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Talent in a Previous Life

Because It's Never Just About the Music

Saturday, December 23, 2006

All Some of the Things We Said 

It's Christmas, and our, like many people's at this time of year, thoughts are turning towards the year gone past. This is partly through nostalgia, partly out of a desire to confirm that we didn't just waste this year like we've done every other one up until now, but mainly because looking back at what we've written about in the last year takes a lot less effort than actually coming up with new content for the site.

So, join us as we take a backwards glance over the events of the last twelve months that we deemed important enough to cover, or at least those which we felt reasonably sure we could come up with a few cheap jokes about.

January
We kicked off the year with our traditional set of predictions for the year ahead, and as always every single one of them turned out to be true, turned in our only Slash piece of the year, looking at the sexual shenannigans of The Noise Next Door, a band who need no introduction as absolutely no-one knew who they were at the time, let alone now. The Brits nominations were announced and we were less than impressed. Mind you, we've now become so cynical and jaded that even the second coming of Jesus would be unlikely to elicit much more than a half hearted shrug from us, but we were entirely justified in our disdain for these, particularly as they somehow felt that James Blunt was worthy of five nominations. James Blunt is worthy of nothing more than your disdain. We got all excited by the Australian Idol finalist Lee Harding, and while we still maintain that Wasabi is all kinds of aceness, our interest failed to continue on to actually giving much of a shit about what he did next. We also took a look at popstar's heartbeats and pondered a potential Louise comeback which, much to the dismay of blandpop fans everywhere, never quite materialised.

February
February saw the launch of our 100 Actual Worst Records... Ever! feature and the initial burst of enthusiasm saw Thunderbugs, England United, Kula Shaker, Deep Blue Something, Hoobastank, Geri Halliwell and Puddle of Mudd all indoctrinated into the chart. If only we'd been able to maintain these enthusiasm levels then we might have been able to complete the list, instead of watching it peter into the ground like most of the ideas we have. We also went to see Sparks, an event which we enjoyed immensely, unlike The Brit Awards, an event which found us wishing we were dead or, failing that, that James Blunt was.

March
Not only do you need to beware the Ides of March, but the A-sides of March left a lot to be desired with Chico getting to the number one slot with It's Chico Time. We helped out by publishing the lyrics, just in case anyone wanted to sing along for some foolish reason. Kylie, who is now contractually required to be described as 'brave' every time she's written about, announced she was going to write a book, and we were swift to grab the exclusive rights to her sister's similar efforts. And we ended the month by getting a bit mardy, well there's a surprise, about the prospect of the 30th anniversery of punk.

April
April saw us jumping on the MySpace bandwagon before promptly doing very little with it whatsoever, but if you'd like to be our 'friend' then you can add us at http://www.myspace.com/talentinapreviouslife. We through the full weight of our support behind the Wigwam single, which promptly failed to make no impact on the chart whatsoever, pointed out that tickets to go and see Madonna were ever so slightly overpriced. The most exciting and revealing insight into the world of pop Girls Aloud: Off the Record was broadcast. Well, there was some nice footage of Nicola in it at any rate. We also had a look at what Kute the ace Girls aloud support band had been up to; in summary, not a lot.

May
FHM published their annual list of the most masterbated over females and Cheryl Tweedy was no doubt extremely proud to top the list of popstars, while we, as part of our 100 Worst Records feature, looked at the list of all pop stars who took part in the BBC's Perfect Day promo from many moons ago. We backed Daz Sampson to win Eurovision and, well, you can find out how he got on here, and not only did we contribute to that, but we also offered some useful advice on how we might actually win the bloody thing next year, or at least not come last. Again.

June
We once again got all unnecessary over the Girls Aloud live experience, which they'll undoubtedly top again next year, while we also took a look at Shakira's body language. Not a lot else happened this month, with us mainly doing our 10 Things... and Top of the Pops reviews, somethig which we found out was going to have to change as we found out the news that Top of the Pops was to be axed.

July
Getting us just as excited as the Girls Aloud tour was The Pipettes live experience, while we took a sneak peak at the antics at Cheryl and Ashley's wedding. We also took great pleasure in welcoming a new member of staff to the team, Laura, our Fashion Correspondent turned in the first of her pieces looking at the style tips of the celebrities. We plugged Frank whose single, guess what, stalled at the scrag end of the top 40. We really do know how to pick them, don't we. Top of the Pops limped to its demise, and we took a look at every single presenter the show has ever had. This was not, perhaps, a constructive use of our time. last show itself was something of a non-event, although given that it's coming back for Christmas, we're not sure how much of a last show it actually was.

August
As always August found ourselves distracted by the Fringe, so we didn't really do much, or, indeed, at all for the site. But we enjoyed ourselves, anyway.

September
We returned after our break, fresh, reinvigorated and full of new ideas, only one of which we actually bothered doing, launching Music Week with a guide to seven days in the life of Robbie Williams. It doesn't just involve being a smugly annoying cunt, you know. Girls Aloud's Something Kinda Ooooh recieved it's premiere and we got slightly over-excited by the whole prospect, and quite rightly so. We also got over-excited by a band called Dateless, who have done absolutely nothing whatsoever since then, and similarly lazy have been 5ive, who announced their reformation with great fanfare and have promptly done the sum total of bugger all since then.

October
October found us celebrating Nicola Roberts' birthday in style by looking back at her video appearences. X Factor launched for the third time, and if you look through all the pieces we wrote about it, we think you can pinpoint the exact moment where our interest waned and only a sheer bloody minded sense of duty forced us to carry on watching. Madonna adpoted a baby, while Girls Aloud released their greatest hits, so we gave a full and in-depth look at all the tracks contained therein.

November
We wrote a piece for Sweeping the Nation about a song we felt everyone should hear, before taking a look at the parallel universe which might have existed had Girls Aloud released Sacred Trust instead of One True Voice. We claimed we were going to cover Matt Willis' time in I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, but promptly didn't do a thing about it. Our lack of support was, based on the performance of those that we do back, probably a major factor in his eventual success. Bono turned up to do a frankly disappointing Question and Answer session, which was entirely his fault and not the fault of the person who wrote the piece. Ahem.

December
And so, December. Or now, as it's otherwise known. We launched our advent calendar which, as predicted, ground to a halt before the month was out, Leona won X Factor, which was a relative success in the sense that it wasn't Ray, but ultimately disappointing in the whole 'finding-a-pop-star' sense and that, bar some present suggestions and our traditional Christmas Eve post tomorrow, is that. What a year it's been, etc, etc. But we tried. At least we tried.