I remember, when I was about fifteen, suddenly arriving at the terrifying realisation that all the good music that was ever going to be written, that ever *could* be written, had been. That was it. Music was over. How, after human beings existing for so long, and with so many great songs having been created, could people keep on producing amazing music?

With a boundless pessimism people who know me in real life will recognise all too well, I settled on the answer: they couldn’t.

Yes, I probably spent a bit too much time in my head as a youngster.

But it’s a notion that resurfaces with me quite regularly, which is a bit of an issue when you’ve got a music blog you’re trying to keep going.

You know, you get the tube to work and rather than go through the hassle of elbowing people in the chin so you can extricate your headphones from your bag, you stare at a Columbus Insurance ad on the wall of the carriage. I mean, it’s only another fifteen minutes before you reach your destination - it’s quite nice just to unfocus the old pupils and space out for a while. It’s the rush hour equivalent of loosening the belt, and it’s far less indecent.

But then you remember times when, not too many years before, you’d get public transport, look at people not listening to music or reading a book - people who were just staring at nothing - and you’d think: “how can they do that?” How can they spend this precious time, when they could be listening to anything they want, reading anything they want, just staring at a cartoon dog holding a pair of skiis?

And you realise that now you’re one of those people, and you blame it on the fact that since there’s so much music out there being flung at/offered to you - in countless emails from PR folk, by music blogs and aggregators, by friends, by the radio, by Twitter, by Spotify - you can’t listen to it all. You can’t do it justice. And so to avoid the heinous mistake of wasting precious time investigating something you might not enjoy, you listen to none of it.

You open 2% of the emails, listen to 2% of the streams, follow up 2% of the recommendations… and if you don’t hear something you like in those miniscule percentiles, that’s it. Your faith in the ability of music to take you out of your world for even four minutes at a time, to transform your mood, is vanquished. All the decent stuff has been produced already. Music’s dead.

THANK FUCK, then, for the days when, remarkably, something makes it through these seemingly insurmountable barriers and reminds you, you bloody dolt, that music will never die. And that, in the same way humans will keep improving technology and medicine and all that boring crap, they will also keep writing beautiful, affecting, unexplainably poignant songs which revive your faith in what - excusez le pretentiousness here pour un second - is pretty much the greatest artform we have. Not that my jaw will ever fail to clench if I hear people refer to it as such.

And *then* you think: how odd to be so passionate about something and have such little faith in it, even after all these years.

I would like to dedicate this self-indulgent brainweep to Julian Casablancas’s “Out Of The Blue”, from his debut solo album Phrazes For The Young, because sadly - or gladly - I literally don’t have the words to say how much and in how many ways I currently love the living shit out of it.

Buy Julian Casablancas MP3s, including “Out Of The Blue”, at 7Digital.com

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Saturday November 7th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Poor old Akon, he’s always got summat on his mind. If it’s not accidentally dry-humping a child, physically throwing a teenager off a stage, or lying about his bad-assedness and his age, it’s something else.

“Something else” is currently illustrated in the lyrics to his latest smash hit, “Sexy Bitch” - a collabaration with Fronch deeshay David Guetta:

She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before
Nothing you can compare to your neighbourhood whore
I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl
Without being disrespectful…

Now, placing the girl in question above the local prostitute goes someway to showing how disrespectful Akon isn’t, but he’s clearly in a considerable tizzy over this matter. Just how can he describe this girl without being disrespectful? Let’s see if he manages it by skipping to the chorus:

Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, a sexy bitch
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, damn, girl
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, a sexy bitch
Damn, you’s a sexy bitch, damn, girl

Hmm. It’s a valiant effort, but some might think that referring to a lady as a bitch - albeit a sexy one - is, like, the least respectful way to describe her. I’m just putting that out there.

What’s interesting, though, is that if you take these lyrics from the mouth of Akon and place them in the mouth of an animated Australian tennis player, they somehow take on a certain charm. Watch:

So, if the lyrics sound OK coming from Graham up there, does that mean Akon succeeded in his attempt to not be disrespecful?

It’s a real conundrum, and one far too complicated for my male thoughtsicles to process. So I decided to ask some of The Womens. I emailed some real-life females and asked them for their opinion on Akon’s attempt to not be disrespectful, alongside a mark out of ten for “Not Being Disrespectful-ness”.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Thursday October 8th, 2009 at 8:30 am

Amerie’s new one “Heard ‘Em All” is a frantic, tribal-beats-y kind of thing, with lots of great “uh-huh”s and “hey hey”s. I liked it after two listens, which makes it about an 8/10 on the immediacy scale. Clearly “One Thing” was an 11, but let’s give the poor girl a break because very few people ever produce a song that perfect and then have the misfortune to find themselves judged against it forever.

The video has a built-in guarantee of quality in that Amerie appears in it, but some people might deem it a bit of a “Disturbia” rip-off. Which isn’t that surprising since it’s by the same director, who clearly has Se7en, Fight Club and Mad Max on rotate on his DVD player.

Whatever, Universal Music don’t want too many people to see it - or any other visual representation of their artists’ work - because they are wrongheaded killjoy cunts who disable embedding on so many of the fucking videos they upload to YouTube.

So instead, here’s a version of the tune with a phoned-in Lil Wayne verse tacked onto the beginning so that men are allowed to listen to the song without feeling like a sissy.

Buy Amerie “Heard ‘Em All” MP3 at Amazon.com

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Tuesday September 29th, 2009 at 8:30 am

Clearly miffed that Jeremih has encroached on his R(umpo)&B(oning) turf, R Kelly has returned with a tune so self-parodic that it might very well reach HMV’s shelves housed in a rubber johnny.

“Having sex with you is like makin’ hits,” he muses to his partner on the track, Keri Hilson. One dreads to think what one might find on entering a recording studio that R Kelly has just vacated.

Spunk everywhere.

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Friday September 18th, 2009 at 8:30 am

Basshunter (real name: Ian Basshunter) has produced a very odd piece of work here. Let’s overlook the fact that he commits a common lyrical crime in switching between “she” and “you” with abandon, and instead focus on a couple of things about the video.

Thing 1: He rolls with a crew who are so much bloody fun that he literally never gets five minutes alone with his missus to propose to her. There he is on a yacht, or a piece of reclining beach furniture, fumbling about in the pocket of his cargo shorts for the ring, when his “boys” come and grab him and drag him off for some laddish larks. You’d think Mr Basshunter might have enough cash these days to take his beloved off for a holiday sans his spitroast buddies, but apparently not.

Thing 2: I don’t want to ruin it for you, but you should really watch until the end. To say the video’s conclusion jars with the tone of the preceding footage - and indeed the euphoric eurospaff of the song in general - is an understatement. There is a “message” there, but it’s pretty unsubtly done unlike the rest of Mr Basshunter’s oeuvre.

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday August 26th, 2009 at 8:00 am

L.

O.

L.

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Thursday August 20th, 2009 at 8:00 am

Credit to P-Money - “Everything” (featuring someone called Vince Harder) is going to find it difficult to be anything other than massive in the UK this summer. It’s irresistible electro-funk-house which I heard for the first time on Zane Lowe the other night and loved immediately.

But it did make me wonder where the heckfire Chromeo are at the moment, because surely they should be tearing up the charts - albeit with slightly fewer housey vibes - with this kind of stuff by now?

Anyway, P-Money is a New Zealandish chap who seems genuinely, touchingly excited by the prospect of soundtracking our summer. And why shouldn’t he? It’s quite an honour. I suppose it’s just nice to catch an artist at that point before they blow up completely and become a tad blasé about the whole success thing.

You can tell the video was shot a while back, mind you - that iPod’s not even a touchscreen! LOLZ!

Buy P-Money’s “Everything” at iTunes

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday July 13th, 2009 at 9:00 am

It wasn’t supposed to, but this video for Chicane’s cover of Sigur Ros’s “Poppiholla” “Hoppiholla” made me do a LOL of considerable volume.

First there’s the fact that Chicane have bothered covering this song at all. If you don’t recognise the title, it’s also known as “That One From David Attenborough’s Planet Earth Which Makes You Feel All Poignant And Misty-Eyed About The Fate Of The Polar Bear For A Couple Of Minutes On A Sunday Night Before You Turn Over To Big Brother.”

Chicane have managed to strip out all of the emotion that the original somehow made people feel, and turned it instead into a plinky-plonky trance yawnfest the like of which you may have thought died with Robert Miles. Robert Miles isn’t dead? Oh.

Anyway, the video. So there’s a BLACK MAN in a HOOD walking along kind of FURTIVELY, getting GLANCES from WHITE PEOPLE who seem to THINK that HE is GOING to BUTCHER THEIR FAMILIES OR SOMETHING. This “walking along furtively” part of the video takes up about two of the video’s three minutes, and I estimate that in this time the clip’s protagonist must cover about five yards.
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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Tuesday July 7th, 2009 at 9:00 am

Michael Jackson died two days ago, so this is going to be a bit of a personal post. Feel free to skip it if you’re not in the mood for a spot of rambling, nostalgic, borderline weepy sincerity.

For me, loving music has always gone hand in hand with loving Michael Jackson. I can’t remember the first time I listened to him - he’s always just been there. And he always will be. His death won’t alter the fact that millions of kids are going to grow up listening to him, because their own parents grew up listening to him.

The last couple of days have felt quite surreal, with every shop and passing car blasting out MJ songs, and everyone I’ve spoken to talking about him. I can’t think of too many other singers whose death would inspire such a reaction, if only because there are so few acts out there who are so universally loved.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Sunday June 28th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

Can you imagine how great it would be if Ladyhawke hooked up wih Girls Aloud producers Xenomania? If your brain isn’t up to such popmath, fear not - there’s a song on Cicada’s new album Roulette which shows exactly how great such a pairing would sound.

It is called “Psycho Thrills”, and if whoever makes such decisions for Cicada doesn’t ensure it is released as a single toot bloody sweet, they ought to find themselves languishing in a dole queue for the rest of the summer.

Slap my wrist for such harshness, but if you give “Psycho Thrills” a listen below you will surely come to the same conclusion - this, amongst an album of splendid electro-pop, is surely a numero one single (despite something in the synths reminding me of Eric Clapton’s “Behind The Mask (?!)).

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Buy “Psycho Thrills” and other tracks from Cicada’s Roulette at 7Digital

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday June 17th, 2009 at 8:30 am