pop music
Thomas H. Green
Example seems a most unlikely sex symbol but the four-fifths full Brighton Centre (capacity 5100) contains multiple gaggles of young women in their late teens and early twenties who want a piece of 29-year-old Elliot Gleave (EG = Example). My pal Don is bemused. “He looks like a bloke you’d see at a bus stop,” he exclaims above female screams. He does, albeit more stylishly dressed and with a hint of Edmund Blackadder (series one) about his severe fringed haircut. This vocal, partisan crowd – also, it should be noted, filled with men of a similar age - appear willing to lap up anything Read more ...
joe.muggs
And we're done. As you'd expect for a grand final, everything was pumped up yet further. A guest spot by Coldplay came over like a Nazi rally styled by kindergarten teachers who once took an E, all rainbow squiggles and brain-obliterating strobes. The fact that the TV sound mix revealed Chris Martin's vocal weaknesses and the flimsiness of the songs beneath the band's bombast couldn't ruin the gloriously dumb spectacle.And talking of gloriously dumb, the “roving reporters in the crowd” Caroline Flack and previous X Factor runner-up Olly Murs really pushed the boat out to make Dermot O'Leary Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well, there we go. Another series of The X Factor about to splutter and crunch to a halt. Seventeen-year-old shouter Amelia Lily has been voted out despite actually turning in the finest performances of the night, leaving delightfully rough-round-the-edges girl group Little Mix and lovable Scouse cheeselord Marcus Collins (pictured below) in the running to “win an amazing recording contract” - in the full knowledge that, given the last couple of years' evidence, pretty much anyone in the final six or so contestants is guaranteed a contract and a good shot at chart success.Unpicking the layers Read more ...
david.cheal
It’s easy enough to diss Coldplay: they make music that’s hugely successful (boo!) and not terribly challenging; they’re middle class – a heinous crime in a form of entertainment that’s steeped in notions of “authenticity” (hence the enduring love affair between music critics and the oafish Oasis – hey, they take lots of drugs and they used to steal car radios!); and as people they just seem a bit nice, to the point of dullness. I’ve done the dissing thing myself often enough: there’s that way of saying “Coldplay” that sounds both slightly sneery and slightly shamefaced, in the same way that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“They’re some of the greatest pop songs ever written,” declares Sir Elton John. He’s right. The Bee Gees – Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb – are responsible for songs that will live forever, songs that are part of successive generation’s cultural furniture. Yet although the title was The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees Song, the question asked on the ITV website was: “Just what is the greatest Bee Gees song ever?” Favourite and greatest aren’t the same thing. They can be, but they aren’t.This kitten-soft stroll through 20 of The Bee Gees’ evergreens wasn’t concerned with any such existential Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Even if you haven’t heard of Slow Moving Millie, aka Amelia Warner, there’s a 99 per cent chance that if you reside in the UK and have access to television, you’ll have heard her sing. The 29-year-old’s cover version of The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” features on the most talked-about, eye-misting Christmas advert of the year: John Lewis’s 30-second commercial of a little boy who can’t wait for his present (wait for it!) to his parents to be given.Millie’s slowed-down, plaintive and beautifully sung cover version is in a big way responsible for the ad’s success. And Read more ...
joe.muggs
Clever people often make terrible music. Not always: the best pop is smart as well as direct - but an inability to stop analysing, comparing and explaining is the anathema of the pleasure principle, and encyclopedic knowledge often leads to bone-dry discourse. These are problems that all of the performers at last night's show have run up against, and dealt with in different ways; in particular, the headliner Green Gartside has spent his entire three-decade-plus career with various versions of Scritti Politti more or less successfully finding ways of reconciling the immediacy and concentrated Read more ...
Russ Coffey
At last, seasonal talent-show spin-offs are showing signs of real talent. Hot on the heels of the appealing, if insubstantial, Olly Murs album, comes Rebecca Ferguson’s debut. And, if Murs’ release wasn’t too bad, people are saying that Ferguson’s is such a leap forward it’s bad form to mention her in the same breath as the other alumni. Part of the fuss is, no doubt, down to the fact that, finally, The X Factor seems to have uncovered someone with authentic, visceral ability. But the reaction is not just about confounded expectations. Ferguson seems genuinely capable of giving Adele Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It catches everyone out that Duran Duran’s version of the hip-hop classic “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” comes off so well. Not just affable entertainment but actually fiercely funky, raising a large section of the Brighton Centre to its feet. Duran’s 1995 covers album Thank You – from which the song comes - was once voted by Q magazine as the worst album ever, but looking around at the enthused reaction, including my own, that all seems rather irrelevant. Midway through their set, Duran Duran are a persuasive force.The four Durans – Nick Rhodes (keys), Simon Le Bon (vocals), John Taylor ( Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Can the Hanson brothers ever rid themselves of the shackles of “MMMBop” (the 1997 hit that brought them global renown)? More to the point, should they bother to try? These were the burning questions I armed myself with as I prepared to watch a band whose progress, it’s fair to say, I’ve hardly followed in the last 15 years since their falsetto singing and rambunctious head-banging brought the world such joy. So, having done some serious mugging up, and listened to their back catalogue, I was interested to see where fortune would have taken the clean-cut trio with the flowing blond hair.As Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Asked what attracted her to the music of South America, Catherine Ringer says, “C’est comme ça. Boom-ta-ta-boom, ta-ta-boom, ta-ta-boom-da boom, boom-da-da-boom.” She begins singing. “Boom-da-boom-da-boom, doo-doo-da-doo. It’s the rhythm of rock'n’roll,” she concludes. Ringer still exudes the spontaneity that defined Les Rita Mitsouko, whose first French hit, "Marcia Baïla", was fuelled by Latin rhythms. Yet now, she’s on her own, in London promoting her first solo album, Ring n’ Roll, released here this week. Her partner Fred Chichin died in November 2007.He’s gone, but Ringer says, “There Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although they're beginning to get cold, the winds blowing in from Scandinavia have recently brought enough music to keep anyone warm through long, dark nights. Finnish intensity, pop and introspection from Denmark, Swedish luxuriousness, Icelandic keyboard quirk, Norwegians that enfold - all are here. Along with Estonian haziness.Finland hits hardest with a new EP from K-X-P. theartsdesk has met them before, live and on album. Previously with Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, Easy is their first outing for Manchester’s Melodic. It’s an extraordinary thing, coalescing a vision marrying a Read more ...