Another Year In Pop: 30

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

4 weeks at the top for Dizzee & Calvin! Crikey. Lower down the charts, DJ Q and MC Bonez have jumped up 53 places and are surely bracing themselves for the top 40 very soon, and Bob Sinclair has totally redeemed his existence with this! Summer anthems ahoy!

[Poll #1231501]

(Apologies for the lateness of this week's poll!)

Comments

[koganbot]

Ida Maria "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked": Gak! Another one of them! Another female voice that's quirky, somewhat tousled, and slightly torn! This is the fast-energy new wavey version (rather than the retrosoul or neolounge or freakfolk or cabaret or twee pop versions), but really it's still part of the singer-songwriter "This is what it's like to be a wry young woman" thing. None of the women are terrible, and ah! the delicious torments of the young people and their personal interactions! The problem isn't the style, so much (Marit Larsen is GREAT in this territory, and sometimes Lily is too). And though her raggedness is too much of a crutch, I like the little twist of desperation Ida throws in at the end of lines. And if she wouldn't sound so fucking coy, her way of being somewhat tousled and torn could be attractive. The lyrics are far too expository and intricate for the small point they're making (that she's actually feeling more than she's pretending to, so her cynicism is trying not to be cynicism). But these are not the BIG problems. The big problems are (1) she's got no good melodies and (2) the whole sound of the band and her singing adds up to this spazzy speed thing that completely, utterly fails at the basic voluptuousness of music, the basic MUSIC of music. NO TICK

The Script "The Man Who Can't Be Moved": Modest emotionalism, very square, with the modesty predominating, because he doesn't have the voice to make the emotions sing. THE MAN WHO WON'T TICK.

Ultrabeat vs. Darren Styles "Discolights": The beats are corny, even funny, but for dance music, this is awfully unsensuous. We have to wait two minutes for it to start boshin', and a few seconds later it reintegrates the melody into the bosh, at the expense of the bosh. A fundamentally weak song takes on bosh and defeats it. This has its moments, but NO TICK.