10) Kings of Leon- Use Somebody
I've got nothing to say about Kings of Leon that hasn't been said already, i'm sure. Four sweaty boys with guitars say nothing about my life, and that ain't ever been truer than now. And i'm sure that this song means something to a lot of people but it's nothing, not to me, maybe because it tries so hard to mean something, knowing that when this generation sobers up and gets married, this'll get played at the reception and maybe your parents bought the album and maybe we'll all have a jolly good time remembering 2008, but fuck it, it's 2009 already and we deserve better and Jesus Christ those backing vocals really are perilously close to Scouting For Girls territory aren't they? I can't help but get the feeling that the narrative's a less wordy version of Teenage Dirtbag, which may well be the biggest problem here.
9) Beyonce- Halo
This, on the other hand, just about works. It's all Beyonce, there's no other singer on earth who could pull this off like she does. Leona would (inevitably) end up investing too much in it without really understanding or meaning any of it, but your girl B, she just knocks it out of the park. The 'halo-oooh' in the first verse, the entire chorus which stops just short of being screechy but never quite manages to be technically brilliant, the way she sings 'addicted' so it sounds like 'a dip dip'...bloody hell. Given her previous two singles, it's a shame vocals like that are on a song like this, really.
8) Akon- Beautiful
This was number one on the 4Music chart today. I don't know about you, but I didn't expect that American r'n'b in 2009 would be taking notes from late 90's UK dance compliations. Akon's here and he's going to charm you like you're Cathy Beale and he's James Wilmott Brown. I've had enough of songwriters who think that repeating the title of the song ad infinitum equates to an amazing second chorus. And if you got rid of Kardinal Offishall's bit, there can't be more than twenty words used altogether. I'm all for succinctness, but that's just taking the piss.
7) Kelly Clarkson- My Life Would Suck Without You
And on the opposite end of the succinct scale....Kelly's gone from defining a sub-genre to making what sounded like Paramore would have done if they werBlogger: The Church Of Practicology - Create Poste twelve years old to, erm, revisiting the sub-genre she defined years after it reached it's peak with Sweet Temptation. In what I assume can only be her subtle revenge against Clive Davis, she sounds totally fucking bored all the way through. And the lyrics sound like they were thrown together in five minutes because they had a reasonable enough backing track to go along with them. I'm not even looking forward to the Almighty club mix, which should tell you something.
6) TI and Justin Timberlake- Dead and Gone
Presumably recorded so that Justin Timberlake could appear in a video being stubbley and moody at the same time. Not Whatever You Like, so not even worth writing about.
5) Taylor Swift- Love Story
Oh Taylor. Not as good as she has been, and she tries to fit too many damn words in that chorus, leaving the last line sounding a little underwhelming when it should be sweeping. At the same time, the way she sings 'go' just before the first chorus, that fucking key change, how she manages to pull off a happy ending in a song without sounding totally smug, the fact that Taylor Swift is in the top five. It's too soon to tell whether she'll have another hit, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
4) The Saturdays- Just Can't Get Enough
This is just not good. It's not that's it's a charity record or a cover or that's they're not Girls Aloud (they're not, for the record) but that it's just not good in any shape or form. It's wonderful that Comic Relief brings out people's generosity. It's not so great that it brings out the 'will this do' productions jobs along too.
3) Haha They Are Welsh- Islands In The Stream
Oh, fuck off.
2. Flo Rida- Right Round
What an odd little record. You could tell me that the girl vocal was just Flo Rida autotuned to buggery and I would probably believe you. Maybe that's the point, I don't know. Anyway, it's Akon's appropriation of Europop with any notions of subtlety removed, a big fuck off sample with some words in between the few moments the sample isn't there equals mega bucks, amiright? I don't know if it's a good pop song, but it works, even if it sounds a bit cheaply produced. Although compared to the last two entries, it's practically Song Cycle, innit?
1) Lady GaGa- Pokerface
Another pop song that works and manages to be massive regardless of critical opinion. Kind of like the pop equivalent of a Tyler Perry movie, if Tyler Perry made White Chicks and the White Chicks went to The Met then read Camile Paglia. Without anything interesting happening, obviously. Anyway, that was far too convoluted a tangent, so let me put it this way, it is not tremendously good but the drums and the chorus are big enough to convince you otherwise. She is the new Madonna in the same way that Jade Goody is the new Emily Davison. And on that charming sentiment, I bid you good night.
Monday 23 March 2009
Friday 21 November 2008
Kid$ In America
A year ago, I could have written a list of potential TV shows I would rather have sat through than watched another hour of thrilling insights into the lives of the rich and beautiful. A sitcom on ITV about, I dunno, the night shift at a slaughterhouse, complete with excruciating close-ups of cows being bludgeoned to death by a slack jawed halfwit played by Hugh Sachs, backed by an even more excruciating laughter track. BBC Three's Honey, I Killed The Groom!, a spin-off to Don't Tell The Bride, where the groom's best man has to try and convince the bride that her future husband wasn't accidentally run over by a lorry on his stag do. A second series of The Wrong Door. Anything but another TMF hourlong following an American teen who has a relatively mundane task to undertake and an entirely disproportionate amount of money to spend on it. Christ, these things have all the emotional depth of a JML informercial and roughly half the production values.
Things changed when I started watching Gossip Girl. It isn't perfect television, by any means. The cast are all so beautiful they manage to make your average British drama look like it was filmed in a hall of mirrors. Flick over to Hollyoaks after watching an episode and you'll think you've tuned into a Bodyshock documentary about John Merrick's family. Over the course of it's first season, it managed to turn into compulsive viewing, partly because of how the show managed to humanise the characters. Sure, they could buy off all African debt and still be on some kind of a Forbes list, but they're every bit as fucked up as everyone else. The queen bitch who needs everything to go exactly her way? Bulimia and daddy issues so messy, she manages to make the Gainsborougs look like the Sullivans. The absolute bastard who could have any woman he wants, cheat on her and most likely charm her into taking him back? Dead inside. The handsome, brooding millionare's son? Not a very good actor. It's total fantasy, but as any good fantasy writer knows, if you're not partly grounded in a world people can relate to, you've totally lost your audience.
Dizzy from the success of Gossip Girl, The CW commissioned 90210, an update of early 90's teen staple Beverly Hills 90210. It should have been their big show, the main feature to GG's B-Movie. Instead it ended closer to an hour long advert for spot cream. The characters are all completely toothless, even the big bitch. The 'kooky' friend runs a website with 'hysterical' flash animations about people she hates. She should turn fucking Juno off for a minute and pick up the call from 2003 asking for their gimmick back. Let's compare the average Gossip Girl plot to the average 90210 plot. In an episode of Gossip Girl a few weeks back, Blair tried to sabotage her mother's latest relationship, Serena had to deal with her new boyfriend wanting to be in an open relationaship, and Dan came damn near close to being able to bring down Chuck's father's company. In 90210's second episode, Dixon joins the lacrosse team, but keeps being sabotaged because he is the principal's son (NOT BECAUSE HE IS BLACK, YOU UNDERSTAND), Annie auditions for the school musical and meets a rich boy and Naiomi finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her. Jeez, it's like comparing the Sinister Six to Swiper the Fox. I'm not saying that big, shocking storylines necessarily make a great series. But these are teen dramas, not Carnivale, and Gossip Girl had Cyndi Lauper guest starring and 90210 had Coldplay as their opening song and you get my drift, yes?
As well as launching 90210, The CW also put out another new piece of glossy, escapist nonsense this year. Presumably pitched as 'bitchy show for teens that can made on the cheap until the Pussycat Dolls need another member', Privileged came without any of the weight of expectation 90210 had, none of the star power and and achieved a fraction of the viewing figures. But as it turns out, it's one of this year's big surprises, a literate, bitchy, consistently entertaining slice of hokum that works far better than a) 90210 does and b) it has any right to.
Joanna Garcia is Megan Smith, a character so obviously based on Anne Hathaway's 2006 role that they may as well have called the show The Devil's Kids Wear Prada Too. Finding herself too shit to be a writer (because she doesn't know enough people or something, I wasn't really paying attention at this point). Somehow, she winds up getting a job as a tutor/nanny for two distressingly rich teenagers in Florida. The girls are supposedly twins, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense since the nice one (Rose; tiny, shrill, sort of pretty in the blandest way possible) is about three feet smaller than Sage, who sounds like she smokes sixty a day. Other characters include the girl's decidedly milfy (gilfy?) grandmother Laurel, and their chef Marco, who's a bit like a Lafayette from True Blood. 'Cept he's never given head in exchange for vampire blood. Unless there's some kind of astonishing reboot the producers are planning.
Anyway, the show works best if you think of it as a sort of Teen Vogue Arrested Development. It's so far removed from any normal person's life that it may as well be set on Pluto, but unlike 90210 or The Fabulous Sweet 16 Of..., it's got characters you would actually want to spend longer than five minutes with and actors who manage to make them three dimensional without constantly hitting the audience over the head with reminders of why they are the way they are. Ashley Newbrough manages the feat of not only justifying Sage's behaviour, but making her kinda likable too. Considering she spends a large amount of her time trying to sabotage the lead character, that's pretty damn impressive.
It's not without it's shortcomings. It'd be nice if quirky female singer/songwriters didn't soundtrack near enough every bloody scene, for instance, but if Privileged can avoid going down any obvious paths, plot wise and not give into the temptation of wrapping every episode up neatly (which, to it's credit, it largely manages to avoid), who knows, we could actually be onto something special here. It beats the hell out of Coming of Age, anyway.
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