I’m lucky enough to be lucky enough to be watching videos at work again instead of actually having to do work. I am truly blessed. This time looks even more bovine than that previous, so without further ado, let’s skip into the marshes of popular culture once more.
1. Fergie - Glamorous
I have such little knowledge of Fergie that I could actually be 80, which is a shame in one way, but a relief in maybe a dozen others. All I know is that she contains lumps and that she also was in the Black-Eyed Peas, so defective food appears to be her “thing”. Here, she’s singing a song called Glamorous. She arrives at a “1994 Backyard Kegger” - an ominous start - where they all appear to be drinking out of paper cups, it’s dark and I think the idea, to us dims, is that they are poor. The fact this level of destitution also appears to include a large swimming pool - and enough facial reconstructive surgery to populate a school with the leftover bits - also evades them. Jennifer Lopez also said she was “Jenny from the block”, and I think this is Fergie’s version, but I can’t honestly be sure what’s happening, as she says she doesn’t care about the trappings of her fame, and then pushes them so far and obscenely into the TV screen while having a bright light shone in her face that you think David Cronenberg’s going to come in and make you vomit through your eyes while your fingers turn into your elbow. Oh, it has a rap in it, where the man is actually gagging as he raps, which is quite entertaining!
# Lifestyle so rich and famous,
Robin Leach will get jealous #,
he gaks. Who’s Robin Leach? Her plumber? They then say “If you ain’t got no money take your broke ass home”, which reminds me of Ricky Gervais laughing at disabled people. Fergie then spells Glamorous about 60 times and does it right every single time, so it wasn’t a totally wasted effort.
2. Pink - Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)
Pink And Her Paradoxes, what is she like? I hoped this was a cover of the only good Michael Jackson song of the last 20 years but nope, Pink did this all by herself, and much like you wouldn’t put all your kids’ pictures they bring back from school on the fridge, this one’s going to have phone numbers and a shopping list on the back of it by the end of the week. It’s a Song With Brackets which means it is Multi-layered and looks like Pink is essentially trying to dichotomise her feelings; she wants you to leave her alone but is also informing you of the possibility that she is also lonely. Do you see? She presents it as a title, but in the end, it’s the substance, the content, the text, if you will, with a con, that provides the key. This one is live from Wembley Arena and there’s cheering all the way through it, even though I think Pink is trying to make a very serious point. And yet she doesn’t seem too worried, which makes me wonder if she’s even in it to make a difference any more. I remember when she was going out and wanted to get this party started, but now, it’s all “leave me alone” and “I’m lonely”, “go away” and “come back”. I hate it when massive pop stars sell out to become humungous pop stars, it makes me feel empty. -er. Come back! Go away! Oh, I’m all confused now. Also, considering it’s supposed to be a live song, her voice sports so much Autotune, her face has sprouted piano keys.
3. The Sounds - Tony Da Beat
Uh-oh. I hate this.
Kind of weirdly empty, the sort of thing Goldfrapp people like, I think, to accompany their sunglasses. More like the feeling you get 15 mins after a bad wank, to be honest, and that includes the video.
4. James Morrison - Undiscovered
It’s just an endless tide of hate, this reviewing session, isn’t it? I don’t mean it to be, I honestly, honestly don’t. I love music! The Universal James Constant is at work here, or it was, but it seems that with global warming, the age-old natural balance of Jameses has somehow gone out of control. Someone has to make a stand or soon it’ll be Jameses as far as the eye can see. One dies - James Brown - but four arrive in his place - James Morrison, James Blunt, James Yorkston and, er, James. There are clearly too many Jameses in music at the moment, and this is one of the chief Jameses of the reason why. Why doesn’t he just go the full way and have a track where he says “Grande, Tall or Vente?” over some crockery clattering, so we don’t actually have to go to a coffee shop to hear him? He also looks a bit like a fish in a wig, which while not his fault, obviously, is disconcerting when he just appears on your screen begging for your cortical attention. His eyes are on the side of his head! But the music! The music! What about the video? Well, it goes like this. Bike. Wall. Wall. Wall. James. Hair. Wall. Rain. Man. Wall. Woman. Bridge. Briefcase. Wall. Hair. Bridge. Scarf. Wall. Wall. Wall. Teddy bear! Oh, a teddy bear! Oh. Wall. Wall. Man. Briefcase. House. Teeth. Woman. Wall. People. Wall. Teeth. Hair. Heart. Bridge. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall. Wall.
5. Lucy Silvas - Sinking In
In which Abby from ER has a blonde wig and a few years after a car crash to recover then releases a single where she can’t hear the backing track properly so is asked to do as well as she can by watching the lights on the recording deck instead and sing around them. The video is on a white background with a man and there’s lots of cuts and jumps. Also, they’ve coloured her eyes in one of those special shades you don’t find in nature except maybe on horny geckos or maybe polonium. Oh, they used that effect in this video similar to those pictures you can buy on the weekly market for £2 of a composite picture of Obi-Wan’s face made up of thousands of details you didn’t notice in Star Wars cos they were boring like rocks on Tattooine, Han Solo’s waistcoat and a piece of cloth in the background in the weird alien bar. Is Lucy Silvas famous? How about now? ..How about now? There’s a man in this video who appears to be inspecting her back for acne, as far as I can tell, as she looks straight ahead. Nice to ask your doctor to be in your video, I suppose. Beats paying him. There’s a good bit where they play Scrabble, but as usual they didn’t realise this and instead let the song carry on to the end, where a minor chordy bit was added for variety and then the key change came in like a burglar in a noisy wheelchair. All of a sudden, the song wasn’t on any more and I went for a cup of tea.
The people who run the music channels here in the UK have, by law, to subtitle a small proportion of their “output” or “music videos” as we call them when not in hell-media land, and part of my job as a subtitler is to add captions to 6 or 7 new songs a week for them. This week, I have been chosen to pick through them.
1. The Feeling, “Rose”
What a dreary video, and dreary song, sorry. Do young people like The Feeling? They were the ones with the 70s album cover that made me feel sick, I think. I have no idea why bands think anyone wants to watch them play their instruments; I’d rather watch them making a pot or digging, or flying in the air. Or eating dinner. The highlight of this video appears to be a pink light in the top left hand corner of the screen when one of them is looking into the middle distance, probably trying to remember the melody to the song, which it turns out appears to be about pink wine, as it’s actually “Ros-ay” but we can’t put in accented “e”s on subtitles as they are considered to be “errors” in the file and mean they won’t be broadcast. Which means some people wouldn’t be able to share the joy of The Feeling’s new lyrics, which I think you’ll agree would be a shame. So lay off the circumflexes, graves, cedillas and accents, guys, if you want the hard of hearing to like your songs too. And tildes.
2. Lil Chris, “Figure It Out”
He sounds like Pat Benatar. Which was a bit of a surprise. And he has the same spade-face as Linda Robson off top slag-com Birds of a Feather. I can’t think of anything else to say about L’i'”‘il’ Chr’is’ because his music was like egg falling off a dirty car bonnet.
3. The Fray, “How To Save A Life”
Hmmm, more piano. More boys with guitars. Except the One Defining Feature for this band appears to be the singer is singing through a toilet roll tube and singing like he’s at some sort of Musical Notes Trolley Dash, grabbing all of them on the way up and all of them on the way down but never really settling on the one he meant for, so it’s the equivalent of only ending up with some bog roll and a KitKat. The video is like a cross between an educational video for people who have been brought up in a sealed-off design museum about what the outside world must be like and an advert for skin cream. The singer looks like he writes poetry where every single poem he writes starts with the word “..And”. It features very pretty adolescents, probably all having mp3 blogs about Keane, crying on an off-white background and lit to look vaguely ugly and “normal” when they’re nothing of the sort and is therefore all about real emotion, and is thus very real. Words appear in that revolting way like “23.Accept” and “11. Be someone”. Jesus Christ, one of you, just fucking smile, it won’t kill you. It also seems to last roughly an hour. Music to cock your head slightly cutely to in Starbucks with your hands wrapped round the mug like it’s your heart, actually. It has an ugly black fat person crying at the end. A work of hideous genius. “86. Open up.”
4. Guns N Roses, “Sweet Child O Mine”
I actively looked forward to this song, which is, by the way, brilliant. It has that brilliant thing that everyone did in the 90s of having a colour camera and a black+white camera for “effect”, all grainy, from a slightly different angle. I believe it was known as “Shakycam” on Adam and Joe, and I think it was actually the law between 1990 and 2000 to have grainy B+W footage cut into your video from a slightly different angle, the desired effect of which was similar to the reason why people stonewashed their jeans or wrote on their schoolbags - authenticity - the actual effect being it looked like you specifically had stonewashed your jeans or written on your schoolbag - tragedy. I like that high bit that Slash plays. I am good at reviewing music. The person doing the subtitles for this song appears to have got the lyrics from a Slovenian palindromes site. The out-of-character-for-the-song guitar solo in the middle should have had Gary Moore ringing his lawyers. If he’d had lawyers. Which he probably did. Like I say, I’m good at reviewing music, me. The “Where do we go now?” bit is ripped off, I am 99% sure, from Jesus Christ Superstar.
5. Guns N Roses, “Welcome To The Jungle”
Nahh. “I wanna watch you bleed”. Well. That’s not very nice, is it? He looks like Russell Brand in this one. It’s a bit boring. Again, it’s making me think of the song Judas sings at the end of Jesus Christ Superstar. That’s not right, is it? That said, it does have:
# Feel my, my, my serpentine
..as a lyric, so you know. It’s not all bad. The video appears to be about Axlotl going into the “city” and watching TV and seeing bad stuff going on. Some sexlicious saucepots in black are lying in a non-contextual bed and looking at the camera. And there’s a bad key change. That said, the bit where Axl/Cartman sings “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby! You’re gonna DIE” could be useful over loudspeakers on I’m a Celebrity after the “Eat As Much Peyote As You Can in 2 Minutes” round, when they get really desperate for viewers. Jesus, this song’s about an hour long too.
6. Take That, “Shine”
In which Mark, the not-right one, is allowed to dance down some stairs on his own to a Moby B-side while the others make sure he doesn’t trip up and damage his little face on the sharp metal edging. Meanwhile, Gary sits at the bottom rather overstatedly pretending to play a piano he’s never sat at before while the other two make sure the remaining sides of the video screen have someone in them too, which is very important. This said, I love very low piano notes played in quick and rhythmic succession, it flicks a weird little switch in my brain and seems to release some sort of powerful gladness enzyme, so you know, it all works out in the end. I can’t help thinking that’s a very large staircase though, and they only use a bit of it. Then it pretends to be The Beatles a little bit, which is cute, then you think, “Oh, hang on, was that the chorus? The verse was much better.” And then the verse comes again, and the one in white looks a bit like the Aphex Twin with his big flappy mouth if you don’t look at the screen properly, but you know what, it’s fine. I don’t mind this at all. Look at the smile on little Mark’s face! Makes me want to give £2 a month to something. They even let him shout a bit at the end before the Sunshine Coach turns up to take him back to Doncaster, or whatever postcode lottery it was he won.
7. Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
Opening shot: helicopter, big tall building, break of day. The helicopter has “Nelly Furtado”, the words, emblazoned on the side. She strikes me as the sort who doesn’t lend it out. Ooh. Neptunesy type blopping. Clapping. Oh, is it going to be like Maneater again where she went to a sewer and danced with the gang from Police Academy? Oh, no. It’s a ballad. Urgh, she’s gone a bit um, angular, hasn’t she? Oh, now she’s in a sequinny evening dress on a helipad. Is this what counts as aspirational these days? Helipads?
This song sounds like a Belinda Carlisle record at 3/4 speed. There’s a bit in the video where she’s in the rain! No, really! She looks kind of sad and she’s dancing in the rain. I wish more people would do that in videos, really. Oh! It faded out like she left the oven on or something. That was quick.
Let it be said that Lost is clearly inspired and adapted from the Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (1980). Plane crash, animals, children, military, makeshift rafts, anger, romance, jungle and so on. It’s where it all started.
From the BBC TV page: ‘High living pilot, Noah Dugan, is hired by a prim evangelist to fly a vintage B-29 bomber full of livestock to a South Pacific Mission. Unbeknown to them, two stowaways have climbed on board, and what should have been a routine flight turns into an adventure of a lifetime for all involved.’
