I'm mad about "Best of..." lists, so December is really when my ship comes in. I'm not entirely sure why. I'm not generally a meticulous, obsessive compulsive kind of person, I just love ranking things in lists. You might have guessed this from my own Top 20 Tracks and Top 12 Albums of 2010 lists.
But soon after we've forgotten the beloved entries into the "Best of the Year" lists and polls we launch into the divisive realms of polls entitled things like "Ones2Watch", "Sound of the Year", "The Future of Music" etc. Some of these lists are derided the moment they're published - and nearly all of them end up being derided 12 months later.
The worst and most criminal of the bunch is the BBC "Sound of..." poll, which is about as cursed as the Defence Against the Dark Arts staffing position at Hogwarts. The poll endeavours to dictate to us the illustrious role call of artists and musicians who will come to define the coming year musically. The winners have almost invariably paled into startling mediocrity, failing to stretch beyond their respective years, and often even failing to see that year out. Key victims/culprits here would be The Bravery, Little Boots, Keane, Corinne Bailey, Rae, Mika, Adele and, most recently, Ellie sodding Goulding. The only one to really escape the curse was the first winner in 2003, 50 Cent. And look what he's become.
Aside from the "winners", the number of bands lower down the poll who fall into the category of mind numbing filler, utterly vanished from memory now, is laughable. The Twang? Sadie Ama? Ghosts? Marcos Hernandez? Audio Bullys? The Dears? The Dead 60s? The Datsuns? Tali? Gemma Fox? Joss Stone? Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong? The Rumble Strips? Just Jack? Kubb? VV Brown? Delphic? The Thrills? Care to name me a song anyone? Any of the band members? No? Heck, most of them didn't even make any kind of impression in their respective years, yet alone do enough to remain in our minds for 2010. I would like to personally point out that I said this time last year that Delphic and Ellie Goulding were gut wrenchingly mundane and would flop, and thus, I have been vindicated!
Then there's the acts who may hang around in our memories slightly more but either because of one unusually popular hit (The Ting Tings, Black Kids) OR because they've been hyped elsewhere, but end up being as anti-climactic as The Phantom Menace(The Drums, KT Tunstall, Kaiser Cheifs, Razorlight)
The acts championed by the poll are almost invariably overly radio-friendly pop acts or supermarket landfill "indie" bands who look like the kind of Topshop boys your mother would be relatively indifferent to if you brought them home. They produce one vaguely hummable hit single in their given year and then bugger off with disappointing album sales and a terminated record contract.
As well as championing bands who have all the staying power of an old woman's fart in a gale, when the poll DOES pick a quality act, they place them criminally low in the list!
2003- Yeah Yeah Yeahs only reach 3rd, Dizzee Rascal only reaches 5th.
2005- Bloc Party inexlpicably lose out to The Bravery for 1st place.
2007- Klaxons only reach 3rd- beaten my Mika and The Twang.
2008- Vampire Weekend only reach 6th and MGMT only reach 9th.
2009- Lady GaGa wasn't first. That is all you need to know.
2010- Marina and the Diamond are robbed of 1st place by Ellie Goulding (whose picture appears in the dictionary next to "underwhelming"), whose biggest contribution to 2010 has been a dreary cover of 'Your Song' in a John Lewis advert, which didn't appear until December.
This year doesn't look that great either sadly - though there are worryingly a couple of acts in there who I'm currently quite fond of, so here's hoping they'll do a Marina & The Diamonds and buck the trend. Either way. The BBC "Sound of..." poll is almost invariably a pathetic, horrendously white middle class, radio friendly advertisement for the Radio 1 January playlist.
I'm not going to compile a list of upcoming new bands that you should watch out for. Who knows what will happen, when they'll release material, whether they'll alter their sounds. I love "Best of..." lists, as I've said, but these lists predicting the rise of new stars often seen to create a touchwood situation. So here's just a few things I'm excited about from already established artists. It's been an awesome year musically, at least as far as my tastes go. What does 2011 have to offer?
- New Radiohead album at some point
- The Strokes FINALLY set to release a new album. This is make or break for possibly the most important band of the last 10 years.
- Kanye and Jay-Z releasing an EP entitled Watch The Throne. Doesn't get much bigger does it?
- System of a Down set to reunite, at least for live shows.
- Elbow set to release new album and your. After their breakthrough with the last album, this should be interesting.
- Lady GaGa has a new album ready to unleash uponm the world. Where is there left to go for her?!
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds set to record new album. Judging by Nick Cave's side project Grinderman releasing another album this year, he's still on top form.
- Pulp reforming for live shows... MUST seeeeee thiiiiiiiisssssssss...
- Blur recording new album in January...
Those are jsut a few of the should-be-amazing musical events coming up in 2011... we'll just have to wait and see...
Any tips for 2011?
mega excited for the new kanye/jay z production. hopefully kanye will be the major creative force behind and jay z will just 'feature'. otherwise it'll be crap.
ReplyDeleteof the current 'sound of' list, of the ones ive heard of i only think jessie j and nero will have any sort of impact this year. wretch will probably sell out and do some sort of pop hit with a former member of the sugababes.
Jessie J might take off but I think she's bloody awful. I haven't been able to turn Radio 1 on over the past few days without hearing Nero so we shall see. The few that I'm liking are The Vaccines, Warpaint, Mona and a bit of The Naked and Famous though the latter definitely won't take off anywhere.
ReplyDeleteshes utterly crap. carbon copy of gaga.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post, but I only thought that this year's bunch was particularly poor, rather than every year! Seriously Esben and the Witch, and perhaps Nero and Warpaint are the only ones that interest me whereas before there's been quite a few good uns. I'll have you know though that Ghosts are/were quite good, and that Delphic, like them or not, are definitely not your run of the mill synthpop band.
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