What is Popjustice’s obsession with Nicole Scherzinger’s ‘Poison’ all about? I don’t get it at all.
What is Popjustice’s obsession with Nicole Scherzinger’s ‘Poison’ all about? I don’t get it at all.
1. Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy gets a 10.0 rating from Pitchfork. It now joins such noteworthy releases as 12 Rods’ Gay? and Robert Pollard’s Relaxation of the Asshole in receiving such a rare honour.
2. In all seriousness, it is a very good album.
It’s weird to think that there are people interested in The Beatles who don’t own all their stuff already.
1. Kanye’s ‘Power’ is one of the best singles of the year - absolutely brilliant. Somehow, he manages to musically match his hubris with powerful production. Clattering drums, driving bass, Greg Lake sample - I love it.
2. “Everybody we rollin’ / With some light skinned girls, and some Kelly Rowlands” is, however, a painfully shitty line.
3. ‘Hard in da Paint’ by Waka Flocka Flame is also great, even in spite of possibly the worst name hip-hop has ever seen.
1. ‘Just a Dream’ by Nelly is ridiculously stupid - I love it!
2. Marquee Moon is a brilliant album, obviously, but ‘Venus’ in particular stands out to me as a remarkable piece of song construction.
1. Forever Changes by Love is such an amazing album. It’s completely unoriginal, even by the standards of ‘67, yet melodically it’s so memorable - almost hypnotically so at times. Even the quaint (that’s a really polite way of putting it) lyrics, and Arthur Lee’s completely unnecessary fake-British accent add to the charm.
2. I Blame Coco is the worst name ever (although I am Kloot comes close). However, what freaks me out more is how much of her dad’s singing style she’s adopted.
3. The Idiot by Iggy Pop is an album of continuous fascination to me - it sounds like Kraftwerk, if they were a bunch of alcoholic, dope addicts. Awesome, right?
1. Das Racist’s Sit Down, Man mixtape is so good! These guys certainly can’t be considered just a novelty group anymore.
2. Pitchfork’s fascination with Deerhunter still perplexes me a bit.
3. Whilst ‘Higher’ by the Saturdays is certainly better than any of the singles off Wordshaker, it still seems fairly generic and unmemorable to me. I guess it’s just hard not to compare them to Girls Aloud.
1. I was once of the opinion that all of The Joshua Tree’s good songs were contained on its first side. Further listenings suggest that I was wrong - ‘In God’s Country’, ‘Trip Through Your Wires’, and in particular, ‘One Tree Hill’ are all excellent.
2. Why was ‘Post-Acid’ the first single released from Wavves’ King of the Beach? I find it rather forgettable.
3. ‘Devotion’, the duet between HURTS and Kylie Minogue, is just wonderful.
Followup thoughts:
1. Good luck to The XX for their second album - the hype cycle’s going to be tough for a band so young.
2. In the Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize, HURTS’ ‘Wonderful Life’ was drawn against ‘Left My Heart in Tokyo’ - rather cruel in my opinion.
1. As a counterpoint to my previous post, I’m really pleased that The XX have won the Mercury Prize. I’m a big fan of that album, even if it puts others to sleep. It’s one of those albums (like, say Is This It, or in my case, Arular), that at first sounds wholly derivative, until one starts to question what it’s actually derivative of. Very good.
2. The entire album Desperate by Divinyls is an eighties pop classic. Seriously, every song is great and really catchy- even the faux-reggae numbers! It of course, comes from a particularly fertile period of Australian pub-rock, but its highlight even amongst the many classics that were produced in this period (which I intend to cover in more detail at a later point).
3. The Holy Bible is so much better than any other Manic Street Preachers album it’s ridiculous. Ritchey’s lyrics are incredibly on point.
4. I’m going to start a typically slow-moving overview of my favourite hip-hop albums ever - stay tuned!
