I WANT IT NOW!

Today I had one of those peculiar experiences where something you've known and accepted for a very long time suddenly strikes you or dawns on you in a new way. I think we all have those moments where, it's not like you realise something new, but something that's already a firm part of your life or your mind suddenly becomes highlighted; something which comes into your life frequently, even something important or integral to how you spend your time.

I was suddenly struck by the sheer speed at which music travels on the internet. Now, I'm a music blogger, so flash in the pan, half-baked, over-hyped pretentious twaddle is something I come into daily contact with. I've regularly written posts sharing or ruminating on new songs or videos or artist announcements which have come out that self same day. It's part of my daily ritual to scour the internet to see if Damon Albarn has rush-released a multi-media opera about ninjas, or to see what ignorant, self-involved drivel of Liam Gallagher's the universe is going to be indifferent to on that particular day. It's just standard fare to focus on the latest daily developments in the music industry, and to try and prise some gems from the swirling storm of human detritus that most if it is. When you spend your time writing about new music in the 21st century, and want to make a career out of it, that's your sweet smelling bread and butter.

And yet today it just suddenly struck me that it takes mere minutes for some new release to set the online community of journalists, bloggers and Twitterers abuzz with excitement. A new track or EP or mixtape can be released in the morning and, by dinner time, have everyone straining their keyboards with excitement.

Today, for example, James Blake (English electro/post-dubstep songwriter) and Drake (mellow Canadian rap artist) were the subjects of a new mixtape entitled, surprise surprise, James Drake, crafted by DJs Bombe and Mr Caribbean. Due to some highly unfortunate quirks of online fate, I have yet to hear it. However, I am a bit desperate to, and the pursuit to find a site which will currently stream it to my computer is monopolising my evening. This mixtape has been the subject of blog posts, tweets and news updates all across the music press throughout today, and it's, for this evening, the hottest record around. Just like that, in a matter of hours, its become the thing that everyone in the independent music business is interested in. And that is just mind bogglingly absurd!

The fact that that is possible is reflective of so many things. It's reflective of the spreading power of social networks, which we're all painfully aware of. It's reflective of the hyping nature of the blogosphere, with every electro blogger and his mum flagging the thing up before you can say "chillwave". Also, it's reflective of the opportunities afforded to young musicians these days. True, James Blake and Drake have had plenty of big names and institutions backing them up, but they're only 21 and 24 respectively. Their music's their own, and Drake is signed to Young Money, one of the best and most forward thinking hip-hop labels around. I'll be the first to spit at the trashy, vacuous, Major Label orchestrated, self-prostrating "pop music" that claws its way into our eardrums like some crazy reverse image of the stomach splatter scene from Alien, but that climate has created a fantastic reactionary spirit in independent pop music.

It may also reflect the fact that the internet affords us the ability to create our own channels to access the information relevant to us ASAP. Through the people I choose to dominate my Twitter feed, through the websites I favourite, through the mailing lists I sing up for, I create my own little world. For someone else (most of my friends - hi if you're reading this!), this kind of stuff doesn't travel to them quickly, if at all. Stuff travels super fast on the internet, but there's so much of it that it often only goes to the people who are looking for it. Sure, the internet's this massive universal thing which does - often through Facebook - create an environment where EVERYONE becomes aware of something, but often things actually happen in niches, or separate cultures which have their own place in the online world. And that's, I suppose, why I notice stuff travelling so fast. I'm part of a community which is now built on the rapid spread and acquisition of art and information.

So it's been odd just considering the speed with which music, and pretty much everything really, travels online. You just take it for granted in the world we live in, a world geared towards instant gratification, populated by a generation of perennial Veruca Salts. If people want something, they expect to get it in seconds. Sports results, release dates, new stories, videos, anything. Anyway, I'm sure this observation will become mundane again soon.

Now, let's find that James Drake mixtape.

P.S. I managed to get hold of the tape whilst I was doing the spellcheck on this. Can't be bothered to rewrite the post. Hope I don't undermine my entire stance on the rapid, self gratifying, internet based accelerated culture we live in or anything.

Rebecca Black - "Friday". Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

If by now you haven't listened to and watched the video for the song "Friday" by 13 year old American singer Rebecca Black then you, my friend, are what we call "out of the loop". Part of me wishes to apologise for what you are about to experience, but it's necessary:



This video went viral last (haha) Friday, March 11th. It's been a while since something that wasn't either purposefully hilarious or Lady GaGa related went full blown viral; and in less than a week it's gained close to 13 million views on YouTube. Why?

Everyone can tell you - it's bloody awful. It has received a universal bludgeoning. Within a week, the song has become the internet's favourite whipping boy (or girl...). I have literally yet to meet a single person who hasn't described it as the worst song they have ever heard. It has been verbally raped. Everywhere.

Now, I don't just want to spend a whole post ranting about the obviously crap things - that devilishly inane chorus, the single stupidest lyric ever in the bridge, the autotune poured on as thick as concrete on Chernobyl. Despite it being a vacuous modern pop husk and the fact that the world's greatest hope is to simply ignore it and hope it goes away, the song and video reveal some tragic truths about how pop music works today.

One of the biggest problems with pop music over the last couple of years is the way that it presents kids at a really immature age (about 12 to 15) with all these ideas about "partying" and being "in the club". I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen 14 year olds dolled up like Bratz dolls on smack, singing and gyrating along to Flo Rida like a bunch of orange, ugg boot wearing marionettes. Now I'm nowhere near saying that Rebecca Black's godless refrain of "partyin', partyin', YEAH!" has propelled a generation of youngsters into a sordid pit of moral abandon, but when someone somewhere thought it was a legitimate idea to have a 13 year old sing that, it proves that, in some way, things have reached rock bottom.

Kids that age have never been in a club! They haven't even been to parties that aren't supervised by mothers voraciously handing out overwhelming amounts of Wotsits and those little biscuits shaped like fish. And yet in this video, you've got a 13 year old and her friends DRIVING A FRIGGING CONVERTIBLE. Then she turns up at some party where all her pre-teen friends are dressed up like slags (with braces) and there are massive, shiny 4x4s parked outside, seemingly being supervised by a bunch of pre-pubescent little waifs whose balls have very low prospects for dropping in the near future. I mean, watch the video and look at the guy she talks to at 1:43-44. Really?

A whole movement of pop songs over the last several years have accelerated the unhealthy preoccupation that kids have with behaving like adults nowadays. They're presented with an adult world and told "this is what you guys should want". They don't know how to deal with it. They're nowhere near ready! They have no idea who they are, and yet they're suddenly surrounded by this inescapable philosophy of waht you should act like, dress like and talk like. Those songs have always been sung by older artists, they just end up marketed at kids and young teenagers. This however is something different. This is actually a kid releasing the track. I hope that the sensory perceptions of even the most repugnant 13 year old can work out that this song is bloody awful, and so this won't inspire kids to think that their fantasies of spending the whole weekend (including Friday) partying are any more attainable. But someone, somewhere thought that it would. Record label bosses somewhere think that the market for pushing adult material (and it doesn't have to be porn to be classed as adult material) onto kids is at a point where it can be exploited at the next level. This may very well not be the last we hear of Rebecca Black. And if the internet achieves the (clearly laudible) feat of destroying the career of a doe-eyed 13 year old girl, there will soon be another on to take her place.

I'm sure plenty of you are going to say "dude, you're reading way too much into this". Maybe. I'm also sure plenty of people are going to say "well, why should I care? Just get on with life!" Maybe. This song's already gone viral and has also already broken the iTunes Top 100. Any popularity it gains however, I think will be purely for ironic amusement. Something of a reverse "Rage Against the X Factor". It's not going to have a sincere cultural impact. But the fact that someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea, that creating a younger, female Justin Bieber (she's been called that as an insult and a compliment) was an appropriate business move, has me worried. And not just because it's sodding awful.

And what's the deal with the middle aged guy rapping, checking his watch and driving along? He's not even with the kids at the party. What the hell is he doing? Going to pick them up I imagine. What a douche.

Can We Get Much Higher?

Andy Warhol (officially the most unnecessarily quoted man in history) is renowned for saying that "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes". It's been repeated ad infinitum that we very much live in Warhol's world now. Big Brother, X Factor, a barren wasteland in the Top 40, the internet and plenty of other 21st century phenomenons have seen to it that anyone can get themselves into the public eye for a brief period of time; whether it be some crazy woman who throws a cat in a bin or some little Canadian ponce who somehow becomes a popstar by flicking his hair around on Youtube.

So in this fame hungry culture in which we live, it's hard to really, truly find a genuine superstar. The kind of person who can casually bathe in gold with winged leopards from Sweden, whilst eating pureed panda cub through a diamond straw. A true pop diva or don. Those who immediately spring to mind in the category - Whitney Houston et al - are aging dinosaurs, washed up and aging, struggling to survive in a new world. You've only got to watch footage of Whitney's recent performances to know that. You can perhaps quote a few others - Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera - but come on. They've never REALLY gone that final mile have they? They're arguably good, very good, at what they do. Album sales are irrelevant - they've never gone truly stratospheric with the whole thing, have they? They typify CELEBRITY as we know it in the 21st century, but they're not really superstars.

If you know me relatively well or read my posts often (hi if I don't know you personally and you read this regularly. Thanks for coming!) then, if asked about my musical tastes, you'd probably be very quick to say "indie stuff", or something similar. Not massively shy of the mark I'll grant you, which is why a lot of people are slightly thrown when I say that I'm a massive fan of Lady GaGa.



GaGa is one of those people who everyone has an opinion on; from music industry insiders to brainless Capital FM listeners. The woman (or girl - she's only 24. TWENTY-FOUR. Bloody hell) is one of the only true superstars active in the world and the music industry right now. In the middle of last year she was in what Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys called "the imperial phase", in reference to his own band (I got this from a brilliant article by Tom Ewing on Pitchfork, which you can read here) It's basically a period where she can do whatever the hell she likes and it will be gold. In the above article, Tom Ewing mentions that imperial phases inevitably end, but does cite that he thinks Pet Shop Boys went on for about their first 20 singles. GaGa has only had 8, and is only one album proper into her career.

I wrote a post (available here) nearly a year ago on why I fell in love with her eventually, how I was struck with a genuine revelation about what she does.

The Fame Monster was revealed as 2010's biggest selling album worldwide, shifting 5.8 million copies. And she's still touring on The Monster Ball your which started in NOVEMBER 2009 and doesn't end until MAY 2011!

Guys my point is that I am convinced Lady GaGa is going to own this year. Like she did last year and the year before. She is a true superstar, and the world is craving that right now. Via the Lady GaGa persona she creates an artistic distance between herself and the world that is incredibly scarce in our over-Tweeted, over-reported and over-indulged 21st century. I love indie and DIY music and I'm sure this year will be awesome for it, though it will have trouble beating 2010. But a true pop monster/behemoth/leviathan is going to get even bigger this year. Her next album, entitled Born This Way, will be released on May 23rd and the world is already abuzz. She's said it's going to be "the anthem for [her] generation for the next decade". Now, that's a big statement to make - even from a woman who can apparently shoot sparks from her nipples at will and turn herself inside out
. But I can't help but believe her.

Like I've said, I love indie music and stuff that's outside the mainstream, intentionally or not. But I adore putting my trust in the hands of a giant like Lady GaGa. 2010 was a stunning year for independent music, even if the charts went to hell. But I think 2011 will be the year for superstars. It will be almost hilarious seeing GaGa in the charts, clobbering all these crappy little pretenders like Katy Perry, Black Eyed Peas, Bruno Mars etc etc over the skull whilst mocking their whole pathetic, vacuous quest to be famous, no matter what the cost.

And I think there are some stunning lieutenants cantering towards us, ready to flank GaGa. Kanye West and Jay-Z are set to release a joint album entitled Watch the Throne in early March, with a single available on the 11th of January. It's hard to get bigger than that folks. Kanye is for one thing writing tunes that are more epic than Zeus playing the Star Wars theme in an epic electric guitar solo whilst being backed up by an orchestra featuring Darth Vader on the gong, Batman on the bassoon and Aslan on the triangle. As well as that, his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is - aside from being one of the greatest albums of all time - also possibly the greatest meditation on what it's like to be a superstar in the history of music. Kanye is definitely a superstar, albeit in quite a different style to GaGa. This will be his year too. He hasn't even announced any live shows to promote the album yet. It's already massive, and it, almost unbelievably, can only get bigger. He says it himself, as do all of his friends, in his latest single: "I'm a motherf*cking monster".



People like GaGa and Kanye - born to be superstars (born this way, get it? Hur hur) only come about once or twice in their generation. I hope both of them continue to flood the music industry with their incredible presences for decades to come. But I think 2011 will be a gargantuan year for both of them. Onwards and upwards. If possible!

Pop Culture Icons

I've noticed that the term "Pop culture", despite whatever it's proper definition may be, is used by a lot of us to refer to popular features of modern life when we want to be skeptical. It's, of course, massively different from the term "popular culture". They're nowhere near the same thing, of course. Popular culture is an official term, important enough to warrant it's own coveted place as the last section of nearly every Wikipedia page.

Anyway, "pop culture"- the easily recognised figures, the cultural in-jokes, the memes etc. is obviously dominated by "pop culture icons". But the majority of these icons, through becoming hugely easily recognisable, lose a their original significance. They're lost beneath mockery and Simpsons and Family Guy cameos. Let me give some examples:

1. Elvis Presley
It's Elvis season on the BBC at the moment and The King was actually what got me thinking about this. He's the most impersonated man in history. He's probaly been lampooned in nearly every major American TV show in the past 30 years. We remember the "uh-huh!", the glittery suits, the impersonators, Vegas. However. My generation, just doesn't appreciate what an incredible artist Elvis was! What he did with his voice was true art, true rock'n'roll. He performed some incredible tracks. There's also a hefty amount of crap in his back catalogue, but that doesn't negate his brilliance. And nor should the glittery pop-culture steretype.

2. Chuck Norris
This man is the internet. He probably accounts for a good 78% of jokes told in the past 7 years. And yet masses of people who indulge in the Chuck Norris meme haven't the foggiest who he is! The man made some awesome kung-fu and action movies! He taught Bruce Lee how to kick properly! Also, he's a Christian!
Here's some of his awesomeness:

Chuck takes down a car with his feet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f67LgpJBPPE

Chuck takes on Bruce Lee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLO1YIWQuXE

3. Jesus
It was inevitable that I'd get here really. We can all recall Jesus appearing in Family Guy. Or he's a nodding plastic car toy. Or a slightly subversive option for a Christmas fancy dress party. Or the harmless baby in the manger, appearing less and less amongst all the Christmas propoganda. He's become a character who can be written into any TV programme as easily as anyone else, taken down from a stock of fictional characters.

Well he's so much more than that.
He's the Son of God and God incarnate.
He's the through whom the universe was made.
He's the one who left the glory of Heaven and died on a cross, beaten, alone and judged so that you might not be punished yourself for your sins, but that you might live in Heaven with God for all eternity.
Don't lose Elvis and Chuck in the seas of popular culture. But more importantly, definitely don't lose Jesus.