even better to have a dialogue with voices other than the ones in my head.
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