Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Curtain Raiser
Right, lets have a look at this pop lark then. In a bid to refamiliarise ourselves with the musical landscape we've spent this weekend watching Top of the Pops, Top of the Pops Saturday and CD:UK this weekend so we're beginning to get a rough idea of what's going on. We also watched the T in the Park coverage on BBC2, but they seemed to believe that spending 15 minutes on Starsailor was a valid use of valuable airtime so we're going to ignore that. We've also taken the brave step of listening to a lot more daytime Radio 1 than anyone should really subject themselves to, such is the strength of our desire to find out just what the hell has been going on. So, over the next few days we're going to let you know exactly what we've learnt about the pop world in which we live. Won't that be exciting? Please, don't answer that. First up, possibly the most important event to have happened while we were away:- The new Girls Aloud single.
Well, it's very ace indeed, isn't it? We were quite worried about what their comeback was going to be like as we had noticed what looked like an attempt to blandify them and turn them into the next Atomic Kitten. This was most noticeable in the yawn-inducing cover to the re-released version of the Sound of the Underground album, and the fact that they released a not hugely good cover. Thankfully though, their management have realised that while the market for mediocre girl bands is somewhat saturated, the position of Most Exciting Pop Group... Ever! is still something worth fighting for and if Love Machine is as fab as this then Nicola and the Other Girls, as we think they should be renamed, will be easily be pushing ahead of the pack beating previous contenders such as the Spice Girls, B*Witched and allSTARS*.
Why is it so ace? Ummm, well you have heard it, haven't you? Nicola doesn't seem to have any solo lines as far as we can tell, so it immediatly loses a few points as a result, but other than that it's as close to perfection as a GA song can be. It also bucks the current trend for pop songs to be quite gender neutral, something which is certainly not the case with this, being very much a girls lyric, which is good because they are girls, but, on the other hand, they do have balls, which slightly confuses matters, but never mind. The only down side of having lyrics about acting like a lady and fluttering your mascara like a butterfly is that it does make it slightly embarassing if you're caught wearing headphones and singing along to it at the top of your voice. Ummm, so we expect anyway. We definitely don't know for certain, right? Right.
Well, it's very ace indeed, isn't it? We were quite worried about what their comeback was going to be like as we had noticed what looked like an attempt to blandify them and turn them into the next Atomic Kitten. This was most noticeable in the yawn-inducing cover to the re-released version of the Sound of the Underground album, and the fact that they released a not hugely good cover. Thankfully though, their management have realised that while the market for mediocre girl bands is somewhat saturated, the position of Most Exciting Pop Group... Ever! is still something worth fighting for and if Love Machine is as fab as this then Nicola and the Other Girls, as we think they should be renamed, will be easily be pushing ahead of the pack beating previous contenders such as the Spice Girls, B*Witched and allSTARS*.
Why is it so ace? Ummm, well you have heard it, haven't you? Nicola doesn't seem to have any solo lines as far as we can tell, so it immediatly loses a few points as a result, but other than that it's as close to perfection as a GA song can be. It also bucks the current trend for pop songs to be quite gender neutral, something which is certainly not the case with this, being very much a girls lyric, which is good because they are girls, but, on the other hand, they do have balls, which slightly confuses matters, but never mind. The only down side of having lyrics about acting like a lady and fluttering your mascara like a butterfly is that it does make it slightly embarassing if you're caught wearing headphones and singing along to it at the top of your voice. Ummm, so we expect anyway. We definitely don't know for certain, right? Right.
