Being a stream of consciousness late on a Wednesday night by Meg, a bit sleepy having been up puking the night before and late in the office for two days running, now conscious that she came back from a long silence and didn’t post anything, but not for the lack of anything to say.
Broadband back. Now that’s the mental barrier of switching on, logging on, waiting, waiting, waiting removed, I might be a bit more prolific in my output here.
Then again, I could just be Meg. Ba-dum-tssssch.
Today, I spent some time listening to the new J-Lo album (incidentally, you can call me M-Pi, if you like - I’m just trying it out, for now - we’ll work on the whole arse thing later).
I wasn’t listening to it through choice, mind - the girl on the bus in the seat in front had it on her walkman at ear-shattering volume - louder, I swear, than it would have been if she’d got out a pair of those little crappy walkman speakers and rested them on the disabled bucket seat (that’s the flap-down seat for disabled people, not a seat for disabled buckets) in the middle of the bus. Every lilting chorus. Every rasp from the block. Every tambourine shake. Every little nuance, broadcast in tinny stereo via the medium of a teenage girl’s fat head.
Is it wrong to hope certain people go deaf? I’m a bad person, sometimes - at least, I can be before breakfast.
One of the funny things about moving is that while your CDs (and MP3s) are packed away, you end up at the mercy of….radio playlists. P and I found, while driving a white transit van around west London, that the only station that wasn’t
a) inhabited by people with a shouting disease
b) broadcasting more ads than music
c) sponsored by broadband double whopper tiles engine fluid or
d) soporific
was the strangely soothing (in a voluntary lobotomy kind of way) Magic 105.4, where the playlist is entirely made up of Lionel Richie, soothing ballads and non-offensive recent chart action. Honestly, I aged a lot listening to that station, but it was the only broadcast frequency that didn’t make me want to stab people.
Radio can be so SHOUTY and INVASIVE and URGENT sometimes. I used to listen to the bloody brilliant XFM in the morning, until I realised it was a bit too hectic to handle before caffiene. So then I switched to the ever-so-soothing Radio 4, but that was worse than the snooze button, that. When I was single, I liked going to sleep to the sound of the shipping forecast - an adult lullaby - or the world service - even when delivering terrible, earth-crushing news, those announcers managed to do it in such calm, even-handed and reassuring tones, you’d drift off like a baby.
“Scientists in Armenia have discovered that the world only has twenty three hours remaining, as a huge meteorite rushes headlong towards the planet, threatening to knock it off its axis and send it spinning into the inky black vacuum of space” Zzzzzzz.
These days, Magic’s got my morning vote. I can just about handle non-offensive, bland swill in the morning - that goes for breakfast as well as listening fodder - but as soon as I wake up properly and leave the bed, it’s over to a station that challenges me a bit more. Magic: the aural equivalent of pureed bananas.
But as I was saying - we listened to an awful lot of odd radio while we were moving and unpacking and looking for the stereo aerial. Plus, if you’re like us and have got digital telly, you find yourself sucked into the weird world of The Hits and TMF - sort of MTV (very) Lite, but with a playlist of only about 12 promos between them.
So with that in mind, and like the old fuddy-duddy I fear I have become, here’s a pop-pickers roundup of the latest tunes the young people seem to be listening to, or at least what videos I keep stumbling over on the digital music channels again and again and again over the last few weeks:
[Cue Top Of The Pops Music]
- tATu - Not Gonna Get Us
Oh look, it’s those girls; the ones who are reputed to be lesbians, but in fact only dry snog or fleetingly touch lip corners in any of their (two) videos. The last one was in a rainy schoolyard and was (though I hate to say it) kind of catchy after a while. This one seems to involve driving a truck through the snow. They shout the refrain a couple of tones to high and decibels too loud. Uncomfortable. - Big Brovaz - Favourite Things
Honestly, I thought this was a pisstake when I heard it. I sort of liked Nu Flow when it came out, but the idea of rummaging around of old musical songs to bastardise and funkify is not really a good one. What’s next? Once On A Hill Stood A Lonely Goatherd (Got You All In Check)? - Daniel Whoingfield - I Can’t Reach You
This is that bloke - the one who sort of rocked up out of nowhere a few months ago and since then has been releasing single after single on the unsuspecting public - each with a totally different style. Same stumpy little nose and big moon face, though. In this one, Daniel rocks out with his band chums. The chorus is vaguely memorable; the rest is not. - J-Lo and LL Cool J - All I Have
J and LL seem to be ex-lovers. She’s leaving him. They sing to each other over the phone. It’s all a bit sad, in a plastic sort of way. Can’t forgive LL for - or indeed take him seriously after - the whole My Hat Is Like A Shark’s Fin episode of a few years back, though. One snatch of lyric sticks in the mind, though - She sings: “All my pride is all I have” and he responds: “Pride is what you had, baby girl, I’m what you have”. Every time I hear that, I just thing….what a dick! - Mariah Carey and Busta Rhymes - I Know What You Want
Mariah and Busta do as J and LL, but back to back, simpering at camera. next. - String and Craig David - Rise and Fall
Hey, hang on a minute, didn’t this exact same sample from Shape of my heart get used on a Sugababes track about five minutes ago? Bloody hell, that String must be just gut laughing nowadays: “Yes, well, obviously the rainforests and yoga and tantric sex and bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…” As Mozza once sang, “Reissue, repackage, pack them into different sleeves, satiate the need” - he was singing about bands recycling material and releasing different formats of the same old thing, but he could easily have been writing about String and his sampl-o-matic song career. At least he appears in this video, unlike the Sugababes one, which is something to do with butterflies. - Christina Aguilera - Fighter
What is it about insects, anyway? This promo features Christina and other dancers in sort of spiky clothing doing odd movements in half light in what looks like a sewer. Are they supposed to be insects? I think so. I don’t see what this has to do with the song, but it’s a vast improvement on the last promo of hers which was stuck on heavy rotation on digital music channels - the one with the boxing ring and the pink knickers. Dirrrrrty. That’s it. - David Gray - Be Mine
And what is it about videos set in pubs? First Craig and String and now David Gray. Mind you, this one wins points because someone (please let it not have been DG himself, let someone else have pointed this out to him) decided to make the twist in the video story that his head falls off because he waggles it so much when he sings. Not a great song, though, mind. - Feeder - Forget About Tomorrow
You can just spot Feeder a mile off. I like Feeder. This is a good one.
And yet, there are CDs in our (newly constructed) racks that I haven’t listened to in four years. Something’s not right, here.
