Most musicians are pretty lax about letting younger artists raid their back catalogues for inspiration, so it takes something to bring a band to the brink of legal action against a young pop starlet. But get ready, it's all set to be the Red Hot Chili Peppers vs Diana Vickers in a court of law soon.
The two tracks in question are the Chilis classic 1991 track “Under The Bridge” and Vickers’ new single “My Wicked Heart.” The choruses of which are so similar, it’s borderline laughable. Vickers hasn’t helped herself with her response to it either, admitting she’d listened to it the day before and had noticed the similarity. There’s only one dignified out of this for Vickers, and that’s handing over all the royalties from the track to the Chilis. Either that or lose it court, owe costs and look really stupid.
This is out of step, because, in her fledgling pop career so far, Vickers has actually made some pretty smart choices. She’s worked with Guy Sigsworth, who’s half of Frou Frou with Imogen Heap on some of the tracks from her debut record “Songs From The Tainted Cherry Treee” as well as Ellie Goulding, Nerina Pallot and Starsmith. She’s made the impression of someone who wants to follow more in the vein of Goulding and Florence Welsh than of Leona Lewis or Alexandra Burke, but thus far, she’s only succeeded in putting out watered down, smoothed out versions of the people she’s worked with. And this has never been more evident than on “My Wicked Heart.”
Even if you leave aside the plagiarism, this is one of the weakest singles released this year. It goes nowhere and does nothing. There’s never any momentum created and Vickers not so subtle attempt to channel a bit of Florence Welch’s taste for the bombastic, never sparks even the smallest speck of feeling. At least Burke and Lewis are slick and efficient in what they do, Vickers is just hiding behind a smokescreen of pseudo indie to distract from the fact her songs aren’t good enough. Even the horn section, chucked in half way through the track, can’t stop this sounding like a pompous bit of dirge.
There’s no point comparing it to “Under The Bridge”, that is a beautifully written, heartfelt pop song that will move people till the end of time, subtle drug references and all. This is a shoddy, half arsed piece of fluff, lacking in momentum and merit.
It doesn’t matter who you work with or how you dress, you’ll get nowhere if you churn out sub standard songs and this is a prime example of that.
Disagree? Video's here:
Tuesday 26 October 2010
Thursday 21 October 2010
Single #11: Cheryl Cole - Promise This
For someone who’s often said the media make her life difficult, Cheryl Cole has been at best naïve, and at worst, very cynical, in the songs she’s chosen to release thus far.
Her first single outside of Girls Aloud, “Fight For This Love” was a righteous sounding pop song that told the listener that love with worth fighting for. Parallels with her personal life, were and remain, indisputable. So after her split with Ashley Cole last year and her many statements about her hatred of media intrusion, you’d think she might have chosen songs about subjects that could be less directly linked to her former husband. She hasn’t, especially as she’s picked the same songwriter who penned “Fight For This Love.” Wayne Wilkins, who’s also written for Natasha Bedingfield and Michelle Williams.
His latest creation, “Promise This”, the lead off single from her second album “Messy Little Raindrops” is a lot more low key than “Fight For This Love.” It doesn’t have either the instantaneousness of that track, which, whether you loved or hated the content, had a chorus that took hold in your brain like chewing gum to an oversized trainer. It’s also much less brash, less in your face.
The track is built like a classy piece of electro pop, much more low key than her previous work which had Will.I.Am’s bolshy, attention seeking production all over it. This is much less aggressive and more refined, with layered electronics and a gentle nagging bassline. It’s more nuanced and actually much much better. Comparisons are, of course, far and wide, with names from Kate Bush to Madonna in the mix. The best way to encapsulate this track though, is it’s the kind of thing Tori Amos might have written if she’d had an arena tour booked and really needed a number one hit.
“Promise This” also has some bizarre bits of French in the bridge, with Cole repeating the words “Alouette uette uette” which translates as “Skylark lark lark” throughout the track. Whether this is an attempt to be abstract or just what happened to fit the instrumental is unclear, but given Cole hasn’t given been too fussed in the past about making people look for deeper meanings in the songs she picks, it’s unlikely this is a deeply veiled dig at someone. To be fair, Cole and her bandmates told us not two years ago they couldn’t speak French, so it’s no surprise that this dabble en francais ends up with something quite so nonsensical.
This track is, for want of a better word, promising. It hints Cole may actually have carried through the nouse that made Girls Aloud such excellent choosers of songwriters into her solo career and she might end up selling records for other reasons then her likeable media persona. Names linked with her new album include Starsmith, Ne-Yo and Australian geniuses Nervo, all of which bodes pretty well.
Let’s hope her second album is full of songs about the first world war, ham sandwiches and Morocco, anything but more non-subtle references to her marriage. The tabloids’ appetite might be never ending, but for those of us who actually like music, enough was, quite a well ago, enough.
Her first single outside of Girls Aloud, “Fight For This Love” was a righteous sounding pop song that told the listener that love with worth fighting for. Parallels with her personal life, were and remain, indisputable. So after her split with Ashley Cole last year and her many statements about her hatred of media intrusion, you’d think she might have chosen songs about subjects that could be less directly linked to her former husband. She hasn’t, especially as she’s picked the same songwriter who penned “Fight For This Love.” Wayne Wilkins, who’s also written for Natasha Bedingfield and Michelle Williams.
His latest creation, “Promise This”, the lead off single from her second album “Messy Little Raindrops” is a lot more low key than “Fight For This Love.” It doesn’t have either the instantaneousness of that track, which, whether you loved or hated the content, had a chorus that took hold in your brain like chewing gum to an oversized trainer. It’s also much less brash, less in your face.
The track is built like a classy piece of electro pop, much more low key than her previous work which had Will.I.Am’s bolshy, attention seeking production all over it. This is much less aggressive and more refined, with layered electronics and a gentle nagging bassline. It’s more nuanced and actually much much better. Comparisons are, of course, far and wide, with names from Kate Bush to Madonna in the mix. The best way to encapsulate this track though, is it’s the kind of thing Tori Amos might have written if she’d had an arena tour booked and really needed a number one hit.
“Promise This” also has some bizarre bits of French in the bridge, with Cole repeating the words “Alouette uette uette” which translates as “Skylark lark lark” throughout the track. Whether this is an attempt to be abstract or just what happened to fit the instrumental is unclear, but given Cole hasn’t given been too fussed in the past about making people look for deeper meanings in the songs she picks, it’s unlikely this is a deeply veiled dig at someone. To be fair, Cole and her bandmates told us not two years ago they couldn’t speak French, so it’s no surprise that this dabble en francais ends up with something quite so nonsensical.
This track is, for want of a better word, promising. It hints Cole may actually have carried through the nouse that made Girls Aloud such excellent choosers of songwriters into her solo career and she might end up selling records for other reasons then her likeable media persona. Names linked with her new album include Starsmith, Ne-Yo and Australian geniuses Nervo, all of which bodes pretty well.
Let’s hope her second album is full of songs about the first world war, ham sandwiches and Morocco, anything but more non-subtle references to her marriage. The tabloids’ appetite might be never ending, but for those of us who actually like music, enough was, quite a well ago, enough.
Disagree, video's below:
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Single #10: Pixie Lott - Broken Arrow
Victoria Louise Lott. Nicknamed Pixie by her friends. Discovered after singing for record impresario L.A Reid and an arena filling pop star in waiting. Her first song “Mama Do”, a mix of neutered Winehouse soul pop and Pussycat Dolls sub sass went straight to number one. And ever since then she’s been trying to establish herself as a sort of less interesting Mariah Carey, which is hard to imagine, but think about it, all sludgy ballads and slick uptown doo wop, just like early Mariah.
Her debut album’s done quite well though, 600 000 selling well and her label think she’s got what it takes to make it Stateside. So they’re re-releasing said debut album “Turn It Up” as “Turn It Up Louder” (Do you see what they did there? Do you? It’s very clever) with a bunch of new tracks, much like the Saturdays did just weeks ago. To go with this new release, Lott has a new single out, bizarrely titled “Broken Arrow.”
This track is one of the worst you’ll hear this year. It’s boring, it’s pedestrian, it’s whiny and it is violently off putting from start to finish. It’s the kind of ballad Leona Lewis would reject for being too drippy.
Throughout the track she sounds like she’s permanently in tears. And not good heartbroken tears that drip poetry all over sad songs, the kind of tears little boys cry when they’re told they can’t have an ice cream. Whiny, cellophane like tears that induce irritation rather than empathy.
Her diction is appalling; most of the words seem to blend into each other, making it pretty difficult to decipher exactly what the words are. At least with Mariah you can hear every word clearly.
What exactly is a broken arrow anyway? It’s not particularly great symbolism. Most people don’t own arrows or if they did it’s unlikely they’d compare them to their lovesick hearts. Unless this was written for the last Robin Hood movie and rejected (you wouldn’t bet against that though) then it all seems a bit silly.
Pixie Lott is the Netto of pop stars. Compare her to Robyn. Actually that’s not fair; there are very few pop stars that are as talented as Robyn. Ok, compare her to Katy Perry, even the new stuff and it’s like comparing champagne with Skol lager. She’s so sub standard it’s almost embarrassing. And this track is the worst thing she’s ever done, which takes some doing.
Disagree? Video's below....
Her debut album’s done quite well though, 600 000 selling well and her label think she’s got what it takes to make it Stateside. So they’re re-releasing said debut album “Turn It Up” as “Turn It Up Louder” (Do you see what they did there? Do you? It’s very clever) with a bunch of new tracks, much like the Saturdays did just weeks ago. To go with this new release, Lott has a new single out, bizarrely titled “Broken Arrow.”
This track is one of the worst you’ll hear this year. It’s boring, it’s pedestrian, it’s whiny and it is violently off putting from start to finish. It’s the kind of ballad Leona Lewis would reject for being too drippy.
Throughout the track she sounds like she’s permanently in tears. And not good heartbroken tears that drip poetry all over sad songs, the kind of tears little boys cry when they’re told they can’t have an ice cream. Whiny, cellophane like tears that induce irritation rather than empathy.
Her diction is appalling; most of the words seem to blend into each other, making it pretty difficult to decipher exactly what the words are. At least with Mariah you can hear every word clearly.
What exactly is a broken arrow anyway? It’s not particularly great symbolism. Most people don’t own arrows or if they did it’s unlikely they’d compare them to their lovesick hearts. Unless this was written for the last Robin Hood movie and rejected (you wouldn’t bet against that though) then it all seems a bit silly.
Pixie Lott is the Netto of pop stars. Compare her to Robyn. Actually that’s not fair; there are very few pop stars that are as talented as Robyn. Ok, compare her to Katy Perry, even the new stuff and it’s like comparing champagne with Skol lager. She’s so sub standard it’s almost embarrassing. And this track is the worst thing she’s ever done, which takes some doing.
Disagree? Video's below....
Thursday 7 October 2010
Singles #9: Mark Ronson & The Business Intl - The Bike Song
When Mark Ronson first started to be noted as someone other than a guy who DJed at gold plated parties, he initially tried to make it as a sort of Timbaland esque hip hop guru. When this didn’t work, he put his headphones back on and helped produce some incredibly successful albums, including Amy Winehouse’s “Back To Black” and Lily Allen’s “Alright, Still.” Credited with bringing something remarkable from both those artists, he stepped out in the spotlight again with “Version” his covers album which basically took 12 songs that were perfectly fine as they were and added some brass to them. Luke warmly received, but with some famous names appearing as guest vocalists, it sold quite well and quickly became coffee table fodder. He went away again after that and produced Adele, Estelle and Christina Aguilera, clearly becoming the go to guy if you want to sound like you’ve listened to a lot of motown records but have roughly 20 times the budget of the Supremes. Now he’s back with a new album “Record Collection” with, get this, all original material and another slew of guest vocalists, including former Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall, Boy George, once golden soul man D’Angelo and the View’s Kyle Falconer, who guests on new single “The Bike Song.”
What Ronson wants, what he desperately craves, is to be a tastemaker, a link for the public at large into the artists he loves. He tried it with Daniel Merriweather and one reasonable ballad aside, that didn’t work. Now he’s trying something slightly different, to take artists on the outskirts of the mainstream and bring them to wider attention and to take a few faded icons and restore them to glory. So why he’s chosen Falconer as the man to help him to do this is bizarre. The View were never any good, never. They had a couple of minor hits, but their second album (Yes, that’s right, they’ve released two albums) “Which Bitch” bombed so spectacularly they were lucky not to be dropped and Falconer’s drunken mess of a voice, which had charmed some people for precisely ten minutes, was reduced to a muddy wheeze. Even on “The Bike Song” in which he is charged with the simple task of saying “Gonna ride my bike until I get home” and with Ronson’s admittedly impressive way of cleaning up his voice, it’s still borderline inaudible. The rest of it is passable, in a sort of expensive advertising campaign way, sounding jaunty without ever making you think at all. Even when kooky rapper Spank Rock turns up things don’t really motor. It hums along, efficiently, but predictably. Meshing together the hip hop beats of Ronson’s early days with the layered cushioning of his later work, it’s got elements of Primal Scream, Beastie Boys and Groove Armada thrown in, without any of the spark and danger of those acts. On this and the early clips from the record, it just feels like Ronson is trying so desperately hard all the time. Trying to be cool, trying to be the kind of musician that critics talk about on late night review shows while still being played in supermarket check outs. It’s not working at the moment.
Sporting his new bleached haircut, Ronson actually now has much in common with another man with scarily blonde hair, Mr Hudson. He’s mates with the right people, he’s got half decent taste in music and ultimately, his future is behind the controls, not in front of the mic. Whether it’s enough for either of them to be just a producer is doubtful, but it’s where they’re both better off. There’s no shame in making other people sound good, it’s a skill few people possess, both men should be proud of it and strive to keep bringing the best out of the artists they work with.
Ronson‘s latest, along with the whole of his last record, is expensive lift music. He’s better off producing, helping to craft the rough cuts of bolshy boys and girls into shape. He should worry less about being famous and remember that people are still writing and talking about Phil Spector, Dr. Dre and Tony Visconti, and, if Ronson produces a few more records as good as “Back To Black” they’ll write about him too. If that comes off, this will at best be a footnote.
Disagree? Track is here:
What Ronson wants, what he desperately craves, is to be a tastemaker, a link for the public at large into the artists he loves. He tried it with Daniel Merriweather and one reasonable ballad aside, that didn’t work. Now he’s trying something slightly different, to take artists on the outskirts of the mainstream and bring them to wider attention and to take a few faded icons and restore them to glory. So why he’s chosen Falconer as the man to help him to do this is bizarre. The View were never any good, never. They had a couple of minor hits, but their second album (Yes, that’s right, they’ve released two albums) “Which Bitch” bombed so spectacularly they were lucky not to be dropped and Falconer’s drunken mess of a voice, which had charmed some people for precisely ten minutes, was reduced to a muddy wheeze. Even on “The Bike Song” in which he is charged with the simple task of saying “Gonna ride my bike until I get home” and with Ronson’s admittedly impressive way of cleaning up his voice, it’s still borderline inaudible. The rest of it is passable, in a sort of expensive advertising campaign way, sounding jaunty without ever making you think at all. Even when kooky rapper Spank Rock turns up things don’t really motor. It hums along, efficiently, but predictably. Meshing together the hip hop beats of Ronson’s early days with the layered cushioning of his later work, it’s got elements of Primal Scream, Beastie Boys and Groove Armada thrown in, without any of the spark and danger of those acts. On this and the early clips from the record, it just feels like Ronson is trying so desperately hard all the time. Trying to be cool, trying to be the kind of musician that critics talk about on late night review shows while still being played in supermarket check outs. It’s not working at the moment.
Sporting his new bleached haircut, Ronson actually now has much in common with another man with scarily blonde hair, Mr Hudson. He’s mates with the right people, he’s got half decent taste in music and ultimately, his future is behind the controls, not in front of the mic. Whether it’s enough for either of them to be just a producer is doubtful, but it’s where they’re both better off. There’s no shame in making other people sound good, it’s a skill few people possess, both men should be proud of it and strive to keep bringing the best out of the artists they work with.
Ronson‘s latest, along with the whole of his last record, is expensive lift music. He’s better off producing, helping to craft the rough cuts of bolshy boys and girls into shape. He should worry less about being famous and remember that people are still writing and talking about Phil Spector, Dr. Dre and Tony Visconti, and, if Ronson produces a few more records as good as “Back To Black” they’ll write about him too. If that comes off, this will at best be a footnote.
Disagree? Track is here:
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