A kung fu fighter in a disco

Are The Gossip in there because they're using that track in the Skins ads? Or are they actually re-releasing it?

Impressed that Kelis is in the top 40 already about a month before release, that song will probably be (deservedly) massive.

Little Man Tate particularly vile. Fall Out Boy beyond vile, I will never comprehend how any of you lot have time for them. Bloc Party surprisingly less bad than I was expecting but his voice remains really unpleasant to have to listen to, so not even a marginal non-tick.

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Ha, it is almost exactly a year to the day since I first heard ‘Standing In The Way…’ – at the first Bugged Out of 06!

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the Gossip track has bounced back because of the download rules. they'll probably re-issue it on CD too tho.

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I listened to this lot this morning over a bowl of healthy Optivita.

FALL OUT BOY: WTF it's some kind of attempt at a skank? Disappointing. No tick.

BLOC PARTY: FVCKING AWFUL. Terrible combination of dreariness and pomposity. Even half-praise entirely unjustified on this showing.

LITTLE MAN TATE: There was a time when a track called "Sexy In Latin" would have been a derivative funky house tune. Now it's a derivative fraggle track. Really atrocious.

KEANE: Right, I ticked this, in part because I was so ANGERED by Bloc Party that somebody tackling the same solemn epicry with a degree of, you know, dynamics and competence and melody needs rewarding just in contrast.

LARRIKIN LOVE: Really really reminds me of something, it's quite a bad memory though.

GOSSIP: Having heard a lot about this I was a bit disappointed - Beth's voice seems kind of floaty for once, on the verses at least. OK backing, the best thing in today's batch.

KELIS: Another disappointment, though if I'm ticking Keane I have to tick this. Cee-Lo's verses sound like a late-period whimsical Britpop track.

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I’m surprised that you’re not feeling the Gossip or Kelis more – the former is an utter dancefloor monster and the latter, it’s not so much Cee-Lo’s chorus as Kelis’s verses which make it, I love it when she sings sweetly and huskily like that, the tune is pretty special, and the lyrics are lovely.

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The "dancefloor monster" status of the Gossip isn't likely to come across at breakfast time on a Tuesday, so I'll withold judgement.

The Kelis just sounded....drippy. Other people I enjoy drippy from, but not Kelis.

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I agree re the Kelis, probably my least fave single of hers.

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Having now listened again to the Gossip I can see it would work on the dancefloor but I'm a bit surprised you like it! It's, how shall we put it, not the kind of dancefloor monster you usually seem to go for...

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It's got a pretty strong four-to-the-floor thumping beat! And the guitars are really produced, they could almost be synths, and the vocals are really anthemic. Also I tend to have one token indie jam each year and this was last year's.

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katstevens.livejournal.com

I don't like the ones I've heard, which isn't many.

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wholepint.livejournal.com

*puts hands up as the person who ticked Bloc Party*

ok, ok... to be fair... it's not as good as anything off their last album. And the first time I heard it I wasnt impressed at all. So I probably shouldn't have ticked it.... but a couple of weeks ago I was at work, having a dull day and listening to the radio through headphones and it suddenly seemed AMAZING and made me feel all awake all of a sudden. But it hasn't done the same again to me since. It got a tick because of that memory...

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i ticked Bloc Party because i quite like the Adam Ant style backing vocals thing.

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I missed this totally. But the lead singer and instrumentation would outweigh it even if Marco Pirroni himself was involved.

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conveniently i have forgotten how Kele sounds on it. probably bad as usual!

i just went and ticked Fall Out Boy because i found myself enjoying the stomping rhythm of the verses on the Friday Night Project. END TIMES.

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anatol-merklich.livejournal.com

More like Fun Boy Three i think?

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anatol-merklich.livejournal.com

Also the phrasing of "tonight, make me unsto, ppa, ble" really really reminds me of Robert Smith.

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is right

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lockedintheatti.livejournal.com

The Phones remix is also excellent, and worth a tick for that - lots of lovely squelchy electro sounds going on make it much more listenable (although I must admit to liking the original too).

You can hear the Phones remix here:

http://www.myspace.com/phones

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

This is an atrocious haul, only The Gossip and Kelis are worth the time of day and even then its a combination of overplayed and underwhelming.

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indeed but it's the second best week so far after the initial JoJo/Amy double whammy

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I don't like The Gossip but this is based on nothing at all (since I've only heard some kind of mix of 'Standing In The Way Of Control' on a Simian Mobile Disco CD that was free off the front of, err, NME awhile ago) except that Beth Ditto is an obnoxious little b*tch.

Fall Out Boy = brilliant. Also, the video is excellent. They are good because they do not take themselves too seriously. They are perceived as bad because a lot of their fans do. As opposed to My Chemical Romance where everyone concerned is COMPLETELY INSANE.

Bloc Party grew on me, despite the video resembling an anti-smoking advert.

Keane are strangely alluring these days.

Kelis is obviously ace.

Haven't heard the other two but Larrikin Love are a big old pile of poo and Little Man Tate probably are too.

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i really hate that Bloc Party video. such a pointless 'look at our new plug-ins' wank fx show.

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Yeah, it's like the most horrific sort of blockbuster title sequence. I really don't understand why they made such a horrifically overworked video for a song that's mainly appealling for being a bit minimalistic.

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well the video is quite minimal conceptually. nothing seems to happen except for the largely pointless visual gimmicks.

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koganbot

Beth Ditto is an obnoxious little b*tch

Little?

(Also, is being an obnoxious bitch necessarily an aesthetic flaw? Cf. Courtney Love, Diana Ross, Grace Slick, Madonna.)

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Not necessarily, it's true but she personally affronts me by assuming that because she is fat (although she professes to hating the word 'fat') she is better than someone who is thin. To me, she can say 'look at me, I am beautiful' but it should be met with frowns in the same way that, quite rightly, Mary-Kate Olsen standing up and saying the same thing would be. Neither of them is healthy, both of them have a problem. They may each perceive themselves to be beautiful (although in Ditto's exhibitionism I see insecurity rather than a self-assured attitude and of course Ms Olsen must be far from psychologically "together") but the fact that she is at the other extreme of the see-saw doesn't make her better. I realise I'm probably throwing about a load of my own complexes and prejudices here but I see Beth Ditto as the equivalent of that well-known picture of the obese man wearing the 'I beat anorexia' t-shirt. Maybe she chooses to be the weight she is but then advocates of the supposed "pro-ana" lifestyle claim that they choose to be anorexic and so I don't feel that it's appropriate for people to advocate Beth Ditto as psychologically sound any more than it would be Nicole Richie. I realise this actually has nothing at all to do with her music but she does rather shove it in the audience's face, as it were and so it's hard to separate.

I also find that the way the press treat her, purely because she is fat and loud is somewhat offensive, given that her views are really neither more developed nor extraordinary to those of many other female singers (I'm not just saying that because obviously Beth's music is intended to be danced to, whereas, say, Ani DiFranco's obviously isn't particularly but purely because I haven't seen anything more developed than some of Tegan and Sara's stuff, which also has the sexuality parallel with Ditto and they aren't even considered political) and she is taking exactly the same route as, say, Charlotte Church or Lily Allen or Cheryl Tweedy or whoever by attempting to court controversy by slagging off others. I do see that the political nature of her music makes it easier to interview her in a political manner but that isn't what she's known for and she seems to be more on a vaguely burlesque mission to expose herself more than she is to awaken political awareness in the youth of today etc. I find her a bit grotesque and pitiable, to be honest, because perhaps I'm transposing my own angst onto her but I can't help thinking she's probably prey to a similar monster, as it were.

Hrmm. Maybe I have leapt to conclusions about her too easily from flicking through irritating Guardian and NME articles but nothing particularly impresses me. If she was shown as some terrible decay, in the way Courtney Love is, then I would buy into it but the pantomime that she is strong and healthy is not something I can (personally) stomach.

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I think I should probably say 'Beth Ditto is marketed at me as an obnoxious b*tch, not that she is one. She may be lovely but that's how the press force her at me.

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This is something I wrote about Beth D and the Gossip about five years ago.

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/essays/2002/01/gossip/

It's a bit excitable. I do still find it interesting how 'fat-friendly' (or otherwise) different kinds of music are. I don't think I've read an interview with her since then - I can well imagine that she's played for shock value and noise value now though.

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Yeah, if people spoke about her the way you do there, I don't think I'd find it so difficult to like The Gossip but instead it's like she's touted as some kind of feminist liberation icon, when she's exactly as bad as anyone else in terms of costume, etc. I dunno, I just find her awful where I found, say, Skin (who could be identified as equally self-conscious by her shaved head and masculine posturing) life-changing.

And it's true, she's marketed as something wholly different to what you describe there, which is basically a deeply earnest punk with interesting stylings as I read it. Now it's all "Beth Ditto says she doesn't give a fuck! Wow, she said 'fuck!'" and the usual direness the NME slobs around printing these days.

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Ha, I've somehow managed to miss the bulk of Beth D's fat-feminism posturing - only caught a few hints of it. I basically agree with you that she shouldn't be held up as an example of a healthy role model for much the same reasons BUT I think what IS a good thing is her confidence, the way she wears her weight well, which is less to do with the fatness per se as with accepting who/what you are, which is pretty fantastic. Miss AMP wrote a really, really brilliant editorial in Plan B, the issue with Beth on the cover, about how as a fat teenage girl herself, merely seeing someone like Beth Ditto on the cover of a magazine would have been important.

Of course this isn't the same thing as harping on about being FAT AND PROUD - surely the Missy Elliott way is preferable, when she was fat she didn't care and she looked great, but she slimmed down because her doctor told her to and she STILL didn't care and she STILL looked great.

Anyway I am pretty against the idea of popstars as role models in any case. People who need role models also need to grow one brain of their own.

(I love SITWOC because it's not just an anthem in the dancefloor sense but because I think it's the first song since 'All The Things She Said' which I can relate to as a fist-pumping standing-together gay anthem - also they have clearly taken on board the fundamentals of DISCO whereby you take lyrics about sadness and loneliness and set them to a massive beat and tus defeat the sadness and loneliness hurrah.)

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agree with all of this.

the Missy comparison is interesting because no-one ever really came down on her for drawing attention to her weight (having the attention put on this from others regardless of course). and Missy is a genuine legend in this and other respects as far as i'm concerned.

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koganbot

I don't know the Ditto story, but there may be something similar to Lily Allen. That is, Lily's known for slagging people so she's asked to slag people and reported as doing so even when she's not; whereas when you read her blog, from which she got her original reputation for slagging, she comes off as someone excited/distraught without much of a built-in censorship apparatus, and is far more warm than mean. (Actually, haven't read that much of the press about her, so maybe they don't push the slagging bit; that's just something that jumped out at me the few times I saw it. Of course "slagging" does seem to fit in with "biting lyrics.")

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

The Fall Out Boy song = tremendous, as is the video. I had my doubts that they could find a song to match the grebtmess of the title, but they have. I was SHOCKED however to see that in said video most of the band look the wrong side of 30. I thought these dudes were the latest emo-for-teens sensations. Surely no self-respecting teenager can love anyone this old.

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they're an older emo-er BUSTED. well i watched a performance just now with a def busted jump(tm) in it. for realz

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I was going to say that the other day but then I realised the people I was talking at in the pub might not see that as an argument in FOB's favour. Nevertheless, they defo are. They even have a sort of sulky rock contingent lurking in the background (guitarist Joe Trohman) although they also have a drummer, so that's very confusing all round.

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koganbot

A fourteen-year-old speaks! (From a MySpace quiz she posted yesterday):

What is your favourite celebrity?: peter wentz, audrey hepburn, and marilyn monroe.

Who do you think is the most fuckable male?: ahh haha. PETER WENTZ!!!!!

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there were lots of chirpy kids queuing 1st thing in the morning at the hammersmith palais yesterday, for (i assume) FoB tix.

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ms-bracken.livejournal.com

I'm amazed by the lack of hate for Keane, relatively speaking. I thought that the little band of hobbits were calculated to make people who like pop music angry.

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The track they wrote for the Gwen Stefani album, "Early Winter", is awesome and has turned me round on Keane!

jauntyalan is of course a long time fan.

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i've not heard ANYthing of the recent album. praps i should.

"calculated to make people who like pop music angry".

i've always believed that the more you like pop music, the less angry you can be made. and KEANE ARE POP.

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ha ha "Keane - A Bad Dream". PAGING TANYA HEADON :-D

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

'poptimism' means 'you will never know what I might like next'. Free your mind!

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I completely agree, one good Gwen Stefani song does not absolve them from their sins in their own right. Not as bad as Fall Out Boy though.

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