Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Verbal Medicine
Yes, the new Girls Aloud single, Wake Me Up is out today and we're sure you're already aware that it's all kinds of aceness so we're not going to bang on about that, although we would like to point out that while they've gone to the trouble of releasing it on the much underused 7" Picture Disc format, they haven't actually put much effort in to the rather vital task of actually getting it into any shops, if our failed attempts to locate a copy are anything to go by. Instead we'd like to draw your attention to the rather fab and, whisper it, actually rather better release by Verbalicious, Don't Play Nice.
Verbalicious, right, is 17 years old and still wears braces. On her teeth that is, not to keep her trousers up. This is not to say that she has a slapdash attitude towards keeping her pants hitched up, quite the opposite in fact, as evidenced by the single's sleeve where she can be seen sporting not one, not two, but three seperate belts, all dedicated to the task of keeping her jeans above ankle level. This lack of so-called urban street-cred about her image means that rather than lazily rapping over bass-heavy beats which excite about as much as the concept of Cheeky Girls porn film, she gets to sound like Betty Boo fronting a revived 21st Century Girls which, let's face it, is what we all, deep down, want our pop to sound like.
Don't Play Nice is essentially the sort of song that Rachel Stevens would be doing if she actually had an ounce of personality. As good as Some Girls was and, indeed, Negotiate With Love is, it still doesn't hold a candle to something that, despite it's slightly retro reference points, still manages to sound like the freshest thing on radio right now, so you should really go out and buy it. Besides, as Verbalicious happily admits in the chorus that her music has the power to raise the dead, you may find yourself being menaced by a brain dead, foul smelling zombie should you elect not to purchase a copy, or Brian McFadden as he's otherwise known. Having said that though, we did try attempting to revive our cat, who's been buried at the bottom of our garden for the last five years, by playing the song at loud volume. As an experiment it wasn't exactly an unqualified success, although it did succeed in waking up our current cat, who came over to see what all the fuss was about. "Miaow.", she commented, before wandering off to eat some grass. Which perhaps says more about the track than we ever could, and was probably a lot funnier as well.
Verbalicious, right, is 17 years old and still wears braces. On her teeth that is, not to keep her trousers up. This is not to say that she has a slapdash attitude towards keeping her pants hitched up, quite the opposite in fact, as evidenced by the single's sleeve where she can be seen sporting not one, not two, but three seperate belts, all dedicated to the task of keeping her jeans above ankle level. This lack of so-called urban street-cred about her image means that rather than lazily rapping over bass-heavy beats which excite about as much as the concept of Cheeky Girls porn film, she gets to sound like Betty Boo fronting a revived 21st Century Girls which, let's face it, is what we all, deep down, want our pop to sound like.Don't Play Nice is essentially the sort of song that Rachel Stevens would be doing if she actually had an ounce of personality. As good as Some Girls was and, indeed, Negotiate With Love is, it still doesn't hold a candle to something that, despite it's slightly retro reference points, still manages to sound like the freshest thing on radio right now, so you should really go out and buy it. Besides, as Verbalicious happily admits in the chorus that her music has the power to raise the dead, you may find yourself being menaced by a brain dead, foul smelling zombie should you elect not to purchase a copy, or Brian McFadden as he's otherwise known. Having said that though, we did try attempting to revive our cat, who's been buried at the bottom of our garden for the last five years, by playing the song at loud volume. As an experiment it wasn't exactly an unqualified success, although it did succeed in waking up our current cat, who came over to see what all the fuss was about. "Miaow.", she commented, before wandering off to eat some grass. Which perhaps says more about the track than we ever could, and was probably a lot funnier as well.
