Some bonus bits from @NerinaPallot

I had a quick chat with Nerina Pallot last week when she popped into the 6 Music news bunker (tidy, isn't it?). The results went up on the BBC News Website today. We talk about babies, fans who make out to her songs, and who is tallest: Nerina or Kylie? You can read the interview here - but, as ever, there are a few little morsels that didn't make the main piece. So here's a few snippets of conversation from the cutting room floor...

I love the synthpop remix of the new single, Put Your Hands Up (Like It's 1987). How did that come about?

I’ll let you into a little secret. That is not the remix. That's the first version we ever did.

Actually, to be honest, the way I wrote the song was on the piano and it was very singer-songwriter. I played it to my husband, and he said, "there’s so much potential here but it’s a bit of a yawn" so we re-worked it together and it became this uber-pop moment. I have this obsession with mid-80s Stock Aitken and Waterman, so I wanted to let that song have its moment in that way.

This album ditches the uber-pop moments you had on your last record, The Graduate, though...

I wanted to make a concerted effort to bring back the rock element to my records. I hadn’t done that on The Graduate. For me, that record was an indulgence. I produced it on my own and I’m not the world’s greatest electric guitar player, so it really lacked that. Bernard [Butler - producer] was one of my first choices, because of that element. And also he had a vision, which was really old-fashioned. We rehearsed a band and cut most of the album live. I think that’s where that grit comes from – just a bunch of people in the studio playing together.

Put Your Hands Up has done really well on Radio 2, but do you find it difficult to get your songs played elsewhere?

We live in a time where things are meant to be niched – but that doesn’t bear reflection of people’s iTunes collections. I think people’s listening is more diverse than we think it is. One day, there’ll be a perfect radio station where they play Britney next to Nirvana.

Maybe it would be good to look at the American model of including airplay and general media exposure into the singles chart. Then we'd get a truer picture of what is a really popular track, what is a fake hit, and what is a manipulated hit. But no-one's going to listen to me on that!

Here's Nerina performing of Put Your Hands Up on ITV1 yesterday. The drummer is having a little too much fun, if you ask me.

Nerina Pallot - Put Your Hands Up (live)

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Nerina Pallot gets the SAW treatment

It's very careless of me, but it's been almost a month since I last wrote about Nerina Pallot's excellent new single Put Your Hands Up.

Luckily, someone from her record label has just emailed me to say, "Hey there, have you heard this remix of Nerina Pallot's excellent new single Put Your Hands Up?"

The answer is "yes," because it's been available on iTunes for roughly four weeks now. But Nerina has recently uploaded the remix on Soundcloud for everyone to enjoy free of charge. What a mensch.

For people of a certain age - IE me - this is going to bring back memories of Stock Aitken Waterman era Kylie Minogue, when every Thursday night meant sitting on the floor, watching TOTP with one finger poised over the VCR's record button.

Amazing scenes.

Nerina Pallot - Put Your Hands Up (Like It's 1987) [We Are The Chatterleys Mix]


PS: In case you missed it, Kylie got PWL/SAW producer Pete Hammond out of retirement this year to remix one of her Aphrodite tracks (confusingly also called Put Your Hands Up). Here is the YouTube link you require.

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Jive (Easter) Bunny

As regular readers might know, I grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. It was an era when Christianity was a fact of life and Religious Education was a compulsory subject at GCSE. Although I'm not a regular church-goer now, I remain fond of those Bible teachings that haven't been distorted into a demented manifesto for small-minded intolerance.

At it's best, religion taught me to look at the world with a sense of awe and gratitude and compassion. That is perfectly alright by me.

I could never get to grips with the music, though. Hymns were tolerable - the bad ones have been filtered out over hundreds of years, after all. It was all that drippy "Jesus is a sunbeam" bollocks that made me want to impale myself on a candelabra like a macabre Marilyn Manson wannabe.

So, just in time for Easter, here are five songs with a religious theme that are 100% not rubbish. I bet they wouldn't play any of them in St Paul's Cathedral, mind.

1) Regina Spektor - Laughing With

Because God has a sense of humour, even if you don't (cf the Duck Billed Platypus).


2) Kanye West - Jesus Walks

Because you can't get Prince's back catalogue on YouTube. if you could, this video would either be The Cross (from Sign O'The Times) or Eye Know (from Lovesexy). They're both amazing.


3) U2 - Until End Of The World

In which Bono plays the character of Judas, betraying Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Alternatively, it's about fighting with your wife at a party thrown by The Great Gastby. From the brief "good period" in U2's career.


4) Nerina Pallot - God Of Small Things

I particularly like the lyrics of this one. Nerina has doubts about God's existence, but has a few ideas of what her "ideal" creator would be like. In honesty, most church-goers are exactly like this, and I prefer them to the staunch, immovable fundamentalists. To quote Kevin Smith's film, Dogma: "Having belief is a bad thing. It's better to have ideas... You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier."


5) The Headhunters - God Made Me Funky
Amen.

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Let's dance with Nerina Pallot

Nerina Pallot's slinky new single Put Your Hands Up is habit forming. The habit involves listening to Nerina Pallot's Put Your Hands Up three or four times a day, so it's not necessarily a bad habit your mum would disapprove of, like biting your nails or murdering prostitutes.

The song now has a video, and what a cute video it is: A one-shot, feel-good affair where everyone "spontaneously" starts dancing to Nerina's very good song. It reeks of cheese, but an impeccably crafted, expensive cheese e.g. Roquefort or Matzoh Brie. So it would taste nice on a Carr's Water Biscuit.

Basically, everything about this is brilliant. Congratulations to everyone concerned.

Nerina Pallot - Put Your Hands Up


Released 23rd May. Which is aaaaages away.

Update: Now it's out on 24th April. I'm taking responsibility for that one.

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Stop everything and listen to this

Nerina Pallot, esteemed popsmith and Kylie collaborator, has made a rather good record with Bernard Butler. The lead single is called Put Your Hands Up and it sounds like this.

Nerina Pallot - Put Your Hands Up (preview)


For now, you will have to take my word for it that this snippet merely hints at the magnificence of the entire song. For the sake of clarity, my word is "flabbergast".

In the meantime, here's Nerina playing an acoustic version of Put Your Hands Up.



The single is released on 22nd May. I think it's safe to say I'll be following any developments on the Nerina Pallot front with eagle eyes and owl ears.

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Journalism in action

Popjustice posted a link to this two-week-old Nerina Pallot video on Twitter this morning.
I had a look at the video. It is a good video. I like this video.

Nerina Pallot - Real Late Starter (8 bit remix)


After those four enjoyable minutes, I clicked on a link that took me to the video of the original version of the song. I liked that one, too.

Nerina Pallot - Real Late Starter

I think this post has been "a win" - not just for blogging, but for music in general.

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