The Smack Of Firm Government

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Is it very wrong of me to have a sneaking liking for Guy Hands?

"The power and the decision has sat with the A&R man, who is someone who gets up late in the day, listens to lots of music, goes to clubs, spends his time with artists and has a knack of knowing what would sell.

"They were committing money with no sign off, no nothing."

"What we are doing is taking the power away from the A&R guys and putting it with the suits - the guys who have to work out how to sell music. Trying to persuade 260 people to give up their power has been hard."

"We had labels at EMI that were spending five times as much on marketing as their gross revenues. We told them you could stick a £50 note on the cover of a CD and have the same effect, and we also wouldn't have to pay them. Those sorts of comments don't go down too well."

MARIAH LAW: UNICORN REDUX

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Lazer gun battle.
Pillow fights.
Playing Frisbee in a kilt.

**OMG**

POPTIMISM IS GOOD FOR YOU

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

There is a POPTIMISM club night on Saturday to usher us all into March. Come to the CROSS KINGS and prepare to dance the night away - guest DJs this month include katstevens and miss_newham and Clare who I think is not on LiveJournal, plus the usual mob.

NOW BETTER THAN EVER: There will be CAKE HOUR from 8pm to 9pm - delicious cakes (well a few of them) with an appropriate soundtrack. DON'T MISS OUT!

Hitz from Finland Vol. 1

[credoimprobus]

Here begins an long-planned and longer-flaked out on post series abt POP FROM FINLAND. It's going to be part retrospective and part current hits -- more retrospective, likely, with the amount of ground to cover even if I only keep to millennial pop! (And, y'know, the fact that I only just started listening to Finnish pop radio again after a good two years. What can I say: I suffered from a ridiculously persistent allergy to rock the last several years, and an allergy to rock + Finnish pop radio = bad, bad combination, haha.)

Starting it up is:

Jenni Vartiainen was in Finland's first Popstars band, Gimmel; they broke up a bunch of years ago, and Jenni is the first of the members (to my knowledge) to resurface as a solo artist. She had one of last year's most controversial hits with second single Ihmisten edessä, which ends the opening verse on the line "you're beautiful as always/in your high heels" -- with the inevitable result of huge amounts of is she/isn't she spec and exchange of flames words between the pro- and anti-gay camps. Meanwhile, the song's touched hearts and resonated with unconventional couples of all kinds everywhere, with its theme of courage in the face of social disapproval won through love.

(Author of the track, incidentally, is increasingly prolific hitmaker Teemu Brunila of The Crash, who professes to have been inspired to write the song after seeing a lesbian couple in the street, "walking with their heads bent down".)


The real point of this post is miss Vartiainen's stunning third single, "Toinen", though, in which she's feeling bad about being a lying cheater that cheats on her man. Quite a change of pace, that!

All I have to say is: her VOICE!