Yet Another Year In Pop: 28

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Cascada remain at the top, Mi-Jack still dominating most of the top 40.

[Poll #1429069]

Reminder: I have decided that you have until THURSDAY LUNCHTIME to nominate songs for 2001 - this means I can put up the first heat on Friday. Please comment on the original post so your nomination doesn't get lost!

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Also there's a list of everything that had been nominated up to last Friday here (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/703304.html).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Chipmunk - juuuust about acceptable but still totally lame compared to what he can do.

VV Brown - this is OK I guess. Apparently many music industry peeps are currently cackling about the total failure of her press campaign - after an amount of promo that others would kill for, she's really not going anywhere. I don't understand why - I'm not really invested in her, or Little Boots, b/c I don't dig their production so much, but I can still remember VV Brown's hooks - why won't Radio 1 touch her? I can't believe La cunting Roux have been the most successful of these overhyped UK quirk acts so far. This is why I hate people.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I really like the VV Brown; I wasn't massively big on 'Crying Blood' but 'Shark In The Water,' w/ all its confused metaphors is ace. There's a plethora of above-average electro remixes bubbling around, too.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, loving the VV Brown - catchy, smart, funny: this is what all "quirky" should have been like really.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Enjoy her while you can: industry gossip heard over the weekend = she's fucked, she's going to get dropped, LOL FLOP and so on. apparently she's a running joke due to her willingness to do ANYTHING for promo.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

the roundabout at shepherd's bush really depresses me because at one traffic light you can see a lone A3 VV Brown poster and then you go round the ...roundabout a bit and there're gigantic billboards for la roux and florence and the machine. grr!

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Chipmunk isn't going to release a great debut album is he? :(

The VV Brown is good I think - going to listen to the album and report back. The varying successes of the UK Female Hype Crew appear to be inversely proportional to the quality of their actual tunes.

[koganbot]

Mix-and-not-match week:

Chipmunk f. Emeli Sande "Diamonds": I love the short-wave cheap-sound-system over-the-water feel of early ska; Chipmunk fits in, one of the boys hanging at the back table with his rum and coke. Emeli is the opposite, Miss Style, glitzed up and into the limelight, above noticing something as mundane as a ska cover of an old surf hit. The incongruity half works, her assertion feeling harried rather than cold, though I will need more listens to decide if this really holds together. In the meantime, it gets the benefit of the TICK.

Arctic Monkeys "Crying Lightning": By coincidence this one uses vaguely surfed-up guitar-billy, though the dogged talk-singing sounds as if it's never been within a hundred miles of a beach or a sock hop, or even a bit of sunlight. NO TICK, though the chorus almost redeems the drudgery.

VV Brown "Shark In The Water": Finishing-school vocal mannerisms try to get their bearings atop weakly strummed Diddley. Rescued by a wash of sound in the chorus. BORDERLINE TICK.

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

Chipmunk has already released a fine debut album - League Of My Own, which came out last year. I'm sure his next album will all be as sharp, funny and propulsive as "Diamond Rings."

The armed forces have sent out their most experienced search parties in treacherous conditions to try to find the tune in "Crying Lightning."

I didn't like VV Brown from the moment I saw her on Later but she seemed to have a great deal more energy and drive than are evident in this single, which is so blanded out sonically that it's hard to detect any personality or metaphors, mixed or otherwise. It plays like a duff 1983 Belle Stars album track but really it could have been done by anybody. The British music industry not knowing what to do with female talent, part 59895.