Miss 600 – Typically Me

Old instrumentation and new production values.

Tom: Film the video in someone’s backyard, edit it on a Mac, and bang, you’re done. This isn’t a big-label production – but it’s managed Radio 2 playlisting despite that.

Tom: Straight to the point: I love the music. I love the sound, the feel of it. It’s got a beautiful combination of old instrumentation and new production values. And her voice sounds incredible.

Tim: Yes, I can see that. Style doesn’t do a huge amount for me, but I can go with it.

Tom: But I really, really dislike the lyrics. It’s like a crap self-deprecating stand up comedy act. Oh, look, I did this. And then I did this. I can’t explain why, somehow, this particular set of lyrics have wound me up, but wound me up they have.

Tim: Or maybe it’s some sort of cynical psychological thingy she’s got going on with her fans – look at me feeling sorry for myself, prove I’m wrong by buying this record.

Tom: Which is a shame, because as I said – the rest of it’s lovely.

Florence + The Machine – No Light, No Light

I have no bloody clue what’s going on in this music video.

Tom: I have no bloody clue what’s going on in this music video.

Tom: Anyway, everyone’s favourite ginger female Noel Fielding lookalike is on form as ever. I’m not sure if she’s recognisable more from her voice, or from the inevitable harp that appears in the background of every track.

Tim: It’s the voice. Always the voice, that some people really like and other people hate, and other people, such as myself, find every so slightly grating when I’m not in the exact right mood.

Tom: That’s not a bad thing, though, because that chorus is just beautiful, with all the trademark Machine soaring…ness.

Tim: Soaring… ness?

Tom: Yeah, that adjective got away from me.

Tim: Ah, don’t worry. I got my pronouns mixed up earlier, so I think I can forgive you this once.

Tom: I’ve heard quite a few people say they don’t really “get” her musical style – and I can see why, for the same reasons that many folks (myself included) don’t “get” Kate Bush. But the track’s just so spectacular that I’ve got to at least appreciate it.

Tim: Hmm – any more spectacular than her other hits, though? She’s always had the big voice, backing instruments and everything else trying to make the songs sound epic, so this seems a bit more of a formula track. Decent formula, though.

Jasmine Kara – Ain’t No More Room

Starts out sounding jolly and bouncy, this does.

Tim: Starts out sounding jolly and bouncy, this does.

Tom: And it keeps sounding jolly and bouncy! What a voice. You know, I reckon I prefer the verses to the chorus here – the simpler instrumentation lets her singing shine out, while the choruses seem a bit overcomplicated and repetitive. It’s strange for me to think that way – but then I’m a big fan of the neo-Motown style of tracks like this.

Tim: It continues in that vein, with none of the violence in the music that the video would imply. There’s a weird contrast there – hearing the music on its own gives a sort of ‘I’d quite like to go out with you, but unfortunately I’m just too busy to fit you in my schedule right now’, with it’s gentle lyrics and pleasant backing that you might hear on Strictly Come Dancing, but watching the video implies a ‘Get the hell out of here and if you come back I’ll kick the shit out of you’ that’s more Come Dine With Me.

Tom: Another strange thought for me: I think the video actually takes something away from the song. I reckon I’d be happy with just the verses and nothing else here.

Tim: And shame on her for chucking that iMac off the balcony – that’s a design classic! Jony Ive’s just been knighted, and she’s treating his products like that. Disgraceful behaviour.

Tom: Thus spake the Apple employee.

Tim: DESIGN. CLASSIC.

Saturday Flashback: LIGHTS – Saviour

Good musicianship hidden behind a childish exterior.

Tom: Bit of Canadian electronica for you now. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

I was introduced to Lights (or “LIGHTS”, but that’s just a bit silly) by a friend in New Orleans a couple of years ago. She’s got two albums out now, but there’s a reason that this particular track was the first single off her first album ‘The Listening’, back in 2009.

Tom: Okay: you’ll need to get over the vaguely CBeebies vibe to it – thanks to our Radio Insider Matt for that description – and the fairly slow verses. Which is a lot to get over, because they can grate.

Tim: I don’t know. I’m assuming that by the CBeebies vibe you mean the video, which I actually love, because it reminds me of It’s Raining Sunshine, off the soundtrack of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, one my favourite films ever. (Five seconds. That’s all you need.)

Tom: That’s… just incredibly disturbing. Eyes don’t do that! Not even on cartoon characters! And… yeah, the more I think about that, the more I think that’s basically just a Nightmare Fuel generator.

Tim: Are you kidding me? Mate, what’s the matter with you? Bloody hell.

Tom: I’ve just looked up the movie. It features a device that creates meat from water. It features intelligent roasted chickens, one of which is then worn as a costume. If you’d have shown me that as a kid, I’d have been incredibly disturbed and probably turned vegetarian.

Tim: Ah, but that wouldn’t save you from the nacho chips that laced themselves with peanut butter just because our heroine has a nut allergy.

Tom: Anyway, the “CBeebies vibe”, as Matt puts it, isn’t down to the video – it’s more a general feeling of sounding like something off Radio Disney.

Tim: Well, for me the autotuniness on them provokes the same reaction as the voice in Still Alive – a bit weird, but fine once I’m used to it.

Tom: But just listen to that chorus. Specifically, to that glorious backing vocal in the final chorus. That, above all, is what keeps me digging out this track, and most of the first half of the album, from time to time: there’s some really very good musicianship hidden behind a childish exterior.

Tim: There, you are bang on. Yes, it’s somewhat childish and even a tad Disney-ish, but only in a very good way.

Tom: There are other good tracks off the same album: Ice, which has one of the strangest middle eights I’ve heard in a long while, and The Last Thing On Your Mind, which is about as emotional as electronica can get before it crosses into some other genre entirely. It’s worth a listen – even if, like listening to a whole Mika album, you need to listen to death metal afterwards to get your brain over the sugar rush.

Tim: No, don’t bother with death metal. Just keep the sugar rush going. Try this.

Valen:tine – Nowhere

“Yes, it’s tat time of year again.”

Tim: There is a CONTROVERSY surrounding this: it was due to be an entry in this year’s Dansk Melodi Grand Prix (yes, it’s tat time of year again)

Tom: Deliberate typo joke, or Freudian slip? You decide.

Tim: Huh. Hmm. Anyway, it had been pushed out on Facebook page briefly last summer, the Eurovision organisers got wind of it and said that broke rules, the Danish guys grudgingly accepted that and now there’ll only be nine songs for them to choose from.

Tom: That is technically a violation: they have to be all-new songs. Harsh, but it’s following the rules.

Tim: But does that matter? Would it have stood a chance of winning? LET’S FIND OUT!*

*Oh, and yes, I know it’s a ridiculous name for an artist, but we’ll just have to live with that.

Tom: My instincts: “middle of the leaderboard”.

Tim: Perhaps. It’s a sort of Kelly Clarkson or Pink type of pop, really, and I like that.

Tom: I do too, but it doesn’t quite seem to reach that – but I can’t put my finger on why. It’s got all the component pieces, but somehow doesn’t quite fit together for me.

Tim: It’s a bit depressing if you listen to the lyrics, but that wouldn’t really have mattered because nobody ever pays attention to the words the first time they hear a track, although the ‘you’re going nowhere’ lyric does stand out a bit, I must concede.

On the other hand, the music’s a good fit for that, and if we’re honest the people of Europe in general do have quite a bit to be a somewhat down about right now*, so maybe it would have worked. OH WELL I GUESS WE’LL NEVER KNOW.

* Ooh, serious talk!

Scooter feat. Vicky Leandros – C’est Bleu

They know what to deliver, and they deliver it in spades.

Tim: Somehow, we’ve never featured Scooter doing a proper track, only a mash-up. Let’s change that, with a new(ish) song that starts out like something your grandparents might enjoy. That doesn’t last for long, though.

Tom: That is exactly what I expect, and want, from Scooter. I can’t fault it. They know what to deliver, and they deliver it in spades.

Tim: The best Scooter tunes have always combined some sort of singing with H. P. Baxxter’s (I promise you, I did not know that off-hand) yelling, and I think this isn’t much of an exception.

Tom: Incidentally, I did know that offhand.

Tim: What’s she singing about? Some sort of rubbish about love, it seems, but H. P. whatsisface soon interrupts which the far more appropriate ‘Turn it up! Yes!’.

Tom: There’s even a shoutout to the Sheffield Gang – a reference to their favourite jumpstyle crew.

Tim: This seems to be Scooter as we know and, well, toler– actually, you know what? I’ll say it – LOVE THEM.

Tom: Well, I’ve got good news for you, Tim. Because they’re – wait for it – BACK IN THE UK. Seriously. They’re playing London in May.

Tim: YES! And WE. WILL. SEE THEM.

The Logical Song was absolutely superb, and vastly better than the original (of whose existence I was entirely ignorant until eighteen months ago).

Tom: Wait, what? Really? I’m astonished by that – the original was a classic. Mind you, we’ve found in the past that we both have unexpected gaps in our music knowledge.

Tim: There’s Friends, a ridiculously over-enthusiastic song that would immediately end all wars if played to the world. There’s Endless Summer, which will get anyone up for partying, whatever their thoughts may have been thirty seconds previously.

I hereby declare that Scooter make fantastic tracks, perfect for any occasion. I’m just gutted that their tribute act, Moped, aren’t still going. Well, I say tribute, but I think it’s meant to be more of a parody; parody implies a greater level of absurdity, though, and here we have lyrics like ‘Boom boom, bang bang, slippy like banana man’ that remove all possibility of that.

Tom: They live on in our hearts, Tim.

FriXion – Falling In Love

Remember INJU5TICE? Well, these guys aren’t quite as bad.

Tim: Long intro time!*

* Slight advance warning: this may or may not be because the story’s more interesting than the song.

Tom: We’re not talking musically here, are we? Right, I’ll brace myself.

Tim: One of my friends on Twitter recently posted this as the reason he despised UK boybands – “typical wardrobe, shit hair cuts, emo air grabs…just one big mother [ahem] cliche!!!” So, naturally, I had to check it out. And, um, remember INJU5TICE? Well, these guys aren’t quite as bad.

Tom: I just Googled INJU5TICE to see what was happening with them recently. I think they may have forgotten to renew their domain name.

Tim: And yet somehow no-one has noticed.

Let’s have a bit of an introduction to these guys. They are “already tipped to be the next big British R&B/Popular music success”, though we’re not told by whom, they “combine soulful vocals and first-class songwriting prowess”, and they are “preparing to unleash their unique vocal style and heart moving songs to the music world with the debut single release in 2010!”

Tom: Hold on, hold on. 2010? Is that a typo, or are they rereleasing something?

Tim: No, I think it’s just forgetting to update. Everything here comes from their Facebook page, you see, as their actual website just redirects to the iTunes page for one of their past singles, and their management’s website is “comming soon“.

Tom: If ever something deserved a [sic] after it…

Tim: Finally, though, before we hear the track I must tell you that “another unique edge that these boys have is the fact that they are all over 6 foot tall, and any lady will feel safe & secure around them but they will never be the ones to cause any Friction.”

Tom: Or, indeed, “FriXion”. Wait, you’re 6′ 7″. Do the ladies feel safe and secure around you?!

Tim: Depends whether I’m dancing, in which case people often run for cover.

Now let’s begin.

Tim: So yes – wardrobe and haircuts are all in attendance, and there’s a cracker of an air grab at 2:17, but there are a good few issues here.

Tom: The aspect ratio of the video’s one of them. They might be over six feet tall, but they look like squidgy munchkins because someone can’t encode a video properly.

Tim: A good point. Second up, we have the fact that it’s about a minute longer than a song like this should be, which, given the effort they put into the second chorus wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but here it is, because of the third problem. What the HELL were they thinking after the middle eight? KEY CHANGE, people. A boyband like this NEEDS a key change, or at least get one of them to sing high above the others.

Tom: You’re right about that air grab, though. It’s a cracker. As ever with something like this, though, I can’t fault the members of the band – everything above is down to the producers, not them.

Tim: True, but these are the guys that inevitably get loathed. And loved, I suppose, but only by people like zalikhah1, who wants us to know that “i havent known emm 4 tht long but wen i strted i loved emmm nd nw i aint gonna let emm gooo i will support em alwaiiz”.

Final problem with the song, if we’re still interested in that, is that it has a ridiculously long outro. Although I suppose that sort of means the two radio DJs that decide to play this are less likely to talk over any important bits.

Tom: That sentence is being generous in several different ways.

Kelly Clarkson – Stronger

One of the best choruses of the last few months.

Tom: For someone who first came to fame after “American Idol”, she’s done spectacularly well.

Tom: Okay, full disclosure: I never really cared much about Kelly Clarkson, and then I saw this video of her performing at the Troubadour, and I might have developed a brief crush.

Tim: SHALLOW.

Tom: Not for the made-up, ridiculously airbrushed version in the glossy music video – but the t-shirt-wearing woman with the fantastic voice on stage.

Tim: Oh, fair enough.

Tom: I really like this song. So the question is: am I being distracted by the fact that I am now, by definition, “a fan”? Well, that’s where I need your opinion. I reckon this has one of the best choruses of the last few months – for the same reason that I like, for example, most of Pink’s stuff.

Tim: You’re right, it does. A good pop-rock chorus with everything that pop-rock needs to make it good – decent beats, a good hook, and ridiculously excessive levels of effort from the vocalist

Tom: As far as I’m concerned, the chorus is brilliant; the verses back it up well; even the middle eight fits in. It’s a good track. Am I right?

Tim: Yes. Although it isn’t as good as My Life Would etc etc, so putting that link in is a bit of a distraction. OH WELL IT’S DONE NOW.

Nicola Roberts – Yo-Yo

Standard pop, and done fairly well.

Tom: Full marks to the backing dancers in this video: there aren’t many of them, and they’re in the middle of some stark environments, but they’re still giving it their best shot.

Tim: Though they never quite match up to her own dancing at about 2:57.

Tom: Occasional bits of the verses remind me of The Feeling and various Disney songs – but all mashed up with a high, falsetto voice and an instrumental that seems to go all over the place.

Tim: Ah, see I think occasional bits of the verses remind me of pop music in general, and I like that a lot. This is standard pop, I feel, and done fairly well.

Tom: A ridiculously long middle-eight with a long euphoric build at the end. It promises great things, but it doesn’t quite deliver.

Tim: There, I absolutely agree with you. It’s far, far too long. Really, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too long. (Do you see what I did there?)

Tom: I see it. I wish I didn’t have to.

This isn’t bad – and I’m always appreciative of gratuitous lingerie shots in music videos, of course – but it won’t be reaching my regular playlist any time soon.

Saturday Flashback: Seal – Amazing

AMAZING.

Tim: IDEA: we use music to prompt a discussion of current events.

Tom: Ooh, I got an idea! I’ve got this shark here. Shall I jump over it?

Tim: OH COME ON.

A couple of days ago some American university decided they wanted to stop a load of people having fun, and want to ban the word amazing. It seems we would both find this a bit annoying*, and so I present this 2009 track in response to them.

* MATHS tells me we’ve used the word amazing in a little over 13% of our posts. That’s quite a bit, isn’t it?

Tom: It’s a bit worrying, but not as worrying as the fact you bothered to work that out.

Tim: Here we have a track that celebrates the target of it being off drugs, but also makes sure the target is okay. I’ll be honest: I’ve never been a cokehead, so I don’t really know the difficulties involved, but I can imagine that being called ‘amazing’ by everyone, as the lyrics suggest, would make me feel much better than being called, say ‘really quite good, actually’ or ‘surprisingly healthy’.

Tom: “He doesn’t look too bad, you know, for someone who was out of his head last month.”

Tim: Indeed. And a song entitled ‘Very Satisfactory’ just wouldn’t sell. That would be a shame, because this is actually quite a good song. Despite the occasionally negative tones of the lyrics, the overall tone of the song is, well, amazing. Uplifting, powerful, all that malarkey, you’re AMAZING!

Tom: Excellent video as well – that’s how you do a “just stick him in front of a greenscreen, we’ll figure it out in post” video properly.

Tim: Also also, if we weren’t allowed to use that word, we wouldn’t have Inna’s track either, which would be a bit of a shame.

And finally, AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING.

Tom: Get it out of your system.

Tim: AMAZING.