Thursday, July 15, 2004
Some Thrills
Charity singles are rubbish. Yes, we know, we're tearing down the walls of recieved wisdom with that particular earth-shattering opinion, but just because something is a known fact doesn't mean it's not worth restating every now and then. They're invariably poorly cobbled together, about as musically exciting as the Stereophonics trying a new direction and simply rely on public goodwill towards the charity to sell copies, rather than the more traditional strategy of actually writing a good tune. All this was a given up until now, however, and the really rather fab Some Girls by Miss Rachel Stevens.
This track is being released to raise money for Sports Relief, a charity which provides much needed trampolines for starving Africans, and appears to have been picked for this role entirely at random. The only connection that we can see to the charity is the fact that Rachel is quite fit. We're pretty sure that the video won't even feature Miss Stevens cavorting around in any sort of sports related manner, despite the fact that we made a great pitch to the record company about this. We basically went there and said "Rachel wears a netball uniform. For 3 minutes." before sitting down and waiting to be given a camera and a few million pounds to shoot it. After a few minutes of sitting there in shocked silence, presumably because they were overawed by the genius of the concept, they asked us if there was anything more to it than that. Racking our brains we managed to flesh out the concept a little bit more:- "In the rain." we added, proud of ourselves. It was at this point that Security was summoned and we were firmly ushered out of the building, proving once again that the music industry in Britain runs scared of true genius.
While the song isn't quite a Sweet Dreams, My LA Ex, we can certainly thank the Lord, or at least thank Richard X, that it's not a Funky Dory. Rachel's career didn't exactly go the way it was planned when that track struggled to reach the top 75. We do have to admire the sort of self-confidence, however, which leads to her publicist claiming the reason that radio stations wouldn't touch it with a bargepole was down to the previous single being too good, rather than just holding their hands up and saying "Yeah, it was a bit of a dull single, wasn't it? No wonder everyone kept play Sweet Dreams... instead." It's no exageration to suggest that Rachel needed the exposure that the association with Sports Relief has given her just as much as the slightly pointless charity has benefited from the exposure that having a pretty girl who's not averse to posing in her smalls has given them. Normally we'd be averse to such cynical manipulation, but when the end product is as fantastic as this we can't really complain. After all everybody wins, we get a good pop song, starving athletes get some food and Rachel gets another chance to play at being a pop star and look pretty on Top of the Pops. And, best of all, it's not a cover of the misogynistic song of the same name by Racey as we had originally feared. Hooray!
This track is being released to raise money for Sports Relief, a charity which provides much needed trampolines for starving Africans, and appears to have been picked for this role entirely at random. The only connection that we can see to the charity is the fact that Rachel is quite fit. We're pretty sure that the video won't even feature Miss Stevens cavorting around in any sort of sports related manner, despite the fact that we made a great pitch to the record company about this. We basically went there and said "Rachel wears a netball uniform. For 3 minutes." before sitting down and waiting to be given a camera and a few million pounds to shoot it. After a few minutes of sitting there in shocked silence, presumably because they were overawed by the genius of the concept, they asked us if there was anything more to it than that. Racking our brains we managed to flesh out the concept a little bit more:- "In the rain." we added, proud of ourselves. It was at this point that Security was summoned and we were firmly ushered out of the building, proving once again that the music industry in Britain runs scared of true genius.
While the song isn't quite a Sweet Dreams, My LA Ex, we can certainly thank the Lord, or at least thank Richard X, that it's not a Funky Dory. Rachel's career didn't exactly go the way it was planned when that track struggled to reach the top 75. We do have to admire the sort of self-confidence, however, which leads to her publicist claiming the reason that radio stations wouldn't touch it with a bargepole was down to the previous single being too good, rather than just holding their hands up and saying "Yeah, it was a bit of a dull single, wasn't it? No wonder everyone kept play Sweet Dreams... instead." It's no exageration to suggest that Rachel needed the exposure that the association with Sports Relief has given her just as much as the slightly pointless charity has benefited from the exposure that having a pretty girl who's not averse to posing in her smalls has given them. Normally we'd be averse to such cynical manipulation, but when the end product is as fantastic as this we can't really complain. After all everybody wins, we get a good pop song, starving athletes get some food and Rachel gets another chance to play at being a pop star and look pretty on Top of the Pops. And, best of all, it's not a cover of the misogynistic song of the same name by Racey as we had originally feared. Hooray!
