A Year In Pop: 24

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Back to Mondays for the duration of the Pop Open - it's this weeks pop records for your dissection and delectation. The return! of reality TV contestants. The return! of bands who seem to think getting a download single in the charts is a major statement. The return! of the new music that's taking over the country. AND MORE!

[Poll #1005169]

Also, use the tag, if you will, to go and tick last week's poll, if you didn't: very poor turnout there.

Comments

Re: having not yet heard any of this

[koganbot]

Gossip - Let's see, I actually like the MSTRKRFT Gossip remix way more than the original, and this is what I wrote about it last month on my MySpace: "In the early '80s there'd been a slew of quirky groove songs, half disco, half funk. This track somehow has caught that spirit without sounding like a throwback but not having near neighbors in contemporary music. But not sounding odd, just sounding like itself. (Um, sorry, I can't do a better description. But this track is surprisingly unassuming from a singer I generally find an enthusiastic but grating blowhard. Makes my smile.)" Tick.

Kelly C. - Discussed above. Enthusiastic tick.

Marillion - It's apparently comment-worthy that they're charting in 2007, though I never heard of them until half an hour ago. Weird voice in that it sounds untrained and unmusical in the way that when you have a cold your voice sounds unmusical, which doesn't mean such voices can't be effective, but strangely he's doing high emotional extravagance that needs more chops than he can give it. Song'd have been a tick if he'd been up to it, but tickless from me.

Lee Mead - In researching this I YouTubed him doing one of the worst imaginable performances of "Paint It, Black," clearly enunciated dramatic reading of a song that demands not that everyone in the far balcony comprehends every syllable and every overacted nuance but that you convincingly embody some kind of menace and terror. So "Any Dream Will Do" is a pleasant contrast, a nice lilt. Still not a style of music or singing I particularly like, though, so no tick but I might change my mind if I hear it more. But I'm not going to hear it more.

Koopa - Low-grade pinched singing, but there's a nice reach for melody and harmony. But the rhythm defeats this, even though it's played expertly. It's too twisted and ungrooved. Borderline nontick.

Erasure - Singing is lifeless. Not the fault of his effort, just that the pipes got stiff with age.

Maximo Park - Deleted this from my computer, don't remember why (and I'd liked their previous single) but will trust my earlier judgment, nontick.

Editors - Long deleted, again don't remember why 'cept remember the deletion was emphatic.

Avril - Concur with complaints above. For the passionate emotive Avril I recommend you go back to "Unwanted" and "Mobile" on Let Go.

Re: having not yet heard any of this

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Marillion had some big hits here in the 80s including 'Kayleigh' which I actually quite like myself but theoretically not as much as the Eurobosh version which I'm sure must exist.