Here's that BBC Music thing "in full"

Lorde, One Direction and Alison Balsom - together at last!

That's the pitch for the BBC's spectacularly lavish, star-studded music video / charity single / promotional campaign, which was unveiled a couple of hours ago on every BBC channel except Radio Three and BBC Parliament, which are much too posh to entertain this sort of hoi polloi.

Ostensibly, it's this year's Children In Need single - a cover of The Beach Boys' God Only Knows, performed en masse by an ensemble of en vogue superstars, from Pharrell to Dave Grohl and, somewhat inevitably, Emeli Sande. But it's also a huge flag in the sand for the new "BBC Music" brand, which aims to give the corporation's musical output equal footing to BBC News and BBC Sport. And that is the reason you get pianist (and BBC Young Musician of the Year) Martin James Bartlett rubbing shoulders with the A-list pop stars.

You might be asking why the BBC needs a brand to promote its musical endeavours? Surely everyone knows the Beeb does music exceptionally well from The Proms, to BBC Introducing to Glastonbury and even creaky old Jools Holland and his boogie woogie pianola. But no, politicians don't.

Even in an era when David Cameron loves The Smiths and Gordon Brown plays air guitar to Arctic Monkeys, MPs are endearingly clueless about "how music works" - and why Britain's pivotal role in the worlds of classical, jazz and pop can often be traced back to BBC music champions like (deep breath) Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens, Lauren Laverne, Alison Howe, Max Reinhardt and Roger Wright.

Now, it just so happens that "BBC Music" in general, and this advert in particular, are being launched as the broadcaster heads into what's rather grandly called Charter Renewal - which is basically the government telling the corporation what it can and can't do for the next decade. In previous negotiations, BBC music has often been seen as an easy target compared to news and sport. There's always someone, from any of the major parties, willing to declare, "you don't need Radio 1 when we have Magic FM," despite never listening to either.

So this sort of branding exercise is a way of neutering that message before the starting pistol is fired. And funnily enough the BBC have done it once before, with this song:


God Only Knows has a much higher budget than Perfect Day. In fact, the three-minute promo was shot over two years at Alexandra Palace (there's a great behind-the-scenes report in Creative Review, which reveals the original song choice was Iron Maiden's Phantom Of The Opera).

But where Perfect Day succeeds, and God Only Knows falters, is that it gave the singers space to put their stamp on the song.

Bono's "you just keep me hanging on" was full of Catholic remorse; Heather Small brought the gospel; and Ronan Keating's reading of "It's just a perfect day" was so deadened and bleak it completely nailed the song's underlying sarcasm (by accident, presumably). Even more satisfying were the jarring juxtapositions - in particular Tammy Wynette handing over to wizened old Shane McGowan.

The 2014 version doesn't take pleasure in those moments. Chrissie Hynde and Paloma Faith trade lines, but they're over so briefly you'd be hard pressed to tell which was which without the video. Lorde and Chris Martin both shine, but their voices are surprisingly similar side-by-side. Jake Bugg, meanwhile, gets handed a couple of desultory "la las", stretching his charisma beyond breaking point.

It's still brilliant and audacious (and the BBC employee in me wants the lobbying to work) but imagine what it could have been.

Especially if they'd done the Iron Maiden track.


PS: Some of the observations on Perfect Day are indebted to Tom Ewing's excellent review on his Popular blog - possibly the best music site on the internet.

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The music of silence

That's the Pussycat Dolls sealing their lips. Not for the good of humanity, you understand, but to promote their Shhh lingerie range back in 2008.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the Pussycats' inexplicable decision to keep singing, I've become preoccupied with musicians being quiet. Let me tell you why...

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague at the BBC News Website Tim Masters dropped me a line saying he'd interviewed author Jennifer Egan about her new book A Visit From The Goon Squad. One of the chapters in this Orange Prize-nominated novel takes the form of a Powerpoint presentation, which details 12 of the greatest pauses in rock music - those little, unexpected moments of calm that are guaranteed to ruin any game of musical chairs. Here they are in no particular order.

• Foxy Lady - Jimi Hendrix
• Please Play This Song on the Radio - NOFX
• Good Times, Bad Times - Led Zeppelin
• Bernadette - The Four Tops
• Young Americans - David Bowie
• Mighty Sword - The Frames
• Supervixen - Garbage
• Long Train Runnin’ - The Doobie Brothers
• The Time of the Season - The Zombies
• Faith - George Michael
• Closing Time - Semisonic
• Roxanne - The Police
• Rearrange Beds - An Horse

Tim sent me a chunk of his interview and suggested it might make a decent feature on 6 Music... I agreed, and set off to ask some musicians about the science of silence, and along the way I bumped into Dr Victoria Williamson (who runs an excellent blog on the psychology of music). It all turned into this radio package, which aired yesterday.



Sometimes I love my job...


Footnote one: The chapter in A Visit From The Goon Sqaud also works as a standalone short story. It's available for free online - just click on this link.

Footnote two: Jennifer's list is far from exhaustive. I'd have included the "STOP!" moment from Britney's Crazy, or the almighty gap before the first verse of The Foo Fighters' Monkey Wrench. Any more ideas out there?

Footnote three: Tim's interview with Jennifer Egan can be found here.

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A quick chat with Robyn!

It can't have escaped your attention that I'm quite a big fan of Robyn's Body Talk project. Well, the third part is out this week and I beseech you to buy it.

If you're not convinced... well, what's wrong with you? But here's a rather fantastic A-Trak remix of the single, Indestructible, to whet your appetite.

Indestructible (A-Trak radio edit) by robyn


I managed to catch up with Robyn last week as part of my "proper job" at the BBC. As I'm out of the country, I can't be certain when the interview goes live, but I'll put up a link once I get back. In the meantime, here's an excerpt of our chat that was cut from the final piece.

On the new tracks, you seem more upbeat than the heartbroken Robyn of Body Talk pts 1&2. What inspired that?

I think this last part of the project became very straightforward. It’s the big pop finale. Time Machine is pop pop pop! It’s like an exercise in how far you can go in that world.

I wanted not to play it safe and go back into the credible world with this last part. I wanted to take it all the way and tie it all together with real pop songs.

Lyrically, you have two personas – the melancholy, unlucky in love teenager, versus this kick-ass woman with towering confidence. Is that split personality present in real life, too?

Maybe. Life is dynamic and complicated – so it can be hard for me to look at myself and tell you who I am. I’m a lot of things, and I try to use that in my music.

Have you managed to avoid leaks by releasing material as soon as its ready?

No, the first album leaked, and the second album leaked, and then the last album leaked! But we’ve managed to close the gap between the leak and the release with the second two albums. It usually happens when we start sending out albums to journalists.

It wasn’t me, I promise!

No, we know who it is because they’re watermarked. You can usually trace the source. But I think it’s got to the point now where journalists don’t really care. And I understand... When it’s that close to a release, I don’t know if it makes that big of a difference.

But if you don’t sell any records, then you don't make any money, and the record companies collapse and suddenly the journalists have no artists to speak to. So they’re essentially making themselves redundant.

You’re right – but I guess when it’s closer to the release, it becomes harder to say how much of an effect it has on sales. And I think the music industry feels more alive nowadays because of blogs and websites like Pitchfork than through the old-school media and MTV.

How important has the visual side of this project been?

It’s been really important. The way the albums were recorded was more natural – and that simple way of looking at things influenced the visuals, as well. Number one, there’s less money to be spent on videos and record covers, so you have to be creative with that. But it’s also about doing something that felt real, and organic and not too complicated.

Are you saying the songs were also less produced than perhaps they were in the past?

I guess you could say that. I don’t know if it’s less complicated – because the way of getting to a simple solution can sometimes be quite difficult, or take a lot of effort. But the music is stripped down. It’s deliberately produced in a simple way – and that’s something we started on the last record [Robyn]. Sparse production, focusing on the melody of the song.

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Curricular activities

Sometimes, my job is just too good to be true. In the last week, I've interviewed three of my favourite singers - Alison Goldfrapp, Nelly Furtado and Lykke Li. Although I'm the world's worst inquisitor, asking banal questions that drag on for minutes at a time, all three were polite and professional enough to provide interesting answers.

First up, here's Ms Goldfrapp, talking about the band's recent tour and why she and Will Gregory let their deal with EMI Records lapse.



The Nelly Furtado interview went up on the BBC News Website today. It's probably the one I'm most proud of - because it took a simple idea (tell me about the songs on your greatest hits album) and provoked half-an-hour of thoughtful reminiscing from the artist. It wasn't supposed to, but that's what happened. You can click this link to read it. Or you can just look at this picture of Nelly Furtado's midriff instead.


Finally we come to Lykke Li, who was an absolute sweetheart, wrapped up against the biting London chill in what can only be described as a leather duffel coat. The interview won't be broadcast for a couple of weeks - but here's a sneak preview, where she talks about her plans to bring a huge percussion section on the road with her next year.


If you want to hear more from Lykke, she was on 6 Music's Nemone show earlier today, where she revealed her new album will be called Wounded Rhymes. The listen again page is here, and Lykke appears about 95 minutes into the programme.

And here ends the biggest name-dropping session of all time.

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JLS: Bonus content

JLS's new single The Club Is Alive prompted one user on the Teentoday site to comment: "My ears have acquired Aids as a result of listening to this".

I think that's a bit harsh. As I pointed out two months ago, it's a pretty audacious song for a boyband at this stage in their career. The fact that some people hate it means it's doing the right job. Teeny pop groups should divide the nation. If your mum liked them, they'd be Westlife - and look where that got us.

Anyway, I got to interview the JLS "crew" for my regular job on the BBC News Website. They are just like you'd expect - well-mannered, engaged, polite. But they are also not what you'd expect - intelligent, poised, self-aware.

As usual, there were plenty of tasty morsels that I couldn't squeeze into the BBC write-up, so here are some JLS off-cuts for you to feast upon.

So, you've been recording the second album. Can you tell me what any of the songs are called, or what they sound like?
Aston: Ah, so you want to know all the secrets! Do you know what? Basically, it’s a very mixed album, like the first one. We worked with a lot of the same producers over here and – because of the success of the last album - it opened doors for us to work with other producers and writers in the States as well. People who have written some monster hits for Beyonce, Ne-Yo and Rihanna – across the board they’ve written some amazing songs.

We think we’ve done an amazing job. It’s very JLS. When people do hear the album, they’re going to be very surprised that we’ve written everything but The Club Is Alive. We put our heart, blood, sweat and tears into this album. Poured our souls out.

You've never released a ballad as a single. Why is that?
Oritse: All I can say is “no comment”. I especially can't talk about what we've recorded this week. On Saturday.
JB: We had a ballad on the last album but we didn’t release it as a single. We felt that we wanted to come with something different for the first singles. But you never know.

A lot of girls want to hear a big love song from JLS.
Oritse: We’ve been trying to keep the clubs alive with our music, you know?

That sounds strangely familiar.
Oristse: Yeah! Where did I get that from? But, you know, I think – we had a ballad on the last album that could have been a single, but the way the year went we were only going to release three singles. But this year… we’ll see.

So it'll be out in time for Christmas?
All: Mmmm... Errr...
JB: Are you working on the JLS team? You know more than us.
Aston: Christmas.... Or Valentines. Watch this space.

Read more »

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Sound of the future...

The BBC revealed the longlist for its annual "sound of" poll this morning and it's well worth checking out the nominees. Unlike previous years, there's some out-there experimental stuff nestling up against the amazing, chart-bound sounds of Ellie Goulding, Stornoway, Delphic and my current obsession, Marina and the Diamonds.

Giggs, a South London rapper with a proper actual criminal record, is probably going to sell as many records as Speech "even my own reflection isn't aware I have a record out" Debelle. More interesting (to me) is Gold Panda, a sort of one-man Go Team on beta blockers. He is quite literally called Derwin, and he rummages through bins and damp cardboard boxes in charity shops to find weird samples for his trippy sound collages.

Check out a few of his songs and remixes using this handy little thingummy that plays you some of his songs and remixes by the power of internet magic. I particularly recommend the rejigged version of Chrome's On It. If you press the right buttons in the right order, you can even download them as MP3s. Fancy that.

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End of an era

Hurrumph!

With the sort of reckless abandon not seen since the Los Angeles' DMV gave driving licences to Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie, the BBC has suddenly decided to stop making its slate of video podcasts. As of last week, these free, excellent, downloads are gone - evaporating into the ether without so much as a bye or leave (incidentally, what does this phrase even mean?).

According to the man in charge, some of the "vodcasts" may reappear later in the year, but others may not.

I don't really get it. Why spend a year courting your audience, only to dump them on your doorstep while secretly hoping they'll get back together with you in October? Why couldn't the "evaluation" of this trial have run simultaneously with the trial itself? It seems a particularly perverse way to carry out your business. But, hey, that's the BBC for you.

Chief among the losses is Storyfix - the corporation's sarcastic look at its own news coverage. I understand the weekly download was roundly hated by the very presenters it lampooned. For that reason alone it was a marvellous and excellent invention. The music wasn't bad, either. (I wonder which gifted genius of modern composition was responsible...)

But sources on the Storyfix team tell me that it won't be one of the shows making a return later in the year. Apparently, budgetary constraints mean it is finished, kaput, no more, the end, annihilated, broken, gorn, dead and buried. Fin.

If you want to see what in the name of heck you were missing, here is the excellent last episode: A compilation of the best bits of the last 12 months of news aimed at a viewer with the attention span of a goldfish raised on MTV and red bull.

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Come again?

Once upon a time, local radio was a hotbed of experimentation and daring. The BBC used to groom the stars of the future in its regional stations, letting them make all their rookie mistakes in front of a sympathetic audience before launching them into prime time. It even outsourced some of that work to independent stations, letting them invest all their money in talent development before tempting away their stars with the promise of a kiss and a lollipop, just like your dirty uncle Gavin.

But in recent years, local radio stations have lost some of their spark. Gone are the days when Chris Morris could get away with filling a studio with helium just before the newsreader arrived. Now everything is formatted, regimented and playlisted. Some DJs are mere voice-over artists - reading scripts delivered to a tele-prompter from corporate HQ. Your local station has roughly the same degree of autonomy as Radio Deutschland in 1944. Not that they have to play oompah bands and denounce the Jews, but you get the point.

Thank God, then, for Clive Garner. He's a doddery old man, who turns up at Radio Merseyside every week with a handful of his collection of 50,000 78rpm records. Clive's been doing this for 15 years, which is just as well, because no station manager would let him through the door now. Actually, that's harsh. They'd let him through the door, find him somewhere to have a quick nap and a cup of tea before putting him back on the bus to convalescent home.

In turns, Clive sounds drunk, confused, asleep, drugged, and clinically dead. But, brilliantly, he shook things up last week and dedicated his programme to… Well, perhaps you should just listen:

A 30-second trail...

...And then the programme

Also flying the flag for innovative local programming is this startling piece of reporting from another BBC local station. Always first with the exclusive breaking news, they reveal that there is an owl in Shropshire:

Owl news

More owl news

You couldn't make this stuff up.

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The world's most respected broadcasting organisation

Because of the unique way the BBC is funded, it can make risky, cutting-edge programming that other broadcasters would never contemplate.

That's why, when BBC local radio station Hereford and Worcester needed to illustrate the problems of inadequate housing provision in their area, they neatly side-stepped copyright law and re-wrote the lyrics to Madness's "Our House". They even got their producer, Bethan, to sing her new verses over the top of the original.

A commercial station, you see, could never made this. Not because of the dodgy legal implications, because their funders would have pulled the plug immediately. The item was one of the most poorly-conceived, amateurly-executed, should-never-have-made-it-to-air pieces of radio ever broadcast.

Needless to say, it is a classic.

Luckily for you, a 'source' sent us an MP3 of the broadcast. We suggest you play it all the way through to experience the full horror.

And when you're through, have a serious think about whether the BBC really deserves an extra £3.14 on the licence fee every year until 2013.

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And Jeremy pulled off his mask to reveal...

...Exactly what it's like to work in a television newsroom.



Jeremy Paxman has nailed the process of putting together a news programme in an article for the BBC's News website.



In particular, his description of my job rings true:

If you want a working definition of a producer's job, it is persuading people to do things they don't want to do. And which are not in their own best interests.

I might not have risen to the heady heights of working on Newsnight, but the next time someone asks what I do, I'm sending them this article.

BBC NEWS:A day in the life of Newsnight

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And at the top of the hit parade this week...

I started out as a studio manager at the BBC World Service about 7 years ago. Which is around the same time that they began to phase out the record players you see here...



Quite distressingly, it now seems that there is a website dedicated to SMs past and present. And it has photos of all the training courses that took place at the BBC's nuclear bunkers in Wood Norton.



All of which begs the question - what was I thinking when I bought that shirt?

Studio Managers Courses - October 1997

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Where'd Everyone Go?

Click the image...

BBC cuts 3,000 jobs

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"Today, we don't know our enemy"

Possibly the best reporting I've seen from Iraq hasn't been written by journalists.



As if to prove this, some of my colleagues at the BBC News website have been publishing accounts of daily life from people living in Iraq. It really gives a flavour of how people on all sides view the current trials and tribulations of the country. Indeed, some of it is strangely reminiscent of growing up in Belfast during 'the troubles' - although they're not eating quite so many potatoes.

BBC: Iraq log

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