Some more Jam

Earlier this week, we promised some extra quotes from our BBC series on songwriters.

First up, here's Jimmy Jam on writing one of the key tracks from Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation 1814".

"Someone like Janet, who is a really good lyricist, comes up with great ideas, great melodies. Many times we will create a track for her and just give it to her and she’ll come back a couple of days later and go, okay here’s what I’ve got.

But I remember when we were working on Rhythm Nation, there was a song we did called Living In A World They Didn’t Make, which was very personal to her and she just couldn’t figure out lyrically what she wanted to do.

It was funny, because we were actually in the process – this was ’89 – we were in the process of building our second Flyte Time studios in Minneapolis and I remember Terry walked in with a bunch of carpet samples and drapery swatches and he said, "what do you think of these?"

And we said, "Terry, hold on a minute, we need a lyric, we’ve got this concept for a song, Living in a World They Didn’t Make – it’s about kids, how they basically have to pay for adults’ mistakes", blah, blah.

And Terry sits down and 10 minutes later, he’s got the whole song written and just hands it to Janet and he says, "is that what you’re thinking about?", and she said, "yeah."

Then he said;
"OK, now what do you think of this carpet sample?!"

More next week!

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I'm sick and tired of your gamesYou know you've got shit for brains

Believe it or not, those are the actual words of Suzanne Shaw's new song about Darren Day.

What on earth possessed the woman to wash her dirty linen in public like this?

And since when did she become a cockney?

"Who do you fink you are saying you don't do fam-laaaay?" she enquires, in a voice that would make Kat Slater think 'blimey that girl's common'.

There's no arguing that Darren Day is a class-A cheating scumbag fuck, but this song almost makes you feel sorry for him.

Listen to the whole debacle here
(via www.suzanneshaw.co.uk
who appear to have nicked it off of Scott Mills)

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Madonna's new album: "Defying Gravity"

I bet she's taken up yogic flying.

Ananova - Madonna works on new album

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No Doggs allowed

Snoop Dogg says he might
shorten his name to plain old Snoop to 'shed all canine references from his moniker'.

Erm, surely Snoop is a canine reference? Or is he planning to come back as a private detective?

The Nintendo DS is getting a Rumble feature, which should make using the stylus a hell of a lot more challenging...

MTV comes up with the lamest excuse yet to get the words 'Britney' and 'Breasts' into a headline.

Sad faces all round: the voice of Tony The Tiger has passed away.

No link for this one (it was on teletext), but U2 have given $23m to charity. That's about one-third of the profits from their last world tour - so it won't break the bank - but it's nice to see Bono put his money where his mouth is.

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Who the hell are you?

How does it feel to be the lead character in the world's most successful sitcom, yet have no-one recognise you in the street?

That's the dilemma Nancy Cartwright explores in her one-woman show, "My Life As A Ten-Year-Old Boy."

Nancy is the voice of Bart Simpson (and Ralph Wiggum, and Nelson, and Chucky from the Rugrats), and its massive fun to hear her break into character, as she does throughout her act.

Trouble is, on the evidence of the opening night, Nancy is only as good as the material she's given - and her show desperately needs the attention of The Simpsons' crack team of writers.

She relies heavily on crowd-pleasing script recitals, and seems more interested in self-promotion than giving an insight into her peculiar talents.

By far the most telling moment comes when she reveals, with a generous helping of jealousy, that Hank Azaria joins most Simpsons readthroughs by speakerphone because he's "off in Italy, or Paris, or Broadway in Spamalot getting 11 Tony nominations." Ouch.

But it was a pleasant surprise to find that Cartwright was one of the voices behind Animaniacs - Warner Brothers brilliant, but largely unloved, TV series of the mid-90s (do a Google search and you might find ten or so woeful sites from the dawn of the internet).

Indeed, Cartwright's character Mindy still shuts down the Discopop PC every night as she squeaks "OK, I love you - Byebye!"

Bless.

NancyCartwright.com

Riverside Studios

Daws Butler (Nancy's mentor and the voice of Hukleberry Hound)

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I've just been busy, okay?

So here's why Discopop Directory has been so sparsely updated for a week or three... We've been putting together a series on the world's greatest pop writers for the BBC's news website.

But it's all done now, and there should now be adequate time to bitch about Britney and Coldplay over here instead.

If you're interested, the interviews with Richard X and Guy Chambers are on the BBC website now. Xenomania, Cathy Dennis and Jam&Lewis get profiled over the course of the week.

There's plenty of choice quotes left over, so maybe we'll put some of them up here in the next couple of days.

To whet your appetite, here's a surprising admission from the nicest man in pop^TM, the irrepressible Mr X.

"I always wanted to be in a girl band - like Girls Aloud. They could always do with a sixth member. And that could be me.”

BBC Entertainment - The Hitmakers: Richard X.

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Buy my ringtone

What is the most popular thing that kids say these days? The catchphrase-du-jour, if you like?

Why, of course, it is:
"Dit dit dit, dah, dah, dahhhhh, brring, brrring, dit, dit, dit, dah, dit, brrrm, brrrm, nelaeooooowhm dit, dit, dit.

Etc.

Inane, isn't it? Although it's really no worse than constantly shouting "Crackerjack" (Crackerjack!!!!!!!!!) at your mates in the middle of maths class.

But those adverts with the so-called 'Crazy' frog. Jesus H Christ are they irritating. Everyone agrees. Even the man who wrote it.

Someone on the internet hates it so much they've come up with a (momentarily hilarious) parody.

Unfortunately, it will end up being just as annoying and repetitive as the real thing. Bastards.

Buy My Ringtone!! (not safe for work!)

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Gerbil Pie

How long is it since you pulled off a great practical joke? Here at Discopop towers it has been too long. Not since that thing with the bucket of custard and the alarm clock, in fact.

So, inspired by The New Yorker, we're going to go out and Punk some people (as the kids are calling it these days).

We're definitely trying the gerbil pie, and we've just had the following phone conversation with Waterstones;

Waterstones: "Hello, Waterstones Picadilly. Can I help you?"
Mrdiscopop: "No, I'm just browsing."
Waterstones: "?"
Mrdiscopop: "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Bonk."

Bonk was the sound of our head falling off with all the laughter.

The New Yorker: Try these fun hoaxes

Gerbil Pie

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GET WELL SOON KYLIE

BBC News: Kylie Minogue has breast cancer

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Channel 4 does a swear

Channel Four have rolled out their 'Celebrities saying a word they like' ad campaign again, which always begs the question; "Why do none of them say shit or bugger?"



But slebs are just like us, and it turns out that channel four "leaked" a viral ad onto the internet last year which is basically two minutes of potty-mouthed filth.



Judy Finnegan says fuck. Rachel Bilson says shitface (although we preferred her saying 'asshat' in Wednesday's episode of the OC). Iain Lee tells us what everyone shouts at him in the street.



Fuckin' A!

Channel 4 Swearing advert

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Fainting Goats

...are the new tipping cows!

Fainting goats

Further information

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Fear of flying

Life imitates art! Jennifer Aniston apparently freaked out and demanded to get off a transatlantic flight minutes before it took off.

Aniston was supposed to be flying back to LA from London, where she'd been spending time with Ross David Schwimmer.

I hope she went straight to his apartment and wept "I got off the plane" before collapsing into his arms. That would make my life complete.

Jennifer Lopez realises what we've all known for years. She's banned a film about the recording of her new album because she "hated the sound of her voice"

But self-delusion continues as normal for Daniel Bedingfield, who believes his shitpot second album flopped because he's not getting any skirt.

No, dear, it's because the record stank like a skunk in a binbag.

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We love Ainsley Harriot!

The picture on your right isn't lifted from an A-Level biology text book.

Oh no, its the result of our search for "I Love Ainsley Harriot" using the latest challenger to Google, which is something called Grokker.

It's slow and a bit pointless, but look at all the pretty colours!

Order us 14 shares in this company, please, Jeeves.

Grokker - A New Way to Look at Search

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Blip!

Sorry for the fallow period - been writing a few articles for the people who pay me. More on that in a fortnight... Anyway, some things you may have missed:

SuperGirl Michelle Gellar:
Cute, but is it real?

Franz Ferdinand fans are asking us to petition for the return of Alex Kapranos' fringe:

"[It] symbolised a great many things to his fans - freedom, truth, beauty, justice - and he also had to push it attractively out of his eyes in order to see. We liked that."

Armando Ianucci simply can't be bothered any more.

Popjustice is having a big old party. Woo-hoo!

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I want people to know what Barry Chuckle is really like

It was only yesterday lunchtime that we were wondering who would be the next celebrity to face a sex scandal.

Top of our list was the Chuckle Brothers (they just look the sort, don't they?)


So imagine our surprise when we opened up a three day old copy of the sun to find it had already happened!

We plan to put our newfound talent for predicting news stories after they've happened to lucrative effect. Tomorrow, we'll exclusively reveal the general election results. At around teatime.

The Sun: What a dirty chuckle

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Blood on the court floor

So, the first half of the Jacko trial is shuddering to an unsatisfactory close. It looks fairly certain that the prosecution can establish reasonable doubt in the jury's collective mind, although they're heading for a fall if they call Liza Minelli as a 'character witness'. They may as well get Michael to take the stand dressed as a clown (not an entirely unlikely possibility, when you think about it).



Whatever you may think of the trial, Eugene Robinson makes a good point in the Washington Post:

"If half of what the prosecution witnesses say about Michael Jackson is true, he deserves to go to jail. But so do some of those witnesses. Once the whole lot is behind bars, the rest of us ought to work on taming the monster of celebrity before it devours us all.

Washington Post: Adoration's Price(registration required)

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Empire Splash-back

Discopop directory isn't about to become a Star Wars fan-blog, but we couldn't resist this photo.

The question is: Where do you find the zipper in a Storm Trooper's suit?

AJ Mast's Member Gallery

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Defying all logic and reason

Here at discopop towers^TM, we consider ourselves quite the connoisseurs of film.

Our favourite flick might be William Goldberg's daft riff on fairytales, "The Princess Bride", but we also know the difference between Dirty Harry and Dirty Dancing. There's no salsa in Dirty Harry.

So why, when we managed to ditch the Matrix after one pointless sequel, are we still desperately excited by "Revenge of the Sith"? Even the fanboy ravings of Kevin Smith can't put us off.

Insert your own "Dark Side" pun here. We're off to join a queue...

View Askew: Kevin Smith geeks out on 'Sith' (spoliers!)

Starwars.com. It's all downhill from here.

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Kiss, cake, mistake

Drew Barrymore and Penelope Cruz mesh faces.
No tongue, though.

Urgh! Why on earth did Prince Charles post a slice of cake to Jamelia?

We all know the USA has become an increasingly tough market for foreign recording artists. But launch.com have perhaps got the wrong end of the stick when they insist that "Coldplay have become only the second British band to have a new entry in the US singles chart."

Has Paula Abdul been doing the dirty with an American Idol contestant? Will Fox axe her from the show? And why is it so important to rival network, ABC, to make this public? Ratings envy, anyone?

From the "I want one of those" department:
Hayden Christensen's Sith Happens T-shirt

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